Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians 9783666550454, 9783525550458, 9783647550459

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© 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550458 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550459

Refo500 Academic Studies

Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In Co-operation with Günter Frank (Bretten), Bruce Gordon, (New Haven), Ute Lotz-Heumann (Tucson), Mathijs Lamberigts (Leuven), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Johannes Schilling (Kiel), Herman Selderhuis (Emden), Günther Wassilowsky (Linz), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück), David M. Whitford (Waco) Volume 10

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht © 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550458 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550459

Mark C. Mattes (ed.)

Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht © 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550458 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550459

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.dnb.de. ISBN 978-3-525-55045-8 ISBN 978-3-647-55045-9 (e-book) Ó 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de 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 by : Konrad Triltsch Print und digitale Medien GmbH Printed and bound in Germany by Hubert & Co, Göttingen Printed on non-aging paper.

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Mark Mattes Editor’s Preface Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians

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David P. Scaer Francis Pieper (1852 – 1931) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Michael J. Albrecht John Philipp Koehler (1859 – 1951)

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Gregory A. Walter Karl Holl (1866 – 1926) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Torleiv Austad Ole Hallesby (1879 – 1961) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Matthew Becker Werner Elert (1885 – 1954) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Hans Schwarz Paul Althaus (1888 – 1966) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 John T. Pless Hermann Sasse (1895 – 1976)

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Gregory A. Walter Hans Joachim Iwand (1899 – 1960)

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Matthew Becker Edmund Schlink (1903 – 1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Richard H. Bliese Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

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Roy A. Harrisville Ernst Käsemann (1906 – 1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 John T. Pless Helmut Thielicke (1908 – 1986)

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Mary Elizabeth Anderson Gustaf Wingren (1910 – 2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Mark D. Menacher Gerhard Ebeling (1912 – 2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 List of Contributors

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Mark Mattes

Editor’s Preface Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians

This book introduces readers to fourteen leading twentieth-century Lutheran theologians. Each essay covers the life, teachings, and continuing relevance of each thinker. The focus here is not on the later but rather the earlier twentiethcentury figures, lest we forget the sources of contemporary theology. From each of these theologians we can learn how to assess truth from within the tradition and present it in our own context. Composed over the last several years, these essays were initiated by the journal Lutheran Quarterly in order to determine how our recent past can help us shape our bearings in a new century. The goal of the authors has been to specify how each theologian’s work continues to impact theology today. We best read our current theological milieu in light of how leading thinkers of the recent past have presented the faith as they have struggled with modern philosophical and scientific perspectives which challenge traditional assumptions.

Overview of the Project The thinkers chosen are ones who are self-described “confessional” Lutherans and not merely culturally influenced by the Lutheran tradition. In its widest sense, to be confessional is to honor the Reformers’ understanding that human justification before God is not to be had in any way through works, but solely by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ. It is to allow the documents in the Book of Concord to be one’s compass in matters of faith and life, the lens through which scripture is interpreted. While not all Lutheran churches, such as the Scandinavian Folk Churches, are committed to the whole Book of Concord as a statement of their faith, most are committed to the Augsburg Confession (1530) and Luther’s Small Catechism (1529). Nevertheless, we will see that there are remarkable differences among these theologians in how they assess the doctrinal truths found in the confessions and how they apply them to their intellectual landscape. Ten of the theologians presented here are Germans, one is Norwegian, one is Swedish, and two are Americans. The fact that so many Germans are included should not be surprising given the ascendency of German theology in the early to mid-twentieth century. No other single text in English provides an extensive

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overview of all these key figures and the ramifications of their work for current theology, culture, and ecumenical overtures. These are theologians who deserve more careful attention than they have hitherto received within the English-speaking world. Several essays present the scholar in a significantly new light. All the essays evaluate how these thinkers shaped not only Lutheran theology but also the entire flow of twentieth-century Protestant theology.

The Intellectual Terrain The majority of the scholars presented here dealt each in their own way with the philosophical and theological legacies bequeathed from giants such as Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), G. W. F. Hegel (1770 – 1831), and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834), and it is worthwhile to alight briefly on each of these thinkers’ perspectives. Kant sought a critique of reason in order to determine reason’s limits. He was convinced that reason is not able to know reality as such, the noumenal or “thing in itself” (ding am sich) as he put it, but only how it phenomenologically appears to us. In this schema, God is seen as a “regulative idea,” a valuable concept for our confidence that all knowledge ultimately coheres. Kant’s approach tends to dismiss the conviction that God is a reality as such who determines affairs independently of human conceptuality. Nevertheless, through ethical reasoning—employing the “categorical imperative” (“act on that maxim by which you can at the same time will to become a universal law”), Kant believes that we have access to God as legislator and judge. While genuine ethics exercises our autonomy, our freedom to formulate moral law rationally, the moral laws that we in fact formulate would be nothing other than what God himself would establish. For Kant, God then is an important postulate for practical reason. Unique among philosophers of the High Enlightenment, Kant acknowledges “radical evil” in human nature, that due to our selfcenteredness we are prone not to follow the categorical imperative and that a moral conversion is often necessary to help people live a moral life. The beginning of the twentieth century would see an affirmation of the individual’s autonomy and an anti-metaphysical stance due in large part to the appropriation of Kant. While not as influential for our lineup of twentieth-century theologians, the philosophy of Hegel hovers in the background in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury work, if for no other reason than that the renewal of Kantianism in this era would find it so important to critique Hegel. In opposition to Kant, Hegel maintained that reality is accessible to human reason due to the fact that reality is by nature self-expressive and self-revealing, particularly in and through the human spirit (Geist). That is, reality is coming to itself more and more in the history of the entire cosmos and that its fullest embodiment is in

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its diremption in human beings, particularly coming to expression in philosophical thinking that is able to comprehend the entire itinerary of reason. For Hegel, this truth is mythologically expressed in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the witness to Christ encountered in the church. Later twentieth-century theologians like Wolfhart Pannenberg, Eberhard Jüngel, and Jürgen Moltmann would especially appeal to the thought of Hegel in their quest to establish a view of God which sees God as deeply interconnected with the world, who suffers not only for the world, but with the world. Our cohort of theologians would be more apt to encounter Hegel quite indirectly in the thinking of Karl Barth (1886 – 1968), the Reformed “neoorthodox” theologian who on occasion affirmed the need to “hegelize.” The form of Barth’s thinking is shaped through the lens of Kant, i. e., that the human mind automatically sets the conditions for human perception of the world, but with the important exception that it is not the human but God himself who offers the conditions for our knowledge of God. In other words, humans are able to understand God and do theology because human cognitive powers are usurped by God’s self-revelation: revelation is not subject to the human potential to receive it and indeed revelation negates and surpasses our ability to receive it. Nevertheless, the content of Barth’s view of God who reveals himself in covenant and creation as centered in the eternal God-man Jesus Christ conveys a Hegelian aura, comparable to divine self-revelation in finite things found in Hegel. Many of the theologians found here were strongly anti-Barthian, especially Elert, Althaus, and Wingren. However, some, such as Bonhoeffer, Iwand, Ebeling, and Käsemann relied on Barth to various degrees. Schleiermacher grounded religious truth not in practical reason like Kant nor in reality evolving from empty “substance” to content-laden “subjectivity” like Hegel, but instead in the immediacy of intuition. Schleiermacher appealed to a “feeling of absolute dependence” at the core of all humans, whose “whence” is best answered by God. Similar to Kant, for Schleiermacher we do not deal with God per se; rather, we deal with human experience of God particularly as it is mediated through the church which through the ages has held forth the image (Bild) of Christ as the redeemer, and which in turn conveys the power to sustain the church. Our lineup of theologians have different reactions to Schleiermacher. While many are willing to concede the importance of a God-centered spiritual dimension as a context (but not a source) for theological reflection, most seek their bearings from scripture. A reaction to these philosophers above that impacted many twentiethcentury Lutheran theologians would be that of existentialism, especially as presented in the thinking of Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855). For Kierkegaard, thinkers like Hegel were far too “objective” in their approach to truth. Instead, faith matters are wholly “subjective”—not in the sense that they are arbitrary, but instead in that they must be inwardly appropriated and lived out if their truth is to be honored. Again, our cadre of theologians react in different ways

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to Kierkegaard—the majority seeking to find objectivity not in a metaphysical landscape like Hegel but instead in an objective word conveyed through scripture and publically presented in proclamation. Forward to Luther The late nineteenth- and twentieth- centuries saw a renewed engagement in Luther’s thinking, particularly as early Luther lectures were discovered. In light of renewed engagement with Luther in the nineteenth-century, seen especially here in the work of Karl Holl, Werner Elert, Paul Althaus, Hans Joachim Iwand, Gerhard Ebeling, and Gustaf Wingren, as well as confessional renewal, each theologian in his own way challenges the legacies of Orthodoxy, Pietism, Rationalism, and Confessional Renewal theologies as they bring Lutheran identity to bear on crucial topics of Christian dogmatics, such as the authority of scripture, the relationship between law and gospel, between faith and reason, between church and state, and the relevance of Christian proclamation. Confessional Renewal theologies could be found in the NeoLutheran movement which emphasized the experience of rebirth, the centrality of the revealing word of Scripture, and the Lutheran confessions as fulfilling the patristic tradition. Voices in this movement included Erlangen theologians such as Johann W. F. Hoefling (1802 – 1852), Gottlieb C. A. Harless (1806 – 1879), Johannes C. K. von Hofmann (1810 – 1877), and Gottfried Thomasius (1802 – 1875). Their pioneering work was paralled by a more conservative churchly—even “catholic”—movement led by Theodor Kliefoth (1810 – 1895), Johann K. W. Löhe (1808 – 1872), and August F. C. Vilmar (1800 – 1868). While some Lutherans responded to these changes by attempting to protect the confessional heritage with a “repristinating” theology, others found ways to accommodate in some way or other to newer views. For instance, some appropriated an existential approach to the faith, while others sought a more political and social approach, and yet others appealed to the scriptural narrative itself as a way to re-center faith. Additionally, the raise of the Third Reich posed a crisis for European Lutherans, especially in Germany, and many theologians found strength in the confessional tradition to challenge this ideology. For many, a Lutheran challenge to Nazism centered on responding to the Ansbach agreement that those of Jewish descent should not serve as pastors in the German church. While some theologians sympathized with this proposal, at least to a degree, it led others, such as Iwand, Bonhoeffer, Käsemann, and Ebeling into the “confessing church,” which stood against the “German Christians.” However, even Elert, who was sympathetic with Ansbach, ultimately would not favor Nazi beliefs and ideology. Overall, the reaction of the majority of our theologians counters the charge against Lutherans as quietistic. Instead, we see our theologians’ engagement in the

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Confessing Church as intense and fruitful. Their behavior in the face of oppression testifies to the fact that while before God we are wholly passive, we are indeed active in the world for the common good.

A Vista of Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians The first two theologians we examine, Francis Pieper (1852 – 1931) and John Philipp Koehler (1859 – 1951) represent an orthodox approach to dogmatics bequeathed to them from the confessional renewal movements in Europe in the nineteenth century. In many respects, this renewal of theology, in opposition to the prevailing Rationalism and Pietism of the time, can be traced to the efforts of Pastor Claus Harms (1778 – 1855) who on the three-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 1817 called for confessional fidelity. This call to faithfulness was amplified by those Lutherans who opposed the union of Lutheran and Reformed churches in the Kingdom of Prussia at the behest of the Prussian royal family around this same time. When these dissidents experienced retaliation and oppression from the government, some chose to immigrate to North America or Australia. The paradigmatic representative of this confessional theological approach in this country is that of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod theologian, Francis Pieper. Pieper was averse to any theological method that seeks to base truth on a religious dimension of human experience, as presented by Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of Protestant Liberalism, instead of scripture. As seen in Pieper, Lutheran orthodoxy favored an objective approach to theology, noting that in this heritage springing from C. F. W. Walther (1811 – 1887) any salvation that appeals to human response apart from the gospel promise is eschewed. Likewise, this Waltherian heritage has been tilted towards preference for a scholastic method in theology akin to the age of Lutheran Orthodoxy. Such a method is seen in a formal approach to theology that favors Aristotelian deduction. Nevertheless, in distinction from Pieper’s scholastic approach to theology, John Philipp Koehler, a professor of theology in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod in the early twentieth century, offers an alternative orthodox approach to dogmatics that is grounded less in proof-texting and more in exegesis of scriptural narratives in their entirety. An advocate of what came to be known as the “Wauwatosa Theology,” Koehler claimed that theology must be done alongside an appreciation for music, history, and the classics. Due to political factors, his leadership would be rejected by his own Wisconsin Synod; nevertheless, aspects of his theology as based on narrative convey a contemporary appeal. At the risk of generalization, for Koehler, dogmatics is to be grounded in exegesis and not exegesis in dogmatics. As noted above, interest in Luther studies, indicating some differences in

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content and style between Luther and Lutheran confessional orthodoxy, increased in the nineteenth century. Particularly the work of Theodosius Harnack (1817 – 1879) and Julius Köstlin (1826 – 1902), as well as the appearance of a critical edition of Luther’s works, the Weimarer Ausgabe starting in 1883, would powerfully impact Luther studies. Karl Holl (1866 – 1926) was a leading researcher in this Luther Renaissance. He centered much of his theology on discerning Luther’s “evangelical breakthrough,” particularly in the early 1515 Lectures on Romans. For Holl, Lutheran Orthodoxy unjustifiably separated humanity’s being made righteous through faith from God’s forensic declaration of sinners to be just. Throughout the twentieth century, Holl’s research and that of his students would reshape an entire generation of Luther studies and how this bears on theology. In spite of confessional renewal, pietism was by no means dead in twentieth-century Lutheranism. Few embodied the goals of this movment better than Ole Hallesby (1879 – 1961), a professor of theology at the Menighetsfakultetet in Oslo, Norway. Hallesby’s theology of prayer had a profound impact on the spirituality of North American ScandinavianAmericans and the entire world for that matter. With roots in nineteenthcentury Norwegian revivalism, indebted to Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771 – 1824) and the Swede Carl Olof Rosenius (1816 – 1868), Hallesby sought an approach to dogmatic theology which honored human experiential response to the gospel and which led believers to live lives of holiness. While fostering a theologically conservative agenda, Hallesby also devised psychological categories by which to interpret the impact of faith on life. Throughout his career he was opposed to theological liberalism, especially universalism, the view that all will be saved even apart from faith in Christ. Along with other resisters, Hallesby opposed Nazism in Norway. In the work of Pieper above, we see one form of Neo-Lutheranism, the reassertion of Lutheran identity as a distinct group, with a renewed focus on the confessions, and traditional doctrine and liturgy. This form is repristinating, seeking to present Lutheran teachings in the same way that the classical Orthodox theologians of the seventeenth century did. Another form, that of the Erlangen theology, which sought to mediate Lutheran confessional theology in the modern world, is expressed in the work of Werner Elert (1885 – 1954). A leading voice of the Erlangen perspective, Elert was a major contributor in retrieving Luther’s notions of God as hidden and revealed, and of the law as accusing and the gospel as comforting. For Elert, it is axiomatic that God has two words—command and promise—and not just one word. He adamantly opposed the Barthian supposition that revelation was limited to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ and argued that instead God is masked throughout all creation. Likewise, Elert saw Lutheran ethics as incompatible with Kant’s categorical imperative but he nevertheless configured anthropology in light of Kant’s transcendental ego, along with an appreciation for community.

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Sharing an anti-Barthian stance with Elert, Paul Althaus (1888 – 1966) saw God’s revelation as not only in the message aligned with Jesus Christ but also in nature and history. Ever an advocate of Luther’s two-kingdoms doctrine, Althaus argued that resistance to the government could be justified if it failed to serve its citizens, a position ironed out through his increasing disillusionment with the Nazis. Althaus believed that Elert’s opposition to a third use of the law needed revision since it could be misunderstood as antinomian. For Althaus, God’s law as command applies to the believer and faith ought to lead to the new obedience. Hans Joachim Iwand (1899 – 1960), similar to Elert, was deeply influenced by the Luther renaissance as mediated through the work of Karl Holl. Iwand, in opposition to the Kantian insistence on a free will, argued for a bound will, at least with respect to ultimate matters. That is, we humans are bound to invent and venerate gods/idols for our own security and self-justification. Again, in opposition to Kant, Iwand saw one’s identity not as something given but as a gift: we are given ourselves in and through Christ. The majority of German theologians described in this volume had to confront Nazism in one way or another. Some, like Bonhoeffer, lost their lives in their resistance. A few, such as Elert in the early years of Hitler’s regime, could concede the “Aryan Clause,” i. e., that pastors serving in the German church should not be of Jewish descent. Nevertheless, even Elert condemned the Deutsche Christen, those Protestants who fully embraced Hitler as der Führer. In this volume Richard Bliese takes a new look at Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945), seeing him as a Lutheran confessor. In this perspective, Bonhoeffer as a martyr, poet, or prisoner is best understood from the communal praxis implied by his confessional stance against the corrupt governmental power of his time. Two of the theologians presented in this volume are especially to be singled out for their work in ecumenism. First, Hermann Sasse (1895 – 1976) ever had an eye for cooperation and was involved in ecumenical dialogues. However, for Sasse, true ecumenism could never entail compromise of the truth—as it is discerned from the ancient church fathers or the Lutheran confessions. His work lends itself to a distinctively pastoral and churchly approach to theology. Second, Edmund Schlink (1903 – 1984), in addition to being a major historian of the Lutheran confessions, distinguished himself as one of the twentieth century’s most important ecumenical theologians. Nevertheless he saw the Lutheran confessions as the basis by which to establish unity. Such unity is fostered through critical dialogue between and among confessional traditions. In the work of Ernst Käsemann (1906 – 1998) we see a Lutheran exegete at work. In response to Bultmann, Käsemann initiated the new quest for the historical Jesus since he found the agnostic disparity between a historical Jesus and a biblical Christ as unacceptable. Likewise, he affirmed that since the New Testament indeed has conflicting trends and voices within it, we are free to affirm justification by faith alone as the canon within the canon even if this

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stymies ecumenical ideals. For Käsemann, the doctrine of justification is the constant while a historical-critical approach to reading scripture is a variant, in which various critics will disagree with one another. Helmut Thielicke (1908 – 1986) was a Lutheran with an eye to both apologetics and pastoral theology, especially preaching. In his day, Thielicke functioned as a pastor’s theologian, at least for many American Lutherans. His relevance remains apparent in several respects. First, his approach to ethics is one liberated from the need to justify the self since we are free to live ethically from forgiveness in Christ. Likewise, Thielicke established an apologetic strategy to theology which challenged a Cartesian or anthropological standpoint (as seen in Lessing, Schleiermacher, and Bultmann) and argued for a non-Cartesian approach which does not repristinate past achievements but conveys the gospel address in a contemporary idiom. Finally, for Thielicke, Bultmann’s program of demythologization is proven to be inadequate since the scriptures themselves historicize myth. Gustaf Wingren (1910 – 2000) wanted to make it clear that Lutheranism cannot be limited to the focus of an “I-Thou” relationship between the believer and God. The doctrine of justification bears not only on how individual sinners are reconciled with God, but also opens them to the place in creation and the church. Wingren offers a powerful reading of the Lutheran tradition through the lens of the early theologian Irenaeus. In this perspective, Lutheranism can no longer be seen as a “Unitarianism of the second article of the creed.” Instead, it is open to creation as gift and task. Humans are not merely redeemed from the power and guilt of sin but are also liberated for engagement in life and community, genuinely worldly tasks. Ultimately God is at work perfecting creation. Last but not least, Gerhard Ebeling’s (1912 – 2001) approach to Lutheran theology can be described as existentialist. He sought a Luther who transcended substance ontology and redefined reality in terms of relationships. The word which justifies humanity should be described as a “word event,” a happening akin to a vertical, mathematical point which however has horizontal dimensions, and alters and redefines human nature, leading it to a cruciform reality of service. The word (Wort) evokes responsibility (antwort) in and for the world.

Moving Forward by Moving Back What issues relevant for today’s theologian surface from a reading of these specific twentieth-century Lutheran theologians? It seems to me at least four important matters arise. First, there is no question that these theologians deal with a tension of wanting to mediate the Lutheran confessional heritage into the modern world

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without accommodating it to contemporary society. All too often theologians perceive that they must accommodate theology to the modern world—allow that world to set the parameters for theology—or theology will grow irrelevant and fail to address contemporary concerns. The tradeoff of accommodation to the modern world is the ability of theology to stay faithful to its heritage or tradition. The problem with such accommodation can be illustrated with how Bonhoeffer, Hallesby, Käsemann, and others responded to Nazism. It is clear for these thinkers that accommodating to Nazism would sell out the faith! While some of our theologians employ language from secular philosophy—on occasion Elert borrows Kantian phraseology as an explanatory tool while Ebeling appeals to aspects of Existentialism—overall, their thinking is grounded not in an a priori commitment to a specific philosophy or worldview but instead to scripture and the confessions. Nevertheless, the interchange between mediation and accommodation has become a fixture in theological inquiry and method and we can see it played out in this selection of thinkers. It raises then the question of where we need to stand today. Second, most of our theologians have been influenced by a renewal of Luther Studies. For some, this fact guarantees the relevance and vibrancy of these thinkers. In contrast, others will deplore the lack of ecumenical sensitivity that these theologians may seem to foster (other than Schlink). Which way for Lutheranism? Should Lutheran theology move outside a parochial, confessional ghetto and not only engage ecumenism with Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, and Geneva, as many member churches of the Lutheran World federation do? Would such engagement tone down its distinctive traits or would it be a way for Lutheranism to reclaim an underlying catholic core? Or instead should it up the ante of its distinctive traits even at the risk of ecumenical insensitivity and promote this uniqueness as a plus in the agora of public affairs and ideas? At stake for many Lutherans would be the status of the gospel as promise, in contra-distinction to the law as command and directive. The gospel as promise is a word that does what it says and says what it does, a word that in fact conveys grace for troubled sinners. In the gospel, sins are forgiven and new life is actually granted in Jesus’ name. It would seem that Lutheran ecumenism must be loyal to this latter stance no matter what. The question of human passivity and activity raised by our theologians merits attention. As seen above, most of our theologians urged action in the face of Nazi oppression. We are grateful for their faithful witness. Nevertheless, modern views of humanity tend to reduce the human to agency : what specifically does any given human do to help usher in a better world, contribute to on-going economic, educational, and political progress? Such secular approaches to human nature reinforce the notion that humanity is the measure of all things. Modern humans are akin to Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. Self-creative to the core, we fail to receive or claim a Sabbath rest.

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Perhaps the Lutheran critique that human poiesis is only possible because human capacities for making are gifts from God can curtail the conviction that autopoiesis (self-making) is at the center of human sensibility. When the story of the world is not centered on us, but on God, then we can see that we do not carry the whole onus of a grand project to perfect ourselves. Instead, we can receive of God’s goodness, enjoy and be grateful for life, and seek to serve others in need. The public wellbeing for such a direction would be in finding a non-exploitative approach to life. Finally, the majority of our theologians are sensitive to distinguishing law from gospel, another hallmark of Lutheran theology. Only this distinction guarantees that the promise will be spoken as promise and not a directive or information. The law gospel distinction is at the core of Lutheran approaches to theology and proclamation. Recent critique has suggested that this distinction makes Lutheranism to be a “thin” tradition, lacking the richness of two-thousand years of reflection evident in catholic tradition. Is this critique in fact true or is it a ruse? It would seem that law-gospel distinction need not be an alternative to the wider catholic tradition but a compass by which to assess how effective that tradition is at any given point to convey the gospel.

Conclusion The following essays invite further exploration into each of these thinkers. Readers will find appropriate material within the essays to journey further into each thinker and the specific issues he was addressing. What is the next stage for Lutheran theology? Whatever it might be, it will only be successful to the degree that it takes stock of the theologians found here. They have explored themes raised by the renewal in Luther studies, ecumenism, the modern world, political movements, and the modern philosophies outlined above in Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher. Pondering the paths these theologians have journeyed will empower us for our work as well.

Acknowledgements Three individuals are to be recognized for their commitment to this project: Pastor Bud Thompson and Dr. Paul Rorem for their editorial skills in working through each essay in its early stages and Princeton Seminary graduate student Mark Dixon for developing the Index of Names.

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David P. Scaer

Francis Pieper (1852 – 1931)

Francis (Franz) August Otto Pieper was born on June 27, 1852, in Carwitz, Pomerania, where his father was mayor. He enrolled in the Gymnasium in Koeslin and received the Abitur in 1870 in Kolberg. In same year he immigrated with his mother and three younger brothers to Wisconsin to join two older brothers. Reinhold, an older brother, later became professor of homiletics and then president at Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, Illinois, now in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Younger brother August became a professor at the seminary of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and inaugurated the theological program known as the Wauwatosa theology. Pieper attended Northwestern College of the Wisconsin Synod in Watertown; at graduation, he delivered an address in Latin: “Which characteristics of the German people should be retained in this country and which should be discarded?” When he died in Saint Louis on June 3, 1931, he was arguably the most influential confessional Lutheran theologian in America. His Christliche Dogmatik, translated as Christian Dogmatics,1 made his name recognizable by nearly all Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) pastors.2 Publication of the German and English editions was authorized by separate LCMS conventions and so his dogmatics has a near canonical status. In 1931, his

1 Christian Dogmatics, 3 vols. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950 – 53) appeared in the order of how the three volumes were numbered. The order of Die christliche Dogmatik, 3 vols. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1917 – 1924) was different. Volume two was published first (1917) to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the Reformation. The third volume came next in 1920. In volume one, which was the last to appear (1924), Pieper explained that it was logical the third volume on the means of grace would follow the one on grace. (Christliche Dogmatik 1:iv ; Christian Dogmatics 1:ix.) The LCMS authorized the English translation in observance of its centennial. Theodore Engelder was chosen as the chief editor but died before completion of the second volume. John Theodore Mueller finished the second volume and Walter W.F. Albrecht translated the third volume and indexed the whole work in a fourth volume which appeared in 1953. 2 The continued high regard for Pieper in the LCMS is seen in the current English translation of his lectures Die lutherische Lehre von der Rechtfertigung and Die Evangelische-Lutherische Kirche, die Wahre Kirche Gottes auf Erde (Saint Louis: Seminary Press, 1916) under the title The Church and Her Treasure: Lectures on Justification and the True Visible Church, tr. O. Marc Tanger (Northfield, SD: The Luther Academy, 2007).

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influence also continued in A Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.3 Pieper’s career spanned a critical transition for the Missouri Synod. He joined the faculty of Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, in 1878. The synod’s estimated membership then stood at 150,000. Pieper served as synod president from 1899 to 1911, a period of exceptional growth. At his death in 1931, the LCMS had more than a million members, and German had been replaced by English as the primary language. His memory is honored by the Pieper Arch in the seminary’s Gothic buildings which were constructed during his presidency.4 His early religious education was in a congregation of the Prussian Union created by that country’s rulers as an administrative union between Lutherans and Reformed in 1817 and a liturgical union in 1830, but he makes no mention of how this was a factor in his theology. As a student at Concordia Seminary he became the proteg¦ to Carl Ferdinand Wihelm Walther in whose footsteps he would follow as professor of theology and seminary president and for a time synod president. Although both the German and English editions of his dogmatics appeared in the twentieth century, he really belonged to the nineteenth century. By the time the English Christian Dogmatics appeared in the 1950’s, seminary professors were paying less attention to him and began to direct students to neo-orthodox and conservative Reformed theologians and biblical scholars. While a need was seen to supplement his Christian Dogmatics, they are still found on the shelves of most LCMS pastors. Tributes at his death noted that his theology revolved around the doctrines of grace and Scriptures, but did not analyze his theology or identify the historical influences shaping it. His passing left a gaping hole in the LCMS theology which no one saw himself filling.5 Outside of the synod it received scant 3 It was written in German as “Thesen zur kurzen Darlegung der Lehrstellung der Missourisynod,” Concordia Theological Monthly 2 (1931): 321 – 36. The English translation appeared in the next issue 2 (1931): 400 – 16. At the 1959 LCMS convention it was given virtual confessional status. In 1962 this was reevaluated, but it is still regarded as an official LCMS statement of faith. 4 Pieper holds a prominent position in a series of three articles in Lutheran Forum by Richard E Koenig: “Church and Tradition in Collision,” LF 6 (November,1972): 17 – 20; “Missouri Turns Moderate: 1938 – 1965,” LF 7 (February, 1973): 19 – 20, 29; and “Conservative Reaction: 1965 – 69,” LF 8 (1974): 18 – 21. They later appeared together under the general title of “What is Behind the Showdown in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod?” n.d. with the title of the first article changed to “The Making of Tradition.” Koenig calls the LCMS theology “the Pieper tradition” and “the Pieper Legacy.” He was critical of Pieper’s theology for rendering the LCMS incapable of consummating fellowship with churches not of its heritage. 5 In the year before he died, Pieper wrote the introduction for the first issue of Concordia Theological Monthly 1:1 (1930). In 1931, the year in which he died, the CTM contained tributes in his honor. Paul E. Kretzmann wrote the first of these, “Prof. Franz August Otto Pieper, D. Theol.” with a three- page bibliography (CTM 2: 561 – 65). Others took note of various aspects of his work. W.H.T. Dau, “Dr. Francis Pieper the Churchman,” said that, “Pieper, with his remarkable clarity of perception and his concise and pregnant style, has been the most forceful, eloquent, and convincing champion of the time-honored, Scripturally oriented view of theology that is part of the

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attention.6 Later LCMS theologians would produce theological treatises, but to date no one has produced another comprehensive dogmatics.7 Pieper was so important for the LCMS that the last volume of his dogmatics in English translation appeared over a quarter century after his death. This was accompanied by an index volume of 1025 double-columned pages referencing topics, theologians, and the biblical and confessional sources, showing the depth of Pieper’s mind and his theological knowledge. Synod preachers at a loss in interpreting biblical texts often went to Pieper. While he had never written anything resembling a biblical commentary, he had become to many an exegete. Publication of the index volume gave credence to the impression that Pieper’s dogmatics was canon for the synod.8 With his Law and Gospel, C.F.W. Walther had earlier shaped the sermons of the synod’s preachers and his Church and Ministry had provided the design for its congregational polity, but Pieper was its theologian.9 Forty years after his death, some would treat him less kindly.

The Christian Dogmatics For Pieper the leader among “modern theologians” was F. Schleiermacher whose Der christliche Glaube (Faith of the Christian Church) was published one century before Pieper’s dogmatics. Names in the Index volume show that he was acquainted with theologians from every era, but for him the modern

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badge of honor and an heirloom of the Church of the Reformation” (CTM 2:731). John Theodore Mueller wrote “D. Pieper als Prediger” (2:761 – 762). L. Fuerbringer, in “D. F. Pieper als Theolog” (2:801 – 807), called him a most important theologian. In a double tribute to Pieper and W. H. T. Dau, who had since died, Theodore Laetsch wrote: “Doctores discriminis legis et evangelii” (2:948 – 949). Laetsch said that after hearing Pieper lecture one had the sense that “Gott hat mit uns geredet,” “God has spoken with us.” Theodore Engelder in “The Theology of Grace” (2:881 – 886) noted that gratia universalis and sola gratia were the foci around which Pieper’s theology revolved (2:882). “Thus Dr. Pieper gazed into the full glory of the Gospel of grace – and how he loved it. He lived for it. He labored for it” (2:884). Iowa Synod (and later American Lutheran Church) theologian Michael Reu commended him and Walther for making grace central for Lutheran theology. Kirchliche Zeitschrift (1930) 55:433. Ironically, those referencing the synod’s position often cite John Theodore Mueller’s Christian Dogmatics, which is actually a one-volume abridgement of Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1934, 1935). The Reverend Rudolph P. F. Ressmeyer, D. D., Pieper’s grandson, told me that his grandfather had told his children that his was not the last word on the subjects handled in his dogmatics. This has been largely ignored. In his preface to What Luther Says, Ewald Pless wrote that “the [Christian] Dogmatics are as refutable as Scripture itself.” (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House: 1959). Walter W. F. Albrecht, Index to Christian Dogmatics by Francis Pieper (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1957). The list of theologians cited by Pieper covers almost one hundred double-columned pages (914 – 1003). Leigh D. Jordahl notes that Pieper’s “teacher C. F. W. Walther was more influential in terms of defining Missouri’s character. He never, however, produced any full scale systematic theology.” “The Theology of Franz Pieper,” Lutheran Quarterly 23 (1971):123, n 16.

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world was the nineteenth century. Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics can still introduce students to classical Lutheranism, with its distinctions between material and formal principles and such Latin phrases as cur alii alii non and crux theologorum, but that theological world has remained largely unknown to them. Works of lesser quality and more popular in nature have appeared,10 but Pieper’s dogmatics could not be replaced. Without a recognized theologian to succeed him, biblical scholars replaced systematicians in prominence.11 Although Pieper’s theology was seen by some to center on biblical authority and inerrancy, its chief topics were actually Christology and grace as they undergirded justification by faith. Pietism, replacing justification with sanctification as the theological center, was short-lived, but made inroads among the people and prepared the way for the rationalist Enlightenment which not only made light of denominational differences, but also questioned the uniqueness of Christianity. Christianity was more about morality than doctrine and might be considered a superior but not exclusive religious expression. Pieper’s reaction to rationalism surfaces throughout his dogmatics especially in “Christianity the Absolute Religion,” a prominent portion of the prolegomena.12 He also responds to Schleiermacher, who combined the pietism of his youth with his university acquired rationalist disregard for the supernatural to posit the collective consciousness of the Christian community as the source of religious truth. In Pieper’s eyes, Schleiermacher was a pantheist.13 Some theologians attempted an amalgam between classical Lutheran theology and Schleiermacher to create what they called “the Christian self-consciousness” or “the regenerated I” as the source of doctrine. In the Erlangen theologians, named for the German university where some taught,14 Pieper found allies on some issues, but faulted them for not distancing themselves from Schleiermacher and rationalist biblical criticism.15 Pieper dubbed it Ego theology or Ichtheologie and insisted that Scripture was the only source of Christian theology. Emerging alongside the Erlangen theology was repristination theology, determined to revive classical Lutheran theology. Pieper saw himself in this group, but he was not part of the vanguard which included Ludwig Claus Harms, Wilhelm Löhe, Friedrich 10 To celebrate the synod’s centennial, a collection of doctrinal essays by different authors, each devoted to one locus, was published under the title of The Abiding Word (3 vols.; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1947). 11 Richard D. LaBore, “Traditions and transitions: a study of the leadership of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod during a decade of theological change, 1960 – 1969” (Ph.D. diss.: Saint Louis: Saint Louis University, 1980), 254. 12 Christian Dogmatics 1:34 – 40. See also his 1926 essay, “The Christian Religion in Its Relation to other Religions.” 13 Christian Dogmatics 2:6, 267. 14 Christian Dogmatics 1:114 – 15. Among the Erlangen theologians were Frank, Ihmels, Hoefling, Luthardt, Stephan Horst, Thomasius, and Heinrich Schmid. 15 Christian Dogmatics 1:30 – 31. Pieper holds that biblical criticism results in denying the Bible’s authority which he correlates with the denial of vicarious satisfaction.

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Adolf Philippi and Walther.16 With the exception of Philippi, the German theologians do not refer to Pieper, although he knows them well.17 Whatever differences their followers had, confessional Lutheranism was institutionalized in newly formed synods in Germany, America and Australia. Pieper was the bridge between LCMS’s German and English eras and he stood between German liberalism on one side and American Protestantism on the other which was a combination of Calvinism and Arminianism. He repudiated nineteenth-century biblical criticism, but he did not address its methods.18 Foundational for Pieper were the Lutheran Confessions and theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Since chapters of his Dogmatics were transcriptions of his classroom lectures, their style is often conversational. Topics or loci are not evenly proportioned. Whereas only two pages are devoted to infant baptism, approximately two hundred are given to the means of grace and an equal number to Christology.19 Refuting false views takes up more space than setting forth his position. He refutes those who find no evidence for the Trinity in the Old Testament, but does not have a locus on this doctrine in the New Testament. Typically he quotes theologians at length and then refutes them with biblical and confessional references. The Reformed doctrines of grace and aspects of their Christology must be refuted and thus that section ends with a “Summary Critique of Reformed Christology.”20 Even in Pieper’s day the real Christological question was not the communication of attributes, but the quest for the historical Jesus. His chief concern was setting forth classical Lutheran Christology over against Reformed views. In America, where the Baptists constituted a significant part of the population and were influential in shaping Protestant culture then as today, it has to be asked whether more should have been devoted to infant baptism. Christology leads to justification, and any doctrinal error especially on 16 Pieper describes the revival of confessional Lutheranism in 1820s and 30s as the “‘awakening’” and lists Franz Delitzsch and Ernst Sartorious as its representatives. He notes that it took place one hundred years before he wrote the preface to the first volume of his Christliche Dogmatik in 1924 (Christian Dogmatics I:x). He here makes no mention of Wilhelm Löhe who in sending his students as pastors to America was as much responsible for establishing the LCMS as was Walther. Pieper has only negative comments about Löhe’s doctrines of the church and ministry (Christian Dogmatics 3:447 – 49). He took exception to Löhe’s teaching that the presbyters or ministers were appointed entirely by apostolic authority (3:453). 17 Christian Dogmatics 1:224. Pieper notes that Philippi in the third edition of his Die kirchliche Dogmatik (1883) had brought his position around to Pieper’s. 18 Rather than anaylzing a particular method, Pieper lumps them together and dismisses them, since they conflict with biblical infallibility. Pieper took the title of Adolph von Harnack’s Wesen des Christentums (1900), the high point of nineteenth-century liberalism, for his own essay to the synod’s 1902 convention (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1903). Agnostic biblical criticism reached its nadir with David Friedrich Strauss’s Jesus. Pieper refers to him only through secondary sources (1:309; 497). 19 Christian Dogmatics 3:305 – 30; 56 – 279; 3:104 – 291. 20 Christian Dogmatics 2:271 – 79.

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justification was an affront to the doctrine of Christ. Since Roman Catholicism places works in its doctrine of justification, the pope is seen as the Antichrist.21 Theology is one cloth and a tear on one corner can rip the entire garment. True Christology also required an inerrant and infallible Bible.22 Pieper did not understand theology as an answer to philosophical issues, as revisionist theologians do, and he made no attempt to incorporate them into his program. His presentation of the loci typically begins with a statement and repudiation of the adversaries’ positions. Then he presents his own, but often his position must be sifted from his negative polemics. Pieper can cite his opponents’ opinions in support of his own arguments, but often without analyzing how they arrived at their conclusions.23 Pieper wrote for both lay and pastoral readers and his convention essays especially reflect his understanding that theology was both an academic and a practical discipline. Theologians had to be ready to serve and even to suffer for their theology.24 Serving as seminary professor and president and then as synod president (1899 – 1911) and as editor of the seminary’s theological journal was physically taxing. The predestination controversy had led to the withdrawal of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, known as the Norwegian Synod, from the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference. For his views on election, Pieper had to defend himself against the charge of Calvinism, as had Walther before him. Ironically, in Germany Lutheran opposition to Calvin’s doctrines on Christ and the Lord’s Supper was one reason for the emigration to America and the founding of the LCMS. Pieper’s doctrine of election does have in common with the Reformed position the conviction that God and not the believer is cause of salvation; however, election is not a subcategory under divine sovereignty or providence, as in classical Reformed theology. It is concomitant to the doctrine of grace and belongs to Christ’s work. Fittingly, Pieper places election at the conclusion of 21 Christian Dogmatics 2:552 – 55. Pieper’s conviction that the pope is the Antichrist plays a prominent role throughout his dogmatics. See Index IV:26 – 28. 22 The following assessment of Pieper’s theology was made at his death by Ludwig Fuerbringer, who succeeded him as seminary president. “Without any hesitation or doubt he committed himself to the highest principle of theology, that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, infallible and without error in matters of doctrine and life, and the so called side issues in historical, archaeological, geographical, astronomical and other things, the absolute and only source and norm of all doctrine.” Concordia Theological Monthly 2 (1931): 724. (Translation by the present author.) Pieper held to the six-day creation, but absent in his dogmatics is a theology of creation in the classical sense (Christian Dogmatics 1:467 – 80). 23 For example, to demonstrate that the congregation is the source of all church authority he cites Karl Hase, who was indebted to rationalism and Schleiermacher. Pieper is seemingly unaware that Hase used the same arguments to deny that the office of the ministry was divinely instituted, a doctrine which Pieper firmly believed and which is given extensive treatment in his dogmatics (3: 443 – 449, 458 f.). The ministry could be exercised only by pastors but ultimately belonged to the una sancta and could only be given by congregations. 24 Christian Dogmatics 1:106 – 10.

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his dogmatics and not at the beginning. Through it God comforts the sinner and there is no predestination to damnation.25 In 1885 he took up the implication of election for the Christian life in his essay “The Certainty of Our Salvation Viewed in its Importance for Spiritual Life.” Again in 1928 he took up the subject in “How May a Christian Become Certain of His Eternal Election.” Election or predestination was a facet of salvation by grace alone and not strictly speaking a separate doctrine.26 At the heart of the Synodical Conference controversy was the phrase intuitu fidei. It was used by the classical Lutheran theologians to mean that God in eternity elected those whom he knew would believe and so faith became in a sense a cause of salvation.27 But Pieper saw any contribution believers made to their conversion as synergism, the distinguishing doctrine of Arminianism. This was denial of the sola gratia. For Pieper the doctrines of grace and election complemented each other and so could be discussed separately or together.28 By placing election near the end of volume three, Pieper advanced his theological discussion of grace in volume two. The topic reappears in his prolegomena, volume one but the last to be printed, where it is the standard by which true and false religions and theologies can be identified.29 Since he rejects any form of cooperation for salvation as synergism, he does not attempt to resolve the apparent contradiction between universal grace (gratia universalis) and salvation by grace alone (sola gratia). Calvinists correctly held to the sola gratia, but by denying universal grace, believers could doubt their salvation. Arminians correctly held to universal grace, but their denial of grace alone and election made man a source or cause of his own salvation. For Pieper the grace by which all men were saved was the same grace which was the cause of salvation for those who were ultimately saved. He could not resolve the tension of these two propositions and so they were for him the crux theologorum, a cross burdening theologians, an insoluble divine riddle. Favoring one over the other, he would fall into either the Arminian error, for whom salvation depended on human choice, or the Calvinist error of a limited atonement. At stake for Pieper was not only justification, but also Christ’s incarnation and atonement; thus both Arminianism and Calvinism were affronts to the doctrine of Christ. Just as the doctrine of grace is the standard for theology, so the Scriptures alone are the only source of theology. Quod non est biblicum, non est theologicum. “What was not Biblical was not theological.”30 Pieper’s commit25 Christian Dogmatics 3:473 – 506. 26 “According to Scripture, the doctrine of election is not the central article to which the doctrine of grace stands in subsidiary relation, but it occupies an auxiliary position to the doctrine of grace (Christian Dogmatics 2:417). Election “serves to corroborate the sola gratia. . . .” (3:473). 27 Christian Dogmatics 3:481; 501 – 3. 28 Christian Dogmatics 3:473. 29 Christian Dogmatics 1:9 – 33. 30 Christian Dogmatics 1:52.

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ment to biblical authority was evident in not resolving the tension between passages supporting grace alone and those supporting universal grace. This belief is built on a detailed doctrine of verbal inspiration which does not take into account the historical origins of the separate biblical books.31 Confessional references support the biblical arguments.32 Still, Pieper’s theological method rests not merely on biblical and confessional citations, but also on a carefully worked out doctrine of the incarnation which is found to be inadequate in Reformed theology. The extra Calvinisticum, the code phrase for Reformed position, allowed for only a partial incarnation of the Son of God in the person of Jesus. Thus their doctrine of a limited atonement was determined not only by their doctrine of election, but by a Christology which could not affirm that Jesus possesses the entire deity. Arminians were right about universal grace, but by placing a cause of salvation in man nullified salvation by grace alone and the atonement. In Pieper’s dogmatics Christology was the foremost topic and the foundation of justification. It was the substance of all doctrines.33 His markedly polemical theology was for the sake of Christ. Calvinism and Arminianism are not simply contrary to the Bible, but are in fact attacks on Christ’s person and work. Pieper’s determination to keep his Christology intact accounts for his refusal to resolve the dilemma of cur alii alii non, “why some [are saved] and others not?”34 Luther was led to his Reformation theology through concern over his own salvation. Pieper’s concern was not for his own salvation, but for that of others. His dilemma so cut to the heart of his existence that it appears in his prolegomena and surfaces throughout his dogmatics.35 The doctrine of universal grace seemed to contradict the view that anyone would be damned.

On Church and Fellowship The doctrine of Christ surpasses all doctrines and provided them with their content, but for external church unity a specific agreement had to be spelled 31 Pieper opposed the then popular views that inspiration applied to the Scripture’s content (Realinspiration), and to the writers (Personalinspiration), but not to the texts. Christian Dogmatics 1:217 – 18. 32 Christian Dogmatics 2:49 – 51. 33 Koenig faults Pieper for devoting 211 pages to the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures and only 66 to justification (“The Making of Tradition”). He fails to consider that justification for Pieper was a subsidiary to Christology to which Pieper devotes 339 pages (Christian Dogmatics 2:55 – 394) or that his discussion of election (3:473 – 503) is really one on justification. 34 Other Latin phrases used to express the dilemma were Cur non omnes? (Why [are] not all [saved]?) and Cur alii prae aliis? (Why some [are chosen] over others?). Christian Dogmatics 3:502. 35 Christian Dogmatics 1:28 – 34. Pieper rejects the gratia particularis of the Calvinists.

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out. Without this there was no church unity. Pieper set forth his position in his 1888 essay, “The Unity of Faith.” Those who did not accept the Lutheran doctrines were conscious of their errors and that they had rejected clear biblical statements.36 To hold this position, he assumes the clarity of the Scriptures, with some sections having a translucence which others do not. The clearer sections are called sedes doctrinae, literally “seats of doctrine,” the proof passages. These verses constitute an operative canon for interpreting the less clear passages and for doing theology.37 Although the LCMS does not require agreement in exegetical interpretation for doctrinal agreement,38 in practice it often follows Pieper’s method in requiring agreement on the sedes doctrinae that in doing theology these passages have a determinative role.39 They serve as a canon within the canon. Pieper was neither a fundamentalist nor influenced by that movement but like them he cited biblical passages without attention to their historical circumstances.40 His doctrine of verbal inspiration precluded a historical study of the Scripture, since it would presuppose a progressive view of revelation.41 In his 1889 essay, “The Difference between Orthodox and Heterodox Churches,” Pieper applied his principles of external fellowship to individual Christians: they must avoid churches that do not teach the truth and join those that do. Not permitted are receiving communion and serving as baptismal sponsors in false churches. Thirty years later, in “The Ecumenical Character of the Lutheran Church in Doctrine and Practice” (1919), he takes another tack to show that those who differ with Lutherans or belong to other churches can be included in the una sancta and so be saved. In spite of the doctrinal errors of non-Lutheran churches, those in them who hold to correct biblical interpretations are really Lutherans. He does not use the argument of the Augsburg Confession that Lutherans are the true Catholics, but the reverse, 36 “From Pieper’s writings it is obvious that he assumed the Missouri Synod was in possession of the truth in all its purity and were passing it on for the benefit of future generations.” Richard Koenig, “The Making of Tradition,” 20. 37 Christian Dogmatics 1:362. Koenig slightly overstates the case that for Pieper the Bible was from free “all ambiguity or uncertainty.” “The Making of Tradition,” 20. In setting up the category of sedes doctrinae Pieper acknowledges that some passages have difficulties in interpretation that others do not. 38 So A Brief Statement, “The [confessional] obligation does not extend to historical statements, ‘purely exegetical questions,” and other matters not belonging to the doctrinal content of the symbols. All doctrines of the symbols are based on clear statements of Scripture.” Concordia Theological Monthly 2 (1931): 416. 39 Christian Dogmatics 1:201 – 02. Pieper’s method did provide a damper on biblical studies in the LCMS. The LCMS climate has changed and his interpretations are not above challenge. 40 Jordahl, “The Theology of Franz Pieper,” 130 – 32. Jordahl notes that for Pieper, “Every part of the Bible is essentially on the same level. No distinctions are made between a passage in Genesis, Isaiah, or John. Historical and literary context is irrelevant. The resurrection of the Lord, for instance, is already taught in Genesis” (131). 41 Jordahl, “The Theology of Franz Pieper,” 131. With the introduction of historical methods into the LCMS in the 1950s and 1960s, a clash with Pieper’s world was unavoidable.

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that believers in salvation by grace in other churches are really Lutherans without knowing it. To adjust a familiar phrase, they are “anonymous Lutherans.” Its doctrine of grace makes the Lutheran church the true visible church; however, there may be some members of other churches who in spite of official church doctrine are individually Lutheran. Thus in allowing for salvation for non-Lutheran Christians, Pieper’s thesis that salvation by grace is the basis of Christianity stays in place. Exclusion of other Christians from Lutheran fellowship, which might appear to be harsh, is mitigated by his considering them as Lutherans without their knowing it. A Brief Statement lists church and ministry as necessary doctrines, but in the case of the Wisconsin Synod differences did not disrupt fellowship.42 In his 1921 essay, “The Inspiration of Scripture,” Pieper argues that the Bible as God’s word inspired by the Holy Spirit makes it different from other books.43 From inspiration he deduces its inerrancy. Its inspired character serves its Christological content to assure believers of salvation. This is consistent with his prolegomena where he begins with Christianity as the only religion of grace and not with loci on God or the Bible as the source of theology.44 False religions are recognized primarily by adherence to the law and secondarily by their faulty biblical interpretations.45 Axiomatic to Pieper’s theology is that “The Holy Scriptures have spoken, the matter is decided,”46 but since false religions are identified by denying the vicarious satisfaction, his approach is hardly biblicistic. Only then does he conclude that they disregard the Bible as the sole source of theology. Theology is biblically derived and finds its conclusion in Christ. The denial of one portends a denial of the other. All 42 Differences between Francis and his brother August Pieper (Wisconsin Synod) are discussed by Erling Teigen, “The Universal Priesthood in the Lutheran Confessions” (The Confessional Lutheran Research Newsletter 25 [Advent 1991]). Whereas Francis held that the ministry was a divine institution, August saw it as deduction from the universal priesthood and hence unnecessary. If F. Pieper had been consistent, he would have broken fellowship with the Wisconsin Synod. Pieper did take issue with Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Hoefling whose functional view of the ministry was dependent on Schleiermacher. This may have been a covert critique of his brother. See my “The Lutheran Confessions on the Holy Ministry with a Few Thoughts on Hoefling.” Logia 7/4 (Reformation 1999): 37 – 43, esp. 39. 43 Christian Dogmatics 1:193 – 367. 44 My colleague Roland Ziegler points out that Pieper begins his theology, as does Schleiermacher, with a discussion of religion in general. 45 Christian Dogmatics 1:19 – 21. Koenig is of another opinion. “Whereas Walther and the founding fathers highlighted justification by faith, attention to this doctrine began to wane in the late 1870s, giving way to a preoccupation with the doctrine of the Holy Scripture. Pieper is by no means solely responsible for this development, but his writings to an extraordinary degree reflect where the process ended.” (“The Making of Tradition.”) Koenig’s observation hardly fits Pieper’s preoccupation with the doctrines of grace and election in his dogmatics. See especially Pieper’s “Dr. C. F. W. Walther as Theologian.” Written in German in Lehre und Wehre 5 (1890), it was published in English in Concordia Theological Monthly 27 (1955): 913 – 28 and 28 (1956) 25 – 40. Pieper discusses justification, Christ’s perfect redemption, the means of grace and the doctrine of grace. Nothing is there said about Biblical inspiration. 46 Christian Dogmatics 1:4.

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doctrines are either antecedent or consequent to Christology and have meaning only in relation to it. Gospel as the proclamation of the atonement is the touchstone of all theology. Pieper’s biblical and Christological principles were the basis for his bifurcated perspective on the church. Members in the true visible church agree to all the clearly revealed biblical doctrines. Inclusion in the una sancta, also regarded as the true church, requires only a correct understanding of grace. So he avoided a doctrinal relativism, which would have given non-Lutheran doctrines equal standing with Lutheran ones, and also a sectarianism that held that only Lutherans are saved. His definition for the una sancta begins with faith. On the other hand his definition of the true visible church begins with a correct understanding of both the fundamental doctrines, among which justification holds the highest rank, and also the nonfundamental ones, as discussed below.

Grace, Christology, and Reason Pieper introduced the Christological principles in his prolegomena of volume one, the last to be written and so serves as a summary conclusion of his theology. Here he stated that Christ’s substitutionary atonement, satisfactio vicaria, is usually compromised by the denial of any doctrine. Although every false doctrine threatened the vicarious satisfaction, his biblical presentation of it barely spans three pages.47 The value of Christ’s death as atonement is more easily found in his refutation of Christ simply providing a model for Christian living, later called the moral theory. Other views he simply rejects out of hand.48 Nowhere in his dogmatics does he relate Christ’s death for sins to his combat with Satan.49 No mention is made of Christians being urged to follow the example of Christ’s life and death. Good works are seen only as the fruits of faith.50 (With the Christological paradigm for good works omitted, it is not uncommon to hear LCMS ministers preach that Christ did not die to leave us an example, which of course he did.) The kind of reason that replaced revelation as a source of theology was condemned as the “magisterial” use of reason, usus rationis magisterialis, but 47 Christian Dogmatics 2:344 – 46. 48 Christian Dogmatics 1:67; 2:18; 342; 351 – 72. 49 When Pieper wrote his dogmatics, Gustav Aul¦n’s three historic interpretations of Christ’s death had not been published, Christus Victor : An Historical Study into the Three Main Types of the Atonement, tr. A. G. Hebert (Eugene, Ore: Wipf & Stock, 1931). Pieper’s concept of the vicarious satisfaction fits what Aul¦n called the Latin or Anselmic view. Pieper opposed the moral theory. The Christus Victor concept that in his death Christ conquered Satan, widespread in the ancient church and favored by Aul¦n, does not appear in Pieper’s dogmatics. 50 See Christian Dogmatics 3:3 – 86, the section entitled “The Christian Life, or Sanctification and Good Works.”

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reason could have a legitimate subsidiary or subservient role, usus rationis ministerialis.51 Among those who let reason reign over the Bible were Zwingli, Calvin, Schleiermacher and all Reformed theologians.52 Add to their number the Erlangen theologians with their Ego theology, and the pope. All error originates in human experience and not in the Holy Scriptures. While rejecting tradition as a source of truth, Pieper extensively cited the Lutheran tradition in defense of his own positions. Lutheran confrontation with the Reformed harkening back to Zwingli dominates his historical discussion of the Lord’s Supper.53 Calvin’s views on any number of subjects provide Pieper with antitheses.54 The section on the history of verbal inspiration is not so much a history as it is a summary of its contemporary denials. Luther is introduced as a witness in support of verbal inspiration as he is on other issues.55 Pieper rarely cites pre-Reformation sources. In his section on the Trinity little is said about Athanasius’s debate with Arius or the other ancient Christological debates. His Christological discussion omits the place of Jesus in history and the authenticity of biblical accounts. These issues had been raised by Baruch Spinoza in the seventeenth century, Gotthold Lessing in the eighteenth century, and extensively in the nineteenth century by David Friedrich Strauss.56 Nothing is said of Immanuel Kant, who rang the death knell for rationalism and provided a basis for Schleiermacher. In his discussion of the Lord’s Supper, “Reformed” refers to all Protestants who reject the Lutheran doctrine of real presence, but it can also refer exclusively to Calvinism as opposed to Arminianism, each with its different view of salvation.57 While he takes exception to the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation,58 his real opponents are the Reformed with their philosophical principle that the finite is not capable of the infinite, finitum non capax infiniti, a frequent phrase in his dogmatics.59 The Reformed principle strikes at the heart of Christianity by denying Christ’s presence in the sacramental 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Christian Dogmatics 1:197 – 99. Christian Dogmatics 1:25, 185. Christian Dogmatics 3:300 – 36. See the extensive references in the Index (4:921 – 23). Christian Dogmatics 1:265 – 98. Pieper refers to Strauss from secondary sources. Christian Dogmatics 1:309, 497. Arminianism differed with Calvinism on election and the free will, but took over its sacramental understandings, and so both may be referred to as Reformed. John W. Riggs, Baptism in the Reformed Tradition: An Historical and Practical Theology (Louisville and London: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002), 38, 102. 58 Christian Dogmatics 3:301 – 02. 59 Pieper holds to receptionism, the belief that the elements of the Lord’s Supper become the body and blood of Christ by their being received into the mouth. “If a wafer happens to fall to the floor during the distribution, or some of the wine is spilled, Christ’s body does not fall to the ground, nor is Christ’s blood spilled, since extra usum a Christo institutum non unio sacramentalis obtains.” Christian Dogmatics 3:354, n 95. He bases his argument on the disapproval of the Roman practice of the reservation of the host and of the Corpus Christi festival in the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration (VII, 15).

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elements and by disallowing a complete incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus (extra Calvinisticum). Reformed sacramental denial is symptomatic of their deeper Christological problem. Pieper makes the doctrine of grace, as derived from the Bible, the only standard in judging non-Christian and other Christian groups. With the doctrine of grace as the standard, Pieper concludes that Lutheranism is the only true religion.60 All others are false. His argument proceeds in this way. All religions are divided into those of either grace or works. Non-Christian religions teach salvation by works and thus are false. The rejection of idolatry, by which Calvinist theologies determine true and false religions, has no role in his theology. Marked as false is Roman Catholicism with its condemnation of the Reformation principle of salvation. More problematical for Pieper is showing that the Reformed and Arminians espouse a false religion, since both explicitly adhere to the Reformation theme of salvation by grace through faith without works. The Reformed separation of the Holy Spirit from the means of grace is seen as an implicit denial of grace and is confirmed by their disavowal of universal grace. They are forced to find the certainty of salvation and election in their own works. In making a person’s will or free choice a factor in conversion, Arminianism denies salvation by grace alone and so marks itself as a false religion. Thus, contrary to some later criticism that Pieper based his theology on an abstract principle of biblical authority,61 he made Luther’s basic Reformation premise of salvation by grace alone his operating theological principle.62 At first glance it may appear that Pieper isolated the doctrine of grace as a theolegomenon, since he calls it the doctrine by which the church stands and falls.63 This hardly fits, since Pieper makes Christology the content of justification. For Pieper justification was dependent on a historical incarnation and resurrection with the atonement at the center.64 A false understanding of either justification or the atonement makes the other of no effect. Christology, to which Pieper devotes more space than any other subject, is the premise for justification. An error in the doctrine of justification is 60 Koenig approves of Martin Scharlemann’s introduction of the Christological principle into the LCMS in 1960: “’By insisting on a Christological principle of interpretation,’ (Scharlemann) wrote, “‘we can . . . distinguish between [those] facts [of Holy Scripture] that matter and those that do not.’” (“Missouri Turns Moderate: 1938 – 65,” 20). However, in making Walther’s position his own Pieper has already done this. “‘If anyone would not rightly know and believe this doctrine [i.e., justification], it would not do him any good if he knew correctly all other doctrines, as for instance, those of the Holy Trintiy, of the person of Christ, and the like.’” (“Dr. C. F. W. Walther as Theologian”, Concordia Theological Monthly 26 (1955):915. This was Pieper’s position already in 1890, two years after he became seminary president. 61 Richard E. Koenig, “Church and Tradition in Collision,” Lutheran Forum 6 (November 1972). 62 Christian Dogmatics 1:9 – 40. 63 Christian Dogmatics 2:55. 64 “But this article [of justification by grace] is directly based on the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of Christ’s theanthropic Person and theanthropic work.” Christian Dogmatics 2:55.

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symptomatic of a deeper one in Christology. Christology is prior to justification from which it derives its value and content. Non-Lutheran churches do not always carry false doctrines of justification to their logical conclusions and thus they are still able to proclaim Christ and salvation in spite of an inherent contradiction in their theologies. Roman Catholicism for the most part has an acceptable Christology, but a false doctrine of justification. With their extra Calvinisticum, the doctrine that not all of the Son of God became incarnate, and the doctrine of a limited atonement, Calvinists have an inadequate Christology. In making faith a contributing factor to one’s salvation, Arminians resemble Roman Catholics. They locate a cause of salvation outside of Christ. In spite of all these aberrations Christ is proclaimed. Since justification by grace is brought about by preaching the gospel, the distinction between it and the law is vital. Only the gospel, the preaching of the atonement, and not the law, creates and preserves the una sancta, the church. Confusing gospel with law makes creating faith impossible.65

Ranking the Doctrines The tension between the una sancta, those who believe the gospel and are justified, and the true visible church, which believes all Scriptural truths, gives Pieper a program for evaluating the necessity of Christian doctrines. Observed from the Scriptures all doctrines are necessary, but from perspective of the personal salvation of the individual some doctrines are less significant than others.66 With this distinction Pieper divides doctrines into the categories of fundamental and non-fundamental. Fundamental doctrines are further divided into primary and secondary ones. The only necessary or most fundamental article (articulum fundamentalissimum) is the gospel as the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, namely, justification.67 While belief in all doctrines is necessary for outward church unity, only the minimal definition of belief in the gospel is required for inclusion in the una sancta. Since the gospel proclamation requires the law, the doctrine of the law is then also regarded as fundamental. Since belief in Christ includes belief in the Trinity, it also becomes a fundamental doctrine. Since the denial of the 65 Christian Dogmatics 3:222 – 52, esp. 243 – 47. In one breath Pieper says that faith is not possible where law and gospel are confused and in the next breath says that true Christians are present in churches where the distinction between the law and the gospel is not known. 66 Christian Dogmatics 1:80 – 93. 67 Christian Dogmatics 3:244. “The Christian doctrine of justification is virtually identical with the discrimination between Law and Gospel.”

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resurrection and eternal life undermines justification, they are also then included in the fundamental doctrines.68 Thus for Pieper more than faith in the gospel is required for inclusion in the una sancta. Fides qua, the faith by which one believes in Christ, begins to resemble the fides quae, the body of Christian truth, the doctrines that distinguish true churches from false ones. By a broadening fides qua, the una sancta takes on the characteristics of the true visible church. However, Pieper insists that without belief in the fundamental doctrine of justification by grace through faith, a correct understanding of all other doctrines is without value.69 Pieper’s placing justification and Christology at the foundation and making it the content of the other articles of faith is in line with the Augsburg Confesson and the Smalkald Articles (II, I, 1 – 5) which makes Christology the first and chief article on which all doctrine rests. After the primary fundamental doctrines, Pieper lists such secondary fundamental doctrines as baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the person of Christ, issues which divide Christians from each other. Non-fundamental doctrines are the Antichrist and angels. A final category embraces open and theological questions which on earth are unresolvable and should be avoided.70 Pieper notes that from the beginning the church has ranked doctrines in the order of their comparative importance. The Reformed ranked them according to the saving value of each, in order to establish a common ground with Lutherans and entice them into fellowship. Through discussions with the Reformed, Lutherans brought this method into their theology. Rationalists ranked doctrines according to their comparative truth value and Schleiermacher ranked them on how they contributed to the corporate Christian consciousness. For all, belief in angels was a peripheral doctrine, but for Pieper because it was not necessary for salvation, not because it lacked biblical proof. Baptism and the ministry are divinely instituted, but since they are secondary fundamental doctrines, they are not necessary for salvation. Inclusion in the una sancta is dependent on justification by faith, the articulum omnium fundamentalissimum, but inclusion in the true visible church is fellowship determined by acceptance of fundamental and non-fundamental doctrine. This distinction allows Pieper to recognize non-Lutheran churches as Christian but to refuse them fellowship.

68 Christian Dogmatics 1:82 – 85. 69 In defining saving faith as the fundamental doctrine, Pieper speaks of the prior knowledge of sin and its consequences. For Pieper faith is not self-reflective, but introducing knowledge into what is necessary for salvation, he comes close to contradicting himself. 70 Christian Dogmatics 1:93 – 96.

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In Search of a Presupposition Critiques of Pieper in 1960s and 1970s came from those in the LCMS who wanted to expand the perimeters of fellowship and to use critical methods in biblical study. Hermann Sasse, whose goals were largely the same as Pieper’s, faulted him for basing his law/gospel theology on an Aristotelian model and for naively following Lutheran Orthodoxy in subordinating sola fide to sola scriptura.71 True enough, Pieper used the Aristotelian distinctions of formal and material principles and the four causes,72 but he did not begin his dogmatics with philosophical theories about God or how he is known, a common discussion in Roman Catholic and Reformed theologies. His discussion of the natural knowledge of God covers only six pages and is reserved for his section on God and not placed in his prolegomena. Inborn knowledge of the law is foundational for civil law and disposes man to responding to the preached law, but is not a bridge providing man a way to reach God.73 Although they lived in different worlds, by beginning theology with revelation, Pieper is closer to Karl Barth, who begins his theology with the word of God, than, for example, Wolfhart Pannenberg, who begins theology with a general knowledge of history.74 For Pieper, apologetics plays no role in laying a foundation for theology or conversion, but can only affirm what the Bible says.75 Since he made frequent use of the theologians of Lutheran 71 Herman Sasse, “Confession and Theology in the Missouri Synod, Scripture and Church,” Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, ed. Jeffrey J. Kloha and Ronald R. Feuerhahn, Concordia Seminary Monograph Series, no. 2 (Saint Louis: Concordia Seminary, 1995), 216 – 17. Also Richard Koenig, “Church and Tradition in Collision,” 17 – 20, and Tom Hardt, “In the Forecourts of Theology : The Epistemology of Hermann Sasse and the Relationship between Philosophy and Theology and between Natural Theology and Revelations in His Works,” Herman Sasse: A Man for Our Times, ed. John R. Stephenson and Thomas M. Winger (Saint Louis: Concordia Academic Press, 1998), 153 – 66. 72 Robert D. Preus shows how Johann Gerhard used Aristotle’s terms, especially causes, but did not make theology subject to any metaphysical construct. The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1970 – 72), 1:115 – 17. 73 Christian Dogmatics 1:371 – 75. 74 The Catechism of the Catholic Church first discusses man’s capacity to know God (Liguori, Missouri: Liguori Publications, 1997), 13 – 18. Wolfhart Pannenberg argues from history as the universally accessible presupposition of theology. Basic Questions in Theology, tr. George H. Kehm, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster. 1970), 1:15. 75 Jordahl assessed differences between Pieper and Charles Hodge. “The other significant difference between Hodge and Pieper has to do with a verbally inspired Bible as a staring pint of Christian witness. Hodge, in keeping with rationalistic methodology, tends to begin the apologetic task with a doctrine of a true and infallible Bible. If true, its assertions must be accepted. Pieper does not proceed accordingly and, in fact, precisely rejects such a rationalistic method. One begins with faith, rather than with knowledge of external proof. One’s task is not to convince the unbeliever of verbal inspiration but to bring him to repentance and faith. The whole field of apologetics is relatively unknown to Pieper, and accordingly, natural theology assumes virtually no significance in his system.” “The Theology of Franz Pieper,” 129 – 30.

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Orthodoxy, it is not surprising that he uses causa efficiens to explain that Adam is responsible for original sin, God for good works, and the Spirit for prayer. Pieper is only saying that one thing is simply prior to and the cause of the another thing, namely, cause and effect. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the gospel can each be described as causa instrumentalis, an especially useful distinction against the Reformed theologians who hold that God works without means.76 Use of such terms hardly suggested that Pieper incorporated Aristotle’s philosophy into his theology. An axiom might be an appropriate synonym for the fundamental principle of a system. When it needs to be defined, its function as a basic principle is compromised. For Pieper, faith in the gospel was the principle for distinguishing fundamental doctrines from non-fundamental ones. What was necessary for salvation was fundamental and what was not necessary was nonfundamental. The question of what was necessary for salvation became a principle of dogmatic organization with a hierarchy of doctrines. Yet by including a detailed Christology within his understanding of justification, Pieper made his fundamental principle more complex. For Pieper faith defined the membership of the una sancta but not the outward church. This is the dichotomy that allowed him to recognize that believers in other churches were included in the gratia universalis and so they also could be saved. His polemic against the Reformed was the application not so much of his sola scriptura principle, but of gratia universalis principle. Since the word and the sacraments according to the Reformed were devoid of salvation, they could not really be means of grace, and believers could not be certain of their salvation.77 For Pieper baptism and the Lord’s Supper differed from each other in their institution and administration, but both assured salvation.78 Sacraments are ranked as secondary fundamental doctrines, since faith can exist without them. Faith and not the Scriptures determine the value of a doctrine. He maintains the historic Lutheran belief that the pope is the anti-Christ, but lessens the bite by making this a non-fundamental doctrine. The Reformed are his real opponents because they are unable to assure believers of salvation and so they unravel Christianity. Even their making prayer a means of grace reflected a denial of the satisfactio vicaria.79 Thus, Pieper began theology from below, and worked up in this order of presupposition, by first making faith certain. Secondly, faith depended on grace. Finally the word and sacraments conveyed the grace necessary to make faith certain. Grace required a commensurately certain doctrine of the means of grace at whose center was the gospel, the proclamation that sins were 76 Christian Dogmatics 4:84 – 86. The index volume provides a convenient overview of where and how Pieper used these terms. 77 Christian Dogmatics, 3:104 – 219. 78 Christian Dogmatics, 3:108 – 14. 79 Christian Dogmatics 3:219.

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forgiven. Christology is the content of the proclamation which effects justification.80 Since saving faith is based on Christology, faith is endangered by any misunderstanding about Christ. Christology’s importance is evident in that it constitutes the longest locus in his dogmatics.81 In valuing one doctrine more than another, Pieper is working not from a strict sola scriptura principle; he asks what is necessary for salvation and answers “faith.” Pieper followed the Lutheran tradition and included Christ’s two natures, the Trinity, faith, the resurrection and eternal life in his definition of the gospel.82 Perhaps he instinctively knew that the fundamental/non-fundamental distinction was deficient, because one doctrine could never stand by itself. While he claims that the distinction has practical use,83 he rarely introduces the distinction into specific parts of his dogmatics.84 The gospel or justification is the articulum omnium fundamentalissimum, but by denoting its components (Trinity, Christ’s two natures, etc.), the fundamental doctrine is expanded and made more complex. So it seems that for Pieper fides qua, the faith which trusts in Christ, has evolved into the fides quae, the acceptance of certain doctrines. So one has to ask whether this is a distinction in theory rather than in fact. Having designated the Lutheran church as God’s true church on earth, Pieper asks about the fate of Christians in other churches. They can be saved by faith in Christ, fides qua, but now fides qua includes Christ’s two nature and the Trinity, and becomes hardly distinguishable from the fides quae.85 Saving faith for Pieper is always fides directa, faith which finds its object in Christ, and not fides reflexa, faith which is aware of itself; however, he urges cultivation of the fides reflexa among those with doubts. Law can be applied to those caught in carnal security and the gospel preached to those with troubled consciences.86 Only fides directa saves, but Pieper has now introduced selfawareness or self-consciousness into his doctrine of faith. This might be overlooked were not that Schleiermacher, whom Pieper sees as the source of all theological evils, saw self-consciousness as a prerequisite for faith. In his doctrine of infant faith, fides infantium, it is evident that Pieper does not make self-reflection an essential part of faith, but faith does have this potential.87 This issue resurfaces when he speaks of justification as the central doctrine. Consider this:

80 81 82 83 84

Christian Dogmatics 1:9; Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheran Theology, 147. Christian Dogmatics 2:55 – 294. Christian Dogmatics 1:82. Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheran Theology, 144. Christian Dogmatics 1:80. Pieper’s claim that “Scripture clearly states which articles constitute the foundation of Christian faith” (Christian Dogmatics 1:81) is not beyond challenge. 85 Christian Dogmatics 1:81. 86 Christian Dogmatics 3:444 – 45. 87 Christian Dogmatics, 448 – 49.

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The article of justification, “Every Christian must believe that by grace, for Christ’s sake, he has forgiveness of sins and eternal life,” presupposes that Christ is true man and true God; for Christ’s merits are valid only if He is true man and true God. It likewise presupposes the Trinity, namely, that God’s Son is true God and the second person of the godhead.88

Here again is the pyramid with justification on the top supported by the doctrines of Christ and the Trinity, but preceded by belief that forgiveness is obtained by grace made possible by Christ. Faith is not simply fides directa, but it is preceded by accepting the doctrine that salvation is by grace. Belief in Christ has been extended to belief in the doctrine about Christ.

The Theologian of Grace and His Heritage Pieper did not subordinate sola gratia to sola scriptura, since grace was so central to his theology.89 Anecdotes tell of his near ecstasy in lecturing on divine grace. Later caricatures that he might have been a hard-nosed biblicist with little thought for sola gratia cannot be supported. His doctrine of election reflected an obsession with grace as the reigning principle in theology. Grace was the first and last topic of his dogmatics and permeated the contents throughout.90 Gratia universalis did not allow him to adopt a doctrine of double election which might have otherwise held an attraction for his logical mind. The necessity of faith for salvation (sola fide) stood in the way of his becoming a universalist, but he recognized that the damnation of some stood at odds with grace. Failure to resolve the cur alii alii non, “why some are saved and others not,” was the crux theologorum, not just as a theological dilemma but as a cross faith had to bear. Pieper’s theology was dialectical not in the sense that a proposition could be true and not true at the same time, but because the principles of sola gratia and gratia universalis came to opposing conclusions about God’s intentions. Paradox also appears in how he understands the church. Maximum belief in the Scriptures (fides quae) defines the external church and only minimum faith in the gospel (fides qua) defines the una sancta, which is for Pieper the real church, those who believe in Christ.91 Pieper, once revered as Missouri’s one indispensable theologian, was later held responsible for its problems. For his ardent defense of inspiration and inerrancy, Evangelicalism, which succeeded Fundamentalism as the voice of 88 The Church and Her Treasure, 204 – 05. 89 Sasse, “Confession and Theology in the Missouri Synod,” Scripture and Church, 215 – 17. Sasse identifies P.E. Kretzmann as the one who made inspiration the fundamental doctrine. 90 Christian Dogmatics 1:9 – 34 and 3:473 – 503. 91 Christian Dogmatics 2:55; 3:397 – 402.

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Reformed-Arminian Protestantism,92 saw him as one of its own, but LCMS theologians asserted the same thing of him either explicitly or implicitly.93 His belief that the Holy Spirit works and confirms faith through the word, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, has no place in Evangelicalism. For Pieper, faith was derived from the Bible’s Christological content not its perfection. Almost a century after the publication of the first volume, his Christian Dogmatics remains a standard reference for many and thus his influence stretches from the nineteenth century into the twenty-first. His doctrine of grace (sola gratia), defined by a complete incarnation of God in Christ and a universal atonement (gratia universalis), emboldens churches in their commitment to the Lutheran Confessions and evangelism. His commitment to the Scriptures as the clear word of God and the only source of theology was drawn from a tradition defined by Lutheran Orthodoxy. For many the Pieper tradition still defines the Scripture as the word of God.

92 Pieper commends Charles Hodge for his defense of biblical inspiration. Perusing the two columns of references to Hodge in the Christian Dogmatics IV Index (930 – 31) should disarm any suggestion that Pieper shared too much else with Hodge who represented for Pieper all that was wrong with Reformed theology. He has no use for Hodge’s attributing regeneration to the Spirit apart from the gospel or the word of God. (Christian Dogmatics 3:120, 129.) Jordahl grasps that Pieper was not a fundamentalist (“Theology of Franz Pieper,” 118 – 37). “Whereas Fundamentalism reduced the necessary doctrines to a few fundamental doctrines as virgin birth, the resurrection and biblical authority, Pieper makes a frontal attack on any tradition – liberal, conservative, or ‘so-called Lutheran’ – which would minimize full doctrinal agreement in order to achieve a common front” (124). 93 Some of Pieper’s detractors and admirers placed him in the fundamentalist camp. Besides Jordahl, Milton Rudnick challenged this widely held view in Fundamentalism and the Missouri Synod: A Historical Study of Their Attraction and Mutual Influence (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1966), esp. 113. Lawrence R. Rast, Jr. and Grant A. Knepper brought the matter up again in showing that the fundamentalist terms in the doctrine of the Scriptures that were missing in Pieper’s theology found their way into that of his successors “Collecting Autographs: Missouri’s Assumption of Princeton’s Doctrine of the Autographa,” in All Theology Is Christology: Essays in Honor of David P. Scaer, ed. Dean O. Wenthe, et al. (Fort Wayne, IN: Concordia Theological Seminary Press, 2000): 349 – 73.

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Michael J. Albrecht

John Philipp Koehler (1859 – 1951)

Professor J. P. Koehler died in relative obscurity in Neillsville, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1951, at the age of ninety-two. The Wauwatosa Theology is reflected in his last words, “Vergib uns unsre Schuld, als wir vergeben unsern Schuldigern.” (Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.)1 To his final breath Prof. Koehler practiced what he had preached, namely, a rigorous self-criticism combined with a biblical and dignified determination to extend the full benefit of the Eighth Commandment to friend and foe alike. Koehler wanted to read the Holy Scriptures historically, yet without relativizing them, and he insisted that the exegete must learn to hear the music and poetry of the Bible in order to appreciate the aesthetic qualities that are essential to the Word of God. This scriptural conviction was central to what became known as the Wauwatosa Theology. To some extent, this movement within the Wisconsin Synod was a reaction against the repristination theology that C. F. W. Walther and Francis Pieper fostered in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, but Prof. Koehler did not aspire to make a name for himself by means of theological innovations. The Wauwatosa Theology was not so much anti-Missouri as it was a positive and winsome invitation to fresh historical and exegetical study of the Holy Scriptures. Koehler was convinced that fresh, first-hand study of the Scriptures is better than learning the doctrine second-hand from our fathers in the faith. This applies especially to preachers, because sermons that are based on second-hand theology inevitably become third-hand theology in the ears of the congregation. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Wauwatosa was at the western edge of Milwaukee. After the Wisconsin Synod seminary was relocated to the corner of 1 Koehler’s death prompted Jaroslav Pelikan to provide one historian’s tribute to another: “Professor Koehler’s interests and accomplishments spanned many fields of human endeavor as well as theology. In the latter area he was particularly given to historical theology and to exegesis, which he regarded as a historical discipline. Viewing the history of the Church within the context of the history of culture, he brought to church history a rare combination of scrupulous and evangelical insight, which enabled him to evaluate the phenomena of the Church’s past in a light that was true to the best in the Lutheran tradition. The corruptions that have infected the Church, past and present, he saw as the narrowing of the spirit of the Gospel, and he pointed them out wherever they occurred.” Jaroslav Pelikan, “John Philip Koehler (1859 – 1951),” Concordia Theological Monthly 23, no. 1 (January 1952), 50 – 51.

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60th and Lloyd Streets in Wauwatosa in 1893, J. P. Koehler was called to teach there in 1900. Together with August Pieper2 who joined the faculty in 1902 and John Schaller who arrived in 1908, J. P. Koehler cultivated what came to be called the Wauwatosa Theology. Although they were not exactly classmates, all three of these Wauwatosa theologians were trained at Northwestern College in Watertown, Wisconsin, and then at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, overlapping each other at both places. In St. Louis all three of them sat at the feet of C. F. W. Walther and George Stoeckhardt. When the Wauwatosa seminary faculty launched the Theologische Quartalschrift in 1904, Koehler and Pieper contributed to the first volume. The articles that Koehler, Pieper and John Schaller published in that seminary journal are now recognized as an official expression of the Wauwatosa Theology.3 Beginning with Schaller, each of these three men also served as director of the seminary. After Schaller’s death in 1920, J. P. Koehler was chosen to be director, serving until he was dismissed in 1929 and sent into ecclesial exile. August Pieper’s tenure as director lasted from 1929 until 1937. J. P. Koehler’s biography can be divided into three parts: the forty years before he came to Wauwatosa, his thirty years there, and his twenty years of exile after his abrupt expulsion from Wauwatosa.

Early Years (1859 – 1900) J. P. Koehler’s father, Christian Philipp Koehler, was born on October 8, 1828, the son of a weaver, in the little town of Neuwied, in the Rhineland-Palatinate. The family lived in poverty. Since he found no pleasure in weaver’s work, he matriculated at the Barmen Mission House in September of 1851, much to the chagrin of his parents. He later described himself as “a blank sheet of paper” when he began his theological education, and he gave thanks for one of his teachers, Johann Christian Wallmann. “Through this faithful man I first really got to know the Scriptures, through him I first became acquainted with Luther’s life, through him I received the key to the correct understanding of the Word of God.”4 In his History of the Wisconsin Synod, J. P. Koehler observed, “The new trend, in the Wisconsin Synod, toward stricter Lutheran practice may be traced to a new period of the work at Barmen. There, since 2 August Pieper is not to be confused with his older brother, Francis, who became C. F. W. Walther’s successor in St. Louis. See David P. Scaer, “Francis Pieper (1852 – 1931),” Lutheran Quarterly 22 (2008): 299 – 323 or the chapter Francis Pieper (1852 – 1931) in this book. 3 See the three-volume set edited by Curtis A. Jahn, The Wauwatosa Theology – Koehler – Pieper – Schaller (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1997). 4 Christian Philipp Koehler, “The Making of an Early Wisconsin Synod Theologian – The Autobiography of Christian Philipp Koehler (1828 – 1896) – Pointing to the Wauwatosa Theology,” Faith-Life 72, no. 5 (September/October 1999), 19.

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1848, new direction was given to the training of the Rhenish mission house students by the leadership of the second inspector, Johann Christian Wallmann.”5 Christian Philipp Koehler came to the United States in December of 1854, and began working in a small congregation at Addison, Wisconsin, on June 6, 1855. Shortly after his ordination, his fianc¦e, Appolonia Schick, arrived from Hesse. Her passport describes her as twenty-five and a half years old and blond.6 They were married on June 19, 1855, at Grace Lutheran Church in Milwaukee. Three years later they moved east from Addison to Manitowoc, where Pastor Koehler began to serve First German Lutheran Church on September 1, 1858. Appolonia was already pregnant when they moved, and their son John Philipp was born in Manitowoc on January 17, 1859. For health reasons, Christian Philipp Koehler moved west to Hustisford, Wisconsin, in July of 1867. J. P. Koehler’s father often does not receive as much credit as he should for the Wisconsin Synod’s development, yet he did much to shape the synod in which his son would serve for half a century.7 Austere though his upbringing was by today’s standards, J. P. Koehler soon learned to love beauty. He developed a deep appreciation for art, literature, poetry, and music. As a child, he learned to play the piano, the pipe organ and the violin. Already at the age of eigiht, shortly after moving from Manitowoc to Hustisford, he was able to accompany the congregation at the organ during the communion liturgy. At the age of ten, J. P. Koehler entered the preparatory department at Northwestern College8 in Watertown, Wisconsin, for the 1869 – 1870 school year. Leigh Jordahl has argued that the educational program at Northwestern promoted individualism in the Wisconsin Synod, in contrast to the remarkably intense synodical loyalty of the Missourians. Latin and Greek were regarded as essential, not so much as tools for theological study, but to open the door to the literature of the classical world so that students could become acquainted with the thought and culture of two great civilizations. In this way “Northwestern set a pattern which was quite different from that of the Missouri schools. They too were organized after the pattern of the German gymnasium … but they were conceived more as schools to provide tools for theological study and the whole educational outlook was considerably narrower.” Jordahl continues, 5 John Philipp Koehler, The History of the Wisconsin Synod – Third Edition, edited and largely translated by Karl Koehler. Compiled and with an Introduction by Leigh D. Jordahl (Saint Cloud, Minnesota: Printed for the Protes’tant Conference by Sentinel Printing Company, 2004), 47. 6 Koehler Family Collection at Concordia Historical Institute, Oversized Box #4. 7 Christian Philipp Koehler’s collaboration with John Bading began when they were young pastors, serving neighboring congregations that were only fifteen miles apart. The story is told in some detail in The History of the Wisconsin Synod, 67 – 69. Bading became the second President of the Wisconsin Synod, and Christian Philipp Koehler participated actively in synodical affairs and carried on a prolific correspondence with Bading. 8 In its earliest days, Northwestern was called “Northwestern University.”

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The educational ideals that motivated Northwestern College are very important for any study of the Wauwatosa Theology. The broad humanistic base of the educational program served as a healthy balance to the increasingly orthodox character of the synod and allowed for a type of orthodoxy to develop that was flexible and alert to life and language at the same time as it was confessional and consciously conservative.9

The seeds of what we would call a liberal arts education were planted during Koehler’s student days at Northwestern and bore abundant fruit when he was called to teach at the Wauwatosa seminary.10 In addition to the formal instruction he received at Northwestern, young Koehler took responsibility for his own education, reading much more than was required of him by his professors. Referring to himself in his “Retrospective,” he wrote: “Already as a student at the Gymnasium, Koehler had also applied himself to poetry and during the vacations he read first the ancient classics, and then ancient and modern German poetry and history.”11 The Wisconsin Synod seminary had originally opened in Watertown in 1863, but an arrangement was made with the Missouri Synod in 1870 to conduct a joint seminary in St. Louis. (The Wisconsin Synod seminary reopened in 1878.) Therefore, upon his graduation from Northwestern College in 1877, Koehler enrolled at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, where he joined a student body that was larger and more diverse than it would have been at the Wisconsin Synod seminary. Koehler’s Missouri classmates included Friedrich Pfotenhauer, who later served as the fourth President of the Missouri Synod (1911 to 1935) during most of Koehler’s tenure at Wauwatosa. During his first year in St. Louis, Koehler studied under C. F. W. Walther and experienced first-hand the dominance of dogmatics in the curriculum. August Pieper later remembered that “New Testament exegesis consisted mainly of dictated quotations from the Lutheran exegetes of the 16th and 17th centuries” and that the hermeneutics course was taught by Walther using a Latin textbook that had been published in 1754. The hermeneutics class also included “cursory reading of a gospel in German.” In other words, the Bible itself was seldom used. The textbook for the dogmatics class was Baier’s Compendium, which led to student complaints about “Baier ochsen” (slaving away at Baier). It was dogmatics, with five to seven periods a week, that in the second and third years of study claimed all the energy even of the diligent students. The pedantry of using a Latin textbook and Latin as the language of instruction together with Latin dictation from the Lutheran church fathers made the study of dogmatics so difficult for most 9 Leigh D. Jordahl, “The Theological Tradition of the Wisconsin Synod with Particular Attention to the Work of John Philip Koehler,” Thesis submitted to the faculty of Luther Theological Seminary in 1959, 12 – 13. 10 See, for instance, the opening address delivered to the seminary student body in the fall of 1922: J. P. Koehler, “What Is Truth?” Faith-Life 82, no. 3 (May/June 2009), 1, 15 – 20. 11 J. P. Koehler, “Retrospective,” Faith-Life 75, no. 6 (November/December 2002), 18.

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students that they had to spend four, five, or even six hours on it every day in order to be able to answer in Latin Walther’s Latin questions and later the questions of the tutor, which were also in Latin.12

This description of the training that J. P. Koehler, August Pieper and John Schaller received at St. Louis in the 1870s helps to explain why the Wauwatosa emphasis on the priority of scriptural exegesis was widely regarded as a reaction against the strong emphasis on dogmatics at St. Louis. Koehler gave credit to George Stoeckhardt for introducing exegetical study when he came to teach at St. Louis during Koehler’s second year there. Shortly after Stoeckhardt died in 1913, August Pieper also paid tribute to his teacher. He lived completely in the Scriptures and drew his theology directly from them. … Walther produced chiefly the Lutheran doctrine and then proved it from the Scriptures; Stoeckhardt produced the scriptural doctrine and then showed that it was also the doctrine of Luther and the Confessions. Thus naturally Walther’s influence came down to chiefly making us orthodox and then biblical, while Stoeckhardt’s method was suitable for making us directly scriptural and thus at the same time Lutheran.13

J. P. Koehler was called to serve St. Johannes Lutheran Church in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, in 1882. His ministry there lasted until 1888, when he was called to the faculty of Northwestern College in Watertown. During his student days at Concordia Seminary, J. P. Koehler had met a young St. Louis woman, Amalia Rohlfing. They were married on January 4, 1882, shortly before Koehler began his pastorate at Two Rivers. They had ten children, four of whom died in infancy. Again writing of himself: Koehler was not in the habit of speaking English, and in his family cultivated the German on the principle that the English would take care of itself; but he had been the first in Synod to supply a mixed group of English Christians at Two Rivers with regular English services at their chapel.14 12 August Pieper, “Anniversary Reflections,” The Wauwatosa Theology 3, 266. See p. 264 for a description of Walther’s teaching. 13 August Pieper, “Stoeckhardt’s Significance in the Lutheran Church of America,” The Wauwatosa Theology 3, 422 – 423. 14 Koehler, History of the Wisconsin Synod, 210. The Koehler Family Collection at Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis, Folder 244, includes several English sermon manuscripts handwritten in ink. A note written in pencil (evidently by another hand) at the top of the first page of the first sermon says, “J. P. Koehler’s Two Rivers 1882 – 1888 English sermons – delivered in Lutheran services to Sectarian [Methodist?] group on their request.” In light of his father’s strong stand against unionism, it is interesting to consider what J. P. Koehler’s “fellowship principles” were as he began his ministry in Two Rivers. There is no reason to fault him for responding to a call from a group of Methodists (or whoever they were) since he was not sharing the pulpit with a Methodist preacher. By serving them separately, rather than inviting them to join the services at St. Johannes Lutheran Church, Koehler accommodated their desire for English sermons and avoided unionistic services. It is not clear how long this arrangement continued, or whether Koehler eventually relinquished the pulpit to a Methodist preacher.

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Koehler’s sermons emphasize the necessity to let the Scriptures speak, without imposing preconceived notions upon them. The Wauwatosa Gospel was already starting to blossom. Meanwhile, August Pieper had graduated from Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) in 1879, and for the next 23 years he served three different parishes in Wisconsin. He was elected to the Northwestern College Board of Control and was instrumental in the decision to call J. P. Koehler to the faculty at Northwestern in 1888. For twelve years Koehler taught courses in religion, history, Latin, and German, and served as inspector in the dormitory. Koehler’s predisposition for history, literature, and art was homegrown; the stimulating teaching of Meumann, Notz and Ernst, in his student days at Northwestern helped to foster it; the accent on dogmatics at St. Louis challenged it, but then there was the advent there of Stoeckhardt, with his exegetical training, to confirm it … Thus the integration of the history of salvation and of profane history afforded a deeper insight into both and into the central position of the Gospel, and besides, avoided the duplication of effort and, what is more, the ever-present danger of a divided point of view.15

The first chapter of Koehler’s biography, the forty years of his life before he came to Wauwatosa, culminated in his twelve years of teaching Scripture and history in this broad and integrated way at Northwestern College.

Wauwatosa Years (1900 – 1930) Koehler was called from Northwestern College to the Wauwatosa seminary to teach New Testament, church history, hermeneutics, liturgics, music, and art history. Professor Koehler devoted considerable time and effort to developing his own skills as an artist, and he compiled a collection of hundreds of glass slides for his 7:00 AM lectures on art and architecture. Both Koehler’s own original paintings16 and his art lectures were essential components of the Wauwatosa Theology, as future pastors were taught to recognize beauty and creativity as gifts of God that are to be enjoyed and used in the service of the Gospel. With his first book, a commentary on Galatians, Koehler planted more of the seeds that would blossom into the Wauwatosa Theology. Originally written in German and published in 1909, this slim volume is an exegetical gem that is 15 Koehler, History of the Wisconsin Synod, 190 – 191. 16 Koehler painted a large crucifixion scene for the altar at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Milwaukee. Concordia Seminary in St. Louis was given one of his paintings, “Let the little children come unto me.” Milwaukee Lutheran High School had a copy of “The Christchild in the Temple.” For St. John’s Lutheran Church in Wauwatosa, Koehler painted “Christ in Gethsemane” for the altar and a triptych on the parable of the prodigal son.

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still used at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary today. In his preface to the English translation, Ralph Gehrke called it “a classic exposition of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians by one of the outstanding theologians of the past generation” and praised “the simple, direct style of an exposition unburdened by philological ballast.” Gehrke continued: Professor Koehler believed that the study of the Holy Scriptures was the very heart of all theological studies. Exegesis was for him the regina (the Queen) of all the theological disciplines. The text of the Scriptures, he maintained, must be understood by the theologian in its grammatical and historical context without allowing other considerations to weaken its import. For that reason Professor Koehler always strove to understand the author from his position at the time of writing (the times in which he and his readers lived, their backgrounds, mental make-up, etc.) and to observe how the Holy Spirit used all of this to express the Gospel! For him the Scriptures were the Word of God in which God, through human language, speaks His Law and His Gospel in a message which can be rightly understood only by faith in Him who is the very center of the Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ. The true Bible student will, therefore, approach the Scriptures without preconceived ideas as to what God ought to say in them.17

Koehler also produced a church history textbook for his students at Wauwatosa.18 In its Preface, he explained, The church history offered here views all church activities within the context which they share with contemporary secular and cultural relationships. These relationships are presented in every instance in brief resume with a corresponding cultural and historical critique. In context with church-related events, secular occurrences receive an evaluation shaped by the thought of God’s universal governance. Similarly, church-related issues receive an evaluation which projects the evolution of the purely human context in the foreground.19 17 Ralph Gehrke, “Preface,” in The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians: A Commentary by J. Ph. Koehler trans. by E. E. Sauer (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1957). 18 J. P. Koehler, Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1917). Translated as Church History Textbook by Philemon Hensel, beginning in Faith-Life 66, no. 1 (January/February 1993), I – IV. Jaroslav Pelikan declared, “In this observer’s judgment, Koehler’s Lehrbuch is perhaps the outstanding work of its kind to come out of American Lutheranism, regardless of synod. It is almost uncanny in its penetration into the way such things as the establishment of the canon, the creation of the episcopacy, the cultivation of the liturgy, the zeal for purity of doctrine, and the Christian ethical concern have become tools for legalistic perversion. With this there is combined a wholesome regard for the good, the beautiful, and the true wherever they have appeared in the history of the church. Professor Koehler knew well and demonstrated well that in its history the Church has to be ecumenical, never sacrificing confessional loyalty and yet never permitting it to become a legalistic denominationalism.” Pelikan, “John Philip Koehler (1859 – 1951),” 50 – 51. 19 J. P. Koehler, Church History Textbook, Preface, trans. by Philemon Hensel, Faith-Life 66, no. 1 (January/Febraury 1993), II.

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Professor Koehler also founded the seminary choir to cultivate his students’ appreciation for the Lutheran chorales. James Tiefel, current director of the seminary choir, says, “The original rhythmic versions of the Lutheran chorales […] had been championed in the Missouri Synod by C. F. W. Walther, and Koehler would have come under that influence while he was a student at Concordia Seminary. Koehler put a great deal of work into gathering scores for these chorales and other Reformation-era anthems.”20 Koehler simply wanted to serve the church he loved, and he was convinced that the singing of the chorales would be an effective way to fortify the faith and life of singers and audiences alike. Between the years 1910 and 1914, the [seminary] choir gave two benefit concerts annually for the [Lutheran] high school. These concerts [in the Plankinton Hall of Milwaukee’s civic auditorium] were to illustrate the history of the congregational hymn, on which Koehler lectured to the high school audience on these occasions.21

This was the Wauwatosa Theology at work. The best of the classroom and the best of the concert hall were incorporated into a marvelous evening for many people as Koehler described the historical context from which the chorales had sprung. The melody of the gospel rang out, loud and clear, as the seminary choir sang the chorales. The audience was invited to sing along with certain carefully selected stanzas. Koehler observed that in our Lutheran churches the music sung by choirs was often not the kind of music that belongs in the divine service. The music may have a Christian or biblical text, but more than that should be required. Neither is it sufficient that the composer be a famous artist such as Beethoven, Haydn or Mozart. There are some kinds of music that are worthwhile for use in the home or in other private gatherings, and such music may be used for practice, but it does not fit in the divine service because it does not edify the congregation. The Wauwatosa Theology can be properly and adequately appreciated only in conjunction with the music of the Lutheran church. In the Wisconsin Synod today, the Wauwatosa Theology is often equated with exegetical study of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures—without dogmatic presuppositions, of course. In the Missouri Synod today, the Wauwatosa Theology is often equated with the Wisconsin Synod position on “Church and Ministry,” as discussed below. Both groups tend to neglect or ignore the music of the Wauwatosa Theology. Professor Koehler insisted that a vital part of doing fresh, independent exegesis of the Holy Scriptures is learning to hear the poetry and the music of the gospel. Likewise, Koehler emphasized the fundamental 20 James P. Tiefel, “The History of the Seminary Chorus 75 Years – Singing New Songs to the Lord,” WELS Historical Institute Journal 25, no. 1 (April 2007), 20. 21 J. P. Koehler, “Retrospective,” Faith-Life 75, no. 6 (November/December 2002), 23.

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importance of the liturgy and the chorales in the life of the church—both for pastors and for their congregations. Koehler’s examination of what the Bible teaches about Verstockung (hardening), for example, is a masterpiece of exegetical and historical study.22 He demonstrates how hardness of heart afflicts us all, and that is why we need the melody of the gospel to move us to work together in harmony. Relationships in the church are easily disrupted by pride and institutionalism and party spirit, whether it be competition between pastors and teachers, or a power struggle between pastors and laity. Professor Koehler attempted to teach God’s people to sing together in peace and unity. This emphasis on keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace also inspired a genuine ecumenism. As the Wisconsin Synod cut its ties with the European mission societies and moved into closer cooperation with the Missouri Synod, it might seem that this ecumenism was emanating from an unlikely source, but the spirit of the Wauwatosa Theology is expressed in a memorable way by Paul Hensel’s dictum: “Heavenborn faith-life is incurably gregarious, but never promiscuous.”23 The music of the gospel prompts Christians to sing together, and the chorales have a way of crossing over denominational boundaries. Professor Koehler was acutely aware of the way music speaks to our hearts, while dogmatic theology speaks to our heads. Koehler articulated his approach to dogmatics in his Church History Textbook. In secular science, we assign the task of systematizing to philosophy ; in theology, we give it to dogmatics. If philosophy seeks to create a positive contribution by means of a systematic summation of all ideas which decisively comes to terms with the past and offers guidelines for action in the future, it is reaching beyond its competence … . Thus the value of philosophy can only rest in that, on the one hand, it removes obsolete elements which have turned into ballast, and on the other, in that it stimulates the mind to work on from a fresh perspective … . The same applies to the business of dogmatics in theology. The right way to study dogmatics is the one that has always counted in the Lutheran church, at least theoretically, that is, to view it as a historical discipline. Its job is to arrange the instructional materials which have been won, through successive epochs in the history of the church … by Scripture interpretation and confessional minting, and to cleanse the channels of study from the ever recurring accretions of the rubbish of false views, but in doing so, to keep the mind always open to the spirituo-historical disposition as expressed in Samuel’s rejoinder [“Speak, Lord; your servant is listening.”].24 22 J. P. Koehler, “Die Lehre der Schrift von der Verstockung,” Theologische Quartalschrift 9, no. 4 (October 1912), 246 – 269 and 10, no. 1 (January 1913), 11 – 34. Translated by James Langebartels. “The Teaching of Scripture Regarding Hardening” in The Wauwatosa Theology 2, 189 – 228. 23 Paul Hensel, “Garlic,” Faith-Life 23, no. 4 (April 1950), 5. 24 J. P. Koehler, Church History Textbook, Preface, translated by Philemon Hensel, Faith-Life 66, no. 1 (January/February 1993).

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Beginning with Dr. C. F. W. Walther, dogmatics had long been the queen of the theological disciplines in the Missouri Synod, but Koehler says, In the study of theology, dogmatics and history occupy parallel positions; the former presenting the inner connection of the divine purpose of salvation and its revelation in the Word of God, the latter telling the story of the working out of the divine plan on earth thru the ages. The center of study is the exegesis of the Scriptures, which forms the basis both for doctrinal theology and the teaching of history and itself deals with both. Luther knew what he was saying when he urged that the study of the languages be fostered … . The lexicon, grammar, logic, psychology are not to be lightly brushed aside. But above all ranks the supreme and supernatural gift of the Spirit, faith … It is significant that such a great part of the Scriptures is devoted to history, which fact alone should suffice to assign history its rightful place alongside of dogmatics as a theological study.25

Obviously, the exegete will bring certain dogmatic assumptions to his task. It is neither possible nor desirable to banish dogmatic presuppositions absolutely. Lutheran exegetes are grateful to Luther for clarifying the proper distinction between law and gospel. However, when a dogmatic system is constructed for purposes of seminary training or congregational catechesis, exegetical study must provide both the foundation upon which everything rests and the plumb line by which the builder checks to make sure the corners are square and the lines are true. This is precisely what J. P. Koehler did in his examination of the analogy of faith.26 Each of the Wauwatosa men, in his own way, tried to make a fresh exegetical approach to the controverted questions of church and ministry.27 This controversy initially sprang from life in the parish, and was not merely the product of armchair speculation by academic theologians enamored with novelty for its own sake. During the 1870s and 1880s questions arose in both synods regarding the status of Lutheran school teachers. It was taken for granted that pastors were expected to remain in the office of the holy ministry until death. But, should a Lutheran school teacher be free to resign from his or her position, or was it a lifelong commitment? It was commonly said in the Missouri Synod that only the pastoral office and the local congregation were ordained by God. The divine call of the pastor included his duty to teach the children of the congregation, because Christ says, “Feed my lambs” (John 21:15). In order to assist the pastor, the school teacher was called to help fulfill this responsibility. Therefore the office of the Lutheran school teacher was derived from the pastoral office. In the Wisconsin Synod, however, it was commonly understood that God 25 Koehler, History of the Wisconsin Synod, 208. 26 J. P. Koehler, “The Analogy of Faith,” The Wauwatosa Theology 1, 221 – 286. 27 Peter M. Prange, “The Wauwatosa Gospel and the Synodical Conference: A Generation of Pelting Rain,” Logia 12, no. 2 (Eastertide 2003), 31 – 45.

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has given parents primary responsibility for the instruction of their children. Ephesians 6:4 was frequently cited: “Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Therefore the office of the Lutheran school teacher was derived from the parents, in loco parentis. Reinhold Pieper, eldest of the Pieper brothers, followed his brother Franz as pastor in Manitowoc at the same church that had previously been served by J. P. Koehler’s father. During his tenure in Manitowoc, Reinhold Pieper delivered a paper to the Manitowoc Conference in which he proposed that the office of teacher was built into creation and that the vocation of the school teacher was comparable to the vocation of a cobbler or a tailor. J. P. Koehler disagreed with Reinhold Pieper. Speaking again of himself, in his Retrospective: Koehler maintained that the divine nature of the teaching office lies in the fact that the teacher preaches salvation and for this reason it [the teaching office] belongs in the sphere of the church. The concept of the office and its amalgamation with legal authority, as the office of the pastor of the local congregation is conceived, must be rejected because the diakoniai [ministries] are distinct functions of the only office there is, namely the office of preaching the Gospel. [Some wanted to preserve the office of the teacher by suggesting that there was more than one office; it was supposed that the “shepherds” of Eph. 4:11 were pastors; the “teachers” were parochial school teachers.] With this understanding, even though not yet clearly formulated, the idea that the application of the term “office” should be restricted only to the pastor of a local congregation was rejected, and it was pointed out that the formal development of the concept of office was not complete in the apostolic church. This was the talk of the town.28

August Pieper liked to call the Wauwatosa position on church and ministry “meine Lehre” (my doctrine) but it was J. P. Koehler who first raised the issue on the basis of his historical and exegetical study. Furthermore, it is significant that Koehler did not consider the teacher and the preacher to be interchangeable. Koehler never would have campaigned for the idea that “everyone is a minister,” as Oscar Feucht29 and others did later. Koehler did believe that teachers should be honored (and paid) in a manner that would reflect the fact that they were laboring in the Word of God. J. P. Koehler’s novella, A House for the Teacher, was another way that he made the simple point that teachers (and their families) should not have to live in abject poverty. It was published in German in Die Abendschule, a bi-weekly St. Louis publication which described itself as “an illustrated family magazine.” This notice appeared with the first installment: “A masterwork of the storyteller’s art begins in this number, a portrayal of everyday 28 J. P. Koehler, “Retrospective,” Faith-Life 76, no. 2 (March/April 2003), 16. 29 Oscar E. Feucht, Everyone a Minister – A Guide to Churchmanship for Laity and Clergy (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1974).

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congregational life, under the title, A House for the Teacher, by Prof. J. Koehler of Wauwatosa, Wis., written under the pen name, Philipp Schick.” Koehler’s pen name here was evidently a combination of his father’s middle name and his mother’s maiden name. There certainly do seem to be elements of autobiography in this work of fiction, but it is more significant to note that Professor Koehler did not address questions about the church and its ministry only by means of scholarly articles in the Theologische Quartalschrift. In fact, Koehler chose to invest considerable time and effort to locate the issue within the context of congregational life, and to use the avenue of popular literature to address an audience that certainly included many laypeople. It is commonly assumed that the Wauwatosa position on “Church and Ministry” was shared by all three Wauwatosa men, but the story is actually more complicated than that. A detailed narrative is provided in The History of the Wisconsin Synod.30 Koehler admits, “The present author himself did not get to writing on the subject of the Church and Ministry excepting for two book reviews, one of Stoeckhardt’s First Peter commentary, the other of Schaller’s Pastorale.”31 It must be emphasized that Koehler’s original concern was to liberate the doctrine of the ministry from the legalistic form that had resulted from centuries of logic based on dogmatic systems. On the basis of his exegesis of the Scriptures and his historical study, Koehler called into question the widely held assumption that the local parish pastor occupied the only divinely instituted form of the office of the public ministry. Koehler did not intend any disrespect for the local parish pastor, since he regarded the historical development of the pastoral office as a gracious work of the Holy Spirit. Neither did Koehler want to imply that the historical development of the local congregation was without divine authorization. Koehler simply insisted that the freedom of the New Testament Gospel allowed for more than one possible external form. His historical study convinced him that the gospel had already created various forms of the church and its ministry down through the centuries. Koehler simply wanted the church to enjoy the liberty of the gospel, rather than getting bogged down in dogmatic legalism. This did not imply that the contemporary church ought to abandon traditional forms and test the limits of her liberty. On the contrary, Koehler regarded all such machinations as another form of legalism. Koehler was content to leave most of the structures of the church as they were, without, however, binding consciences with the 30 Koehler, History of the Wisconsin Synod, 230 – 39. 31 Koehler, History of the Wisconsin Synod, 238. See Joh. Ph. Koehler, “Buechertisch – Kommentar ueber den Ersten Brief Petri von D. G. Stoeckhardt,” Theologische Quartalschrift 10, no. 1 (January 1913), 62 – 70, and Joh. Ph. Koehler, “Buechertisch – Pastorale Praxis in der ev.-luth. Freikirche Amerikas von J. Schaller,” Theologische Quartalschrift 10, no. 4 (October 1913), 292 – 304.

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unfounded assertion that the current situation was the only divinely instituted form. As August Pieper produced his own Quartalschrift articles on church and ministry issues, he was responding to current events. He concentrated on the application of the doctrine of church and ministry to issues of church discipline, and insisted that the synod was a legitimate form of the church, and therefore had the authority to impose suspensions and excommunication. In the process of working out the practical application of Koehler’s exegetical and historical insights, however, Pieper was drawn in a direction that turned from the gospel freedom Koehler had advocated toward a legalistic assertion of synodical authority. The sad irony is that August Pieper eventually pushed the synod to exercise this authority to suspend Professor Koehler himself.32 The story of J. P. Koehler’s expulsion from the Wisconsin Synod begins in 1924 when the Northwestern College Board of Control clashed with the faculty and lit the fuse that exploded into the so-called “Protes’tant33 Controversy.” The discovery of a thievery ring in the dormitory led to a special faculty meeting at which all the boys who had been accused were individually questioned and disciplined. The Board of Control overruled some of the faculty decisions. Although the board was able to appeal to the letter of the law, the faculty objected that their supervision of dormitory life had been seriously undermined. J. P. Koehler’s son, Karl Koehler, then 39, was one of two professors who resigned in protest against this action of the Board of Control. At this early point in the controversy, J. P. Koehler was absent because he had gone to Germany to do research for his History of the Wisconsin Synod. Upon his return from Germany, the elder Koehler bluntly told his son Karl that he did not regard the highhanded action of the board as sufficient reason to resign. “I could have resigned a hundred times,” he said. Two years later, Pastor William Beitz delivered a conference paper that he called “God’s Message to Us in Galatians: The Just Shall Live by Faith.”34 He criticized various aspects of synodical life and called for repentance at the foot of the cross. His paper immediately provoked controversy, and before long it was simply known as “the Beitz Paper.” It cannot be said of Beitz that he was a scholar concerned with detailed and careful exegesis. Rather, he was a popularizer (in the best sense of the word) of the Wauwatosa Theology. In this respect he was more a student of Pieper than of Koehler. 32 Philemon Hensel, “A Brief History of the Protes’tant Controversy,” Faith-Life 73, no. 5 (September/October 2000), 1 – 20 and no. 6 (November/December 2000), 2 – 6. 33 The accent mark distinguishes the Protes’tants from generic Protestants. The pastors and congregations who were removed from the Wisconsin Synod during the controversy described below were called “Protestler” by their German-speaking opponents. “Protes’tants” is the English translation of this German epithet. 34 William F. Beitz, “God’s Message to Us in Galatians: The Just Shall Live by Faith (1926),” FaithLife 74, no. 3 (May/June 2001), 10 – 20.

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Indeed, portions of his paper remind a person of Pieper’s earlier writings, both in style and in content. His paper strikes one as a sermon, as a canvas painted with broad strokes, as a gripping and worthy preachment of Law and Gospel, though his critics (and there were many of them), first of all Seminary Prof. August Pieper, falsely accused Beitz of confusing Law and Gospel.35

It is noteworthy that in his paper Beitz made no specific reference to the trouble in Watertown. There were plenty of specific examples given, but Beitz did not name names. The Beitz Paper was a sharp and concrete expression of the self-criticism embodied in the Wauwatosa Theology. It asked the pointed question whether the life of the Synod was not being governed more by the Law than by the Gospel. It did not attack the doctrinal position of the Synod, although the effect was certainly to challenge the prevalent view that evangelical practice is somehow guaranteed by precise and orthodox doctrinal formulations.36

A theological opinion was solicited from the Wauwatosa seminary faculty. August Pieper was the primary author of the faculty opinion, popularly known by its German title, Gutachten. Although Beitz did say that he included himself among the guilty, the Gutachten charged that he did not really mean that, and, ironically, accused Beitz of judging hearts. Professor Koehler made a valiant attempt to keep peace among men who should have regarded each other as brethren. He tried to teach those on both sides of the controversy to sing in harmony. (There is, of course, a difference between singing in harmony and singing in unison – or in monotone.) The “Protes’tant Controversy” tested the Wisconsin Synod’s ability to implement the Wauwatosa Theology in a time of conflict. In the heat of the controversy, the Beitz Paper and the Gutachten were for all practical purposes elevated to the status of rival confessional documents – especially by the leaders of the synod. Led by August Pieper’s attitude of “rum oder raus” (“shape up or ship out”), the synod chose the Gutachten rather than the Wauwatosa Theology. More than thirty pastors were expelled from the synod because they did not embrace the Gutachten. They banded together, meeting two or three times a year, and came to be called the Protes’tant Conference. They began publishing Faith-Life in 1928, and both their magazine and their regular conference sessions (February, June and October) continue to this day. Professor Koehler also criticized Beitz for a lack of clarity and for neglecting careful exegesis, but he did not find Beitz guilty of false doctrine or slander. August Pieper accused J. P. Koehler of trying to interpret the Beitz Paper more charitably than Beitz deserved. But Koehler insisted, “This must be observed above all in controversy. Fairness demands that we seek to understand our 35 John Springer, “Conference Report,” Faith-Life 74, no. 3 (May/June 2001), 7. 36 Leigh Jordahl, “Prote’stant Conference,” in The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, ed. Julius Bodensieck (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1965), 1978.

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opponent not as his words can or even must be understood, but as he wants them to be understood.”37 Koehler was simply making practical application of Luther’s familiar explanation of the Eighth Commandment, “Defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.” Koehler freely admitted that he considered the Beitz Paper to be flawed, but he could not in good conscience repudiate Beitz. Professor Koehler was a man of courage, conviction and integrity. When he went to bat for Beitz, he paid a high price for it. The day before the 1929 convention of the Wisconsin Synod opened, Prof. Koehler received a notice from the seminary board which said, “We are unreservedly in agreement on all points … and, therefore, declare that Professor Koehler cannot continue in office at our seminary and expect God to bless his efforts.”38 The immediate outcome was that Koehler was not allowed to participate in the dedication service of the new Thiensville seminary that he had himself designed. He was allowed to stay in the director’s residence on campus, but was barred from teaching during the 1929 – 1930 school year. Unfounded rumors circulated, claiming that his absence from the classroom was due to a mental breakdown. Koehler’s mental acuity is demonstrated by the fact that during this turbulent time he produced his last major contribution to the Theologische Quartalschrift, a masterful summation of the Wauwatosa Theology entitled “Der Glaube, das Urwesen des Christenlebens auf Erden,”39 which was translated as “Faith, the Quintessence of Christian Life on Earth.”40 The decision of the seminary board was followed by a declaration of the officers of the Southeast Wisconsin District (which was published in the Proceedings of the 1933 convention of the Wisconsin Synod) that Prof. Koehler was “openly practicing brotherly fellowship with those who have severed relation with us” – namely the Protes’tants. “This we must consider a severance of church fellowship with us.” They blamed the victim.

37 J. P. Koehler, “The Analogy of Faith,” Faith-Life 25, no. 5 (May 1952), 11. Translation by E. E. Sauer. Italics in the original. 38 “Wauwatosa Seminary Director Joh. Ph. Koehler’s immediate response to his dismissal,” FaithLife 75, no. 2 (March/April 2002), 27. 39 J. P. Koehler, “Der Glaube, das Urwesen des Christenlebens auf Erden,” Theologische Quartalschrift 24, no. 1 (January 1927), 97 – 161 and 24, no. 3 (July 1927), 193 – 244. 40 Translation by Emil John and Leigh Jordahl, Faith-Life 21, nos. 8 – 12 (August-December 1948) and 22, nos. 1 – 6, 9, 11 (January-June, September, November 1949). Translation resumed by Kurt Zorn, Faith-Life 27, nos. 7 – 9, 11 (July-September, November 1954) and 28, nos. 1, 3 – 7 (January, March-July 1955).

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Exile Years (1930 – 1951) The third chapter of Koehler’s biography began as he moved to Neillsville, Wisconsin, where Karl Koehler had readied a spacious residence for his parents and his unmarried sister, Ada. By this time J. P. Koehler had given almost fifty years of service to the Wisconsin Synod, and he had reached his three score years and ten. Moving his library and all of his personal belongings was complicated by the fact that he had never owned a car and did not drive, but at the age of seventy-one he was forced into exile. It must be emphasized that J. P. Koehler never resigned or retired; he was put out of his classroom and expelled from the synod he had served so faithfully. His exile lasted twenty-one years. During that time he finished his History of the Wisconsin Synod, a remarkable work that presents the readers with much more than what the simple title may lead them to expect. Koehler’s History of the Wisconsin Synod begins by tracing the conflict between materialism and Christianity through the Thirty Years’ War, the French Revolution and World War I. This first chapter provides more than context; Koehler is not afraid to make historical judgments, to condemn evil men and their evil purposes wherever they appear – in the world or in the church. But this is not only pointing the finger at others. Koehler insisted that historical study must not be allowed to become a detached academic exercise. Whether we are studying the history recorded in the Bible or history that is written elsewhere, rigorous self-examination is always in order. An earnest attempt was made at Wauwatosa to teach church history in terms of the total history of culture and to bridge the gap between sacred and secular. But what was involved in the Wauwatosa Theology and in the Protes’tant Controversy was much more than a method in theology, viz., a strong emphasis upon self analysis and self criticism. The life of the church must in all its manifestations be continuously subjected to thorough analysis. Especially must there be an effort to cut through surface manifestations to understand the influences that are molding the essential character of the church.41

Another notable example of this approach is Koehler’s “Unsere Schuld am Weltkrieg” (Our Guilt for the World War). The first word of the title was deliberately chosen, as Koehler invited his readers to join him and engage in rigorous self-criticism. The first installment of this article in 1918 concluded with the promise “Fortsetzung folgt” (continuation follows). This promise went unfulfilled. “Seeing the proofs for what was to appear next, Koehler’s seminary colleagues, August Pieper and John Schaller, objected.”42 The rest of the article never appeared in the Quartalschrift. Fifty years later an English 41 Leigh Jordahl, “Prote’stant Conference,” The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, 1978. 42 John Springer, “Conference Report,” Faith-Life 75, no. 3 (May/June 2002), 13.

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translation of the entire article finally appeared in Faith-Life.43 Despite Pieper’s objections, Koehler continued to regard “the World War” as a judgment of God and a call to repentance, and he returned to this theme in another article that was published after his expulsion from the Wisconsin Synod.44 In the third chapter of his life, J. P. Koehler also wrote commentaries on the Gospel of John and Ephesians and I John, and produced numerous essays and book reviews, all published in Faith-Life. He remained alert and productive until the end. During his long career at Northwestern College and at the Wauwatosa seminary, Koehler taught most of the men who were pastors in the synod at the time of his expulsion. They were his immediate legacy. For many years at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, Prof. Richard Balge (now retired) taught church history and New Testament exegesis, courses that Koehler had taught before him. Balge gratefully made use of Koehler’s Kirchengeschichte and the Galatians commentary. When asked to define the Wauwatosa Theology, Balge said, “It was a theology of the cross. Now, they didn’t use that cross and glory distinction at that time, but it is that. It was certainly not a theology of glory.”45 Paul Wendland, current president of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, also 43 J. P. Koehler, “Unsere Schuld am Weltkrieg, und was nun den Reformationsgedanken gemaess werden sollte,” Theologische Quartalschrift 15, no. 1 (January 1918). Trans. by Alex Hilmer, “Our Guilt for the World War,” Faith-Life 41, no. 5 (September/October 1968), 4 – 8 and 42, no. 1 (January/February 1969), 4 – 8 and 42, no. 2 (March/April 1969), 4 – 6 and 42, no. 3 (May/June 1969), 4 – 8 and 42, no. 4 (July/August 1969), 4 – 6. Koehler provides further details: “Meanwhile the war [World War I] broke out. German Lutherans over here were against our entering the war. They expressed their views in meetings and mass protests. Pieper and Schaller were in the forefront of such movements. …At the pastoral conferences Koehler, however, spoke against such measures… Koehler himself, accordingly, wrote letters of earnest protest to President Wilson …and for the benefit of the President – himself a historian – contrasted the history of the Prussian monarchy with the history of all the democracies. See Michael J. Albrecht, “Sizing Up Leading Contemporary Personalities in World and Church,” Faith-Life 80, no. 5 (September/ October 2007), 5 – 24. Pieper and Schaller, on the other hand, along with Brenner, …in one instance through their incorrect advice induced Koehler himself to buy the last Victory Stamp. Finally because of the different position which Koehler took towards the upheaval [Ecclat] in these individual instances, the last part of his article, “Our Guilt for the World War,” was not published, owing to the protestations of Pieper. Koehler had expressed the truth to the ruling powers in quite unvarnished terms but in the Faculty discussions had demonstrated his willingness to tone down his presentation somewhat. The actual stumbling block, however, was the detailed presentation of how the war was of necessity the result of our own deficient participation in the intellectual [geistigen] efforts of the present culture. Pieper’s observation was: “In these matters I won’t be taught by you.” This showed what the real point of offense was. Schaller was eager to learn in such matters and took up new ideas from Koehler with gratitude. By contrast, Pieper (as Koehler later discovered) assiduously tried to create the impression in his “Encyclopedics” lectures that he had mastered the entire field of higher learning.” See J. P. Koehler, “Retrospective,” Faith-Life 76, no. 3 (May/June 2003), 18. 44 Johannes Philipp Koehler, “Die Kriegschuldluege und ihre Behandlung eine Warnung fuer die Kirche,” Faith-Life 8, no. 5 (May 1935), 3 – 7. 45 Interview with the author, conducted at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, June 14, 2007.

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sits in a chair once held by J. P. Koehler. When he was asked to define the Wauwatosa Theology, Wendland said, It was a conviction that sola scriptura needed to be asserted in a special way within a historical context of a church that was too often thinking that exegesis had already been done by the fathers, that we could pretty much count on that task as being completed simply by looking at dogmatics texts and confessional texts. And so, it was within that context a stirring call for “Let’s get back to the sources.” Let’s recapture anew from the Scriptures the basis for our doctrinal statements, and if new questions arise in the church or even questions that seem to be older, that we first look to the Scriptures and allow the Scriptures to set the frame for the debate … rather than simply going to the fathers as some kind of default answer … . Sometimes I hear, for example, even in our own circles in WELS, an attempt to articulate the Wauwatosa Theology as being an anti-dogmatics movement, as if it were impossible to come up with dogmatic statements that would be universally valid. And I think that’s a mistake. They were rather saying exegesis has to feed systematics – not the other way round.46

J. P. Koehler was the foremost of the Wauwatosa theologians because he brought such a wide-ranging and comprehensive view of faith-life to the Wauwatosa seminary. He was always a teacher ; he endeavored to impress upon his students the vital connection between faith and life. Koehler was not an academic professional. He had no interest in building a resume, and when Concordia Seminary in St. Louis offered him an honorary doctorate, he politely declined. It might be easy to dismiss the Wauwatosa Theology as nave idealism. A closer look, however, reveals that Koehler’s unflinching focus on the obduracy of the human heart and his repeated calls for rigorous self-criticism are hardly what might be expected from a man who viewed the world through rosecolored glasses. So what is J. P. Koehler’s legacy? His son Karl was his most alert and gifted student. Father and son collaborated on the English translation of The History of the Wisconsin Synod. Karl served as the editor of Faith-Life from 1929 until his death in 1948, three years before his father died. Editorial responsibility for Faith-Life passed to Paul Hensel and Philemon Hensel (father and son) and to Marcus Albrecht. Among Paul Hensel’s chief literary works are The Hardening of Israel and Hardening in the Church and “Why I Am a Protes’tant.”47 Philemon Hensel (in addition to his own poetic and literary contributions to Faith-Life) has translated Koehler’s Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, and

46 Interview with the author, conducted at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, August 6, 2007. 47 Floyd Brand’s translations of The Hardening of Israel and Hardening in the Church are soon to be published by the Protes’tant Conference in a volume that will also include Paul Hensel’s “Why I Am a Protes’tant.”

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has devoted considerable time to the Koehler Family Collection at Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis. Even if you cannot read German, much of the Wauwatosa Theology is now available in English. Who will read it? Who will proclaim it? Augustana V declares that the Holy Spirit works faith where and when it pleases him. When the melody of the gospel seems like an ancient song that is seldom sung anymore, God may raise up a musician-theologian to teach the people of God to sing in harmony once again.

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Gregory A. Walter

Karl Holl (1866 – 1926)

Karl Holl provided a major interpretation of recovered writings of Martin Luther, setting in motion a long scholarly preoccupation with the early Luther. Although Holl had long labored on early church history, his work with Luther bridged historical and systematic theological concerns. He primarily focused his theological inquiry on the doctrine of justification but also worked to think through the relationship of God and Jesus and theological ethics. Holl’s greatest theological contribution was his attention to the role of promise in the early Luther’s writings. He constructed his doctrine of justification out of his interpretation of Luther’s Romans Lecture. However, this reconstruction came with a great difficulty : because of his shifting concerns about the fate of Germany following World War I, Holl pursued his scholarship of Luther in the service of a reactionary and anti–democratic nationalism. He advocated a position that he summarized as “a religion of conscience” whose ecclesial form took the shape of a nation. The paths he created in the study of Luther’s thought led in various directions: his students Emanuel Hirsch and Erich Vogelsang both attempted to solve his religion of conscience by interpreting Luther’s thinking about Christ, while Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Hermann, and Hans–Joachim Iwand would seek other paths. Beyond these theologians, who tried to carry out Holl’s program of promise in some fashion, many others such as Paul Althaus or Karl Barth criticized his work from their own perspectives. Karl Holl holds a place of great importance in the modern history of Luther scholarship. His work established for many decades the tone and tenor of the debates, debates that were of course upset, replaced, and turned on their heads by his successors. Rather than confining Holl to that history as a scholar of Luther, in many ways out of date and now corrected, his overall concerns and many contributions as a theologian should be considered. This theology begins with the doctrine of justification and unfolds into a host of theological concerns.

Life and Path to Luther Scholarship Karl Holl did not begin his scholarly career as a Luther scholar. He only came to Luther in the last two decades of his life as he sought to work out some

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questions facing liberal theology and the doctrine of justification.1 He was born to Karl Holl and Sophie Prager in Tübingen. Liberal Protestant commitments pervaded his childhood home. He studied theology and philosophy at Tübingen from 1884 to 1889. After taking his first licentiate in 1890 and serving a vicariate as a pastor, he found that parish ministry did not suit him. At the time of his work as a pastor, he completed a dissertation on Thomas Hobbes’ logic. After that, he began doctoral work at the University of Tübingen under Adolph von Harnack and Carl von Weizäcker, but his initial work on Polycarp received poor reviews even from his advisors. Weizäcker stated sadly : “rather no Polycarp than this one.”2 At that time, von Harnack helped him to acquire a position on the Berlin Kirchenvaterkommission, where he edited patristic texts. Alongside his historical work, Holl demonstrated his political and theological direction by joining the Union of the Friends of the Christliche Welt in 1892 after the Apostles’ Creed controversy. This controversy began when a pastor, Christoph Schrempf, refused to utilize the Apostles’ Creed in a baptismal service because he did not personally confess it. This would have remained an isolated issue of church discipline had not some students asked von Harnack to respond. Harnack sympathized with Schrempf, which led to many reactions from church authorities and conservative theologians.3 Although the reactions of its members varied, the Union of the Friends generally also sympathized with Schrempf. Besides sharing these sympathies, Holl held many of the political commitments of this large and diverse group, commitments to liberal democracy and liberal theology. In this, Holl belonged to the large and diverse stream of German liberal Protestantism.4 He would later split from the Union of the Friends over the war with England in 1914, fully marking his separation from their liberal political outlook in 1918. At that time he started to embrace a form of German nationalism and political anti–liberalism that conditioned his theological writing, especially the way he sought to demonstrate the significance of the doctrine of justification for hermeneutics, ecclesiology, and ethics. After some years at his editorial work, Holl acquired his first teaching post at the University of Tübingen in 1900 and then moved to the University of Berlin in 1906, alongside von Harnack and Reinhold Seeberg. Once there, Holl

1 This biographical account of Holl relies on James M. Stayer, Martin Luther, German Saviour : German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917 – 1933 (Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000); Johannes Wallmann, “Karl Holl und seine Schule,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche Beiheft 4 (1978): 1 – 33. 2 Quoted in Wallmann, “Karl Holl und seine Schule,” 13. 3 Johannes Rathje, Die Welt des Freien Protestantismus. Ein Beitrag zur deutsch-evangelischen Geistesgeschichte Dargestellt an Leben und Werk von Martin Rade (Stuttgart: Ehrenfried Klotz Verlag, 1952) 64 – 74. 4 Stayer, Martin Luther, German Saviour, 19.

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turned from historical scholarship and philology to theology in the form of the interpretation of Luther. He held this position until his death in 1926. This turn to theology brings us to the period when Holl began constructive theological work through his historical research. In order to see how Holl arrived at his later position, it is necessary to look first at his early writing on justification, which started in 1906, through to the beginning of the Luther Renaissance in 1910, and then to his mature theology in what his contemporaries referred to as the Luther Book, whose proper title is Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte: Luther.5 He began by defining justification as an analytic judgment because it concerns God’s present and future work. Holl busied himself with the doctrine of justification because of his commitments and concerns present in the political and cultural climate of Germany in these decades.

The Turn to Justification The first writings that prepared Holl for the driving questions of Luther research are his two essays in 1906 and 1907 on justification. Here he argued that the doctrine of justification must spring from the doctrine of God itself. The first essay, a history of justification in the history of Protestantism, complemented a second, shorter piece on the contemporary significance of justification. These two essays bring to light his orientation and the doctrine of justification he constructed, though in outline form. Holl argued that Protestant theology needed a fresh start from Luther’s theology to reorient the problem. He pointed out that Luther’s conception of justification was a two–fold concept: “Luther envisions the event [of justification] from above as an act of God, the other from below as the experience of a human being.”6 This two–sided understanding of justification allows one to establish certainty of salvation in God’s will alone just as it permitted Holl to articulate God’s paradoxical acceptance of the sinner. In the 1906 essay, “The Doctrine of Justification in Light of the History of Protestantism,” Holl argued that, in constructing a proper doctrine of justification, one must fix one’s gaze on the “original experience of Luther, out of which he developed his theory.”7 Attention to that experience will enable reconstruction of the doctrine. “The basic question Luther has in his experience to which justification is the answer is: ‘How can I remove my sin 5 Karl Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 1 (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1921). 6 Karl Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre im Licht der Geschichte des Protestantismus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1906), 8. 7 Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre, 3.

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before God?’”8 The answer depends upon the view of God. “The sure ground of personal certainty is and remains God’s will of grace.”9 The will of God is the ultimate foundation of the certainty that Luther acquired; this will grounds personal certainty and is fulfilled in the work of Christ and the Spirit. Because God’s will is creative, one cannot rest with the idea that God only declares a person righteous, when in reality that person remains in sin. That would be what Holl and Ritschl called justification as a synthetic judgment because the person is considered wholly just and sinful at the same time, a synthesis of two realities. Holl puts it this way : “In the moment that God declares a sinner righteous, God anticipates the result to which he himself will bring the human being. God’s justification is an analytic judgment.”10 By using this language, Holl adopted but altered Albrecht Ritschl’s use of the term. Holl continued to describe justification in this way until 1910 when he argued that it should be both synthetic and analytic. Holl combined justification as an analytic judgment with the two–sided view of justification to account for the fact that God’s creative will remains hidden to the human being. Only when human beings view themselves from God’s point of view do they see grace. the present God’s future completion of making them just; therefore on the human side, “only sin remains.”11 Human beings are not sure of salvation; they have no access to the future work of God. This description is the core of Holl’s theology of justification although he used the notion of promise to connect the human and divine perspective. Holl’s 1906 and 1907 essays do not clarify the relationship of God’s future work to the present encounter or how those two aspects of God’s work relate to the paradox. In short, Holl awaited the recovery of the category of promise that struck him so in 1910. Further, Holl does not give an account of the new self created by God and how the human being may assume the perspective God has. The paradox he describes refers to the paradox of demand and love in God, not to the seeming paradox that God only creates in the future but declares in the present. If this conceptualization were carried out in elaborating on the new self created by God, then it would seem that the perception of God’s love, which creates in the future, cannot create a new self in the present. This point is important because Holl argued in both essays that any account of justification in which God declares righteousness without creating righteousness disconnects justification from ethics. If God’s will creates only in the future, then Holl’s view of justification might have no connection with the present. He needed to articulate how the future affects the present. This is especially important because the human and the divine

8 9 10 11

Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre, 4. Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre, 9. Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre, 9. Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre, 9 – 10.

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perspectives do not come into contact with each other. Holl provided no way to bridge them. An additional problem at the base of this paradox was the way Holl conceived of faith. Because the human being has nothing but a future renewed self, faith has nothing to which to cling. Thus, in both early essays Holl described faith as a “risk.”12 Faith does not rest in or on anything present to it but only flings itself into the unknown. The notion of promise that Holl later uncovered in Luther’s Romans Lecture will repair these gaps since Holl will be able to give the human being access to the divine will through God’s promise. Holl’s beginnings in reflecting on justification would continue to employ paradox, the focus on the relationship of act and will, analytic and synthetic judgment, as well as the ethical formulation of demand, but they would undergo important transformations on the way to his mature position in a revision of the Luther Book. However, at this beginning point Holl’s Christological problems were already evident. As he concluded his 1907 essay, he had committed himself to advocating the importance of the doctrine of justification: I have only sought to indicate the chief points which the power and depth of the doctrine of justification hides in itself. It is not a doctrine that has had its time. It is the evangelium aeternum. And it is perhaps more necessary and salutatory for the modern situation than some other earlier generation.13

It is through his 1910 essay on Luther’s Romans Lecture that Holl would be able to deepen and carry out the doctrine of justification according to his vision. The discovery of Luther’s use of promise would enable him to address his concerns.

Promise and Luther’s Romans Lecture The Luther Renaissance began with the recovery of Luther’s Romans Lecture. Although Holl had nothing to do with the discovery of some of Luther’s early writings, their discovery enabled him to solve the outstanding problems in his doctrine of justification. He and so many others relied upon the work of Johannes Ficker. Ficker’s search for Luther’s early writings had begun in 1897 with another Reformation jubilee, the 400th anniversary of Melanchthon’s birth.14 For this occasion, Ficker, a professor of church history at the 12 Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre, 41; Holl, “Was hat die Rechtfertigungslehre dem modernen Menschen zu sagen?” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, 3:566. 13 Holl, “Was hat die Rechtfertigungslehre dem modernen Menschen zu sagen?,” 567. 14 This account is a summary of Ficker’s own, taken from Martin Luther, Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief 1515/1516, ed. Johannes Ficker (Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlag, 1908), vii–xvi.

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University of Strasbourg, prepared a collection of Melanchthon’s early exegetical work. In the course of Ficker’s work, he learned of an anonymous lecture on Romans that had served as an important source for Melanchthon’s Loci communes. Ficker had come to know of the existence of a variety of early Reformation exegetical writings through his work in the Vatican Archives in 1887 – 89. In 1899 he called upon his friend and colleague, Hermann Vopel, who was at the Archives at the time, to look for anything and everything to determine the author of this lecture and to find a copy. To his surprise, the list of materials Vopel provided contained several unknown writings of Luther, including student notes to Luther’s Romans Lecture. Ficker spent the next several years searching, writing inquiries, and even posting notices in church newspapers and theological journals. According to him, “I have sought the original [copies] of the early exegetical writings of the Reformer in all of Europe.”15 In the course of time, he discovered other student copies. In 1905, the Berlin Royal Library discovered that it possessed the original copy of the Romans Lecture, after having replied earlier to Ficker that it had nothing. (It had been stored for a long time in a showcase in the library!) In order to show the differences between this original and the versions of the lecture created by the students who heard it, Ficker published this provisional edition in late 1908. Ultimately, he edited the version that appeared in the Weimarer Ausgabe. Although Holl’s writing on this lecture made for a significant breakthrough in the Protestant theology of the time, none of it would have been possible without Ficker’s prior accomplishment. In the winter semester of 1908/1909 Holl held a seminar on the Romans Lecture of Luther and subsequently published the results of his investigation.16 Heinrich Assel identifies this essay as the beginning of the Luther Renaissance because Holl’s interest in defending a contemporary form of justification now met with the doctrine he had found in the early writings of Martin Luther.17 This essay deserves close analysis since it marks the modern treatment of justification in terms of promise. Holl developed this theology of justification in an analysis of Luther’s Romans Lecture, having come to this position by responding to a problem. This is also available in English in the preface to Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, trans. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961). 15 Luther, Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief 1515/1516, xi. 16 Karl Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewissheit,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 20 (1910): 245 – 291. Reprinted in Karl Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewissheit,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1932) 1:111 – 54. I will cite from this edition. 17 Heinrich Assel, Der andere Aufbruch: die Lutherrenaissance. Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910 – 1935) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 89 – 10.

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Justification, as explained in his essays in 1906 and 1907, had a significant problem to resolve, namely, its “unique riddle,” as Holl called it.18 Holl argued that the three possible descriptions of justification utilized by Luther were incompatible. First, God’s recognition of the sinner as righteous is incoherent when combined with the second, that justification is a reckoning of Christ’s righteousness as the sinner’s own. How, asked Holl, can the sinner be declared or recognized as righteous when “[the justified] is in reality … sinner and is only a sinner”?19 Luther’s third possible description is that God justifies “those who fulfill the law.”20 This contradicts both of the prior descriptions because, in this possibility, the persons who fulfill God’s law are factually righteous and have no need of either the declaration of righteousness or of having Christ’s righteousness reckoned to them.21 This problem requires an account of both the God who justifies and the sinner who is justified, a dual perspective that would provide Holl’s solution. This solution continued his earlier interest in conceiving of justification from both perspectives. The Romans Lecture provided a solution to Holl’s problem of personal certainty and the moral life in three ways: through justification as God’s promise; through the community between God and humanity created by this promise; and through the future consummation of this promise. Holl continued his earliest claim that justification involves simultaneously seeing oneself from one’s own perspective and from God’s perspective, which allowed him to articulate how a person is justified while remaining a sinner.22 “Since Melanchthon it has become usual in Protestant theology to treat justification exclusively from the point of view of that which the human being needs and experiences, namely the trust of the conscience. The other side of justification, insofar as it is an act of God . . . appears as the necessary ground of the certainty of forgiveness.”23 Now, through the notion of promise he will be able to bridge the gap between human and divine knowledge of the justified sinner.

18 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewissheit,” 117. 19 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 117. 20 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 117. 21 “This implies that the justified are factually righteous, whereas as it was put earlier [in the first two alternatives], God justifies those, who are not factually righteous,” Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 117. 22 This claim is first formulated in Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre im Licht der Geschichte des Protestantismus, 8. 23 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 113.

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Promise as the Intersection of the Present and Future of God’s Work The most important new development was that justification concerns God’s promise. In Holl’s doctrine, promise indicates the ground of certainty that the future holds this consummation. It is certainty of the goal of justification: “For hope rests itself on a determinate promise of God.”24 The notion of promise allowed Holl to connect the present and future aspects of his earlier understanding of justification. In this earlier position, justification occurs in the present and anticipates God’s future work.25 In the new formulation, God promises righteousness in the present and fulfills that promise in the future. The conjunction of present promise and future fulfillment addresses that which was lacking in his earlier reflection.26 This formulation allowed Holl to connect present and future not just by anticipation but also by God’s act. Holl started by describing justification as an act of God, as opposed to God simply cooperating in justifying. “The whole new life [created by God in justification] is from beginning to end exclusively God’s work.”27 This continued his commitment and peculiar view of God’s Alleinwirksamkeit; it is God’s action, through and through, and it is a creative act. “God himself brings faith to existence through his power, through his ‘promise.’”28 Promise is the present address of God to a human being, the address of God’s will. It is a promise because it points to the future and eternal consummation of justification. The human being must hope for the future and so faith is the correlate of God’s promise.29 Justification itself is an act of God that creates community between the human being and God and in that act God recognizes the human being as just.30 This notion of promise revised his earlier description of faith as a “risk.” Faith is now viewed as clinging to God’s promise, rather than representing a risk or “leap” into the unknown. This earlier situation developed from the chasm between human and divine knowledge. Holl had no way to solve this problem and to account for how human beings come to know God’s will to justify. The notion of promise now presented a solution because it indicates that God addresses the individual to give knowledge of God’s will, which is knowledge of God’s future act of making just. Holl called the creative activity that starts life anew God’s “promise.”31 “The 24 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 144. 25 Holl notes that he is refining his earlier work from 1905. See Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 124 n2. 26 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 99. 27 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 119. 28 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 113. 29 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 119 n3. 30 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 113. 31 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 119.

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establishment of faith indicates as well the moment where God and humanity can really find themselves.”32 But in this Holl encountered a problem. First, God’s activity creates a new person who “becomes factually righteous before God,” in fact so righteous that the person can stand in judgment. So in this it seems that Luther had a double view of justification, one that recognizes an already righteous reality and another that sees justification as an act of God that creates a reality. These two views correspond to Holl’s earlier articulation of justification according to the divine and human perspectives. The solution must lie deeper than the usual formulation of the matter, said Holl.33 There must be a new conception of God’s activity. His proposal is that God justifies a human being in the present situation on the basis of God’s future activity, making that same human being just. This differs immensely from the present activity of the human being made just.34 Thus, two aspects of God’s being solve the riddle of justification. The first, “a solution which lies deeper,” rests on Holl’s view of God’s eternal immutability.35 This way, if God in the consummation of the justifying work justifies the sinner, God already sees the sinner in the present situation as just. “Just as a great artist sees a completed statue in a crude block of marble, so God sees the sinner, whom God justifies, already as the righteous person, into which God will form [the sinner].”36 God, being eternal, has the result of time before God, which means that God perceives no individual moment apart from the whole of time. A person can “see God’s love” only when “[he or she] is freed from the bonds of the earthly.”37 The fulfillment of justification brings us to the “doorstep of the beyond.”38 Justification is a proleptic judgment. By invoking the consummation of God’s work in eternity, Holl greatly shifted the ground on which justification had been put forward in his earlier works. The second aspect of God’s being continues the importance of God’s monenergism; since God works and creates all alone, there cannot be any basis in the human being for the creative judgment involved in justification, in Holl’s mind. But this also grounds the certainty of justification. The state of being made just or being declared so is entirely on the basis of God’s Alleinwirksamkeit, God’s working completely by Godself.39 Since God works entirely alone and God’s will is unchangeable, “what God wills, he wills 32 33 34 35 36

Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 119. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 122. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 125. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 122. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 125. “What God has begun, God will also complete,” Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 121. 37 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 122. 38 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 122. 39 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 125. He also invoked it in grounding the present righteousness of God’s promise in God’s future making the sinner righteous. See Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 119.

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earnestly and that will remain constant.”40 Holl had consistently found this to be a central insight of Luther and Calvin since his lectures for a Calvin Jubilee in 1906. The second way that Holl provided a solution to the problem of certainty and the moral life was by arguing that in justification God establishes a community of will between God’s will and human will. “This recognition [of righteousness] is not only a valuation by which God and humanity remain strange to each other ; it grounds at the same time, which is essential for Luther, a community between them.”41 God does not establish righteousness impersonally but creates a community of persons, a community that forms the basis of an understanding of the renewed self. Combining this with the disjunction between will and act in the human being, Holl comes to give an account of the human being in community with God as living a contradictory existence in which the new self and the old do not agree. This is the root of Holl’s conception of the justified as simultaneously righteous and sinner.42

The Consciousness of Justification Having established God’s perspective in justification, we may now elaborate on the perspective of humanity in justification, the “act of God reflected in human consciousness.”43 Since for Holl this certainty rests in God’s future consummation of justification, there is no sense in which that peace can be obtained other than in the “eternal peace of God.”44 This leaves the question of the character of the new life created by God’s justifying act. If the new life is “not an object of experience” or consciousness, what sort of reality does it have?45 Holl described the new life in moral terms as the reality of hoping for consummation, the union of the human will with God, and the act of new life creating new powers in the human conscience.46 “Not peace but movement is the hallmark of genuine Christianity.”47 The third way Holl resolved his earlier problem of certainty was by connecting the present to God’s future working through promise and the 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 143. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 115; Assel, Der andere Aufbruch, 90. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 122. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 129. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 138. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 139. The new life consists of a “suffering love of God and God’s will,” just as a child seeks the “free fulfillment of the Father’s will;” Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 136. True holiness consists of “the full union of the will with God,” Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 146. 47 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 136.

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present establishment of community. Holl thus avoided defining faith as a risk.48 Faith now lives from the presence of God’s promise, which awaits fulfillment.49 Future and present are connected by this promise, which God brings to a person through personal community.50 In this community the old self, the one whose actions and will do not correspond, is contradicted by the anticipation of a future self.51 Holl located certainty in hope, calling it “resignation.”52 A person can never have certainty in or of himself or herself; the certainty lies only in the “gracious will of God, in Christ.”53 Thus, a person does not know God’s making just as a point in himself or herself but only has access to knowledge of God’s will through God’s address of the individual, through the advent of God’s will in the conscience. Once a person knows God’s will, he or she is able to know that God’s will points to a future consummation of justification. Certainty is not established at one point in a person’s life. Rather, the certainty of justification must “be won again and again, ever anew.”54 This sort of selfless certainty is not for every person, and Holl claimed that it is only the “strong” who may find their way through the hopelessness of God’s strict demand to find the mercy of God, only to start all over again.55 Luther had demanded, according to Holl, a “constant repentance” that awaits the future.56 In this “selfless selfhood,” one only gains certainty by viewing oneself from God’s perspective through God’s promise. Having this dual perspective constitutes the way in which the human being is at the same time both just and sinner. On the grounds of Holl’s theology an individual would not be able to develop a simultaneity that concerns the side–by–side realities of wholly sinner and wholly just. The human being awaits future righteousness and therefore becomes righteous in the present by anticipating that reality.57 Since God works alone, the arrival of that reality depends entirely upon God and one may trust the promise of that future now. Only in that sense is the sinner presently just. Whereas the activity of God in justification may bear the name of promise, 48 He first defined faith as a risk in Die Rechtfertigungslehre, 41; Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 566. 49 “God’s promise is—and remains—a command for a person which that person should seek. So this permits a human being to always newly believe that God holds him or her to be righteous.” Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 144. 50 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 141. 51 One anticipates because the human being is only just in the future, the feeling of certainty always “lies outside of the self” in the future. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 141. 52 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 147. 53 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 142. 54 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 142. 55 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 149. 56 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 142. 57 Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 144.

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the corollary for the human perception of that act is prayer, asking for the righteousness that lies outside of the person in the future. “The human being cries forth to another.”58 Prayer encompasses the seeking and asking after this righteousness that lies in the future. Human beings must wait for God’s activity to fulfill the promise.59 Despite these three ways of solving his earlier problem of certainty, Holl presented this view of justification in ambiguous terms related to the way in which God promises and the way in which the human being apprehends that promise.60 Holl first described justification in terms of God’s speaking in God’s Word and the hearing of that Word by the human, and second, he described God’s immediate communication of that promise to the human conscience. Assel has shown that Emanuel Hirsch developed the latter possibility and Rudolf Hermann the first.61 In their own way, both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans Joachim Iwand would follow Hermann’s lead in reconstructing this doctrine of justification in terms of God’s promise in Christ. After 1910 Holl continuously developed the second form of justification, which was in terms of the human conscience. The next emphasis of this period shows a shift towards the basis of justification in a community of conscience, an important connection between Holl’s political and ecclesial stances and his Luther–research.62

Holl’s Theology during the Great War Seeking to elaborate the importance of the doctrine of justification on the nature of community and the church, Holl wrote essays on Luther’s ecclesiology and thoughts on war, alongside a series of other exploratory essays. A series of essays followed with commissions relating to the 1917 Luther–Anniversary, the most important of which is his address, What did Luther Understand as Religion? Each of these essays would undergo modification in light of Holl’s third stage of development, in the wake of the end of the First World War and the defeat of Germany. This late part of Holl’s life betrays a complexity that exceeds earlier periods since the tumultuous political and ecclesial environment starts to intrude in his patient scholarly work. Heinrich Assel’s great merit has been to document this interaction and shift. 58 59 60 61 62

Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 144. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung,” 144 n6. Assel, Der andere Aufbruch, 59 – 60. This is the central thesis of Assel’s book. See Assel, Der andere Aufbruch, 469 – 490. Assel, Der andere Aufbruch, 101 – 12.

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These events brought significant changes to Holl’s thinking, having a profound effect on his conception of community and the goals of the German nation. Earlier he had shared the Friends of the Christian World’s commitment to liberal democracy, but after the war he disagreed with most of the Friends over their desire for a peaceful compromise to the end of the First World War. This disagreement meant a significant political shift for Holl that transformed his scholarly path. This did not lead to a full break with his previous work but altered the purpose of his Luther research to bring to focus his new vision of German nationalism and the destiny of the German Volk.63 Holl rewrote some of the essays that would appear in the Luther Book to reflect this new purpose, forged through the lens of the “religion of conscience.” These essays were then collected and published in 1921 with the addition of another essay, “The Reconstruction of Morality.” This late work of Holl’s demonstrates that he abandoned the category of promise and his reliance on a nationalistic understanding of Christian community and its connection to the doctrine of justification as a hermeneutic of human ethical action.

Conclusion Karl Holl opened up the early Luther to theological and historical investigation. His patient and meticulous approach to Luther’s exegetical writings long set the agenda for Luther scholarship even as later scholars overturned or falsified many of his approaches. Theologically, he recovered the notion of promise and grounded it in the forefront of Luther’s theology. Even as he abandoned it, some of his students—like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Hans Joachim Iwand—continued to press his insights in various directions. Bonhoeffer rejected the identity of ecclesiology and nationality but readily took up Holl’s eschatologically–directed notion of justification. He thought Holl neglected Christology in his discussion of justification and the church. Rudolf Hermann and Hans Joachim Iwand in different ways took up the challenge to develop justification as promise. Emanuel Hirsch, much neglected owing to his political collaboration, further developed a religion of conscience while trying to correct what he took to be problems in Holl’s Christology by integrating the role of Jesus’ death in justification. Hirsch attempted to show how Jesus had a necessary importance to Holl’s religion of conscience. Hirsch did this also with a view toward Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich’s christological and theological programs. As one can observe, by the time he died in 1926 Karl Holl had given a remarkable legacy for future generations of Luther scholars and theologians. Holl did not offer a completed picture of Luther and did not finish the many 63 Assel, Der andere Aufbruch, 112 – 39.

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lines of investigation he opened. But, as Paul Althaus correctly observed, “Through K[arl] Holl’s presentation of the doctrine of justification of Luther […] dogmatics has received a task.”64 Following Holl’s labors, many have and still need to take up this task because Luther’s reflection on promise still provokes and demands attention.

64 Paul Althaus, “Zum Verständnis der Rechtfertigung,” in Theologische Aufsätze (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1935), 2:31.

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Torleiv Austad

Ole Hallesby (1879 – 1961)

Ole Kristian Hallesby was one of the most prominent and influential theologians in Norway during the first half of the twentieth century. He taught dogmatics and ethics at the Norwegian School of Theology (Det teologiske Menighetsfakultet) from 1909 to 1952, and he greatly influenced those trained at the Menighetsfakultet (MF) through the years. His emphasis was on the believer’s experience of life with God, and the necessity of awakening and conversion. His Lutheran Pietist views were expressed both in his work as a theological educator and also as a revivalist preacher and church leader. His clear, concise, and direct style, combined with a strong spirit and personal authority, made him a persuasive speaker. At the same time, he wrote over sixty books, with translations into thirty-nine languages. He was thus able to reach far beyond Norway. Some of his books, especially Prayer, are still read in Germany, the United States, Japan, and Africa. Hallesby is probably the most widely-read Norwegian theologian outside of the Nordic area. In addition to his work as a theological educator and author, Hallesby was the leading force in the establishment of a Christian teacher’s college, a Christian high school and many Christian folk schools, as well as two agricultural schools. Through more than thirty years – from 1923 to 1956 – he was chairman of the board for the Norwegian Lutheran Home Missions Society (Det norske lutherske Indremisjonsselskap), and was also active in the work of foreign missions.

Early Life and Career Ole Hallesby was born on August 5, 1879, in Aremark, a town in southern Norway near the border with Sweden. His father, Christian Andersen Hallesby (1844 – 1923), was a farmer on the Søndre Hallesby farm – a large estate that had been in the family since the 1500s. He was known as a good farmer, and held several public offices. Christian married Lina Tellefsdatter Dahl (1842 – 1891) in 1868. Together, they had eight children, but only three grew to be adults: Anders, Ole and Johan. Lina died when her son Ole was only twelve years old. Christian and Lina Hallesby were from “Haugian” families, having been raised in the tradition of the great lay preacher and activist Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771 – 1824).

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So Hallesby grew up in “a typical Haugian farming community in inner Østfold.”1 It was in this setting that he became familiar with the Pietist teachings of conversion and the Christian life. He himself had two conversion experiences in his early years. The first came in 1894, and the second in 1902 during his theological studies.2 These two experiences followed the Pietist pattern of conversion, with a thorough regret for sin and a conscious desire for repentance. Hallesby would return often to these significant experiences, speaking of them in very emotional terms. As a revivalist and author of spiritual literature, he focused on the listener and the reader, making an appeal for awakening and conversion. Conversion was presented in simple psychological language as a breakthrough to a new spiritual life with an attitude of penitence. In 1895, widower Christian Hallesby sent his three sons to Kristiania (from 1924, renamed Oslo) for a two-year High School at Hauges Minde. After that, their home was more or less in Kristiania. During this time, the Hallesbys were involved in the awakening led by Otto Treider. His work was directed against the State Church and encouraged lay preaching, “new-evangelism” (from Sweden), and interconfessionalism. In this way, Ole Hallesby was closely connected to awakening movements to be found on the periphery of the State Church from early on. After completing high school in 1897, Hallesby began studying theology at the University of Kristiania. During his time there, he became fascinated by the academic study of theology, with the result that his faith dried up. He then saw himself as a lapsed Christian. During his conversion experience in 1902, he once again embraced conservative Pietist Lutheranism. He finished his theological degree in 1903 and his practicaltheological training in the spring of 1904. When he did not receive a scholarship for further studies, he began work as an unpaid itinerate lay preacher. After some time, his interests turned from the theological to the practical and spiritual, and he was soon known as a revivalist preacher who drew large crowds. When the Menighetsfakultet was established in 1907, in protest to the liberal theology at the University of Kristiania, Hallesby was a top candidate for instructor in systematic theology. At first he refused. He was from the lowchurch community, he said, and would rather be part of starting a missionary school than a seminary. At this point in his life, he was quite critical of the church. The thought of establishing a free church as a part of a protest against the rationalist theology within the State Church was not a foreign idea for him. In the end, however, he was persuaded to teach at the newly established seminary, which began classes in the fall of 1908. Hallesby went to Germany in 1 John Nome, Brytningstid. Menighetsfakultetet i norsk kirkeliv. Den historiske bakgrunn og grunnleggelsestiden (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsen, 1958), 208. 2 Steinar Moe, Det avgjørende frelsesvalg. Vilje- og omvendelsesforst”elsen hos Ole Hallesby (Tønsberg: Doctoral Dissertation, University of Oslo, 1988), 72 – 152.

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1908 to attain formal qualification for the position in systematic theology and visited several universities. In Leipzig, he was under the watchful eye of professor (and later Bishop) Ludwig Ihmels, and was quite taken by Ihmels’ scholarly prowess and deep Christian faith. Ihmels was influenced by the experiential theology of Erlangen, which in turn was inspired by the awakenings of the early 1800’s. Hallesby recognized several familiar features in this theology. During his time in Germany, he worked mainly with theoretical questions, and he received his Ph.D. from the University of Erlangen in the spring of 1909. His dissertation was in epistemology and was entitled Johannes Volkelts Erkenntnistheorie.3 The previous year, in August of 1908, Hallesby had visited Samuel Zeller in Switzerland. Zeller was an experienced counselor who ran a sanatorium in Männedorf. Here, the young Norwegian theologian received help in making the connection between theological reasoning, piety, preaching, and counseling. Zeller made a great impression on Hallesby and served as a role model for him, especially in the area of prayer.4 Hallesby was so taken by Zeller’s intense and sincere faith that he let himself be “ordained” by him to his vocation.5 For Hallesby, it was of the utmost importance to be able to connect his own experiential theology to the call to preach the word of God for awakening and repentance. He also learned how important it was for a preacher to communicate with his audience, and therefore focused on certain psychological aspects of Christianity.6 On June 15, 1911, Ole Hallesby married Anne Marie (Mia) Riddervold (1882 – 1961). She was the daughter of a minister, Julius Riddervold (1842 – 1921) and his wife Karoline Ellingsen (1855 – 1933). Mia – as she was called – was a teacher at Majorstuen School, in Oslo. Mia and Ole had three children: Christen (1911 – 2004), Helge (1914– ) and Anne Marie (1917– ). In 1914, they moved to a villa at Vinderen, which at that time was in the countryside outside of Oslo, but near enough the Menighetsfakultet (MF) to walk. Hallesby began his career at MF in the fall of 1909, and remained there for forty-three years. He taught dogmatics and ethics; with his strong Christian personality, pedagogical gifts, and experiential theology, he influenced many of the students who studied under him. Even though his theology was at times criticized, even by the students, he was in many ways seen as a spiritual leader – not only within the institution, but also for many conservative Norwegians outside it. Through his many years as a theological teacher and preacher, Hallesby wrote sixty-seven books. Because he saw as one of his most important tasks to preach for awakening and to counsel the converted, he 3 His dissertation is written in honor of his parents. It covers 76 pages. 4 Moe, Det avgjørende frelsesvalg, 306 – 321. 5 Dag Kullerud, Ole Hallesby. Mannen som ville kristne Norge (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1987), 123 – 124. 6 Steinar Moe, “Trekk fra Ole Hallesbys liv og gjerning,” Tidsskrift for Teologi og Kirke 54 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1983), 128.

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made sure that as many people as possible had literature that could provide them spiritual direction. The 1920s were a very productive time for Hallesby as an author. Measured in total publications, this was his most creative period. In addition to text books in dogmatics and ethics, he published several ecclesiological works and a series of devotional books. The majority of Hallesby’s books are in the genre of spiritual growth.7 He wanted to awaken the lapsed to a spiritual life and to hold the faithful in a living relationship with God. In 1923 Hallesby visited Norwegian-American congregations and institutions in the United States. He travelled from New York to Seattle and gave 155 speeches and lectures during those six months.8 At that time most of his listeners understood Norwegian. At Augsburg Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he delivered five lectures, which were translated into English and published in 1924 under the title Infant Baptism and Adult Conversion: An Exposition of the Relation between Regeneration in Infant Baptism and Awakening and Conversion.9 Hallesby took up the question of the growing tension between those who were satisfied with the standard of infant baptism, and those who claimed the necessity of a personal conversion later in life. Like most revivalist Christians at that time he criticized the traditional “Christianity of Upbringing,” which thought it enough that baptism was followed by religious teaching in school and confirmation in the church. He believed that the individual had to repent to be a living Christian. In Norway the lectures were published in 1926 and called Opdragelseskristendom og vækkelseskristendom (Christianity of Upbringing and Awakening Christianity).10 During this same visit to the United States in 1923 Hallesby also delivered lectures at a summer course for pastors at Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. The lectures were immediately translated into English and published the same year under the title, The Main Difference between Positive and Liberal Theology.11 The Norwegian edition, Hovedforskjellen mellem positiv og liberal teologi, came out in 1924. Here, Hallesby claimed that liberal theology had broken with the authority of the Bible and replaced the Word of 7 See, for instance, Hallesby’s devotional books I den Høiestes skjul (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1931) and Daglig fornyelse. Andaktsbook for hjemmet (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1932), English translations by Clarence J. Carlsen, Under His Wings (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1932) and God’s Word for Today. A Devotional Book for the Home (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1937). 8 Sverre Norborg, Vekkeren fra Aremark. Ole Hallesbys livssaga (Oslo: Luther Forlag, 1979), 133. 9 Translated from Norwegian by Clarence J. Carlsen (Minneapolis: The Lutheran Free Church Publishing Co., 1924). See also Ole Hallesby, Baptism – Infant Baptism (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1921), translated from the Norwegian book Daab-Barnedaab (Kristiania: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1921). 10 Ole Hallesby, Opdragelseskristendom og vækkelseskristendom: En utredning av forholdet mellem gjenfødelsen i barnedaaben og vækkelsen og omvendelsen (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1926). 11 Edited by George Taylor Rygh (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1923).

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God with human opinions. The liberals remove “the metaphysical miracle” and “the supernatural revelation,” and thus erase the “qualitative difference from the other religions.”12 He concluded that the difference between positive and liberal theology is both scholarly and religious. They each have their religion and each have their view of what theological scholarship is. The positive theologians maintain with the whole Christian church a transcendent religion of revelation, a supernatural religion of salvation. The liberals know only an immanent religion of evolution.13 Hallesby developed and concretized his church strategy in a book to his friends in home missions, Fra arbeidsmarken (From the Mission Field), in 1928. In this work, he warned against a close relationship between home missions and the official church, saying that those in the ordained ministry can vary, but the work of the layman is stable and lasting.14 He also published a work on the psychology of religion called Temperamenterne i kristelig lys (Temperament and the Christian Faith).15 This work is based on popular considerations about the temperaments, their common nature and respective differences, and is meant to be practical advice for Christians who want to discipline, exercise, and consecrate their temperament. Here we see how important the subconscious life of the soul is for Hallesby’s anthropology.16 He always emphasized that awakening means awakening of the conscience.17 Internationally, Hallesby is best known for his book on prayer, Fra bønnens verden. Et ord til trætte bedere. It was first published in 1927,18 and has been translated into thirty-seven languages. In the U.S., the book was first published under the title Prayer in 1931,19 quickly went into twenty printings, and since then has sold over 800,000 copies. In many countries it continues to be printed, and is counted as one of the classics of spiritual literature. In 12 Ole Hallesby, Hovedforskjellen mellem positiv og liberal teologi (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1924), 21. 13 Hallesby, Hovedforskjellen, 48. See also Ole Hallesby, Religiøsitet og kristendom (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1929), in English translation by Clarence J. Carlsen Religious or Christian (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1939). 14 Bernt T. Oftestad, “Fakultet og kirke,” in Bernt T. Oftestad and Nils Aksel Røsæg (eds.), Mellom kirke og akademia. Det teologiske Menighetsfakultet 100 ”r (Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag, 2008), 120. 15 Translated into English under the title Temperament and the Christian Faith (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1962). 16 For many years, Hallesby’s work on the psychology of religion dealing with the temperaments was seen as out dated. The fact that it was released again in 2000 (Lunde Forlage) is a sign that there is a renewed interest in psychology in certain Norwegian Christian settings in recent years. 17 Ole Hallesby, Samvittigheten og dens plads i det faldne og forløste menneskeliv (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1930), 67 – 82, translated into English by Clarence J. Carlsen under the title Conscience (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1933). 18 (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1927). In Norway alone Hallesby’s book on prayer has been published in 22 editions. 19 Translated by Clarence J. Carlsen (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1931). The twentysecond printing came out in November, 1936.

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Germany, it is currently published in the series Klassiker des Glaubens (Hänssler Verlag). The book is often mentioned along with other classics such as Thomas — Kempis’ Imitation of Christ (four books in the period 1414 – 1425) and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Some have even drawn comparisons to Blaise Pascal’s Pens¦es (published posthumously in 1670), even though Pascal’s ideas belong to a different genre than Hallesby’s book. When Hallesby is interpreted as a Christian mystic, he has been compared with Johannes Tauler, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross.

Controversies In line with the Pietist tradition, Hallesby recognized the importance of Christian knowledge. Therefore, he gave a priority to the educational arena. He took the initiative to start a group of schools that were important for the education of “born-again personalities” with academic competence in various areas within the church and society. In 1912 he presented his educational program in six articles under the heading of “Home Missions in Newer Times” in the periodical For Fattig og Rik (For Poor and Rich), The Home Missions Society’s main publication. Here, he clearly addressed “the educated” and thus desired to compete with the cultural hegemony in society. This meant an emphasis on “the classes which hold decisive influence on our people, both in legislation, government, art, literature and science.”20 With this strategic tactic, he distanced himself from the rapidly growing secularization in society. He battled against the anti-Christian forces in the Labor Movement and the influence of the liberal elite on the culture. Hallesby thus made his transition from the Revivalist movement among the lower levels of society to the education of Christian citizens who could take up central positions in society. Theologically, his educational program had its foundation in experiential theology, which became prominent in The Home Missions Society due to Hallesby’s governing position there. In this program there was also a clear front against the theology of the University of Oslo. Hallesby led the initiative for the establishment of a Christian teacher’s college in 1912, namely, Oslo Teacher’s College. Later, the Labor Party, which was the majority party in Parliament after World War II, was critical of such private schools and in 1947 the government took control of the school. Hallesby also was a leading force, along with several of the Christian organizations, in establishing the Christian High School. The High School was started in 1913 and was meant to be a sort of a preparatory school for the Menighetsfakultet, aiming at recruiting students to study at MF and enter the 20 Rune Slagstad, “Hallesby og folkedannelsen,” in Asbjørn Aarnes and Ole Andreas Bjerkeset (eds.), Gjensyn med Hallesby (Oslo: Lunde Forlag AS, 2002), 64 – 65.

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ministry. Hallesby also played a role in starting The Home Missions Society’s Bible School in 1916, where he taught until 1952. He was also active in increasing the number of Christian folk high schools for youth who had finished their obligatory schooling. In 1912, there were only six such schools, but by 1930 the number had reached thirty. The Home Missions Society, with Hallesby as chairman of the board, was also behind the opening of two schools for occupational training, Tomb Agricultural School which opened in 1939 and Gjennestad Gardening School which opened in 1946. Through these schools, the Society was able to reach the youth from the farmlands who wanted formal training in agriculture. The establishment of The Norwegian Christian Student and School Association (Norges kristelige Student- og Gymnasiastlag) in 1924, a counterweight to the more liberal Norwegian Student’s Christian Association (Norske Studenters kristelige forbund), can also be seen as part of Hallesby’s strategic plan to reach talented young people in a wide variety of academic disciplines. It was all about getting Christian intellectuals into leading positions. Hallesby wanted to have “faithful ministers, faithful doctors, faithful lawyers, faithful officers, faithful lecturers.”21 The goal was to have chapters at all high schools and all colleges and universities. Students who were active in this movement were also quite influenced by Hallesby’s theological and ecclesiological views, for he was a part of the leadership team until 1948. Hallesby’s comprehensive educational program was in reality an attempt at Christianization. Through “born-again personalities” in leading positions in all areas of society, he hoped that people would once again be Christianized, and that this would reverse the process of secularization. With roots in the lay movement that followed Haugianism, he wanted to establish the groundwork for a “nationwide awakening.” From before the First World War until after the Second, Hallesby was concerned with a vision of a great awakening that would be far-reaching and renew the people as a Christian people.22 In a lecture held in 1910 on miracles, Hallesby attacked liberal theology for teaching that “miracles destroy Christianity” and must be cut away. He made himself a proponent of positive theology, and claimed that without miracles Christianity ceases to be Christianity.23 This polarization between liberal and positive theology would follow Hallesby throughout his life. He did not define himself as a conservative theologian, but rather as a positive theologian. By positive theology he meant a theology based on Scripture, and focused on living the life of faith with God in light of the church’s doctrinal foundation. In the years immediately after 1910, Hallesby was busy with his teaching and educational program, and rarely attacked liberal theology. In 1919, however, 21 Slagstad, “Hallesby og folkedannelsen,” 65. 22 Rune Slagstad, “Dannelsesteologen Hallesby,” in Bernt T. Oftestad and Nils Aksel Røsæg (eds.), Mellom kirke og akademia, 275 – 288. 23 Ole Hallesby, Om Underet (Kristiania 1910: Forlagt Lutherstiftelsens Boghandel, 1910), 7.

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when a meeting in Drammen planned to bring together liberals and conservatives, a church conflict broke out that would characterize the life of the church in the years between the World Wars, and to a certain degree the first years after the Nazi occupation. Hallesby interpreted the Drammen meeting as an initiative for giving the liberals ecclesial acceptance. The Bishop of Oslo, Jens Tandberg, who was chairman of MF’s Board of Trustees, supported this process and spoke at the meeting. Through several articles in newspapers in the fall of 1919, Hallesby attacked the attempt at building bridges between positive and liberal theology. These two forms of theology represent different faiths and are therefore irreconcilable, he said, and pointed out that the liberals denied the faith and confession of the church. They could not even agree to the three articles of faith in the Apostles’ Creed. “We will go to the grave as betrayers of the one eternal Gospel, if we now give in to the rhetoric from above and lay down our weapons,” wrote Hallesby to Bishop Tandberg.24 The Bishop was stripped of his role as chairman of MF’s Board of Trustees, and soon resigned from the board altogether. Tensions thus increased between the two theological movements, and became an open church conflict from 1919 onward. The conflict gained attention outside of Norway, and Hallesby was soon well known through the Nordic region.25 In a lecture at the general assembly of The Norwegian Pastors’ Association on “The Church and Theology,” which was later released as a book, he systematically placed the liberal theologians in the School of the History of Religions. He claimed that they, in their study of the Christian religion, removed the metaphysical miracle and the supernatural revelation, “and thereby Christianity’s qualitative difference from the other religions.”26 He said further that theology, with “a clearly scholarly methodology” should express the Christian faith of the congregation, namely, those who know the supernatural reality through Jesus Christ. Hallesby cited 1 Corinthians 2:12, saying that the word of revelation must be understood and used by “the new experience born in the Spirit, not of the world.”27 Initiative was taken for a national assembly in the Calmeyergaten Mission House for January 15 – 18, 1920, to debate the church conflict and the relationship with the liberals. At this meeting there were 950 delegates. The majority were sent from various Christian volunteer organizations, but there were also several other Christian groups and associations represented, among them MF. Hallesby was clearly the leader of the meeting. In his address, “The dangers of liberal theology,” he said that liberal theology “has broken with the

24 Ole Hallesby, Fra kirkestriden (Kristiania: Forlagt av Lutherstiftelsens Boghandel, 1919), 57. 25 Osmo Tiililä, “Hallesby som teolog,” in Ole Hallesby. En høvding i Guds rike (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsen, 1962), 61 – 70. 26 Ole Hallesby, Kirken og teologien (Kristiania: Lutherstiftelsens Boghandel, 1919), 7. 27 Hallesby, Kirken og teologien, 15.

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authority of the Bible and replaced the word of God with human opinions.”28 Even more dangerous are the liberal theologians “who have not yet revealed their true faith to the lay people” and who were gaining leading positions in Christian organizations.29 In one of the resolutions from the meeting, it was stated that the elected representatives of the Christian organizations in Norway should protest against voluntary cooperation with liberal theologians. The aim was to secure that the positions of representatives and coworkers should only be filled by people “who unabashedly stand firm on the foundation of Scripture according to our church’s confession.”30 In those places where the minister did not preach the biblical Gospel, “we claim the right of the living congregation, by legal means, to administer the word of God, Baptism and Holy Communion.”31 The meeting also claimed that the positive work of the Christian volunteer organizations was the most important means in the battle against liberal theology. The meeting at Calmeyergaten was the most acute time of the conflict. Here, Hallesby became the theological and spiritual leader of the committed Christian people (kristenfolket), especially those in the Christian organizations. The church was threatened by such a serious conflict that it could have been broken. At that time, Hallesby reasoned that it could be possible to dissolve the State Church and establish a free church based in The Home Missions Society. He predicted that a “home missions free church” would maintain right doctrine and promote awakening and renewal on the basis of experiential theology, and be opposed to liberal theology.32 During the 1920s, the church conflict was irreconcilable. Hallesby contributed to making the distinctions between positive and liberal theology as great as possible, without trying to balance the picture. His position as the unchallenged leader in the battle against liberal theology was further secured. Throughout the 1930s, however, the theological debate tapered off. The church conflict went into a political phase where the focus was on protecting one’s own interests. At the same time, the liberals were in retreat, and a new understanding of the church and its faith (Neo-Orthodoxy) was growing in the University setting. This created a milder climate in the relationship between the two theological communities and schools, even though the church conflict was not yet over. The German invasion of Norway on April 9, 1940, came as a surprise for the majority of Norwegians, as well as the church. After the outbreak of the war, uncertainty and confusion reigned in the church about what position to take 28 Johan M. Wisløff (ed.), Landsmøtet i anledning kirkestriden avholdt i Calmeyergatens Missionshus 15.–18. januar 1920 (Kristiania: Lutherstiftelsens Boghandel, 1920), 43. 29 Wisløff J. M., Landsmøtet, 51. 30 Wisløff J. M., Landsmøtet, 171 – 172. 31 Wisløff J. M., Landsmøtet, 172. There was disagreement here about the use of the adjective “legal” in this sentence. It was, however, approved by 472 votes against 334. 32 Oftestad, “Fakultet og kirke,” 110.

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concerning the occupational power. When the Bishop of Oslo, Eivind Berggrav, began in 1940 to see that the German occupation did not respect international law, he initiated the establishment of Kristent Samr”d, a Christian forum for deliberations that was comprised of leaders from the official church and from the Christian organizations. Hallesby, who was a skeptical critic of Bishop Berggrav’s theology during the 1930s, joined the coalition. Here, the situation was discussed week by week, with plans for the church’s resistance against the Nazi ideology and church politics. When Berggrav was arrested and detained, Hallesby took over the leadership of the church resistance movement (The Temporary Church Leadership) which was established in 1942. He was constantly under observation by the Nazis. His house was searched seven times, and he was called in for questioning twelve times by the German Secret Service police. In the fall of 1942, Hallesby’s property was seized, and he and his family were thrown out of their house.33 In May of 1943, Hallesby and lay leader Ludvig Hope were arrested and jailed after protesting on behalf of The Temporary Church Leadership against the Quisling government’s agenda for “Law on National Work Service.” Hallesby was then in jail for two years. He soon found himself in an important position among the prisoners, both because of his courage to speak against the Germans and also because of his abilities as a counselor for his fellow inmates. After the war, Hallesby was renowned for his patriotic resistance, and he was appointed by the government as a member of the commission that looked into what had happened in the country during the five years of occupation. He also became a member of the Church Order Committee which was to suggest a new order for the relationship between state and church. Still, little time passed before Hallesby was again at the center of controversy, since he was not willing to cover up the theological differences that again became obvious now that the battle for the church was over. On the evening of January 25, 1953, the 73–year-old Hallesby spoke in the meeting hall of The Home Missions Society in Oslo. The meeting was broadcast live on the radio. Hallesby was aware that he would rarely have such an opportunity to reach the Norwegian people and chose to speak directly about salvation and damnation based on Luke 9:57 – 62. As he had done many times before, he appealed to his audience to repent and believe in God. “I certainly speak to many this evening who know that they have not repented. You know that if you fell dead on the floor in this instant, that you would go to hell. You know that you cannot and do not want to die as you are now. (…) Repent now, where you are sitting!”34 This speech unleashed a harsh and emotional debate which lasted for four 33 Chr. Hallesby, “Ole Hallesby : Tiden, mannen og verket” in Asbjørn Aarnes and Ole Andreas Bjerkeset (eds.), Gjensyn med Hallesby, 21. 34 This speech is presented in its entirety in Ragnar Skottene, Gudsbilde og fortapelsessyn. En teologihistorisk analyse av norsk helvetesdebatt 1953 – 1957 (Oslo: Solum, 2003), 25 – 28.

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years and shook all of Christian Norway in various ways. One of those who declared himself to be in disagreement with Hallesby’s view of hell was Bishop Kristian Schjelderup from Hamar. He said that for him, the doctrine of eternal damnation did not belong in the religion of love. By that, he meant to distance himself from the traditional idea of hell, without completely throwing out the possibility of damnation. In many areas of the population there were supporters of Schjelderup’s view of Christianity as a religion of love. But most of the ministers saw it necessary, however, at least to begin with, to continue to preach the double outcome of judgment, whether salvation or damnation. The split led to Schjelderup asking the governmental Ministry of Church and Education to decide if he had, through his claims about Christianity as a religion of love and his objection to preaching damnation, come outside the church’s confession. The Ministry asked the bishops and the two theological faculties to comment on the case, something which revealed a deep disagreement in the church on the understanding of the biblical passages dealing with salvation and damnation and about the commitment to the confession, in this case the Augsburg Confession, article 17. While the bishops’ comments differed greatly on the question of whether Schjelderup had gone too far with his comments, MF supported Hallesby’s opinion, claiming that the Hamar bishop’s view was irreconcilable with his obligation to the church’s confession as a Lutheran pastor and bishop.35 The Theological Faculty of the University of Oslo, however, was of the opinion that Schjelderup had not wavered from the church’s confession.36 The government also asked for a legal statement from law professor Frede Castberg. He emphasized that the confession of the church must be interpreted “in the spirit of the times.”37 According to Church Law the King had to make the decision in the controversy, and he concluded – on behalf of the state – in favor of Schjelderup that he had not gone beyond his obligation to the confession as a bishop. Hallesby deemed all these events surrounding Schjelderup as a sign that liberal theology was not dead.38

35 De evige helvetesstraffer og bekjennelsen (Oslo: Forlaget Land og Kirke, 1954). From the Ministry of Church and Education, February 19, 1954, approved by royal resolution the same day. 36 De evige helvetesstraffer og bekjennelsen, 80 – 99. 37 Frede Castberg, Statsreligion og kirkestyre (Oslo: Forlaget Land og Kirke Castberg, 1953), 19. Statement given November 21, 1953 by the request of the Ministry of Church and Education. 38 On the Hell Debate from 1953 – 57, see Skottene, Gudsbilde og fortapelsessyn; Norborg, Vekkeren fra Aremark, 224 – 227; Kullerud, Ole Hallesby, 333 – 341; P”l Repstad, Mannen som ville ”pne kirken. Kristian Schjelderups liv (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1989), 349 – 389.

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Revivalist Preacher to the End Hallesby was first and foremost a preacher. Even though he loved to discuss experiential theology with his students in the classroom and could show a great mildness in counseling, it was mainly in the pulpit that he realized his calling. He was passionate for the salvation of others, and thus preached the Kingdom of God for awakening and repentance. His style was direct and the language was simple and clear. With his sharp gaze, down-to- earth experiences and great knowledge of the Bible, he was able to uncover his listener’s relationship with God. He was able to lead them to the confession of sins and could then preach the Gospel of forgiveness and new life. There was an air of seriousness in Hallesby’s preaching, because it was about salvation or damnation. Some were offended by the crystal clear either/or, and described him in negative terms. This form of criticism would not, however, keep Hallesby from collecting great crowds to listen to him. Many were grateful for his clear proclamation of sin and grace. He was a towering figure who radiated spiritual authority and power. Outwardly, he appeared as an aristocrat, but was still fully accepted in all lay circles. This was not just because of his passion for the lay movement, but also because he preached grace into the hearts of his listeners and helped form new spiritual life. Hallesby was an important speaker who had a message that could change lives. He stood at the forefront of an opposition that was far reaching.39 For several decades, he was in reality the leader of a large part of the Norwegian Christian population, especially within the Christian organizations for home and foreign missions. In addition, he was influential for the many ministers who studied under him. After his doctoral dissertation in 1909, Hallesby never wrote any substantial scholarly work. His text books in dogmatics and ethics were certainly based on a theological methodology within the experiential theological tradition, but they are not scholarly work as such. He was academically educated and qualified, but he was not primarily a typical scholar. His passion was above all the salvation of people. That is why his comprehensive authorship is so firmly grounded in the genre of spiritual growth. He was a teacher and preacher, but not a real scholar. He did not contribute in any great degree in theological research. It was as a church leader, theological educator, revivalist preacher and author of spiritually enriching books that he has been known, and beyond the borders of Norway. When Hallesby retired from MF, he was seventy-three years old. He remained chairman of the board for the Norwegian Lutheran Home Missions Society until he was seventy-seven. Although he felt tired after his hard time during the years of Nazi occupation he continued as a revivalist preacher, visiting churches and meeting houses around the country until the end of 39 Slagstad, “Dannelsesteologen Hallesby,” 283.

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1960. Mia and Ole Hallesby were not afraid of their coming death. Mia prayed that she would die first, and indeed died on May 25, 1961. After being ill nearly two months, Ole Hallesby passed away on November 22, 1961, at eighty-two years old. At the funeral a few days later, The Trinity Church (Trefoldighetskirken) in Oslo was overcrowded. Mia and Ole Hallesby are buried at Vestre Aker cemetery in Oslo.

Doctrine At the age of forty, Hallesby published his dogmatics in two volumes, Den kristelige troslære I, Principlæren (The Christian Doctrine I, Principia) (1920) and Den kristelige troslære II, Den specielle del (The Christian Doctrine II, The Special Part) (1921). A new, somewhat edited version of Principia was released in 1925, while The Special Part was revised in 1938. The new edition of Principia had no important changes. Concerning the second volume, The Special Part, Hallesby said in its preface that he had not been influenced much by the new trendsetting theology. By that he obviously meant “Dialectical Theology.” He assured the reader, however, that he has not underestimated the importance of this theology’s undermining of liberal theology. But he claimed that the new theology’s position in relation to Scripture and confession are “still so unclear” that it did not yet have such importance for biblical and confessional dogmatics as to suggest major changes.40 But he became more moderate on one point, the question of the State Church. In the 1921 edition, he had claimed that the church in this context had “betrayed its own idea” and come to the side of “the law” for the sake of the growth of the Kingdom of God. In the new edition of 1938, this protest against the State Church was erased. He would not have received support for this idea from a home missions-oriented free church at The Home Missions Society or at MF.41 Hallesby’s work on ethics, Den kristelige sedelære (Christian Ethics), was published in 1928, and met with sharp criticism. Still, he released it again a few years after World War II. The title of the book was then changed to Det kristne liv I – II (The Christian Life I – II) (1950 – 51), but the contents were the same as the 1928 edition, except for two points. First, his view of justification was revised, based on deeper insight into Christ’s atoning work.42 Second, concerning the issue of remarriage after divorce, he became stricter, saying a firm “no,” whereas in the first edition he was open to remarriage for those who had biblical reasons for divorce, such as their partner’s unfaithfulness.43 40 Ole Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. II. Den spesielle del, Annen utgave (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1938), 5. 41 Oftestad, “Fakultet og kirke,” 119. 42 See Ole Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1928), 146 – 151 and Ole Hallesby, Det kristne liv. 2 volumes (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1950 – 51), I:167 – 172. 43 See Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 246 – 251 and Hallesby, Det kristne liv, II: 60 – 66.

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Hallesby’s new edition of his ethics after the war was not much affected by his participation in the church’s struggle against the Nazis during the occupation of Norway, as mentioned above. In the years after Hallesby retired from teaching in 1952, his book on ethics was quickly out-dated with respect to both the principles and the specific ethical guidance. After Hallesby published his text books in dogmatics and ethics in the 1920s, he tended to set up his lectures as dialogues – also called examinatorium – about the information from the books. This let him use less time preparing for the lectures. His basic theological convictions changed very little; he had long since found his experiential theological standpoint, and he remained faithful to what was in his own books. Still, he accepted that his students were opposed to him and questioned his methodology in dogmatics and ethics. It was during his studies in Germany in 1908 – 1909 that Hallesby’s theology began to take its own form. This was true for both his educational views and his piety. He received a great deal of influence from the Erlangen school, which at that time was known for its experiential theology. It was especially Ludwig Ihmels in Leipzig among the German experiential theologians who inspired Hallesby. This can be seen in his text book in dogmatics. But he received inspiration from such varying theologians as Carl Stange and Friedrich Schleiermacher, in addition to Norwegian theologians such as Gisle Johnson, Fredrik Petersen and Christian Ihlen. In the development of his doctrine, Hallesby borrowed much material from Chr. Ernst Luthardt, Kompedium der Dogmatik (1893).44 Hallesby’s Principia shows that he places his experiential theology in the context of the Norwegian church. It is characterized by the polarization of positive and liberal theology. Hallesby does not play down the tensions, but rather emphasizes them. In this way, his work is a polemic.45 At the same time, he is concerned with laying a positive foundation for the Christian church’s scholarly understanding of its reality which begins in the revelation of Jesus Christ. When Hallesby formed his doctrine, his focus was on thinking through and ordering the contents of faith that “are concerned with a consciousness through experience.”46 One must be aware of what one has experienced in order to believe, and aware of why one’s faith is as it is and not different. He thinks that special experiences in the past can and should be relived in our lives today. Even though Hallesby has his starting point in the experiences that the 44 Moe, “Trekk fra Ole Hallesbys liv og gjerning,” 124. 45 In his highly critical review of Hallesby’s Principia, the Swedish Professor (and later Bishop) Gustaf Aul¦n said that he had never read a work on dogmatics that was “as filled to the brim with polemic as this one.” Gustaf Aul¦n, “En sektandans dogmatik,” Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift 22 (Kristiania, 1921), 119 – 130. 46 Ole Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. I. Principlæren, 2. oplag (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1925), 9.

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theologian, with his faith in Jesus Christ, has in common with the Christian congregation, he also maintains that it is the word of revelation – “the Word’s conceptual contents” – that decide the actual content for the perception of faith.47 In contrast to the general study of religion, in Christian theology it is faith (meaning experiences) which is the organ for being able to grasp the divine reality. Faith can only be understood and used by “the new understanding that is born in the spirit,” which is qualitatively different from all other understanding. It is a perception that requires “the born-again person’s new spiritual senses”48 which make it possible to live with God in the world. Born-again believers are aware that in faith they are “taken up to the highest form of life,” and are thus capable of grasping the life of faith of the Christian religion, which is qualitatively different from all other religious and ethical life.49 With this as his starting point, Hallesby is clearly an experiential theologian. Yet he criticized Erlangen theologian Franz Hermann Reinhold Frank for over-emphasizing the subjective awareness of the believer as to being born again and having a new identity. Instead, Hallesby turned to Ludwig Ihmels, who he claims has presented the best solution to this problem. Ihmels, unlike Frank, did not emphasize the believer’s awareness of being reborn, because this awareness can vary greatly. Hallesby follows Ihmels when he stresses that the Christian faith is “a subjective awareness of the objective, of having met God, who called forth this awareness of the experience in the soul.” The Christian faith is thus awareness that God has revealed himself. It is “a personal and experiential awareness of the revelation of salvation in Christ given through the Word.”50 Hallesby follows this basic view and highlights that the Christian faith is awareness of experiencing God through Jesus Christ. This experiential awareness is in every way connected to the final revelation, and it is imparted by the word of revelation. The awareness of the trustworthiness and historical factuality of this word is created by the miraculous work of the Spirit – testimonium Spiritus Sancti.51 Hallesby says that while imparting the Word of revelation, the Spirit uses both canonical and non-canonical proclamations of Christ. To avoid this being seen as a weakening of the priority of the apostolic witness, he points out that experience shows that the witness of the Spirit is only connected to those points in the proclamation of the church that are in line with the apostolic message.52 Hallesby was of the understanding that a theologian had to be a repentant believer to work with theology. This was a form of experiential theology often called “theology of the regenerate,” and he denied the idea of a “theology of the unregenerate.” For Hallesby, such a theology was a contradiction in terms, and 47 48 49 50 51 52

Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. I, 229. Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. I, 21. Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. I, 34; 103 – 105. Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. I, 158. Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. I, 159. Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. I, 166.

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could be nothing more than the study of religion. The religious life, as the experienced life and as an objective truth, cannot be examined “unless the scholar has personally experienced this religious situation,” he claimed. That is to say that the scholar must be “a personal Christian.” With this, Hallesby introduced a distinction between the study of religion and theology, and claimed that the study of religion becomes Christian theology “in the moment that it treats the Christian religion based on experiences that the researcher has in faith in Jesus Christ that are in common with the Christian church.”53 Even though Hallesby emphasized time and time again the importance of the awakening power of the Word, he still claimed in his doctrine that there is rebirth in baptism. Here, he was undoubtedly influenced by Professor Sigurd Odland, who in 1900 published a long periodical article on “Baptism in the New Testament.” In this article, Odland – who was later founder of the Menighetsfakultet – claimed that baptism for Paul entails “cleaning from the impurity of sin and freedom from the power of sin.”54 Odland went on to repeat this view some years later, and clarified that in baptism “the repentant sinner receives God’s Spirit for rebirth.”55 Hallesby fully accepted Odland’s exegesis, as did Leiv Aalen, who in the 1950s took over Hallesby’s chair in dogmatics at MF. Hallesby and Aalen were thus in agreement about baptism being the sacrament of rebirth, even though they belonged to two different theological traditions. Although there were no open conflicts between them on the issue of baptism, there was a constant tension between their basic theological understandings. In a memorial article on Hallesby the year after his death, Aalen claimed that Hallesby, at the end of his life, turned away from the Lutheran understanding of baptism and attempted to make MF more Pietist. Aalen saw this as a sign that Hallesby was really “more Pietist than Lutheran.”56 Several years later, Aalen said that in 1947 he had received a reprimand from Hallesby for citing Luther’s Large Catechism that conversion was to return to one’s baptism. Hallesby was aware of this passage, but questioned if it was necessary to mention it.57 Aalen strengthened his critique of Hallesby by claiming that the latter had gone beyond “his mandate as a theologian and educator for the Lutheran Church.”58 Pietist revivalist preachers generally spoke to adults, and claimed that the 53 Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. I, 15. 54 Sigurd Odland, “Daaben i det nye testamente,” Norsk Theologisk Tidsskrift 1 (Kristiania, 1900), 56. 55 Sigurd Odland, Vækkelse, omvendelse og gjenfødelse (Daab og barnedaab), (Bergen: Lunde & Co’s Forlag, 1919), 47,49. 56 Leiv Aalen, “O. Hallesby som teolog og kirkeman,” Tidsskrift for Teologi og Kirke 33 (Oslo 1962), 70. 57 Leiv Aalen, “Hilsen fra en kollega,” in Torleiv Austad and Tore Wigen (eds.) Tro og norm. Festskrift til professor, dr.philos. & theol. John Nome p” 70–”rsdagen 2. oktober 1974 (Oslo: Luther Forlag 1974), 234 note 26. 58 Aalen, “Hilsen fra en kollega,” 62.

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road to salvation is a process having several steps. The process was usually called the “order of salvation” (ordo salutis). The central point was conversion, which was in this case the same as rebirth.59 The question of how faith is acquired is a main topic in Hallesby’s spiritual literature, and it is also treated in his works on dogmatics and ethics. After reviewing the ordo salutis as presented by orthodox dogmaticians and analyzing the order of the divine actions,60 Hallesby decided that a logical coordination of the different acts of salvation can easily give an incorrect picture of how one is saved. It is more important to show how it happens that Jesus, through his means of grace, lets the sinful person take part in deliverance and eternal life than to count and define the terms found in Scripture. Because it is about God’s re-creation of the soul, Hallesby emphasized that the understanding of salvation must be ordered according to practical, not theoretical, concerns. The goal is to mark “the actual demonstrable steps or stages in the soul’s development.”61 In light of this experiential and psychological perspective, Hallesby divided the process of salvation into four stages: (1) the call, (2) conversion, (3) justification/rebirth and (4) the holy life. Hallesby understands the call as God’s regenerating work on the sinful persons who are awakened to the knowledge of their sins and made able to open themselves for salvation. Conversion happens by choice, when the sinner accepts the judgment of God and repents, and, in hopelessness, submits to God’s grace, believing in Him. In the moment of faith, the sinner receives full salvation. In justification, one takes part in the new relationship with God that is made possible by Christ’s work, and through rebirth the Spirit of Christ enters the heart. Saying “yes” to salvation entails that in justification, one is freed from the guilt of sin and through rebirth released from the power of sin. Life as a Christian is a holy life. This is to be seen in “the re-created personal life of the reborn.”62 Here there is a daily struggle against the old self who is ever present. The individual’s spirit, soul, and body are devoted to the Lord in voluntary, thankful, and unceasing service. Hallesby calls this sanctification, and says it leads to the transformation of our mind. But this transformation is “both slow and incomplete.”63 It will be completed the day we see Christ in all of his glory. When preaching, Hallesby often simplified his doctrine of ordo salutis, by making it into three stages on the road to salvation: (1) unconverted, (2) aware, and (3) converted. He spoke often to the unconverted person, who was more often baptized as a child. He seldom connected his 59 Torleiv Austad, Gud møter oss. Artikler om bønn og gudsbilde (Oslo: Akademia forlag, 2008), 89 – 106. 60 Hallesby lists nine ‘divine stages of grace’: vocatio, illuminatio, regeneratio, conversio, justificatio, unio mystica, renovatio or sanctificatio, conservatio and glorificatio. See Ole Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. II. Den specielle del (Kristiania: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1921), 393 – 405. 61 Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære. II, 1921, 405. 62 Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære, II, 1921, 465. 63 Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære, II, 1921, 480.

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preaching to baptism, even though he made it quite clear in his writing that the lapsed who converted were returning to their baptismal covenant.64 Hallesby describes the unconverted as a self-satisfied person without an understanding of sin. When God’s Word and Spirit take hold of such a person, the feeling of guilt weighs “heavily and painfully upon the soul,” he says in his very personal book Hvorfor jeg er en kristen (Why I am a Christian).65 One is awakened, but not converted. There must be a conscious choice – this is decisive. “One moment a man is unsaved and the next, he is saved,” says Hallesby. The difference is in the choice, which is the “matter of a moment.”66 Hallesby’s description of conversion was based on his own personal experience. He does not hide his view that according to Scripture, conversion is the decisive factor in salvation, citing Matthew 4:17; 18:3; Acts 2:38 and 17:30. In doing so, he assumes that an individual’s experience of conversion is the same thing as what is written about conversion in the biblical text. But, it is in the description of the experience of repentance that the experiential aspect is seen. First of all, repentance is a choice. It is “our choice” says Hallesby, at the same time as he points out that God calls people to repentance. Repentance is then both something that God gives and something we do.67 It is implicit in this decision that each person must deal with his sins in relation to God, cleanse himself from all sin, cry out to the Lord for help and submit to God’s mercy. It is in this way that a person can enter a new relationship with God, sin, and himself. A prerequisite for this is that it must be able to be lived and experienced. “Repentance is the necessary psychological-ethical condition for Christ coming with his salvation,” says Hallesby.68 By highlighting the psychological side of repentance and the experience of conversion so strongly, he shows the inheritance he has from the Pietist ordo salutis doctrine. In the lecture series Hallesby presented at Augsburg College in Minneapolis in 1923 he discussed the relationship between rebirth in baptism and the preaching for awakening and conversion, and rejected the idea that the lifegiving sprout of baptism lays deep in the soul “overgrown by worldliness.”69 64 Hallesby, Daab-Barnedaab, 25. 65 Ole Hallesby, Hvorfor jeg er en kristen. Et ord til redelige tvilere og andre søkende (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1925), 83. Translated into English by Clarence J. Carlsen under the title Why I Am a Christian. A Word to Honest Doubters (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1930). Within a year the work was printed nine times. 66 Hallesby, Hvorfor jeg er en kristen, 188. 67 In his dissertation, Det avgjørende frelsesvalg, Steinar Moe analyzed Hallesby’s use of the terms “will” and “conversion,” and came to the conclusion that the choice of salvation is motive-based. The motives are created by God. “It is the God-impulses and thereby – psychologically speaking – motives, that are the foundation for the choice of salvation,” says Moe (713). Hallesby has most likely borrowed the motive from earlier Christian literature, but he also found support for it in modern psychological literature (720). According to Moe, it is not possible to describe Hallesby’s view of salvation as synergism (593). 68 Hallesby, Den kristelige troslære, II, 1921, 429. 69 Hallesby, Opdragelseskristendom og vækkelseskristendom, 52 – 53, 55 – 56.

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He says that those who reason in this way are satisfied by digging up the living sprout of the life of baptism and have little use for awakening and conversion. Despite his rejection of this way of thinking, he warned against letting awakening and conversion become so important that there was no longer room for rebirth in baptism. On the one hand, Hallesby claimed that a child is reborn in baptism, on the other hand he strongly emphasized that at a mature age, there must be a conversion that transforms the individual’s mind. “It is only after the Word has caused the transformation of the sinner’s mind that baptism can be salvation for him,” he wrote in 1921.70 A lapsed person who was baptized as a child but who repents turns back to the baptismal covenant which he or she has broken, but to which God is still faithful and is willing to enter again.71 The importance of the experience of conversion for Hallesby is apparent in his view of the baptized God-fearing child in the transition between childhood and adulthood.72 At this stage, the God-fearer must go through the same conversion experience as a non-believer to come to faith and be saved. The God-fearing child must see himself as a non-believer. He must admit his hardened hart and apathetic mind in order to be aware, and then through a conscious choice understand his enmity with God and his inability to change himself. A God-fearing child who does this will then have the experience in line with that of the non-believer, says Hallesby in his book Barnets liv med Gud (The Child’s Life with God), which was published in 1919.73 He repeated this a few years later, and maintained that the awakening of the God-fearing child works “precisely the same as it works for the adult who has fallen away from God.”74 When Hallesby made the claim that the “God-fearer” must go through a conversion in the same way as the lapsed, it is because his main focus is always on the conversion experience being the basis for being a Christian. One must understand one’s sinful nature and total damnation to be able to choose grace and forgiveness. What happens next is a deep transformation that can, and should, be experienced. It is apparent in the mind, thoughts, and actions that one is converted. This is a description of the conversion experience that has clear similarities with his own experience. It is made to be normative and a model of how to be saved, showing how important the experience is in the breakthrough to a conscious Christian life. In his textbook in Christian ethics from 1928, Hallesby clarifies that ethics and doctrine have a shared foundation. This is seen especially when determining the uniqueness of Christian ethics. It is “in an organic and 70 Hallesby, Daab-Barnedaab, 18 – 19. 71 Hallesby, Daab-Barnedaab, 25. 72 Torleiv Austad, “D”p, gjenfødelse og omvendelse – i erfaringens perspektiv” in Mellom kirke og akademia, 291 – 292. 73 Ole Hallesby, Barnets liv med Gud (Kristiania: Forlagt av Lutherstiftelsens Boghandel, 1919), 49. 74 Hallesby, Opdragelseskristendom og vækkelseskristendom, 69.

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eternal dependency relationship with Jesus Christ,” and has its source, its motive and its standard in the relationship with God.75 According to Hallesby, a Christian morality is an “attitude ethics” (“sindelagsmoral”).76 That is to say that every action is in the end evaluated by the attitude, especially the state of mind, in which it is done. This way of thinking gives awakening, conversion, justification and rebirth a decisive importance for the creation and living of the Christian life. What happens in this process of salvation is that in the rebirth “an objective new life is created in the sinner.”77 When it comes to the development of the Christian life, Hallesby distinguishes between the individual and society. When the Christian life is fed by the means of grace and is fought as a battle against sin for brotherly love and loving one’s neighbor, social ethics is part of life in the area of family, culture, society, and church. Other than marital and sexual ethics, it was Hallesby’s presentation of life as a public citizen that caused the reactions and public debate. In his book, Hallesby claimed that the government has a divine right and duty to use the death penalty and to make war. It is to punish on God’s behalf, and has the right to acquire executioners and soldiers when it is necessary to have “a mass execution of criminals who have committed violent crimes against the sacrosanct judicial order of the state.”78 In a time filled with pacifist tendencies, Hallesby’s religious and authoritarian understanding of the government awakened a cannonade of criticism – and not just from the liberal and “open-minded.” Even Gabriel Skagestad, the head of the PracticalTheological Seminary at MF, was unhappy with the section on war, and wrote that it gave him chills every time he read that section, and that he wished that it had taken a different form.79 The debate on Hallesby’s ethics lasted for several years, and many saw him as a moralistic and narrow-minded fanatic who lacked an understanding of humaneness and tolerance.80 Hallesby’s ethical foundation became the object of public criticism. The criticism was more pointed after the Second World War than in the years between the wars. In his theology of prayer, Hallesby emphasized the willful decision to let Jesus into the soul. This is a transforming presence in the individual’s soul and entails a mystical connection with Jesus that is in line with his words of having a meal with those who open their heart’s door for him.81 In other words, there are good arguments for Hallesby belonging to a prayer tradition that goes back a long way in church history. For him, however, prayer was not just an 75 76 77 78 79

Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 78. Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 80. Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 152. Hallesby, Den kriselige sedelære, 328. Gabriel Skagestad, “Hallesbys sedelære,” Luthersk Kirketidende 66 (Oslo: Forlagt av Lutherstiftelsens Bokhandel, 1929), 71. 80 On the ethical debate, see Norborg, Vekkeren fra Aremark 143 – 157. 81 Mette Nyg”rd, “Bønnen hos Ole Hallesby og i den kristne tradisjon,” in Gjensyn med Hallesby, 77.

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interesting theme in the life of the church. More than anything else, it was an existential challenge. It was in his “inner room” where he found strength, discipline, and comfort. Prayer was simply the deciding factor in his life. As already mentioned, Hallesby received much inspiration for his prayer life from Samuel Zeller in Switzerland. This also included healing through prayer.82 Hallesby also treats prayer in his ethics, since ethics and dogmatics share the same foundation. The Christian life is, according to Hallesby, “in an organic and unending dependency relationship with Jesus Christ.”83 The relationship with God is the source, motive, and norm of Christian ethics. When prayer is included as a part of “the believer’s elements of life,”84 it is understandable that it is discussed in light of what Hallesby calls “the development of the Christian life.”85 Prayer is placed in connection with the Word and the sacraments. To pray is to open the heart for Jesus. This is the basis for both his book on prayer and his ethics. Prayer is “the heartbeat in the believer’s life with God,”86 also called “the breath of the soul.”87 Citing Revelation 3:20, prayer is described as “a human reaction to a divine action.”88 Prayer is our active response to God’s action. God is there first and “knocks” on the door of the heart. It is up to each individual to respond. For Hallesby, prayer is for those who are in need and feel helpless. In his book Prayer he emphasized that it is “only the helpless who can pray,”89 and adds that he never grows weary of emphasizing helplessness. When we pray, we open up and give God the possibility to use his miraculous powers in our helplessness.90 As prayer is a part of the life of the heart with God, it is logical that one must believe in order to pray. To this, Hallesby says that God has not promised to answer the prayers of others who are not his “born again children.” But God can do more than he has promised. He can also fulfill the prayers of the nonconverted, adds Hallesby, and points out that God also loves those who are not saved. He can pour out goodness upon an unsaved soul in order to save it. But, because prayer is by definition opening the heart to Jesus, Hallesby has a problem. How can it be possible for God to listen to the prayers of the unsaved? Such prayers that are answered are “a dark and heavy riddle,” says Hallesby.91 He solves the problem by claiming that Scripture speaks of two different kinds of faith. The first opens up for God to come in for salvation from the guilt and 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

Kullerud, Ole Hallesby, 123 – 124. Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 78. Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 163 – 164. Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 156 – 179. Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 164. Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 9. Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 163. Ole Hallesby, Fra bønnens verden. Et ord til trætte bedere (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1927), 14; Prayer, 16, 19. 90 Hallesby, Fra bønnens verden, 24; Prayer, 26. 91 Hallesby, Fra bønnens verden, 151; “deep and profound mystery,” Prayer, 159.

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power of sin; the second, however, is healing without being saved. A person can believe in God’s wonderful power without being converted or having a saving faith. When God answers the prayers of such a faith, it is on the basis of love, says Hallesby. Here, it can seem that Hallesby breaks his own principle about the re-born and his basic view of prayer as “the believer’s inner, confidential life with God.”92

Influence Ole Hallesby was a strong personality who combined experiential theology and revivalist preaching. He was without a doubt one of the most influential figures in the Church of Norway and in Norwegian society during the first half of the twentieth century. He sparked controversies especially with his sharp attacks on liberal theology, his experiential theology, and his unabashed revivalist preaching. Many were offended by his prominent and challenging personality and aristocratic style. His radio address in 1953 led to him being labeled a “hellfire and brimstone” preacher by the media, a picture that remained with the Hallesby name long after his death. While Hallesby’s legacy has not received full acceptance, it seems that more and more people acknowledge that he was an important leader. Rune Slagstad, for example, sees Hallesby along the same lines as the great leader of the Labor Movement in the early 1900s, Martin Tranmæl. As Tranmæl was an important speaker who fought for the case of the workers, so Hallesby fought for the “reborn,” and gathered great crowds.93 He was in many ways the foremost speaker for MF, and greatly influenced many of the ministers trained here in the 1920s through the 1940s. He contributed greatly to spreading Christian knowledge to the people through his comprehensive educational plan, and that in turn provided a solid foundation for spiritual growth, especially within the Christian organizations. His vision was to re-Christianize the people. Through his work for the country during the Second World War, he had an even stronger position in Norway after the war, even though the “Hell debate” weakened his reputation among the people. In any case, he will go down in history as one of the twentieth century’s most influential leaders in the Church of Norway. Hallesby was never really an academic scholar, and participated very seldom in the systematic theological debates. The textbooks he wrote in dogmatics and ethics were meaningful for their teaching and in the context of the awakening movement. But as soon as teachers and students at MF began to move on to new developments in systematic theology, they lost interest in Hallesby’s experiential theology. He was the exponent of a school that had its 92 Hallesby, Den kristelige sedelære, 164. 93 Slagstad, “Hallesby og folkedannelsen,” 59 – 73, especially 66 – 67.

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time, but did not have a long-lasting impact on the understanding of the Christian faith. It is not as the author of theological literature that Hallesby’s name lives on today in Christian circles. His works on spiritual growth have proven to last much longer. While Hallesby’s successor as teacher of dogmatics at MF, Leiv Aalen, was concerned with the tension between Pietism and Lutheranism, later dogmaticians at the institution have toned down the conflict between Hallesby and Aalen. At a seminar on Aalen’s 100th birthday, it became clear that his followers as teachers of dogmatics had not gone against Pietism as dramatically as their teacher. It was argued that the difference between Lutheranism and Pietism was not as sharp as Aalen saw it.94 Professor Kjell Olav Sannes has said that he tries “to combine the Hallesby tradition and the Aalen tradition” in his dogmatics classes.95 The interest in an experience of faith among students at MF has varied through the years. That Hallesby’s experiential theology had many followers among students in the years between the World Wars was because many of the students came from places influenced by the awakening. During the 1940s through the 1960s, it was Leiv Aalen’s rejection of subjective faith experience that gained attention. No Norwegian theologian has had such a wide international following as Hallesby. This includes several of his books. But none of these has been as widely read as Prayer – a book on prayer and for prayer. It has become a classic, especially in evangelical circles that are concerned with awakening and piety. Hallesby shares a deep faith, one congenial to Christians from all different confessional families. His influence continues to spread insofar as his spiritual books reflect a nondenominational devotion to Christ.

94 Torleiv Austad, Gud møter oss, 87 – 88. 95 Kjell Olav Sannes, “Guds Ord og bekjennelsen. En samtale med Leiv Aalen,” Tidsskrift for Teologi og Kirke 77 (Oslo, Universitetsforlaget, 2006), 293.

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Matthew Becker

Werner Elert (1885 – 1954)

Werner Elert (1885 – 1954) was the most significant Lutheran theologian of his generation and one of the most important, if also most controversial, theologians of the twentieth century. The author of four major works, an unfinished final project, and dozens of shorter texts, he was the principal systematic-historical theologian at the University of Erlangen from 1923 until his death in 1954. His deep “delight in original research,” his remarkable command of primary sources, his erudite publications, and his incisive lectures made “this entirely non-clerical man” a theologian of the first order in these three decades.1 Through his economical style as a teacher and writer, which demanded that the student examine carefully the original materials that he himself had studied intensively, he sought to lead people to think through with him “that chain of development which would be relevant to the problem under discussion.”2 His “matchless wit and irony” certainly helped to make this preeminent Lutheran theologian of the twentieth century an engaging figure as well.3 Often described as “the Lutheranissimus” of twentieth-century German theologians, he was also a sober critic of that tradition.4 Neither a 1 Wolfgang Trillhaas, Aufgehobene Vergangenheit:aus meinem Leben (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), 87; Karlmann Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie (Erlangen: Martin-LutherVerlag, 1993), 151. 2 Robert Schultz, “Werner Elert, Professor of Theology,” in The Structure of Lutheranism: The Theology and Philosophy of Life of Lutheranism, Especially in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by Werner Elert, trans. Walter Hansen (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1962), xiv. Regarding his “economical” style, Elert likened the task of sketching the development of Lutheranism to painting a portrait: “everything depends on knowing what to omit.” 3 Lowell Green, “The Relationship of Werner Elert and America,” Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 70 (1997): 77. 4 Martin Doerne, “Rezension W. Elert, ‘Der christliche Glaube,’” Deutsche Literaturzeitung 62 (1941): 101. Doerne’s label (Lutheranissimus; “most Lutheran”) probably applies more properly to Hermann Sasse (1895 – 1976), if one compares Sasse’s rather unqualified confessionalism with Elert’s critical, post-Enlightenment Morphologie of Lutheranism, although Elert, like Sasse, was very polemical toward John Calvin and the Reformed tradition. See also Karlmann Beyschlag, “Werner Elert in memoriam,” Jahrbuch des Martin Luther-Bundes 39 (1992), 29; Reinhard Hauber, “Werner Elert: Einführung in Leben und Werk eines ‘Lutheranissimus,’” Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 29 (1987): 113 – 46; Hanns Lilje, “In Memoriam,” in D. Werner Elert Gedenkschrift: Beiträge zur historischen und systematischen Theologie, ed. Friedrich Hübner, Wilhelm Maurer, and Ernst Kinder (Berlin: Lutherisches Ver-

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repristinationist nor a generic Protestant, he was a confessional Lutheran who was also a modern and enlightened man. Not surprisingly, scores of students flocked to the small Bavarian city of Erlangen to study with him and his colleagues, Paul Althaus, Jr. (1888 – 1966) and Otto Procksch (1874 – 1947), who joined the faculty in 1925.5 Together, these three theologians created the second “Blütezeit” of the so-called “Erlanger Theologie.”6 The student motto then was, “Come because of Althaus; stay because of Elert.” No other confessional Lutherans exerted as wide an influence in the middle decades of the twentieth century as did they. But Elert’s life and work were not free of controversy. Along with Althaus, he opposed what he perceived to be the theological errors in the Barmen Declaration, the 1934 statement of the so-called Confessing Church which sought to counter the influence of Nazi ideology in the German churches. He attributed these errors to the influence of Karl Barth (1886 – 1968), the principal author of Barmen and Elert’s central theological opponent. More significantly, he defended the legitimacy of Hitler’s government, although he never joined the Nazi Party. Because of these actions, he was sharply criticized after the war and many dismissed his work altogether. In the United States, however, where his political theology remained mostly unknown, he was a main resource for Lutheran theologians between 1940 and 1980. Nevertheless, in more recent years he has been largely ignored or even criticized.7 In the lagshaus, 1955), 7; and Wilhelm Maurer, “In memoriam Professor D. Dr. Werner Elert,” Evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 8 (1954): 378. I am grateful to Prof. Beyschlag for giving me the original draft of his lecture (complete with personal photos of his former teacher). 5 From the founding of the university in 1743 until 1970, the theology faculty had to be Lutheran by Bavarian law, a point that Elert frequently emphasized. American students who studied under him include Helmut Lehmann, Martin Lehmann, Theodore Bachmann, Norman Nagel, Robert Schultz, Edward Schroeder, Richard Baepler, Lloyd Svendsbye, and Lowell Green. Germans who studied under him and later became prominent in America include Gottfried Krodel, Gerhard Krodel, and Hans Hillerbrand. See Green, “The Relationship of Werner Elert and America,” 83. 6 The first “flowering period” occurred under Johannes Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810 – 77; at Erlangen 1838 – 42, 1845 – 77). See Matthew Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History : The Trinitarian Theology of Johannes von Hofmann (New York: T & T Clark, 2004, with bibliography); Wilfried Behr, Politischer Liberalismus und kirchliches Christentum (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1995); Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie, 58 – 119, 143 – 206; Martin Hein, Lutherisches Bekenntnis und Erlanger Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1984); Friedrich Kantzenbach, Die Erlanger Theologie (München: Evangelisch Presseverband für Bayern, 1960); and Notger Slenczka, Der Glaube und sein Grund: F. H. R. von Frank, seine Auseinandersetzung mit A. Ritschl und die Fortführung seines Programms durch L. Ihmels. Studien zur Erlanger Theologie I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998). Key characteristics of this complex theological tradition include the centrality of human and Christian “experience” (Erfahrungstheologie), the independent “certainty” (Gewißheit) of the individual Christian’s faith in God, the historical mediation of personal faith through Scripture and the church, and a criticalhistorical appropriation of the Lutheran confessional writings. 7 For positive reference to Elert’s theology in circles of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), see especially the materials of the Crossings Community, founded by two American Elertians, Robert Bertram (1921 – 2003) and Edward Schroeder (1930–-), at www.crossings.org

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Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), whose publishing house continues to sell volume one of his Morphologie des Luthertums (although not volume two), he is also widely ignored or criticized, not so much for his politics as for his rejection of the verbal inspiration of the Bible and for his denial of a so-called “third use” of the law. Here, too, he has been accused of “Antinomianism,” namely, of holding that Christians are freed from the need of hearing or observing the law as a divine command. In this regard he has been accused of contributing to the theological crisis in that church body in the 1960s and 1970s.8 Contrary to those who would simply dismiss him or wrongly accuse him of fostering Antinomianism, the present essay attempts to demonstrate that his work is a fruitful resource for contemporary theological thinking. The issues with which he wrestled are still pressing ones, and his responses to them are worth pondering. In addition, the essay evaluates his political theology and activities in the 1930s and shows that he himself adjusted his theology in the 1940s to correct serious errors in his previous thinking. After summarizing his life and work, the essay concludes with a brief analysis of some issues in his thought that deserve on-going, critical attention.

Elert’s Life9 Werner August Friedrich Immanuel Elert was born on August 19, 1885 in the village of Heldrungen am Kyffhäuser in the Prussian province of Saxony. He (internet). Schroeder also edited The Promising Tradition: A Reader in Law-Gospel Reconstructionist Theology (St. Louis: Concordia Seminary in Exile, 1974), which contains material by Elert and Americans influenced by him. 8 In 1966 John Warwick Montgomery accused then-LCMS professor Walter Bouman of “gospel reductionism,” which he traced to Bouman’s reception of Elertian theology. See John Warwick Montgomery, Crisis in Lutheran Theology I (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1967), 81 – 123. More recently Scott R. Murray has criticized Elert for his rejection of a so-called “third use of the law,” which Murray thinks made him an “Antinomian.” Murray attempts to trace the influence of Elert in the LCMS via theologians who taught at Valparaiso University in the 1950s and 60s, including Schultz, Schroeder, and Bertram. See Scott R. Murray, Law, Life, and the Living God: The Third Use of the Law in Modern American Lutheranism (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2002). For criticism of Murray’s book, see Matthew Becker, “Review of Law, Life, and the Living God by Scott Murray,” www.day-star.net (internet). 9 For biographical information, see Werner Elert, “Lebensläufe,” Erlangen Fakultätsbuch, November 17, 1923; idem., “Lebensläufe,” Erlangen Fakultätsbuch, January 5, 1927; Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, “Elert, Werner,” in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, www.bautz. de/bbkl (internet); Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie, 149 – 78; idem, “Werner Elert in memoriam,” 29 – 58; Andr¦ Birmel¦, “Interpretation et actualisation d’une tradition confessionnelle: Werner Elert” (Ph.D. diss., University of Strassbourg, 1977), 13 – 17; Sigurjûn Ýrni Eyjûlfsson, Rechtfertigung und Schöpfung in der Theologie Werner Elerts, Arbeiten Zur Geschichte und Theologie Des Luthertums (Gütersloh: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1994), 13 – 22; Hauber, “Wer-

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was the youngest child of three, and the only son. When Elert was an infant, his father, August Elert, who had served twelve years in the Prussian army, moved his family to Husum in Schleswig-Holstein and then to Lunden in the same area. He worked as a minor civic official. The Elerts were faithful members of “The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Prussia” (ELKP), the so-called “old Lutheran” church, which had been formed by confessional Lutherans, which resisted the 1830 decree of Frederick Wilhelm III to unite the Reformed and Lutheran churches in Prussia. Since 1845, when this “free church” was legally recognized, the ELKP had its own churches and schools, its own missionary society (the revitalized Leipzig Missionary Society), and its own administrators and seminary in Breslau.10 As a young boy, Elert attended several Gymnasia (secondary classical schools), which provided him with a solid, classical, German-humanist education in preparation for university study. He began his formal study of theology at the Breslau seminary in the fall of 1906, most likely at the behest of his mother, Friederike.11 During his two years there he studied not only theology and the biblical languages but also many non-theological disciplines, including philosophy, history, German literature, psychology, and law. Indeed one ought to keep in mind that he had as much interest in military history, his “noble passion,” according to Althaus, as he did in church history.12 Even after becoming a professor of theology, he routinely

ner Elert,” 113 – 46; Thomas Kaufmann, “Elert, Werner,” Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 4th ed., ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998ff), 2:1198; Rudolf Keller and Michael Roth, “Werner Elert: Person—Werk—Wirkung,” in Mit dem Menschen verhandeln über den Sachgehalt des Evangeliums: Die Bedeutung der Theologie Werner Elerts für die Gegenwart, ed. Rudolf Keller and Michael Roth (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag, 2004), 9 – 11; Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie (München: Claudius, 1979), 117 – 22; idem, “Die Erlanger Theologische Fakultät 1922 – 1972,” Jahrbuch für Fränkische Landesforschung 34/ 35 (1975): 635 – 658; Albrecht Peters, “Elert, Werner (1885 – 1954),” Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Krause and Gerhard Müller, 36 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977 ff.), 9:493 – 97; Werner Srocka, “Professor D. Dr. Werner Elert zum Gedächtnis,” Unter dem Kreuze, Kirchenblatt der selbständigen evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche 69 (1955), 22 – 23; Walter Sparn, “Werner Elert,” Profile des Luthertums: Biographien zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. WolfDieter Hauschild (Gütersloh: Güterslohverlagshaus, 1998), 159 – 83; Max Tratz, “Was ist geblieben? Erinnerungen und Besinnungen zum 10. Todestag von Werner Elert,” Jahrbuch des Martin Luther-Bundes 12 (1964): 7 – 25; Trillhaas, Aufgehobene Vergangenheit, 86 – 87; and idem, “Konservative Theologie und moderne Welt: Erinnerung an Werner Elert,” Jahrbuch des Martin Luther-Bundes 33 (1986): 35 – 46. 10 Both of Elert’s sisters married German Lutheran pastors. See Green, “The Relationship of Werner Elert and America,” 80 – 81. 11 See Trillhaas, “Konservative Theologie und moderne Welt,” 35. 12 See Althaus, “Werner Elerts theologisches Werk,” 400. As an officer in the Prussian army, Elert was respected for his sharp-shooting ability. He was proud that a member of his family had fought in every Prussian military campaign. In Erlangen, he was a frequent guest at the officers’ club. Martial illustrations and metaphors fill many of his writings. See also Werner Elert, “Zur Geschichte des kriegerischen Ethos,” Festgabe für Theodor Zahn (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1928), 131 – 50; and idem, “Zur Frage des Soldateneides,” Deutsches Pfarrerblatt (1952): 13 – 15.

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gave lectures in non-theological subjects (psychology, philosophy, military science). In addition to Breslau, he also studied at Erlangen, Leipzig, and then again at Erlangen.13 The theologians who had the most influence on him were Ludwig Ihmels (1858 – 1933) and August Wilhelm Hunzinger (1871 – 1920), whose respective “Erlangian” concerns to provide an objective basis to Christian experience affected him deeply. Other teachers of importance at this time included Theodor Zahn (1838 – 1933), who taught New Testament and patristics at Erlangen (where he had also been Hofmann’s most famous student), Theodor Kolde (1850 – 1913), who taught church history there, Reinhold Seeberg (1859 – 1935), historian of dogma at Berlin, and Theodosius Harnack (1817 – 1889), whose two-volume study of Luther’s theology underscored for Elert the distinction between the hidden God and the competing revelations of God in law and gospel.14 In May of 1910 Elert completed his philosophical dissertation at Erlangen under the direction of Richard Falckenberg (1851 – 1920), whose academic focus was post-Kantian idealist philosophy.15 This dissertation was an examination of Rudolph Rocholl’s (1822 – 1905) speculative philosophy of history in relation to the thought of Böhme, Schelling, Hegel, and several other thinkers. Rocholl was among the most famous ELKP pastors and writers. He was particularly influenced by Schelling’s philosophy of history. For Rocholl, all of history finds its “center” and meaning in Jesus Christ, the divine Logos who is also the divine “reason” behind history. The christological center that Rocholl thus gave to all of history demonstrated his close affinities to Hofmann and his notion of Heilsgeschichte (“salvation history”), which had also been influenced by German idealism. While Elert was critical of Rocholl’s actual idealist conception of history and also his speculative doctrine of God, he thought Rocholl had correctly understood that the philosophy of history is necessarily shaped by metaphysical and theological presuppositions. Through 13 For Elert’s relation to the Erlangen tradition, see Notger Slenczka, Selbstkonstitution und Gotteserfahrung: W. Elerts Deutung der neuzeitlichen Subjektivität im Kontext der Erlanger Theologie, Studien zur Erlanger Theologie II (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 15 – 22, 343 – 54; Thomas Gerlach, Verborgener Gott—Dreieiniger Gott: Ein Koordinationsproblem lutherischer Gotteslehre bei Werner Elert (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1998), 339 – 419; and Friedrich Kantzenbach, “Von Ludwig Ihmels bis zu Paul Althaus,” Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 11 (1969): 94 – 111. 14 Seeberg had also taught at Erlangen before moving to Berlin. Harnack had taught at Erlangen and then at Dorpat. His most important work is Luthers Theologie, 2 vols. (Erlangen: Theodor Blaesing, 1862; A. Deichert, 1886). Elert later wrote a very positive review of the second edition of this work. See Werner Elert, “Rezension, ‘Th. Harnack, Luthers Theologie mit besonderes Beziehung auf seine Versöhnungs- und Erlösungslehre,’” Theologische Literaturblatt 49 (1928): 330 – 32. 15 Werner Elert, Rudolf Rocholls Philosophie der Geschichte: Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Hohen Philosophischen Fakultät der Friedrich-Alexanders-Universität Erlangen (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1910).

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his study of Rocholl, Elert also engaged the mystical and polemical thought of Philipp Nicolai (1556 – 1608), especially his understanding of the mystical union of the believer with Christ, a matter that he would again explore in the Morphologie. One year later (1911) Elert completed his theological dissertation at Erlangen under the direction of Hunzinger.16 This work also analyzes the tension between the Christian’s personal certainty of existence and the fulfillment of humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, who is believed by Christians to be the center (Mitte) of history. This “certainty” (Gewißheit), given in the experience of personal rebirth and faith, is the basic presupposition of Christian theology. From within this perspective the theological task is to explicate the Christian worldview (Weltanschauung) and place the doctrine of God, cosmology, and theological anthropology into a critical position over against contemporary non-Christian and anti-Christian worldviews. Once again the older Erlangen theologians figure here, particularly Hofmann, Franz H. R. Frank (1827 – 1894; at Erlangen from 1857), and Ihmels. For part of 1911 Elert served as a tutor in Livonia (the northwestern coast of Latvia). He also undertook an influential trip to Russia, which sparked his lifelong interest in Eastern Orthodoxy (v. his study of eucharistic theology and practice in the eastern churches). Later that year he served as a vicar (Hilfsgeistlicher) in Breslau. The following year he married Annemarie Froböß, the daughter of the ELKP church superintendent. That same year he was ordained a parish pastor in Seefeld bei Kolberg (Pomerania), where he served until 1919. During this time he also became a part-time chaplain in the Prussian army. He would serve for the duration of the First World War, on both the eastern and western fronts. His war experiences impressed on him the realities of tragedy in history and of questioning the ways of God in the world. He learned first hand how people could rage against God, against the seeming lack of human and divine justice in the world, against human suffering and evil. After the war, in 1919, he was called to be the director of the seminary in Breslau. It was here that he sharpened the apologetic-polemical perspective that appears in his first scholarly writings. Here, too, he was influenced by two important post-war books: Spengler’s masterful, almost prophetic twovolume work, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, and Otto’s Das Heilige.17 Not 16 Werner Elert, Prolegomena der Geschichtsphilosophie: Studie zur Grundlegung der Apologetik (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1911). 17 Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, 2 vols. (München: C. H. Beck, 1919, 1922; Decline of the West, 2 vols., trans. Charles Atkinson [New York: Knopf, 1922]); Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (Breslau: Trewendt & Granier, 1917; The Idea of the Holy : An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, trans. John W. Harvey [London: Oxford University Press, 1923]).

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only did Spengler provide Elert with the paradigm for writing his own “Morphologie,” but his extensive analysis of the experience of Schicksal was also a significant influence on the budding theologian.18 Elert would develop this notion into a theological concept in his works, both early and late (although the concept is less central in his post-1945 ethics).19 He was struck, for example, by Spengler’s description of the presence of absurdity and the irrational in history. Furthermore the experience of the ultimate power in and behind one’s personal Schicksal also bears a close relation to the notions of “the numinous,” “the mysterium tremendum et fascinans,” and “the holy,” as developed in Otto’s 1917 classic, a text that Elert had carefully studied. He remained in Breslau until 1923, when he was called to Erlangen to serve as professor of church history, history of dogma, and comparative church doctrine (“symbolics”). In April 1932, when Philip Bachmann died, he assumed the chair of systematic theology. He declined calls to Münster in 1926 and to Göttingen a decade later.20 In the winter semester 1933/34, there were 661 theology students, the most since the founding of the university.21 Only Berlin and Tübingen had more. After coming to Erlangen, he was an active member of the Bavarian territorial church, the successor to the former state church. His deep concern for world Lutheranism led him to participate in all of the major Lutheran ecumenical conferences between 1923, when he delivered a paper at the first World Lutheran Conference in Eisenach, and 1952, when he participated in the Second Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Hanover. In 1927 18 The German term, Schicksal, is a tricky word in Elert’s theology. As he employed it, the term denotes something different from “fate” and “destiny,” in the usual sense of these two terms. Whereas “destiny” implies an inescapable future goal, “fate” conjures up Greek tragedy and the notion of fatalism, that is, a belief in a teleological concatenation of circumstance that hopelessly also cancels human freedom. For Elert Schicksal refers primarily to one’s “lot” in life and includes reference to “finitude” and “location.” Thus Schicksal refers to all the factors that constitute human existence, over which human beings 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, era, etc., which together become an inescapable dynamic entity and power that delimit human freedom and with which human beings must come to terms and which can finally exercise power over them, as is most singularly evident in their death. Schicksal is literally that which is “sent to us,” was uns geschickt ist. In this essay Schicksal will be left untranslated. I am grateful to Hans Spalteholz for helping me to think more clearly about this important concept in Elert’s theology. 19 Elert was not the only prominent German Lutheran theologian to analyze Schicksal in the early 1920s. See the analysis of Emanuel Hirsch’s book, Deutschlands Schicksal (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1920), in Robert Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 127 – 41. Hirsch emphasized much more than Elert that human will and power rule history rather than Schicksal, and that Schicksal must somehow be overcome through human thought and action. For Elert, too, Schicksal is mainly a personal power rather than mainly an historical one. 20 Some had hoped he would have accepted the chair in Münster so as to become “the Lutheran counterweight” to Barth, who was then on that faculty. See Sparn, “Werner Elert,” 161. 21 Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 118.

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he delivered a major address at the Lausanne Conference, the first ecumenical conference of the “Faith and Order” movement.22 After the formation of the LWF in 1947, he served on its Theological Commission. In his efforts toward Christian unity, “he did not seek easy solutions but was intent upon laying solid foundations.”23 This concern was also expressed by him in his presentations at the “Bad Boll Conferences,” three retreats for German and LCMS theologians that were initiated by LCMS leaders and held at Bad Boll, West Germany, in the late 1940s.24 As a result of these conferences, his theology gained importance in LCMS circles. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Elert served in several administrative capacities. He was elected Rektor of the university for the year 1927 – 28 and dean of the theology faculty for the year after that. In 1935 he was made “perpetual dean” (Decanus perpetuus) of the theology faculty, an unprecedented arrangement that lasted until the winter semester 1943/44, when the Nazis forced him to resign because of perceived subversive activities. By all accounts, he had a difficult, “complicated personality,” a “kämpferische Natur” (polemical nature).25 He was a sensitive and easily hurt individual who nonetheless engaged in fierce polemics and biting sarcasm against his opponents, most notably Barth. Even with colleagues and friends he could get into serious disagreements: “[He] did not have a single friend with whom he had not had at least one quarrel.”26 His “polemical electricity,” which his ecclesial and familial background undoubtedly helped to foster, may partly be explained by his devotion to the truth.27 “Truth and error cannot make peace with each other. Where the truth is at stake, no compromise may be given…

22 Werner Elert, “Der Ruf zur Einheit,” Allgemeine evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 60 (1927): 725 – 28. 23 E. Theodore Bachmann, “Werner Elert, Theologian,” The Lutheran Quarterly 7 (1955): 362. 24 See F. E. Mayer, The Story of Bad Boll (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1949); and Paul M. Bretscher, “Professor D. Dr. Werner Elert, 1885 – 1954,” Concordia Theological Monthly 26 (1955): 211 – 14. 25 Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 120 – 21; and Althaus, “Werner Elerts theologisches Werk,” 401. See also Trillhaas, “Konservative Theologie und moderne Welt,” 42 – 43. A particularly vindictive portrait is presented by Helmut Thielicke in his autobiography, Notes from a Wayfarer, trans. David R. Law (New York: Paragon House, 1995), 74 – 5, 80 – 1. Thielicke completed his post-doctoral Habilitation dissertation under Althaus, although Elert, “the evil spirit (and dean!) of the theology faculty at Erlangen” is blamed for having caused a delay in the process (ibid., 75). According to Loewenich (Thielicke’s brother-in-law), “Elert was not free of resentment and competition against Althaus and also caused Althaus’s students to sense this” (Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 121). 26 Wolfgang Trillhaas, lecture at Augsburg on September 19, 1985, which served as the basis for his essay, “Konservative Theologie und moderne Welt,” as cited by Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie, 151. 27 Beyschlag, “Werner Elert in memoriam,” 38. Cf. Trillhaas, “Konservative Theologie und moderne Welt,” 42.

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The signs of truth are polemical.”28 For this reason, he held that the one who would testify to the truth of Christianity must do so “without compromise.”29 Elert and his wife had three children, a daughter and two sons. Sunday after Sunday the family attended the divine services at the Neustädter Kirche (sitting in the same “professors’ place” in which Hofmann had also regularly sat).” He loved art (one of his sons was named Rembrandt), music, and literature, and enjoyed playing the piano and dancing at social occasions. Indeed, at the annual balls of the theology department, he was often “the life of the party.”30 He regularly participated in the cultural life of the university and the city. His joie de vivre diminished, however, after both of his sons (as officers) were killed in hand-to-hand combat in the Second World War. Thereafter his mood was more somber, and he gave up much of his socializing. Made an emeritus in 1953, he remained on the faculty until his death from cancer on November 21, 1954.

Elert’s Work31 Elert’s scholarly activity may be divided into five periods: 1910 – 21 (the philosophy of history and the defense of the Christian faith in relation to nineteenth-century theology), 1922 – 32 (Lutheran confessional theology), 1932 – 40 (political theology and dogmatics), 1940 – 1949 (ethics), and 1950 – 1954 (history of dogma). Each of the first four periods ended with the publication of a major work that brought historical and systematic concerns into relation with each other. This relationship is also evident in his final project, which remained incomplete at his death. With good reason, the most important contemporary historian of dogma has called Elert “a historian among the systematic theologians and a systematician among the church historians,” and that “combination of gifts was evident in all his works.”32

28 Elert, “Der Ruf zur Einheit,” 726. 29 Werner Elert, “Die Forderung unseres Zeitalters an die Sprecher der Christenheit,” Allgemeine evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 55 (1922): 435, cited by Keller and Roth, “Werner Elert,” 9. 30 Green, “The Relationship of Werner Elert and America,” 79. 31 See Herwig Wagner, “Bibliographie sämtlicher theologischer Veröffentlichungen, Zeitschriftenaufsätze und Rezensionen von Professor D. Dr. Werner Elert,” D. Werner Elert Gedenkschrift, 411 – 24. This bibliography has been corrected and updated by Reinhard Hauber, “Werner Elert,” 138 – 41. 32 Jaroslav Pelikan, foreword to The Structure of Lutheranism, viii. Compare Althaus, “Werner Elerts theologisches Werk,” 401; and Thomas Kaufmann, “Werner Elert als Kirchenhistoriker,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 93 (1996): 193 – 242.

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1. 1910 – 1921: Philosophy of History The earliest period began with the two dissertations and several shorter investigations into the Psalms and the religious psychology of the Apostle Peter and of Jakob Böhme (1575 – 1624).33 In these studies, which were informed by Wilhelm Dilthey’s hermeneutical perspective and William James’ empirical approach to religious experience, Elert developed a fundamental conviction that he would maintain in all of his other work, namely, the idea of “Voluntarismus,” the “intentional willing” of one’s actions before God.34 While Böhme’s understanding of religious experience has similarities with emphases in the Erlangen theological tradition, Elert held that it came up short due to Böhme’s inattention to the historical dimension of Christian religious experience. While the Christian certainty cannot be grounded historically, still “the ‘inclination toward the historical,’ the fundamental interest in historical facts, above all, in the historical Jesus, belongs to the essence of every Lutheran piety.”35 Elert’s orientation toward the individual and his emphasis on the “intentional willing” in religious piety are perhaps the second most important characteristics of his theology next to the central concern to distinguish the law from the gospel.36 The first major work, Der Kampf um das Christentum (“The Struggle for Christianity”), was published in 1921, a few years after he moved to Breslau.37 Written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, it provides a powerful critique of the mutual interaction between Christianity and modern German culture that occurred principally as a result of the ideas of Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel (as its full title indicates). Elert thus did not ignore the intellectual difficulties posed by these major thinkers, even though he rejected nearly all of their proposed solutions. His primary goal was to challenge the validity of all attempts to form a synthesis between the Christian faith and modern culture, since he interpreted the latter as being in a state of decline and inherently opposed to the Christian gospel.38 Thus he warned that 33 Werner Elert, Die Religiosität des Petrus: Ein religionspsychologischer Versuch (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1911); idem, Die Voluntaristische Mystik Jacob Böhmes: Eine Psychologische Studie (Berlin: Trowitzsch & Sohn, 1913). 34 I am thankful to my colleague, Christoffer Grundmann, for clarifying for me the meaning of this technical German term. 35 Elert, Die Voluntaristische Mystik, 135 – 36. 36 See Slenczka, Selbstkonstitution und Gotteserfahrung, 61 – 73. 37 Werner Elert, Der Kampf um das Christentum: Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen dem evangelischen Christentum in Deutschland und dem allgemeinen Denken seit Schleiermacher und Hegel (München: C. H. Beck, 1921), hereafter abbreviated as KC. After its publication he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the theology faculty in Greifswald. 38 Eyjûlfsson is correct to note a similarity between this work and Barth’s famous commentary on Romans, which had been published in 1919. While the goal of each work is to undermine the synthesis between Christianity and culture that had developed in nineteenth-century liberal

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Christianity could only flourish to the extent that it differentiated itself from “modern culture” and maintained its “diastasis” (“standing apart,” “disagreement”).39 “Only when Christianity becomes entirely separate again for a moment, i. e., entirely free from the present ‘culture,’ will it demonstrate its power for producing a new thing, something it has done more than once in its history” (KC 490). In this “apologetic,” Elert is not really concerned with the traditional question, “How can one demonstrate the truth of Christianity for the non-Christian?” Rather, the question is now, “In what way can the Christian himself come to the conviction of faith?” (KC 465). While the influence of Spengler’s “pessimistic” perspective on “modernity” is evident throughout the book, the analysis is also shaped by Frank’s understanding of the Christian’s “certainty,” which allows the theologian to submit “the whole subjective factual situation [Tatbestand] of the Christian to scientific supervision” (KC 295), and by Ihmels’ concern to understand the connection between the historic witness to Christ and the immediacy of the Christian’s relationship to the sovereign, transcendent God (KC 463). This methodological position distanced Elert from the confessionalism of seventeenthcentury Lutheran Orthodoxy and the Kantian ethics of Albrecht Ritschl, even as it put him closer to Schleiermacher’s Speeches, the German religious Awakening (Die Erweckungsbewegung), and the appropriation of Luther’s experiential understanding of faith within German Romanticism. Central to the Erlangen theological tradition, in which Elert firmly stood, was the relation of the “subjective” experience of faith and its “objective” grounding in Scripture and the confessions.40 Elert developed this “pathos of the experience of faith,” especially in relation to the thought of Luther, in another important work from this initial period, Dogma, Ethos, Pathos, which was mainly directed against an intellectual understanding of faith, as in Lutheran Orthodoxy, and the practical/moral understanding of faith, as defended by the Ritschlians.41 He stressed that the “pathos” is not arbitrary or random but occasioned by the gospel, which is nonetheless distinct from dogma. The latter presupposes the former, since the Christian has already experienced in himself the significance of the salvific facts (Tatsachen) attested by the gospel. The dialectical relationship of the law and the gospel, which had already been elaborated in the works of Ihmels and Harnack Sr., was now reflected in Elert’s analysis. This “real dialectic,” experienced first as Protestantism, Elert focused on the wrath and transcendence of God, while Barth pointed to the absolute “otherness” of God and God’s revelation in Christ. See Eyjûlfsson, Rechtfertigung und Schöpfung, 18. 39 See Gerhard Müller, “Synthese oder Diastase?,” Mit dem Menschen verhandeln, 119 – 54; see also Kurt Meier, “Kulturkrise und Syntheseproblem,” Kerygma und Dogma 31 (1985): 293 – 306. 40 See Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History, 31 – 88; Max Keller-Hüschemenger, “Das Problem der Gewißheit bei J. Chr. K. von Hofmann im Rahmen der ‘Erlanger Schule,’” D. Werner Elert Gedenkschrift, 288 – 295; and Slenczka, Selbstkonstitution und Gotteserfahrung, 74 – 88. 41 Werner Elert, Dogma, Ethos, Pathos: Dreierlei Christentum (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1920).

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repentance and then as confident trust in the gospel, would become the defining characteristic of his remaining work. 2. 1922 – 1932: Lutheran Confessional Theology The second period began shortly before his move to Erlangen in 1923, a move that was occasioned, in part, by the critical acclaim for Kampf.42 In this period he turned to the complex issue of the historical development of Lutheranism. Key works from this period are his initial presentation of Lutheran dogmatics and ethics in Die Lehre des Luthertums im Abriss43 and especially his 1000–page Morphologie des Luthertums,44 “the most significant achievement of the Erlangen theology since the days of Hofmann.”45 Through these writings he sought to give Lutheran theology a fresh and timely expression.46 Like Hofmann’s Schutzschriften, which were subtitled “a new way to teach old truth,” the approach of The Doctrine of Lutheranism in Outline is entirely original. The small book is divided into three parts: the Struggle with God (Doctrine I), Reconciliation (Doctrine II), and Freedom (Ethics). Each of these parts is divided into five brief chapters. The first part begins with an inductive analysis of human freedom and Schicksal, matters that again tie Elert to Spengler, though Elert’s starting point in human experience also ties him to Schleiermacher and the Erlangen tradition. Biblical statements about human beings, God, and sin only appear near the end of this part and then only in the context of his analysis of human experience. At this time in his thinking the concept of Schicksal served as an important bridge between the cultural situation in which he found himself as a Lutheran theologian and the attempt to provide a contemporary articulation of the Christian faith. He defined Schicksal as “the product of all the factors which shape our lives, other than the 42 Even Barth appreciated this work. See Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1973), 21. 43 Werner Elert, Die Lehre des Luthertums im Abriss (München: C. H. Beck, 1924; 2nd ed., 1926; 3rd ed., ed. Gerhard Müller, 1978; The first edition: An Outline of Christian Doctrine, trans. Charles M. Jacobs [Philadelphia: The United Lutheran Publication House, 1927]). Hereafter, the second German edition is abbreviated as LLA. It contains several expanded paragraphs, many supporting quotations from Luther, and an appendix on “dogma and dogmatics” that explains his methodology and responds to criticisms of the first edition. 44 Werner Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums, 2 vols. (München: C. H. Beck, 1931, 1932; 2nd ed., 1952; 3rd ed., 1965; for volume one of the second German edition, see The Structure of Lutheranism, trans. Walter Hansen [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1962]). Hereafter, the second German edition is abbreviated ML and the English translation is abbreviated as SL. 45 Lowenich, Erlebte Theologie, 119. 46 As a measure of his impact on the study of Luther and Lutheranism, see Hanns Rückert, “Werner Elert,” D. Martin Luthers Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe: Die Deutsche Bibel 10/1, ed. Hanns Rückert (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus, 1956), xiii-xv. Elert had been a member of the WA editorial commission from June 1950 until his death. According to Rückert, “[Elert] erected his scholarly works on [this edition],” and so “he will remain bound to [it]” (ibid., xv).

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will to be free” (LLA 4; see also endnote 18). His analysis of the sovereignty of Schicksal, a power that stands over every human life, leads directly to the question of the living God, “that power which places limits upon our will to freedom” (8). Against German idealism, which had tended to blur the distinction between God and humanity, Elert’s analysis stresses the fundamental opposition between God and humanity, which is experienced as “an immediate feeling of separation from God,” as a “limitation to our knowledge,” and as “the moral contrast with God” that arises from our behaviors and accomplishments (9 – 11). The accounts of human-divine conflict in the Bible (for example, Gen. 32; Mark 14) “clarify and deepen things that are suggested by our own experience of Schicksal” (47), including the experience of guilt and the fear of death. The second part of the book proceeds deductively, demonstrating that the divine response, attested to in Holy Scripture, is the only true and lasting answer to the situation described in part one. But the revelation of God in Scripture complicates this human situation. On the one hand, the Scriptures reveal God’s “will to destroy,” God’s will to recompense, God’s vengeance, hate, and wrath. For Elert this divine “motive” is the direct consequence of human sin; God’s wrath is as real as God’s law is real and not an illusion of subjective experience, since “the law brings wrath” (Rom. 4:15). On the other hand, the biblical texts disclose the revelation of God’s love, patience, benevolence, mercy, pity, and God’s readiness to save. Since there is little, if any, confirmation of this second divine “motive” in human experience, the message of God’s mercy and forgiveness can only be had by faith, “against appearances.” This faith is directed to Jesus, who practiced forgiveness and mercy and who “turned the wrath of God away from others” (40). Central texts for this claim are Rom. 5:9, 2 Cor. 5:21, and Rom. 3:25, where hilasterion is understood as the “propitiation” or “expiation” of God’s wrath. “The divine will to forgive has taken the place of the will to recompense” (41). But this replacement is true only for faith, since faith is allowing oneself to be reconciled to God through Christ. Thus, for faith, “God’s final and innermost motive,” God’s “ultimate relation to us,” is one of love and forgiveness (49, 52). This reconciliation in Christ, mediated by the Spirit through the church, has now changed the relation of the faithful to the forces of Schicksal. The latter have been deprived of the character of enmity. Even death, the last enemy, is now accepted as a peaceful sleep (71 – 74). This change in existence for the believer has also affected “his will to be free,” which now becomes “the expression of his peace with the Creator” (76). The practical consequence is that the Christian now thinks not only of his own freedom, but also of the will of the Creator “that all of God’s creatures shall be free” (76). The task of Christian ethics, then, is to develop Christian freedom in relation to “the orders of creation” (Schöpfungsordnungen), which is the focus of the final part of the little book. All the creaturely conditions and relations of the Christian’s life—“blood” (family and social relationships), law (relation to

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government), feeling (relation to art and culture), knowledge, and business— are the arenas in which the “new creature” lives out the life of faith and love. Although “the order of grace and the order of creation,” “the two-fold divine order for society,” are in tension with each other within the individual Christian until death, their true purpose under God is to serve together for “the development of true life in the world” (96 – 97). The new life in Christ thus seeks the liberation of others through the reconciliation of Christ, “that we become Schicksal for others” (80 – 81). This freedom is the key concept in Elert’s theology that finally unites creation and redemption, doctrine and ethics, the triune God and humanity, the church and the world. The same “experiential” starting point that marks The Outline also marks the much larger Morphologie, which a critic at the time called “the most profound study of Lutheran theology and of the Lutheran essence.”47 Without question it is his greatest scholarly achievement, despite the pejorative dismissals by Barth and Sasse.48 For the first time, a scholar would treat “Lutheranism” as a vital religious and cultural totality and not as a static corpus of “pure doctrine.” Fundamental to Elert’s treatment is his transference of Spengler’s insight about the Schicksalhafte (“fateful,” “given”) relation of Seele (“soul,” “spirit,” or “mind”) and Kultur (“civilization”) to the development of the Lutheran Confessions and Lutheranism as a vital organism. The heartbeat of the Lutheran vitality, its dunamis, resides in what Elert called “the evangelischer Ansatz,” the evangelical “starting point” or “point of departure” that “grounded” all of Christian doctrine and life in the gospel.49 This “grounding in the gospel,” the evangelical “constant,” is, however, distinct from the Morphe of Lutheranism, that is, its various 47 Theodore Engelder, “Review of Elert’s ‘Morphologie des Luthertums,’” Concordia Theological Monthly 3 (1932): 668. While Engelder appreciated Elert’s retrieval of the proper distinction between the law and the gospel and the centrality of justification by faith alone, he was very critical of Elert’s rejection of the verbal inspiration of the Bible (ibid., 671 – 74; cf. idem, “Review of Elert’s ‘Schrift und Bekenntnis,’” Concordia Theological Monthly 8 [1937]: 738 – 40). 48 See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 13 vols., trans. Geoffrey Bromiley et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956 – 69), 2.1:837. Of course Barth himself was not free of “morphologizing” the Reformed tradition in the small print sections of his dogmatics. See Church Dogmatics, 1.1:65, 88 – 89, 416 – 19; 1.2:546 ff.; 2.1:27 – 29; etc. In several of Sasse’s letters to pastors, he had criticized Elert for falsely combining dogmatic and historical points of view into a homogeneous thought structure. 49 While Engelder thought Elert used the phrase evangelischer Ansatz synonymously with “the doctrine of justification,” Hansen translated it as “the impact of the gospel,” a rendering that is quite inadequate, as he himself partly acknowledged (SL, xix). “Gospel starting point” or “Gospel point of departure” or even “grounding in the gospel” are better alternatives. In this essay the phrase will be left untranslated or translated in one of these ways. Unfortunately, Hansen’s translation suffers from other serious defects; for example, he mistranslates Schicksal almost always as “destiny,” even though Elert himself stated that Schicksal is distinct from “destiny” (Geschick), a concept that is “purely subjective” (see LLA, sections 4 – 5). Schicksal is best translated as “lot” (in the sense of a “lottery”) or “one’s lot in life,” since the “chance” element is most important. See note 18 above.

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historical developments and cultural instances. The “Morphe” more or less received its “form” from the evangelischer Ansatz. According to Elert, then, the evangelischer Ansatz becomes the basic stance for evaluating the totality of historical forms (Gestalt) that have arisen from the Lutheran dynamic or that have distorted it. As he traced the weakening and strengthening of this dynamic, he attempted to show how Luther’s original evangelical Ansatz, the proper distinction between the law and the gospel, was genuinely developed in the early confessional writings of the sixteenth century, partly sharpened and partly distorted by Melanchthon, partly renewed and partly distorted in the Formula of Concord, and significantly distorted in the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy, the last time the “great constant” of Lutheranism could be seen clearly. Contrary to Karl Holl (1866 – 1926) and his students, Elert emphasized the fundamental unity between Luther’s theology (early and late) and the Lutheran Confessions and the frequent disunity between Luther/Confessions and later doctrinal developments. While Elert was especially concerned to criticize Calvin and the Reformed tradition, including the important works of Ernst Troeltsch (1865 – 1923) and of Max Weber (1864 – 1920), his study stands on its own as a powerful and unique interpretation of Lutheranism. Volume One, which appeared in 1931, is divided into three parts: The evangelischer Ansatz, Dogma and Church, and Worldview (Weltanschauung). The evangelischer Ansatz encompasses a theological understanding of human existence, first as the experience of the wrath of God (the experience of Schicksal and guilt, law and sin, angst, Anfechtungen, death), and then the experience of the gospel (justification by faith, reconciliation, election in Christ, the mystical union, eternal life). Particularly poignant is Elert’s description of Luther’s “primal experience” (Urerlebnis), the terrifying encounter of human beings with “the hidden God” (deus absconditus), which also served as a point of connection with “the generation” of the First World War. Essential to this presentation are Luther’s 1534 interpretation of Psalm 90, his dread of the hidden, angry God, his fear of the idea of predestination, and his understanding of the bondage of the will (De servo arbitrio). The divine law reveals the primal experience to be the result of God’s judgment against the sinner. When, however, it is also announced that God declares that sinner to be a righteous person on account of Christ, the one so declared now stands before a second divine judgment (ML 1:56; SL 62). The one who decides to accept this second judgment is the person of faith: [Faith] puts itself into direct opposition to the position forced on human beings by the primal experience… [Faith] hears that God calls the sinner righteous in spite of the fact that the sinner is and remains a sinner, that he makes alive in spite of the fact that he kills. The unconditional acknowledgment of this judgment of God’s is faith’s mediation. It is unconditional because it keeps itself free from all conditionality of human judgment, therefore also from the knowledge it has gained in the primal experience. (ML 1:56; SL 63)

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So faith is indeed always “faith contrary to appearance” (ML 1:64; SL 72). Every appearance contradicts the fact that in Christ God shows and offers one his mercy. Thus the gospel does not merely bring new information; it actually creates a new relationship between God and those who hear and believe the gospel about Jesus Christ and his death. The goal of the gospel is “precisely victory over despair, and only the gospel is able to do this” (ML 1:127 – 28; SL 145; emphasis original). Chapter two then explicates Luther’s and Melanchthon’s respective understandings of justification by faith alone and how those understandings were distorted and undermined in later thinkers who attempted to provide a rational and/or moral basis for faith, predestination (election), good works, and the mystical union. Using Kantian language, Elert stated that for Luther justification concerns “the transcendental I” (das transzendentale Ich) and only secondarily “the empirical I” (see ML 1: 69 – 73, 124 – 33; SL 83 – 86, 140 – 53). The subjective experience of faith is subordinated in Luther to the transsubjective effectiveness of the word of the gospel.50 Gradually, the later dogmatic tradition (with its “order of salvation”) moved away from Luther’s profound insight that before God, the individual with his conscience and faith is as a mathematical point (ML 1:72; SL 89ff), for “strictly speaking faith, which receives the righteousness of God, is outside of space and time” (ML 1:134; SL 153). By the end of the nineteenth century the evangelical Ansatz was in serious jeopardy in most respects, due to rationalistic and moralistic influences. Part two of volume one traces similar undulations in relation to Scripture, the dogmas of the Trinity and Person of Christ, the church, the sacraments, liturgy and adiaphora, ministry, and missions. For example, Elert’s analysis shows that the evangelical Ansatz made for a radically new understanding of the nature and purpose of Holy Scripture. The authority of Scripture is tied solely to the evangelical and historical content and focal point in the prophetic and apostolic witness to the incarnational reality of God in Christ. To attempt to go behind this content, to some additional act by which this content is guaranteed (for example, to the supposed verbal inspiration of the Bible or to the history “behind” the Bible by means of historical criticism), is to undermine the evangelical Ansatz by making this other act more basic and central. The final section of the first volume examines the relation between the evangelical Ansatz and the debates about “worldview” (Weltanschauung) in later Lutheranism. Against Troeltsch’s claim that Lutheranism was essentially 50 While Elert here stressed the transsubjective effectiveness of the word of the gospel, he remained very much a Lutheran Erfahrungstheologe. While justification is entirely a forensic, “extra nos” act in Elert’s theology (both early and later), the word of that act effectively speaks to individual human experience and makes a decisive difference in one’s self-understanding. Throughout the Morphologie, “the transsubjective” word and human experience are kept in close proximity.

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“medieval,” Elert carefully and polemically argued that the evangelical Ansatz, encompassing both the experience of the hidden God and the individual’s summons to faith and freedom in the world, is the heartbeat of authentic contemporary Christianity. While Elert’s analysis shows that Lutheranism— which began in a university—has been more open to secular learning than less dialectical forms of Christianity (see Luther’s break with the spatial conceptions of heaven in Zwingli and the Reformed tradition, which was quite significant for the history of Weltanschauungen), its dogmatic traditions have also unfortunately included much that is “helplessly enmeshed in a Weltanschauung that is at the brink of death and is struggling convulsively for air” (ML 1:356; SL 407). For example, if the teaching of Copernicus was fostered in universities in the domain of Lutheranism, as it surely was (see ML 1:374ff; SL 426ff), many of these same universities had Lutheran theologians who sought to develop an apologetic for “the biblical worldview,” that is, to criticize the Copernican theory (and later the Darwinian). “Here the Bible, which Luther read as law and gospel, had become a canon in the field of the natural sciences. But this defection from the evangelical Ansatz came too late to cast doubt on the great success the German Reformation achieved for the liberation of the natural sciences” (ML 1:377 – 78; SL 431).51 While Elert thus argued that authentic Lutheranism supported the essential independence of the sciences from theology, he also held that theology has a critical role over against all pretensions of human knowledge that seek self-justification before God. Then, too, one detects in this section the great joy that Elert had in extolling several of the good gifts that the Creator has given to his creation, such as laughter, friends, sex, art, music, poetry. Elert is at his stylistic best here. The second volume of the Morphologie, on the social teachings and social consequences of Lutheranism, serves as the fourth and concluding part of the project. It is divided into five sections, which are as rich in historical detail as those of volume one. Section one addresses “pragmatic and ethical principles” (Ansätze), which are consequences of the evangelical Ansatz. The focus is on such issues as the “pragmatic consequences of the Reformation” for church and state, “ethos and utopianism” (for example, Melanchthon’s “idealistic utopianism,” but also the issues of freedom, love, and service), the order of creation (understood as the relationship between “Schicksal and ethos”), and Luther’s understanding of Stände (“social standings” or “stations”), Beruf (“calling”), and Führertum (“leadership”). The other four sections indicate how the evangelical Ansatz was practically applied to marriage and the family, 51 See also Werner Elert, “Humanität und Kirche,” Zwischen Gnade und Ungnade: Abwandlungen des Themas Gesetz und Evangelium (München: Evangelischer Presseverband für Bayern, 1948), 92 – 113. In this 1947 essay Elert analyzed Melanchthon’s humanism, the openness of Wittenberg University to new disciplines (history, astronomy), and the Lutheran concern for academic freedom.

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nationality and nations, secular government, and “the economy and social stratification.” The historical trajectories that are presented run from Luther and the sixteenth century into the early twentieth century, and they cover all of the major “Lutheran” territories, including the Americas. The wealth of information that Elert included is truly astonishing, especially since much of it is otherwise difficult to obtain without visiting numerous archives and private libraries throughout Europe and elsewhere. Elert here extended his argument against Troeltsch and Weber by demonstrating that the Lutheran Ansatz alone provides the proper basis for the Christian life of free responsibility in the contemporary world. The Christian “ethos” (literally, “habit,” “custom,” “law,” and not merely “ethic”) is the result of this Ansatz, and all of the Christian responsibilities are shaped by it. 3. 1932 – 1940: Political Theology and Dogmatics The third period of Elert’s work, which commenced in 1932 with his assumption of the chair in systematic theology, was the most turbulent of his life, for it was in this period, while he worked on his dogmatics, that he wrote or co-wrote several controversial texts that addressed questions arising from within the post-1933 situation of the German churches and state. Even though he was never a member of the Nazi Party—he was a constitutional monarchist, at least until 1945—he publicly supported the regime of Hitler through the early 1940s, especially against those who he thought were calling for political disobedience.52 This support is difficult to understand today in light of the 52 For analysis of Elert’s actions during and after the so-called Third Reich, see especially Helmut Baier, Die Deutschen Christen Bayerns im Rahmen des bayerischen Kirchenkampfes (Nürnberg: Selbstverlag des Vereins für bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 1968), 97 – 102; idem, Kirche in Not: Die bayerische Landeskirche im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Neustadt/Aisch: Degener & Co., 1979); Gerhard Besier, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich (Berlin: Econ Ullstein List, 2001), 519, 561, 905, 914, 1065; Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie, 160 – 70; idem, “In Sachen Althaus/Elert: Einspruch gegen Berndt Hamm,” Homiletisch-Liturgische Korrespondenzblatt (1990 – 1991): 153 – 172; Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler, 87 – 9; Thomas Gerlach, Verborgener Gott—Dreieiniger Gott, 226 – 37; Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews, trans. Victoria Barnett (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 12 – 44; Richard Gutteridge, The German Evangelical Church and the Jews 1879 – 1950 (Blackwell, 1976), 91 – 151; Berndt Hamm, “Schuld und Verstrickung der Kirche,” Kirche und Nationalsozialismus, 2nd ed., ed. Wolfgang Stegemann (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992), 13 – 49; idem, “Werner Elert als Kriegstheologe,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 11 (1998): 206 – 54; Keller and Roth, “Werner Elert,” 23 – 26; Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 142 – 84; Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, vol. 2, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 161 – 71; and Tratz, “Was ist geblieben?,” 7 – 25. Wolfgang Gerlach’s analysis is marred by several errors, for example, Althaus and Elert were members of the Erlangen faculty, and Elert’s pre1933 writings do not clearly indicate an “enthusiastic” nationalism which, in any case, must be distinguished from National Socialism. Gerlach and Gutteridge do not refer to Elert’s criticism of Nazi ideology or to his anti-Nazi actions after 1938. More balanced interpretations of Elert’s

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evils that transpired during the so-called Third Reich. Hitler’s public appeal to traditional “German” values, his opposition to “the immoralities” of Weimar culture, his complaint against the injustice of the Versailles peace, his German nationalism and militarism, and the economic measures he took to curtail rampant inflation and to improve the infrastructure of the nation, undoubtedly made him an attractive figure to Elert in 1933 – 36. Even Hitler’s antiSemitism apparently did not trouble him too much, since he, like nearly all other German theologians of this time, held a theologically grounded polemical position over against Judaism that contained German-völkisch elements.53 This perspective is clearly evident in the Gutachten (“formal counsel”) that he and Althaus prepared in the fall of 1933 to address the socalled “Aryan Paragraph,” a national law passed on April 7, 1933, which purged all “non-Aryans” from civic (including church and university) offices.54 This law was fiercely debated but eventually adopted at the Prussian General Synod in early September, 1933, mainly through the political maneuvering of the Deutsche Christen (DC), those Christians who sought to purify the state church and order it along racist, anti-Semitic, Nazi-Aryan lines. While the DC left no doubt that they would work to enforce the introduction of the Aryan Paragraph within the state church, Elert and Althaus asserted that baptism makes both Jew and Gentile full members of the body of Christ. Nonetheless, the Gutachen also stresses that the Evangelical Church in Germany is a church of and for the German people/nation (Volk). Implicit here is the anti-Semitic assumption that Jews are not and cannot be Germans or full members of the German nation. Because pastors of Jewish descent would cause “a heavy burden and hindrance” “in the present situation,” the Gutachten counsels that for the time being the church should obey the government and limit its offices to non-Jews, even though Christians of Jewish actions are provided by Beyschlag, Hamm, Loewenich, Scholder, and Tratz. Unfortunately, Beyschlag does not adequately acknowledge that some of Elert’s writings do contain nationalist, anti-Semitic language. Handwritten sermons from as late as 1941 or 1942 reveal Elert’s support for Hitler even though, as Loewenich stresses, Elert (unlike Althaus) was mostly concerned with positive obedience to the state government as an order of creation, rather than concerned with purifying “the Volk.” 53 Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler, 4 (and the sources he cites on p. 201 [endnote 8]). For evidence that even the early Bonhoeffer had ambivalent thoughts and feelings about Judaism, see Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer : A Biography, rev. ed., trans. Victoria Barnett (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 119, 275 – 76. At Barmen, the only concern was the internal affairs of the church, not Nazi policy toward Jews. Sadly, the Confessing Church never formally spoke out about the persecution of the Jews under Hitler. By 1937 the Confessing Church was in disarray. See also Robert Ericksen and Susannah Heschel, eds., Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999). 54 Paul Althaus and Werner Elert, “Theologische Gutachten über die Zulassung von Christen jüdischer Herkunft zu den Ämtern der deutschen evangelischen Kirche,” Junge Kirche 1 (1933): 271 – 74 (reprinted in Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Außerungen zur Kirchenfrage des Jahres 1933, ed. Kurt Dietrich Schmidt [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934], 182 – 86).

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descent remain full and complete members of the church. Those of Jewish descent already serving in office should not be removed, especially if such removal would damage the particular ministry, but if there were insurmountable differences between pastor and congregation then the pastor should be removed or reassigned. Despite their anti-Semitic prejudices in the early 1930s, both Elert and Althaus also criticized the Deutsche Christen. Although the title of Elert’s 1934 pamphlet, Bekenntnis, Blut und Boden (“Confession, Blood and Soil”), suggests that it was nothing but a piece of Nazi or DC propaganda, it actually was in part an attack on Nazi and DC ideology as well as a critical response to Barth and the Barmen Declaration.55 In his preface Elert made clear that he opposed the racist ideology of the DC, just as he also opposed what he considered the theological errors of Barmen. Even though “blood” and “soil” are inescapable and determinative of human identity and relationships/ responsibilities (family, race, nation, historical situation), Elert argued that they are nonetheless radically changed for faith, through the gospel of the new creation in Christ. Thus “confession” of the gospel supplants “blood and soil.” Although Elert provided theological reasons for obedience to the state, and to that German government in particular, he also clearly separated the mission and tasks of the church from those of the state, contrary to DC efforts to combine the two into a form of theocracy. He thus argued for the independence of a confessing church in a secular state and he joined his colleagues in protesting against the proposed union of the Bavarian territorial church with the Reich Church.56 A further example of his anti-DC position is the theological Gutachten that he, Althaus, and four other theologians published in July of 1936, which clearly condemns the DC for holding “a false understanding of the essence of the church” that is inconsistent with the Scriptural and Confessional gospel of Jesus Christ.57 55 Werner Elert, Bekenntnis, Blut und Boden: Drei theologische Vorträge (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1934). According to Trillhaas, “When, during the so-called Third Reich, several times he chose titles for his shorter writings from the most outrageous Nazi slogans (e. g., Confession, Blood and Soil, 1934), there were many factors bound together : camouflage, enticing the reader’s curiosity, a practical joke, and, at the same time, the desire to reach some elusive reader in order to instruct him” (Trillhaas, “Konservative Theologie und moderne Welt,” 42 – 43). See Green, “The Relationship of Werner Elert and America,” 77. 56 See “Die Erlanger Fakultät an den Reichsstatthalter Ritter von Epp: Erklärung vom 13. 10. 1934,” Allgemeine evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 67 (1934): 993 – 96. Elert also criticized the church politics of Reichsbishop Ludwig Müller and, together with 118 college professors, demanded the latter’s resignation. See “Telegramm von 118 Hochschullehrern an den Reichsbischof vom 5. 11. 1934,” Allgemeine evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 67 (1934): 1076 – 77; “Antwort der theologischen Fakultäten an den Reichsbischof (ca. Ende November 1934),” Allgemeine evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 67 (1934): 1143 ff. Elert’s theological position is completely misrepresented by Arthur Cochrane, The Church’s Confession under Hitler (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962); and Wolfgang Tilgner, Volksnomostheologie und Schöpfungsglaube (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 201 – 11. 57 Paul Althaus, Rudolf Bultmann, Werner Elert, Friedrich Gogarten, et al., “Theologisches Gut-

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If in this period Elert opposed the DC with the gospel, he opposed Barth and Barmen with the law.58 Most significant for Elert was Barmen’s first thesis: Jesus Christ, as he is witnessed to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we must hear and to whom we must give trust and obedience in life and in death. We reject the false teaching, that the church could and should acknowledge as God’s revelation and source of her proclamation other events and powers, figures and truths, apart from or in addition to this one Word of God.59

In Elert’s view, this thesis is wrong since God addresses human beings with two words, the law and the gospel. As Elert had already demonstrated in LLA and ML, there is no such thing as an abstract concept of “revelation” or even “Word of God,” since the divine revelations are concrete and specific in the real dialectic of law and gospel. Thus the two-page “Ansbacher Ratschlag” (AR), which Elert and Althaus signed, attempted to clarify succinctly the nature of God’s revelations of law and gospel, although the majority of attention is given to the law. 60 While the unchanging gospel is entirely a word that is revealed in the word about Jesus Christ, the law contains both an unchanging element, namely, “the eternal will of God” (FC Ep. VI, 6), and a transitory/historical element that is affected by the natural and historical orderings/relationships achten über die Thüringer Richtung der DC,” Junge Kirche 1 (1936): 674 – 5 (reprinted in Baier, Die Deutschen Christen Bayerns, 519 – 20, here 519). This important Gutachten is not mentioned in Ericksen’s chapter on Althaus, Theologians Under Hitler, 79 – 119. While Elert opposed Bultmann’s program of de-mythologizing, he respected the famous Marburger, for example, they had a cordial dinner together when the latter gave a lecture in Erlangen. 58 See Robert Bertram, “Barmen and Bonhoeffer : An American Perspective” (paper presented to the Martin Luther Bund, Erlangen, February, 1992); Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie, 165 – 78; Eyjûlfsson, Rechtfertigung und Schöpfung, 23 – 43; Gerhard Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1969), 150 – 53; Albrecht Peters, “Barmer Theologische Erklärung und das Luthertum,” in Wolf-Dieter Hauschild et al., ed., Die lutherischen Kirchen und die Bekenntnissynode von Barmen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984), 319 – 59; idem, “Unter Gottes Heimsuchung—zum theologischen Vermächtnis Werner Elert,” Kerygma und Dogma 31 (1985), 250 – 92; idem, “Zwischen Gesetz und Evangelium: Werner Elert: Ein Versuch, ihn zu Verstehen,” Lutherische Monatsheft 24 (1985): 553 – 57; Reinhard Ritter, ed., Barmen und das Luthertum (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1984); and Ronald Thiemann, “A Conflict of Perspectives: The Debate between Karl Barth and Werner Elert” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976), 52 – 89. 59 “The Barmen Declaration,” Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äusserungen zur Kirchenfrage, ed. Karl Dietrich Schmidt, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1935), 93. 60 Werner Elert and Paul Althaus, “Der ‘Ansbacher Ratschlag’ zu der Barmer ‘Theologischen Erklärung,’” Allgemeine evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 67 (June 11, 1934): 584 – 86 (reprinted in Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen zur Kirchenfrage, vol. 2, ed. Kurt Dietrich Schmidt [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1935], 102 – 4; hereafter abbreviated AR). This statement was originally prepared by Pastor Hans Sommerer, then slightly modified by Elert and Althaus, and finally signed by them and six other Bavarian Lutheran pastors, four of whom were from the city of Ansbach. This group thus called itself “the Ansbach Circle” and named its document after the first “Ansbacher Counsel,” a 1524 text of twenty-three “articles in the form of questions” that gave the first impetus toward the formation of the Lutheran Confessions.

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which situate and define human life. Because the law of God obligates human beings to be responsible before God, and yet human beings are sinners, the law accuses every human being of sin (usus theologicus legis; cf. Apol. IV, 38, 58, 128 [“the law always accuses; it always shows that God is angry”], 179). This word of the law is not ahistorical or atemporal, however, since it binds human beings to the “natural orders” of family, race, state/people (Volk), and historical circumstance, and enjoins people to be responsible before God in those relationships. While these “orders of creation” are in fact distorted by sin and evil, they are not thereby totally destroyed: As Christians we honor each order [Ordnung] with thanks before God, also each governing authority, even in its deformation [Entstellung], as an instrument of divine development [Entfaltung], but also as Christians we distinguish between kind leaders and wayward ones, and between healthy orders and deformed ones. In this knowledge, we as believing Christians thank God, the Lord, that he has given to our people [Volk] in their need the Führer as “a pious and faithful sovereign,” and that he wants to prepare for us in the National-Socialistic order of the state “good government,” a government with “discipline and honor.” Accordingly, we know that we are responsible before God to assist the work of the Führer in our calling [Beruf] and in our station [Stand] in life. (AR 103; cf. section 51 [“Community of Law”] in LLA)

Elert and Althaus thus utilized Luther’s explanation of the Fourth Petition in the Small Catechism to support their argument that the Hitler regime was a legitimate order with its own responsibilities. The irony here, of course, is that neither Elert nor Althaus could hardly admit that the Weimar Republic was “a good government!” Because of Barmen’s silence about the law, Elert accused the Confessing Church of perpetrating “a repetition of the antinomian teaching from the time of the Reformation.” 61 He stressed that the law has an indispensable function within the preaching of the church, since the knowledge of sin, the presupposition for the gospel, only comes through the revelation of the law (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16). While he did not think a positive bridge existed between “culture” and the gospel, and for this reason he cannot be accused of establishing a neo-Protestant “natural theology,” he did think God’s law was operative through “the natural and historical orders” to intensify rebellion against God. With biting sarcasm Elert described these “orders” as “the books” that Barth forbade the Christian “to read.” While apart from faith one may only form hypotheses about these situations, Elert held that in the perspective of faith, under the law and the gospel, one may “read” them with insight: God has written “the book of nature,” the Bible touches on “the book of history,” and many biblical texts (Mark 13:7; 1 John 2:18) refer to a 61 Werner Elert, “Confessio Barmensis,” Allgemeine evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 67 (1934): 603.

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historical moment or situation.62 Thus God’s revelations of law and gospel are always actualized and directed to specific, concrete human beings in specific situations. Against Barth’s “positivism of revelation,” Elert asserted: What human weakness is, what sin is, what guilt is, what law is, what one’s relation to the past is, what divine hiddenness is, what divine wrath and judgment are, what the sovereignty of God is, what divine providence and divine retribution are, what doubt and despair are—one does not learn these matters from books.63

Human experience is what it is, apart from divine revelation. Still, Elert also insisted that the radical antithesis between the law and the gospel reveals a two-fold judgment of God toward human beings, all of whom are sinners, and that apart from this two-fold judgment human beings could neither identify the wrath of God for what it is nor experience true consolation from the gospel. Hence his theology seeks to be realistic toward both human experience (including especially Anfechtungen) and the divine justice that defies human rationality (especially in view of human suffering and evil). One may not blithely invoke Christ’s lordship over all reality without in some way doing a disservice to the depths of the human situation before “the hidden God.” Christian theology must address itself to the experiences and realities that mark the fallen character of human existence, since the Christian kerygma itself is a message of God’s response to human need and thus is the answer to those experienced realities. “With all soberness, one must say : [Elert’s] was a theology of suffering.”64 His was “a theology of Anfechtungen in the sense of Luther, which forms the counterpart to Luther’s theology of the cross.”65 Needless to say, Elert and Althaus met with opposition from some members of the Confessing Church. The criticism against them intensified when it became clear that their writings were being co-opted by the Deutsche Christen for goals that neither Elert nor Althaus shared. By September, 1934, both authors had officially withdrawn from the Ansbach Circle, had distanced themselves from the “Ansbacher Ratschlag,” and had become more outspoken in their criticism of the DC, even as they continued their theological criticism of Barmen and defended the Hitler regime against attack on the basis of their reading of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2.66 Elert’s last public attempt at addressing the responsibilities of Christians in Germany, regarding that particular 62 Werner Elert, Karl Barths Index der verbotenen Bücher (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1935), 7. 63 Ibid., 20. 64 Wolfgang Trillhaas, “Zum Geleit,” in Der christliche Glaube, by Werner Elert, 6th ed. (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag, 1988), 4. 65 Maurer, “In memoriam Professor D. Dr. Werner Elert,” 379. 66 See the preface to Bekenntnis, Blut und Boden, where Elert explicitly disavowed the interpretation and utilization of the AR by the DC. For Elert’s withdrawal from the Ansbach Circle, see Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, 252. See also Werner Elert, Die Herrschaft Christi und die Herrschaft von Menschen (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1936), 17 – 24.

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German government, was his 1937 pamphlet, Der Christ und der völkische Wehrwille.67 The theological-political stance that Elert took in the 1930s is deeply troublesome, to say the least.68 Although he actively worked against the infiltration of Nazism and the Deutsche Christen at Erlangen, he remained silent in face of other anti-Semitic actions on the part of the Nazis. While he may have been privately critical of Hitler, his understanding and application of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2, and his understanding of the orders of creation, prevented him from openly criticizing a regime he had come to deplore by the end of the war. In his view at that time, the order of the state is a rather static, authoritarian structure that is largely beyond criticism by individuals and smaller groups. He thus lacked a sufficient theological basis on which to level legitimate criticism—and even to engage in political resistance—against a government when it perpetrates evil actions. He was incapable of clarifying how individual Christians and groups of Christians and others could level legitimate criticism or take action when “the larger circles” of “the blood community” oppress and no longer “strengthen the life of the smaller circles which they contain,” since the “true life of humanity is possible only if the peculiar life of the races and the nations contained within it is unimpaired” (LLA 84). After the war he regretted that it had taken him so long to recognize that “from the upheaval of that time [1933] an irrational Cäsarismus had developed.”69 The deaths of his own sons and the sons of five other theology colleagues also had their effect.70 The Allies forced him to go through a period of de-Nazification, although he was quickly exonerated. His case was undoubtedly helped by his public condemnation of the ideology of the DC, his refusal to participate in the Reich Church government, and his protection of forty to fifty students who, according to Nazi policy, should have been expelled from the university for reasons of race and politics. Finally, one needs to note that after the war he publicly acknowledged his sins and errors of judgment in the 1930s. “I know that I made many wrong turns. I also know that I am guilty before God in entirely other ways.”71 His expression of personal 67 Werner Elert, Der Christ und der völkische Wehrwille (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1937). See also another essay from the same year, “Die Lutherische Kirche im neuen Reich,” Luthertum 4 (1937): 33 – 46. 68 I am grateful to my colleague, Mark Schwehn, for helping me to think more carefully about Elert’s political theology. 69 Elert, “Unter Anklage,” Korrespondenzblatt für die evangelische-lutherische Geistlichen in Bayern 65 (1950): 56. 70 See the very personal expression of grief over the deaths of his sons in “Philologie der Heimsuchung,” Zwischen Gnade und Ungnade, 9 – 16. 71 Ibid., 56. For his discussion of “personal guilt” and “collective guilt,” see also “Paulus und Nero,” Zwischen Gnade und Ungnade, 50 – 51. Thomas Gerlach does not find in these writings a true expression of remorse or a genuine confession of guilt, but instead a plea for sympathy. See Gerlach, Verborgener Gott—Dreieiniger Gott, 233 – 34. For a contrary interpretation by an eye-

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guilt and responsibility, which was not easy for the head-strong theologian to make, is rather remarkable when one considers that most of those who were directly involved in the mass killing of Jews denied their personal responsibility and complicity in the Holocaust. That he also modified his understanding of “the orders of creation” indicates he recognized the deeply problematic character of his earlier formulations. (He also acknowledged that Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 need to be understood in their context—one that also includes reference to Revelation 13 and the demonic corruption of the orders—and not simply applied with little critical reflection in contemporary political situations.) While one may not excuse or exonerate him for what he did and did not do in this time, these additional factors need to be accounted for in any effort to understand and evaluate this particular “theologian under Hitler.”72 The major work to come out of these turbulent years was Der christliche Glaube, which Althaus called “the first great contradiction… against the theology of Barth from the Lutheran side.”73 The first edition appeared in 1940 and the second one a year later.74 Although it is explicitly identified as a “Lutheran” dogmatics, and this is especially clear in its discussion of law and gospel, the person of Christ, and the Lord’s Supper, it freely draws upon theologians throughout the Christian tradition.75 The 700–page work is divided into one section of prolegomena and seven main sections of dogmatics proper. After the introductory section on the nature and purpose of theology and dogmatics, Elert addressed (in order): “The Self-understanding of Human Beings under the Hiddenness of God,” “The Basis of the Church’s Kerygma,”

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witness and participant, see Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 182 – 84. See also Keller and Roth, “Werner Elert,” 23 – 26; and Peters, “Werner Elert,” 497. Interestingly, after the war Elert joined a liberal political party. See Trillhaas, “Konservative Theologie und moderne Welt,” 44. Another significant document that relates to this issue is his official report to his department about his actions as dean between 1935 and 1943. This 15–page report, dated August 15, 1945, is included as an appendix in Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie, 268 – 286. In it Elert stressed the anti-DC actions of himself and the faculty. Althaus, “Werner Elerts theologische Werke,” 406. Werner Elert, Der christliche Glaube: Grundlinien der lutherischen Dogmatik (Berlin: FurcheVerlag, 1940; 2nd ed., 1941; 3rd – 6th ed., ed. Ernst Kinder, 1955 – 1988; ET of 5th ed., The Christian Faith: An Outline of Lutheran Dogmatics, trans. Martin Bertram and Walter Bouman [Columbus: Lutheran Theological Seminary, 1974]). At the time of his death, Elert was in the process of revising the second edition. His hand-written revision of chapter one (“On the Historical Place of the Given Task”) is included as an appendix to later editions. Kinder removed many of those phrases that sounded racist and nationalist. Unfortunately Bertram and Bouman do not include the bibliographies (some exhaustive) that begin the subsections of each chapter. Unless otherwise specified, all citations are from the second German edition, abbreviated as CG, and cross-referenced to the English translation, which is abbreviated as CF. The section on the Lord’s Supper from Bertram’s translation was published as The Lord’s Supper Today (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1973).

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“God in Himself,” “God and World,” “Reconciliation,” “The Change in Existence” (Der Existenzwandel), and “The Last Things.”76 According to Elert, the goal of Christian dogmatics is “to establish” for the present situation of the church “the mandatory content of the church’s preaching” (den Sollgehalt des kirchlichen Kerygma festellt; CG 34; CF 14). This required content is not identical to the content of Scripture, since Scripture contains material that is inessential to the church’s contemporary preaching (for example, Jude 9; biblical cosmology), nor is it the result of a coercive understanding of “faith” (faith as a set of beliefs that must be believed).77 Rather, this mandatory content, the sine qua non element in the church’s preaching, is that which must be present in the kerygma in order to make it Christian kerygma. While dogma about Christ does not get proclaimed, dogma specifies the essential content of the kerygma for it to be good news about Jesus Christ, about whom the canonical Scriptures and all gospel confessors freely bear witness. The task of theology, then, is to find that point within the substantive content of Scripture at which it “confronts contemporary human beings most immediately with the reality of its subject matter” (CG 33; CF 11), and to ward off misunderstandings.78 Thus, going beyond Schleiermacher’s pragmatic goal of “training church leaders,” Elert thought that dogmatics must also keep one eye critically focused on the church’s received dogmas and one eye focused on the contemporary person who is “by nature without faith.” While Christian dogmatics ought not demolish the content of the church’s proclamation, as perhaps occurred in Strauss’s Glaubenslehre, it must at all times “place the church into a position of being questioned,” that is, it must question both the church’s own received dogmatic teachings and engage the questions which arise from an unbelieving world. Along the way, dogmatics serves the church and the other disciplines of theology by “differentiating between the important and the unimportant” and by “organizing the results of all the other disciplines into a systematic whole” (CG 37; CF 13). Nonetheless, similar to Hofmann’s approach, Elert too maintained that the subject matter of theology alone establishes it as a university discipline, not its method, although dogmatics must have methodological logicality (CG 58; CF 26). Elert’s starting point in human experience once again reveals his deep connection with the older Erlangen tradition and his diastasis with Barth.79

76 This final section of Bertram’s translation was published as Last Things (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1974). 77 For a good summary of Elert’s understanding of the nature and purpose of Holy Scripture, see Rudolf Keller, “Erinnerung an Werner Elert,” Jahrbuch des Martin Luther-Bundes 26 (1979): 9 – 26. 78 See especially Michael Roth, “Hermeneut der Gegenwart? Werner Elerts Versuch, ‘mit dem Gegenwartsmenschen zu verhandeln,’” Mit dem Menschen verhandeln, 155 – 74. 79 See Tobias Claudy, “Dilemma oder Gelassenheit? Weiterführende Gedanken zur an-

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Contrary to the latter’s position, which reversed the order of “law and gospel,” Elert maintained the temporal-ontological priority of the law, especially since this reveals the true nature of human experience apart from Christ.80 This revelation is not gracious, since it is a revelation of the wrath of God and of judgment. Apart from Christ the experience of human beings is inescapably marked by fear, anxiety, pride, dread, and the forces of Schicksal. This Christless understanding shows such people at best to be in relation to the deus absconditus (the hidden God). The conclusion of this first section is therefore two-fold: “First, every possible human self-understanding is dealing always and only with the hidden God. Second, one cannot love this hidden God” (CG 133; CF 68). The second dogmatic section, “The Basis of the Church’s Kerygma,” provides the salutary divine response to the human situation under the hiddenness of God. Here the analysis begins with the gospel, which is the organizing principle of the entire dogmatics, then proceeds to sharpen the antithesis between the law and the gospel, and then turns to the historical Jesus and the apostolic witness to Jesus as found in Holy Scripture. While the purpose of the law is to deprive human beings of every excuse before God and to make them guilty (“to reveal the wrath of God”), the gospel presupposes the law and stands in opposition to it. Whereas apart from Christ the law makes sin “recognizable” and even “powerful” (Rom. 1:18; 3:20; 5:20; 7:7; 1 Cor. 15:56), through the gospel about the crucified Christ, the accusations of the law are brought to an end (Rom. 10:4). While Christ is subject to the law, even unto the law of death, and though some of his statements actually intensify the power of the law, he has an ultimate authority over it. By forgiving people their sins, and especially by dying as a condemned sinner and being raised from the dead, he overcomes the law’s most devastating power, the order of death. This sharp distinction between the law and the gospel is the organizing principle of Elert’s entire dogmatic presentation. One finds it in his chapters on Holy Scripture, the triune God, creation, the person and work of Jesus, the Lord’s Supper, the church, Baptism, and the Last Things. For example, “a doctrine of God ‘per se’ is just as impossible as a recognition of God ‘per se’ is, because there is no revelation of God ‘per se.’ God is only revealed as law or as gospel, and accordingly we recognize God only as we are struck by the one or the other. Gospel and law speak of God only in relation to his creatures. Consequently, the church can proclaim nothing else about him either” (CG thropologischen Grundlegung in Werner Elerts Dogmatik,” Mit dem Menschen verhandeln, 27 – 50; and Slenczka, Selbstkonstitution und Gotteserfahrung, 254 – 265. 80 See Karl Barth, “Gospel and Law,” God, Grace and Gospel, trans. James Strathearn McNab (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 3 – 27. Barth’s dogmatics is shaped by this perspective on “gospel and law.” For example, each Christologically-shaped section concludes with an appropriate ethical exhortation that is grounded in the Decalogue.

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241; CF 129). While this conclusion contradicts the Thomistic emphasis on God’s “simplicity” and “unity,” Elert held that the biblical testimony is clear : the self-witness of God is divided in itself and this antithesis between wrath and grace is brought to a head in Christ. The only means for overcoming it is “to believe against it,” since “the reality of God’s wrath, which expresses itself in the order of death, cannot be thought away. It is necessary to believe against it, not as against a false notion, but against the darkness of the deus absconditus, which is attested by death in us and round about us as a horrible reality” (CG 281 – 82; CF 153). While “here we become impressively aware of the anthropomorphism of all human speech about God,” it is unavoidable. In view of God’s self-witness “we can by no means evade the thought of thisbeing-against-one-another [Widereinandersein]. We can only try to restrict the anthropopathos as much as possible, lest we forget the other moments of the divine self-witness over it” (CG 283; CF 154). Because the justification of the sinner is a forensic act—although the person who receives the word of justification in faith “is cut to the heart” (CG 153; CF 78)—the Christian remains under the conflict between the law and the gospel throughout her life. Daily she is called to turn from the law and be oriented to the gospel, to believe against appearances (CG 466 – 78, 488ff). In this respect, faith is always a risk: “All postulates of God are and remain mere question marks. Not even the forgiveness of sins can be postulated. But for faith it exists. For this reason only faith also knows about the power of the personal God over the world and Schicksal” (ML 1:363; SL 414).

4. 1940 – 1949: Ethics In the immediate post-war years, Elert completed his ethics, which provides his most complete theological anthropology.81 His dogmatics and Das christliche Ethos together form a larger project, which is itself a sequel to The Outline and the historical-systematic analysis in the Morphologie. While the dogmatics represents his contemporary restatement of the first two parts of The Outline and volume one of the Morphologie, Das christliche Ethos represents his contemporary restatement of the ethics he had outlined in the final part of The Outline and described historically in volume two of the Morphologie. While dogmatics and ethics do not form a unified systematic whole, they do have a close relationship since their materials form sectors of 81 Werner Elert, Das christliche Ethos (Tübingen: Furche-Verlag, 1949; 2nd ed., ed. Ernst Kinder, 1961; ETof the first edition, The Christian Ethos, trans. Carl J. Schindler [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957]). All citations are from the second German edition, abbreviated as CE, and crossreferenced with the English translation that is abbreviated TCE. Schindler’s translation does not include Elert’s extensive bibliographical references. Most of Elert’s footnotes are truncated and in some cases even eliminated.

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the same circle. As in the dogmatics, the ethics is also oriented to the gospel in opposition to the law.82 For Elert an “ethos” is the character or quality that a person has by virtue of God’s verdict about that person. Although this quality or character is related to specific and concrete human actions, Christian ethics is not primarily about the question, “What should I do?” While no Christian theologian “wants to deny the validity of the divine law” or even “the obligations that human law places upon a Christian,” “the normative character of theological ethics must rest upon other foundations” (CE 22; TCE 5). For Elert this other basis is “the quality of the human according to divine judgment” (CE 24; TCE 7), and this judgment is two-fold, the law and the gospel. Thus Christian ethics “must approach its subject from” these two directions, if it is to be faithful to the Christian kerygma. Apart from this two-fold kerygma, which shapes the mandatory content of the church’s preaching, there can be no Christian ethos (CE 34; TCE 15). Thus Elert divided The Christian Ethos into two main parts, “ethos under the law” and “ethos under the gospel.” Both of these parts analyze the ethos of the Christian as an individual. A third part, “objective ethos,” provides an analysis of what Elert called “the ethos of the community,” the ethos of the church as something other than the totality of its members, that is, as a Christian Gesamtheit (also in relation to other historical forces, such as secular governments).83 Ethos under the law is the quality of one’s existence by virtue of God’s word of law about that person. It has three valences: God as Creator/Preserver of the world, apart from Christ—although the person and work of Christ are presupposed in this section and throughout the book (cf. CE 36 – 37; TCE 17), God as Legislator, and God as Judge. While one does not fully recognize the severity of God’s judgment against the sinner under the law “until Christ 82 For a helpful summary of the relation between dogmatics and ethics in the theology of Elert, see Edward Schroeder, “The Relationship between Dogmatics and Ethics in the Thought of Elert, Barth, and Troeltsch,” Concordia Theological Monthly 36 (1965): 744 – 71. I am grateful to Prof. Schroeder for helping me to think more carefully about Elert’s ethics. For a comparison of Elert’s ethics with Bonhoeffer’s, see Franklin Sherman, “The Problem of a ‘Trinitarian’ Social Ethic” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1961). Sherman concludes that “[e]mployment of the doctrine of creation does not necessarily imply uncritical acceptance of the social status quo or of the dominant cultural values: it may be used, especially when complemented by a doctrine of the fall, to support a program of ‘diastasis’ from culture, as we have seen in Elert. On the other hand, an insistence on a strictly Christological approach does not necessarily require positing an utter discontinuity between that which is Christian and that which is generally human; indeed, it may result in a most intimate alliance between Christianity and humanism,” as in Bonhoeffer’s theology (207 – 8). 83 Schindler fails to include 23 lines that appear at the end of section three in the German edition (CE 39 – 40). These sentences make clear the intent of “the objective ethos.” Other serious errors mar Schindler’s translation, too numerous to state here in full. Suffice it to say, almost every page contains infelicities, inaccuracies, deletions, and even additions that are nowhere to be found in the original text. Schindler has frequently obscured Elert’s train of logic by running paragraphs into each other and then inexplicably breaking up other paragraphs.

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becomes the companion of the sinner,” God’s condemnatory judgment precedes the announcement of his forgiveness, and so ethos under the law is the logical starting point for the Christian ethos. This section analyzes “the creature,” “the law,” “the natural orders,” and “sin and guilt.” The law embraces both God’s creative and preservative activity through the natural orders (also entailing the imago dei 84), but also God’s legislative and judging action through the divine will (expressed in the Decalogue, the Christian law of love, and even “natural law”) and its retributive judgment against sin. Elert reflected on three different meanings of the word “order.” First is the Tatbestand, the factual situation of “order” into which one is born and situated, for example, the relationship of child to parent or care-giver. The second type is the order of time, for example, one person follows another or is placed in a different historical situation. And third is that of a directive, such as an order to follow traffic rules and regulations or a military command. While many theologians complained that the Erlangian “orders of creation” were mostly about the third type, Elert stressed that he was primarily interested in the first and the second types and only indirectly in the third. So with his focus primarily directed toward the first type of “order,” he examined the relation of the law to creation. “Nomos, law, is a category of orderliness which signifies a definite relationship of human beings to God but also to the total cosmos. Creation places a person into the world, nomos binds a person to the world” (CTE 51). In this context the law reveals that human existence is marked by lack of true fear and trust of God (AC II; Apol. II), pangs of conscience, and the awareness that these two realities are related. In this way human existence under the law (nomos) is “nomological existence,” even as it is conditioned and limited by historical, social, and interpersonal factors which elsewhere Elert had discussed cumulatively under the terms of “Schicksal,” “the orders of creation,” and human freedom. As noted above, Elert’s allowance for the serious corruption of the orders, especially of the state, marks an important shift from his earlier understanding (CE 165 – 67; TCE 122 – 23). “Every good order of God stands in danger of demonization” (CE 156; TCE 114). Given Elert’s conservative, martial past, one is surprised to read that he opposed the death penalty (CE 157; TCE 115). His explicit rationale entails reference to what transpired in prisons during the regime of Hitler. The central element in “ethos under grace” is the reconciliation that Christ has accomplished between God and sinners. This reconciliation has endowed the human ethos “with a new quality” (CE 236; TCE 177). While “ethos under the law” is always an “ethos unto death,” the encounter with Christ changes that ethos. For Christ comes into human life “as the friend of sinners” (Matt. 11:19; CE 242 – 49; TCE 182 – 88). As such, he is not a law-giver; he is 84 See especially the analysis by Sigurjûn 6rni Eyjûlfsson, “Werner Elerts Verständnis der Imago Dei,” Mit dem Menschen verhandeln, 51 – 70.

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rather a law-intensifier and then principally a law- and wrath-remover. Over against the law, he shows mercy (see the woman caught in adultery). In the socalled Sermon on the Mount, he intensifies the law beyond the Torah, yet he willingly joins sinners in solidarity with them, even to the point of suffering God’s judgment. Christ’s death reveals the deepest meaning of Melanchthon’s dictim, lex semper accusat (CE 96; TCE 67). “If by the judgment of God death is the result of guilt for all people, it is the same in the case of Christ. If in the death of Christ God’s judgment is executed upon all humankind, his death is the execution of God’s judgment upon every one of us” (CE 253; TCE 191). But though the divine law ultimately killed Jesus, his death resulted in the law itself being silenced (Eph. 2:15). His death has undone the old order that ends in death. Life and resurrection have now triumphed. “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19). In this section Elert moves from “the encounter with Christ” to an analysis of “the new creature,” “the new obedience,” and “the invisible struggle” between the old creature and the new. The person who hears and trusts the message of God’s forgiveness and life in Christ is fundamentally changed. God’s “second verdict” in Christ overcomes the first verdict. For the believer, the promise of forgiveness is the revelation of God’s grace and the concealment of God’s wrath. This turn-around, however, is only possible for the person who trusts the good news. Faith in the gospel is always faith against the first “verdict,” the verdict of death, faith against the law, against appearances, against the God of wrath and punishment. Thus the gospel always has the last word in Christian ethics. By being the last word, the gospel promise (not the medieval “law of Christ”) makes for Christian freedom. “Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified… Christ is the end of nomological existence and thereby also the originator of a new existence” (Rom. 10:4; CE 256; TCE 194). “If Jesus were simply a lawgiving ruler, the new ethos would be a mere continuation of nomological existence, of life under the law which is always a law of retribution” (CE 261; TCE 197). To be sure, Elert acknowledged that in the life of the Christian, the new ethos does not simply follow chronologically after the old one; rather, until death, these two are in conflict. In the life-long struggle between the old ethos and the new, the person of faith is summoned to a life of service, not by compulsion but by grace. Such summoning involves what Elert called “grace imperatives.” Against Calvin’s “first use of the law” (law as a rule for Christian life), Elert stressed the power of the Holy Spirit to make a new creature out of the old one. This new creature is marked by repentance and faith and obedience to the summons to live a life worthy of the gospel, no longer under the law but under grace. While each individual human being is and remains a creature of God unto death, the call of the gospel effects a fundamental change in this creaturehood. For example, “’Come unto me,’ says Christ. ‘Be reconciled to God,’ writes the apostle. These imperatives are not commands, not legal obligations but invitations” (CE 295; TCE 224). The same is true for the

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imperative of regeneration and the call to “growth in righteousness.” “The New Testament recognizes no state of perfection in the life of the Christian. It recognizes only a state of growth” (CE 296; TCE 225). As in his earlier outline of ethics, Elert’s second part includes analyses of Christian freedom, faith, willing obedience, and concrete love for others. The third part of The Christian Ethos spells out the nature and actions of the church as an “individual totality that is hidden” (Christ the Head and his Body, the church, the new corpus in the world), as well as “the sum total of all members of the church,” and thus focuses on the external acts of the church, for example, preaching and the administration of the sacraments, but also its acts of mercy in the world. Because of these actions, the collective ethos “retains its Christian character although it is practiced by hypocrites and selfseekers” (CE 453; TCE 347). After an analysis of the ethics of “the Christian community” as a whole, Elert analyzed the relation of the Church to the other forces at work in creation, including especially governmental powers. Once again he stressed the need for the church to recognize its appropriate responsibilities and to maintain its distinction from the power of the state. In this regard, however, the church has a responsibility over against the state: “In order to fulfill its mission, the church must proclaim the inviolability of God’s law, not as a rule of life but as a law of retribution. As far as the voice of the church will reach, it must remind the states that they stand in the service of this law and must exercise its protective function according to Romans 13” (CE 529; TCE 405; emphasis added). Elert’s analysis reveals that the retributive power of the law actually has a positive result for creation, namely, the preservation of order and the pursuit of justice. His analysis concludes with a summary of the Lutheran teaching about the two kingdoms, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the law, that remain in tension, though nonetheless distinct, until the eschaton. 5. 1950 – 1954: History of Dogma After the completion of his dogmatics and ethics, Elert entered the final phase of his work when he dedicated himself to the development of doctrine in the early church. (His interest was sparked, in part, by his concern that patristics had been almost entirely surrendered to Roman Catholic scholars, whose quite understandable apologetic interests had occasionally distorted their conclusions, but he also thought that contemporary Protestant theology and practice had become unhinged from the early church.) While in the immediate post-war years, he wrote shorter essays on such topics as Augustine as a “teacher of Christianity” and “Paul and Nero,”85 he also completed an 85 Werner Elert, “Augustin als Lehrer der Christenheit,” Ein Lehrer der Kirche: Kirchlich-theolo-

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investigation into the relation of the confession of faith and the practice of altar fellowship in the Eastern Church.86 In light of his research, he stressed that Holy Communion is not merely fellowship in the body of Christ; it also presupposes agreement in the essential content of the church’s kerygma, that is, what is constitutive of church unity. As a descriptive text, this little book provides invaluable insight into the doctrine and practice of the early church, but it cannot be accurately understood to reflect in its entirety Elert’s own dogmatic position on the Lord’s Supper. Even though eastern churches tied confessional orthodoxy and even church polity to eucharistic fellowship, Elert himself limited eucharistic fellowship solely to the confession of the mandatory and essential content of the church’s kerygma (“all the factors that sustain the church”). Significantly, Elert himself placed the locus on the Lord’s Supper after “the person of the reconciler” and “the work of the reconciler” in the fifth part of his dogmatics (“Reconciliation”). His reasons for doing so centered on the catholic and orthodox claim that what one confesses of Christ has implications for what one confesses of Christ’s Supper and vice versa. “It is precisely in the situation of the local congregation that the Lord’s Supper fulfills its function as synaxis [participation in Christ and Christ’s body, the church] most meaningfully,” a synaxis that depends solely on the Lord’s own call, work, and gift to make “of the many one body” (CG 480; Lord’s Supper Today, 47). Elert’s preliminary studies in the doctrine and practice of the early church prepared him to begin writing his final project, a history of Christian dogma. His goal was to demonstrate a progressive “unfolding” of church dogma that occurred as the original apostolic kerygma needed to be defended against attacks from within and without.87 He hoped his presentation of Dogmengeschichte would undermine, at least in part, the classic theses of Adolf von Harnack, Friedrich Loofs, and Reinhold Seeberg, and demonstrate that the development of doctrine in the early church was really a process of “dehellenizing” church doctrine, contrary to Harnack’s view. In Elert’s account, formal doctrine developed much more directly as a result of explicating the dogmatic content of the kerygma, on the basis of the interpretation of that content in Holy Scripture, than both Roman Catholic and liberal Protestant scholars had indicated. Similar to the older Erlangers, especially Gottfried Thomasius (1802 – 1875, at Erlangen from 1842), Elert held that the history of dogma is the church’s development of an originally undeveloped dogmatic gische Aufsätze und Vorträge von Werner Elert, ed. Max Keller-Hüschemenger (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1967), 174 – 183. 86 Werner Elert, Abendmahl und Kirchengemeinschaft in der alten Kirche, hauptsächlich des Ostens (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1954; 2nd. ed., 1984; ET of the 1st ed., Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries, trans. Norman Nagel [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1966]). 87 Werner Elert, Die Kirche und ihre Dogmengeschichte (München: Evangelischer Presseverband für Bayern, 1950).

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content that is itself bound to the apostolic kerygma. He hoped to show that the biblical witness to Christ provides the normative and the historic basis for the development of Christological dogma, and that the image of the finite, suffering Christ had supplanted the Greek metaphysical axioms of divine infinity and apatheia.88 In contrast to Nicholas of Cusa’s claim that “there is no relation, no analogy between the finite and the infinite,” Elert hoped to show that indeed the early church confessed the contrary position: Finitum capax infiniti, the theological principle that also relates to the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Altogether Elert had planned three parts for his history of doctrine in the early church. The first part was to be an exploration of three problems: the interaction between classical Greek metaphysics and ante-Nicene Christology, the significance of the apostolic picture of Christ (Christusbild) for the development of Christological dogma, and the extent to which the early church had addressed the modern question about the person and personality of Christ. The second part was to be an analysis of the Monothelite controversy, and the third was to be an investigation of the Christologies of Theodore of Pharan and Maximus Confessor. Unfortunately, Elert was only able to complete the first section of the third part before the ravages of cancer interfered with his work. This unfinished section was published posthumously.89 “It was a great loss that he did not live to fill one of the great needs of theological scholarship in our time, a new history of dogma, for which he was preparing.”90

Critical Issues While a detailed analysis of Elert’s theology is beyond the scope of this introductory essay, one ought to note briefly, by way of conclusion, a few important issues in his thought that deserve on-going, critical examination.91 88 See Volker Keding, “Wider das Apathieaxiom,” Mit dem Menschen verhandeln, 82 – 106. 89 Werner Elert, Der Ausgang der Altkirchlichen Christologie: Eine Untersuchung über Theodor von Pharan und seine Zeit als Einführung in die alte Dogmengeschichte, ed. Wilhelm Maurer and Elisabeth Bergsträsser (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1957). This is the only extensive, contemporary study of Theodore, who defended the Christological formulas of Cyril of Alexandria against the Monophysites. In addition to “The Church and Its History of Dogma,” the editors included as appendices several fragments of material that Elert had prepared before his death. 90 Pelikan, Foreword, The Structure of Lutheranism, ix. Pelikan himself, of course, undertook this task. 91 One indication of Elert’s abiding importance is the amount of analysis given to his theology in the eighteen-volume Handbuch Systematischer Theologie, edited by Carl Heinz Ratschow, a widely used series of textbooks for German theology students. Each of the volumes examines three to five theologians from the twentieth century and Elert is always among these. See especially Oswald Bayer, Theologie (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1994), 281 – 309; Ulrich Kühn,

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One central issue is the distinction between “the hidden God” and “the revealed God,” which also entails making the distinction between the law and the gospel, an activity that Luther thought defined the task of the theologian.92 This distinction, or set of distinctions, had been debated in Germany for nearly a century prior to Elert’s arrival at Erlangen, but he reinvigorated the discussion.93 For Elert human existence is not fully explored theologically until it is exposed as sin, as alienation from God, as under God’s condemnation. The psychological and sociological analyses that he thus provided in his work demonstrate the inescapable transcendent threat that ultimately confronts every human being. He sought to expose existential dread for what it truly is. In view of human Schicksal, human suffering, and evil, he also acknowledged that skepticism and atheism are live options that must be explored and understood for what they reveal about Christ-less human existence. “Schicksal,” one aspect of which he later came to develop under the rubrics of law and gospel as “affliction” (Heimsuchung), pushes one either to unbelief—or all the way to the cross of Christ. There is then for Elert the revelation of God’s wrath, which is revealed through the law and which human beings encounter in their daily lives. “This God, who holds us accountable for demands we cannot fulfill, who asks us questions we cannot answer, who created for us that which is good and, in spite of this, leaves no choice but to do that which is evil—this is the hidden God. It is the God of absolute predestination. It is the God who hardens the heart of Pharaoh and hates Esau before Esau was born, the potter who forms vessels that fill one with loathing—and, in spite of all this, thunders at these Kirche (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1980), 79 – 90; idem, Sakramente (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1985), 133 – 45; Christian Link, Schöpfungstheologie, 2 vols. (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1991), 1:183 – 222; Albrecht Peters, Gesetz und Evangelium (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1981), 166 – 87; idem, Rechtfertigung (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1984), 171 – 83; and Carl Heinz Ratschow, Jesus Christus (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1982), 65 – 82. 92 “Anyone who can properly distinguish the gospel from the law may thank God and know that he is a theologian” (WA 40/1, 207, 17; LW 26:115). For an insightful analysis of Elert’s and Althaus’s respective receptions of Luther’s distinction between the law and the gospel, as he defined that distinction in his 1535 Commentary on Galatians, see Jörg Kailus, Gesetz und Evangelium in Luthers Grossem Galaterkommentar sowie bei Werner Elert und Paul Althaus (Münster : Lit Verlag, 2004). Kailus confirms that Luther only spoke of a two-fold use of the law and that the distinction between the law and the gospel is correctly understood only in the context of Anfechtung, as one finds in Luther’s sermons and in his Seelsorge. The existential and experiential dimensions of Elert’s and Althaus’s theologies are thus in continuity with Luther’s own experience of the forgiving gospel in contrast to the law and wrath of God. 93 For the background to this debate, see especially Robert C. Schultz, Gesetz und Evangelium in der lutherischen Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1958); Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate; and Becker, The Self-Giving God, 173 – 203. Schultz began his dissertation under Elert and, after Elert’s death, completed it under Althaus. Elert considered C. F. W. Walther’s 1884 – 85 classic, The Proper Distinction between the Law and the Gospel, trans. W. H. T. Dau (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1929), one of the few nineteenth-century works to understand this dialectic properly.

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luckless creatures in a brutally despotic manner” (ML 1:19; SL 22). “[God] is the merciful One only for faith—for unbelief and therefore also for the unbeliever he remains the hidden One, the God of wrath” (ML 1:95; SL 108). “Without Christ, God is the God of wrath; in Christ, he is the God of grace” (ML 1:206; SL 234). Only by faith in Christ is the hidden God concealed behind the mercy revealed in Christ. By faith in Christ, God’s wrath is silenced. This faith depends solely on hearing the good news that Jesus Christ has taken “the curse of God” (Gal. 3:13), “the wrath of God” (Rom. 3:25; Rom. 5:9), and sin (2 Cor. 5:21) upon himself to liberate human beings. But does not “the diastasis” between God’s wrath and mercy, between “the hidden God” and “the God revealed in Jesus,” between the law and the gospel, entail a schizophrenic God or, to put it differently, the return of the polytheistic heresy of Marcion? How is it possible to affirm God’s unity in view of such contradictory divine judgments? Has not Elert overstressed the distinction between God as Creator, Preserver, Law-giver, and Judge, and God as Redeemer, to the degree that one is left with two different gods? Several examinations fault Elert for undermining the unity of God and for thereby calling into question the certainty that God’s will and purpose for creation are essentially loving and gracious.94 S. S. Maimela goes so far as to conclude, “There is no basis for Elert’s view [that the law is intrinsically retributive] in the biblical testimony ; nor is the God who is portrayed by him identical with God our Redeemer in Jesus Christ.”95 Although Elert did not devote sufficient attention to this serious criticism (only two pages in the dogmatics are given to the problem), he did seek to counter it by asserting that the unity of God can only be believed on the basis of the atonement through the crucified and risen Christ. The theologian may not speculate on what that atonement means in and for God himself, but only may speak and think upon what has been revealed in the gospel.96 According to the gospel, the judgment of the law and the judgment of the gospel are both verdicts of the one holy God. “When we, in accord with the monotheistic obligation, have to attest God’s unity and simplicity despite the antithesis of wrath and love in God, our only adequate explanation is found in the fact that 94 See Wolfgang Berge, Gesetz und Evangelium in der neueren Theologie (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1958); Thomas Gerlach, Verborgener Gott—Dreieiniger Gott, 103ff; Ernest Koenker, Great Dialecticians in Modern Christian Thought (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1971), 143 – 54; Wolf Krötke, Das Problem ‘Gesetz und Evangelium’ bei W. Elert und P. Althaus (Zürich: Evz. Verlag, 1965); Leo Langemeyer, Gesetz und Evangelium (Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1970), 377 – 413; Peters, Gesetz und Evangelium, 185 – 87; and Thiemann, “A Conflict of Perspectives,” 306 – 17. 95 S. S. Maimela, God’s Creative Activity through the Law (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1984), 76. Gordon Kaufman, Maimela’s dissertation advisor, asked him rhetorically, “Can this portrait be reconciled with the Christian view of a loving God?” (ibid.) 96 One thinks of Luther’s famous aphorism: “He deserves to be called a theologian…who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and cross” (WA 1, 354, 17 – 20 [1518]; LW 31:40).

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the same Thou of God addresses us in both his wrath and love. Wrath and love can be stated simultaneously only of a personal bearer” (CG 282 – 83; CF 153). [T]he same God who pronounces judgment bestows grace. If it were not the same God, the belief that he bestows grace would, at the very outset, have to give way to the suspicion that this is an illusion. At the very least the fact that it is the same God protects faith from itself against the suspicion that through an intellectual accomplishment of its own it has overcome one concept of God by means of another, “higher” one—one that in reality would be more comforting only to itself. Here faith is not primarily opposed to faith, but God is opposed to God. And not even one God to another God; the contradiction lies in the God who is identical with himself. From the standpoint of faith, therefore, it is of a transcendental nature, in any case of a nature that is transsubjective. (ML 1:94; SL 107) While Elert acknowledged the problem of anthropomorphism, he was convinced that human experience and the testimony of the prophets and the apostles will not allow one to avoid the real tensions and contradictions in God’s own self-witnessing. While “holiness” is the term that Elert used to affirm the essential unity and simplicity of God, the term does not resolve the conflict between law and gospel, between wrath and grace, this side of the eschaton. Christian faith has only to do with the revelation of God’s mercy and forgiveness in and through Jesus Christ, the person of the reconciler. His merciful work cancels out the validity of God’s law and wrath.97 Thus the 97 Mark Ellingsen’s analysis of Elert’s doctrine of God does not capture this point. According to Ellingsen, “[Elert] argues that Law and Gospel must be opposed, ‘in such a way that both succeed whether the success of one transcends and overturns the other’” (Mark Ellingsen, “Luther in Context” [Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1979], 24 – 25). In the paragraph previous to this quotation, Elert explicitly stated, “it is precisely the gospel which confirms the validity of the law— of the same law whose validity is abolished [aufgehoben] by the gospel” (CG 140; CF 88). While Ellingsen is correct to note Elert’s concern to affirm the validity of the law and the gospel apart from human consciousness, and thus maintain their transubjective opposition, Elert also stressed that the gospel triumphs over the law for the sake of faith, also in the doctrine of predestination. “If one considers the relationship between law and gospel as dialectical, i. e., represents it as a conversation, this cannot be understood as if yesterday God spoke one way, today speaks another way, and tomorrow will speak the previous way again… [I]n this conversation the gospel irrefutably and irrevocably has the last word” (Werner Elert, “Gesetz und Evangelium,” Zwischen Gnade und Ungnade, 155 – 56. This 1948 essay was reprinted in Ein Lehrer der Kirche, 51 – 75; ET Law and Gospel, trans. Edward Schroeder [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972], here 30). The final paragraphs of sec. 23 of the dogmatics affirm that in and through Christ “the law is silenced,” “the law is abrogated,” and with that abrogation the rebellion against God is ended. This is not “a formal picture of God,” but the actual and effective overcoming of the law through the death of Christ. This overcoming is now only known in personal faith and not through speculation about what God has or has not willed from eternity (deus absconditus). See Sigurjûn Ýrni Eyjûlfsson, “Der verborgene Gott in der Theologie Werner Elerts,” Studia Theologica 54 (2000): 107 – 26; idem, Rechtfertigung und Schöpfung, 223 ff.; Michael Roth, Zwischen Erlösungshoffnung und Schicksalserfahrung: Das Grundanliegen der Theologie Werner Elerts (Aachen: Verlag Mainz, 1997); and Slenczka, Selbstkonstitution und Gotteserfahrung, 53 ff.

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gospel is the goal of the distinction between the law and the gospel. The conflict between the law and the gospel is a real dialectic that is only resolved by daily repentance and faith in the Kreuzeswerk of Christ. Law and gospel are thus distinguished in order that they might be rightly related, and these two words of God are rightly related only when the gospel is heard as God’s ultimate word for a person so addressed by both law and gospel. The resolution of God’s wrath and mercy occurs nowhere else than in the word about Christ’s atonement that is received by faith alone. The conflict is certainly not resolved in the head of the speculative theologian. Another critical issue in Elert’s theology is the nature and purpose of the divine law.98 As we have noted, his early theology of the law did lead him to make a tragic error with regard to the orders of creation, especially the order of government, which he held to be a static, inherently good, authoritarian structure. Consequently Bayer is correct to note that had Elert brought the theological use of the law closer to the political use, he might have been better prepared to acknowledge the fallen condition of the orders of creation and to have articulated a different position regarding National Socialism and its claims.99 That he adjusted his theology of the orders in his 1949 ethics is one indication that he himself detected error in his earlier formulations and sought to make important corrections. No longer is any order solely a static, 98 See Walter Bouman, “The Concept of the ‘Law’ in the Lutheran Tradition,” Word and World 3 (1983): 413 – 22; Friedrich Duensing, Gesetz als Gericht: Eine lutherische Kategorie in der Theologie Werner Elerts und Friedrich Gogarten (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1970), 13 – 62; Langemeyer, Gesetz und Evangelium, 129 – 212; Maimela, God’s Creative Activity through the Law, 39 – 137; and Thiemann, “A Conflict of Perspectives,” 52 – 189. Bouman proposes that the Lutheran tradition has been misguided by limiting “law” to the Decalogue and then assigning several “uses” to it; rather, the Torah, including the Decalogue, had for Israel only one use: guidance. But, contrary to Bouman’s argument, certainly the prophets used Torah as the criterion for God’s judgment of Israel, i. e., as “mirror.” In this essay Bouman minimizes the Pauline-Lutheran-Elertian connection between law and divine wrath that had been a staple of his earlier theology. Thiemann rightly criticizes Duensing and Langemeyer for thinking that Schicksal dominates and controls even Elert’s later work, but he understates the degree to which Schicksal and “God’s judgment” are still linked in the ethics (CE 50, 58; TCE 28, 35). Contra Thiemann’s reading, Elert never stated that one may know the wrath of God as divine wrath solely from the natural orders (cf. CG 146 – 47; CF 93). While the natural orders are the setting in which God’s wrath is experienced apart from revelation, God’s wrath as divine wrath remains hidden (deus absconditus) until it is revealed through the law. This understanding is not as clearly articulated in Elert’s earlier works (see LLA, sec. 16, 18, and 19), where Schicksal itself seems to give rise to definite knowledge of God’s wrath. The key insight of Thiemann’s analysis is his recognition that the conflict between Barth and Elert was a dispute about the role of Christology in describing the relationship between God and humanity. Elert posited a dual relationship (law and gospel), which dualism is most deeply actualized in the atonement through Jesus—and overcome by faith in him, whereas Barth posited a sole, unitary relationship in the sovereign election of Jesus Christ. See also Reinhard Hauber, “Die Lehre vom Zorn Gottes nach Werner Elert,” Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 36 (1994): 117 – 161. 99 See Bayer, Theologie, 306 – 309. Bayer is otherwise appreciative of Elert, including his Konfrontationsmethode and his concern for the “diastasis” between the gospel and culture.

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ontological structure; rather each dynamic order is constituted by individuals in their social relationships, and thus open to evaluation (on the basis of the law), positive change, but also demonization and even destruction. While Elert understood “the law” to include the Sinaitic law, centering on the Decalogue, he viewed the law as more than mere legislation. Quoting Paul, he argued that the law was operative in creation long before Sinai, since death as God’s judgment has reigned supreme over all human beings and this death is “the wages of sin” (Rom. 5:12 – 14; 6:23). Following Luther, he held that the written law is an historical announcement that only applied to the Israelites (Gal. 3:17), and thus it cannot be transferred without further ado to other peoples and ages, although in his ethics he did present positive applications of the Decalogue in both personal and corporate life. More than legislation, the divine law is the means for God’s ordering and preserving creation as well as his means for judging and punishing. In this view, the law is always accusatory toward human beings, simply and solely because the law’s divine demands cannot be kept fully by human beings who remain sinners unto death. Thus, in this fallen world, “the law and God’s wrath can never be separated from each other (Rom. 4:15)” (CG 171; CF 88). The ultimate judgment of the law is inescapable death, which makes of every human life a “mathematical point.” While the law still speaks to the Christian, insofar as she remains a sinner unto death, “the knowledge that the law does not apply to the believer as a believer is one of the fundamental postulates of the evangelischer Ansatz. …[T]his decision cannot be understood as an arbitrary choice but is made by God himself in what he says in the gospel concerning the believing sinner ; the evangelical content of Scripture continues to have for the believer an authority with which its legal content can no longer interfere” (ML 1:159; SL 181; emphasis added). The gospel is valid for us, or expressed more clearly, it makes faith necessary for us, because the law of God is valid for us. This first makes the paradox fully perceptible: it is precisely the gospel which confirms the validity of the law—of the same law whose validity is abolished by the gospel. Thus the relationship of law and gospel is dialectical in a double sense. In the first place, because we may and must apply the term “revelation” of God to both, although this application to both is contradictory in itself. In the second place, because both are indubitably valid, although the validity of the one cancels out the validity of the other, and vice versa. (CG 172; CF 88 – 89) “When the law speaks, then gospel is silent; when the gospel speaks, the law must be mute.”100 For the person of faith Christ silences the law and abolishes it (Eph. 2:15). Because of Elert’s consistent emphasis on the law’s accusatory and retributive effect, some have accused him of denying entirely “a positive 100 Werner Elert, “Gesetz und Evangelium,” Zwischen Gnade und Ungnade, 132.

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and creative” use of the law.101 Other Lutherans have accused him of denying a “third use of the law,” as taught in the sixth article of the Formula of Concord.102 But this is a totally wrong conclusion about his theology. For Elert, FC VI does not describe Calvin’s pedagogical use of the law, but merely the first and second uses of the divine law in the life of the Christian. Thus FC VI is to be 101 See Maimela, God’s Creative Activity through the Law, 66 – 75. This Harvard dissertation contains serious distortions and false conclusions about Elert’s theology. Not only does Maimela ignore Elert’s dogmatics, wherein Elert analyzed the Creator’s preserving and dynamic ordering of creation as the positive good for God’s creatures, he also entirely misunderstands the relation of ethos under the law to ethos under the gospel. These are not two ethoi in chronological sequence, but two divine judgments that together form the Christian ethos; that is, the two judgments are existential and simultaneous, although the second ultimately and eschatologically triumphs over the first for faith. “Ethos under the law” is true of all human creatures, including the believing sinners called Christians. Maimela contradicts himself when, on the one hand, he acknowledges that “Elert concedes that God does provide some measure of security in the orders of existence” (53) but, on the other hand, states that for Elert “the divine law is rightly understood only when its meaning is restricted to the so-called ‘theological use of the law’” (66). Nowhere does Elert understand the law “only” as accusatory and retributive, or restrict the law to this function, since he affirms the usus politicus throughout “ethos under the law” (for example, “God’s nomos is not only a law of life which enables us to live according to the law or merely a law of death placing a limit on human existence. It is also a law of retribution” [CE 78; CTE 52; emphasis added]; “The Decalogue represents the law of God as an order of necessity. The law is concurrently security and peril, it is a law of life and death and it is also a law of retribution” [CE 89 – 90; TCE 62, emphasis added].) In this context Elert stated that the law may never be reduced to “a rulebook for living,” but it “is and remains obligation, not only in a legislative but also a juridical sense” (ibid., emphasis added). Elert acknowledged the continuing validity of the Decalogue for the Christian ethos and the two-fold use of the law. Contra Maimela, Elert explicitly stated, “the Decalogue is implicitly included” in the law of love (CE 86; CTE 59). Nonetheless, “by making the law of love supreme, the way is prepared for the eventual abolition of the juridical and ceremonial laws” (CE 87; CTE 60), and even for the replacement of the Decalogue (CE 89; TCE 62). In other words, as “a law of retribution,” “the Decalogue resists all attempts to change it into a law of love,” but this fact does not mean that believers must refrain from so interpreting it as a law of love, since for faith the Decalogue is no longer a threat (ibid., emphasis added). Furthermore, on the very page from which Maimela cites his supposed proof that Elert “could not care less about the content of the law,” Elert affirmed that the Decalogue provides the principles for the ethos of the individual civic legislator and the ethos of the state (CE 154 – 55; TCE 112 – 13). In this context Elert explicated the Decalogue in relation to the state in terms of “the law of preservation” and “the law of retribution.” “All ordinances of God are also orders of preservation and protection, safeguarding creaturely existence against the powers of destruction. Therefore, as an order, the state must contribute to the preservation of the populace. A law which destroys people bodily or morally is irresponsible before God. The law of retribution is a fundamental principle of every form of nomological existence especially of the social use of the law as wielded by the state. It is not only basic to criminal law but also serves civil law as justitia commutativa” (ibid.) The remaining fifty pages of Elert’s “ethos under the law” contain numerous principled judgments and applications of the Decalogue in the postWorld-War situation in which he lived. 102 Murray accuses Elert of “[setting] up a false alternative: Either the Law accuses or it is only didactic” (Law, Life, and the Living God, 29). But it is Murray’s accusation that creates the false alternative, for in Elert’s theology the law does inform (though never neutrally) but always dynamically under or within the two “uses.”

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interpreted in light of Luther’s theology, which only admitted two uses of the law.103 If the notion of a ‘third use of the law’ is understood in purely informatory terms, then we shall have to agree with the Scandinavian and Finnish theologians who have pronounced the doctrine of a third use incompatible with the Lutheran understanding of law and gospel. If we still wish to continue to use the concept in theology, it must be applied as it is in the Formula of Concord only for answering the question of the realm of the law’s validity, but not for indicating a special function of the law. The third use of the law then designates its significance for the regenerate in his earthly empirical existence, but not in some imagined earthly perfection which does not exist. In the earthly empirical life of the regenerate the law constantly exercises also the usus theologicus. It steadfastly convicts him of his sin.104 Elert thus did not deny that the concept of the third use of the law should be retained in Lutheran theology. His concern, it must be understood, was the influence of Calvin and Barth on Protestant understandings and articulations of the law that led in the direction of legalism. Forced by its premises to subsume the law completely under the gospel, Barthian ethics results in the gospel taking on the characteristics of the law, as “the new law.” The assumption then is that the law is the final criterion of human conduct, and that the gospel (merely) has an auxiliary function. This is to make the gospel subordinate to the law, “the necessary form of the gospel whose content is grace.”105 Against this subordination, Elert asserted the opposite: the gospel triumphs over the law; it abolishes it (“hebt es auf”) for faith. At the end of the day, however, Elert could live with FC VI, properly understood, for it also states that “to reprove is the real function of the law” (FC VI, 566, 14), and that the good works that the Christian does “are, strictly speaking, not works of the law but works and fruits of the Spirit” (FC VI, 566, 17). The charge of “Antinomianism” against Elert is totally unfounded and flatly false. Although Elert rejected a Calvinistic-Barthian “use” of the law, he did use the paraenesis (exhortation) and “gospel imperatives” from the New Testament to articulate the evangelical basis of Christian ethics after conversion and faith. Thus Elert sought to articulate a contemporary Lutheran ethic that is grounded in the Decalogue, natural law, the orders of creation, and in the gospel. This is no mere “situational ethic,” but an ethic that entails very specific principles and applications about the family, friendship, marriage, work, government, the economy, church and state, the church as community, and humanistic fellowship, among other topics, and Elert explicates these matters over the course of 576 pages. While the Christian remains under the 103 See also ML 2:27 and Werner Elert, “The Third Use of the Law,” The Lutheran World Review 1 (1949): 38 – 48. 104 Elert, Law and Gospel, 42 – 43 (emphasis in original). 105 Barth, “Gospel and Law,” 10.

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retributive power of the law insofar as he is a creature/sinner unto death, the Christian is primarily guided by the Spirit to struggle against “the old creature” and to be daily reborn in the image of Christ: For after faith has been born, it is impossible for him who has been converted by God to God to sanction in himself what he hates as sin in his past life. As a believer he is, of course, also a penitent throughout his life. In the light of God’s verdict he will consider good nothing that he himself is or does. Before the eye of God, therefore he will always subject the whole of his being to the judgment of “contrition.” But this does not exclude his own entrance into the battle against sin; it includes it. Thus faith—no more need be said at present—becomes an active ferment in the man of sin. If all sin has its foundation in unbelief and unbelief is its real essence, then faith must have the courage to attack its real enemy, unless it wants to capitulate (ML 1:129; SL 147 – 48).

Implicit here and elsewhere (CE 352 – 431) is the assumption that the Christian life is marked by “faith active in love” and a growth in Christian obedience under “the law of love.” This life is marked by the imitation of Christ (CE 302; TCE 230), the mystical union of Christ and believer, spiritual discipline, prayer, repentance (including the acknowledgment that all human action involves sin and guilt), forgiveness, concrete love for others (fellowship), and freedom for creativity. “We have no time to lose, yet we still have time, chronological time, for faith and the new obedience. In accordance with the parable of the two roads we walk at present on the road of faith as a continuous progression through chronological time. As indicated, this road indeed runs alongside the tempting wide road and we can avoid the dangers it presents only if we renew the kairological decision of faith day after day” (CE 377; CTE 288). Elert’s theological scheme thus entails a tripartite structure: the divine wrath in the law is contradicted by the divine mercy in the gospel, which in turn creates, renews, and recreates faith, and establishes and reestablishes human freedom and love under the power of the Holy Spirit. This tripartite structure is precisely the morphology that Elert repeated in each of his major dogmatic/ethical texts. It is the morphology of the Christian life. I am grateful to my friend and mentor, Professor Hans Spalteholz (Concordia University, Portland), who read an earlier draft of this essay and provided me with very helpful criticism. List of Abbreviations AR

Werner Elert and Paul Althaus, “Der ‘Ansbacher Ratschlag’ zu der Barmer ‘Theologischen Erklärung,’” Allgemeine evangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung 67 (June 11, 1934), 584 – 86 (reprinted in Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen zur Kirchenfrage, vol. 2, ed. Kurt Dietrich Schmidt [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1935], 102 – 4)

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Werner Elert, Das christliche Ethos, 2nd. ed. (Tübingen: Furche-Verlag, 1961) CF Werner Elert, The Christian Faith: An Outline of Lutheran Dogmatics, trans. Martin Bertram and Walter Bouman (Columbus: Lutheran Theological Seminary, 1974) CG Werner Elert, Der christliche Glaube: Grundlinien der lutherischen Dogmatik, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Furche-Verlag) KC Werner Elert, Der Kampf um das Christentum: Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen dem evangelischen Christentum in Deutschland und dem allgemeinen Denken sein Schleiermacher und Hegel (München: C. H. Beck, 1921) LLA Werner Elert, Die Lehre des Luthertums im Abriss, 2nd ed. (München: C. H. Beck, 1926) ML Werner Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (München: C. H. Beck, 1952) SL Werner Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, trans. Walter Hansen (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1962) TCE Werner Elert, The Christian Ethos, trans. Carl J. Schindler (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957) CE

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Hans Schwarz

Paul Althaus (1888 – 1966)

In the second part of the nineteenth century, the Erlangen School in Germany with its main representatives Adolf von Harleß (1806 – 79), Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810 – 77), and Franz Hermann Reinhold Franck (1827 – 94), attracted both considerable attention and numerous theology students. Its emphasis was on Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions, and experience. Experience was not understood as something subjective, but was derived from being related to God through Christ. As von Hofmann pointed out in his attempt to achieve a biblical foundation for Christian doctrine: “Christianity is the communion of God and humanity, personally mediated by Jesus Christ.”1 In the first half of the twentieth century, there was a second revival of the so–called Erlangen School, this time focusing on Luther research and the significance of a historically– grounded Christian faith. This second era of the Erlangen School is associated with scholars such as Paul Althaus, the subject of this essay, along with Werner Elert (1885 – 1954), but also the church historian Walther von Loewenich (1903 – 92) and the New Testament scholar Ethelbert Stauffer (1902 – 79). An Impressive Career Paul Althaus was born on February 4, 1888, in Obershagen, a village approximately thirty kilometers east of Hannover in Lower Saxony. He hailed from a family of theologians which was originally at home in Westphalia, and adhered to the Reformed confession.2 His grandfather became a Lutheran and served in the Church of Hannover. Perhaps because of his Reformed ancestry, Althaus had never become a narrow confessionalist, though he was decidedly Lutheran. His father, Paul Althaus Sr. (1861 – 1925), initially served as a pastor. In 1897 he received a call to represent the so–called “positive” theology as Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology at the University of Göttingen, 1 Johann Ch. K. von Hofmann, Der Schriftbeweis. Ein theologischer Versuch, 2nd ed. (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck, 1857) 1:8. See Matthew L. Becker, “Appreciating the Life and Work of Johannes v. Hofmann,” Lutheran Quarterly 17 (2003): 177 – 198, and The Self-Giving God and Salvation History : The Trinitarian Theology of Johannes von Hofmann (New York: T&T Clark, 2004). 2 Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie. Begegnungen – Erfahrungen – Erwägungen (Munich: Claudius, 1979), 125.

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and in 1912 he accepted a call to the University of Leipzig as Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament. Except for one year at Göttingen he did most of his studies at Erlangen University and was an enthusiastic follower of Franz Hermann Reinhold Frank.3 Young Althaus had a good theological mentor in his father. It is no surprise that Paul Althaus, Jr. edited his father’s work,4 and also wrote a biography of his father in 1928.5 Young Althaus began his theological studies with three semesters at the University of Tübingen (1906 – 07) where he was decisively influenced by the New Testament scholar Adolf Schlatter (1852 – 1938). He encountered in Schlatter a peculiar weaving together of historical and theological exegesis which proved influential for his later career as theologian in both New Testament and Systematics. In the summer semester of 1906 he still had a chance to study with Karl Holl (1866 – 1926) who by then had accepted a call to a professorship in Berlin. Althaus wrote in glowing terms about Holl’s course in early church history where, out of twelve students in the class, he was the only freshman; and he was proud of the fact that whenever possible he also occasionally sneaked into Holl’s other lectures.6 Holl had begun to publish his Luther research and concerned himself that semester with the significance of the Lutheran doctrine of justification for the modern world. How much Althaus was indebted to Holl can be seen in the emphasis in his writings on the Godhead of God in Luther. In the fall of 1907 Althaus moved to Göttingen in order to continue his studies “at home.” Through his father his love of Luther and the Lutheran confessions deepened; of his father’s lectures in systematic theology Althaus wrote in 1927 in his entry in the golden book of the University of Erlangen, “he handed on to me the heritage of Erlangen theology.”7 In Göttingen the history–of–religion school was at its peak. Yet, not to offend his father he avoided taking any classes with scholars such as Wilhelm Bousset (1865 – 1920) and Wilhelm Heitmüller (1869 – 1926). But Althaus took notice of their writings and even entered into discussions with Bousset in 1914 to test out his own contrary notions.8 Influential for Althaus in Göttingen was also Carl Stange (1970 – 1959). He had succeeded Althaus’ 3 See Roland Liebenberg, Der Gott der feldgrauen Männer. Die theozentrische Erfahrungstheologie von Paul Althaus d. J. im Ersten Weltkrieg (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2008), 37 f. See note 10 below. 4 Paul Althaus, Forschungen zur evangelischen Gebetsliteratur (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1927; reprinted Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966). 5 Paul Althaus, Aus dem Leben von D. Althaus – Leipzig (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1928). 6 See his letter to his parents of May 6, 1906, in Theologiestudium vor 100 Jahren – im Spiegel der Briefe des Studienanfängers Paul Althaus an seine Eltern, ed. Gotthard Jasper (Erlangen: Uttenreutherhaus, 2009) 24. Significant also is the introduction by the editor who remarks about the tendency to find even in young Althaus the roots for his initially favorable statements about the Nazi regime. 7 “Eintrag von Paul Althaus in das Goldene Buch der Universität Erlangen vom 23. 11. 1927,” reprinted in Liebenberg, Der Gott der feldgrauen Männer, 583. 8 See Liebenberg, Der Gott der feldgrauen Männer, 72, n. 201.

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father 1912 in Göttingen and was known for his Luther studies. In 1910 Althaus finished his studies in Göttingen with a first comprehensive church exam and then entered the Predigerseminar (practical seminar) of his Lutheran Church of Hannover for two years to obtain his practical training as a pastor. Other theologians beyond Göttingen who were influential for Althaus were Martin Kähler (1835 – 1912) and also the young Karl Heim (1874 – 1958). Kähler’s small book, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (1892), helped Althaus in establishing a relatively conservative basis with regard to the historical–critical research in New Testament studies. At that time Karl Heim was still Privatdozent (private lecturer) at the University of Halle. He introduced Althaus to dialectic thinking, something which Althaus also learned from his contemporary Karl Barth (1886 – 1968). Although barely twenty–five years old, Althaus had already finished both his dissertation and also his habilitation (second thesis) in 1913 with an investigation on “reason and revelation” in the German Reformed dogmatics around 1600.9 He had done his research while at the Predigerseminar. At that time it was still possible to do one’s dissertation and habilitation with basically one thesis if the research was considered good enough for both purposes. Although by 1914 Althaus was a Privatdozent, he was only able to serve as research assistant for one summer semester at the institute of practical theology of Carl Stange and teach a New Testament class on First Peter when his academic career was interrupted with the start of World War I. Since he had joined a fraternity (the Schwarzburgbund) which emphasized independence, strength of will, responsibility, and sacrifice, he volunteered immediately to serve in the army. As he said in a sermon in 1915: “The emperor calls, the fatherland calls, God calls. God calls to a holy sacrifice for the fatherland.”10 Since he had not been ordained and had no military experience, he first served as an orderly in what is now Poland, which was then part of Germany. In January 1915 he was ordained to the ministry and then served as a hospital and base chaplain.11 Later in that year he served as one of the two pastors of the department of Lodz, a position he held until the end of the war. This encounter with the besieged ethnic German communities in Eastern Europe may have influenced his later political ethics.12 9 Paul Althaus, Die Prinzipien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik im Zeitalter der aristotelischen Scholastik. Eine Untersuchung zur altprotestantischen Theologie (Leipzig: Deichert, 1914). 10 As quoted in Liebenberg, Der Gott der feldgrauen Männer, 160. This carefully researched PhD thesis provides many valuable insights. Yet, under the guidance of Berndt Hamm, Liebenberg wants to show that the socio-political context of his youth led Althaus to opt for the Nazi regime. One can take as the opposite example Walter Künneth who had practically the same sociopolitical context but vehemently opposed the Nazi regime. 11 Liebenberg, Der Gott der feldgrauen Männer, 165. 12 Hans Graß, “Althaus, Paul,” in TRE 2:330. See Liebenberg, Der Gott der feldgrauen Männer, 170, n. 46 and 172, n. 56. Liebenberg, however, does not comment on the forced resettlement of the

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It was only in the summer semester of 1919 that he was able to resume his duties in Göttingen. Just one year after the war, and at only thirty-one years of age, Althaus received in 1919 a call to become full professor at the University of Rostock. There he wrote a small booklet on religious socialism,13 and a year later also published the first edition of his major work on eschatology.14 It was there that the first volume of his sermons appeared of which more were to follow.15 In addition he published many articles, for instance about Luther as preacher, Osiander and Luther, the doctrine of sin, and a discussion with neoReformation theology. It was no surprise that in 1925 the industrious Althaus received another call, this time to the University of Erlangen. (The same year he also received two other calls, one to the University of Gießen and the other to the University of Leipzig. But he accepted the one to Erlangen. Two more calls followed rather quickly : in 1929 to the University of Halle, and in 1930 to the University of Tübingen. The latter occurred exactly at the time when he moved into his newly built house at Etzelsberger Straße 10 in Erlangen where he would live for the rest of his life.) Yet coming to Erlangen was not easy for Althaus, since the faculty members were far from unanimous in their vote. In the decisive meeting of the academic senate of the university, three of the five theological faculty members who were eligible to vote opted for Werner Elert and only two for Althaus.16 Yet the senate decided for Althaus, and the three dissenters offered a minority opinion against the decision. The administration, however, followed the decision of the academic senate and on August 1, 1925, Althaus was appointed as full professor at the University of Erlangen. Elert had already been called to Erlangen in 1923, but as professor for Church History, and he very much wanted to change to Systematic Theology.17 When another chair in Systematic Theology became vacant, and the faculty offered it to Elert, he switched to Systematic Theology in 1932, more specifically to dogmatics, ethics, history of dogma, and confessions. He also made sure that the time slots when he lectured never coincided with those of Althaus. As Walther von Loewenich relates in his autobiography : “Elert was not free of resentments and competitiveness against Althaus and the students

13 14 15 16 17

Germans nor their reception by the Polish people, except to say that the resettlement by the Russians was supervised by the Swedish government and led to no hardship (168, n. 42). Paul Althaus, Religiöser Sozialismus. Grundfragen der christlichen Sozialethik (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1921). Paul Althaus, Die letzten Dinge. Entwurf einer christlichen Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1922); 2nd ed. (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1924); 3rd rev. ed. (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1926). Paul Althaus, Der Heilige. Rostocker Predigten (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1921); 2nd ed. (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1922); 3rd ed. (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1925). According to Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 126. In general, see Matthew Becker, “Werner Elert in Retrospect,” Lutheran Quarterly 20 (2006): 249–302.

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of Althaus noticed that too. [As a student of Althaus] I also suffered, and this went on for years.”18 According to von Loewenich, even Althaus himself commented: “Elert attempts to intimidate all my doctoral students.”19 Althaus, however, made his way. Only a year after coming to Erlangen, he had to hold his class on Luther’s theology in the Auditorium Maximum, which is the largest lecture hall of the university. Even after his retirement he still had the largest audience of all the theology professors. As the church historian von Loewenich, his later colleague, relates: Althaus was an excellent teacher. He gathered large crowds of enthused students around himself. It was a matter of fact, perhaps also for him, that he always had the most crowded lecture classes. Today’s students can hardly imagine how revered and well-liked he was as an academic teacher. Althaus was a speaker of excellent rhetoric. He carefully prepared for his lecture classes and his seminars. The latter covered many different subjects, those purely theological, and those relating to the history of thought. All of these were excellent with regard to methodology. His numerous public lectures received long applause. He had a gift to make himself understood to diverse audiences without making concessions to the substance of what he had to say.20

Even Helmut Thielicke (1908 – 86), an eloquent speaker himself, mentioned how gifted his teacher Paul Althaus was and how well–prepared he came to class. Yet he also mentioned, tongue–in–cheek, that sometimes his eloquence seduced him to formulate an answer to a problem which enthralled his audience as a brilliant solution without them realizing that even with this answer the problem was far from being solved. For instance in the controversy between Luther and Zwingli concerning the “real presence” of Christ in the elements of the Lord’s Supper, Althaus proposed the following solution: “It does not depend on the presence of the corporeality, but on the corporeality of the presence.”21 The students applauded because for centuries Lutherans and Zwinglians had fought about the proper understanding of the Lord’s Supper and now finally here was the solution. Yet in the discussion after class the students realized that none of them really understood the alleged solution. But when Althaus had formulated it, the solution seemed clear beyond doubt. While Thielicke poked fun at Althaus in this context, this episode also showed a characteristic trait of Althaus: he did not enjoy controversy and conflicts. According to von Loewenich, some colleagues on the faculty were envious of Althaus’ success. But he simply overlooked it and in turn praised his colleagues for their obvious virtues. Althaus was a pastor at heart. It is no surprise therefore that he became the official university preacher from 1931 to 18 19 20 21

Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 121. Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 69. Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 129. Helmut Thielicke, Zu Gast auf einem schönen Stern. Erinnerungen (Hamburg: Hofmann und Campe, 1984), 85.

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1964, meaning also during the Third Reich, when officially there were not supposed to be university preachers, and also in his years as professor emeritus. As Thielicke stated, his sermons “emerged from a pious heart.”22 Von Loewenich, too, conceded: “Althaus was a preacher who made the biggest impression on me.”23 Wolfgang Trillhaas (1903 – 95), who was briefly a colleague of Althaus until he accepted a call to the University of Göttingen in 1946, relates in his autobiography that Althaus’ “popularity in the city was expressed in his well–attended worship services.”24 Again, the worship services were meticulously prepared and Althaus was especially careful with selecting appropriate hymns. The organist was Georg Kempff (1893 – 1975), the director of the Church Music Institute of the University (Universitätsmusikdirektor) from 1933 to 1959. As von Loewenich states: “The cooperation between both men created unforgettable worship services for which one could have envied us in all of Germany at that time.”25 It was evident for Althaus that theology had only as much value as it is able to be preached. Church and theology belong together. Yet Althaus was by no stretch of the imagination a clerically–minded person. There was academic freedom, yet no licentiousness. It was assumed for him that when he did not preach he sat in the pew attentively participating in the services. That he was one of the pillars of the theological faculty and even of the university in general did not get unnoticed. When he entered the classroom for a seminar it was normal for the students to rise from their seats, after which he greeted the “senior,” that is, the student leader of the seminar, with a handshake and motioned the students to take their seats. This was the case when Helmut Thielicke studied with him in 1934, and this was still the case in the summer semester of 1962 when I participated in his dogmatic colloquium where we read and discussed the then recent publication from the so–called Pannenberg Circle, Revelation as History. Especially because of his Luther studies he was elected to the Bavarian Academy of the Sciences in 1953, and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as of the State of Bavaria, and also the ring of honor of the City of Erlangen. When he died on May 18, 1966, the best–known theologian of the Erlangen faculty in the twentieth century passed away.

22 Helmut Thielicke, Zu Gast auf einem schönen Stern, 84. 23 Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 129. 24 Wolfgang Trillhaas, Aufgehobene Vergangenheit. Aus meinem Leben (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), 85. 25 Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 129.

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An Innocent Ally Although in North America, Paul Althaus is known as a Luther scholar, his main systematic work The Christian Truth (Die christliche Wahrheit) remains unknown here and is still not translated. Yet this publication, which went through five German editions, would have been especially amenable to a North American audience where theology is much more open to God’s working in nature and history, in contrast to Germany which has been under the long spell of the dialectic approach of Karl Barth. The reason this book is virtually unknown in the United States may be found in what Karl Hertz addressed this way : Althaus was one of the signers of the infamous Ansbacher Ratschlag (1934) in which Lutheran theologians found it possible to give approval to the Aryan clause in the Nazi church constitution … [There is also] the nationalistic animus of Althaus’ Theologie der Ordnungen, and of the general alliance between the Lutheran clergy and nationalism in Weimar Germany.26

Since Althaus has been charged with collusion with the Nazi regime, his theology has been highly suspect. For example, Robert P. Ericksen, in his study, 1948), the systematician and Kierkegaard scholar Emanuel Hirsch (1888 – 1972), and Paul Althaus as theologians who served Hitler’s cause. (His book also informed a television documentary broadcast by PBS in January 2006.) Ericksen, the Kurt Mayer Professor of Holocaust studies at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, writes in conclusion about Althaus: The theology which Althaus developed contains no single unacceptable element, but in retrospect it is apparent that one of his emphases proved very suitable for National Socialism. In his “orders of creation” theology he concerned himself with law more than gospel. This focused his attention on morality, order and stability, and allowed him to view the Weimar Republic as a breakdown of God’s intended order. By equating the traditional, pre–Weimar order of society with God’s will, Althaus opposed progressive and revolutionary ideologies of the left which hoped to remake society in a new and better form, and he affirmed the authoritarian and paternalistic emphases of National Socialism.

In the end neither Althaus’ theology, his intelligence, his personal qualities, nor his role as mediator was crucial in his support of a movement which he recognized too late as an evil phenomenon.27 What was so fatal in Althaus’ theology and what tainted his reputation? Although Althaus was not a political person, political ethics was part of his 26 Karl Hertz, “A Response to Hans Schwarz,” Lutheran Quarterly (February, 1975), 27:77. 27 Robert D. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler (New Haven: Yale University, 1985), 166.

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m¦tier. Especially instructive is his publication of 1921, Religious Socialism (Religiöser Sozialismus). Against the idea of a “Christian politics” or a “Christian league of nations” as advanced by religious socialists, Althaus asserts that “independent nations resolved to lead their own lives are the ultimate entities in history” sanctioned by God.28 Althaus here asserts a “two–kingdoms” doctrine against religious socialists such as Hermann Kutter (1863 – 1931) and Leonhard Ragaz (1868 – 1945). He rejects the notion advanced by them that the kingdom of God could ever become the order of this world or that the order of this world could become the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is ruled by love, and the state is governed by justice. Therefore “a nation can ––as circumstances demand––even in obedience to its historical position and task be obligated to wage war.”29 But this should not be done frivolously and egotistically, since all nations have a common calling and belong together. We must remember here that during World War I Althaus was in Poland and saw how the ethnic German groups had suffered among the Poles. Then in 1923 he wrote that the state is a juridicial order and cannot be thought of without resorting to coercion.30 But the state and the kingdom of God are very different entities. States are transitional, but the kingdom of God remains. A few years later he wrote an essay with the title: The Will of Nationalities in the Light of the Gospel (Der völkische Wille im Lichte des Evangeliums). While a national religion is national idolatry, Althaus is convinced that “the nations are endowed with different callings by the Lord of history.”31 Yet the respective national heritage (Volkstum) needs the gospel to understand its calling. Therefore “the national heritage must seek out the church, but the church must also seek out the national heritage.”32 According to Althaus, the church should be happy about the rediscovery of the national heritage and it must become and remain a church of the people (Volkskirche). He says, however, that this national heritage is threatened by the German people themselves on account of their loose morals and “the Jewish threat to our national heritage.” While one must have “an eye and a word” for this Jewish threat, Althaus rejects “the wild anti–Semitism” to which so many succumb and their own “anti–Semitic Pharisaic attitude.”33 Althaus suggests that this has nothing to do with Jewish blood or the Jewish religion. His concern is for losing one’s own national identity. In retrospect, after the Holocaust, this nationalistic reasoning, although common at that time, is unacceptable. For a theologian, it was already problematic even beforehand. 28 Paul Althaus, Religiöser Sozialismus. Grundfragen der christlichen Sozialethik (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1921) 69 f., and 39. 29 Paul Althaus, Religiöser Sozialismus, 94. 30 “Staatsgedanke und Reich Gottes,” 33. 31 Paul Althaus, Kirche und Volkstum. Der völkische Wille im Lichte des Evangeliums (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1928), 25. 32 Paul Althaus, Kirche und Volkstum, 27. 33 Paul Althaus, Kirche und Volkstum, 33.

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In 1932 Althaus emphatically claimed that he was not a member of the National Socialist Party and also voiced objections to the party’s nationalistic politics and rejected its naturalistic ideology of race. But he saw in National Socialism the resolve of the youth of the German nation not to succumb to the dictate of the peace treaty of Versailles of 1918.34 He wrote in 1933: “Our Protestant churches have greeted the German change of 1933 as a gift and as God’s miracle.”35 While he cannot see the Third Reich as the beginning of the kingdom of God, nevertheless he asserted that not just a theology of salvation history is needed, but also a theology of our own history.36 He then asserted a year later in Christ and the German Soul (Christus und die deutsche Seele) that “there is a mutual penetration of Christianity and the German soul. What we call German has actually come into being through the effectiveness of Christianity.”37 Then he rejected the attempts to go behind Christianity to the Germanic roots and re–introduce the old Germanic religion which allegedly is true to the Germanic race. While through the manifoldness of divine creation there is a difference by blood, all people come from the same blood. “This, however, is Adam’s blood, the blood of that person who was disobedient to God. In that there is no difference between the races.”38 We notice so far that Althaus very much emphasized the dignity of the German nation which was severely violated by the Treaty of Versailles of 1918, and also an awareness that God’s activity is not confined to the narrow strand of salvation history, but takes place in the universal horizon of history in general. In 1934 the Barmen Declaration was issued by the so–called Confessing Church. This statement showed the theological hand-writing of Karl Barth and opposed the notion that God could made God’s self known anywhere outside his self–disclosure in Jesus Christ. It was not surprising that Althaus attacked this as “Christomonism” and spoke against thesis one which declared: Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.39

Althaus maintained that there is indeed a general revelation, even though the German Christians—meaning those who fell prey to National Socialism— 34 35 36 37 38 39

Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 165. Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche, 5. Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche, 15. Paul Althaus, Christus und die deutsche Seele. Ein Vortrag (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1934) 16. Paul Althaus, Christus und die deutsche Seele, 26. Reprinted in Kurt Dietrich Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äußerungen zur Kirchenfrage, vol. 2: Das Jahr 1934 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1935), 93.

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have grossly misused that concept. Althaus directly attacks here the “peculiarity of the dialectic theology of Barth.”40 Similarly Althaus rejected thesis two of the Barmen Declaration where it states: “As Jesus Christ is God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so, in the same way and with the same seriousness he is also God’s mighty claim upon our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures.”41 Again, Althaus observed that reference to Christ here replaced God’s law. With regard to the orders of this world he noted that there is only the negative reference to “godless fetters of this world,” but no mention is made of the interrelations in which God has put us in this world.42 On July 11, 1934, came the Lutheran corrective to the Barmen Declaration, the so–called Ansbach Advice (Ansbacher Ratschlag). It was drafted by Pastor Hans Sommerer, amended by Paul Althaus and Werner Elert, and was signed by eight people. Here the distinction between law and gospel is made and reference is also made to the natural orders through which God creates and sustains our earthly life. It continues then in thesis four : “As Christians we honor with thanksgiving toward God every order, this means also every government, even in its distorted manner, as a tool of divine unfolding. But as Christians we distinguish between benevolent and strange lords, between healthy and distorted orders.”43 Then comes the fateful fifth thesis of the Advice: In recognition of this, as faithful Christians we are grateful to God our Lord that he has sent to our nation in its plight the Führer as “pious and trustworthy ruler” and that the Lord wills to prepare in the National Socialistic order of the country a “good government,” a government in “decency and honor.” We acknowledge therefore before God our responsibility to cooperate in the work of our Führer according to our vocation and state.

This praise for Hitler and his regime, although in quotation marks, was not only mistaken, but also, as von Loewenich relates, provided welcome support for the German Christians and for those who propagated Nazi ideology.44 Earlier, on September 25, 1933, the Erlangen faculty had issued a “Theological Opinion on the Admission of Christians of Jewish Descent to the Offices of the German Evangelical Church” (Theologisches Gutachten über die Zulassung von Christen jüdischer Herkunft zu den Ämtern der Deutschen 40 Paul Althaus, Bedenken zur “theologischen Erklärung” der Barmer Erkenntnissynode, reprinted in Karlmann Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag, 1993), 259. 41 Kurt Dietrich Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse, 94. 42 Paul Althaus, Bedenken, in Beyschlag, 260. 43 Der “Ansbacher Ratschlag” zu der Barmer “Theologischen Erklärung”, reprinted in Kurt Dietrich Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äußerungen zur Kirchenfrage, vol. 2: Das Jahr 1934, 103 for this and the following quote. 44 Von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 175. See also David Ferguson, Church, State, and Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 121.

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Evangelischen Kirche).45 This statement was also signed by Elert and Althaus. In it the theological faculty unanimously agreed that with regard to public office the state has to set its own guidelines. They concluded that in the church one should also be careful about employing people of Jewish descent, but that there are exceptions. For those pastors and officials already in the Lutheran Church who are of Jewish descent, their ordination and their call means that they are to be left in that office if they have proven to be effective. “Not the remaining in office, but their dismissal needs from case to case a special substantiation.” Since the Nazi government wanted to dismiss all people of Jewish descent from public office, the faculty avoided here a clear confrontation with the government policy. While therefore being neutral with regard to the service of people of Jewish descent in public office, it gave a clear signal concerning its own policy. Those pastors who served well should continue their service and new candidates were not necessarily excluded simply because of their Jewish descent. In 1936 Althaus published an essay on Government and Leadership. Changes in Protestant Political Ethics. In this largely historical treatise he says that the true sovereign is God alone. “Unconditional obedience is ultimately not due to the ruler or leader (Führer) but only to the cause of the people entrusted to them by God whom he serves, and it is due to the political leader (Führer) insofar as he serves that cause.”46 This means that Althaus severely qualifies the unconditional obedience which Hitler had asked from the military and all civil servants, saying that it pertains only insofar as the Führer serves God’s cause. Althaus even claims that the responsibility for the whole nation, its life and its task, even to protect it against a bad government, may be the extreme possibility of a revolutionary attack on the government and the constitution.47 Although Althaus shied away from a direct confrontation with the Nazi regime, he nevertheless here clearly voiced his opposition. As von Loewenich relates, from 1938 onward Althaus never said anything positive about the Third Reich. Yet the damage was done. Although he had written extensively on political ethics, it was always more difficult for him to say no than to say yes. There was also a certain degree of nostalgia that prevented him from seeing the dubious and perverse character of National Socialism from its very beginning. Yet Althaus was not alone. Many other people, among them politicians, even outside Germany, believed that a new and positive wind was blowing in Germany after the chaos of the Weimar Republic. Many leaders of the so–called Confessing Church had also thought initially that National Socialism was the answer.48 At the end of World War II, 45 Reprinted in Kurt Dietrich Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äußerungen zur Kirchenfrage des Jahres 1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934), 182 – 186. 46 Paul Althaus, Obrigkeit und Führertum. Wandlungen des evangelischen Staatsethos (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1936), 45. 47 Paul Althaus, Obrigkeit und Führertum, 54. 48 See Friedrich Baumgärtel, in his carefully researched booklet Wider die Kirchenkampflegenden,

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Althaus was suspended for a year from his professorial duties and then re–instated. Every now and then Althaus is still blamed for having provided theological support for the Nazi cause. Yet one should not forget that Althaus is best–known as a Luther scholar, and Martin Luther too wrote some lines that are often seen as having provided support for the Anti–Semitism of the Nazis.

The Luther Scholar Walter von Loewenich writes: “There is almost no important topic on Luther which Althaus has not treated at least in an article.”49 Most well–known are his two volumes on the theology and the ethics of Martin Luther.50 Althaus was not interested in repristinating Luther’s theology, but, as he wrote in the preface to his Theology of Martin Luther, he was concerned “to present a living picture of Luther’s theology … and so to present this picture that it will be fruitful for theological study––and thereby also fruitful for the proclamation of the gospel in our time.”51 He was convinced that Luther’s theology has abiding relevancy for today. It was also clear for him that Lutheran orthodoxy did not necessarily follow Martin Luther and that Martin Luther himself was not infallible, but always had to be measured by Scripture. For instance, in his book Paulus und Luther über den Menschen (Paul and Luther Concerning Humanity) of 1938, he sides with Paul against Luther that even as a sinner a human being remains God’s creature who enjoys listening to God’s law.52 Then he sides with Luther when he says that “in Luther we find the full expression of truth in the issue of the Christian life.”53 In another publication, Die lutherische Abendmahlslehre in der Gegenwart (The Lutheran Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in the Present Time, 1931), Althaus shows that both Luther and Calvin are not really in conformity with the New Testament concerning their understanding of the Lord’s Supper. According to the New Testament, the gift of the Lord’s Supper is

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2nd enlarged ed. (Neuendettelsau: Freimund, 1959). There he cites from a sermon of 1935 by Martin Niemöller (1892 – 1984), one of the leaders of the so-called Confessing Church: We “thank God today that he has given our nation a government and has maintained for us through its service order and peace. We ask him at the same time that he may lead and rule our leader (Führer) and his advisors, our nation, and our church in such a way that his kingdom come and may be enfleshed among us” (Baumgärtel, 35). Von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, 128. Paul Althaus, Die Theologie Martin Luthers (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1962; Engl. trans. The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), and Paul Althaus, Die Ethik Martin Luthers (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1965; Engl. trans. Ethics of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972). Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, v. Paul Althaus, Paulus und Luther über den Menschen. Ein Vergleich, 2nd enlarged ed. (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1951), 58 f. Paul Althaus, Paulus und Luther über den Menschen, 95.

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not only the transformed body of Christ, but also his life given for us in his death. Most important in Althaus’ research of Luther is his emphasis on the Godhead of God, especially with regard to justification. He writes: Faith is the only attitude of humanity which corresponds to the essence of God namely to God’s Godhead. Because God’s actual Godhead consists in the fact that as the creator God creates everything out of nothingness. It is God’s joy to create out of nothingness, light out of darkness, help out of forsakenness, life out of death, salvation out of condemnation. Faith then means to expect to see something from God where there is nothing to see; to persevere against any evidence. God’s Godhead and faith necessarily correspond to each other.54

In the center of Luther’s understanding of justification is the Godhead of God, in so far as God always creates out of nothingness and under the appearance of the opposite. In this context of God’s Godhead Althaus also understands the Theology of the Cross. From 1 Corinthians 1:21, Luther concludes that humans misused God’s knowledge from the things God made and therefore God wants to be known through his suffering. Yet God shows his Godhead in being powerful in weakness and glorious in lowliness. “God and veiling, God and the paradox, God and the dialectic, therefore also God and faith, which dares toward the invisible, belong together. God proves himself as God in reversing all earthly measures and relationships.”55 Where nothing is to be expected, there God shows his power. Yet, lowliness and nothingness are not always the means by which God would disclose God’s self, because if that were the case we could outguess God. God always has priority in everything. According to Althaus, in Luther’s view justification is not only a forensic act by which we are freed from our sins and made just. Justification does not allow us to look simply toward the future in some kind of apokatastasis, toward a universal redemption. By grounding oneself in Christ as the one who justifies, one can also become lost if one does not grasp the opportunity that the Christ who forgives is also the one who renews us.56 Faith in God who justifies through Christ must lead to a new obedience if such faith is to be true. Althaus affirms that the law still has a function in the new life of the justified person. In his small publication, The Divine Command. A New Perspective on Law and Gospel, first published in German in 1952, he asserts that he finds it impossible to retain the concept of the third use of the law as first introduced by Philip Melanchthon. He then notes that even Luther realized that we are not continuously living in the Spirit. The flesh wars with the Spirit and therefore it 54 Paul Althaus, “Gottes Gottheit als Sinn der Rechtfertigungslehre Luthers” (1931), in Paul Althaus, Theologische Aufsätze, vol. 2 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1935), 22. 55 Paul Althaus, “Gottes Gottheit,” 27. 56 Paul Althaus, “Zum Verständnis der Rechtfertigung” (1930), in Paul Althaus, Theologische Aufsätze, vol. 2, 43 f.

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is necessary to adhere to certain commands and writings of the apostles lest we confuse our own spirit with God’s Spirit. “Even for a Christian it is possible to be quite thoroughly mistaken about what God’s role really is. It is for this reason that we are well advised to pay attention to the moral teachings of the New Testament, to the apostolic imperatives. We need these as the norm and corrective of our own apprehension of the will of God for us today.”57 Yet Althaus cautions that the ethical admonitions of the Scriptures are misused if they are applied as legal prescriptions. “They are meant as aids for my own personal discernment of what God, the Lord, asks of me now.”58 In order not to slide back into some kind of legalism, Althaus calls these biblical imperatives “moral directives” that, however, do not relieve us of the necessity of making decisions. Althaus rejects the Barthian use of gospel and law instead of law and gospel, since Barth does not distinguish between law and moral directives or commands, as Althaus also calls them. But he concedes that his own position and that of Barth are not that far from one another. Through human sinfulness the divine command became a law and through the gospel it returns again to its original position as divine command.59 We notice here that Althaus does not just pay heed to Luther, but, as Luther himself had done, he refers back to Scripture. Althaus proves himself to be a competent New Testament scholar.

The New Testament Scholar Since the professorship in Erlangen included both Systematic Theology and New Testament studies, Althaus regularly treated the main Pauline epistles in his lecture classes, namely, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Galatians, and the two letters to the congregation in Corinth.60 He was also one of the editors of the New Testament commentary, Das Neue Testament auf Deutsch (The New Testament in German) for which he wrote commentaries on Romans and Galatians. Yet he never lectured on the synoptics or on the Gospel of John. That did not mean, however, that he did not have a good knowledge of the difficult issues concerning the Gospels. In 1935 Althaus wrote an essay entitled The Historical Jesus and the Biblical Christ (Der “historische Jesus” und der biblische Christus) which he dedicated to the memory of Martin Kähler (1835 – 1912) and his famous writing The 57 Paul Althaus, The Divine Command, trans. Franklin Sherman (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 44 f. 58 Paul Althaus, The Divine Command, 45. 59 Paul Althaus, The Divine Command, 28, esp. footnote 23. 60 For details concerning his New Testament studies and how much they influenced his dogmatics and vice versa see the thorough PhD thesis of Martin Meiser, Paul Althaus als Neutestamentler. Eine Untersuchung der Werke, Briefe, unveröffentlichten Manuskripte und Randbemerkungen (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1993).

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So–called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (1892). Althaus showed in that essay that the attempt of historicism to distinguish between the true words and actions of Jesus and those that were later additions creates a misleading juxtaposition. Althaus notes that the so–called historic Jesus, the Jesus as he really was, did not win from his disciple a strong faith in himself, “but only a very shaky attachment to himself which was capable of desertion and denial. Only the Resurrected One with the help of the Holy Spirit was able to draw those who belonged to him to a real faith. Only from his cross and with his resurrection was he ‘complete’ but not before that. Only after Easter, could he be correctly understood.”61 Althaus points out that it was through Kähler’s theology that a new understanding was reached regarding what is true in the gospel, namely, each word and characteristic in which the realization at Easter expresses who Jesus Christ really is. The distinction between historic and non–historic is therefore wrong if historic does not also include that which the first believers understood in the light of their experience with the resurrected Christ. Althaus concludes his essay by saying: “Furthermore, this image of Jesus [as portrayed in the Gospels and by Paul] is essentially vindicated. It contains the witness to the true image of the real historic Christ, the Resurrected One, who is none other than the one who walked on this earth, indeed he himself, but now completed to his own reality which is only understood by faith.”62 Althaus later realized, especially through Rudolf Bultmann’s conclusion that one should not go behind the kerygma, that one must move beyond Kähler’s emphasis on the proclaimed Christ. We must connect this emphasis “with an intentional critical recourse behind the kerygma.”63 Although this recourse is not done alongside the historical work with the Gospels, it takes place not in opposition to it, but with this research and in it, since “the Gospels are also accounts and sources.”64 In contrast to Bultmann and the purely kerygmatic Christ, Althaus asserts that the Easter faith is decidedly interested in the historical issue because the question must be answered whether the gospel is correct when it claims that it is founded on a historical fact. Before Althaus claimed the necessity of the historical basis for the Christ event in his exchange with Bultmann, he had taken Karl Barth to task for juxtaposing the “historical proof” and the “testimony of revelation” by totally divorcing the Easter faith from the Easter history.65 It is evident for Althaus that in 1

61 Paul Althaus, “Der ‘historische Jesus’ und der biblische Christus. Zum Gedächtnis Martin Kählers,” in Paul Althaus, Theologische Aufsätze, 2:166. 62 Paul Althaus, “Der ‘historische Jesus’,” 168. 63 Paul Althaus, Die christliche Wahrheit. Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 5th ed. (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1959), 120. 64 Paul Althaus, Das sogenannte Kerygma und der historische Jesu. Zur Kritik der heutigen Kerygma-Theologie, 3rd ed. (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1963 [1958]), 13. 65 Paul Althaus, “‘Die Auferstehung der Toten.’ Zur Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Barth über die

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Corinthians 15 Paul does not want to prove the historical fact of the resurrection. “Paul wants to document most strongly an experienced ‘historical’ reality by enumerating the witnesses as is shown in verse 6 with reference to the five hundred brothers most of whom are still alive though some have died.”66 While for Barth the resurrection is only important in relation to the parousia, for Althaus it is essential for understanding Christ and his significance. Althaus was well–versed in New Testament scholarship and therefore saw the shortcoming in Barth’s approach. But Althaus was not only a New Testament scholar, he was also a well–versed systematician.

The Systematician Again we could say the same as with his New Testament studies, there is hardly an important topic in Systematic Theology that was not covered in the writings of Paul Althaus. In 1923 he founded together with Carl Stange the Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie which today is continued as the Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie (New Journal of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion). This not only provided him with an outlet for his own articles but also allowed him to watch closely what was going on in his field. Among his own publications his massive systematic theology, or rather dogmatics, Die christliche Wahrheit (The Christian Truth), first published in 1947, is of special importance. Its fifth and final edition in 1959 comprised 728 pages.67 Of equal importance is his eschatology, Die letzten Dinge (The Final Things), first published in 1922, the seventh edition hailing from 1957. Initially Althaus advocated an axiological eschatology in which life eternal is experienced as a present value. History and above all the ethical norms show the presence of the eternal. Christian hope is directed toward completion of the fullness of life which is already given in faith. Althaus advocated an immortality which does not preclude judgment and a twofold outcome of history. Since 1933, however, Althaus focused on an eschatology in which the personal completion takes place at the resurrection on Judgment Day in conjunction with the consummation of the world. For Althaus there is no immortality of the soul by which a soul would live on forever, but immortality means that our personal relationship with God theologische Exegese” (1925), in Paul Althaus, Theologische Aufsätze (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1929), 132 f. 66 Paul Althaus, “‘Die Auferstehung,’” 135. 67 It is perhaps not just a coincidence that its title resembles that of Hermann Reinhold von Frank, a representative of the first phase of the Erlangen School who in 1878 – 80 wrote System der christlichen Wahrheit (System of Christian Truth).

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cannot be revoked.68 Althaus also asserts that there is no intermediate state after death. He says: “The question concerning future of the dead cannot be answered in any other way, but by pointing to death and Judgment Day. Not one word can be added! Whatever is in between is of evil!”69 There is no intermediate state and no purgatory. Althaus also rejects a totally present–oriented eschatological theology as advocated by Barth and Bultmann in which a future–oriented eschatology has no place. And, of course, he rejects a non–eschatological theology as presented by Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965) and Fritz Buri (1907 – 95).70 The eschatology of Paul Althaus with its full treatment of the so–called last things and his extensive discussion with the contemporary theological and philosophical scene had no equal in the German language until Jürgen Moltmann published Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie in 1995 (Engl. trans. 1996: The Coming of God. Christian Eschatology), although Moltmann approached the subject from a very different angle. Wolfhart Pannenberg even observed that in the later editions of Die letzten Dinge (actually starting with the 4th edition) Althaus actually had anticipated the concept of divine promise upon which Moltmann would base his eschatology.71

Conclusion The theology of Paul Althaus is a theology from below, not starting with some theological concept from which then all the other loci are deduced and influenced. As fitting for someone deeply grounded in New Testament study, he comes from a historical angle informed by God’s self–disclosure as reflected in the biblical documents, especially in the New Testament. Therefore it is not surprising that he does not start with the doctrine of the Trinity, as is fashionable today, often leading to undue speculation. Althaus writes: The doctrine of the Trinity is the final word, the most extreme step of theological thought. Therefore the boundary of knowledge in faith, though it must be established everywhere, can be felt here in a special way. This dogma of the essential threefoldness of God can so-to-speak only be hinted at with soft lines suggesting the outline of the primal mountains which stands with God far on the horizon of our life, the mountains from which our help comes, namely the stream of eternal love in Jesus 68 Paul Althaus, Die letzten Dinge. Lehrbuch der Eschatologie, 7th ed. (Gütersloh: Carl Bertelsmann, 1957), 114. 69 Paul Althaus, Die letzten Dinge, 159. 70 Paul Althaus, Die letzten Dinge, 3 f., and XV resp. 71 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 3:580. I owe this reference to Terry C. Dohm, The Rediscovery of Eschatology in the Message of Jesus and Its Impact on Theology in the Twentieth Century (Regensburg: S. Roderer, 2003), 164, who claims there that even Pannenberg’s concept of “anticipation” is already used by Althaus.

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Christ through the Holy Spirit. This doctrine forms concepts, but it is unable to fill it with perception. It forms concepts, but it cannot grasp them.72

Placing the doctrine of the Trinity at the end of theological reflection, Althaus sides with Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834), although he usually does not follow him. The most controversial concept in Althaus’ theological reflection, however, is his insistence on a primal revelation (Uroffenbarung), a position which from beginning to end opposes Karl Barth.73 Yet Althaus does not side with the modern relativism and skepticism which moved Karl Barth to insist that no natural knowledge of God is possible. Althaus insists that God has shown God’s self outside of and prior to Christ, not in totality but still in such a way that humans are not without some experience of God and therefore also not without a demand from God.74 Althaus sides here with Paul Tillich who proposed a method of correlation between human existence and divine selfdisclosure.75 According to Althaus, God attests himself in human existence, theoretical thought, and historical life. Especially the latter misled Althaus to his positive assessment of National Socialism. Thereby he forgot his own caution which he wrote in Christliche Wahrheit: “The God who makes himself known in historical life is still the hidden one.”76 But Althaus asserted that God as the Lord of all reality attests God’s self in all areas of life. Among other items Althaus refers here to the so–called proofs of the existence of God, and most important to God’s presence in nature. He writes: “The present shows a strange picture. Leading scientists attest that their research points to the reality of God … With few exceptions, however, theology takes no notice of this and puts no weight on this, but repeats the refrain that nature has no significance for our knowledge of God and that God cannot be perceived through nature.”77 Next to Karl Heim (1874 – 1958) he was one of the few German theologians in the first half of the twentieth century who saw the necessity to engage in a dialogue with the secular sciences. Even his small publication on the Theology of Orders (Theologie der Ordnungen, Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1934) although misused in support of Nazi ideology, sounds astoundingly contemporary when we talk about the stewardship of creation and the violation of structures of existence that seem to threaten the survival of humanity itself. 72 Paul Althaus, Die christliche Wahrheit, 700. 73 Joo-Hoon Choi, Das Konzept der Ur-Offenbarung bei Paul Althaus in seiner Bedeutung für die Stellung des Christentums unter den Weltreligionen (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2006), 74. 74 It is not surprising that Paul Knitter, who advocates God’s saving presence in all religions, focused on Paul Althaus in his doctoral thesis. Paul Knitter, Towards a Protestant Theology of Religions. A Case Study of Paul Althaus and Contemporary Attitudes (Marburg/Lahn: N. G. Elwert, 1974). 75 Paul Althaus, Die christliche Wahrheit, 55. 76 Paul Althaus, Die christliche Wahrheit, 76. 77 Paul Althaus, Die christliche Wahrheit, 82 f.

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While Althaus started his theological career warning against the ghettoization of theology advocated by Barth’s christomonistic approach, at the end of his life he cautioned against the theological exuberance of trusting in reason alone and forgetting the necessity of faith. This caution he uttered in a memorable exchange with, at that time, young Wolfhart Pannenberg who thought that faith is just trust in the trustworthiness of God and not also a gift which allows us to grasp the ground of our faith.78 For Althaus theology was neither innovative nor iconoclastic. While deeply aware of the tradition in which he stood, he sought out continuous contact with the representatives of his own profession and also with trends in the world, whether in philosophy or in politics. At times he is too irenic and also somewhat romantic. But at least he addressed the important issues of the day, picking up the concerns of the people and attempting to answer them with insights gathered from God’s self–disclosure in Jesus Christ as reflected in both the biblical witness and also through the documents of the Reformation. In this way, Althaus had an immense influence on several generations of pastors. How much interest he took in students is attested when he once confessed late in life that his memory was slipping because he did not remember the first name of a former theology student whose son was now studying with him. Educating future pastors was important to him. Yet Althaus also had a decided influence on many academic theologians such as Wolfgang Trillhaas in Göttingen, Wenzel Lohff and Helmut Thielicke in Hamburg, and Hans Grass in Marburg, not to mention Walther von Loewenich at Erlangen. Paul Althaus was indeed a true representative of Erlangen Theology when it was at its height in the middle of the twentieth century.79

78 Paul Althaus, “Offenbarung als Geschichte und Glaube. Bemerkungen zu Wolfhart Pannenbergs Begriff der Offenbarung”, in Theologische Literaturzeitung (1962), 87:321 – 330; and Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Einsicht und Glaube. Antwort an Paul Althaus” (1963), in Wolfhart Pannenberg, Grundfragen Systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), 223 – 236. 79 For a bibliography of Paul Althaus, see Dank an Paul Althaus. Eine Festgabe zum 70. Geburtstagdargebracht von Freunden, Kollegen und Schülern, ed. Walter Künneth und Wilfried Joest (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1958), 246 – 276.

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John T. Pless

Hermann Sasse (1895 – 1976)

Hermann Otto Erich Sasse can be characterized as a global Lutheran.1 Born in Germany, his years would end in Adelaide, Australia, where he had lived since 1949. Between his birth on July 17, 1895, in Sonnewalde (Niederlausitz) in Thuringia and his death from fumes emitted by an overturned kerosene heater on August 8, 1976, Sasse traveled extensively in Europe and the United States. By means of his mimeographed, circular “letters to Lutheran pastors,” he communicated with far–flung pastors around the world. His life would take him through two world wars, from the relatively casual Protestantism of the Prussian Union to an unwavering and unflinching Lutheranism molded by the confessional revival of the nineteenth century. An early critic of National Socialism and an engaged ecumenist, Sasse led an adventuresome and, more often than not, a contentious life. He would be hailed by some as a tragic figure, hopelessly entangled in an age now past;2 others would see him a pioneer for a new and robust confessional revival that continues to unfold in the present.3 After a survey of his career, his thought will be covered under four headings: the nature of confession, the doctrine of scripture, the sacrament of the altar, and ecclesiology.

1 For biographical treatments of Sasse’s life, see Ronald R. Feuerhahn, “Hermann Sasse: Theologian of the Church” in Hermann Sasse: A Man for Our Times, ed. John R. Stephenson and Thomas M. Winger (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1998): 11–36; Ronald R. Feuerhahn, “Hermann Sasse (1895–1976): A Biographical Sketch” in The Lonely Way: Selected Essays and Letters Volume I (1927–1939), ed. Matthew C. Harrison (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2002): 13–21; Maurice Schild, “Hermann Sasse” in Profile des Luthertums: Biographien zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolf-Dieter Hauschild (Gütersloh: Gütersloh Verlagshaus, 1998): 591 – 603. For a bibliographical guide to Sasse’s writings, see Ronald Feuerhahn, Hermann Sasse: A Bibliography (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1995). 2 See Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, Begegnunggen, Erfahrungen, Erwägungen (Munich: Claudius Verlag, 1979): 136. 3 Evidence of this may be seen in the article by the current president of The Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod, Matthew C. Harrison, “Hermann Sasse: A Remarkable Anti–Nazi and Lutheran Confessor” Higher Things XI (Summer 2011): 8 – 9. The centennial of Sasse’s birth, 1995, was observed with an international conference, “The Sasse Symposium,” hosted by Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario, from October 30 to November 1, 1995. The essays from this gathering were subsequently published under the editorship of John Stephenson and Thomas Winger in Hermann Sasse: A Man for Our Times? In the same year, the Reformation issue of Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology was devoted to Sasse’s life and legacy.

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Early Formation The first of five children, Sasse was named after his father, a pharmacist. In 1913 he matriculated at the University of Berlin simultaneously studying theology and philology.4 Berlin, at the time, was the showcase of theological heavyweights: Adolph von Harnack,5 Karl Holl, Reinhold Seeberg, Julius Kaftan, and Adolph Deissmann. Deissmann would become his doktorvater while Holl would instill in Sasse a deep interest in Martin Luther. Later, in a 1965 article, Sasse recalled “We who had been students of Holl suddenly began to realize that the Lutheran Reformation meant something also for modern mankind: ‘Man is nothing, and nothing is left to us but to despair of ourselves and hope in Christ’…We began to study Luther, the Confessions and the Bible.”6 Sasse’s studies in Berlin were interrupted by the First World War as he enlisted in the army in October of 1916 with the rank of sergeant. Shortly thereafter, his infantry regiment was engaged in the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Out of the one hundred and fifty men in his regiment who went into battle, only six survived. The lethal realities of warfare would leave their imprint on a student twenty–one years old.7 After the war Sasse passed his second theological examination under the auspices of the Consistory of Berlin. He was ordained at Saint Matthew’s Church in Berlin on June 13, 1920. For the next few years he served pastoral positions in three churches in and around Berlin. While a pastor in Oranienburg, he married Charlotte Naumann in 1924. Two sons and a daughter would be born to this union; their daughter died in infancy. A year after his marriage Sasse sailed to the United States with Wilhelm Pauck and Peter Brunner. He spent the 1925–26 academic year working on a master of sacred theology degree at Hartford Seminary. There Sasse read Wilhelm Löhe’s Drei Bücher von der Kirche, a book that he would credit with making him consciously Lutheran, and leading him into a more profound study of Luther and the Lutheran Confessions. Reflecting lalter, in the foreword to Here We Stand, Sasse wrote “Personally I must confess that it was in America that I first learned fully to appreciate what it means to be loyal to 4 For a treatment of a sample of Sasse’s early exegetical work in Berlin, see Norman Nagel “Hermann Sasse Identifies the Paraclete,” Lutheran Quarterly 10 (1996): 3–23. 5 See Sasse’s reflections on Harnack in his 1936 essay, “The Theologian of the Second Reich: Thoughts on the Biography of Adolf von Harnack” in The Lonely Way Volume I: 1927–1939, ed. Matthew C. Harrison, 311–320. 6 Hermann Sasse, “The Impact of Bultmannism on American Lutheranism, With Special Reference to his Demythologization of the New Testament,” Lutheran Synod Quarterly V (June, 1965): 5. 7 Years after the war, Sasse would comment “You can perhaps live on (Harnack’s theology) in happy times, but you can’t die with it, and so the liberal theology and optimistic view of man died in the catastrophe of the First War” – Sasse, “The Impact of Bultmannism on American Lutheranism,” 5.

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the Lutheran Confessions; but for what I learned from the Lutheran theologians and church bodies in the United States, I probably could never have written this book.”8 In the United States, Sasse was exposed to American pluralism and liberalism, recording his reflections in a 1927 monograph, “American Christianity and the Church.” This book, read by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in preparation for his own study at Union Seminary,9 is important insofar as Sasse touches on a number of themes that will become critical for his life’s work, such as the nature of dogma and confession and the question of church unity. He commented on the Federal Council of Churches in America and the Social Gospel movement, observing that “the American concept of church” avoids the question of truth.10 Sasse was here suspicious of both liberal, undogmatic Protestantism and also Fundamentalism with its literalism and nave eschatology ; this essay prefigures his later critiques of both. Sasse also here records his reflections on the various confessional traditions in American Christianity, including Lutheranism. Generally positive in his assessment of the American Lutheranism of this era, Sasse recognized the “dangers of the process of Americanization”11 but saw promise for a vibrant, genuinely Lutheran communion free from guardianship by the state. “The life of these churches dispels the foolish notion that Lutheranism’s doctrine of justification necessarily leads to quietism. There is in America perhaps no more active church than the Missouri Synod, which is the most dogmatically rigorous in the country.”12 Upon his return to Germany, Sasse became active in ecumenical affairs, serving as a member of the German delegation to Lausanne in 1927 and editing the delegation’s official report. In 1928, he became a member of the Continuation Committee for the Lausanne Conference. Sasse’s participation in ecumenical work continued until government-imposed travel restrictions made this untenable in 1935, even though he journeyed illegally to a meeting with the Archbishop of York in 1936.13 Throughout his life, Sasse would remain committed to a responsible ecumenism, that is, an ongoing conversation that presupposes the oneness confessed in the Nicene Creed,14 where dialogue partners are accountable to the confessional standards of their respective 8 Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand: Nature and Character of the Lutheran Faith, trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1979), 10–11. 9 Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer : A Biography, trans. Eric Mosbacher et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 143. 10 Hermann Sasse, “American Christianity and the Church” in Lonely Way, vol. I, 47. 11 Hermann Sasse, “American Christianity and the Church,” 55. 12 Hermann Sasse, “American Christianity and the Church,” 55. 13 Ronald Feuerhahn, “Hermann Sasse: Theologian of the Church,” 13. 14 See the discussion of this point in Gordon J. Gerhardy, Hermann Sasse on Confession and Culture for a Younger Church, Master of Theology Thesis (St. Paul: Luther Northwestern Seminary, 1981), 91.

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churches. His thoroughly Lutheran convictions compelled Sasse to this conversation as can be seen in his long correspondence with Cardinal Bea and his involvement with Reformed theologians and organizations in Australia.15

Confessing Against National Socialism Sasse took a prominent role in opposition to the growing penetration of the National Socialists into the affairs of the church. Already in 1931, as editor of the Kirchliches Jahrbuch, he provided a strong theological refutation of attempts by National Socialists to manipulate the church for political ends.16 In 1932 he identified himself with the anti-Nazi cause with his refutation of Article 24 of the Party Programme of the Nationalsocialistiche Arbeiterpartei.17 Along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Georg Merz, Wilhelm Vischer, and Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, he was a drafter of the Bethel Confession of 1933. Although he would not sign the Barmen Declaration of 1934, seeing it as an embodiment of Barth’s theology and a betrayal of the Lutheran distinction of the Law from the Gospel, he participated in discussions leading to the 15 See Maurice Schild, “Lausanne Ecumenist—Lutheran Confessionalist: On Hermann Sasse’s Significance for Australian Lutheranism,” dialog 17 (Summer 1978): 216–221. 16 Klaus Scholder, The Churches Under the Third Reich, vol. I: 1918–1934, Preliminary History and Time of Illusions, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 142. Scolder observes that “it was not some dubious, or at least debatable, political analysis which led Sasse to this conclusion but rather the examination of what was said by the Lutheran confession” (142). Also note Sasse’s letter to Dietrich Bonhoeffer on September 12, 1933. Sasse writes that the Aryan paragraph “means that even the apostles of Jesus Christ, and moreover the Lord himself, who in the flesh was a Son of David, would have to leave the ordained ministry of the Prussian church. This new law indeed separates the Prussian Church from Christianity. It amounts to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which cannot be forgiven in this world or the next” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 12 Berlin: 1932 – 1933, ed. Larry Rasmussen, trans. Isabel Best and David Higgins (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2009), 169. 17 Gerhardy cites these words from Sasse in 1932: “This article makes any discussion with the church impossible. One can forgive National Socialism for all its theological sins. This article 24, however, excludes every conversation with the church, the Evangelical as well as the Catholic…For the Evangelical Church would have to begin a discussion about it with the frank admission that its doctrine is an intentional and permanent offence to the ‘moral and ethical feelings of the Germanic race.’…Let it be said that the Evangelical doctrine of original sin – in contrast to the Catholic- does not admit of the possibility of the Germanic, Nordic or any other race being able by nature to fear and love God and do his will, that on the contrary a newborn child of the most noble German descent with the finest racial characteristics of an intellectual and physical sort is just as liable to eternal damnation as a halfbreed born of two decadent races and with serious hereditary defects. However, we have to confess that the doctrine of the sinner sola gratia, sola fide is the end of Germanic morality as it is the end of all human morality ; and we take the liberty to state, this again being a serious offence against the Nordic race, that because of this doctrine which overthrows all morality, the Jews nailed Jesus Christ to the cross also in the name of the German people (Volk) and the Nordic race” (Gerhardy, 50) Also see Hermann Sasse, In Statu Confessionis I, ed. F. W. Hopf (Berlin: Verlag der Spur, 1975): 251.

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document. Although severely criticized for his refusal to endorse the Barmen text, Sasse steadfastly saw it as a denial of the Lutheran Confessions, and thus a capitulation to an alien theology.18 This incident demonstrates something of the weight the Lutheran Confessions carried for Sasse and their authoritative status in guiding his activities with other Christians. Called to the theological faculty at Erlangen in 1933, taking his place amongst such notable theologians as Werner Elert, Otto Procksch, and Paul Althaus, Sasse would find himself in political controversy with some of his colleagues. Lowell Green describes Sasse’s relationships as “complicated and often neuralgic.”19 While the Erlangen colleagues shared a common commitment to confessional Lutheran theology, there were also differences. Elert and Althaus had taken a decidedly different path in regard to the political situation in Germany. Along with other clergy, they had signed the Ansbacher Ratschlag in 1934,20 clearly opposing the Barthian character of the Barmen Declaration but also identifying themselves politically with the National Socialists. Sasse, while adamantly opposed to the Barmen Declaration, had been persistent in voicing a sustained theological refutation of Nazi ideology. Through the maneuverings of Elert, the theological faculty at Erlangen was spared radical interference from the Nazi government during the war years. Sasse was able to maintain his faculty position although he was denied promotion.21 Sasse found himself in opposition not only to Althaus and Elert but also, for different reasons, to his New Testament colleague, Hermann Strathmann, who 18 Here see Sasse’s essays from 1934 – 1937, especially “Union and Confession” in The Lonely Way, vol. I, 265 – 305 and “The Barmen Declaration-An Ecumenical Confession?” in Lonely Way, vol. I, 347–349. Arthur Cochrane writes “It is to the lasting credit of Prof. Hermann Sasse, of the University of Erlangen, that he was the first to declare that because of this one plank in the Party’s program the Church could in no way approve of Nazism. It had to be categorically repudiated. The fact that Sasse eventually broke with the Confessing Church in the interest of narrow Lutheran confessionalism, and thereby greatly weakened the Church’s opposition to National Socialism, must not obscure the prophetic role he played at the outset” – Arthur Cochrane, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 36. The text of Sasse’s statement, handed to President Karl Koch, before he left the Barmen meeting on May 31, 1934 is included in Cochrane, 194–195. In short, Sasse sees Barmen in conflict with Article VII of the Augsburg Confession. Also see Martin Wittenberg, “Hermann Sasse und Barmen,” in Die lutherischen Kirchen und die Bekenntnissynode von Barmen: Referate des Internationalen Symposiums auf der Reisensburg 1984, ed. Wolf–Dieter Hauschild, Georg Kretschmar, and Cartsen Nicolaisen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984): 84–106 and John Wilch, “Hermann Sasse and the Third Reich Threats to the Church” in Hermann Sasse: A Man for our Times?, 65–105. 19 Lowell Green, “Hermann Sasse’s Relations with his Erlangen Colleagues” in Hermann Sasse: A Man for Our Times?, 37. Also see Karlmann Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie (Erlangen: Martin Luther Verlag, 1993), 160–203, and Lowell Green, The Erlangen School of Theology : Its History, Teaching and Practice (Fort Wayne: Lutheran Legacy Press, 2010), 289–298. 20 See Lowell Green, Lutherans Against Hitler : The Untold Story (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), 240–249 and Robert P. Erickson, Theologians Under Hitler (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 87–90. 21 Lowell Green, “Hermann Sasse’s Relations with his Erlangen Colleagues,” 43–44.

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was critical of those who put loyalty to the Lutheran Confessions above the Barmen Declaration. After the war ended, Sasse was asked by authorities with the American Occupational Force to prepare a memorandum on the theological faculty. What was intended as a confidential report soon became public, revealing less than flattering descriptions of his colleagues’ political persuasions and activities.22 Strathmann was especially infuriated, blaming his retirement on Sasse’s report. In an article entitled “German Theologian Describes Postwar Situation” published in the August 28, 1946, issue of the official periodical of the United Lutheran Church in America, The Lutheran, Strathmann told of the physical hardships endured after the war’s ending and then added: More painful for me was that my colleague, Sasse, considered it proper in April 1945, without any compulsion to besmear Elert, Althaus, and myself in a secret letter to the Americans. I did not learn of it until August and as a German and a theologian can only be deeply ashamed of his conduct. By perverting the truth, I was described in his letter as a ‘Nationalist.’ I was not dismissed, but requested temporarily to request a ‘leave,’ and since December 1, 1945, do not lecture anymore. I was one of the very few men who did not howl with the wolves and was the only man in the whole university who, as long as it was possible, actively opposed the Nazis with the spoken and printed word. For that reason, I was maligned and hated by them.23

Exodus from the Bavarian Church Escalated tensions with faculty colleagues would thus plague Sasse in the years immediately following the war. There would be other hardships as well. A heart attack in 1946 kept him from attending the first meeting of the Faith and Order Committee after the war. The family would suffer from scarcity of food and lack of fuel to heat their home. But Sasse’s greatest disappointment had to do with the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (EKD) in 1948. Thirteen years later his bitterness is still evident as he wrote: “In Eisenach, at the foot of the Wartburg, the Lutheran Church in Germany was 22 For example, Tom G. A. Hardt relates how Sasse defended Paul Althaus to the American authorities saying “that Althaus never could have been a Nazi being a typical Melanchthonnatur, lacking the ability to reject or affirm anything”—Tom G.A. Hardt, “Hermann Sasse in His Letters” Logia IV (Reformation 1995): 7. 23 Hermann Strathmann, “German Theologian Describes Postwar Situation” The Lutheran 28 (August 28, 1946): 13–14. After an American student reported to Sasse the Strathmann article, Sasse wrote a letter to the editor of The Lutheran protesting Strathmann’s allegations, as published in the January 15, 1947, issue of the magazine. A few months earlier, George W. Forell wrote a letter to the same magazine in defense of Sasse. See The Lutheran 29 (October 2, 1946): 32.

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buried in 1948. Löhe’s nightmare of the Lutheran Church being buried by its own pastors became a reality.”24 Church historian and ecumenist that he was, Sasse was keenly aware of the story of unionizing movements in German Lutheranism and the drive toward institutional unity in the world Christianity of his day. Under political pressure, the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche (DEK) was formed as a body encompassing Protestant territorial churches in 1933, thus fulfilling the aim of the Prussian Union of 1817. Sasse had hoped that the end of the Nazi era would signal a new day for the Lutheran Church in Germany, free from politicized union with the Reformed. His hopes were dashed as Lutheran churches freely entered into the EKD. For Sasse this was a crisis of confession. Already in 1946, he pleaded unsuccessfully with his bishop, Hans Meiser, warning that such a union would sacrifice the Lutheran confession of the Sacrament of the Altar.25 Not the least of Sasse’s disappointments with this episode was the failure of theologians of the Missouri Synod’s St. Louis seminary to come to his aid. In fact, Frederick Meyer and Theodore Graebner pleaded with Sasse not to leave the Bavarian Church which had just joined the EKD.26 In a letter to Robert Preus in 1975, Sasse recalled what he could only see as Graebner’s betrayal of the confessional cause: When the synod Hannover had to decide whether or not to accept the constitution of the EKiD and join it or not, the decisive vote was against the motion and for the preservation of the Lutheran Church. This came as a great surprise. Then the chairman, the new Bishop Lilje, declared the proceedings as confidential and read the assembly a letter written by one of the outstanding older men in St. Louis, a man of blameless orthodoxy in the same way of Walther and Pieper, as he was generally regarded. He was traveling in Europe and had just attended as a visitor the constituting convention of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, 1948. He 24 Hermann Sasse, “Article VII of the Augsburg Confession in the Present Crisis of Lutheranism: Letters to Lutheran Pastors, no. 53, April 1961” in We Confess the Church, trans. Norman E. Nagel (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1986), 59. 25 Sasse wrote to Bishop Meiser in a letter dated July 17, 1946: “From the standpoint of the Lutheran confession it is to be said that fundamentally altar fellowship is always church fellowship, since both accord with the NT. Koinonia tou somatos Christou. If the VELKD [United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany] fundamentally acknowledges altar fellowship with the Reformed as it was proclaimed in the declaration of the Prussian Confessing Synod of Halle cited by Wüttemberg, then church fellowship has been realized which Calvin and the Reformed have desired from the start. Then we are still Lutheran Church only in the sense that Calvinism has always tolerated it. For then the doctrine of the Sacrament has lost its church-dividing force. There we must grant no more than in particular cases of emergency non-Lutherans may be allowed to come to the Lutheran Supper.” Cited by Matthew Harrison, “Hermann Sasse and the EKiD – 1948: The Death of the Lutheran Church” in Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology IV (Reformation 1995): 41. 26 For an account of Sasse’s disappointment with the St. Louis faculty on this issue, see Matthew C. Harrison, “Hermann Sasse and the EKiD–1948: The Death of the Lutheran Church” Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology IV (Reformation 1995): 41 – 46.

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wrote to Bishop Lilje: Don’t follow the advice of the ‘Schwabacher Konvent’ (the organization of some hundreds of confessionally minded Lutheran pastors), and its leaders. There can be no objection against joining EKiD and the WCC. Do you want to be more Lutheran than Missouri, Lilje asked. The public was readmitted and a new vote was taken in favour of the motion. This was the end of the endeavors to restore the Church of the Augsburg Confession in Germany. It was not the fault of your church, but of one man who as it sometimes happens with old men had completely changed his formal views. But it must be kept in mind if one wants to understand the development of Missouri. This event showed clearly what was to come if the dogmatic compass of the great ship was no longer working.27

Sasse resigned his membership in the territorial Church of Bavaria and joined in the Evangelische –lutherische (altlutherische) Kirche in 1948 and the next year he accepted a call to teach on the faculty of Immanuel Seminary in North Adelaide, Australia, a school of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia (UELCA).

The Australian Chapter The move to Australia would mean sacrifice for Sasse financially and academically as he would draw a lesser salary and be deprived of library resources. He had contributed several articles to Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, but the additional entries he had agreed to contribute would have to be assigned to others because the needed scholarly sources were unavailable in his new location. Lutheranism, a minority church in Australia, was divided into two rather small groups: the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia with roots in the tradition of Löhe in Bavaria, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia (ELCA) with historic connections to The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Sasse found it deplorable that these two bodies, both products of the nineteenth–century confessional revival were not in fellowship. He worked untiringly toward their merger as the Lutheran Church of Australia in 1966. This merger was due in no small part to Sasse’s theological capability to diagnose matters that had created division between the two groups and to work out clear doctrinal definitions with accuracy and integrity.28 In fact, Kurt Marquart (a pastor in Australia at the time) was of the opinion that “without Sasse’s weighty intervention, however, and this precisely on the UELCA side, it is almost 27 Letter of Hermann Sasse to Robert Preus, January 19, 1975 (in this author’s possession). 28 For an assessment of Sasse’s theological leadership in bringing the two Australian Lutheran bodies together, see J. T. E. Renner, “Hermann Sasse & the Australian Lutheran Scene,” Logia: A Lutheran Journal of Theology IV (Reformation 1995): 37–40.

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impossible to envisage this kind of consensus which led to the union of the two churches.”29 While Australia would isolate Sasse from the academic circles he had moved in while in Germany, it would also provide him with new opportunities for work within global Christianity but especially amongst English-speaking Lutherans. Sasse’s contacts in the United States date back to his study leave in 1925–26. Theodore Tappert of the Mt. Airy Seminary in Philadelphia had visited with Sasse in the summer of 1939, offering him a position there. Although they never met in person, Sasse also carried on a correspondence with J. Michael Reu of Wartburg Seminary beginning in the 1930’s and continuing until it was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Reu had sought to bring Sasse to the faculty at Wartburg in 1936. Herman Preus of Luther Seminary in St. Paul became a trusted friend. Sasse first met E. Theodore Bachmann in Erlangen in 1934 and in 1949 it was Bachmann who as Chief of Protestant Affairs for the U.S. Military Government in Germany cleared Sasse for emigration. The two kept in contact for most of the remainder of Sasse’s life.30 Sasse’s “Letters to Lutheran Pastors” were frequently published in the theological journal of the Wisconsin Synod giving Sasse even more exposure to an American audience. These sixty-two open letters between 1949 and 1969 addressed a range of theological topics, usually providing commentary on happenings in the wider Christian community, and often extending a message of pastoral consolation and encouragement to clergy laboring in challenging times. The relative geographical isolation of Australia, however, could not curtail Sasse’s ecumenical contacts. The Roman Catholic Church was always within Sasse’s field of vision even though his engagement with Rome was more pronounced after his departure from Germany ; in general, Rome had not been involved in ecumenical discussion prior to the war.31 For Sasse, Lutherans share with Rome a common theological heritage rooted to the Christological and Trinitarian dogma confessed in the Nicene Creed. This dogmatic grounding provides a basis for genuine ecumenical conversation that Sasse found lacking in liberal Protestantism. Yet Sasse was also a realist; he contended that ecumenicists must not bend church history to make it conform to their goal for a reunion of Lutheranism with Rome. A keen observer of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church, especially the proceedings of the Second Vatican Council, Sasse reacted with both hope and disappointment, 29 Kurt Marquart, “Hermann Sasse and the Mystery of Sacred Scripture” in Hermann Sasse: A Man for our Times?, 168. 30 See Hermann Sasse, “Letter to E. Theodore Bachmann, December 15, 1955” Lutheran Quarterly 13 (1999): 213–17. 31 Here see Ronald R. Feuerhahn, Hermann Sasse as Ecumenical Confessor (PhD Dissertation Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, 1991; Revised 1994), 123–138; also see Gottfried Martens, “Where the Rhine and the Tiber Met: Hermann Sasse and the Roman Catholic Church” in Hermann Sasse: A Man For Our Times?, 194–223.

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publishing over twenty–five articles on the Roman Catholic Church and the Second Vatican Council between 1959 and 1970.32 Cardinal Augustin Bea, a highly influential theologian in the Vatican, was Sasse’s host in Rome in 1965 and his conversation partner through a regular exchange of letters in the 1960’s up until Bea’s death in 1968. Sasse lauded what he recognized as positive developments in the Roman Church, including openness to other Christians and a fresh appreciation for the place of the Holy Scriptures in the life of the church. Yet he was also critical fearing that the proponents of change within the Roman Church were unable to distinguish the fresh breezes of the Holy Spirit from the winds of modernism which had wreaked havoc within so much of the Protestant world. When Sasse directed a polemic against Rome, he most often found occasion to apply his criticism also to movements within the Lutheran Church. He believed that Lutherans would ignore or dismiss Roman Catholicism at their own peril. Lutherans also had a shared heritage in the Reformation with other Protestants. While he never weakened in his opposition to church fellowship with Reformed, Sasse maintained a collegial and friendly network of contacts with conservative Protestants in Australia and beyond. A chief publisher of Sasse’s articles and book reviews was the Reformed Theological Review, and numerous shorter articles were published in Christianity Today. In 1966, Sasse accepted an invitation to address the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin on “Preserving the Truth of the Bible.”33 He served for a time as president of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in Australia. Henry P. Hamann, Sasse’s colleague at Luther Seminary in Adelaide, observed that Sasse opened the door for a wider and deeper understanding of Lutheran theology for non-Lutherans in Australia.34

32 Gottfried Martens, “Where the Rhine and the Tiber Meet,” 198. 33 Hermann Sasse, “Preserving the Truth of the Bible in One Race One Gospel One Task, vol. II Official Reference Volumes: Papers and Reports, ed. Carl F.H. Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham (Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1967), 219–221. 34 “His [Sasse’s] gained him entry to all centres of theological learning and ecclesiastical government. It is again difficult to assess the impact made here. It is certain, however, that because of him the leaders of other churches grew more ready to listen to other members of the Lutheran Church, whom they previously tended to regard as nonentities, and probably not without reason. At the same time, the example of Sasse encouraged Lutherans themselves to be more open and ready to speak beyond their own church, something which for various reasons had happened only rarely in the previous history of the Lutheran Church here. It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Dr. Sasse made more of an impact at the level of church life in Australia then had been made by the Lutheran Church in all its previous history.” Henry P. Hamann, “Hermann Sasse: The Adelaide Chapter” in Theologia Crucis: Studies in Honour of Hermann Sasse, ed. Henry P. Hamman (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1975), 7.

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The Nature of Confession An early essay from 1931, “Jesus Christ is Lord: The Church’s Original Confession,” is in several ways a prolegomenon to the many works that Sasse would produce on the theme of confession throughout his career. This fundamental Christian confession, “Jesus Christ is Lord,” is echoed and unpacked in all future creeds of the church. Sasse understood confession as “the answer that is evoked by God’s revelation of Himself, faith’s answer to the received Word of God.”35 Here Sasse identified four aspects of confession. First, as a response to God’s revelation in Christ, “the church’s confession tells objectively of facts, not of human experience.”36 Second, confession is churchly. Church and confession belong together for Sasse. “Christ’s church is always a confessing church. Not only does each Christian confess his personal faith, but the church, the whole company of believers, gives testimony of the revelation that has happened. The individual Christian joins this testimony in his personal faith. Out of such consensus of faith, worked by the Holy Spirit, is true confession born.”37 Third, confession is doxological as “it belongs in the liturgy, in the divine service, in which the church appears as the hearing, praying, and confessing congregation.”38 Fourth, confession is made both coram deo and coram mundo, before God and the world. According to Sasse this means that genuine confession always is polemical in that it rejects alternatives to the faith that was once delivered to the saints. These themes appear over and again in Sasse, interpenetrating his writing on the church, the Lord’s Supper, liturgy, church fellowship, ecumenism, and particular critical issues of ecclesial life as they confront the contemporary church. Themes in this early essay were then taken up in one of Sasse’s best known books, Was heißt lutherisch? Written in 1934, it was published in an English translation by Theodore Tappert in 1938 under the title Here We Stand but now with a focus on the particularity of the Lutheran confession. After surveying various interpretations of the Reformation, Sasse sought to answer the question of why is it necessary that the Lutheran Church continue to exist. He observed that “Whatever the faults are which the Calvinistic and the Catholic critics have to find with each other, they agree in condemning the Lutheran understanding of the Gospel as inadmissible, as limiting the fullness of Revelation, as not giving the whole of the divine Word its due; consequently it 35 Hermann Sasse, “Jesus Christ is Lord: The Church’s Original Confession” in We Confess Jesus Christ, trans. Norman N. Nagel (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1984), 10. 36 Hermann Sasse, “Jesus Christ: The Church’s Original Confession,” 10. Here Sasse echoes August F. C. Vilmar (1800 – 1868), the nineteenth-century theologian whose book, The Theology of Facts Versus the Theology of Rhetoric, trans. Roy Harrisville with Introduction by Walter Sundberg (Fort Wayne: Lutheran Legacy Press, 2008), left an indelible imprint on Sasse’s theology. 37 Hermann Sasse, “Jesus Christ is Lord: The Church’s Original Confession,” 11. 38 Hermann Sasse, “Jesus Christ is Lord: The Church’s Original Confession,” 11.

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is a doctrine which, although it just misses being heresy, leads to it.”39 For Sasse the only claim that the Lutheran Church has for continued existence is in its confession of the truth of the Gospel of God’s justification of the ungodly. Sasse’s thinking on confession was shaped by his involvement in the ecumenical movement in the 1920’s and 30’s,40 but it was tested and sharpened in the crucible of the Kirchenkampf. It is in these articles and essays, written in the period leading up to the war and during the war itself, that Sasse’s work on confession accents its eschatological character.41 In a 1937 essay, “Confession and Confessing: Lessons from Five Years of Church Struggle,” Sasse cited both Luther and the Formula of Concord to make the point that confession is never merely limited to a historical moment or a geographical location but is always made in light of the last day and God’s final judgment.42 Given the coming judgment, the church must ever be vigilant and discerning, because, Sasse says, “where man can no longer bear the truth, he cannot live without the lie.”43 Error presents itself as truth; this is the “pious lie” that “will lie not only to people, but also to God in prayer, in confession, in the Holy Supper, in sermon, and in theology.”44 A church that can no longer recognize or remove error in its midst, Sasse argues, will expel the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. Heresy is a real category for Sasse. “The great heresies die as little as does the devil.”45 “A church can fall into terrible dogmatic error, it can open door after door to heresy by tolerating it and doing nothing about it. With the help of the Holy Spirit, such a church can later repent, return to the pure Word of God, and take up the fight against false doctrine commanded by the Word. But if it has solemnly acknowledged the right of heresy in its midst, then heresy itself has become an organic component of the church concerned. It can no longer fight against heresy ; and a burning struggle against the false doctrine in its midst would be a completely illegal fight of one wing of this church against another.”46

39 Hermaan Sasse, Here We Stand: Nature and Character of the Lutheran Faith, trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1979), 121. 40 Feuerhahn cites a letter Sasse wrote to Klaus Runia: “More and more I studied Luther while in the ministry. This and my experience in ecumenical work…made me a confessional Lutheran.” Ronald F. Feuerhahn, “Hermann Sasse: Confessionalist and Confessor” in And Every Tongue Confess: Essays in Honor of Norman Nagel on the Occasion of His Sixth-fifth Birthday, ed. Gerald S. Krispin and Jon D. Vieker (Dearborn, Michigan: The Nagel Festschrift Committee, 1990): 15. 41 This eschatological theme is very evident in Sasse’s preaching. Here one may see Hermann Sasse, Zeugnisse: Erlanger Predigten und Vorträge vor Gemeinden 1933 – 1944, ed. F. W. Hopf (Erlangen: Martin Luther-Verlag, 1979). 42 Hermann Sasse, “Confession and Confessing: Lessons from Five Years of the Church Struggle” in The Lonely Way, vol. I: 339 – 349. 43 Hermann Sasse, “Union and Confession” in The Lonely Way, vol. I: 266. 44 Hermann Sasse, “Union and Confession,” 266. 45 Hermann Sasse, “Union and Confession,” 269. 46 Hermann Sasse, “Union and Confession,” 269.

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The Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures Questions of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures and the corollary issues of biblical infallibility and inerrancy were, for the most part,47 not engaged by Sasse prior to his departure from Germany. When he arrived in Australia, however, he soon discovered that the questions of inspiration and inerrancy were matters of lively discussion and controversy. The same would be true in American Lutheranism. In 1963, Sasse wrote to Herman Preus: Or take the tragedy of your doctrine of Holy Scripture. I remember the day when we walked along the ‘Kanal’ at Erlangen and spoke of the inspiration of Scripture. I have never forgotten that conversation. You wondered, and rightly so, of our ability to understand the doctrine of Inspiration. No one in German Lutheranism understood any longer this dogma of the church. You only have to look at Elert’s Dogmatics to understand how right you were. Historism (sic) had simply destroyed, also among conservative Lutherans, the understanding of that aspect of the Scriptures which cannot be understood only historically. It was only when I came to Australia that I saw that problem. If I have learned one thing in the English-speaking Lutheran world, then it is this issue. It was to the honour of your churches that you have preserved the doctrine. What you have not been able to do was to re-examine it and find what of your formulas was dogma, based on Holy Scripture, and what was theological tradition, a venerable tradition which goes back to Gregory the Great and Augustine, but just a tradition. Perhaps this is the greatest tragedy of the churches of the Reformation that just in the doctrine De Sacra Scriptura they were actually bound by tradition rather than the Scripture. Thus while we in Europe lost the doctrine altogether, you preserved it in a form which does not answer the question the Bible itself raises by being written in human form.48

Sasse’s letter provides a window into understanding his struggle to articulate a doctrine of inspiration and the controversy that would be provoked surrounding his “On the Doctrine De Scriptura Sacra” (often simply referred to as Letter 14) written in 1950 shortly after his arrival in Australia. In this letter, Sasse sought to bring clarity to how Lutheran theology might confess 47 One exception would be his essay prepared for a meeting of the Continuation Committee of Faith and Order in 1934, “The Church and the Word of God: Toward a Doctrine of the Word of God” in The Lonely Way, vol. I: 147 – 158. Here Sasse does not so much speak of the nature of the Bible but rather treats the question of revelation and how the Scriptures are instrumental to this revelation. In this essay, Sasse asserts that “the Bible and the Word of God are not identical” but “neither would it suffice were these preachers to come without the Holy Scriptures, bearing the Word of God only in their heads and hearts” (156). 48 Cited by Jeffrey J. Kloha in “Hermann Sasse Confesses the Doctrine De Scriptura” in Scripture and the Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, ed. Jeffrey J. Kloha and Ronald R. Feuerhahn (St. Louis: Concordia Seminary, 1995): 344 – 345; also see Hermann Sasse, “Toward Understanding Augustine’s Doctrine of Inspiration” in Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 221 – 245.

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the Holy Scriptures as God’s Word over against both Neo-Protestantism and also Fundamentalism, doing justice to the human character of the biblical books without undermining the Bible’s divine nature. Realizing that if the Scriptures are not the Word of God, theology is reduced to a completely human exercise that renders preaching impotent and robs faith of certainty, Sasse wants to confess the absolute authority of the Holy Scriptures in all matters of faith and life while avoiding a speculative doctrine of inspiration that he sees as arising from the neo-Platonic views of Augustine transmitted through Calvin and seventeenth-century Lutheran Orthodoxy. Sasse recognized the attractiveness of Fundamentalism in view of the acidity of modernistic attempts to erode the content of the biblical faith. But ultimately, such Fundamentalism is the wrong turn for it claims more of the Scriptures than they claim for themselves. Fundamentalism yields a view of the Bible as a divine book at the expense of the Scriptures’ human nature. This does not mean that the Scriptures are not the inspired Word of God for Sasse. He repeatedly asserts, “The doctrine that the Holy Scripture is given, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the self–understood presupposition for the understanding of the Bible which Luther and the Lutheran Confessions had even when it was either not expressed at all or expressed only incidentally.”49 Sasse saw the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures as a dogma of the church but argued that neither the Bible nor the Lutheran Confessions seek to define a process of inspiration. Lutheran theology does not so much argue for a doctrine of biblical inspiration as it presupposes and argues from this doctrine: “even though the Lutheran Confessions do not contain an extended doctrine concerning the Holy Scripture, it must definitely be asserted that they do teach the inspiration and consequent absolute trustworthiness of the Bible as God’s Word. The Lutheran church does not, however, know of a detailed dogma about the nature of inspiration.”50 According to Sasse three happenings make it mandatory for Lutheran theology to provide a new formulation of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. The first is emergence of the view of inspiration in both Reformed and Lutheran Orthodoxy which Sasse sees as a departure from both the New Testament and Luther. Secondly, there is the decline of “this doctrine and the loss of any scriptural authority whatsoever in NeoProtestantism.”51 Thirdly, there is the way in which the First Vatican Council has brought Rome’s own doctrine of Scripture to completion. Sasse worried that world Lutheranism is not prepared for this challenge: “The Lutheran 49 Hermann Sasse, “On the Doctrine De Scriptura Sacra : Letters Addressed to Lutheran Pastors, No. 14” in Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 57 (Hereafter cited as “Letter 14”). The italics indicate Sasse’s own emphasis. For more on this letter and its place in the totality of Sasse’s work on the doctrine of Scripture, see Armin Wenz, “Hermann Sasse Beitrag zur Lehre von Heiligen Schrift” in Wort des lebendigen Gottes. Festgabe für Prof. Dr. Reinhard Slenczka zum 60. Geburtstag (Erlangen: Institute für Systematische Theologie, 1991): 99 – 112. 50 Hermann Sasse, “Letter 14,” 57. 51 Letter 14, 57.

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World Federation would immediately fall apart if its members should attempt to express what they mean when they confess that for them the Holy Scripture is the highest authority in the church.”52 Seeing the task at hand of a fresh articulation of the doctrine of Scripture, Sasse made several proposals in Letter 14. He contrasted the notion of inspiration in the Old and New Testaments with that in the history of religions, showing how the biblical teaching is different than that of Mormonism or Islam for example. Drawing on Luther, Sasse sought to set out a Christological understanding of inspiration: “But the Holy Scripture is inspired because in it that is said which can be said only ‘in the Holy Ghost,’ (I Cor. 12:3), because in it that fact is testified to, to which the Holy Ghost alone can testify (Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:13 f.), namely that Jesus is the Christ and Lord.”53 The Bible is to be received as a book which is both divine and human even as Christ is both God and man. This necessitates a hermeneutic which Sasse then goes on to lay out: If we must therefore learn that the entire Holy Scripture, Old and New Testaments, is God’s Word, the Holy Ghost’s book because Jesus Christ is its content, the question then arises of how these assertions relate to the fact that the Bible is a collection (a collection which grew up in a long history) of literary documents of entirely different natures which all, written by men, have had the fortunes of human books. If we must say of the Bible with all seriousness and without reservations that it is God’s Word and the Holy Ghost its author then we must declare no less seriously, on the other hand, that the books of the Bible are genuine man’s word. If we deny the first, the Bible loses its character as Holy Scripture and becomes a haphazard collection of documents from man’s history-of-religion, a collection of which a person is unable to imagine why they should have any normative dogmatic significance. If we deny the human character of the Bible, then the human–ness [sic] and naturalness of the biblical texts become mere appearance––think of personal confessions like Psalm 51 or Jeremiah 20:7 ff., or the natural human traits of the Pauline epistles.54

In short, Sasse argued that Lutheran theology must steer its way between “the cliffs of a rationalistic, history–of–religion’s understanding of the Scripture and a super–naturalistic, docetic understanding of Scripture.”55 Sasse went on to draw out the implications of his proposal, suggesting that Luther’s approach to sola Scriptura was a consequence of the sola fide, while the reverse was true for the theologians of late Lutheran Orthodoxy. For him, Luther’s reception of Holy Scripture as the Word of God clothed in human speech allows for seeming historical or geographical errors or even contradictions between biblical writers in the reporting of events without detracting from the Bible’s status as the Word of God. While Sasse saw the thoughts 52 53 54 55

Letter 14, 58. Letter 14, 67. The italics indicate Sasse’s own emphasis. Letter 14, 75 – 76. Letter 14, 76.

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expressed in Letter 14 as preliminary and exploratory, others did not. Some would see Letter 14 as a denial of the orthodox teaching of biblical inspiration and inerrancy. Others would use the letter to champion a critical reading of the Scripture, drawing conclusions Sasse never intended. In the end Sasse withdrew this letter. When in the 1960’s it was printed and sold without his permission through the bookstore at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, he protested.56 It was Sasse’s intention to write a book on the doctrine of Holy Scripture. Although he never finished this project,57 he wrote numerous essays attempting to clarify his position on the nature of the Holy Scriptures, biblical infallibility, and inerrancy. A few months after the publication of Letter 14, Sasse wrote Letter 16, “What Does Luther Have to Say to Us on the Inerrancy of the Holy Scripture?” In this letter, Sasse suggested that Luther’s doctrine of the Scripture is best apprehended as “a piece of this great Theology of the cross (theologia crucis).”58 The Scriptures come in lowliness and the form of a servant yet faith beholds these writings as the very Word of God. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Sasse continued to expound an approach to the doctrine of Scripture that holds together the Bible as both human and divine. In a book of essays commemorating the 450th anniversary of the Reformation, Accents in Luther’s Theology, Sasse contributed a chapter, “Luther and the Word of God,” which serves as something of a summation of his earlier reflections on the nature of the Bible while demonstrating the vitality of Luther’s hermeneutics from the perspective of the debate with Erasmus. Sasse repeatedly expressed his discomfort at what he deemed to be a wooden and Aristotelian doctrine of biblical inerrancy in the theologians of Lutheran Orthodoxy and in classical teachers of the Missouri Synod such as Franz Pieper, Theodore Engelder, and Paul Kretzmann. He was also troubled by what he saw as a new theology emerging from the Synod’s St. Louis seminary after the Second World War. His 1951 essay, “Confession (Confessionalism) and the Theology of the Missouri Synod,” renders a diagnosis of the inability of theologians indebted to Franz Pieper to move beyond the thought world of seventeenth–century Orthodoxy. But then he finds it strange that “A Statement” signed by forty–four prominent Missouri Synod pastors and theologians in 1945 calling for greater openness to and 56 See Sasse’s letter to the editor of The Springfielder (May 25, 1968) cited by Jeffrey Khloa in “Sasse Confesses De Scriptura Sacra” in Scripture and the Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 411: “I was deeply hurt by the fact that all my attempts to correct my letter 14 and stop its circulation were in vain. If an author has publicly withdrawn a certain statement no one is entitled to continue to publicize it without comment.” 57 After Sasse’s death, his friend and co-worker, F. W. Hopf edited and published the uncompleted manuscript under the title, Sacra Scriptura. Studien zur Lehre von der Heiligen Schrift (Erlangen: Verlag der Ev.-Lutherischen Mission, 1981). 58 Hermann Sasse, “What Does Luther Have to Say to Us On the Inerrancy of the Holy Scripture? Letters to Lutheran Pastors, No. 16” in Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 156.

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increased cooperation with other Lutherans makes no mention of the Lutheran Confessions. “The Lutheran Confessions no longer play the role in the life and theological thinking of the Missouri Synod, in fact, of all of American Lutheranism by far which they played during the 19th century.”59 In Sasse’s reading, “A Statement” represents a shift from theology to ethics in keeping with the spirit of American Christianity but detrimental to a confessional understanding of the church. As indicated already, the Australian theologian was no disinterested observer of the Missouri Synod. He saw the departure of the faculty majority at the St. Louis seminary to form Concordia Seminary in Exile in 1974 as the culmination of a problem deeply rooted in the Missouri Synod’s insecurity with the Lutheran Confessions, the Synod’s malfunctioning “dogmatic compass” as he put it in his 1975 letter to Robert Preus. This long letter (23 pages on legal paper) is instructive not only as to how Sasse perceived the crisis in the Missouri Synod but also in regard to his articulation of the doctrine of Scripture. Critical as he was of aspects of Missouri’s traditional teaching on the inerrancy of Scripture, he was even more opposed to what he saw as a confessional collapse embodied in those who left the Synod. In the letter to Preus, Sasse observed that the events surrounding the formation of the exile seminary pointed to a fault in the theology of Missouri which needed to be rectified. “Since you could not solve the problem by your own strength your theologians made the worst blunder they could make; they borrowed the theology from other churches without realizing that by doing so they abandoned what could help to solve your problems: the strong sense of Missouri for the authority of Holy Scripture and the faithful preservation of some of the great truths of the Reformation … . They simply took over uncritically and carelessly what was offered on the European market of the newest theological or pseudotheological fashions.”60 While maintaining a strong criticism of Missouri Synod teachers such as Alfred Rehwinkel61 and Lutheran Orthodoxy’s over–reliance on Aristotelian categories, Sasse went on to express his appreciation for Preus’ work on the seventeenth–century theologians and the doctrine of inspiration. He lauded Preus for dispelling faulty mistaken characterizations of the period. “The books published by you and your brother in recent years together with some other similar publications made by others are really a promising beginning of a new indigenous Lutheran

59 Hermann Sasse, “Confession (Confessionalism) and Theology in the Missouri Synod. Letters to Lutheran Pastors, no. 20” in Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 205. 60 Letter from Hermann Sasse to Robert Preus, January 19, 1975. 61 Alfred Rehwinkel (b. 1887) had been a professor at Concordia Seminary, St. Lous. He was the author of The Age of the Earth: Chronology of the Bible (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1966) in which he argued for a “young earth” and The Flood (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1957), a defense of the historical accuracy of the Genesis account of the deluge.

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theology in America. It may be significant that they have not come from the dissenters.”62 Sasse suggested that Robert Preus himself may be in the position to assist in the theological revitalization of the Missouri Synod: If Missouri has now to rethink its theology one of the first tasks will be to examine the philosophical presuppositions of your traditional theology. This is especially true of the problem of Inspiration and Inerrancy of Holy Scripture. Your discussion of the doctrine of our orthodox fathers on these problems should open up the door to a fresh approach to this problem which is of greatest concern to all Christian churches and which may be the basic question underlying the troubles of your church. You refute rightly the wrong conceptions of inspiration as the Biblical authors had only been the penmen of the Holy Spirit who dictated to them the holy books. You are fighting in an impressive way simultaneously the theory of a mechanic dictation as well as the untenable reaction of modern theologians who are watering down or bluntly rejecting the doctrine of Inspiration altogether, as it is being done even by otherwise conservative thinkers like Werner Elert whose Dogmatics are marred by this blunder.63

Sasse’s treatment of Holy Scripture would remain something of an enigma even to the end of his life as he attempted to chart a way for contemporary Lutherans to confess without equivocation that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God while recognizing that God’s Word comes in and through human words open to literary and historical analysis.

The Sacrament of the Altar Among the theologians of his era, Sasse stands out as one who gave ongoing and thorough attention to the Lord’s Supper from exegetical, historical, dogmatic, and liturgical perspectives. Perhaps the most focused treatments of the Lord’s Supper come within the period of 1938 to1941 when Sasse wrote several essays on the Lord’s Supper although his best known work on the Sacrament, This is My Body : Luther’s Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar, was not published until 1959. This book, written by Sasse in English, demonstrated his capacity as a Luther scholar as he traced the medieval background for the Reformer’s teaching on the Sacrament, the conflict with Rome from 1517 to 1524, the disagreement with Zwingli at Marburg, and later developments with Bucer, Melanchthon, and Calvin concluding with the confessional decisions of the Formula of Concord. A final section of This is My Body took up questions raised by new exegetical and 62 Letter from Hermann Sasse to Robert Preus, January 19, 1975. 63 Letter from Hermann Sasse to Robert Preus, January 19, 1975.

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ecumenical studies. But This is My Body built upon earlier works of Sasse on the Lord’s Supper. In the “Preface” to Vom Sacrament des Altars (1941), a collection of essays by Sasse and like-minded colleagues (Friedrich Wilhelm Hopf, Theodor Knolle, Hans Preuss, Otto Procksch, and Ernst Sommerlath), Sasse located the Sacrament at the heart of the church. “Around the Lord’s Table is gathered the church. At the Table of the Lord, the church knows what it most profoundly is: the body of Christ. There has been no doubt of this since the days of the apostles. Where the Lord’s Supper is no longer known or celebrated, there the church dies, irretrievably lost.”64 Noting the decline of the place of the Sacrament in the Lutheran Church in the periods of Pietism and Rationalism, Sasse urged Lutherans to test their doctrine of the Lord’s Supper by the Scriptures and then joyfully to proclaim this gift before all of Christendom. Another essay from the same year (1941), “The Lord’s Supper in the Catholic Mass,” is instructive on a number of levels. It demonstrated Sasse’s historical acumen as well as his knowledge of contemporary developments in the Roman Church in a day when ecumenical contact with Rome was limited. Sasse also observed how the history of liturgy and the history of dogma are woven together : “In this history of the Lord’s Supper, the church lived her own history. As a lens gathers beams of light to a burning point, so in the history of the Sacrament of the Altar are gathered the history of liturgy and of doctrine, the history of the way Christians worship and live, and how the church is structured. The history of this Sacrament is the core of the church’s history.”65 This essay gives evidence of how Sasse saw the relationship between doctrine and liturgy. “Even though liturgy may indeed have its inherent laws of essence and form, yet it does not produce its doctrinal content out of itself. This it receives from God what has been revealed. Whatever the liturgy says is subject always to the judgment of norma normans (‘ultimate/norming norm”) of Holy Scripture. The assertion that something could be liturgically right and doctrinally wrong may indeed be true of the ancient mystery religions, but never of the Christian liturgy.”66 Sasse observes that the ancient rule lex orandi lex credendi also applies to perpetuation of false doctrine in the church as in the case of Mariology and development of the notion of the Mass as a sacrifice. “What it may lead to when lex orandi lex credendi is used to subordinate doctrine to liturgy may be seen in the development of the Lord’s Supper into the Mass of the Catholic churches in the East and in the West.”67 Sasse thus champions the liturgy for the sake of the church’s dogma, which led him to take a critical position over against the liturgical movement.68 64 65 66 67 68

Hermann Sasse, “Preface to Vom Sakrament des Altars” in The Lonely Way, vol. II:12. Hermann Sasse, “The Lord’s Supper and the Catholic Mass” in The Lonely Way, vol. II:17. Hermann Sasse, “The Lord’s Supper and the Catholic Mass,” 25. Hermann Sasse, “The Lord’s Supper and the Catholic Mass,” 25. See John T. Pless, “Hermann Sasse and the Liturgical Movement,” Logia: A Lutheran Journal of Theology VII (Eastertide 1998): 47 – 51.

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Arguing that a real renewal of liturgy is needed, Sasse wrote “Liturgy and Confession: A Brotherly Warning Against the High Church Danger” in 1959. In this treatise, Sasse was critical of Arthur Carl Piepkorn69 and his associates who published Una Sancta. A Lutheran liturgical movement, Sasse opined, ought to be anchored in “the saving message of the justification of the sinner by faith alone” (314). Sasse chided the formulators of the 1958 Service Book and Hymnal for importing an Anglican eucharistic prayer into the Lutheran rite, pointing out the weaknesses of Gregory Dix’s approach to liturgical theology. At the heart of his criticisms of the liturgical movement is its inattentiveness to the doctrinal content and orientation of liturgical forms and practices. The lex credendi lex orandi must also be reversible. “The liturgy defines doctrine only if doctrine defines the liturgy.”70

Ecclesiology The confession of the church, for Sasse, is a confession of the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ. The church is defined not by historical observations or sociological data but by the Gospel purely preached and the sacraments rightly administered. The Seventh Article of the Augsburg Confession is the ever present refrain in Sasse’s ecclesiology. In a 1930 essay, “Church and Churches: Concerning the Doctrine of the Unity of the Church,” he wrote “No treatment of the church which begins with people, with human communities, with the faith of people, ever leads to that other aspect of the church which the NT describes with the words ‘body of Christ.”71 The church is known only from her head. It is from this perspective that Sasse addressed the unity of the church. “If this is the case, if the church is the body of Christ, if the church as body of Christ comes into history, then the proposition of the unity of the church needs no further foundation. If the church were constituted by our faith, then a series of churches would be conceivable, because there are varying views regarding Christ. Luther’s faith in Christ is something different than that of the modern American Protestant. But Christ, the present Lord, constitutes 69 Sasse’s critique of Piepkorn was persistent. He wrote to Robert Preus that Piepkorn’s theology “was exactly what the Anglo-Catholics teach in their church.” Letter from Hermann Sasse to Robert Preus, January 19, 1975. Also see Ronald Feuerhahn, “Hermann Sasse’s Critique of Arthur Carl Piepkorn” in Shepherd the Church: Essays in Pastoral Theology Honoring Bishop Roger D. Pittelko, ed. Frederic W. Baue et al. (Fort Wayne: Concordia Theological Seminary Press, 2002): 89 – 103. 70 Hermann Sasse, “Liturgy and Confession: A Brotherly Warning against the ‘High Church’ Danger” in The Lonely Way, vol. II:301. 71 Hermann Sasse, “Church and Churches: Concerning the Doctrine of the Unity of the Church” in The Lonely Way, vol. I:81.

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the church, then there can be only one church, because there is one Christ.”72 This raises the question of the visibility of the church. Rather than using the language of the church’s visibility or invisibility, Sasse, following Luther, speaks of the church as hidden but known through the marks of the church (notae ecclesiae), the means of grace around which the assembly of believers is gathered. The unity of the church is then not an ideal to be pursued, but a gift to be confessed even though it is finally hidden from human eyes. In his discussion of the Lutheran Church and the Una Sancta four years later in Here We Stand, Sasse continued to expound this theme in light of Article VII of the Augustana: In this great article, for the first time in the history of Christian doctrine, a part of Christendom tried to express confessionally what the church really is and what its unity consists. The two truths which are inseparably conjoined in the doctrine of the church are set forth in this article. The first truth is the belief in the una sancta ecclesia perpetuo mansura, in the one holy church which has been given the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The second truth is the conviction that the church militant on earth, the realization of church unity is dependent upon agreement in the generally received truth of the pure Gospel. It is the plain teaching of the New Testament that the true unity of the church is unity in the truth.73

This twofold aspect of the church’s unity, the unbroken continuation of the one church and the necessity of consensus in the truth, are axiomatic for all of Sasse’s writings on the church whether they have to do with his rejection of the Barmen Declaration, his critique of the formation of the EKD, his ecumenical discussions with Rome and the Anglicans, his disquiet with the Arnoldshain Theses and the Leuenberg Concord,74 or his observations regarding pressures for confessional compromise on the mission field. So, in a 1946 essay, “The Question of the Church’s Unity on the Mission Field,” Sasse wrote “Genuine faith in the una sancta as an indestructible, divinely established reality in the world can guard us all, Christians of churches young and old, from doubting the church of God. For the present state of Christianity will plunge anyone into despair who only sees this outer state and knows nothing of the hidden glory of the regnum Christi (“kingdom of Christ”) which stands behind it.”75 For Sasse, the doctrine of the church is always an ecclesiology of the cross. The Christian 72 Hermann Sasse. “Church and Churches: Concerning the Doctrine of the Unity of the Church,” 82. 73 Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand, 186, with Sasse’s own italics. 74 See Hermann Sasse, “Sanctorum Communio,” Lutheran Theological Journal VIII (August 1974): 49 – 60. Also see Werner Klän, “Eucharist and Ecclesiology : Marginal Comments Concerning the Inherent Coherence of the Theology of Hermann Sasse” in Lord Jesus Christ, Will You Not Stay : Essays in Honor of Ronald Feuerhahn on the Occasion of his Sixth-Fifth Birthday, ed. J. Bart Day et al. (Houston: The Feuerhahn Festschrift Committee, 2002): 153 – 165. 75 Hermann Sasse, “The Question of the Church’s Unity on the Mission Field” in The Lonely Way, vol. II:186.

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stance is thus not despair but faithfulness and patience in the face of the outward fissures in Christendom. “As difficult as it may be for us Christians of the modern world, we must allow ourselves anew to say that the question of the unity of the church of Christ always has to do with the truth of the Gospel.”76 Where this is forgotten, a lethal synergism sets in that would attempt to create a unity other than that of Article VII of the Augsburg Confession. This Sasse sees as the error of Pietism expressed in its slogan “Doctrine divides, service unites.”77 Without the truth of the Gospel, the unity of the church is never secure; in fact, it can become an energetic but idolatrous project coming under divine judgment.

Conclusion Albrecht Peters speaks, no doubt, for many when he says that “to the chorus of present-day theology, Sasse’s voice sounds foreign and shrill.”78 Sasse could be easily dismissed as one who was theologically rigid, an isolationist, out of place in a climate that calls for tolerance in the midst of pluralism and diversity. But such a judgment would fail to understand the depth of Sasse’s learning, the scope of his engagement beyond Lutheranism, or the strength of his conviction. He was a theologian of the cross who realized the perpetual temptations to a theology of glory. Relentless in his insistence that “all that we think and do in the church has to be cleansed by the theology of the cross if we are to escape the perils of a theology of glory,”79 Sasse used the theologia crucis as the orienting point for his discussion of Christology, church, the nature of Holy Scriptures, the sacraments, and liturgy. Ultimately nothing is left untouched by the theology of the cross for this theologian so deeply rooted in the thinking of Luther. Sasse’s indebtedness to Luther is also evident in an essay from 1968 on Erasmus. Sasse says of Luther : “He saw behind Erasmus’ concept of an undogmatic Christianity the coming neo-paganism of the modern world.”80 Like Luther, Sasse knew that to take away assertions destroys Christian faith with a feeble skepticism. His diagnosis of twentieth–century Christianity, including much of Lutheranism, was that it had opted for the way of Erasmus, not Luther. Thus Sasse would become something of a John the Baptist–like figure in contemporary Lutheranism, a minority voice, calling for repentance and faith. Bavarian Lutheran Bishop Hermann Dietzfelbinger would comment after Sasse’s death that his words “seldom conformed with the general trend, also in 76 77 78 79

“The Church’s Unity on the Mission Field,” 188, with original italics. “The Church’s Unity on the Mission Field,” 188. Cited in Gerhardy, 39 (see note 14 above). Hermann Sasse, “The Theology of the Cross, Letters to Lutheran Pastors, No. 18, Jubilate 1951” in We Confess Jesus Christ, 52. 80 Hermann Sasse, “Erasmus, Luther, and Modern Christendom” in The Lonely Way, vol. II: 381.

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regard to the church. Should they not precisely for this reason then occupy our interest again? This harsh Lutheran, also at times unsparing with his powerful assaults, was by no means a narrow confessionalist. Rather he was a passionate ecumenist with worldwide vision.”81 Bishop Dietzfelbinger’s words are a commendation of the legacy of Hermann Sasse for our day where the challenges addressed by Sasse have only intensified for the Lutheran Church “which has been sentenced to death by the world.”82 The author dedicates this article to Dr. Ronald R. Feuerhahn, Professor Emeritus at Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, in honor of his untiring scholarship on the life and theology of Hermann Sasse.

81 Cited by Gerhardy, 40. 82 Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand, 187. Also see Steven D. Paulson, Lutheran Theology (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2011). Paulson suggests that Sasse captures something of the dynamic of Lutheran theology as “always offensive and perverse in its specific attack on virtue with Christ” (4).

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Gregory A. Walter

Hans Joachim Iwand (1899 – 1960)

The human will and God are intertwined. Human desire and God mix and meet in various ways: no wonder that much of the church’s interpretation of the Song of Songs readily reads the desire expressed in that poem as desire for God.1 For many modern thinkers this connection between the will and God gives human beings the right to think about God. In such an arrangement this claim does not necessarily mean that the will alone has any significance, but rather that the will makes it possible for thought, judgment, or understanding to think rightly about God. Whether this means that God has a postulated existence based on the needs of practical reason, as Immanuel Kant would claim, or that God can be spoken rightly of only in an authentic human existence, as Rudolf Bultmann put it, the human will plays a frequent and important role in basic theological questions. Hans Joachim Iwand’s important contribution to theology is to expose this problem for theology and champion an alternative: the doctrine of the bound will is a necessary supposition to properly identify the “me” intended in the Reformation formula pro me, to receive true reality in Jesus’ cross, and to “let God be God.” In short, for Iwand, the doctrine of the bound will is dialectically related to Christological statements in Christ’s very advent to humanity. Because the will possesses such prominence in modern thought, Iwand claimed that this situation makes Reformation discussions on the bound will always contemporary. Martin Luther’s doctrine of the bound will brought Hans Joachim Iwand to a wide-ranging engagement with modern philosophy and theology. The bound human will meant for Iwand more than a dimension of salvation, a problem of ethics, or theological anthropology. This doctrine played a significant role in the development of his Christology and his political theology and even of his theological methodology itself. Since Iwand emerged out of the Luther Renaissance, he is first of all an interpreter of Luther’s theology while also effectively operating as a systematic theologian. He especially engaged two fields of thinkers: German philosophers Kant to Hegel and modern theologians from Schleiermacher onward. I will 1 Denys Turner provides an account of the relationship between human desire and God in the tradition of commentaries in Eros and Allegory : Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Spencer, Mass: Cistercian Publications, 1995). Turner also makes a case in this work for the contemporary theological significance of human desire.

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outline his biography and writings, interpret his reflections on the bound will, and draw out some implications of his theological claims.

Iwand’s Work and Life Hans Joachim Iwand expressed his theology mainly in essays and lectures. He published only two monographs during his lifetime, yet two series of posthumous works have been collected.2 His series of sermons and homiletical reflections, Gottinger Predigt-Meditationen, is collected into two volumes and three other collections of his essays have been published as well.3 He has his roots in the movement known as the Luther Renaissance and much of his theology is exposition of Luther’s theology or work in the philosophy of religion. The Luther Renaissance itself advanced a historical and theological program starting in 1910. It was a movement to restore the German church and nation after the First World War by turning to the young Luther, a goal shared widely by such diverse theologians as Erich Seeberg, Werner Elert, Emanuel Hirsch, and Paul Althaus.4 Theologians and historians belonging to this group were influenced by Holl’s recovery of Luther. In Heinrich Assel’s important definition, the Luther Renaissance consisted of the Holl School and a loose group of “positive theologians” who did not emerge from a confessional school of theology, such as the Erlangen school, but owed their openness to Reformation theology to the theology of Martin Kähler. Thus, the Luther Renaissance formed a fourth front against the theology of Albrecht Ritschl, the History of Religions School, and Dialectical Theology.5 The Luther Renaissance had its public center in the journal Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie, founded in 1923. Carl Stange, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch were the founding editors of this journal. This task, as the editorial introduction to the first issue states, most prominently used the 2 Hans Joachim Iwand, Rechtfertigungslehre und Christusglaube: eine Untersuchung zur Systematik der Rechtfertigungslehre Luthers in ihren Anfängen. 2nd Ed. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1961) and Glaubensgerechtigkeit nach Luthers Lehre (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1951). Principle posthumous collections are Hans Joachim Iwand, Nachgelassene Werke, eds. Helmut Gollwitzer et al. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1962 – 1974) and Nachgelassene Werke. Neue Folge, eds. E. Borsch et al. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1988 – 2002). Hereafter cited as NW and NWN. 3 Hans Joachim Iwand, Predigt-Meditationen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963); Um dem rechten Glaube: Gesammelte Aufsätze, ed. Helmut Gollwitzer (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1960); Glaubensgerechtigkeit: Lutherstudien, ed. Gerhard Sauter (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1991); Frieden mit dem Osten: Texte 1933 – 1959, ed. Gerard C. den Hertog (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1988). 4 Heinrich Assel, Der andere Aufbruch : die Lutherrenaissance – Urspünge, Aporien und Wege : Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910 – 1935) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 20. 5 Ibid., 22.

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“reformation experience” of Luther to critically reevaluate the Protestant theology of the time.6 The various contributors to this journal, Assel argues, may be counted as members of the Luther Renaissance. Their articles contributed to the task laid out in the initial editorial. Some of Holl’s immediate students were among the contributors to the Zeitschrift, bringing about this union of the Holl School and “positive theologians” such as Carl Stange, Erich Seeberg, and Georg Wehrung. This shared commitment defines the Luther Renaissance more loosely as a theological movement whose roots were in Karl Holl’s collected essays on Luther’s theology.7 After the journal appeared, Holl recognized his agreement with it and contributed an article to it.8 Since this program had political as well as theological components, political judgments in early 1930 began to divide the group. The Holl School’s nationalism and involvement in the German-Christian movement created a rift between Hirsch and Stange, and the journal survived only by inviting Scandinavian theologians to contribute to it.9 While Hirsch went on to contribute to the German Christian journal Deutsche Theologie, some of the younger members of the Luther Renaissance, such as Hans Joachim Iwand, helped to found Evangelische Theologie, a journal polemically opposed to Deutsche Theologie. Even though the Luther Renaissance ended as a movement in 1934 with the split between the Holl school and the positive theologians, Hans Joachim Iwand continued to articulate its concerns. He would respond to other aspects of Holl’s theology late in life, calling Holl the “Moses of Liberal theology,” explaining that though Holl saw the new land opened up by Luther’s theology, he did not enter it.10 Iwand lived much of his life in and around Königsberg, which was at the time in East Prussia, now belonging to Russia. He was born on November 7, 1899, to Lydia and Otto Iwand, a pastor of the Prussian Union Church, in Schreibendorf, forty kilometers south of the Prussian provincial city of Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland). After attending Gymnasium at Görlitz, Iwand began theological study in the Winter Semester of 1917 at the University of Breslau. Military service soon interrupted his studies and from Easter 1918 to Spring 1919 he served as a soldier on the French front in the 10th Grenadier Regiment. Iwand engaged Bultmann’s theology throughout his life. After this semester, Rudolf Hermann came to teach at Breslau, as did Erich Seeberg, and Iwand maintained theological correspondence with both of these theologians and Luther 6 Ibid., 36 – 38. Assel’s willingness to extend the Luther Renaissance program to include international figures shows the central importance of the early Luther’s theology and the relative value of the political commitments that were distinctive to only some of the Germans involved. 7 These essays collected in Karl Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte: Luther, 3rd ed. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1932). 8 Assel, Der andere Aufbruch, 38. 9 Ibid., 27. 10 NW 5, 47 – 8

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scholars. In an “Interim-Semester” between Summer and Winter Semesters in 1919 that was held at the University of Königsburg for students returning from military service, he heard Hermann’s lectures on Schleiermacher, and during Winter Semester 1919/1920 he attended Hermann’s first lectures on the philosophy of religion.11 From Seeberg he received instruction on Protestant history. Iwand then left Breslau for two semesters at Halle, where his father wished him to study. There he heard lectures from Ferdinand Kattenbusch and Herman Gunkel. For his last semester, during the summer of 1921, he returned to Breslau. By then Hermann had left the faculty, and Iwand studied with Erich Seeberg, Erich Schaeder, and Hans von Soden. Upon the completion of these studies he spent time preparing for his theological exams by teaching in a home in Machinitz. In March of 1923 he became the Studieninspektor of Lutherheim, a house of studies for the Prussian Union Church. The students who lived there attended the University of Königsberg and took some lecture courses given at the house itself. The president of the local consistory, D. Quandt, had founded Lutherheim in 1917.12 Like other houses of study, it provided a place for students preparing for ordained ministry to live and work together. The position enabled Iwand to lecture occasionally in conjunction with fulfilling pastoral and administrative duties for the seminarians. He primarily occupied himself with the day-to-day activities of maintaining Lutherheim and preparing students to pass their examinations. Iwand’s beginnings in the philosophy of religion and theology with Rudolf Hermann foreshadowed important future directions for his development of Christology and attention to the doctrine of the bound will. In his first dissertation, Über die methodische Verwendung von Antinomien in der Religionsphilosophie, completed in 1924, Iwand developed the relationship between the humanity of the knowing subject and the humanity of Christ.13 Without the incarnation of Christ, one cannot know what humanity is. He built on these initial notions in his second dissertation in 1927. Folkart Wittekind summarizes this dissertation well: “Iwand formulates in his Christology the possibility of such agreement [between the human will and the perception of God], and in such a way that the experience strived for is only to be thought in Christ.”14 11 Rudolf Hermann had studied first with Wilhelm Herrmann at Marburg and then Martin Kähler at Halle before receiving a professorship at Breslau. 12 Hugo Linck, Der Kirchenkampf in Ostpreussen: 1933 bis 1945 Geschichte und Dokumentation (Munich: Gräfe & Unzer, 1968), 101 – 103; Jürgen Seim, Hans Joachim Iwand: Eine Biografie (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1999), 36 – 39. 13 Hans Joachim Iwand, Über die methodische Verwendung von Antinomien in der Religionsphilosophie (PhD Dissertation, Üniversitat Königsburg, 1924). 14 Folkart Wittekind, “Das Erleben der Wirklichkeit Gottes: Die Enstehung der Theologie Hans Joachim Iwands aus der Religionsphilosophie Carl Stanges und Rudolf Hermanns,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 44 (2002): 38.

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After completing his first dissertation in 1924, Iwand sought the advice of Rudolf Hermann about the next step towards securing a teaching position. Hermann suggested that Iwand should write his second dissertation with Erich Seeberg, but Iwand instead chose to work under Martin Schulze at the University of Königsberg. He later explained to Hermann that his decision to remain in Königsberg came from theological differences between Seeberg and himself.15 Iwand’s second dissertation built on the first even though it focuses on theological and interpretative problems of Luther’s theology. In the first dissertation on Heim, Iwand had identified the importance of Christ in his critique of religion by locating the experience of God in the experience of Christ. This occurred through the doctrine of the bound human will. Now his work would expand his view of these questions by examining the relationship between justification and Christology in Luther’s early theology. Karl Holl’s problems now consumed his energies. Iwand retained crucial parts of the position Holl had articulated on justification: he still articulated justification as that which occurs in the present in God’s promise with a future consummation. In this picture he established God’s promise as Christ’s work and justification as consummating a future union with Christ. In his letters to Hermann while writing the study, he noted that, if one looks at Luther’s doctrine of justification, Christology is its basis. Luther’s Christology cannot be isolated from the doctrine of justification, but, it does not appear to me to be a “constructed aid,” that Ritschl thought it to be … It is simply not so, that Christology is the presupposition and justification the consequence of this presupposition. … The relationship is not reversible because one cannot make Christological statements out of justification.16

In the midst of Iwand’s analysis of selections from Luther’s Romans Lectures he discovered his entry point to the dissertation: God’s promise. He wrote to Hermann, “the true pro nobis lies in the promissio, what faith in Christ brings. Therefore I have found the beginning point of the Christological. That is, this is the point where self-knowledge comes together with knowledge of God in Christ.”17 Iwand then examined Karl Holl’s Luther Book, writing that he has taken issue with Holl’s stress on the role of Luther’s experience of God as the beginning point of his theology.18 Prepared by his first dissertation, Iwand had a number of objections to Holl’s starting point, chiefly that Christ’s Work should replace Holl’s account of Luther’s breakthrough experience. Here Iwand deepened the Christological determination of self-knowledge through engagement with Holl: “The question ‘Who is Christ’ must be identical in 15 16 17 18

Letter to Rudolf Hermann, September 20, 1926, in NW 6, 123. Letter to Rudolf Hermann, August 30, 1926, in NW 6, 98. Letter to Rudolf Hermann, August 31, 1926, in NW 6, 119. Letter to Rudolf Hermann, September 20, 1926, in NW 6, 121.

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some form to the other question ’Who am I?’” These reservations and insights about Holl’s theology would lead Iwand to do the Christological work of reconstruction. He remained convinced of the correctness of Holl’s judgment of justification as promise. Iwand based his second dissertation on Luther’s Romans Lectures, drawing most of the material from this work, although some of Luther’s other early exegetical works from 1513 – 1519 also provided resources for the study. Iwand made connections between sections of Luther’s writing in order to produce a systematic summary of the treatise. He rarely called attention to the context of the quotations he used from Luther’s writing and therefore his study has had limited value for subsequent work on Luther’s Romans Lectures. His advisor Marin Schultze nearly rejected the dissertation when he read it initially as a historical treatment of Luther’s theology.19 After completing this dissertation, he continued in his work at Lutherheim. Starting in 1933 events both in the National Socialist takeover of Germany and the Kirchenkampf began to jeopardize Iwand’s positions at the University of Königsburg and Lutherheim.20 In June, German Christians took control of the church supervisory committee of Lutherheim, with Iwand having been deposed just before a promotion by the Cultural Ministry and then reinstated at the end of the month. The mother of his wife Ilse Iwand, born Eberhard, was Jewish and so he was denounced as having married a “half-Jew.”21 In November, Julius Schniewind, a New Testament theologian at the University of Königsburg, and Iwand founded a working group for pastors to resist this takeover. The East-Prussian Confessing Church counted this group as one of its predecessors. On July 8, 1934, Iwand received a call from the Herderinstitut in Riga, Latvia, an institute that educated pastors for German-speaking congregations in the Baltic countries, asking him to take up a position in New Testament. That summer, while awaiting permission to take the call, the Bavarian Lutheran bishop Hans Meiser invited him to work in the Lutheran commission of the Confessing Church in Munich. Iwand turned the position down. Finally, on October 31 he received permission from the Cultural Ministry, which certified academic appointments, to take up the call from Riga, and he traveled there in the beginning of November. That Christmas, Iwand’s family joined him in Riga. Ilse Iwand brought him Karl Barth’s reply to Emil Brunner on the matter of a “point of contact.”22 19 NW 6, 122. 20 For the history of the German Protestant Church during 1933 see Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), vol. 1, 219 – 236, 280 – 305. 21 Taken from an anonymous denunciation. Reprinted in Peter Sänger and Dieter Pauly, Hans Joachim Iwand, Theologie in der Zeit: Lebensabriss und Briefdokumentation: Bibliographie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1992), 80. 22 Karl Barth, Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner (Munich, C. Kaiser, 1934).

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Iwand reported to Rudolf Hermann that Barth and Brunner’s exchange struck to the heart of their current struggles. Despite his positive estimation of Barth’s position, Iwand turned to a more critical consideration of Barth’s theology and in the process clarified for himself the relationship between human and divine words in preaching and, by extension, their relationship in the sacraments.23 He published a review of Barth’s first volume of the Church Dogmatics, anticipating the coming law-gospel debate by raising important questions about Barth’s doctrine of revelation.24 In this mostly positive review Iwand concluded with a few questions that he feared would amount to the basic difference between Reformed and Lutheran theology. Nevertheless, he worried that Barth had translated the older Reformed strictures against the communion of divinity and humanity in Christ into his theological method and particularly into his doctrine of the word. He therefore raised the question whether Barth’s doctrine of the word of God was in fact “beyond law and gospel,” as his article’s title pondered. Iwand continued with his work in Riga. Then, on March 20, 1935, the Herderinstitut received notice that Iwand could not complete his duties as an instructor and that he must retire and no longer hold any academic position. At this time, Iwand was only 36 years old! Despite this notice, he continued to lecture at Riga until leaving for Germany on 10 May. Later that summer, Iwand was invited to lead one of the East Prussian Confessing Church’s Seminars. These seminars, most widely known from interest in the Finkenwalde Seminar led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were established by the East Prussian Confessing Church to carry out the education of pastors under the condition of the “declared emergency church law.”25 The relationship of these seminars to the official ones of the East Prussian Church was complex and their tenuous legality eventually led to the end of the seminars as some moved and others closed their doors permanently. Iwand moved to Bloestau where his seminar held its classes in August 1935. In 1936 through the summer of 1937, the Bloestau seminar held two terms. The seminar required Iwand to lecture in dogmatics, homiletics, and pastoral care.26 On May 24, 1937, Iwand received the Reichsredeverbot, which prohibited him from speaking publicly. The seminar itself moved briefly to Jordan in Neumark on May 31, 1937, and then moved ultimately to Dortmund in October of the same year. After brief arrests of all the members of the seminar, Iwand and students, they resumed work in January 1938. The seminar closed its doors in April of that year; the students left for Westfalen 23 Letter to Rudolf Hermann, December 25, 1934, in NW 6, 272. 24 Hans Joachim Iwand, “Jenseits vom Gesetz und Evangelium?,” Um dem rechten Glaube, 87 – 109. 25 Hugo Linck, Der Kirchenkampf in Ostpreussen: 1933 bis 1945 Geschichte und Dokumentation (Munich: Gräfe & Unzer, 1968), 133 – 138. 26 Hans Joachim Iwand, “Gesetz und Evangelium,” in NW 4; “Homiletik-Vorlesung,” in NWN 5, 417 – 508.

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and Iwand now had no professional options available to him except to serve a congregation as its pastor. He received a call to be pastor of St. Marienkirche in Dortmund but the Reich’s church ministerium, which certified pastoral appointments, rejected this call and the Gestapo arrested Iwand again. After another month in jail, the call was upheld, Iwand was released, and he took up work as pastor of St. Marienkirche in Dortmund. During this time, Iwand composed his second and last monograph, The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther.27 This monograph is a tour de force examining the nature of faith, the relationship of law and gospel, and the existence of a Christian as saint and sinner. Much more of a systematic work than his earlier monograph, Rechtferigungslehre und Christusglaube, it is an accessible and significant work. Iwand remained in Dortmund until the end of the war. The Allies bombed Dortmund in October 1944, destroying his library and many of his academic and personal papers. Iwand and his family barely escaped with their lives.28 Following the war, Iwand left his pastoral call and took up a position in systematic theology at the University of Göttingen in 1945. In this period he labored for the formation of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, not least through his drafting the Darmstadt Word in 1947.29 As Christians in Germany struggled to understand themselves after the war, many proposed confessions and statements of repentance. The Stuttgart Word became the most official.30 Iwand and Karl Barth both penned versions of the Darmstadt Word in reflection on the Barmen Confession. It remains a testament of confession and reconciliation. Attentive to the difficulties facing post-war life, Iwand took a special interest in the plight of displaced persons and orphans. He founded the Haus der helfenden Hände in Beinrode near Konigslutter in 1949 and advocated for the support of displaced persons and orphans in the church. At Göttingen he joined colleagues Ernst Wolf and Ernst Käsemann and wrote a series of essays considering the role of government in Reformation theology of law. At this time, his most significant lecture was Kirche und Gesellschaft, given in the Summer Semester of 1951. In this lecture he detailed his criticism of the Lutheran Two Kingdoms doctrine in a manner akin to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth. Also at this time, he began publishing his PredigtMeditationen, later collected in two volumes. These meditations were both original sermons and homiletical aids into which Iwand poured his theological

27 The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther, trans. Randi H. Lundell (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2008). See also Gregory Walter, “An Introduction to H.J. Iwand’s The Righteousness of Faith according to Luther”, Lutheran Quarterly 21 (2007): 17 – 26. 28 Jürgen Seim, Hans Joachim Iwand: eine Biografie (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1999), 288 – 289. 29 Als Kirche Schuld bekennen: zur Entstehungs und Wirkungsgeschichte des “Darmsta¨ dter Wortes” von 1947 (Mu¨ lheim/Ruhr: Evangelischen Akademie, 1989. 30 Im Zeichen der Schuld: 40 Jahre Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis, ed. Martin Greschat (NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1985).

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talents. As we shall see, the activity of the preacher is decisive for theology to be truly theological in his mind. In 1952 he was called to be systematic theologian on the faculty of the University of Bonn, where he served until his death in 1960. He increasingly became involved in churchly politics, a companion to Helmut Gollwitzer, who was on the same faculty. His ecumenical efforts pressed further when he was part of the drafting committee of the Arnoldshain Theses, a precursor to the Leuenburg Conrcord. His ecumenical work also extended to the discussions held between the EKD and the Russian Orthodox Church. He argued against political stances that placed Germany between east and west, wrote against atomic warfare, and helped to found the Christlichen Friedenskonferenz in Prague with Josef Hromadka. During these years Iwand periodically wrote investigations into the theology of the early Luther and its importance. His lectures on Christology given in 1958 and 1959 remain a testament and summation of his work even if new themes emerge in this period in concert with his greater engagement with German idealism. But his main contribution lies in the dialectical relationship between Christology and the bound will.

Bound Will as Critique of Theology Iwand’s theology is at root a critique since he takes the advent of the Crucified One to engender existential and epistemic crises in persons.31 The norm that drives this critique is his doctrine of the bound will. Iwand neither argued for the plausibility of this norm nor did he claim for it the status of a foundation that is immediately available to some nor did he hold that it could be logically deduced from other principles. Instead, the advent of the Crucified One in human existence gives the norm. His claim for the doctrine of the bound will to escape the arbitrary or willful religious desires of humanity is of special significance. The doctrine enables theology to articulate God and Christ’s true difference from human desires. This claim demands further investigation since Iwand proposes it as the way forward. The doctrine of the bound will runs throughout his writing. I will offer an interpretation of Iwand’s theology to show his working out of the bound will for theological method. He provided a powerful summary in his 1954 essay, “Wider den Mibbrauch des pro me als methodischer Prinzip.”32 I will 31 This is the thesis of “Die Krisis der Wissenschaftsbegriffes und die Theologie,” Hans Joachim Iwand, Um dem rechten Glaube, 62 – 74. 32 “Wider den Missbrach des ‘pro me’ als methodisches Prinzip in der Theologie,” Rechtefertigung als Grundbegriff evangelischer Theologie. Eine Textsammlung, ed. Gerhard Sauter (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1989), 274 – 279. Iwand defended this thesis in various contexts. His lecture

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supplement my interpretation by referring to his essays and lectures on Christology, concluding with an assessment of Iwand’s interpretation of the Deus absconditus, a crucial part of any interpretation of Luther’s De servio arbitrio. Iwand’s essay, “Wider den Mibbrauch,” epitomizes his use of the bound will for theological method, particularly theological epistemology.33 It further demonstrates his conviction that proper human knowledge is rooted in Christ and his cross. The difficulty faced by such a conviction rests in its proximity to what one might call reductionist or projectionist theories of theology. Such theories claim that ideas about God are solely constructed by human beings and have no purchase on reality. For instance, Ludwig Feuerbach is infamous for his assertion that “the secret of theology is anthropology.”34 The specter of reductionism looms large over any enterprise that roots theology or Christology in human subjectivity. When investigating the connection of anthropology to theology, care must be taken to understand claims such as this to avoid facile contrasts in theological positions. Though he would not agree with the way Feurbach defended that claim, Iwand was interested in providing a proper ground and warrant for theology. He nuanced the anthropological turn of modern theology by demanding that Christology and anthropology determine each other : “all christological statements are pro me statements and vice versa, all pro me must be interpreted christologically in theology.”35 Iwand’s formulation of this rule seems similar to Karl Rahner’s statement on the relationship between the immanent and economic Trinity, but this phrase actually plays a formula developed by Rudolf Bultmann. In his Theology of the New Testament, Bultmann noted the reciprocal nature of anthropology which means soteriology : “Every assertion about Christ is also an assertion about man[sic] and vice versa.”36 What Bultmann meant by this, and Iwand’s evaluation of its failings, is the main thrust of Iwand’s criticism. Since it could seem that Iwand and Bultmann mean the same thing (although Iwand is at pains to distance himself from Bultmann), the nature of the identity or reciprocity between pro me statements and Christology needs further clarification.

33

34 35 36

Glauben und Wissen examined German idealism and represents his most philosophical reflection on the bound will. See NW 1, 27 – 211. Further essays directly treating the bound will are “Die grundlegende Bedeutung der Lehre vom unfreien Willen für den Glauben,” Um den rechten Glaube, 13 – 30; “Studien zum Problem des unfreien Willens,” Ibid., 31 – 61; “Die Freiheit des Christen und die Unfreiheit des Willens,” Ibid., 247 – 268. “Vorläufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie” in Ludwig Feurbach, Werke, ed. Erich Thies (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), vol. 3, 223. “Wider den Mibbracuh,” 275. Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (New York: Scribner’s, 1955), vol. 2, 191.

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Such explication can be gained through Iwand’s use of it to criticize some strains of modern theology. Albrecht Ritschl and his students interpreted the Reformation “pro me” formula in an influential way in the late Nineteenth Century. Ritschl, by the prompting of the massive statement on theological method of his former student Wilhelm Herrmann, wrote a response to his critics, entitled Theologie und Metaphysik.37 In this essay, Ritschl took up the distinction between judgments of fact and of value as a way to identify what makes theology a unique discipline. All theological statements must be those of value, that is, they must be expressions of my will that concern me. Factual judgments belong to the natural and objective sciences. Of course, such a distinction stems from Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy. Kant did not permit God to be an object of experience in his Critique of Pure Reason, but, in his terms, a postulate of practical reason.38 This means that in Kant’s view, God is a necessary idea to undergird moral action. Since practical reason aims at the highest good, it must assume the existence of that good, which is “only possible under the condition of the existence of God.”39 Along with a few other postulates, the existence of God makes the pursuit of the good possible. Kant argued that God can only be thought to exist in relationship to the moral pursuit of the good. God neither has objective existence nor does God have any connection to the other transcendentals such as the true or the beautiful. Those belong to the autonomy of reason itself and in Kant’s view do not require the existence of God for them to have grounding. However, the idea of God can only help to clarify what is meant by the concept of God; it cannot have any objective standing as genuine knowledge. Such classification does not demote the idea of God but it is one that Kant’s regimentation of the passive and active functions of human knowing, if correct, demands. God’s status as a postulate means that it is something that the human will needs in order to make morality rational. It seems that Kant never took up the formulation pro me, but Ritschl clarified this pro me as a value-judgment, combining Kant’s critical philosophy and Herman Lotze’s adoption of it. Wilhelm Hermann made a richer defense of this idea by referring valuejudgments to one’s inner and moral life.40 Herrmann did not reduce religious value to the moral but counted it as an expansion of it. In either theologian’s

37 Theologie und Metaphysik, 2nd ed. (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1887). Translated by Philip Hefner as “Theology and Metaphysics” in Albrecht Ritschl, Three Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 149 – 217. 38 Kant defined a postulate of pure practical reason as “a theoretical proposition, though one not demonstrable as such, insofar as it is attached inseparably to an a priori unconditionally valid practical law,” Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 102. 39 Ibid., 105. 40 Wilhelm Herrmann, Die Religion im Verhältnib zum Welterkennen und zur Sittlichkeit (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1879).

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use, Iwand argued that the “me” intended in the formula of pro me is the self of personal concern. It is the “me” in which I have interest and desire. Many worries can be raised about utilizing human subjectivity to ground thought about God. Anything that is pro me is for the self that my will has created but most of all it may seem that God could merely be a wish. Rudolf Bultmann would seem to escape this problem by focusing on human existence and the impossibility of speaking about God. In his 1926 essay, “Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu reden?,” Bultmann claimed that God cannot be apprehended as an object of knowledge or perception.41 Any attempt to speak about God means to fix God as an object or to obtain a point outside of God in order to observe God. Since God is the “all determining reality,” God is utterly non-objective. The non-objectivity of God is a common claim held by Kant, Ritschl, and Herrmann. But since Bultmann wanted to avoid reducing God to a function of the inner life of a human being, he claimed that to speak of God is the equivalent of speaking of one’s own existence even as God is the “all determining reality” and “wholly other.”42 Gerhard Ebeling rightly cautioned facile interpreters of Bultmann’s essay to avoid thinking that this entails the elimination of the word “God” and the establishment of “humanity” in its place.43 Rather, Bultmann claimed that human existence, indeed, one’s own existence is what must be spoken of when one speaks of God since God is both the “all determining reality” and “wholly other.” Bultmann claimed that this always refers to the human existence.44 Ebeling and Iwand both noted a Christological lacuna in Bultmann’s formulation of God in this essay. Iwand argued that any theological identification of God as nonobjective must clarify the role of the human will and its Christological root to refer truly to God. Every claim about the pro me must be Christological, and vice versa. Iwand therefore claimed that most views of the subordination separate the faith that is believed (fides quae creditur) and the faith by which one believes (fides qua creditur), holding the latter to be of only importance.45 Bultmann mapped the object of faith and the faith that believes to the Kant-like division between objective knowing and subjective concern.46 For Bultmann, theological knowledge that is objective can only be atheistic since God cannot be an object in this sense.47 Although Bultmann reformed the latter to be existential in the sense of the whole situation of one’s life, Iwand points out that such a

41 Rudolf Bultmann, “Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu reden?,” Glauben und Verstehen (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr : 1933), vol. 1, 26 – 37. 42 Ibid., 27. 43 Gerhard Ebeling, “Zum Verständnis von R. Bultmanns Aufsatz ,Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu reden?’,” Wort und Glaube (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1969), vol. 2, 344. 44 Bultmann, “Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu reden?,” 28. 45 Iwand, “Wider den Mibbrauch,” 275. 46 Bultmann, “Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu Reden?,” 28. 47 Ibid., 32 – 33.

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separation cannot obtain because dividing content and form gives free reign to the human will to shape judgments of knowledge according to its wishes. To remedy this deficit, Iwand articulated theological epistemology on the basis of “God’s gracious election of me in Jesus Christ.”48 Thus, the Christological and anthropological are tied together as an identity according to Iwand’s basic rule. I am me so far as I am given myself by Christ. And Christ is who he is by taking me on. The mystery of substitution or the exchange of places is an important part of Iwand’s Christology. By connecting the bound will to Christology, Iwand sought to overcome the formalism of Bultmann’s distinctions by providing Christ as form and content.49 The doctrine of the bound will therefore indicates the possibility of a reality that is alien to one’s own desires and knowledge. The bound will makes space for the strange and the stranger within theological epistemology. Iwand did not demonstrate the legitimacy of this framework. Because he claimed this bound will demonstrates that only someone or something can liberate a person from without (extra nos), Iwand stands at the edge of either Christian theology, nihilism, or agnosticism. If the human will, when bound, creates reality as it wishes, perceives, judges, and values as it desires, then the only thing that can disrupt or liberate it can arrive from without. The human being must be liberated by someone outside of the self. Nevertheless, Iwand would have undercut the power of his critique if he were to hold that the human being at this point can decide or leap either to God or to nothing when driven to recognize the limits of human desire.50 This would fix the otherness of Christ to the bounds determined by human decision. Instead, the bound human cannot even conceive of this other. Christ is unsought. But, one might note, there may be nothing outside of the human will and so the critique could be driven by a kind of nihilism or agnosticism. The strange other could be the void, a cavity of pure nothingness. So the theologian who credits the doctrine of the bound will must wait on the advent of the alien.

The Strange Cross and the Deus absconditus The first stranger the bound will makes space for is the one who comes in the cross. Since his critique relies on Christology to drive it, the success of Iwand’s theology depends upon his construal of Christ, so it must be noted that 48 “Wider den Mibbrauch,” 278. 49 By taking up the theological separation of form from content, Iwand reduplicated Johann Georg Hamann’s criticism of Kant. Hamann, a contemporary of Kant, argued that the latter possessed a “platonic love of form and a gnostic hatred of the body” in his Metakritik über den Purismum der Vernunft in Sämtliche Werke, ed. J. Nadler (Vienna: Herder, 1949 – 1957), vol. 3, 285. 50 Such a position belongs to Karl Heim, which Iwand criticized in his first dissertation, Über die methodische Verwendung von Antinomien in der Religionsphilosophie.

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Christology bears a serious burden in his theology. A brief examination is necessary of what he claims about Christ as this stranger who comes to give righteousness to humanity. Not every aspect of his work can be examined, particularly his assessment of the role of the historical Jesus in theology, a matter he remains mostly silent about. Iwand summarizes his account of Christ in an essay that epitomizes much of his theology, “Theologia crucis.”51 In this essay, he defined Christ’s substitution of humanity in terms of a representative archetype (Urbild) and as an active, promising Christ who is present in sacraments and preaching. Further, in various Christology lectures he appears to have embraced a speculative moment of God’s opposition to God in Christ’s death as the crucial moment of the new reality that grounds the pro me. The center of Iwand’s doctrine of Christ concerns his death and resurrection as the archetype of humanity. In 1956 he contributed to a Festschrift for Karl Barth an essay entitled “Vom Primat der Christologie.” In this essay, he examined the major contributors to the Urbildlichkeittradition.52 Late in his life he gave a lecture that considers the reconstruction of the two-natures doctrine, yet the main form of his doctrine followed the use of Christ as the archetype (Urbild) of humanity. This notion follows the Pauline articulation of Christ in relation to Adam. Friedrich Schleiermacher gave it its modern sense in his Glaubenslehre. He distinguished between Christ as exemplar (Vorbild) and archetype (Urbild) in order to distance himself from any notion that Christ is merely an example.53 As archetype, Christ is the architectonic human. His existence and person determines humanity. In this way the Urbildlichkeit tradition was able to combine the notion of Christ’s substation with the classic two-natures doctrine and extend it throughout the whole of Christ’s existence. By identifying Christ as the archetype of humanity, theologians were able to conceptualize how Christ effectively substitutes for all of humanity in modern terms. The idea of Christ as substitute had been under attack since Socinians in the Reformation. In general, Socinians and others throughout modernity objected that Christ’s substitution violated human autonomy and moral responsibility. If humanity itself was constituted by Christ as its archetype, substitution could be construed as a part of that autonomy and responsibility.54 51 Hans Joachim Iwand, “Theologia crucis,” NW 2, 381 – 398. 52 Vom Primat der Christologie,” Antwort: Karl Barth zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Ernst Wolf (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1956), 172 – 189. 53 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube, ed. Martin Redeker (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960), vol. 2, 34 – 43; Translated by H. R. Macintosh and J. S. Stewart as The Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989), 377 – 385. 54 Paul Tillich stated this judgment in similar fashion in his criticism of the Urbildlichkeit tradition: “The term Urbild when used for Jesus as the Christ does not have the decisive implication of the term ‘New Being.’ … The Urbild remains unmoved above existence,” Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), vol. 2., 150.

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Iwand claimed that this tradition is the key to modern reconstruction of the two-natures doctrine.55 He championed Karl Barth’s Christological writings and Barth’s own reconstruction and speculation.56 Iwand claimed that the center of Christ’s Urbildlichkeit is his death and resurrection, the accomplishment of a new reality liberates the human will. This required Iwand to modify elements of the Urbildlichkeit tradition so that the archetypical Christ is not the result of human desire but truly from without. In Iwand’s analysis of Isaac Dorner’s construal of Christ as archetype, Dorner, along with Ferdinand Christian Baur, considers the archetype to be above history in a principle.57 This will not do, according to Iwand, since what is archetypical about Jesus Christ must be his history, crucifixion, and resurrection. Only in Christ’s unique and concrete existence as the one who comes again in the power of the Spirit can a proper Christology ground the pro me. This further occurs when Iwand argued that considering Christ as archetype without attention to Jesus’ cross would reconcile humanity and God only in thought but not in existence.58 This moves Christ as archetype from the fundamental structure of human nature to a person’s encounter with Christ in preaching or in the sacraments. Thus, Iwand argued that the proclamation of Christ is the way in which Christ must arrive into human life. Proclamation must at least be ostensive: it must point to and identify Christ for hearers. Theology can only follow this proclamation.59 If the bound will and Christ were not related dialectically, then the doctrine of Christ Iwand intended could be merely the expression of human will. Thus, the doctrine of Christ must give reality in a way that counters the bound will. It does so, according to Iwand, by proclamation giving the crucified Jesus. This history of sorrow is “our history.”60 But how does Iwand obtain this history without it falling prey to the bound will? This required Iwand to attend to the problems of interpreting the Jesus of history which takes us beyond the limits of this essay because of the paucity of his reflection on this matter. Rather, we are led to consider his doctrine of God. Iwand articulated how the distinction between God preached and not preached must be a theological correlate of his concentration on the preached Christ.61 He rejected interpretations of this distinction that subordinated God in Jesus to God in majesty. Likewise, he also claimed that Luther’s God is not an 55 56 57 58 59

NWN 2, 171 – 230. NWN 2, 129 – 153, 276 – 285. Iwand, “Vom Primat der Christologie,” 175. Ibid., 178. This is the thesis of his important lecture “Tod und Auferstehung. Christologie II,” NWN 2, 291 – 433. 60 NWN 2, 429. 61 Hans Joachim Iwand, “Erläuterungen” in Martin Luther, Dab der freie Wille nichts sei. Antwort D. Martin Luthers an Erasmus von Rotterdam, trans. Bruno Jordahn (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag: 1954), 293.

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arbitrary or tyrannical God. Instead, the God not preached, the hidden God is the necessary result of God’s free decision to give righteousness in Christ. This means that the hidden God is the sheer freedom of God distinguished from God’s free gift in Christ. And, as Iwand noted, no human can bear this freedom. They can only trust God in Christ.62 Iwand used these as theological parallels to the dialectical relationship of the doctrine of the bound will and Christology. The hidden God marks off the boundaries of human knowledge of God yet gives the possibility of the preached God, the Crucified One. In Iwand’s view, if a theologian reduced them to each other, either the Crucified One would not be worthy of trust or else the freedom God’s gracious gift of righteousness enjoys would become sheer necessity. Thus, Iwand perceives in this doctrine of God a sort of paradox that cannot be resolved. This doctrine of God contrasts with the one he developed in his late Christology lectures. In those lectures he explored how the death and resurrection of Christ creates a crisis for God and God’s righteousness that is resolved in the resurrection.63 This account of Christ is the doctrine dialectically related to the bondage of the will. And since this Christ is the one who liberates from without, it is important to note that Iwand’s Christology bears some conceptual resemblance to the speculative Good Friday of G. W. F. Hegel.64 While Iwand did not describe the death of Christ as the alienation of God from God, he does note that it is a vital moment that challenges God’s very divinity.65 Other theologians in the first half of the twentieth century also considered Jesus’ death or God’s justification of sinners by faith alone to be God demonstrating God’s divinity (Gottes Gottheit).66 But for these resemblances to Hegel to have any significance, one would have to extend Iwand’s thought on the relationship of God preached and not preached to the sort of reflection on God’s being that Hegel himself provided. Iwand does not undertake that sort of ontological investigation. Some may point to Iwand’s influence on Jürgen Moltmann’s Crucified God as the work which does this very thing, but that belies the serious difference between the two.67 Iwand, 62 Ibid., 294. 63 NWN 2, 406 – 409. 64 For example, G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 476. On Hegel’s idea of the death of God and the speculative Good Friday, see James Yerkes, The Christology of Hegel (Albany : SUNY Press, 1983), 137 – 139 and Christian Link, Hegels Wort “Gott selbst ist tot” (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974). 65 “Kreuz und Auferstehung Jesu Christi,” Diskussion um Kreuz und Auferstehung, ed. Bertold Klappert (Wuppertal: Aussaat Verlag, 1967), 288 – 290. This lecture manuscript does not appear to have been taken into account in the editing of this lecture in NWN 2, 406 – 409. 66 For instance, Paul Althaus, “Gottes Gottheit als Sinn der Rechtfertigungslehre Luthers,” Jahrbuch der Luthergesellschaft 13 (1931): 1 – 28. 67 Jurgen Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott: das Kreuz Christi als Grund und Kritik christlicher Theologie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1981). Translated by R. A. Wilson and John Bowden as The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). On the connection between Moltmann and Iwand, see

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therefore, identified Christ as the one who negates and overcomes the bound will and then offers freedom as the very God preached and clothed.

Conclusion Iwand spent much of his life reflecting on the theological import of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will. His interpretation of this great work’s theology led him to criticize many of the ways his contemporaries made the basic decisions about theology and its grounding in human subjectivity. While some have criticized his own blind spots, his challenge to theology to clarify its own hidden debts to Kant and to make good on the role of Christ and the bound will in freeing theologians from their own subjectivity is a gift that demands further consideration. While Iwand did not engage in reflection on some of the important metaphysical questions of God’s being that make Karl Barth’s doctrine of election or Rudolf Bultmann’s hermeneutics such lasting contributions to theology, his insistence on the bound will and the importance of Jesus’ resurrection for determining reality demands conversation with metaphysics and other areas in order to make good on the promise of his work. Most of all, the human will has returned to contemporary theology in the form of desire, especially in the elevation of theological aesthetics into prominence as ways to enable the theological enterprise. Any such attention to the will should also reflect on Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will and his many interpreters. Hans Joachim Iwand must be counted among the first rank of this host.

Wayne Meeks, Origins of the Theology of Hope (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974) and Christopher Morse, The Logic of Promise in Moltmann’s Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979).

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Matthew Becker

Edmund Schlink (1903 – 1984)

Edmund Schlink was an influential teacher and pastor in the Confessing Church, a major Lutheran theologian in the second half of the twentieth century, and a leading participant in official ecumenical dialogues over the course of nearly four decades.1 The author of a weighty dogmatics text, five additional important books, and numerous essays, sermons, and addresses, many of which have been translated into other languages, this secondgeneration “ecumenical pioneer of the 20th Century” was the central systematic-historical theologian at Heidelberg University from 1946 until his death in 1984.2 Schlink’s theological outlook was deeply shaped by his experiences during the German church struggle (Kirchenkampf) in the 1930s and early 1940s. During these years he preached, taught, and sought to work in faithfulness to Christ, and these actions brought him into conflict with those who tried to control the state churches, order them along racist, anti-Semitic, Nazi-Aryan lines, and nationalize them into a single Reich church that would be controlled by the state under a Reich bishop appointed by Hitler. Already in this context Schlink worked ecumenically in order to strengthen the church’s confession and witness against the anti-Christian ideology of the so-called “German Christians” (Deutsche Christen). He later characterized these years of conflict as “grace in God’s judgment.”3 After the Second World War, he was called to teach dogmatic and ecumenical theology at Heidelberg. A few years later he served as a delegate to the inaugural assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) at Amsterdam (1948) and became a member of its Central Committee. Active in the WCC’s Commission on Faith and Order (1949 – 75), he articulated new 1 This chapter is revision of an earlier essay by Matthew Becker, “Edmund Schlink on Theological Anthropology, the Law, and the Gospel,” Lutheran Quarterly 24 (Summer 2010), 151 – 82. For a brief analysis of the key events in Schlink’s life, see Matthew Becker, “Edmund Schlink (1903 – 1984),” Lutheran Quarterly 23 (Winter 2009), 406 – 38. 2 Nikos A. Nissiotis, “Zum 80. Geburtstag von Edmund Schlink,” Ökumenische Rundschau 32 (1983), 137; Günther Gassmann, “Edmund Schlink – Ein ökumenischer Pionier des 20. Jahrhunderts: Vortrag anlässlich des Gedenksymposiums des Freundeskreises,” Oecumenica 15 (2003), 25 – 33. A shorter English version of Gassmann’s address appeared as “Edmund Schlink – An Ecumenical Pioneer of the 20th Century,” Ecumenical Trends 33 (2004), 6 – 10. 3 Edmund Schlink, Die Gnade in Gottes Gericht (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1946).

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approaches to such issues as altar fellowship, the eschatological dimension of Christian unity, ecumenical methodology, and conciliarity, and he brought a measure of clarity to them that was very helpful.4 He was especially concerned to encourage the participation of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the modern Ecumenical Movement and was instrumental in helping the Russian Orthodox Church join the WCC in 1961. Between October 1962 and December 1965 he was the official observer for the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (the Protestant Church in Germany or EKD) at the Second Vatican Council and a main speaker for the group of all official observers. Convinced that the goal of complete organic church unity in Christ could only be achieved theologically, he stressed the need for a truly “ecumenical dogmatics” as integral to overcoming the divisions within Christendom. Lauded as a “teacher of the church,” as a “forerunner of the Ecumene in the 20th Century,” and as “a quiet reformer” who “lived his life for the unity of the church,” Schlink’s influence upon the development of ecumenical theology in the second half of the twentieth century was considerable.5 In light of his life’s work, he must be counted among the most significant Christian theologians in recent history.6 Despite his importance, however, his dogmatic work remains mostly terra incognita among English-speaking theologians. His life and theology have received only one very brief examination by an American, the important biography by Eugene Skibbe.7 While several of Schlink’s writings have been 4 Günther Gassmann, “Schlink, Edmund,” in Ökumene-Lexikon, 2d ed., ed. Hanfried Krüger et al. (Frankfurt: Lembeck, 1987), 1085. 5 Michael Plathow, “Edmund Schlink–Lehrer der Kirche: Doxologische und poetische Theologie,” Badische Pfarrerblätter (March 2003), 61; Christoph Schwöbel, “Ökumenische Dogmatik: Zum 100. Geburtstag von Edmund Schlink am 6. März 2003,” Ökumenische Rundschau 52 (2003), 254 (Schwöbel’s address, delivered at Heidelberg University’s celebration of the centennial of Schlink’s birth, was also published as “Edmund Schlink: Ökumenische Dogmatik: Vortrag anlässlich der akademischen Gedenkfeier der Fakultät,” Oecumenica 15 [2003], 11 – 24); Eugene M. Skibbe, A Quiet Reformer: An Introduction to Edmund Schlink’s Life and Ecumenical Theology (Minneapolis: Kirk House Publishers, 1999); and Jochen Eber, “Edmund Schlink 1903 – 1984: Ein Leben für die Einheit der Kirche,” in Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, vol. 1, ed. Klaus Engelhardt et al. [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004], xi-xxii (here xi). Eber’s introductory chapter to the first volume of Schlink’s collected works is an expansion of the biographical chapter in his doctoral dissertation on Schlink’s ecclesiology : Jochen Eber, Einheit der Kirche als dogmatisches Problem bei Edmund Schlink, Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie, vol. 67, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg and Reinhard Slenczka (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 18 – 50. 6 For additional biographical information on Schlink, see Reinhard Slenczka, “Edmund Schlink,” Ökumenische Profile: Brückenbauer der einen Kirche, vol. 2, ed. Günter Gloede (Stuttgart: Evang. Missionsverlag, 1963), 155 – 66; Gerhard Rau, “Edmund Schhlink zum Gedächtnis: Ansprache bei der Akademischen Gedenkfeier am 5. 12. 1984,” in Ruperto-Carola 37 (1985), 235 – 37; Jochen Eber, “Schlink, Edmund,” in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, www.bautz.de/bbkl (internet); and Klaus Engelhardt, “Biographische Reminiszenz zu Edmund Schlink,” Ökumenische Rundschau 52 (2003), 242 – 44 (this address was also published under the same title in Oecumenica 15 [2003], 8 – 10). 7 See note 5 above. “[Schlink] does not emerge from recent history as an heroic figure. In certain

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rendered into English (some quite poorly), his magisterial 828–page Ökumenische Dogmatik remains untranslated.8 Even in its native land, this large book has been ignored by many students of theology.9 This neglect is unfortunate, since the work is without question a fruitful resource for contemporary theological reflection. The ecumenical issues with which Schlink wrestled are still pressing ones and his analyses of them are worth pondering today. In the words of one of his most well-known and influential students, “By connecting such ecumenical breadth with a forceful emphasis on the abiding authority of the apostolic confession of Christ, the theological works of Edmund Schlink, and especially his Ökumenische Dogmatik, are still exemplary guides today.”10 The new publication of his collected writings (2004–), which will eventually total five large volumes, is a further indication that his life’s work has an abiding importance and ought to be of interest to younger theologians who may be unfamiliar with it.11

8

9 10 11

ways Dietrich Bonhoeffer appears heroic in the mortal struggle between Hitler and individual Christians. Schlink was not like that. What he did, he did quietly as a keen theologian and faithful pastor” (Skibbe, 5). Skibbe’s book is significantly informed by the biographical chapter in Eber’s dissertation, although he has added anecdotes from Schlink’s family and former students as well as several quotations from unpublished and untranslated materials. An additional benefit of Skibbe’s book is its summary of the Ökumenische Dogmatik. Unfortunately, he does not offer extensive analysis of Schlink’s other major books and essays. Several minor errors appear in the book as well: During the Third Reich, the Erlangen theologians Werner Elert (1885 – 1954) and Paul Althaus (1888 – 1966) did not support “a national church in partnership with the state for a stronger Germany” (Skibbe, 15); Reformed church leaders in Germany were not the only confessional Christians to oppose the Deutsche Christen early and decisively (contra ibid., 13) since confessional Lutherans in Bavaria, Württemberg, and Westphalia in large numbers opposed them as well; Karl Koch [1876 – 1951] was not the only Lutheran president/ bishop to reject the authority of Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller (on the same page [ibid., 13] Skibbe acknowledges that the Lutheran bishops Hans Meiser [1881 – 1956] of Bavaria and Theophil Wurm [1868 – 1953] of Württemberg also did not submit to Müller’s authority, but he does not mention that August Marahrens [1875 – 1950], bishop of the Lutheran Church of Hanover, likewise opposed Müller, August Jäger [in charge of Reich church affairs in the mid-1930s], and the Deutsche Christen); and Hans von Campenhausen (1903 – 1989) had been called to teach at Heidelberg in 1936 (not 1941) but did not join the faculty until 1946 (not 1945) (contra ibid., 66). Edmund Schlink, Ökumenische Dogmatik: Grundzüge (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983; 2d ed., 1985; 3rd ed. in Edmund Schlink, Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, vol. 2, ed. Michael Plathow [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005]). Hereafter the 3rd ed. will be abbreviated as ÖD. “The work is just too big for most students to manage, although I frequently recommend it to them to study in preparation for their examinations in dogmatics” (Notger Slenczka, conversation with the author, January 16, 2009). Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Vorwort” to ÖD, ix. For bibliographies of Schlink’s writings, see Reinhard Slenczka, “Bibliographie Edmund Schlink zum 60. Geburtstag am 6. März 1963,” Theologischen Literaturzeitung 88 (1963), 469 – 74; Günther Gassmann, “Bibliographie Edmund Schlink zum 65. Geburtstag am 6. März 1968,” Theologischen Literaturzeitung 93 (1968), 315 – 18; and Michael Plathow, “Bibliographie Edmund Schlink II,” Theologischen Literaturzeitung 111 (1986), 635 – 639. These bibliographies have been updated by Eber, Einheit, 274 – 94.

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The purpose of this chapter, then, is to examine two central foci in his theological work: (1) the problem of theological anthropology and (2) the distinction between the law and the gospel. By focusing on these themes, one may gain some insight into his more important theological emphases.12

The Problem of Theological Anthropology The question, “What is a human being (Mensch)?” was for Schlink “a great theme, perhaps even his life’s theme.”13 His initial engagement with this question occurred in the context of his 1930 philosophical dissertation on “the emotional experiences of God,” which he wrote as a contribution to the discussion of a fundamental problem in the theology of Karl Barth (1886 – 1968), namely, the problem of “natural theology.”14 The first two parts of the study analyze the perceptions and self-understandings of individuals who were suffering depression and focus on how these perceptions related to certain basic human feelings the individuals had experienced. Schlink found that quite frequently the emotional experiences of “being saved” or of “salvation” had a counterpart in feelings of depression which were interpreted by the individual as experiences of God’s absence.15 Schlink further explored the descriptions of the inner self-understanding of the individuals he studied and how these could only be talked about as experiences that had been caused by something external to the self. These expressions that arise from the innerperspectives of the subjects he interviewed were understood by the subjects to imply an external, ambivalent power that was either wrathful or merciful (or 12 The material that follows is a revision of my essay, “Edmund Schlink on Theological Anthropology, Law, and Gospel,” Lutheran Quarterly 24 (Summer 2010), 151 – 182. 13 Engelhardt, “Biographische Reminiszenz zu Edmund Schlink,” 243. 14 Edmund Schlink, Emotionale Gotteserlebnisse: Ein empirisch-psychologischer Beitrag zum Problem der natürlichen Religion. Abhandlungen und Monographien zur Philosophie des Wirklichen 5 (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1931). Hereafter this work will be abbreviated as EG. That Barth was impressed by this work is evident in his formal decision (Gutachten) about it, dated June 13, 1930, from Bonn (included in Schlink’s unpublished writings in the Archiv des Konfessionskundlichen Instituts des Evangelischen Bundes, Bensheim): “First of all, by use of the methodology of the natural sciences that is appropriate to it, the author shows us a piece of nature in order to disclose to us through its confrontation with grace the following conclusion: namely, that he knows that nature is merely nature and that thus in precisely this way, even with his natural science, he confesses himself to be a theologian” (Quoted by Eber, Einheit, 20. See also idem, “Edmund Schlinks Beitrag zum interdisziplinären Dialog [mit einer Predigt von Schlink über die Wissenschaften]”, in Glaube und Denken, Jahrbuch der Kark-Heim-Gesellschaft 7, ed. Hans Schwarz [Frankfurt a. Main: Lang, 1994], 157). A particularly helpful analysis of Schlink’s theological anthropology is by Notger Slenczka, “Grund und Norm der Vielfalt: Edmund Schlink (1903 – 1984),” Kerygma und Dogma 49 (2003), 24 – 51, which has served as a guide to my reading of Schlink’s dissertations. 15 See EG 88 – 94; 94 – 101; and 106 – 9.

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that implied the possibility of two external powers), and that the execution of the subject’s self-denial was seen has having the character of a command, whereas self-assertion, which makes an experience of salvation impossible, had the character of a violation of this command. In the third part of the work, Schlink turned to an explicitly Christian understanding of the empirical research he had conducted. He concluded here that the emotional experiences of salvation are not necessarily authentic experiences of God but possible self-deceptions by sinners themselves. The personal experience of God was interpreted as the verification of the theological work of the law: Because the command for self-denial appeals to the capacities of the fallen human being, it does not lead to grace. In addition, because it leads the human being through the development of his possibilities to hold on to himself as a replacement for grace, …it makes sin powerful and increases it.16 In view of the question as to whether or not the actualization of the predisposition (Anlage) to emotional experiences of God could be an actual working of God’s grace, Schlink responded: The actualization of that predisposition (Anlage) can be… of God’s blessed action, and the experienced joy…could very well be a sign for an authentically-received reconciliation of the sinner with God. Although the experienced “power of salvation” is undetermined, since it is not experienced as a personality and needs to be brought into connection with the name of God, God can in this form still be near, revealing himself as gracious to the sinner… “Whoever knows the revealing God, also knows the hidden God”; “the hidden God… is also the revealing God” (Karl Barth).17

Notger Slenczka has correctly concluded that Schlink has likely misused or even misunderstood Barth’s quotations here, since in Barth’s view whoever experiences the law under the hiddenness of God (deus absconditus) is at the same time being confronted with the revelation of God’s grace (deus revelatus), and apart from Christ there is no divine revelation, whereas Schlink continued to hold to the Lutheran presuppositions regarding the revelation of God’s law in creation and the proper distinction between the law and the gospel.18 For Schlink, unlike Barth, the revelation of the sins of human beings and of the wrath of God against sin is an experience of the law of God, also within the emotional experiences of (the hidden) God, and not somehow a function of God’s grace. Four years later the focus of Schlink’s philosophical dissertation on empirical psychology was extended in his 1934 theological Habilitationsthesis, later expanded into a book entitled The Human Being in the Proclamation of the Church: A Dogmatic Investigation, that articulates a Lutheran under16 Ibid., 165. 17 Ibid., 166. 18 Slenczka, “Grund und Norm der Vielfalt,” 29 – 30.

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standing of human beings in service to the preaching and teaching of a Christian congregation.19 This book summarizes the basic position on theological anthropology that Schlink would maintain throughout the rest of his life. Its goal is to identify the limits of anthropological considerations that are proper to the task of Christian preaching. How does one human being–who serves as the preacher of God’s holy word in the concrete situation of the church, with its given circle of life, its finite location (Schicksal), its distinct spiritual crises (Anfechtungen), and political circumstances–proclaim the divine word faithfully to other human beings? There are then three problems that have to be addressed: How are human beings interpreted by Holy Scripture in service to Christian proclamation? What does it mean that a human being is the proclaimer of God’s word? And what can be said about human beings who hear such proclamation? [The preacher] cannot excuse himself if he interprets the word correctly but obstructs it in his language, conceptuality, and delivery that look down on and despise the language, conceptuality, and situation of the hearers. Rather each preacher is asked, if he has not, on the one hand, in an unauthorized “objectivity,” obstructed the gospel by the personal peculiarity of his own theological thinking or, on the other, in a subjective arbitrariness, betrayed the gospel through an intrusion of himself on his hearers.20 …With regard to human beings Scripture uncovers only sin and guilt, slavery and death. Life, freedom, and forgiveness come only through Jesus Christ. We must know him, proclaim his deed! If nevertheless theology is impossible apart from looking at human beings, then this must only be done because God and his Christ cannot be known by sinners apart from repentance.21

After an introduction on “the anthropological presuppositions of the Kirchenkampf,” in which Schlink identified the task of his project in relation to other theological understandings of human beings, such as the optimism about human beings within neo-Protestant liberalism and the “Volk, race and blood” ideology of the Deutsche Christen, the book is divided into three parts: “The Problem of the Human Being,” “Biblical Teaching about the Human Being,” and “The Trouble/Concern (Bemühung) about the Human Being.” The first part explores the relationship between human thinking and theological knowledge and attempts to uncover the conditions under which the revelation 19 Edmund Schlink, Der Mensch in der Verkündigung der Kirche (Hab. diss., University of Gießen, 1934). This work forms the first part of an expanded, three-part book that Schlink later published under the same title: Edmund Schlink, Der Mensch in der Verkündigung der Kirche: Eine dogmatische Untersuchung (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1936). Hereafter the expanded, three-part book will be abbreviated as MVK. 20 MVK, vii – viii. 21 Ibid., ix.

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of God can be received by human beings.22 While his philosophical dissertation had explored the psychological emotions in the experience of knowing God that condition that experience, here he was concerned to understand how the experience of God’s revelation can be received within the distinct structures of human thinking. To do this theologically, Schlink concentrated on the thought-forms and expressions about the “self” (Ich), “the human being” (Mensch), “knowing” (Erkennen) and “thinking” (Denken) that are contained in the letters of Paul, John, and James, and in the Gospel according to John.23 He concluded that the differing thought structures (for example, between James and Paul on the relation of faith to works) are not the product of differing faiths since Christian faith is always a movement away from the self and a reception of the revelation of God that conditions all such human reception. Different thought structures therefore do not necessarily entail an altogether different faith, even if the movement away from the self that occurs within the different thought-forms acquires a concrete and distinct form. The position that he set forth here would again become important in his analysis of the differences among dogmatic statements from the different churches in the Oecumene. The unity and plurality within the biblical witnesses allow one to assess the unity and plurality within the contemporary forms of Christian confession. Of course this position became complicated in the context of the theological anthropology of the Deutsche Christen, who argued that the Christian faith could be shaped into a racial and nationalist form without harming the substance of the faith. Thus Schlink devoted Part Two of his work to an exposition of the biblical teaching regarding human beings as creatures of the Creator and as fallen sinners under the divine law: “Every human being has his origin in God the Creator and stands under God the Creator who demands obedience and is angered by disobedience.”24 The concepts of “creature” and “sinner” thus serve as the most important theological categories for understanding the nature of human beings and which clearly contradict elements within the optimistic, hubristic, racist anthropology of the Deutsche Christen. For Schlink, the human being is simultaneously and thoroughly “creature” and “sinner” and these conditions qualify both the question about the knowledge of God that human beings “naturally” have as creatures “under the divine law” and the question regarding their knowledge of God’s will in God’s divine law.25 Only through Holy Scripture does this true knowledge of the human being become clear, namely, that the human being is a fallen sinner who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ. Such knowledge is the product of the Holy Spirit who “breaks through” the diverse human “thought-structures” 22 23 24 25

Ibid., 20 – 116. Ibid., 33 – 101. Ibid., 117. See especially ibid., 151 – 60.

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and summons people to repentance and faith. Authentic proclamation in the Christian church about human beings is thus centered on the biblical revelation about the sinner who stands condemned under God’s law, but who, through repentance and faith, stands forgiven in and through Christ. Schlink’s Habilitationsthesis must also be understood in the context of the famous 1934 debate between Barth and Emil Brunner (1889 – 1966) over “the starting point” of Christian theology.26 Whereas Barth maintained that theology can only begin from its own starting point in the divine revelation of the Word of God “from above”–and thus he rejected all attempts to begin theology “from below,” including basing theology on human experience, philosophical reflection, or any kind of “natural theology”–Brunner argued that Christian dogmatics must allow for some human, creaturely response to the general revelation of God as the context for God’s saving revelation in Jesus Christ. According to Brunner, all human beings possess rationality and language, grounded in “the image of God,” which, though damaged by sin, still provides them a “point of contact” (Anknüpfungspunkt) for the general revelation of God. While both theologians agreed that divine revelation comes totally from God, “from above,” Brunner held that human beings have within them the creaturely conditions for their reception of that revelation. Barth totally rejected this view and denounced Brunner’s position with a sharplyworded “Nein!” For Barth divine revelation itself creates the conditions for its reception. Every attempt to find a point of contact in sinful human beings for divine revelation ends up repudiating the uniqueness of Christ as God’s Word to creatures. According to Barth, the basic problem with the theology of the Deutschen Christen is that it begins with a natural theology and ends in idolatry. Schlink’s position differs from both Barth’s and Brunner’s and must be situated between their contrasting perspectives. On the one hand, Schlink rejected Barth’s total rejection of all forms of natural theology, since the human creature has knowledge of God’s law apart from Christ, but on the other hand he qualified Brunner’s notion of revelation by stressing human beings as both “creature” and “sinner.” Schlink differentiated himself from both Barth and Brunner by defending the traditional Lutheran distinction between the law and the gospel and by maintaining the natural knowledge of God in God’s revelation of law within creation. Although Schlink’s position comes close to that of other Lutherans who also rejected Barth’s and Brunner’s respective positions on divine revelation (for example, Elert and Althaus), he was close to Barth by insisting that the political structures within creation 26 For the principal documents in the debate, see Emil Brunner, Natur und Gnade (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1934) and Karl Barth, Nein!: Antwort an Emil Brunner (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1934). Both works have been translated and included in John Baillie, ed., Natural Theology : Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the reply “No!” by Dr. Karl Barth, trans. Peter Fraenkel (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 2002; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002).

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receive their normative significance only under the divine law in the second table of the Ten Commandments revealed and interpreted within Holy Scripture. He was also close to Brunner’s position, however, by agreeing that there is a general revelation of God beyond Christ.

The Distinction between the Law and the Gospel While Schlink’s principal book on theological anthropology was a crucial first step in his own understanding of God’s law and gospel in the context of the Kirchenkampf, a further step occurred when he was forced to engage and respond to understandings of law and gospel in the Barmen Theological Declaration and in additional essays on law and gospel by the Declaration’s principal author, Barth. The initial impetus for this engagement was the controversy surrounding several theses in the Declaration that had been adopted by the 140 delegates of the Confessing Synod at Barmen on May 31, 1934.27 The first thesis asserts that “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and death.”28 Rejected is “the false teaching” that “the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.” Confessional Lutherans were troubled by this first thesis since it seems to restrict divine revelation solely to Christ and denies that there is a revelation of law beyond Christ, namely, in the secular political world. The second thesis was also problematic from a confessional Lutheran perspective since it maintains that just as Christ is “God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins,” so “in the same way and with the same earnestness he is also God’s powerful claim on our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless bonds of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures.”29 Rejected in this second thesis is “the false teaching” that there are “certain areas of our life in which we are not under Jesus Christ but under other lords–areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.” The problem here is that Christ seems to be made into a new law-maker who governs all of human life in a kind of Christocracy. While Barth and his co-authors, including especially the Lutheran Hans 27 The official text is contained in Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung: Einführung und Dokumentation, ed. Martin Heimbucher and Rudolf Weth, 7th ed. (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2009). 28 Ibid., 37. 29 Ibid., 38.

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Asmussen (1898 – 1968), realized they needed to add a fifth thesis to the Declaration that would articulate the traditional Lutheran understanding of the “two regiments” in order to gain the support of the Lutherans present at Barmen, nevertheless controversy ensued within and outside the Confessing Church because of the first two theses of the Declaration and their implied understandings of the relation of Christ’s gospel to secular authority. Indeed, beneath the surface at Barmen it became clear that there were theological divisions among the delegates regarding their respective understandings of the relationship of gospel to law in the matter of re-prioritizing ecclesial and civil authorities. While in the end the delegates voted for the Declaration “with one voice,” they did so with the provision that the Declaration be transmitted to the three church bodies (Lutheran, Reformed, and United) “for the purpose of providing responsible interpretations from their respective confessional traditions.”30 Two years later, in 1936, Schlink published his attempt to do just this, namely, to provide “a Lutheran understanding of the first Barmen thesis.” It would appear as an essay, entitled “The Hiddenness of God the Creator according to Lutheran Teaching,” in a Festschrift for Barth on the occasion of his 50th birthday.31 Schlink’s essay would later become the basis for his chapter on “the Revelation of God the Creator” in The Theology of the Lutheran Confessions.32 It sets forth the position of the Lutheran Confessions 30 Ibid., 63. 31 Edmund Schlink, “Die Verborgenheit Gottes des Schoepfers nach lutherischer Lehre: Ein Beitrag zum lutherischen Verständnis der ersten Barmer These” in Theologische Aufsätze. Karl Barth zum 50. Geburtstag, ed. Ernst Wolf (München: Kaiser, 1936), 202 – 221. This essay was published as a separate pamphlet by Kaiser in the same year. Hereafter this text will be abbreviated as VGS. In addition, I will give the corresponding page references in Edmund Schlink, Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften, 4th ed. (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1954; hereafter abbreviated as TLB; 3rd edition translated as Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, trans. Paul F. Koehneke and Herbert J. A. Bouman [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961]; hereafter abbreviated as TLC). 32 See TLB 43 – 65 and TLC 37 – 66. While most of the contents of the essay appear in TLB, Schlink did make several important changes to it. For example, he added a footnote (TLB 47; TLC 42) that criticized Emil Brunner’s understanding of sin and a lengthy paragraph that clarifies the confessional teaching that human beings have totally lost the image of God (TLB 51; TLC 47). He also moved the paragraph that highlights “the victory of mercy over wrath, the victory of grace over sin and condemnation” (VGS 215) after the section the describes the gospel as “the message of the work of Christ” that is both law and gospel (ibid, TLB 57; TLC 55), but he did not include in TLB the following bold statements: “So the gospel stands over the law, because the law reveals God’s wrath, but the gospel reveals God’s love. One can feel God’s wrath in the disorder of one’s soul, but the gospel makes one free from this perceptible and felt reality… Therefore in Lutheran teaching the law does not have the same worth alongside of the gospel, since the law can already be recognized partly by reason, but the gospel can only be believed on the basis of the revelation in the Word (see LC III, 67)” (VGS 215). Why Schlink removed these sentences is unclear, especially since they help to support his conclusion that “the summary of the Scriptures is not merely law and promises… but simply the promise of the gospel” (VGS 215; TLB 57; TLC 55 – 56). Also omitted from TLB is the all-important conclusion from the essay, namely, that in light

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(which admittedly have very little to say about God the Creator) in such a way that one could find continuity between them and the wording of the Declaration’s first thesis. While human beings, who are altogether creatures of God and simul sinners, have “an indefinite and general” knowledge that God is, they nevertheless do not know naturally “who God is and so do not know God the Creator.”33 Because human beings are “altogether both saint and sinner, at the same time,” they cannot recognize either God’s goodness or God’s wrath on the basis of natural reality. The Lutheran Confessions “are entirely consistent in denying natural man the ability to know God.”34 “Only the word of God reveals our reality as being sinners and creatures… Therefore the decisive theme of all theology… must be: sin and grace, law and gospel, judgment and forgiveness, God’s wrath and mercy.”35 But in these crucial parings, what is truly decisive is “the victory” of God’s mercy over God’s wrath, “the victory of grace over sin and condemnation.” Only by faith in the gospel is one able to recognize the Creator-goodness of God. Therefore the brevity of the Lutheran doctrine of creation is “no weakness… On the contrary, the apparent incompleteness and the lack of emphasis… prove to be a theological necessity.”36 The confession of God as Creator has its proper basis in the doctrine of justification: “God the Creator can be known only in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son, the Redeemer.”37 In this essay Schlink attempted to affirm the first thesis of Barmen and still maintain the proper distinction between law and gospel. However, by stressing the contrast between God’s law and gospel, Schlink distanced his view from that of his famous teacher. Contrary to Barth’s position, Schlink acknowledged that human beings can know some (indistinct) knowledge about God apart from Scripture and Christ. Thus he held that there is a natural knowledge of God in God’s revelation of law within creation apart from God’s written revelation. Nevertheless, in agreement with Barth, Schlink concluded that this so-called “natural” knowledge is only truly clear and complete through the revelation of the law and gospel as given in Holy Scripture. A year later, in 1937, he published yet another essay that engaged the

33 34 35 36 37

of Lutheran teaching about the knowledge of God the Creator, there is nothing within the first thesis of the Barmen Declaration that conflicts with the Lutheran Confessions. Indeed, “under the presupposition that the Lutheran confessional writings and the Barmen Theological Declaration not only cite individual Scriptural passages relating to the question at hand, but interpret Holy Scripture as entirely correct, the first Barmen thesis can be considered as teaching of the Lutheran Church” (VGS 221). Finally, an entirely new thesis was added to the end of the essay (Thesis 10 in TLB): “The doctrine of the Trinity is the basis for all statements in the Lutheran Confessions” (TLB 62; TLC 62). VGS 212; see TLB 54 and TLC 51. VGS 209; see TLB 52 and TLC 48. VGS 214 – 15; see TLB 57 and TLC 55. VGS 217; see TLB 59 and TLC 57. TLB 62 and TLC 62. This section is worded differently in VGS 220, but the same conclusion is reached there too.

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Barmen Declaration, this time its second thesis.38 Like the earlier essay that examined the first thesis, this one, too, was not a rejection of the Declaration, but a “responsible interpretation” of it from within the Lutheran confessional tradition. Like the earlier essay, it was implicitly critical of Barth’s theology, but it was a friendly critique. The four parts of this 102–page essay would also eventually be included in Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften, published three years later. There they would appear as the book’s central and longest chapters. The essay progresses through four sections: (1) the law; (2) law and gospel; (3) gospel and law; and (4) the gospel. (These headings are missing in Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften.) A concluding section, also left out of the later book, attempts to interpret the second thesis of the Declaration in light of Schlink’s preceding exposition of law and gospel in the Lutheran Confessions. The first section, entitled “The Law,” is a defense of a single thesis: “God’s law is the Ten Commandments revealed in God’s word.”39 Not only did Schlink here set forth the confessional distinction between abrogated ceremonial/civil laws of Moses and “God’s permanently valid demand” in the Decalogue, a distinction that is only possible after hearing the gospel (“God’s law is correctly understood only when we know the gospel, that is, the work of Christ”), but he also argued, as in the other essay, that one cannot properly “know the law of God in truth apart from the word of Scripture.”40 Nevertheless, “and this is even more important, …it would also be an erroneous possibility for natural man to try to know the law of God in the Word of Scripture, namely, in the multiplicity of its legal prescriptions. Apart from the Holy Spirit, apart from faith in the gospel, man will lose his way in the Bible just as much as when he attempts to base a system of ethics on conscience, reason, natural order, utility, etc.”41 Christ has abolished the ceremonial and civil laws of Israel, also to the extent that they appear in the Decalogue, and has taken the law into his own hands and explained it spiritually in the Sermon on the Mount. “Accordingly the words of the Lord and the words of the apostles are added to the Decalogue as norms in eliminating human traditions.”42 The true purpose of the law is to demand perfect obedience to God, true fear of God, and true love for God and neighbor. Thus the entire law is summarized and included within the First Command-

38 Edmund Schlink, Gesetz und Evangelium: Ein Beitrag zum lutherischen Verständnis der 2. Barmer These, Theologische Existenz Heute 53, ed. Eduard Thurneysen (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1937). Hereafter this essay will be abbreviated as GE. I will also give the corresponding pages in TLB and TLC, whenever possible. 39 GE 8 – 17, here 8; see TLB 66 – 71 and TLC 67 – 74. Most of the changes that Schlink made to this first section are additions that stress the Scriptural character of God’s law. 40 GE 13; see TLB 69 and TLC 71. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

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ment, “the highest, holiest, greatest, most important commandment” (Apol. IV, 131). The second section, entitled “Law and Gospel,” comprises nine theses, the first five of which concentrate on the chief effects of the law upon sinners, namely, the magnification of sin and the revelation of God’s wrath against sin, and on how Christ has removed these effects by suffering the divine wrath on the cross.43 The final three theses in this section focus on the justification of sinner for Christ’s sake apart from the law by grace through faith and its chief effect, namely, freedom from the law. “If the law reveals God’s wrath, the believer sets the merit of Jesus Christ against the wrath and, hence, against the law of God. ’Therefore this propitiator will benefit us when by faith we grasp the word, through which mercy is promised, and set it against God’s wrath and judgment’ (Apol. IV, 82).”44 The third section, entitled “Gospel and Law,” addresses the “new obedience” that follows faith.45 (In Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften this section comprises the first six theses in the chapter, “Law and Gospel [Part Two].”) “Justification is not only the imputation of the work of Christ, but also regeneration, and it cannot remain without new obedience.”46 43 GE 18 – 51; see also TLB 71 – 95 and TLC 74 – 104. While the essential contents of this section of the essay appear in TLB, augmented in places by bibliographical information in a few new footnotes, several of the paragraphs, particularly in Theses 4 – 7 and 10, were reordered and slightly revised, often to include more supportive quotations from the Confessions. Some of Schlink’s changes, however, did not always make his presentation clearer. For example, the original essay had the paragraph about the obedience of the sinless Christ as “a suffering from his birth to his cross” (the paragraph that begins at the bottom of TLB 76 [top paragraph on TLC 81]) before the paragraph that begins, “This obedience, this death, is the deed of one of us and yet also the deed of one who is entirely different” (TLB 76; TLC 80), which occurs almost at the end of the material under Thesis 4 in the original essay. The earlier arrangement was more logical since it moved from the general topic to more specific matters. Two paragraphs on the sacrifice of Jesus and on Jesus as mediator were moved from the middle of the essay to become the second and third paragraphs in TLB 79 (TLC 84 – 85). In other words, what is now the fourth paragraph of Thesis Five in TLB (“Jesus Christ by his death has reconciled and propitiated the wrath of God and ’has made satisfaction for our sins’…”) had originally been included in the first paragraph under Thesis Five in the essay (after the quote from AC III, 2). Together with the four paragraphs that follow (TLB 80 – 81; TLC 85 – 87), it made for a better introduction to Thesis Five than the current three paragraphs (TLB 79; TLC 84 – 85), which clearly address topics subordinate to the former. Moreover, what is now the second paragraph under this thesis in TLB was unfortunately edited to place the three broad sentences on Christ as “mediator, priest, sacrifice, and mercyseat” after the more narrowly-focused sentences on Christ as sacrifice, which again does not seem to be the best construction. This is also the case with the final two paragraphs in Thesis 10. These were reversed in TLB, a change that undid what had been a better conclusion and transition to the next sections on “the new obedience” (TLB 96 ff.; TLC 105 ff.). Why these changes were made is not clear. In some places, however, Schlink did improve on his original essay. For example, in Thesis Four he expanded the material about the doctrine of the two natures in order to be more thorough (see TLB 77 and TLC 81). 44 GE 42; see TLB 90 and TLC 97. 45 GE 52 – 74; see TLB 96 – 110 and TLC 105 – 124. 46 GE 52; see TLB 96 and TLC 105.

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In the later book Schlink explicitly stated in a new footnote that the doctrine of justification in Apology IV “must be understood not only in a forensic sense, but also as regeneration, particularly as renewal of the heart and will.”47 Furthermore, the regenerated person is renewed in the heart and will so as to freely give “joyous assent to the law of God.”48 Although the new obedience is obedience to God’s law, “the good works are not deeds of the law but fruits of the Spirit; they are not products of the Ten Commandments, but of the gospel.”49 Still, this renewal is under constant threat from the old Adam and in conflict with the power of sin, insofar as the Christian remains a sinner unto death. So, insofar as he or she is regenerated, the “regenerated person lives in the law, no longer under the law,” but insofar as the Christian’s new obedience remains imperfect in this life, “the regenerated person is not only in the law, but also under the law.”50 Even within the new life of the regenerated, “the law finds many things of which to accuse us” (Apol. IV:161). In daily repentance the Christian “recognizes himself more and more as a total sinner who stands under God’s wrath and is in need of forgiveness.”51 Thus Schlink’s investigation of the distinction between the law and the gospel leads from the law and God’s wrath to the gospel and Christ’s salvific work and then from the unfolding of the gospel in faith and new obedience back to the law and the wrath of God that attack anew each day the Christianwho-is-a-sinner. Only by traversing both ways, from law to gospel and from gospel to law, “can we truly see the problem that must be called the theme of the whole of Lutheran theology–the distinction between law and gospel. This distinction is the guarantee of the gloria Christi.”52 The fourth section of the essay, entitled “The Gospel,” comprises four theses that together reject positions that undermine the gospel.53 Justification does not occur because of regeneration or because of the new obedience. While the latter two cannot be separated from justification, they must be distinguished from it, just as the law is to be distinguished from God’s proper 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

TLB 97 – 98; TLC 107. GE 55; see TLB 98 and TLC 108. GE 61; see TLB 102 and TLC 112. GE 58, 69; see TLB 100, 106 and TLC 110, 119. GE 74; see TLB 109 and TLC 123. TLB 110; TLC 123 – 24. The final sentence here does not appear in GE. GE 75 – 96; see TLB 110 – 22 and TLC 124 – 140. The first two theses were unchanged in TLB, but Schlink eliminated several sentences that suggested the distinction between law and gospel is a humanly-made distinction rather than one that results from God’s two-fold address to human beings. In Thesis 20 (GE 94 – 95) he removed a very long paragraph that defended the confessional expression “law and gospel” and criticized the expression “gospel and law.” One wonders why Schlink kept this instructive paragraph from appearing in TLB, especially since it helped to uncover and clarify the proper ordering of “law and gospel” over against Barthian ambiguities, and it stressed that the gospel follows the law because the law will have its eschatological end only in Christ. This paragraph underscored that the gift of the gospel is eternal life in the resurrection, and thus it must be God’s final word to the sinner. This paragraph would have been the third-to-the-last paragraph in the section under Thesis 10 (see TLB 122 and TLC 139).

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and final word, the word of promise that is the gospel. In consequence of these distinctions, wherein the gospel and faith are extolled and elevated far above the law and God’s wrath, one may rightly conclude that “the word of God is, strictly speaking, the gospel.”54 Indeed, “in antithesis to the gospel, the law is God’s improper word. In the antithesis between law and gospel, the glory belongs to the gospel, not to the law.”55 In the final section of the essay, which was omitted in the later book, Schlink affirmed the second thesis of the Barmen Declaration because it could be properly interpreted to confess that Christ is both gospel (as “God’s consolation of the forgiveness of all our sins”) and law (as “God’s powerful claim upon our entire life”).56 “In Lutheran doctrine Christ is not only the revelation of the gospel, but also of the law. Jesus Christ is God’s revealed law because he preached repentance and explained the law. Moreover, he was obedient to the law even unto his death on the cross, and he commanded us to follow him.”57 So whereas other Lutherans (Elert and Althaus) saw a woeful comingling of law and gospel in the Declaration, Schlink saw a distinction between the two: Such a distinction between law and gospel shows itself in always new two-fold formulations throughout the entire Barmen Declaration. In the first and fifth theses “trust” and “obey” are distinguished; in the third thesis “faith” and “obedience,” and “consolation” and “instruction”; in the fourth thesis “entrust” and “command.” All of these formulations stand in relation to gospel and law, gift and demand, faith and works. Even the opposition of message and order of the church in the third thesis can be understood in this sense, according to Lutheran doctrine.58

Likewise, the ordering of “gospel” and then “law” can also be understood correctly to correspond to the teaching about law and gospel in the Lutheran Confessions, since regeneration and the new obedience flow out from the gospel, even if ultimately the better, more comprehensive ordering is “law and gospel.” Finally, Schlink addressed the unity of law and gospel in the triune God, which Barth and the Declaration also affirmed, especially in the first thesis: “The opposition between the law and the gospel would indeed not be properly recognized, if one did not know about their unity in God.”59 “In recognition of the two words of God in law and gospel Lutheran doctrine 54 GE 92; see TLB 120 and TLC 136 – 37. 55 GE 94; see TLB 122 and TLC 139. In light of Schlink’s contrast between the gospel’s glory and the inglorious law, the American translators of TLB consistently put the word “law” in lower case letters and the word “Gospel” with an upper-case “G,” but there is no support for this in the original text, since all nouns in the German language are capitalized. 56 GE 97 – 102. 57 Ibid., 97. 58 Ibid., 98. 59 Ibid.

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speaks of a word of God and confesses the unity of law and gospel in the triune God by the use of the singular : verbum Dei.”60 Nevertheless, Schlink noted that the distinction between law and gospel “can in no way be denied by this singular. Indeed, even the law is not removed if the confessional writings simply say ‘gospel’ for verbum Dei.” Likewise, if the first Barmen thesis identifies “the one word of God” with Jesus Christ, this one Word “can only be acknowledged and honored in two words, in ‘trust and obey.’” According to Schlink, the Barmen Declaration acknowledges this distinction through the simple “and” that accompanies the pairs of contrasting words that correspond to gospel and law. Thus, the second thesis teaches that Jesus Christ is both “consolation” (Zuspruch) and “demand” (Anspruch), a teaching that Schlink himself had uncovered in his analysis of the confessional teaching about law and gospel. Moreover, the Barmen Declaration “praises the gospel more than the law. This is the great strength of the final sixth thesis, which defines the message of the church merely as ’the message of the free grace of God’ and is generally reticent about God’s demand.”61 At the end of his essay Schlink analyzed what the second thesis rejects, and here, too, he found consistency with Lutheran teaching: Civic righteousness/ obedience is not the same as God’s righteousness and the new obedience that flows from faith. Apart from faith in Christ, even so-called good works are still sin. Works that are truly good flow only from faith in Christ. Such faithful obedience means that the believer “belongs” only to Jesus and not to other lords: Because Jesus Christ has died for me, “I am his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in eternal righteousness” (SC, Art. 2). The believer is no longer property of the tyrannical lordship of the devil. The believer does not even belong to the lords who rule in the offices ordered by God. The believer rightly obeys these lords only if he obeys God in this obedience. That is, when he fears and loves the triune God in this obedience and believes in his work of atonement. Only then is he obedient as property of the Lord.62 60 Ibid., 98 – 99. 61 Ibid., 99. 62 Ibid., 100. Schlink stressed that civil government is incapable of liberating from the power of sin and that the righteousness which it ought to produce is “in its essence merely external righteousness, not the righteousness that avails before God” (TLB 190; TLC 228 – 29). Civil government is “God’s good creature and ordinance” (TLB 197; TLC 237) for the sake of preserving peace and justice in accordance with the second table of the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, all “statements about government as God’s order rather presuppose that government is lawful (‘legitimate,’ AC XVI:1)… God does not act as avenger through every penal sentence and through every war conducted by the civil power, but civil government has the duty to ’prescribe legal punishments, engage in just wars’ (Apol. XVI: 1)… Since God commands obedience to both civil and spiritual government, “neither may be obeyed contrary to God’s commandment, that is, contrary to the divine institution and authorization of the respective power” (TLB 218; TLC 263). Behind his discussion here had to be remembrances of how individuals had been unjustly persecuted within the Hitler regime.

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Schlink concluded the essay by affirming that “there can be no objection to the statements that the Barmen Declaration actually makes.”63 In light of what the Lutheran Confessions teach about law and gospel, and given the fact that the Barmen theses were not intended to be exhaustive statements about the topics they address, a Lutheran Christian can defend the Declaration as consistent with Lutheran doctrine. Schlink’s 1937 essay had not only been sparked by the need to engage the Barmen Declaration. A further impetus came from Barth’s famous 1935 lecture on “Gospel and Law.”64 Not only had the Swiss theologian reversed the traditional order and stressed that the gospel precedes the law (a reversal that is also reflected in all of the pairings in the Declaration: “faith and obedience,” “consolation and instruction,” etc.), but he had also asserted that the law is a divine gift, just like the gospel, and as such is always a revelation of God’s grace. Thus he held that according to its original purpose, apart from sin, the law is simply “the necessary form of the gospel, whose content is grace.”65 While he acknowledged that “the gospel is not the law, just as the law is not the gospel,” nevertheless, “because the law is in the gospel, comes from the gospel, and points to the gospel, we must first know about the gospel in order to know what law is, and not the other way around.”66 In this view, the law must follow the promise and be the fulfillment of the promise. Moreover, both law and gospel are contained within the one word of God: “greater than their duality and their conflict is their peace in the one word of the Father.”67 When this one word of God addresses us, whether as law or as gospel, this is always grace. “That God speaks with us, that is, in all circumstances, already in itself grace” (that is, “free, non-obligatory, undeserved divine goodness, mercy, and condescension”).68 While Barth somewhat reluctantly admitted that the law and the gospel must be distinguished, he stressed that they cannot be separated. Jesus Christ, who is the content of the gospel, has also satisfied the law, has fulfilled the law, and was obedient to the law’s commands. “When this event of the will of God–thus the event of his grace–is revealed to us, the law is simultaneously revealed to us. We read from it what God here has done for us

63 GE 101. 64 Karl Barth, Evangelium und Gesetz, Theologische Existenz Heute 32 (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1935), reprinted in Gesetz und Evangelium, ed. Ernst Kinder and Klaus Haendler (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 1 – 29, and translated as “Gospel and Law,” in Karl Barth, Community, State, and Church: Three Essays, ed. and with an introduction by David Haddorff (Eugene, Or.: Wifp and Stock, 2004), 71 – 100. While I will give the appropriate citation in this work, the translations of Barth’s statements are my own. Barth’s position on “gospel and law” would be further developed in his Kirchliche Dogmatik, especially in volumes II/2 (§36 – 39) and II/4. 65 Barth, Evangelium und Gesetz, 9; see Gospel and Law, 80. 66 Barth, Evangelium und Gesetz, 1 – 2; see Gospel and Law, 72. 67 Barth, Evangelium und Gesetz, 2; see Gospel and Law, 72. 68 Barth, Evangelium und Gesetz, 2; see Gospel and Law, 72.

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and wants with us and from us.”69 To proclaim the Lordship of Jesus entails preaching the demand for obedience to the will of God against all of human beings’ sinful presumptions. Clearly, Schlink’s essays on the Barmen Declaration took issue with some elements in Barth’s position. This was especially true with regard to the persistently accusatory nature of the law (also for the Christian) and Barth’s emphasis on the unity of law and gospel, rather than their sharp contrast in view of their respective purposes and results. Schlink would raise these objections against Barth’s position in a secret meeting that he and other theologians had with him in Utrecht in 1938.70 The question mark in the title of this latter lecture, “The Gospel as Form of the Law?,” indicates Schlink’s critical perspective vis-—-vis this aspect of Barth’s theology, at least at that time. While the gospel has implications for the Christian life, these implications come solely from the gospel and are shaped by the Spirit, not by the law.71 Twenty years later, however, Schlink cautiously affirmed Barth’s formula in an essay that he wrote for yet another Festschrift in honor of his Doktorvater, this time on the occasion of Barth’s 70th birthday. Here Schlink addressed himself further to the relationships between law and gospel and between gospel and Pauline admonition (paraklesis).72 After acknowledging the importance of Barth’s writings for stimulating the discussion about “law and gospel,” the essay provides scriptural evidence from the letters of Paul that supports several fundamental distinctions: (1) between the Old Testament law and the New Testament gospel; (2) between promise and law within the Old 69 Barth, Evangelium und Gesetz, 7; see Gospel and Law, 78. 70 On the meeting at Utrecht, see Eber, Einheit, 24. 71 Shortly after this exchange with Barth, Schlink articulated his understanding of the distinction between the law and the gospel in the context of the age-old question about the nature and purpose of music. See Edmund Schlink, Zum Theologischen Problem der Musik (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1945; 2nd. ed., 1950). In this 31–page booklet he set forth his view that music can be understood philosophically, but its fuller understanding only becomes clear in relation to the knowledge of the law of God that all human beings possess and which relates also to the presence of order and freedom within God’s creation, which includes music. Indeed for Schlink music is “tone in movement between order and freedom” (ibid.[ 2d. ed.], 5). The final sections of the booklet examine the fullest knowledge and impact that the Christian gospel brings for the Christian’s understanding and practice of music. While music does not fit easily into the Christian’s imitation of Christ, it does have legitimacy within the Christian’s faithful and joyful response to the gospel. Freed from the curse and judgment of the law by faith in Christ, the Christian is free to enjoy music as a playful celebration of God and of God’s creation. While Christians may choose to omit music from worship and only focus on the Word, music has its proper place in worship insofar as it serves the gospel. But if music becomes an end in itself that pulls people away from God and his Word, then such music is to be rejected. 72 Edmund Schlink, “Gesetz und Paraklese,” in Antwort: Karl Barth zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag am 10. Mai 1956, ed. Ernst Wolf et al. (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1956), 323 – 35. Hereafter this text is abbreviated as GP. This essay was reprinted in Gesetz und Evangelium, ed. Ernst Kinder and Klaus Haendler (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 239 – 59.

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Testament law; (3) between gospel and exhortation within the New Testament gospel; (4) between the effects of the gospel for life and for death; and (5) between acquittal and condemnation in the proclamation of the divine judgment. An additional section (between sections 3 and 4) analyzes the freedom from the law through faith in the gospel. Whereas the law is “the content of the revealed commands by God to Moses and through Moses to God’s covenantal people,” the gospel is “the message of Jesus Christ,” preeminently “the word of the cross, and this means always at the same time the word of Christ’s cross and resurrection.”73 The law and the gospel are thus always sharply contrasted by Paul: whereas through the law God demands good works, the gospel is oriented to the hearing of faith; whereas through the law God reveals sin, through the gospel God justifies the believing sinner ; whereas the law works divine wrath, the gospel brings grace and life; whereas the law is written in dead letters, the Spirit of the living God works through the gospel. Christ is both the termination and fulfillment of the law; whoever believes in him is righteous. For that person, “the lordship of the law has ended.”74 Within the Old Testament Scriptures themselves a further distinction is to be made, namely, between God’s legal demand/command and God’s graceful promise. Here Schlink acknowledged that Barth was correct to stress the sequence “gospel and law” insofar as “gospel” refers to the prophetic promises and the fact that the faithful already had a share in these promises in the old covenant (although their fulfillment occurred in Jesus Christ). Likewise, a two-fold message is to be distinguished in the New Testament Scriptures, namely, between gospel and admonition/exhortation (paraklesis). The apostolic message includes both indicative statements of gospel and imperative statements that are grounded in the indicative. “Pauline paraklesis is especially grounded in Baptism, in which and through which the sinner is given over to Christ, crucified with Christ, died and buried, and has become a new creature.”75 Because the sinner has died with Christ and has been raised to new life, the sinner is called to live a life worthy of the gospel. “The relationship between gospel and paraklesis is indeed a paradox, but still not antithetical. Gospel and paraklesis stand with each other, not over against each other like promise and law and like law and gospel. Gospel and paraklesis do not exclude each other. Here there is not either-or.”76 For here God does not demand from the believer anything that he has not already given to the believer through the gospel. He merely exhorts the believer to live as the person he has become by the gospel. Freed from the law by the gospel, the one who believes in Christ is gifted by the Spirit who produces love, joy, peace, etc. In this context, Schlink 73 74 75 76

GP, 324. Ibid., 325, 330. Ibid., 326. Ibid.

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slightly corrected Barth’s sequence of “gospel and law” to be a sequence of “gospel and paraklesis” (not “gospel and law”), since “New Testament paraklesis follows the gospel.”77 The apostolic sequence indeed moves from “indicative to imperative, from consolation to demand, from gospel to command,” and yet these sequences remain enclosed by the historical succession of the old and new covenant which cannot be cancelled. Likewise, paraklesis (which Schlink also calls “apostolic command,” Gebot) does not have the same relation to gospel as law does, nor are its purposes in any way the same as those of the law.78 “Law and paraklesis are for Paul two very different things, indeed opposites.”79 Thus Schlink concluded that Barth had misunderstood paraklesis when he wrote of it as “law” and that Protestant theology, both Reformed and Lutheran, had erred by speaking of paraklesis under the category of “law” instead of under usus practicus evangelii. Schlink’s solution to the age-old debate about the so-called “third use of the law” is to speak of apostolic admonition (paraklesis, Mahnung) as grounded in the gospel, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, and shaped by Christ’s promises through them–and thereby such paraklesis is distinct from the law. Schlink built on this essay in an address he gave four years later to the Ecumenical Working Group of Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians at Heidelberg on April 6, 1960.80 This occasion allowed him to return to the theme of “law and gospel” and examine it as an ecumenical issue between Protestants and Roman Catholics. In this new context he summarized the five Pauline distinctions he had set forth in the 1956 Festschrift essay and he returned to several issues he had already explored in both that essay and the one from 1937, such as the unity of law and gospel and the differences between them. The new situation also stimulated him to make some further observations and conclusions beyond those he had already described and to set these into a larger ecumenical context. For example, he asserted that the distinction between law and gospel “is really of the greatest significance for the whole of Christendom.”81 Nevertheless, this theme has played “only a small role in the dogmas of the different parts of Christendom seen as a whole”–the Church of the Augsburg Confession has been the lone exception–and in the dogmatic treatment of the theme “considerable differences exist” within Christendom.82 77 78 79 80

Ibid., 331. Ibid., 326. Ibid., 333. This address was subsequently published as “Gesetz und Evangelium als kontroverstheologisches Problem” in Kerygma und Dogma 7 (January 1961), 1 – 35 and republished under the same title in Edmund Schlink, Der kommende Christus und die kirchlichen Traditionen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 126 – 59 (ET as “Law and Gospel as a Controversial Theological Problem,” in The Coming Christ and the Coming Church, trans. I. H. Neilson et al. [Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967], 144 – 85). 81 Schlink, “Law and Gospel as a Controversial Theological Problem,” 164. 82 Ibid., 168.

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Thus he called for further reflection on the methodological issues involved in understanding this distinction (for example, that dogmatic statements are only one kind of statement of faith, that they arose within distinct historical situations, that they contain distinct concepts, that important differences in content may be due to a different structure among the various dogmatic statements, and that they may not be compared with one another as timeless and isolated statements), and for further steps “in order to push forward to the affirmation of the real differences and to a true comparison of the dogmatic statements.”83 After traversing this ground, he returned in his conclusion to the central assertion of his address: The ecumenical significance of the Lutheran distinction between law and gospel lies in the fact that there this theme, which is actually central for the church, has been made the content of dogmatic statements and that these statements have been formulated in such direct relation to God’s dual speech and action that space is left open for the freedom of God’s saving action. The structure of the personal encounter in the word is obviously not the only one in which the dogma of the church is to be formulated. For the dogmatic statements about God’s message in law and gospel it is however the appropriate structure.84

Schlink’s reflections here led him to the articulation of his final understanding of the distinction between law and gospel as set forth in his Ökumenische Dogmatik.85 This is without question his longest treatment of the topic, even longer than in Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften, since he defined the gospel in his introduction (71 pages) and identified the distinction between law and gospel as the basic content of the entire second part of the 83 Ibid. Schlink’s reflections here mirror several of his basic concerns in an earlier essay, “Die Struktur der dogmatischen Aussage als ökumenisches Problem,” Kerygma und Dogma 3 (1957), 251 – 306 (republished under the same title in Der kommende Christus 24 – 79 and reprinted in Edmund Schlink, Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, vol. 1, Part I: 24 – 79. Unfortunately, the English translation [“The Structure of Dogmatic Expressions as an Ecumenical Problem”] in The Coming Christ [16 – 84] is not very accurate.). 84 Schlink, “Law and Gospel as a Controversial Theological Problem,” 184 – 85. 85 See note 8 above. Schlink summarized the purpose of an ecumenical dogmatics on the first page: “An ecumenical dogmatics is centered on the whole of Christianity with the question about the unity of its faith and its confessions of faith. The ecumenical dogmatics is at the same time about both the community of believers and the unity of faith” (ÖD 1). These first two sentences of the work highlight the two-fold goal of the project: on the one hand dogmatics should be concerned with the unity of faith, with the community of believers, and thereby the unity of the church through the entirety of Christian history. On the other hand, an ecumenical dogmatics is also marked by an orientation to the truths of the Christian faith. The task of such a dogmatics proceeds “not from the outside, namely, not from the dogmatic antitheses that mark the borders of the separated churches, but from the inside, namely, from the dogma that remains common, to scrutinize it, to ground it anew, and to interpret it in the intellectual situation of our time. Thus, here a consensus is not sought out of the traditional confessional antitheses, but just the reverse, the attempt is made from a newly discerned consensus to a new understanding of each antithesis and its weight within the entirety of the Christian faith” (ÖD xiii).

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dogmatics that explicates the doctrine of salvation, a section that is 313 pages long.86 The second part of the dogmatics begins with an analysis of the Old Testament law as both promise and law (Chapter 11). Then, after chapters on the humiliation (Chapter 12) and exaltation (Chapter 13) of the Son of God, there is a chapter on the New Testament gospel as both gospel and admonition (Mahnung). Then follow chapters on Baptism (Chapter 15) and the Lord’s Supper (Chapter 16). In the “summary” of these five chapters he framed the issue in the context of how the relationship between the Old and New testaments should be articulated. “This question concentrates itself in the question regarding the distinction between law and gospel whereby both a unity and a difference between law and gospel is presupposed.”87 While not all churches have treated this question as a part of dogmatics, in actuality it has been present in all churches through their interpretations of the old covenant, through their preaching of the gospel, and in their fulfillment of the tasks of pastoral care.88 The first sub-section of this summary sets forth the problem of the distinction between the law and gospel and outlines the complexities within the relationship. Not only is the distinction the result of a historical sequence in God’s acts with humanity but it is the result of how God acts differently in the simultaneity of law and gospel as these are addressed to human beings. With respect to historical sequence, after Moses came Jesus Christ. “Law” is the content of the former covenant through Moses, whereas “gospel” is the message of Jesus Christ, especially the word of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. The additional material in this sub-section, which defines the theological contrast between law and gospel and their respective effects on sinners, is based largely on the essay from the 1956 Barth Festschrift (which is not cited) wherein Schlink had identified five basic distinctions between law and gospel. A second brief sub-section acknowledges that there is gospel in the Old Testament law insofar as the latter promises fulfillment in the coming of Jesus Christ and his salvation.89 Just as the Old Testament does not merely contain law, so the New Testament does not only announce the gospel, since it also contains the warning about the coming Judgment Day. Thus there is also eschatological “law” in the New Testament gospel, a theme that Schlink had stressed in his address on “hope” at the Evanston assembly of the WCC and that he had also highlighted in the fifth distinction in his essay on “law and paraklesis.”90 So, “the distinction between law and gospel is not only a distinction between the Old and New Testaments,” not merely a historical development from the old covenant to the new; it is also a theological 86 87 88 89 90

For the central importance of the distinction in dogmatics, see ÖD 518. Ibid., 518 – 19. Ibid., 519. Ibid., 520. Ibid., 520 – 21. See also GP 328 – 29.

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distinction that runs through both testaments.91 But these distinctions should not be understood in such a way as to separate law from gospel or vice versa. They share a fundamental unity. Almost as long as the first sub-section, this fourth one underscores the origin of both law and gospel in the triune God, “who speaks and acts through both words.”92 Despite their unity in the triune God, however, law and gospel have different purposes and different effects. There is a fundamental difference between them: “Through the law God demands everything of us; through the gospel he gifts us with everything. Through the law God demands that we sacrifice ourselves to him; through the gospel God sacrifices himself in Christ for us…”93 And then follows a whole list of contrasts that he had set forth initially in his 1937 essay on “law and gospel” and summarized in his essay in the 1956 Barth Festschrift. Another element from the 1937 essay also appears here, namely, the defense of the thesis that “the gospel, not the law, is God’s proper word,” since God’s will is to make alive, not to kill.94 Thus the dialectic between law and gospel is not a timeless construct that remains constantly in place. Rather, the gospel should always be proclaimed in this world, in every historical situation, so that the word of God’s merciful promise and his gracious gifts overcome the divine judgment of the law. This is particularly necessary in pastoral situations of spiritual crises, when individuals and congregations are suffering the negative effects of the divine working of the law, are persecuted, imprisoned, and killed, and thus when they stand in need of the divine promises of the gospel.95 “The distinction between law and gospel is learned and retained in Anfechtung.”96 The one who wrote these words near the end of his life surely must have been thinking of his own spiritual crises during the Kirchenkampf.

Conclusion This brief summary of Schlink’s theological anthropology and his understanding of the distinction between law and gospel gives rise to a few observations and critical questions: 1) The question, “What is a human being?” was a central theme in his life and work, perhaps even the main theme, according to his son-in-law. That he sought to answer this question theologically, yet in conversation with the other disciplines in modern universities, indicates that he understood that the question cannot be answered solely by Christian theology. He realized that 91 92 93 94 95 96

ÖD, 521. Ibid. Ibid., 522. Ibid., 522 – 23. Ibid., 523 – 24. Ibid., 523.

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there are complementary and even competing responses to this question, outside of Christian theology, and that these are often in serious conflict with basic assertions in the Christian faith. While he was open to the insights from other scholarly disciplines, including the natural sciences, he tended not to correlate dominant scientific conclusions that have an impact on theological anthropology with assertions of Christian faith. For example, he did not explicitly engage the implications that modern evolutionary theory has for traditional understandings of the doctrines of creation, sin and evil. While the exposition of the doctrine of God the Creator in his Ökumenische Dogmatik has clearly been informed by the modern natural sciences, there is no explicit engagement with their significant conclusions that have a direct bearing on Christian understandings of nature. As the work of his student, Pannenberg, has shown, Christian anthropology needs to engage the natural sciences directly and explicitly for the sake of clearly explicating Christian doctrine and the limits of human knowledge. On-going advances in the natural sciences will only continue to challenge Christian understandings of human beings. As Schlink himself acknowledged, Lutheran theology is not merely informed by Scripture. Because of a dialectical view toward human reason and experience (human reason is both a gift of God, to be used in service to God’s creation, and a divine gift that has become corrupt through the power of sin), Lutheran Christians are cautiously open to new insights from the sciences and human experience, especially when they have a direct bearing on Christian doctrine and ethical teaching. Still apropos, however, are Schlink’s criticisms of any conclusion or position that contradicts the two-fold affirmation that human beings are both “creature” and “sinner” at the same time. The crucified Jesus does have a relation to worldly wisdom. Schlink’s healthy appreciation for the potential of sin to corrupt all things human is indeed justified. 2) Better than the Barthian description of revelation, which is cast, from beginning to end, in terms of Creator-creature (or transcendence-immanence), Schlink’s understanding of God’s revelation in law and gospel stresses God’s condescending grace that overcomes the legal demands and just judgment of God against sinners through the sacrificial, merciful forgiveness of our sins. Merely that God addresses human beings is not grace; God speaks a two-fold address, and one of the words is not a pleasant, graceful word to receive. Thankfully, God’s preliminary, penultimate, judging and condemning word is overcome by faith in Christ, that is, by means of God’s final, ultimate, forgiving and loving incarnate Word. 3) The distinction between the law and the gospel was thus central to Schlink’s theology. He demonstrated in his dogmatics that this distinction is of central importance for all of the churches in the Oecumene and that the distinction itself is at the heart and center of any truly “ecumenical dogmatics.” But has Schlink understood the distinction correctly? Again, a detailed answer to this question cannot be given here, but the following could

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serve as a preliminary query into some issues in his thought that deserve further reflection: a) Schlink defined the law as “the Ten Commandments” that are “written in Holy Scripture,” and yet he elsewhere acknowledged that the one divine law is never merely a legal moral code or a neutral, informative guide. Given the fact that he underscored the law’s accusatory, juridical power, which finally puts sinners to death, one wonders if his definition of the law is too narrowly focused on the written Ten Commandments. Does not Paul stress that the divine law is active within human beings who have never read the Scriptures, that God’s law is working through human conscience and within human societies, and that its chief power is in administering divine justice, divine accusation, and ultimately divine condemnation? Is not a better definition of “the law” something like: “God’s retributive justice that is active within human consciences and societies but most clearly revealed in the Ten Commandments and intensified by the revelation of God’s wrath in the crucifixion of Jesus”? The divine law is always more dangerous than those who understand it as merely as a written, objective, neutral guide. b) Schlink correctly appreciated the gospel’s intrinsic seriousness about the law and found in this very criticalness of the law the sufficient reason for why sinners can be justified only by faith in Christ. While Schlink affirmed that Christians are also accountable to the divine law insofar as they are and remain sinners unto death, nevertheless he rightly stressed, over and above the law, that the gospel alone 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. One can never be more righteous or holy than when one believes that one’s sins are forgiven solely for Christ’s sake. For this reason, too, the sequence “law and gospel” is ultimately more accurate than “gospel and law.” c) Given that “Christ is the end of the law” and that what truly counts before God is “faith apart from works of law,” was Schlink correct to maintain that there is a fundamental unity between Christian dogmatics and ethics, between gospel and paraklesis, as Barth also affirmed, or should these not be as sharply distinguished as law and gospel for the sake of the gospel’s overcoming the divine law, that is, for the sake of faith alone in Christ alone? Schlink asserted that the gospel is God’s proper word, since it is God’s final word, yet he also was moved by the Barthian critique of the traditional Lutheran distinction (separation?) between “law and gospel.” He knew that justification was not merely a matter of a forensic act and that it has good consequences for the Christian’s life, but he did not think that the New Testament gospel allowed one to properly describe this new life as a life “under the law.” Christ is the end of the law for faith. So how does one faithfully and rightly speak of the Christian life in relation to God’s two-fold address in law and gospel? Schlink’s

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attempted solution was to see Pauline (and other apostolic) exhortation, not as a function of the law, but as an effect and outgrowth of the gospel. God does not demand from the believer anything that he has not already given to the believer through the gospel; the apostles merely exhorted believers to live as the people they had become by the gospel. This exhortation was an application of the gospel to the concrete situations of those first-century regenerated Christians. Yet one must ask if such apostolic paranesis and paraklesis are really that different from the divine law, at least in their effects? While Schlink was right to be critical of those theologians who spoke of the renewed life as “life under the third use of the law,” was he really able to escape the problem of legalism (and avoid antinomianism) by means of his understanding of apostolic paraklesis? While the divine law does have an informatory effect, an effect that under the gospel and through the power of the Holy Spirit is not coercive but free, that free effect is always itself ideal because Christians are never perfectly free of sin in this world, and therefore always live, even as believers, bound to the first two uses of the law. To this extent, then, do not parenesis and paraklesis really fall also under the power of the law and not merely under the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit, as Schlink thought was the case? Such 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. In other words, does not apostolic paraklesis have the same result as the law, namely, driving the Christian back to Christ and to faith alone? Of course Schlink acknowledged this reality, too, when he stressed that the Christian life is marked by “the daily return” to one’s baptism in repentance and faith, but the relation between this “return” and apostolic paraklesis is not entirely clear. d) Schlink did not attend to the transitory character of at least some of the contents within the apostolic paraklesis (for example, regarding head coverings; eating blood; owing no one anything; not seeking a wife if one is single; commands to slaves and wives; honoring the emperor ; etc.) How does one discern the abiding, normative content in the apostolic paranesis and paraklesis while also acknowledging that at least some elements in the early church’s paraklesis/paranesis were limited to the conditions of the apostles’ time and thus transitory? This, of course, is a primary issue today that is dividing the Oecumene even further, but the hermeneutical issues involved in today’s conflicts were also at play in the 16th Century (see especially Apol. XXVIII) and earlier. Have not the doctrinal divisions within Christendom been overtaken by the ethical divisions? Schlink devoted most of his attention to the former and not to the latter, but an adequate ecumenical theology in our day must not only attend to the doctrinal differences among the divided churches, but it will have to engage the serious ethical differences that are perhaps even more divisive. A few final observations about Schlink’s life and work as a whole are also in order :

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1) His publications and actions during the Kirchenkampf provide evidence of a confessional Lutheran theology of politics that is clearly distinct from Barth’s Reformed position but also distinct from other confessional Lutherans, like Elert and Althaus, who, unlike Schlink, could not join the Confessing Church or support the Barmen Declaration. That one could be a confessional Lutheran and affirm both the distinction between the law and the gospel (over against Barth) and the so-called “two regiments” doctrine and still be an active theologian within the Confessing Church is not appreciated or well understood by those who have written about the Kirchenkampf in English. Schlink’s theology of politics ought to be better appreciated for its attempt to defend the traditional Lutheran understandings of law and gospel and the two regiments within the context of ecclesial resistance to the Deutsche Christen and other Nazis. His view represents a fourth way in addition to those of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and the Erlangens. 2) Schlink embodied the best kind of ecumenical orientation and activity, one that takes doctrine and theology seriously as foundational for church unity. His ecumenism was undertaken consciously and intentionally from within the perspective of his own confessional tradition and community, and yet such a commitment was for him not in opposition to his call for a “Copernican Revolution” in ecclesial thinking and attitude. In other words, his work demonstrates that one can be both confessional and ecumenical.97 In particular his moves toward the Eastern Orthodox Church must be acknowledged as truly ground-breaking. His Ökumenische Dogmatik reflects the kind of careful, respectful attention to the Scriptures, the Oecumene, 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. This project deserves closer study and it ought to be translated into English. 3) Schlink’s theology is also properly pastoral in its basic orientation. Even when reading one of his technical essays one detects the voice of one who labored and suffered as a shepherd in Christ’s field. Not merely in his sermons and devotional texts, but also in his dogmatics there is the central emphasis on the living presence of Jesus Christ in the contemporary church. This witness to the crucified and risen Lord clearly took place within 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.”98 In other words, there is in the work of Schlink a consistent witness to the living, Triune God who calls sinners to repentance and faith and who acts mightily to save them.

97 This point is nicely highlighted by D. J. Smit, “Confessional and ecumenical? Revisiting Edmund Schlink on the Hermeneutics of Doctrine,” Verbum et Ecclesia 29 (2008), 446 – 74. 98 TLB 154; TLC 183.

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List of Abbreviations CC

Edmund Schlink, The Coming Christ and the Coming Church, trans. I. H. Neilson et al. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968) EG Edmund Schlink, Emotionale Gotteserlebnisse: Ein empirisch-psychologischer Beitrag zum Problem der natürlichen Religion. Abhandlungen und Monographien zur Philosophie des Wirklichen 5 (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1931) GE Edmund Schlink, Gesetz und Evangelium: Ein Beitrag zum lutherischen Verständnis der 2. Barmer These, Theologische Existenz Heute 53, ed. Eduard Thurneysen (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1937) GP Edmund Schlink, “Gesetz und Paraklese,” in Antwort: Karl Barth zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag am 10. Mai 1956, ed. Ernst Wolf et al. (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1956), 323 – 35 KC Edmund Schlink, Der kommende Christus und die kirchlichen Traditionen: Beiträge zum Gespräch zwischen den getrennten Kirchen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961; reprinted in Edmund Schlink, Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, vol. 1, ed. Klaus Engelhardt et al. [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004], I:3 – 276) MVK Edmund Schlink, Der Mensch in der Verkündigung der Kirche: Eine dogmatische Untersuchung (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1936) ÖD Edmund Schlink, Ökumenische Dogmatik: Grundzüge, 3rd ed., in Edmund Schlink, Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, vol. 2, ed. Michael Plathow (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005) TLB Edmund Schlink, Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften, 4th ed. (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1954; reprinted in Edmund Schlink, Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, vol. 4, ed. Günther Gassmann [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008]) TLC Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, trans. Paul F. Koehneke and Herbert J. A. Bouman (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961) VGS Edmund Schlink, “Die Verborgenheit Gottes des Schoepfers nach lutherische Lehre: Ein Beitrag zum lutherischen Verständnis der ersten Barmer These,” in Theologische Aufsätze Karl Barth zum 50. Geburtstag, ed. Ernst Wolf (München: Kaiser, 1936), 202 – 21

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Richard H. Bliese

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945)

The Bonhoeffer twins, Dietrich and Sabine, were born on February 4, 1906, the sixth and seventh children of a family of eight.1 By present day standards the Bonhoeffer household was rather lavish. The household over which Dietrich’s mother, Paula, presided had a staff of at least five, including a governess, a nurse or nanny, a housemaid, a parlor maid, and a cook. Dietrich’s father, Karl, was a university teacher and physician. The Bonhoeffers were not a churchgoing family. Although Dietrich’s parents knew the Bible well, the children were not sent to church. Paula catechized her soon-to-be famous son at home thus fulfilling her responsibility as a good Lutheran parent. No parish pastor appears to have played any significant part in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s social upbringing or in his choice of vocation. Against overwhelming odds, then, Dietrich firmly decided to be a minister and a theologian as a young boy. His brothers and sisters challenged his choice. When he was about fourteen they tried to persuade him that the church to which he proposed to devote himself was a poor, feeble, boring, petty and bourgeois institution. He confidently replied: “In that case I shall reform it!”2 What is it then about Bonhoeffer’s life and writings that draws interest from so many different people? Larry Rasmussen cautions us not to equate Bonhoeffer’s “full measure” too quickly with his martyrdom. He writes: Is martyrdom why PBS airs a documentary about him and USA Today gives a fullpage article? Is his death sufficient cause for an opera in his name or a statue in Westminster Abby? Does the drama of prison and execution truly explain the Bonhoeffer phenomenon? Let’s step back a moment and consider : Which Bonhoeffer do we actually meet across his 39 years. Is it the pastor, the patriot, the poet, the professor, the pursuer of peace or some other? Several Bonhoeffer’s seem to surface.3

As interest in Bonhoeffer has exploded so too have the plurality of projections about “his meaning for today.” Harvey Cox once likened the diverse

1 Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer : A Biography – Revised Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 36 f. 2 Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 22. Hereafter abbreviated as Bethge. 3 Larry Rasmussen, “More than a Martyr,” The Lutheran (February, 2007), 24.

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interpretations of Bonhoeffer to a Rorschach test.4 People usually reveal more about themselves in the process than about Bonhoeffer. Stephen Haynes maps out the complex world of Bonhoeffer scholarship with a recent survey entitled, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint.5 The results of his work are both enlightening and sobering. Haynes structures his portraits of the “Protestant saint” under the following headings: Seer : the Radical Bonhoeffer ; Prophet: The Liberal Bonhoeffer ; Apostle: The Conservative Bonhoeffer ; Bridge: The Universal Bonhoeffer ; Saint: The function and form of Christian Hagiography ; Cult: Expressions of the Bonhoeffer Phenomenon; and Domestication: The Perils of Protestant Sainthood. Given the preponderance of this “Rorschach effect,” it is with some trepidation that yet another name will be given to the configuration of all those theological blots (i. e. fragments) inherited from Bonhoeffer’s writings and Bethge’s indispensable biography. The “new angle” is Bonhoeffer’s identity as a Lutheran confessor. Does the lens of the Lutheran confessional tradition open up new avenues for grasping how Bonhoeffer understood himself as a theologian and a disciple of Christ? The contention of this article is that for Bonhoeffer, the life of a disciple of Christ was the life of a confessor. Bonhoeffer’s eclectic engagement with theologians like Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Althaus, Søren Kierkegaard and Karl Holl is well documented. It is also clear that Bonhoeffer’s theological framework relied heavily on Martin Luther. But whereas studies are quick to point to Luther’s influence on Bonhoeffer’s thought, few go the next step and inquire about the influence of the Lutheran confessional tradition on him. In other words, Bonhoeffer is often approached through the hermeneutical lens of Luther, not confessional Lutheranism. Ironically, it was Bonhoeffer’s own fascination with “arcane” theological and spiritual issues which led his contemporaries to label his initiatives as “routing out ancient halberds from dusty ecclesial armories.” Today, it would be truly ironic if these same “ancient halberds” led contemporary theologians, especially Lutheran ones, to dismiss their own confessional material in Bonhoeffer as arcane, out-dated, and thus extrinsic to the central picture of one of the church’s guiding lights. This article cannot explore in great detail all the fascinating dimensions of confessional thought in either the first (early scholarly period from 1923 to 1932) or final (period of resistance and prison after 1939 to his death in 1945) periods of his life. Leave it to say, however, that the scholarly consensus is that Bonhoeffer’s life and writings form a fundamental continuity over his entire 4 Harvey Cox, “Using and Misusing Bonhoeffer” in Christianity and Crisis, 24 (October 19, 1964), 199. 5 Stephen Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004). For a helpful review of this book by Geffrey Kelly, see the International Bonhoeffer Society’s Newsletter (No. 87, Fall, 2005), 4 – 6.

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life.6 Therefore, if it can be shown that confessing and confession are central themes for him from 1933 to 1939, then it can be confidently assumed that this same evangelical dynamic played itself out at other times in his life as well, even in prison. This article argues that Bonhoeffer’s identity should include “confessor” as a fundamental dynamic that drove him spiritually, theologically and politically. It is his role as a confessor that best explains his participation in both the Confessing Church and the conspiracy to kill Hitler. Moreover rediscovering this dimension of Bonhoeffer will assist us in discovering the relationship between discipleship and grace as we struggle to live out our own callings as public evangelical leaders today. Confessional complexities have characterized German church history since the Reformation. Bonhoeffer was well steeped in this history.7 In 1830, Frederick William III of Prussia sent out a directive commissioning the arrangement of a tercentennial celebration of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession to Emperor Charles V. This celebration was to be conducted by a Protestant church divided over the authoritative status of confessions in general and the Augsburg Confession in particular. The disagreement over confessions was to supply the proposed festival with a seriousness which it otherwise would not have enjoyed. One prominent preacher and theologian found himself caught in the middle of this confessional feud, Friedrich Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher went on that year to preach an entire series of sermons on the Augsburg Confession. In defense of his participation in the festival, he explained his position regarding the confessional documents as follows: I believe it was possible for a minister to say confidently on this festive occasion, even in the pulpit, that the document presented on that day should not be measured by the standard of our times, and that one must in many points judge it with caution … And yet if … we acknowledge that our church has not stood still for three hundred years in the purification of Christian doctrine by means of biblical scholarship, that could not retract one bit from our celebration … For the celebration does not hold for the document anyway … but for its presentation [Übergabe]: it is not the work that is being celebrated but the deed.8

6 John Godsey’s Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Louisville, KY: Westminster, 1958), James Burtness, Shaping the Future: the Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985), and Renate Wind, Dietrich Bonhoeffer : A Spoke in the Wheel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992) and Larry Rasmussen’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer: His Significance for North American Lutherans (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990) make significant steps to keep both life and work, biography and theology, in balance. 7 See Richard H. Bliese, Bonhoeffer as Confessor: The Nature and Presence of Confession in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Writings (Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Dissertation, 1995). 8 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Kleine Schriften und Predigten, ed. Hayo Gerdes and Emanuel Hirsch, vol. 2, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967 – 70), 229 – 30.

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By underlining “deed” instead of “content,” Schleiermacher was siding with the act of confessing over the authoritative content of the confession, the fides qua at the expense of the fides quae creditur. Such a decision didn’t please everyone. B. A. Gerrish comments about the situation in 1830: “The confessional questions, raised earlier by the formation of the union [Prussian Union of 1817], had been raised again; and the tercentennial was to be celebrated by a church officially united in confession but actually divided over the status of confessions …9 What was true at the tercentennial celebration of the Augsburg Confession remained true up to the quadricentennial in 1930. The same unresolved dilemmas surrounding a common approach to “confession” and “confessing” played themselves out in 1930 in the same way as they had in 1830 – and as they would four years later in Barmen. The tension remained between the authority of the new versus the old confession, Reformed versus Lutheran models, and the fides qua (the faith by which one confesses) versus the fides quae creditur (content of faith which is confessed). Bonhoeffer not only understood these confessional complexities, he embodied their legacy already at the time of Barmen’s convocation in 1934. In contrast to Schleiermacher, he desired to resolve the confessional stalemate without losing the content of the historic confessions as still existentially valid. The fides quae creditur should not be sacrificed in the act of confessing. On the other hand, Bonhoeffer was ready to forge ahead “with God’s guidance” toward the formation and declaration of a new living confession together with other non-Lutherans, accepting the “dangerous” ecclesiastical consequences for German Protestantism, and especially German Lutheranism, which this confessional “union” might bring. These views on confession were not traditional, but rooted in tradition. They were theological in nature, but also theologically “questionable.”10 Bonhoeffer’s participation with Herman Sasse in formulating the Bethel confession is illustrative of the growing role that confession played throughout the whole middle period of Bonhoeffer’s life and writings. Three insights from this period of time are important to retain: 1. Bonhoeffer’s writings and theological interests from 1933 to 1939 unveil the prominent role confession played in this thinking; 2. Bonhoeffer’s hermeneutical understanding of confession was not generically “Lutheran” but a particular school of Lutheran confessionalism; and 3. Bonhoeffer’s use of “confession” in the middle period appears explicitly in his many articles and activities but only implicitly in his major books.

9 B. A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 254 – 55. 10 Gesammelte Schriften, II, 2nd edition, (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1965 – 69), 380. Hereafter abbreviated as GS.

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Confession during the Church Crisis (the Middle Period) What made Bonhoeffer’s confessorhood unique was not that he was a confessor over against other pastors or theologians in Germany. Evangelical confessors abounded in Germany from 1933 to 1939. What made Bonhoeffer unique was that he intentionally practiced three different modes of confession. These modes of confession will be characterized here as: Evangelical Confessor : Bonhoeffer found common cause with other Lutheran and Reformed confessors who grasped the theological, ecclesiological, and legal dynamics of being Protestant, i. e. Evangelical. Lutheran Confessor: Bonhoeffer interpreted the confessional nature of the church from a particular “evangelical” stance; that is, as a Lutheran. Formula of Concord Confessor : Bonhoeffer understood the internal functioning of confessing as a particular class of Lutheran in that he both accepted and engaged the rules of the Formula of Concord.

The following is a short account of the major historical and theological events in Bonhoeffer’s life during the middle period. The role of confession, understood in its three different modes, was of central concern in each of these events.

The Jewish Question Ignites the Confessional Fires Bonhoeffer was one of the first evangelical theologians to attack the Aryan legislation in writing based on the confessional nature of the church. In his essay on “The Church and the Jewish Question,”11 he stated clearly what options were open to church in relating to the State. Bonhoeffer mapped out three ways in which the church could react. First, it should call upon the state to look again at its responsibilities (this is the church’s prophetic call). Second, it must aid the victims who suffer under State action (in this case, the Jews). Third, there was the possibility “not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.”12 The last option, as described by Bonhoeffer, was to be strictly a confessional-theological act, as opposed to a purely political act. The “spoke in the wheel” option was to be inaugurated only after a breach of the gospel could be established by an evangelical 11 GS II, 45 – 53. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 217 – 225. 12 GS II, 48 – 49; John de Gruchy, ed., Dietrich Bonhoeffer : Witness to Jesus Christ (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 127. No Rusty Swords, 221 [italics mine].

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council.13 By the decree of an evangelical council, a status confessionis could be declared in which the whole church recognized that the integrity of its identity and gospel-message were at risk of the state’s actions. Amidst the confusion and intrigue surrounding the July 23rd election of church officers and the law of April 7, 1933 on the “Reconstruction of the Civil Service,” it was clear to Bonhoeffer that a status confessionis as defined by the Formula of Concord had arrived. On the Sunday of the election, Bonhoeffer preached in Berlin and called the church to confession. Church stay a church! But church confess, confess, confess! Christ alone is your Lord, from his grace alone can you live as you are … The Confessing Church is the eternal church because Christ protects her.14

The broad range of confessional terms used by Bonhoeffer is particularly evident in the draft of a protest, signed by Bonhoeffer and Niemöller on September 7th, 1933, which would later serve as a foundation for the League’s celebrated points [phrases in italics mine]: 1. According to the Confession of our Church, the teaching office of the Church is bound only to the authorized calling [Evangelical Confessor]. The Aryan clause of the Church Civil Service Law has given rise to a legal situation which is in direct opposition to the fundamental principle of the Confession [Lutheran Confessor]. In this way, a situation which must be regarded as unlawful from the point of view of the Confession has been proclaimed as the law of the church and has violated the Confession. 2. There can be no doubt that the ordained ministers affected by the Civil Service law, in so far as they have not been deprived by formal procedure of the rights of the clerical profession, should continue to exercise in full the right freely to proclaim the Word and freely to administer the sacraments in the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union, which is based upon the Confession of the Reformation [Evangelical and Lutheran Confessor]. 3. Anyone who assents to such a breach of the Confession excludes himself from the communion of the Church [Formula of Concord Confessor]. We therefore demand the repeal of the law which separates the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union from the Christian Church. Niemöller called upon the German clergy to protest on September 12th and to pledge themselves “to a new allegiance to the Scriptures and Confessions … and to reject the Aryan clause.” A “time of confessing” in terms of the Formula of Concord’s Article 10 had arisen – for Bonhoeffer at least. This situation necessitated a return by the churches to the basics of gospel and confession [Evangelical Confession]; it demanded that ecclesiastical-legal rights be recognized by the state and other churches [Evangelical and Lutheran 13 GS II, 49; No Rusty Swords, 226. 14 GS IV, 135; No Rusty Swords, 217.

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Confession]; and for Bonhoeffer, it raised the warming flag that the central teaching of the church, and thus the theological foundation for church and state, were being compromised [Formula of Concord Confession].

London; the Confessing Church gains strength – 1933 – 1935 When Bonhoeffer became overwhelmed with church matters he always moved abroad – once to London in 1933 and twice to New York (1930, 1939). On October 17th, 1933 Bonhoeffer moved into the German vicarage in South London. For the first time Bonhoeffer had a regular pastorate. Two events received wide publicity during the first few months of Bonhoeffer’s stay in England. First, the English press debated in detail the Wittenberg manifesto, “To the National Church” of September 1933, which had been sent to the synod by two thousand pastors of the newly formed Pastor’s Emergency League. By virtue of its initial letter, Bonhoeffer’s name was prominent at the head of the list of twenty-two signatories. Second, everyone in London was eager to learn about the details of the Sports Place “scandal.” As an insider to these events, Bonhoeffer was in a good position to defend the cause of the church opposition. He used this position in London to create growing pressure on the newly formed German Church. Telegrams, not theological books, were the weapons of choice sent from the German churches in London to the central offices of the German Evangelical Church. Bonhoeffer had long since decided that the church was heading for schism; that is, a division caused by confessional disagreements. In London, Bonhoeffer worked tirelessly with the German community and with Anglican Church leaders in order to prepare for the split. With the Aryan clause, Bonhoeffer believed that schism had been brought to the church. But it was for this same reason that Bonhoeffer was shocked by Barth’s response to his own conclusions. “If there is to be schism, it must come from the other side,” writes Barth.15 This initial disagreement between Barth and Bonhoeffer points in actuality toward two different approaches to the hermeneutics of confession. Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s hermeneutics for defining a confessional situation generally ran along traditional Reformed-Lutheran confessional lines of interpretation. In Bonhoeffer’s case, the additional Lutheran hermeneutical category of status confessionis, drawn from the Formula of Concord, was a key category distinguishing him from Barth. Preparing his parishes for a church schism became Bonhoeffer’s driving project within his time in London. Not everyone in his parishes understood all 15 M. Schoemann, “The Special Case for Confessing” in The Debate on “Status Confessionis”: Studies in Christian Political Theology (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1983), 59.

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the confessional hermeneutics behind such a drastic move, but the parishes followed his analysis and called for concrete action. They were some of the only German congregations outside of Germany to do so.

The Confessions – Bethel, Barmen, Dahlem16 Confessional action increasingly became viewed as the appropriate genre for responding to the church crisis in Germany. Groups sprang up everywhere in Germany calling for confessional action. A notice by one of this groups, the Young Reformers read: Within this context, not only are the Reformation confessions being referred to, but also the new contemporary confessions, for example, the “Confession of the Altoner Pastors,” or the “Attempt at a Lutheran catechism” from Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt. In a not so long time, even from within our circles a confession will emerge which will provide the most appropriate foundation for the training of the congregation.17

Bonhoeffer believed that both the historical confessions were authoritative and that the Holy Spirit could speak through a “new” confession, thus binding the confessors to the Word of God and to each other through their confessing. Confessions, both old and new, became Bonhoeffer’s tools for spiritual battle. I come in certainty and thankfulness that God has let me know the way for his church through his word and the church’s confession. I do not go to such meetings as to a Quaker meeting, in which each time I should first have to wait for new directions from the Holy Spirit; I go to them rather as to a battlefield, in which the Word of God is in conflict with all human views and would be used as a sharp sword. What takes place here is not representation of a piece of realized Christian life, but a struggle for truth. I do not wait here somehow for an “intervention of the Spirit of God” as you write. God’s Spirit battles only through the Word of Scripture and of Confession, and only where my insights are overwhelmed by Scripture and confession can I know myself to be overwhelmed with the Spirit of God.18

Bonhoeffer was a recognized leader in the formation of the Pastors’ Emergency League. As a leader in a movement which affirmed a return to “Bible and Confession,” he was asked by Friedrich von Bodelschwing to help draft a new confession, the Bethel Confession, as an attempt to counter Nazi ideology creeping into the Evangelical Church. Furthermore, although he was 16 For an excellent study of how Bonhoeffer’s confessional theology was expressed in this period, see Robert Bertram, A Time for Confessing (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 65 – 95. 17 GS II, 81 [translation mine]. 18 GS II, 214. No Rusty Swords, 305. In this quotation, Bonhoeffer is particularly referring to the two confessions made at Barmen and Dahlem.

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not invited to Barmen in 1934, Bonhoeffer affirmed strongly the Barmen Declaration and its later interpretation at Dahlem as more than a mere declaration to be studies and interpreted by each confessional community. He acknowledged their theological status as “confessions.”19 Although people often spoke about the “Altoner Bekenntnis” and the “Confessions of 1933,” the actual synod at Barmen was extremely cautious in regard to terminology and avoided using the word “Bekenntnis” (i. e. Confession) so as not to offend the confessional sensitivities of the Lutherans, the Reformed and the Union church delegates or create a new “union” church through the development of a common confession. Bonheoffer seems to throw the caution of the Barmen Synod to the wind. He interpreted Barmen and Dahlem outright as “confessions” not mere declarations. In fact, “Word of God” status or “a common word” is at times used to affirm their authority.20

The Ecumenical Movement The use of confession within Bonhoeffer’s writings is never as forceful or allencompassing as in the document, “The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement.”21 Bonhoeffer had been active in the ecumenical movement. A conference had been arranged in May 1935 to prepare for the 1937 Oxford Conference. Bonhoeffer was invited to participate as a representative of the Confessing Church. The problem facing Geneva was which church would be invited to represent the German church at this ecumenical gathering, the newly formed Confessing Church or the German Reich Church. Geneva wanted to act in a conciliatory manner and invite representatives from all the warring sides of the German church dispute. Bonhoeffer argued against this weak posture. Geneva, he thought, needed to stop evading the decision as to which was the “real” Church in Germany. Bonhoeffer wrote: A church without a confession or free from one is not a church, but a sect, and makes itself master of the Bible and the Word of God. A confession is the church’s formulated 19 The most obvious sign of this theological judgment was the inclusion of the Barmen Declaration into his catechism (GS III, 335) where he directly refers to this document as a confession (338). See also the Geltung von Barmen und Dahlem (GS II, 205). 20 “We can no longer go back behind Barmen and Dahlem not because they are historical facts of our church to which we show due reverence, but because we can no longer go back behind the Word of God.” [“The Question of the Boundaries of the Church and Church Union” in De Gruchy, 151; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Way to Freedom, ed. Edwin Robertson and John Bowden (London: Collins, 1966), 88; GS II, 231 f.] 21 GS I, 240 f; No Rusty Swords, 326.

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answer to the Word of God in Holy Scripture, expressed in its own words. Now unity of confession is a part of the true unity of the church.22

Bonhoeffer claimed the Confessing Church was fighting vicariously for all Christendom. It was the participation in the Ecumenical Movement which called the Confessing Church to articulate precisely its confessional nature in relationship to the whole church. It was, on the other hand, the Confessing Church which challenged the Ecumenical Movement to deal with its very existence in relation to confession.23 Thus Bonhoeffer was trying to challenge the ecumenical church to recognize the confessional nature of church. Such recognition would fundamentally change the way the Ecumenical movement went about its business. The Confessing Church is the church which would be exclusively governed in all its totality by the confession. It is fundamentally impossible to enter into conversation with this church at any point without immediately raising the question of the confession. Because the Confessing Church has learnt in the church struggle that from the preaching of the gospel to the taxing of the churches, the church must be governed by the confession and the confession alone, because there is no neutral ground, divorced from the confession, within her, she immediately confronts any partner in conversation with the question of confession.24

Confession and Church Boundaries Given the “modern” church’s penchant for religious tolerance, no topic is potentially as embarrassing as Bonhoeffer’s strict pronouncements against the German Christians in the July 1936 issue of Evangelische Theologie. The infamous sentence from the article spread like wildfire: “Whoever knowingly separates himself from the Confessing Church in Germany separates himself from salvation.”25 The phrase was later reduced by opponents to read, “Those without a Red Card won’t go to heaven!” Explanation was immediately 22 GS I, 250 – 251; No Rusty Swords, 335. 23 At the conference of the Central Church Office at Dassel on March 6 – 9, 1933, Bonhoeffer gave two speeches concerning the confessional problem and ecumenism: Bethge writes: “[Bonhoeffer in the speeches] shows himself already to have been the conscious Lutheran that he had always wanted to be in the ecumenical movement and that he later showed himself to be in the 1935 statement of principles. He insists on two things, the necessity of avoiding the danger of confessional relativism on the one hand, and on the other the necessity of loosening up the rigidity of confessional absolutism. One of the subjects of the Dassel conference was ‘Confession and Truth,’ and he tries to show that the truth of the word is double-sided, in that it represents both the word of God and the confessional word of the Christian congregation” (Bethge, 180). 24 GS I, 243, No Rusty Swords, 328. 25 GS II, 238 f.

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demanded from Bonhoeffer by all sides for theological reasons as well as for financial ones.26 The reactions to Bonhoeffer’s modern application of the ancient doctrine extra ecclesiam nulla salus, came swiftly. Objections arose throughout Germany, on all sides of the Church Struggle, because Bonhoeffer pronounced an anathema, in the fullest confessional sense of the word, against those confessing Christians who associated “knowingly” with the German Christian church. Martin Niemöller called this “spiritual adultery.”27 The vitriol of the attacks seems to have taken Bonhoeffer by surprise. Bonhoeffer wrote to Barth, “People are getting terribly excited about it. And really I thought that what I was writing was axiomatic.”28 A statement by the Rhineland Council to queries about Bonhoeffer’s infamous phrase explains his intent: Bonhoeffer’s statements are ‘based on the thesis that the call “Here is the church” is synonymous with the call “Here is the gospel.’ The Rhineland Council sees in this thesis a legitimate interpretation of the reformatory concept of the Church … Anyone who persistently repudiates the call “Here is the Church, here is the Gospel” raised by the Confessing Church, has broken with the gospel as it is preached …29

How did Bonhoeffer support such a radical, uncompromising condemnation against a whole church? Was he acting theologically or church politically? Bonhoeffer writes in response: So while conversation with other erring churches would be possible, such a possibility no longer exists for conversation between the National Church and the Confessing Church. Doubtless it would be easy to point out the false doctrines of the German Christians in many other churches. Nevertheless the Confessing Church recognizes a qualitative difference.30

How does Bonhoeffer justify this “qualitative difference?” He uses the notion of confession. The Confession Church takes its confident way between the Scylla of orthodoxy and the Charybdis of confessionlessness …the church will recognize friend and enemy by the Confession … The church must decide where the enemy is standing. Because he can stand now on Eucharistic doctrine, another time on the doctrine of justification, a third time on the doctrine of the church, the church has to decide. And in deciding it makes its confession.31 26 Due to Bonhoeffer’s pronouncement, certain supporters of the Confessing Church stopped contributing to the general fund. 27 Klaus Scholder, The Churches of the Third Reich, vol. II (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 273. 28 Bethge, 433. 29 Ibid. 30 GS II, 234 – 235; John de Gruchy, 153; The Way to Freedom, 90 – 91. 31 Ibid.

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In decisions like these one recognizes elements in Bonhoeffer’s thought and actions can be explained only if Bonhoeffer’s confessional thought is fully grasped as an expression of his ecclesiology and Christology.

Finkenwalde: A Teacher of the Lutheran Confessions In 1935 the Confessing Church had reached the peak of its development as an organization. This was a time when there still seemed to be a reasonable prospect of success for the church opposition. The seminary at Finkenwalde was one of five seminaries set up by the Confessing Church as an alternative to the state institutions. It wouldn’t be long until they were banned by the government as illegal. Concerning the curriculum at Finkenwalde, the Lutheran confessional writings played a prominent role in Bonhoeffer’s classes: From July 1933 onwards, study was centered almost wholly on the confessional writings which at that time aroused the same passionate interest as does the hermeneutical question today. With each term more and more time was allocated to these classes than to any other subject. The authenticity of the binding declarations made by the Protestant church was examined in the light of the concepts of ministry, Church, adiaphora and scriptural doctrine.32

Bonhoeffer’s interest in the confessional writings wasn’t merely “pedagogical.” It would appear from the copious notes in his own copy of the Bekenntnisschriften that these writings were a major resource for his thought. During later courses at Finkenwalde it [Formula of Concord]33 was to become the predominant theme in this series of lectures, and his notes, which cover his whole

32 Bethge, 366. 33 The Erlangen school remained a permanent stimulus to Bonhoeffer. He acquired the complete works of F. H. R. Frank and Hofmann, and he gladly made use of Frank’s four-volume Theology of the Formula of Concord when he discovered the “confessions” during the church struggle. Then Hofmann’s hermeneutics also began to attract him (Bethge, 62). It was Frank’s theology which influenced Bonhoeffer concerning the question of adiaphora and the nature of “times of confession.” Martin Schoemann writes: “With the growth of confessional consciousness, historical studies were increasingly directed to the development of Reformation confessions, including new approaches to the controversy over adiaphora. Striking examples are to be found in Frank’s theology of FC IV (1865) and the earlier work of Preger whose reformulation of the Flacius’ “thesis” is cited increasingly (Schoemann, 59). It is to be noted in Schoemann’s article that the issue adiaphora, associated with the term “status confessionis,” had been newly rediscovered in the 19th century by Frank (Theologie der Concordienformel IV, 1865) and in the 20th century by R. Seeberg (Lehrbuch der Dogmensgeschichte IV, 2, 1920) under the influence of his Doktervater, F. H. R. Frank. Seeberg was Bonhoeffer’s Doktervater. It is thus very likely that, concerning the issue of confession and adiaphora, there is a strong link running from Frank

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time at the seminary, contain no fewer than eighty-one themes and questions on this subject which he gave as tasks to the ordinands. He loved the Formula of Concordia and liked nothing better than to discuss its tendency to express, in the guide of traditional philosophical formulae, the saving truth, and in the doctrines of confessional differentiation, the invitation to salvation.34

Lutheran seminarians at Finkenwalde had to take an oath that they would accept the confessional documents as “true interpretations of the Word of God” for their ordination to become pastors. Among Bonhoeffer’s duties as a Lutheran theologian at Finkenwalde, therefore, was the responsibility to teach the Lutheran confessional literature so as to prepare seminarians for their pastoral oath. In addition, as a seminary of the Confessing Church, these same seminarians were to be taught the nature of modern confessions and the role they played with the German church situation. In other words, Barmen and Dahlem were as much a topic for discussion as the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord.

The Confessing Church and the Confessional Churches How Lutherans were to use the confessions in response to the new crisis remained a problem throughout the Church Struggle. As Bonhoeffer drove to Wittenberg in 1933 to express protest at the Aryan policies of the church on the basis of the Lutheran Confessions, the Erlangen theologians Elert and Althaus undercut his efforts on the basis of the same documents. Althaus’ statement announced; “the church must therefore demand that Jewish Christians hold back from the ministry.”35 Bonhoeffer’s argument was completely the opposite, calling the exclusion of Jews from the ministry as grounds for church schism. Both positions referred to the same confessional documents as witnesses. And while the Pastors’ Emergency League was calling on the church to confess in resistance to the take-over of the church by German Christians, Ludwig Müller, the first Bishop of the united German Protestant Church, called German Christians to renewal based upon the confessional documents of the church. The result was constant confessional confusion. Early in the crisis, Niemöller did not disguise the fact that he would greatly have preferred to consider the Aryan clause as peripheral; that is, as adiaphoron.36 This would have relegated the Aryan clause to a neutral position vis-—-vis the confessions. Sasse, in sharp contrast, understood the Aryan through Seeberg to Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was on of the few theologians during the Church Struggle to use the phrase “status confessionis” within its confessional context (FC X). 34 Bethge, 368. 35 Bethge, 236. 36 Ibid.

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clause from beginning as a major heresy and a break with the confessions. Yet, at Barmen, instead of joining rank with other Protestant churches in Germany to protest the injustices created by the German Christian movement, Sasse’s biggest protest was made in response to a remote but fundamental confessional rule which had been broken or overlooked by the delegates at Barmen. The Barmen document, cautiously labeled by the whole synod merely as a “declaration,” would be later included by Bonhoeffer within his catechism as a confession. German Christians, the Confessing Church, the “Third Front” Lutherans37 and the silent majority of Protestants were all confronted with the weighty decisions on how they stood over against the state and each other. Confession quickly became the wedge, the plumb line, the acid test which divided the camps, if not always cleanly. Confesssional terminology proliferated as the church grappled with their identities, with their futures, and with the future of Germany. Bonhoeffer was clear that the old confessions were now insufficient in defining the boundaries of the church. To confess in 1936, one needed more than the Reformation confessions. Bonhoeffer was also conscious of the problems this interest in “new confessions” might create. New confessions made by old confessional opponents meant breaking Lutheran confessional “rules.” One of Bonhoeffer’s greatest concerns, consequently, was how to theologically reconcile his participation in the Lutheran Church and in the Confessing Church at the same time. Since Barmen, Lutherans and Reformed have been speaking with one voice in synodical declarations. Schismatic differences of confession no longer make it impossible to form a Confessing Synod, though of course the synods are without intercommunion. This is to be taken into consideration as an actual fact. Of course, disputes arise on the confessing side. But the fact is there, and it is up to God to make what he will of it.38

In summary, a rich grasp of confessional thought and action penetrated all the major events of Bonhoeffer’s middle period. His articles reflect this tradition; his books mirror this tradition too, but only implicitly. To support this argument, we need to address how Bonhoeffer’s identity as confessor related to his call to discipleship.

37 “Intact” Lutherans in the south of Germany formed a “Third Front.” The desired result of this act was, among others, to weaken the “United” churches in the north. 38 GS II, 233.

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Confession and Conversion Bonhoeffer began teaching at the seminary in Finkenwalde in 1935. On the surface there appeared nothing special about how Bonhoeffer organized the seminary or the syllabus, that is, except for his series of lectures on discipleship. Bethge reports that after only a few hours in class, newcomers would realize that this was the nerve-center of the whole.39 In essence, Discipleship was an interpretation of justification by grace through faith. Bonhoeffer wanted to unite the confessional articles of “faith,” “justification,” and “sanctification,” under the one concept of “discipleship.”40 Faith and obedience, according to Bonhoeffer, shouldn’t be so sharply distinguished. Faith and obedience are two sides of one coin. For support, Bonhoeffer went to scripture and wrestled with the text from Matthew on the Sermon on the Mount. Bonhoeffer’s conception of faith as discipleship, however, found little support in the confessional writings. This is fascinating, naturally, because Bonhoeffer was responsible for teaching the confessional writings and the catechism as part of the Finkenwalde curriculum. Nevertheless, Bonhoeffer continued to assert that his book built on the validity of Luther’s sola fide and sola gratia. His aim, he insisted, was to avoid both extremes and rediscover and restore Luther’s language of faith to its full value. His use of “cheap grace,” “costly grace” and “discipleship as participation in Christ’s sufferings for others,” was Bonhoeffer’s way of keeping Matthew and Paul, the gospels and the Pauline epistles, pointing in the same direction. Bonhoeffer identified himself within the confessional tradition of a church at the brink of a special kairos in Germany history ; Germany’s “hour of destiny. Thus anyone in conversation with Bonhoeffer will necessarily be confronted with the questions of confession and discipleship. But what led to Bonhoeffer’s insights about the life of discipleship? Bonhoeffer experienced a conversion in the early 1930s. As a result of this conversion, a new confessional identity emerged that reshaped his ecclesiology, led to his concern for discipleship, and gave him new eyes to see the reality of the church as Christ existing as community. What was then the nature of his conversion experience? I plunged into work [on Act and Being] in a very unchristian way … Then something happened, something that has changed and transformed my life to the present day. For the first time I discovered the Bible … I had often preached, I had seen a great deal of the Church, and talked and preached about it – but I had not yet become a Christian… . Since then everything has changed… It was a great liberation.41 39 Bethge, 360. 40 Bethge, 372. 41 Bethge, 155.

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Bonhoeffer disliked conversion stories.42 Showing emotions in public had been frowned upon at home by his father. Bonhoeffer’s frank uneasiness with publicly airing internal struggles may explain why we know so little about the biographical background of his own conversion; his turn from “phraseology to reality.” The exercise of analyzing the root causes for his conversion may have been judged too spiritually dangerous. For whatever reason, a significant change took place in Bonhoeffer which was observable to friends, family, and students. Bethge writes, “What Bonhoeffer so serenely describes as a ‘turning away from phraseology’ and as ‘longing for a break’ turns out on closer examination to refer to a change in him that took place at a definite time and can be attributed to the period when he was beginning work at the university, in the Church, and in the Ecumenical movement.”43 The date of the conversion corresponded to a general period of time not a specific day, that is, to the whole year of 1932. It was during the course of this year that Bonhoeffer became concretely involved with responsibilities for the church, the ecumenical movement, and the university. Between the winter semesters of 1931/1932 and 1932/1933 the outward signs of Bonhoeffer’s turn toward reality consisted of at least six elements. All six outgrowths of Bonhoeffer’s turn had a major impact on his ecclesiology as it developed within the new emerging confessional paradigm. First, there was the “discovery of the Bible as the Word of God,” particularly the Sermon on the Mount had great impact as God’s Word. Bonhoeffer’s new attitude toward the Scripture lay at the heart of all subsequent changes. Second, God’s Word was understood as a Word of Christus praesens, a word which united gospel and command. Third, international peace was accepted as a command of God for discipleship “in our time.” Fourth, Bonhoeffer began to exercise various disciplina pietatis (e. g. daily devotions and regular church attendance.). Fifth, there was a renewed commitment to the German church and the ecumenical movement. Sixth, there was a new discovery of confession as the basis for church identity, ministry and “knowing the truth” not found within the early dissertations.44 The groundwork for Bonhoeffer’s renewed interest in confession was already in place as early as the summer of 1932, as witnessed in Hanns Ruppell’s and Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann’s class notes on Bonhoeffer’s lecture “On the Being of the Church.”45 This lecture represents the first systematic handling of confession within the Bonhoeffer corpus and begins to show a transformation of the ecclesiological categories of the dissertations.46 Several 42 43 44 45 46

Bethge, 157. Bethge, 155. Bethge, 154. GS (first edition) V: 227 f. It is likewise the first time Bonhoeffer specifically links together the notions of truth and confession. On July 1932, Bonhoeffer writes that “The churches included in the World Alliance

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intriguing “rules” concerning confession are noted in this 1932 lecture which reappear consistently in later writings. These rules defined the use of confession both inside and outside the church community. 1. Bonhoeffer characterized “word-confession” as an arcane discipline which rightly finds its place within the fellowship of believers. In contrast, the only churchly confession the world can comprehend is a self-interpreting “deed-confession.” A “word-confession” is inappropriately used by the church when it functions as propaganda against unbelievers (e. g. The German Christians’ “confession” against Marxists). He pejoratively labeled this use of confession as Bekennertum. 2. An evangelical confession involves the question of how one stands before God: it is an existential confession; it is comparable in truth value to a sermon; and it is recognition of truth, not general truths or principles. 3. Based upon the recognition of truth, Bonhoeffer goes on to distinguish an evangelical confession from both the Catholic church and the early church in terms of “the spoken world,” using Luther’s conception of the viva vox evangelii. This distinction was even used to call into question the adequacy of the Apostle’s Creed in the service of ordination.47 4. The relationship between Confession and the office of preaching has a vertical and horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension reflects the church’s relationship with God expressed through its verbal confession of faith. The “I” inherent in this confession does not represent the individual but “the collective I” of the congregation, that is Christ confessing in and with the believers as community. The horizontal dimension reflects the power and authority of the office of preaching. 5. The question about the correct preaching of the gospel is decisive for confession, that is, for an existential understanding of divine truth. 6. The Word of God has established three fundamental aspects of the church which must be understood as creations of the Word: the gathering of believers, the office of preaching and confession. Three additional domains of the church are meant to protect these aspects of the Word: theology, the authority of councils over theology and establishment of dogma by the councils.48 By outlining the nature of confession in such detail in 1932, one recognizes that both the epistemological and act-being categories from his Berlin dissertahave no common recognition of the truth.” (No Rusty Swords, 172). On April 1932, he writes: “The ecumenical movement had lost the concept of heresy” (No Rusty Swords, 177 – 178). 47 Bonhoeffer’s and Hildebrandt’s 1931 catechism does not include the Apostle’s Creed but instead Luther’s statement of faith which Hildebrandt had discovered while working on his thesis. Bonhoeffer liked this so much that for the rest of his life he kept it in his daily prayer and service book and occasionally used it instead of the Apostle’s Creed in even the most orthodox confessional services. Compare Bethge, 143 f. 48 No Rusty Swords, 258 – 259.

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tions are now assumed as functions of the church’s confession. This transformation is significant and striking. Bonhoeffer’s unique treatment of his past epistemological and ecclesiological categories marks the beginnings of a significant theological shift toward understanding discipleship and theology within a confessional framework. By 1935 Bonhoeffer can formulate the structure of confession more profoundly as a “way of knowing” which “governs her whole sphere … from taxing the churches to the preaching of the gospel.49 It took the election of January 20, 1933, and the subsequent events including the Altoner Confession on January 11th, to bring Bonhoeffer to the point on July 23, 1933 where ecclesiology and confession were more systematically linked and developed. The truly unique feature of Bonhoeffer’s “confessional shift” was not that confessional rules were being formed by a community in order to govern its theology and life within a crisis situation. This kind of theologizing would not have represented anything new in Germany. The fascinating feature of Bonhoeffer’s confessionalism was his unique correlation of “living confessions,” the concrete command and the traditional confessional theology on the one hand, and the relation of ecclesiastical “knowing” with confession on the other. Bonhoeffer’s confessionalism becomes clearer when its Christological foundation in Luther’s Eucharistic thought is fully comprehended. Bonhoeffer followed the character of Luther’s sacramental argument step for step in his 1932 Christological lectures, making exact distinctions between how Christ is and is not present bodily in word, sacrament and churchly fellowship. Here Christology has become Eucharistic Christology and as Eucharistic theology, the ontological nature of “who” Christ is and “where” he is to be found determines the direction of the soteriological question, not vice verse. Bonhoeffer’s 1933 lectures contain most of the crucial elements of Luther’s Christology. This was no accident. Bonhoeffer had immersed himself in Luther’s Christology since his student days. He learned many aspects of his own Christology within the context of Luther’s notion of Christ’s real presence in the Lord’s Supper. Bonhoeffer was certainly aware of the fact that Christology and the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper had in Luther mutually conditioned each other. Luther’s Eucharistic thought thus provides a rich contextual framework for analyzing Bonhoeffer’s Christology. Of particular interest is the fact that just as the Eucharistic debates led Luther to make his “Great Confession” concerning Christ’s presence in the bread and wine, so too did the Church Struggle lead Bonhoeffer to make his (in) famous confessional pronouncement concerning Christ’s presence in the Confessing Church.50 There appears to be, therefore, a direct link between the Eucharistic 49 GS I, 244. 50 GS I, 253 – 254.

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christologies of Luther and Bonhoeffer and their practice of uncompromising confession. Gottfried Krodel has observed that the character of Luther’s theology can best be described as affirmation; that is, assertion.51 Krodel suggests that it was the confessional nature of Luther’s theology which distinguished him most fundamentally from Erasmus. In his assertions, Luther expressed “my faith” on a wide range of teaching that had been in dispute. On account of Luther’s understanding of what the Word was and how it functioned, he treated his confession as a kerygmatic assertion. Any compromise in reference to these assertions would have likewise compromised for him the gospel message. Luther felt compelled to confess Christ’s bodily presence in bread and wine because that was his understanding of the gospel’s essence. Luther neatly interwove his understanding of assertion (e. g. the words of institution) with confession as faith’s response to that address (the response to the words of institution is, “Amen.”). Luther’s assertion as kerygmatic confession thus embraced both Word-address and the existential Word-response. The central point here is that Lutheran and Reformed Christians since the 16th century have held a number of theological approaches to their confessions in common: doxological, hermeneutical, catechetical, legal and ecclesiastical. The one major difference is the kerygmatic function of confession. This approach to confession links gospel proclamation and confession and is unique to Lutheran dogmatic history.52 There should be no surprise that Bonhoeffer’s kerygmatic assertions became especially pronounced after his Christological lectures in the summer of 1933 were completed. Bonhoeffer’s growing dependence on Luther’s Christology drew him deeper into the “living word.” The stress on concrete proclamation and concrete response led Bonhoeffer into making very concrete assertions. These assertions would define for Bonhoeffer areas of truth. At two critical times in particular, one can clearly see this kerygmatic approach to assertion. First, the call for a status confessionis was raised in response to the Jewish question. Second, Bonhoeffer wrote: “The Confessing Church is the true church of Jesus Christ.” Just as Luther declared the Gospel with his confession, “This is my body,” Bonhoeffer declared the gospel with his confession, “Here is the Church!” Many aspects of Bonhoeffer’s theology in the middle period are incomprehensible without reviewing the underlying tenets of his Christology which were in place before his confessionalism during the church crisis became apparent. Like Luther before him, Bonhoeffer’s Christology led to a life of

51 Quoted in Robert Kolb, Confessing the Faith: Reformers in the Church 1530 – 1580 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1991), 26. 52 George Hendry, “Gospel, Confession and Scripture” in Marburg Revisited, ed. by Paul C. Empie and James I. McCord (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1966), 26 f.

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confessorhood, employed here as both a schematic theological paradigm and a praxis for Christian discipleship.

The Confessor as Prisoner, Poet, Martyr The role of confessional thought and praxis played a prominent role in Bonhoeffer’s life and theology during the church crisis. Did this focus, however, remain the same from his return from New York in 1939 until his death at Flossenburg on April 9th, 1945? At first glance, the answer seems to be “no.” In sharp contrast to his articles and writings in the middle period, Bonhoeffer’s two fragmentary books, Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison, rarely mention confession or confessing directly.53 Nevertheless, the question about confession is the driving issue for anyone who tries to interpret the final actions of Bonhoeffer’s life in prison. Bonhoeffer’s label as either “martyr” or unfortunate “collateral damage” of the war depends on the answer to this question. In order to clarify the role of confession in the last period of his life, three categories of confession in Bonhoeffer need to be identified and distinguished. These categories, which will be labeled as first, second and third order confession, emerged first in Bonhoeffer’s dissertations. They function in one form or another throughout Bonhoeffer’s life. First Order Confession (actus directus): confessing is a direct response of the church to Christ’s address to the world by grace through faith [e.g. repentance, prayer, worship, good works, acts of charity and witness, silence, etc.]. Second Order Confession (actus reflectus): Confession is a communal interpretive scheme which establishes authoritatively the nature and existence of the community and governs and guards that community’s life of discipleship in the world through regulae fidei. It is the “remembering of the church.” Third Order Confession (the act of preaching – kerygmatic act): Confessing is the church’s living proclamation of and response to both truth and heresy within any particular context. The role of confession as a communal praxis played itself out systematically in a rather surprising fashion during the third period. Confessional decisions had been made authoritatively at Barmen and Dahlem. They were final; considered by Bonhoeffer as God’s Word to the church. But now, beginning already in Ethics, this same negative confessional process was forcing 53 See Bonhoeffer’s “Outline for a Book” for one of the most direct references to the role of confession in the world come of age in Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 382. Hereafter, LPP.

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Bonhoeffer to step back and look critically at his own Confessing Church. A confessional church was defined by its speech, its confession. Confession was its response to its Christological and ecclesiological “reality.” For a church to break a second order confessional rule was merely bad theology, but it was apostasy for a confessing church to compromise a third order confession. Once a church has declared, “Here is the church. Here is the gospel. Come here!”, it denies both itself and the gospel proclamation if it willingly moves from that position. That is how Bonhoeffer interpreted the posture of the Confessing Church by 1939. It willingly removed itself from its living confession, and thus from the reality of Christ’s presence in the world itself. The key to understanding the role of confession in the third period is to see that Bonhoeffer acknowledges the ongoing role of first and second order confessions. The problem with the church is that it has compromised its ability to practice third order confession; that is, to preach Christ contextually in its time. When a church abandons its confession, its only recourse is silence. Silence transforms the nature of the church within a status confessionis from a speaking church centered on proclamation (third order Confession) to a silent church centered on the confession of sin (first order Confession). By withdrawing itself from speaking “the truth,” the Confessing Church was no longer by definition a confessing church. It had lost its right, according to Bonhoeffer, to speak. One may conclude therefore that Bonhoeffer was not primarily concerned in prison with the church’s speaking. He was much more concerned with the form of Christianity in a world come of age. “What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over…”54 He suggests that all that remains for a world-come-of-age confessor was to pray and act responsibly. In the baptismal sermon from prison, Bonhoeffer summarized these new positive and critical thoughts to his nephew as a baptismal gift. These thought mark the end of a process which had begun in 1933. This confessional process which began with ecclesiological words spoken publicly as an authoritative confession of Christ’s presence in the church was now ending in a very different fashion. Today you will be baptized a Christian. All those great ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be spoken over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to baptize will be carried out on you, without your knowing anything about it. But we are once again being driven right back to the beginnings of our understanding. Reconciliation and redemption, regeneration and the Holy Spirit, love of our enemies, cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship – all these things are so difficult and so remote that we hardy venture any more to speak of them. 54 LPP, 279.

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In traditional words and acts we suspect that there may be something quite new and revolutionary, though we cannot as yet grasp and express it. That’s our own fault. Our church (i. e. the Confessing Church) which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, incapable of taking the word of reconciliation to the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and action. All Christian thinking, speaking, and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action. By the time you have grown up, the church’s form will have changed greatly … Till then the Christian cause will be a silent and hidden affair, but there will be those who prayer and do right and wait for God’s own time.55

The Confessing Church’s disregard for its living confession led to the call for the church’s silence for the gospel’s sake. This third period marks a period “between the times” when Bonhoeffer searched to re-capture a true worldly confession of Christ in a world come of age. The movement is from an orthodox confessionalism in the middle period to a search for a new worldly confession. In his “Outline for a Book,” Bonhoeffer gathered notes about the future role for a worldly confession of Christ in a church – without religion. What do we really believe? I mean, believe in such a way that we stake our lives on it? The problem of the Apostle’s Creed? “What must I believe? is the wrong question; antiquated controversies, especially those between the different sects; the Lutheran versus the Reformed, and to some extent Roman Catholic versus Protestant, are now unreal. They may at any time be revived with passion, but they no longer carry conviction.56

This text serves as a springboard for highlighting six aspects of confession which are both explicitly and implicitly supported by Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison in the year 1944. 1. Confession as a response to concrete faith-knowledge of God in the world remains a driving concern for Bonhoeffer throughout the letters from prison. “What do we really believe?” and “who is Jesus Christ for us today?” are questions which serve in these letters as leitmotifs. 2. The state of status confessionis had not been rescinded by 1944. This theologically defined crisis was still in force while Bonhoeffer was in prison. 3. Since the Confessing Church had abandoned its living confession during a status confessionis, its entire confession had lost its moorings in Christ’s reality in the world and had become, in Bonhoeffer’s words, “unreal … they no longer carry conviction.” The traditional confessional “rules” of the church, even the Apostles’ Creed, had now become a problem within the 55 LPP, 300. 56 LPP, 382

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German context; that is, “religion” (a phrase borrowed from Barth). A concrete worldly confession was needed; i. e. “religionless Christianity.” 4. Life in the world without God, etsi deus non daretur, did not mean life in the world without the church. Bonhoeffer declared in his letter of June 8, 1944, that “God is being pushed more and more out of life, losing more and more ground.” Furthermore, “the time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over – and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time.” Nevertheless, “in the place of religion there now stands the church – that is in itself biblical.” “The church stands not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village.” 5. Bonhoeffer claimed in his letter of April 30, 1944, that religion had become a garment to be discarded. Without its connection to reality (third order confessing), confession as paradigm and praxis in the church was judged by Bonhoeffer to be dangerous for faith and for the world. Confession without its connection to reality becomes a “historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression.” He continued by questioning the status of the church, congregation, sermon, liturgy, and Christian life in a religionless Christianity : “How do we speak of God – without religion?” The real intent of this letter is to imagine the form of Christianity in the future. What form will Christianity, the church and the church’s confession take when disrobed of religion? 6. The overarching goal of Bonhoeffer’s letter was to underline the need and the guidelines concerning how the church might search for a new worldly confession of Christ in a world come of age. Unlike Barth, Bonhoeffer didn’t want to be accused of not giving the church concrete guidance as it searched for this goal. The renewal process was envisioned at first in terms of two negative pictures: the picture of circumcision and of the disciples praying with their Lord in Gethsemane. Religion had to be cut away so that the new religionless Christianity might emerge. Death before resurrection. And while Jesus was being pushed out of the world on the cross, Christians were called to watch with Jesus in the garden and pray. Bonhoeffer risks only a few projections about Christianity in the future. He is much clearer about how to clear away any obstacles from prohibiting this renewal process to occur : ultimate honesty before God, prayer, repentance, silence, and responsible action for others. In his poetry from prison,57 he writes: “We come before thee as men. As confessors of our sins … Until thou wipe out our guilt, keep us in quiet patience.” Bonhoeffer was anxious to use new phrases to express how the church should overcome the division of faith and world. In his letter of July 21, 1944,

57 LPP, 349. “Night Voices in Tegel.”

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he wrote about a worldly confession emerging from a church called unreservedly into life’s duties: During the last year of so I’ve come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but simply a man, as Jesus was a man – in contrast, shall we say, to John the Baptist. I don’t mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightenment, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection. I think Luther lived a this worldly life in this sense . . By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failure, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia: and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian.58

The third period was marked theologically by the provocative and now famous notions of “religionless Christianity”, “arcane disciplines”, “the non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts”, “living in the world without God”, and the “World come of Age.” This new vocabulary was Bonhoeffer’s attempt at reestablishing “true” churchly confessions on a new, earthier understanding of Christ’s presence in the world. In short, the basis for any true and living confession for Bonhoeffer was the answer to the question, “Who is Jesus Christ for us today.” This question, developed thematically in the 1933 Christological lectures at the university in Berlin followed him all the way in prison – and to the gallows. The pursuit of this question is one of Bonhoeffer’s greatest contributions to the contemporary church today.

Conclusion The pacifist and the conspirator lands in prison. Fragments of his thought from Tegel prison have tantalized and troubled readers ever since. And there, for the first time, Bonhoeffer pens poetry, like his lament/poem/confession entitled Who am I?.59 “Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.” “O God, I am thine.” Bonhoeffer’s confession in prison is profound; and it is simple. It still rings out and draws new readers to his life, and to the life in Christ. Nevertheless, his approach to confessing at the end of his life also had its shortcomings. He raised more questions than answers with his new insights from prison. Bonhoeffer envisioned for the future a new path for theology and discipleship in the new world brought on by both the German 58 LPP, 369 – 370. 59 LPP, 347.

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kairos and the church’s inability to respond. Within the rapidly changing world that Bonhoeffer could already see from his tiny single cell No. 92 in Tegel prison, he knew a new vocabulary was required. The concrete reality of Christ’s cruciform presence in the world needed new articulation. But in order to learn this new vocabulary the church needed to follow a certain path; that is, it was bound in the interim to “silently prepare [itself] till though doest call us to new times.”60 Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men. All Christian thinking, speaking, and organizing must be born anew our of this prayer and action … It is not for us to prophesy the day (though the day will come) when men will once more be called so to utter the word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming – as was Jesus’ language.61

Identifying with Moses’ story in the wilderness, Bonhoeffer sensed that he might die before seeing the Promised Land. Despite this prophetic insight, he began writing a book in prison with the title “The Essence of Christianity” where, in fact, he returned to the same nagging questions he had posed twelve year earlier in his lectures. What is the truth of Christian propositions? What relevance do these propositions have to real life? Although Bonhoeffer was still wrestling with the same questions had had posed earlier at Berlin University, he had in fact made progress in regard to his Christological and ecclesiological understanding of truth, doctrinal propositions, community, reality, moral action, communal decisions, and responsibility. The church struggle had been for him a baptism in fire. It had also been a good teacher. In Discipleship the key lesson was singleminded obedience. Obedience meant simply doing and believing what God had promised and commanded. It was this kind of obedience that could lead to martyrdom just as it had led Jesus to the cross. But in Ethics God also commands freedom, permission, responsibility and liberty. Responsible action became obedience to the command of God and action which arises out of the freedom to interpret that command. Determining one’s responsible action in freedom, however, was not to be conducted in a vacuum. In was an interpretation which took place within a communal process and one which incorporated very precise structures, rules and disciplines. This was the life of a confessor. Confessio, understood as a systematic theological concept (confession) and as a mode of life (confessing), was at the heart of Bonhoeffer’s life and writings; that is, both in the “who” of his identity and the “what” of his theology. The role of Bonhoeffer as a confessor was so foundational to his life, in fact, that without grasping this root of the tree, the beauty and power of the fruit of Bonhoeffer’s legacy to the church today is missed. Bonhoeffer was a 60 LPP, 355. 61 LPP, 300.

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confessor. And we have received his life and writings as powerful pictures of costly discipleship. Is this the secret of his popularity? For Lutherans, he points the way to a practice of confession that is faithful, challenging and generous. This may prove to be his greatest legacy for Christians today struggling to give witness to Jesus Christ within our own “special times.”

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Roy A. Harrisville

Ernst Käsemann (1906 – 1998) Resistez

On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday celebration in the Aula of Tübingen University, Ernst Käsemann, Emeritus Professor of New Testament, reviewed his career, and ended with these words: Allow me, as my last word and bequest, to shout to you in Hugenot fashion, “Resistez!” For the discipleship of the Crucified of necessity leads to resistance to idolatry on every front, and this resistance is and must be the most important mark of Christian freedom.1

The theme of this essay is Ernst Käsemann’s resistance to what he believed held his country and his church in its thrall. It is thus a “monochrome” approach to a subject sufficiently complex to fault any single retrospective. On the other hand, it furnishes a certain context for Käsemann’s work in the life he actually lived, that is, in a world gone mad. As his frequent use of the verb “to resist” and all its congeners attests, there is no lack in Käsemann of what a Paul Fussel would call “literary dimensions of the trench experience,” that “reciprocal process by which life feeds materials to literature while literature returns the favor by conferring forms upon life.”2 In Käsemann’s case it was a process by which his life in a century of upheaval fed his theology and his theology in turn gave shape to his life.

Biographical Sketch When his father fell on the eastern front early in 1915, the man later to become one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated biblical interpreters was only nine years old. Born near Bochum, Westphalia in July 1906, Ernst Käsemann spent his earliest years in Essen, and there entered its “Burggymnasium.” In his last years at Essen he came to know the youth pastor Wilhelm Weigle (1862 – 1932), who before and after the Great War drew thousands of youth from the working class and secondary schools. Käsemann wrote that through Weigle “it became clear to me what I had unconsciously sought, that is, the Lord, to whom I could give myself, and who showed me life’s path and goal.”3 1 “Ernst Käsemann: Resistez! Nachfolge des Gekreuzigten führt notwendig zum Widerstand,” Transparent, Zeitschrift für die kritische Masse in der Rheinischen Kirche, 12. Jahrgang, Nr. 52 (December, 1998), 14. 2 Paul Fussell, “Preface,” The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: The University Press, 1977), ix. 3 “Resistez! Nachfolge des Gekreuzigten führt notwendig zum Widerstand,” 9.

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In 1925 Käsemann entered Bonn University, and came under the spell of Erik Peterson (1890 – 1960), professor of Church History and New Testament. Peterson’s ecclesiology introduced him to the concept of the world-wide Body of Christ, about which he later took a degree in 1931. Never again, said Käsemann, would he regard pietistic concentration on the spiritual condition of the individual as the center of theology. In 1929 Peterson resigned his post at Bonn and a year later at Rome converted to Roman Catholicism. Tempted to follow Peterson out of Protestantism, Käsemann left for Marburg where he took an “antidote” in the form of Rudolf Bultmann’s (1884 – 1976) historical criticism. After negotiating the hurdles facing a late registrant he finally became a recognized member of the “Marburg School.” Concerned over the relation between his pietism and radical historical criticism, Käsemann changed school for the third time, awaiting solace from his third teacher, Adolf Schlatter of Tübingen (1852 – 1938), who, however, detoured around his problem. After winning a Tübingen prize competition on the status of Johannine research, he successfully passed his first theological examination at Coblenz in 1929, and was installed as teaching vicar at Zieverich. After a year at the PredigerSeminar in Soest he took his first degree as Licentiate (a licensure with rank just below Doktor) under Bultmann with the dissertation entitled Leib und Leib Christi.4 In 1931 he was installed as synodical vicar at Barmen, took his second theological exam, was ordained, and in 1933 was called as pastor to the congregation in Gelsenkirchen-Rotthausen. From 1930 to 1933, experiencing civil war first hand and hoping for law and order, Käsemann cast his vote for Adolf Hitler. Accordingly, he joined the “DC” (Deutsche Christen = “German Christians”), the right wing Hitlerite movement within German Protestantism. Then, mistrustful of Hitler after the Führer intervened on behalf of a criminal storm-trooper, and witnessing the growth of the “German Christians” in his parish, Käsemann denounced their head, Reichsbischof Müller, as a traitor to the evangelical church, for which he was himself denounced as a traitor and recommended for assignment to a concentration camp. Toward the end of September, 1933, Käsemann joined the Pfarrernotbund (“Pastors’ Emergency Union”) founded by Pastor Martin Niemöller in Berlin-Dahlem. Later, in 1934, on the Day of Repentance and Prayer, together with colleagues and members of the newly formed “Confessing Church” (Bekennende Kirche) Käsemann dismissed the “German Christians” of the Rotthausen parish from church service, replacing them with new representatives. At the replacements’ installation, Käsemann preached on the text of Jeremiah 7:1 – 15 (“…Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place….”). It was the first time a Protestant congregation had publicly and before its altar dismissed Nazi collaborators. Thanks to the inexplicable 4 Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1933.

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intervention of the advocate for church affairs, Gestapo chief Graf Stosch, riot was prevented and Käsemann and his colleagues escaped flogging. The day, said Käsemann, marked the great turning point in his life. One year following his separation from the German Christians, Käsemann preached on the text of Joshua 7:13 (“…you will be unable to stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you”), and spoke of “our old Adam” as hankering after earthly support instead of “boldly striding with its Lord out of the encampments of this world into No-Man’sLand.” The pastor was warned, and a charge levied against him on December 3, 1935. Käsemann was now isolated from the wider church fellowship and repulsed by its call to reconciliation with the national authority. In 1937, when Niemöller together with seven hundred other evangelical pastors entered a concentration camp, Käsemann preached at a service of intercession (Bittgottesdienst) on the text of Isaiah 26:13: “O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but we acknowledge your name alone.” Among the approximately two hundred and fifty visitors sat Gestapo officials. He was reported for treachery (Heimtücke), and the Gestapo arrived the following day to jail him. During his approximately twenty-five days’ incarceration, he completed his study on Hebrews, later published as “The Wandering People of God” (“Das Wandernde Gottesvolk”). Three years later, in 1940, due to his uncompromising stance toward the destructive effect of German Christians in his area, Käsemann left the Westphalian synod of the Confessing Church.5 In the same year, he was wrenched from his parish and drafted into the Wehrmacht. Sent first to the mining region of Charleroi where he contracted an infection requiring extraction of his fingernails, he was marched off to Paris and put in charge of a telephone exchange, with “six hours on and six hours off,” the off-time filled with reading French novels and touring the city “until the SS came and ruined everything.” Reclaimed by his parish in the spring of 1941, only to be drafted a second time in 1943, he was sent to Greece, and in howling contradiction of the German passion for consistency, attached to a light artillery unit. Observed as totally out of his element, Käsemann was subsequently attached to a unit boating about the Aegean with provender and mail for German units in the area. In April 1943, before being sent to Greece he sent these lines to his wife Margrit from Osnabrück:

5 The move did not distance him from the concerns of the Confessing Church. During the war he was called to serve on two of its commissions. Finally, in 1945, he rejoined the Westphalian synod, and cooperated in its reorganization.

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As usual in the military, even when we really aren’t doing anything, we’re always kept posted. The newest order has a clerk watching the orderly room night and day. So all my beautiful plans for visiting classes and going to the Bible hour have fallen through. And evenings I’m just sitting in the big building.…. I can’t even go to the cinema. Today we no longer need diversion but a pause and quiet and conversation with someone we can trust…A living human being in all this noise, in all the inexpressible grimness and despair around us! Day in, day out it engulfs us like a poisonous cloud: Yearning, hopelessness, lust for life, stupidity, vulgarity, cramping. If at all, then it’s here that we learn why we talk about original sin and redemption. Within the narrow circle of the fenced in house, of middle class respectability, of Christian custom, people look out onto the real world as from a peephole. If God should set us again in our old place, this time too will not have been in vain….We’re going again to the school of which Hebrews 12 speaks, not to fall asleep, but to get on and be made whole as it reads there in one of the verses. Our path is the way on which we are to be healed, healed of our selfish dreams, illusions and absurdities, so that bit by bit we enter the clarity of the children of God. In this way even the evil day takes on meaning and result.….6

Since Bulgaria and Rumania were occupied by the Soviets in 1944, the Germans had to retreat from Greece to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. Preparing for the long march, Käsemann oiled his boots to Kleenex consistency, contracting not so much as a single blister. Retreating from the Peleponnesis to Athens and Larissa, then to Skopje, Macedonia, and finally to Sarajevo in Bosnia, Käsemann was fired on by partisans. His hand grazed by a bullet and suppurating, he was billeted in a military hospital. When the hand improved he was ordered to join a group of Slovenians and Croats guarding a defile in the mountains between Sarajevo and Mostar against the partisans of Tito. After learning of the death from diphtheria of his eldest son, Dietrich, Käsemann applied for and received a temporary release from the military in March of 1945. After arriving the distance from Greece to within twelve kilometers of his home, Käsemann was captured by the Americans near Erfurt and transported to the prisoner of war camp at Bad Kreuznach. There he was detailed each day to throw prisoners over the wire who had died of starvation. Sick with malaria, huddled in an underground cave dug with a pocket-knife, a spoon and a can, Käsemann was finally released, returned to his congregation, and learned he had been chosen as professor of New Testament at the University of Münster in Westphalia. Due to a denunciation adverting to his life with the left-leaning “Masurians” of Gelsenkirchen, he landed at the University of Mainz, from which he later moved to Göttingen, and thence to Tübingen, where he spent thirty-seven years. As he said, never in all his adult life had he ever made disposition respecting his future.7 6 From the literary remains preserved by Dr. Eva (Käsemann) Teufel of Denzlingen, Germany. 7 Much of the information regarding Käsemann’s years in the military comes from his daughter Eva; smaller portions of it from conversation with the author.

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In 1977 Käsemann lost a second child. During the “Dirty War” in Argentina, his youngest daughter, Elisabeth, a sociologist, at work there since 1968, was detained for several weeks in “El Vesubio,” an illegal detention center in the Buenos Aires province, its walls coated in polystyrene and decorated with swastikas. Tortured for weeks, from March 3 to May 24, and then murdered in a cover-up for the massacre of campesinos at Monte Grande, she was alleged to have been a member of the Trotskyite Fourth Internationale, and to have been shot in a confrontation with leftist Peronist guerillas. Responsibility for the crime lay with functionaries of the military junta supported by the United States and its Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and in power from 1976 to 1983. Among its leaders was General Suarez Mason, responsible for creating dozens of clandestine torture centers and the deaths of thousands, and whose asylum in the United States ended with the Argentine government’s demand for his extradition. Elisabeth’s body was found riddled with bullets on May 24, 1977 in Monte Grande, together with fifteen others. In anguish, Käsemann wrote, “as grotesque as it appears to the observer, those presently in power in Argentina lay claim to…the primacy of a cultural nation, and downright blasphemously, to a pronounced liberal tradition….with the aid of the army and the police great wealth protects itself against the protest of a proletariat….”8 Friends of the Käsemanns received this notice from Lustnau: Today we buried our daughter Elisabeth at the Lustnau cemetery. Born on May 11, 1947, and murdered on May 24, 1977 by functionaries of the military dictatorship in Buenos Aires, she gave her life for freedom and a better righteousness in a land she loved. Entirely of one will with her, we bear our pain in the power of Christ, and do not forget the goodness and joy we learned through her.

The Malady No retrospective on Käsemann’s work can ignore its context in a world gone mad. All the inhumanity he endured, from his earliest years, he traced to a persuasion, a perspective, from which neither church nor state had ever gotten free: “That mighty train of German romantic idealism.” It was idealism, imported from France, and exercising its strongest influence on Germany’s greatest thinkers, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, and on its greatest poets, Schiller, Goethe, Novalis, and Hölderlin, which held Germany, particularly the middleclass, in its grip. It was idealism that split reality into subjective and objective spheres and assigned the essence of all reality to the subjective. In the subjective, thus, in consciousness, in the “I,” lay the divine. As for the world, 8 Ernst Käsemann, “Tod im argentinischen Dschungel,” Evangelische Kommentare, August 1977, no. 8, 10. Jahrgang, 469 – 471.

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the cosmos, it was blamed for humanity’s “fall,” for its loss of existence as spiritual, or was taken to be simply “material” for action. The results for theology were obvious. First, robbed of its object, loosed from its relation to the world, and construed as value judgment, faith was rendered absolute, nonderivable. From there it was but a short step to preoccupation with the self, as per the old pietistic scheme. Second, in the struggle to reconcile faith and knowledge, Protestantism substituted the question of the sense and context of history for morality. From there, it was but a short step to preoccupation with human event as heilsgeschichtlich, as avatar of the divine. The history of the effects of idealism in the political sphere are readily seen in the “Speeches of the German Nation” of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814). In 1808, sandwiched between Kant and Hegel, Fichte called his countrymen, not yet a nation, to a love for fatherland that not merely aimed at a flourishing of the eternal and divine in the world, but in which the divine life itself would reappear. This higher love, embracing the nation as “hull of the eternal,” would exalt the German nation to the most glorious among all the peoples of the world. To everyone within reach he declared, “you are the one in whom the germ of human perfection most decisively lies, and who is charged with progress in its development….If you sink, all of humanity sinks with you.”9 In his “Guide to a Blessed Life,” Fichte made clear the assumption beneath his summons to a higher love. Since the “absolutely immediate existence of God” had become flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal had now taken on flesh in each one. Mere insight into that enfleshment spelled unity with God, since the essence of the divine, the essence of God, took the form of knowledge. As for the world, the cosmos, assigning to God its creating was “the first criterion of falsehood,” a falsehood perpetrated by Jewish religion, for “in God and from God there is nothing; nothing emerges. In him there is eternally only the Is, and what is to exist must originally be with him, must be himself.” So, not the historical but the metaphysical spelled salvation. The historical merely rendered it intelligible.10 Fichte would have been horrified at the suggestion that his idealism furnished fuel for Hitler’s Third Reich, but however obliquely, it belonged with those occasions which made up that horror of context for Käsemann’s life and work. The angle from which Käsemann diagnosed his century’s malady and prescribed its cure had to be theological in nature. It was the pietism of youth pastor Weigle that first attracted him, as a result of which he entered on the study of theology at the university. There, at Bonn, Erik Peterson first opened his eyes to the anthropocentrism of idealism. However anxious he became over 9 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Reden an die deutsche Nation, Achte Rede: ‘Was ein Volk sei, in der höhern Bedeutung des Worts, und was Vaterlandsliebe;’ Vierzehnte Rede, ‘Beschluss des Ganzen;’” Ausgewählte Werke in Sechs Bänden (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1962), V, 492 – 505, 597 – 610. 10 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben, Sechste Vorlesung;” Ausgewählte Werke, V, 187 – 202, 284.

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Peterson’s move toward Rome, which explained the transfer to Marburg and Bultmann, Käsemann never abandoned his conviction that the Christian existed vis ‚ vis an entire world, that for this reason devotional individualism was no match for the priesthood of all believers. Bultmann’s anthropology with its roots in idealistic Protestantism became problematic. When in seminar the master used his existential perspective to spoil usage of the term “humanity” as abstract, Käsemann retorted “almost insolently” that reference to the “individual” was just as abstract. The struggle took on concreteness with Käsemann’s suspicions respecting Bultmann’s expositions of Johannine and Pauline texts, and erupted in public in a contest over the “quest” for the historical Jesus. True, the teacher had recognized as Christian only that exposition of existence determined by the doctrine of justification, but his commitment to Western, idealistic tradition had resulted in disdain for history. The “Quest,” on the other hand, witnessed to the church’s unwillingness to abandon, Fichtean-like, “the real person, for whom hunger and thirst, passion and anxiety, love and death are whole events, embedding him in the cosmos.”11 More, when the kerygma takes the place of the historical Jesus the inference to be drawn is that there is no faith in Christ which is not also faith in the church. Thus did existentialism, at least in this form, pave the way to Rome and summon up old anxieties. Heinrich Schlier, himself among the most celebrated of the century’s Bible interpreters, had Bultmann among others to thank for his decision to cross the aisle to the Bonn Roman Catholic faculty in 1952.12 With Käsemann, Heilsgeschichte or “Salvation History” fared no better. It had sprung from the same parent root. Ironically, despite Bultmann’s acosmic interpretation of existence, his theology of proclamation led to discovery of the Reformation doctrine of justification that had become so unintelligible to earlier generations. In Käsemann’s case, perhaps, it led to rediscovery, since Weigle had already shown him that pietism, when not fanatical or egocentric, had preserved the Reformation heritage. At any rate, Heilsgeschichte had refused to recognize apocalyptic as the oldest and supporting layer of post-Easter Christianity. As a result it paralyzed Paul’s doctrine of justification by reducing it to a polemical, thus provisional and disposable motif within the superstructure of saving facts. The result was that 11 The quotation is from Hans Joachim Iwand, Christologie, Nachgelassene Werke, Neue Folge, bearbeitet, kommentiert und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Eberhard Lempp und Edgar Thaidigsmann (Gütersloher Verlagshaus: Chr. Kaiser, 1999), II, 134; cf. also 425 – 426. 12 In a “brief accounting,” Schlier wrote: “I could expand considerably on what contributed and cooperated toward the fact that I, at first slowly, then naturally, went over to the Church. Viewed correctly it was really everything I experienced in life. Viewed correctly it was often what did not at all appear as if it led me to it. How else should I understand my years of learning in the school of my great teachers, K. Barth, R. Bultmann, M. Heidegger?” Cf. “Kurze Rechenschaft,” Der Geist Und Die Kirche, Exegetische Aufsätze und Vorträge, ed. Veronika Kubina und Karl Lehmann, (Freiburg: Herder, 1980), IV, 270.

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faith was altered to a gnosis, a retrospection on so-called saving facts. It was this discovery or rediscovery that immunized Käsemann and his like from a Heilsgeschichte which broke in upon them in secularized and political form with the Third Reich. The immunization was not self-administered. Until at least 1937, Käsemann’s first teacher had traveled extensively throughout Germany lecturing against Nationalsocialism. In 1933 appeared his Die Kirche aus Juden und Heiden, in which Peterson attacked Nazism’s use of the Christian faith for political ends. This tractate has been described as the most convincing renunciation of anti-Semitism produced by German Catholicism in the year of Hitler’s seizure of power.13 In 1935 appeared Peterson’s Monotheismus als politisches Problem, in which he confronted the so-called Reichstheologie or political theology of a long-time friend on the way toward a brilliant career as Nazi jurist, and denied the Christian legitimacy of his friend’s embrace of Nationalsocialism. If in other respects Käsemann could readily admit to Peterson’s influence so also here. In 1963 the Swedish scholar Krister Stendahl wrote an article entitled “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” in which he argued that the portrait of Paul inherited from Augustine and Luther was misleading; that Luther’s agonies of soul were not to be read into Romans; that salvation-history constituted the basic content of Paul’s theology, whereas justification by faith comprised an apologetic on behalf of the Gentile mission.14 In the next year Käsemann traveled to the United States and used the occasion to respond to Stendahl’s argument. As “burnt children” he wrote of his and his colleagues’ inability to add fuel to the fire of a theology of saving facts now being greeted for the third time. This theology, Käsemann said, “determined the liberalism whose faith in progress was finally shattered by the First World War,” and “however erroneously and improperly, was able to serve as a shield for Nazi eschatology.” He added, “we do not want to be called back to the place where our fathers and grand-fathers stood a hundred years ago and where they came to grief fifty years later.”15 Despite agreement with his central thesis respecting the place of justification in Paul’s theology, Käsemann was criticized for lapsing into dogmatic polemic.16 Lapse or no, the fear which occasioned it was real. Käsemann was adamant, the right and promise of faith could not be read off from history ; the so-called saving deeds could not be confused with

13 Rudolf Lill, “Die Deutschen Katholiken und die Juden in der Zeit von 1850 bis zur Machtübernahme Hitlers,” Kirche Und Synagoge, Handbuch zur Geschichte von Christen und Juden, ed. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf und Siegfried von Kortzfleisch (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1970), II, 410. 14 Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963): 199 – 215. 15 Ernst Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 64. 16 For example, N. T. Wright, “Justification and Salvation History : Stendahl and Käsemann,” Tyndale Bulletin 29 (1978): 62 ff.

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recordable facts. Agreed, faith is not distant from experience, but it is not sight, and its experience is continually prey to assault. He wrote: If historical criticism as the advocate of a realistic view of history asks faith to give a reason for its certainty, it does so because it knows that on those vast stretches between the history we can verify and its theological interpretation lie severest tensions, incongruity, and rude contradictions.17

The history of the church documented an idealistic and religious alienation of the gospel. And the fact that Protestantism so easily turned away from the law under which it had set out, and looked yearningly toward the Egyptian fleshpots18 in the shape of a “metaphysics of saving acts,” was an evil omen and yielded a gloomy prognosis. For this reason the gospel necessarily had to wage war against idealism and religion. In fact, it was the historical-critical method that rendered the idealistic axiom untrue. The model of history as the selfunfolding of the Spirit in a continuous process of development required displacing by another, that of the chain reaction resulting from the splitting of an atom.19 According to Käsemann, the corollary to the reduction of faith to selfunderstanding or to retrospection on saving facts, to a “gnosis,” had to be preoccupation with structure, with fixed, established order. It was inevitable, he argued, that in face of Christ’s delay the Christian community should give attention to the manner of its continuance, but such concentration spelled retrogression, a surrender of the apocalyptic of the earliest community, and thus of the Pauline gospel. The term used for the retrogression was “early Catholicism,” a condition originating with the disciples of Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and Luke.

The Antidote The antidote to idealism’s cutting history adrift lay first of all in Käsemann’s correction of his teacher, Rudolf Bultmann. Affirming historical continuity between the so-called “Jesus of History” and the “Christ of Faith,” the Marburg scholar nonetheless denied any material relation between them. In other words, he denied their identity. The principal reason for the denial lay in 17 Ernst Käsemann, “Vom theologischen Recht historisch-kritischer Exegese,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 64 (October, 1967): 270. 18 Ibid., 274. The use of this metaphor has had varied history in German theology. For example, in his debate with Erik Peterson over the nature of the Church Adolf von Harnack wrote that Protestantism was still living from the remnants of Roman Catholic ecclesiology “as from the smell of an empty bottle,” and described nostalgia toward Rome as hankering after “the old fleshpots of Egypt;” quoted in Reinhard Hütter, Theologie als kirchliche Praktik (Gütersloher Verlagshaus: Chr. Kaiser, 1997), 20. 19 Ibid., 259, 272, 274.

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Bultmann’s assumption respecting the nature of faith as independent of historical research, and the attempt to render it dependent as sprung from unbelief. Following a lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1950, Bultmann gave particular point to the assumption when a member of his audience asked if he believed Jesus’ grave had been emptied of its dead. He replied, “that is an archaeological question, and I am not an archaeologist.” Had it not been for a certain historical-theological amnesia, Bultmann’s many hearers or readers would not have been dismayed at an assumption which had been fathered by the old Reformers with their disdain for a mere fides historica. He frequently complained that few understood he was simply carrying the theology of Paul and Luther to its logical conclusion. In 1953, at a meeting of “old Marburgers,” Käsemann initiated what came to be called the “New Quest” in an address entitled “The Problem of the Historical Jesus.” Admitting, as he also did later in his preface to Ferdinand Baur’s history of the Christian Church, that a speculation that imagines it can ingest “the whole” in one huge Hegelian gulp gets its come-uppance from history as a sphere of tensions, contradictions, and discontinuities,20 Käsemann set forth his thesis that it was possible to glean a portrait of the Jesus of history from the Gospels despite their mingling of myth and history. Conceding that no formal criteria existed for reconstructing the authentic words of Jesus, he nonetheless argued on behalf of the genuineness of utterances in the Gospels in which Jesus reflects a dialectical relationship to the Torah, as in the first, second, and fourth antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount, utterances in which he displays the immediacy of a teacher of wisdom, or in which he employs such terms as “Amen” that reflect direct relation to the divine. These utterances, Käsemann contended, express the uniqueness of Jesus’ mission and thus fix continuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. In an address to the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences Bultmann replied as he often did, that he had been misunderstood, on this occasion by Käsemann who had failed to recognize the distinction drawn between historical continuity and a material relation between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.21 Whether or not, as some argued, an “undercurrent” in terms of preoccupation with the historical Jesus could be detected in 20 Ferdinand Christian Baur, Historisch-kritische Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament mit einer Einführung von Ernst Käsemann, Ausgewählte Werke (Stuttgart = Bad Cannstatt, 1963), I, xxxxi, xxv. 21 Bultmann wrote: “My assertion that the person of the historical Jesus is not the object of faith, but rather the Christ of the kerygma, and that the person addressed by the kerygma may not inquire back of it for a legitimation which historical research must furnish—this assertion is often misunderstood to read that I sever the continuity between the historical Jesus and the kerygma,” then in a footnote added, “thus especially Käsemann.” Das Verhältnis der urchristlichen Christus Botschaft zum historischen Jesus (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1961), 7. See Bultmann, The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ trans. Carl E. Braaten and Roy A. Harrisville (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1964), 17 – 18.

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Bultmann’s program, Käsemann read it as captive to idealism’s resistance to the historical. There was more. Käsemann’s interest was never in the “Quest” as such, but in the entr¦ it gave to apocalyptic, that “first variation” on the Christian kerygma.22 The mission of Jesus and the apocalyptic scheme had to be connected. But if this was so, then Bultmann’s concentration on anthropology as the earliest variation was in error. For as clearly and resolutely as Bultmann had insisted that the Christian interpretation of existence had to be determined by the doctrine of justification, his orientation of justification to anthropology constituted an alien allegiance to idealism. In as lucid an argument on behalf of historical criticism as he ever wrote, Käsemann paid homage to his second teacher, then laid bare what he believed to be his essential fault. He wrote that in his illumination of existence Bultmann saw the one and abiding task of all genuine proclamation, and regarded as Christian only that illumination in which an understanding of human being and the world is determined by the doctrine of justification. At the same time, Bultmann did not succeed in getting free of the idealistic notion of personality, thus did not do justice to humans’ involvement in the world. Rather, that involvement appeared to him as the fallenness of unbelief, for which reason “desecularization” (Entweltlichung) was of the essence of faith. Such usage, Käsemann stated, spelled the continuance of a western tradition according to which human existence is separated from nature.23 Apocalyptic, the vision of God as Cosmocrator, winning back the world he made, as the earliest variation of Christian proclamation, an activity occurring under the sign of the Crucified, for which reason the justification of the godless lay at its core—to this, Käsemann insisted, his scientific method had led him. No matter how vigorously his critics attacked him for his radical criticism, he would not abandon it. But it was not for its own sake he would not relinquish it, certainly not because he believed it furnished the best access to historical event. The attraction of method does not explain the passion with which Käsemann held to it and risked marginalization at the hands of church leaders and university colleagues. As he stated in his foreword to Ferdinand Christian Baur’s selected works, “methodology is not derivable from principles but proves its identity as experiment by its usefulness and by nothing else,” or again, “there is no such thing as access to historical reality that is methodologically guaranteed.” It was rather that to which the method propelled him that he refused to surrender it. In that brief foreword, Käsemann explained Baur’s understanding of 22 In a footnote contained in his essay on the righteousness of God in Paul, Käsemann stated that the theme of apocalyptic was every bit as important as that of the historical Jesus and probably deserved to be researched in advance of it. Cf. “Gottesgerechtigkeit bei Paulus,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 58 (April 1961): 378, n. 1. “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul,” New Testament Questions of Today trans. W.J. Montague (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 181 f. 23 Ernst Käsemann, “Vom theologischen Recht hiustorisch-kritischer Exegese,” 273, 276.

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biblical criticism in words readily recognizable as reflecting his own. First, to those who denounced biblical criticism as a sign of unbelief and a demonically inspired dismantling of Christian foundations, Baur replied that his opponents did not at all dispense with criticism, further, that his critical science was legitimized by the Reformation, for which responsibility of the individual conscience toward truth transcended or displaced obligation to any institution. Next, Baur’s intention was not to dismantle history, but to reconstruct it within its intellectual context. At this point Käsemann noted the similarity between Baur’s “program” and that of the current “demythologizing,” insofar as it employed the critical method to get a proper grasp of history as well as to serve theological truth and the building up of the Christian community. Historical criticism was thus the function of a living faith on its way from the past into one’s own present and future. On the other hand, Baur neither forgot that the New Testament yields only fragments of past history, nor did he presume to search for more than was probable. Rather, in the name of faith he gave to skepticism the place it deserved in scientific investigation. Clearly, Käsemann added, the total view at which Baur aimed did not lead him out of the “airy region of hypotheses” into the sphere of objectivity. No one, at least till Schlatter or Bultmann, was any longer attempting to grasp “the whole.” To their number Käsemann could have added Erik Peterson, who never attempted to reconstruct a “picture” of the change brought about by Christianity in the ancient world, and for historical reasons. More, Peterson believed such historical reconstruction was irrelevant to the pressing problems of theology.24 But, as Käsemann continued, the fact that attempts at grasping “the whole” misfired never threw in doubt the value of historical research and the personal obligation toward it. Toward the end of his foreword Käsemann cited Baur as proof that science could not be carried on apart from presuppositions, and therefore, not a science without presuppositions, but only a science that radically questions and is prepared for self-correction is possible.25 In face of current impatience with use of the “traditional” historical-critical method, Käsemann would have been unfazed. That to which the method led (crux sola nostra theologia) was the constant; the method was the variable. Any conceivable method was in some fashion captive to premises. So the end and the means could be separated, though Käsemann did not live to see how they could be. In this respect, Käsemann resembled his old teacher, Bultmann. In that now ancient response to his critics, the Marburg scholar had replied that his existential reinterpretation of the New Testament did not create the relation between scripture and the reader but merely made it clear, and to the objection of Karl Jaspers, onetime pupil of Heidegger, that “the appropriation of biblical 24 Heinrich Schlier, “Erik Peterson,” Der Geist Und Die Kirche, Exegetische Aufsätze und Vorträge, hrsg. Veronika Kubina und Karl Lehmann (Freiburg: Herder, 1980), IV, 266. 25 Baur, op. cit., viii-xxv.

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faith is not carried out by research,” or that “the understanding that is of faith…does not occur by way of a method of research,” Bultmann replied: “Certainly not! but an appropriation of the biblical word from out of an understanding borne of faith is possible only if the biblical word is at any given time translated into the intelligible language of the present.”26 “At any given time”–for Bultmann as well the vehicle, in his case existential reinterpretation of the New Testament message, was the variable for which subsequent generations could substitute another. The articulis stantis et cadentis ecclesiae in terms of the apocalyptic vision under the sign of the Crucified, with justification at its core was the constant, and historical-critical method the variable. The latter depended on the former for its legitimacy, and the former depended on the latter for its integrity. In describing this “Pauline view” as the most vulnerable component of the apostle’s theology, Käsemann could just as well have been speaking of his own “perspective,” since his entire interpretive enterprise spelled a concentration that was not reflected throughout the New Testament, but rather represented a “canon within the canon.” In 1962 the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches held its meeting in Montreal, Canada. The General Secretary of the council had determined that the topic of discussion should be the unity of the Church as established in the unity of the Bible. Over the suspicion of the secretary, Willem Visser’t Hooft, Käsemann was invited to give the main address. There, said Käsemann, he said what his science and reason compelled him to say, that is, that the Bible is not a unified book, that of the four Gospels none dared say which was the authentic voice, though for 1800 years the Gospel of John was assumed to be such. “This,” Käsemann commented, “was the voice of idealists who preferred the spiritual to the corporeal.” He continued, that as a “half-way honorable man” he was compelled to state that the Bible is a complex of contradictory views, and does not demonstrate the unity of the church but rather the plurality of confessions. “Then,” said Käsemann, “Visser’t Hooft became terribly angry and never again shook my hand…. I shattered his ideology.”27 Whether or not, as he believed, his thesis was later accepted, Käsemann contended that historical criticism had proved its right to exist by removing from the canon its binding character and freeing for a sight of what lay at the heart of the biblical message: The righteousness of God in the justification of the godless as “canon within the canon.” Since the twenty-seven books of the New Testament did not establish the unity of the 26 Rudolf Bultmann, “Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung,” Kerygma Und Mythos, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (Herbert Reich Evangelischer Verlag: Hamburg-Volksdorf, 1952), II, 189, and “Zur Frage der Entmythologisierng, Antwort an Karl Jaspers,” III, 53. Kerygma and Myth, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (London: S. P. C. K., 1962) II, 186 f. 27 Ernst Käsemann, Widerstand im Zeichen des Nazareners. Protokoll des Abendgespräches vom 25. November 1986 (Luzern: Romero-Haus, 1987), 22.

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church but rather a variety of confessions, the biblical canon, though inseparable from, could not be identified with the gospel. According to Käsemann, this “canon within the canon” embraced both the gift of God and service to God, freedom and obedience, indicative and imperative, the forensic and the sacramental. Precisely in what manner it did so Käsemann was at pains to make clear. First of all, the meaning of the phrase dijaios}mg tRu heRu had nothing to do with the general concept and its juridical usage. This usage construed the righteousness of God according to Greek thought as a divine attribute in some fashion transferable to the individual. Nor could the righteousness of God be interpreted idealistically as a principle requiring realization in action. Käsemann wrote that when the relation between the indicative and imperative in Paul is described with the formula, “become what you are,” the description may not be altogether false, but in view of its origin in idealistic thought scarcely harmless. Thus, construed as an attributable divine attribute, the concept would be absorbed in anthropology ; understood as a principle needing action for its realization, the righteousness of faith would be replaced with a righteousness of works. By contrast, this “canon” had its home in apocalyptic Judaism, which conceived the righteousness of God as power, not as a transferable attribute, but a gift that was never detachable from the Giver. It was a nomen actionis which did not deal with God as he is in himself but with the God who reveals himself. Its primary orientation was not to the individual but to the lordship of God over the world eschatologically revealed in Christ.28 This interpretation of the righteousness of God as a “Jewish formula” to be construed in terms of power, was the legacy of Käsemann’s second teacher, Adolf Schlatter. In midst of his attack on the near-synergism of Reformation theology with its interpretation of the righteousness of God in the context of human need, Schlatter argued that when Paul refers to the righteousness of God he is thinking of the Creator, who wills and works, reveals himself, and brings mankind into the relation he himself desires. He writes: It is absolutely clear : there can be no talk of man’s but only of God’s righteousness. Man is unrighteous, for the relation which he establishes toward God and man is enmity and a lie. Only what is peculiar to God and God’s activity is the righteousness which establishes fellowship. The genitive didjaios}mg Heou permits no relaxing.29

Or again:

28 Ernst Käsemann, “Gottesgerechtigkeit bei Paulus,” 369 – 378. “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul,” 168 – 182 (see n. 22 above). 29 Adolf Schlatter, Gottes Gerechtigkeit (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1952), 137.

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In his relation to mankind God is never the one moved or effected, but wholly and without limitation the one at work, and righteousness is entirely God’s righteousness, his creative deed.30

This interpretation, Käsemann wrote, was “a brilliant achievement.”31 But if it was Schlatter who stood the concept on its feet, it was Käsemann who gave it legs. To all this teacher number two raised objection. Paul, Bultmann insisted, did not radicalize the Jewish concept of the righteousness of God; rather, the concept was Paul’s own invention.32 There was more at issue here than a difference over lexicography or religious-historical contexts, more at stake than an interpretation from the perspective of Judaism or Hellenism, however attendant. Bultmann’s “alien” commitment to idealism with its anthropocentrism, albeit a Christianized version of the theme of personality as vehicle of transcendence, thus his resistance to apocalyptic as in the end spelling the exclusion of human initiative, had to put him at odds with his former student’s understanding of the righteousness of God, and for precisely the same reason as it had put him at odds with the initiation of the “New Quest.” If it was teacher number two, Rudolf Bultmann, who had furnished the antidote to teacher number one, Erik Peterson, in this instance it was number three, Adolf Schlatter, who furnished the antidote to number two. Now, if the righteousness of God does not simply denote gift but also a salvation-creating power, in other words, if the gift is never without the Giver, then the old distinction between “forensic” and “effective righteousness,” between “to declare righteous” and “to make righteous,” puts asunder what Paul had always joined together. Further, that salvation-creating power is hidden, at work under the sign of the Crucified, mocking the demand for proof. The despair of orthodoxy and pietism over the absence of tangible evidence for the life of faith, the one ruling out any change in the movement from unbelief to faith, and the other struggling to establish criteria by which faith may be evidenced, spells inattention to the contingency of the revelation according to which the true God as well as true human existence is totally hidden in a fallen world. Curiously, with his insistence on the movement of faith as leaving the structures of existence unchanged, and for this reason his use of Heidegger’s phenomenology to sketch the “broad, empty structures of Dasein,” Bultmann took his place with the orthodox, resulting in an oscillation between a moralistic and an idealistic interpretation of the Pauline

30 Ibid.,145. 31 Paul Francis Matthew Zahl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre Ernst Käsemanns (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1996), 147. I am indebted to Zahl for pointing out what I had missed in my reading of Schlatter’s commentary. 32 Rudolf Bultmann, “Dikaiosyne Theou,” Journal of Biblical Literature 83 (1964): 12 – 16.

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imperatives.33 At any rate, precisely because God was becoming Cosmocrator, winning back the world he had made under the sign of the Crucified, and thus justifying the godless, the gospel, the news of it was separated from all religions and world-views, and often from a bourgeoise or even proletarian Christianity. But it was this very sub contrario aspect that rendered Paul’s gospel an “outsider,” vulnerable. And it would not be long before the commitment to idealism would tear it from its context, warping it to anthropology or subordinating it to an historical scheme.

Life in the World In as bitter an attack on anthropocentrism and thus by association on his teacher Rudolf Bultmann as he ever made, Käsemann wrote that preoccupation with the individual resulted in the reduction of discipleship of Jesus to a “caricature of a middle-class respectability which pulls its nightcap over its head when the alarm sounds, forgetting that its Lord died in an earthly noman’s-land between two zealots….”34 If it is the world that God is winning back, then discipleship of the Crucified involves engagement in that “earthly no-man’s-land.” To that engagement Käsemann would never apply the term “ethics.” Such a concept, he wrote, stemmed from Hellenistic tradition and formed the basis for the modern idea of performance. Paul’s theology with its announcement of the justification of the godless sets in the place of “ethics” a doctrine of charisms. These in turn reflect the first commandment made concrete in the Nazarene, and whose discipleship reflects the divine power of liberation in a world beset by demons. In an interview held in November 1986, Käsemann gave what could be described as a summary of his thought on Christian existence in the world. At Kreuznach his “idealistic morality” was shattered. He said: I no longer believe there are systems of morality which would be inviolable due to our humanity or Christianity. If they are inviolable, then (I can see it now) as in the case of that officer who walked unfazed through the filth and the living cadavers waiting there to starve to death! I don’t know if he even brushed himself off, so that his uniform at least no longer held the worst splashes of muck—unfazed!35

Admitting that he had not given much attention to philosophy, Käsemann stated that he was nonetheless forced to consider the meaning of human 33 Cf. Carl E. Braaten and Roy A. Harrisville, Kerygma and History (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), 212 – 228. 34 Ernst Käsemann, Der Ruf der Freiheit (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 2. Auflage, 1968), 140. Jesus Means Freedom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), 136. 35 Ernst Käsemann, “Widerstand im Zeichen des Nazareners,” 44.

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existence, to concede (“did not discover, only discovered what others already knew”) that a human is a political being, and that human existence may not be turned in upon itself, taking its pulse, navel-gazing with the pietists. During the Vietnam war Käsemann lived more or less in strictly ascetic fashion, concerned that his students learn Hebrew and Greek, study the New Testament or the history of dogma, until they demanded that he take a position. Then I said, yes, alright! and I took a position, so that my colleagues, more or less all (precious few were still as cordial as before) thought me to be a very suspicious fellow after all. And the security service naturally listened in on the phone.36

Following his retirement in 1971, those colleagues invited him to their Arbeitsgemeinschaft, a monthly meeting of members of the university’s Catholic and Protestant faculties, and which featured monthly presentation of scholarly papers and responses. According to Käsemann, the invitation contained the proviso that he remain silent throughout. At the suggestion that he had misunderstood the invitation, he responded robustly that he had not, punctuating his insistence with a healthy rap on the nearest available surface. Toward the end of his university tenure Käsemann’s struggle to give Christian freedom expression in resistance to the world’s insanities took the form of support for Christian-Marxist dialogue. When the Baden-Württemberg see withdrew its financial support for the dialogue, Käsemann resolved to leave the Evangelical Church, and applied to the Methodists for membership. He was refused. As he said, “they didn’t want me.” In 1981, Käsemann’s commentary on the Romans, to which Americans held the rights to translate and publish for twelve years, was eliminated from the series for which it had been intended and with the disingenuous explanation that it lacked sufficient technical detail. Käsemann conceded the possibility that his exposition of Paul’s struggle against nomism might be liable to the charge of anti-Semitism, as indeed it was. In addition to earlier charges,37 a more recent essay cites an article by Käsemann in Evangelische Theologie as “a case in point,” with its argument that “to call Jesus’ teachings Jewish is insulting and renders Christianity meaningless.” The author adds, “that [Käsemann] would continue to feel so threatened by Jesus’ Jewishness indicates the depth and persistence of the theological dilemma.”38 Käsemann’s article was entitled “Protest!” and 36 Ibid., 46 – 47. 37 See the review of Käsemann’s Romans by Roy A. Harrisville in Word and World I/3 (1981), 313 – 316, and the charges raised by Markus Barth, “St. Paul—A Good Jew,” Horizons in Biblical Theology : An International Dialogue I (1979), 38, n. 2; William S. Campbell, Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992), 188, n. 9; 193, n. 65, and Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1994), 11, 210 – 213. 38 In Betrayal, German Churches and the Holocaust, ed. Robert P. Ericksen & Susannah Heschel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 18.

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contained a response to another in the same journal by Jürgen Seim, a pupil and biographer of Käsemann’s friend, the Göttingen and Bonn systematician Hans Joachim Iwand.39 The article and Käsemann’s response deserve attention here, if Käsemann’s resistance to idealism, whether anthropocentric or heilsgeschichtlich, in sacral or secular shape as with Nazism, was selective or no. In his article titled, “Zur christlichen Identität im christlich-jüdischen Gespräch,”40 Seim proposes to establish the dual thesis that from the outset Christian identity has been a composite, and since the holocaust has been fragmented. Following a review of Christian dependence on the Old Testament and Judaism, Seim writes that Christology may not absorb (literally : “suck up” = aufsaugen) the doctrine of God without degenerating into pagan description of divine attributes; that the Jewish “No” to Jesus belongs paradoxically to Christian identity ; that the Pauline teaching respecting Torah has been misunderstood, and that the problem of Law and Gospel when addressed critically and not for the sake of Christian self-legitimation evidences Jewish participation in composite Christian identity. Then Seim summarizes: Very early, in the interest of securing our own identity, and more and more throughout church history, we have dispossessed Israel. We have taken the Bible from [it] by claiming to understand the authors of Israel better than they themselves did; we have taken God from them by drafting the dogma that he has rejected his people; we have taken the Messiah from them by making of Jesus a pagan Son of God; we have taken the Torah from them by fastening it to the law.41

Seim continues that consciousness of that composite identity might have prevented the holocaust, or at least have moved the Church to protest. He then quotes his mentor Iwand who wrote that Christian participation in the holocaust was due less to cowardice toward its anti-Semitic perpetrators than to blindness respecting Christian identity, concluding that the identity has been fragmented by the holocaust. In his “Protest!” Käsemann bristles at Seim’s assertion that the Christians have dispossessed Judaism, “thus stolen” its concept of God, the Messiah, the Law, and justification, contending that Seim does not properly trace Jewish rejection of Jesus’ messiahship to the scandal of the cross but to disappointing his people over the non-appearance of an earthly kingdom. He asks whether an evangelical pastor should not fearlessly proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom in the Incarnation of the Son, earthly redemption anticipated in 39 For a thumbnail discussion of the similarity in theological outlook between Käsemann and Iwand, see Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2nd edition 2002), 269 – 270. 40 Evangelische Theologie 51 (1991). 41 Ibid., 465.

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miracles and signs, witnessed to at Easter and Pentecost, and the inbreaking of the freedom of the children of God. He challenges the assertion that the “deification” of Jesus is in fact appropriated from pagan Hellenism and thus that the “genuine doctrine of God” has been “sucked up” by Christology. Käsemann continues that discussion of Pauline theology, Reformation faith and the Barmen Declaration should be more seriously conducted, “since no one who reads and respects the Bible can seriously contest its dependence on the Old Testament and Jewish tradition.” On the other hand, he insists, “it belongs to a theological discerning of spirits whether or not such dependence must be made the criterion for exposition.” This would indicate, he concludes, whether rabbinic control of Bible interpretation as Seim advocates would allow to an uncircumcised Gentile, if not acceptance, at least Jewish tolerance. The criticism of Seim is robust, even harsh, with its reference to Seim’s article as “grotesque,” “unrestrained,” and “impudent” (kaltschnauzig). Nowhere in the response, however, does Käsemann write that “to call Jesus’ teachings Jewish is insulting and renders Christianity meaningless.” On the other hand, if the assigning of Judaism’s resistance to Jesus’ messiahship is traceable to his cross, and if Christian Bible exposition deserves tolerance if not acceptance from the side of Judaism, only a virulent case of political correctness would read the protest as anti-Semitic. In reality, it is a remonstrance against a Christian who has ignored what “belongs to a theological discerning of the spirits.”42 If the authors of Betrayal had troubled to throw a wider net, they might have come upon an exchange between Käsemann and the man who accused him to the Gestapo in 1938, written after Käsemann’s release in September of the same year. Responding to Käsemann’s insistence that he return the presbytery’s diaconate cash-box, requisitioned by the Nazis, as well as to his pastoral remonstrance, he wrote: ….the few sermons you gave without stirring up anything rejoiced not only me but also my fellow presbyters. But how few were they? How often, on the other hand, have you misused God’s word and the preaching office? I remember your series of sermons of the previous year. One Sunday you said repeatedly : ‘You will have to decide about father Abraham, there is no use to your saying, we have Christ in our hearts!’ On another Sunday you slapped us in the face again with the whole Old Testament and demanded that we give total consent to it as ‘Word of God’ and cut off our salvation with it. Then I said to myself: This is false doctrine! You are preaching this sort of thing against better wisdom. But since no one hindered you, you kept on. Up to the famous Service of Prayer (Bittgottesdienst). I informed the Gestapo. I do not understand why this should surprise you….43 42 Ernst Käsemann, “Protest!” Evangelische Theologie, Jahrgang 52, no. 2 (1992), 177 – 178. 43 Richard Walter, “Ernst Käsemanns Wirken als Gemeindepfarrer im Kirchenkampf in Westfalen 1933 – 1946,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 12. Jahrgang (1999), Heft 1, Sonderdruck, 214.

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That wider net would also have caught Käsemann’s 1939 survey of the condition of his parish in which he equates “the national church” among other things with the rejection of the Old Testament and the elimination of everything alleged to be of Jewish spirit in the Bible, hymnary, and church, together with the Arian paragraph.44 No more than the definition of “church” by Erik Peterson,45can Käsemann’s exposition of the righteousness of God revealed in the justification of the godless be labeled anti-Semitic. In 1991, on his eighty-fifth birthday, the local newspaper described Käsemann as a pupil of Bultmann, known for his “rediscovery” of the historical Jesus but also for his political stance, stating that among evangelical church members he was regarded as a “false teacher,” and ending with the comment that he was jailed by the Nazis in 1937 due to his engagement on behalf of communist miners. Allowing for restrictions due to the limitations of space, the newspiece highlighted only what Käsemann appeared to defend, and poorly at that, but not what he had resisted—the alien commitment of teachers, church and nation to idealism, resulting in his public challenge to Nazism and his incarceration, exclusively thus mistakenly assigned to association with his “beloved Masurians.” None of the standard texts on the German church and the Third Reich make reference to Käsemann as the first Lutheran pastor to dismiss members of his parish belonging to the “German Christians.” In a volume dedicated to the theological institutions of the Third Reich, the only reference to Pastor Ernst Käsemann of Gelsenkirchen, is to his being passed over (“wenig passend” = “little suited”) for the position of New Testament instructor at the theological school in Bethel.46 Apparently, Käsemann’s resistance to Nazism does not deserve the exposure of that of a Bonhoeffer, for example, since it ended only in pain and suffering, not in death. In his treatise “On The Councils And The Church” of 1539, Luther writes of Christians that,

44 In Walter, op. cit., 218. 45 In two essays written while still a Protestant, Peterson asserted that if the Jews had believed, there would have been no church; the Son of Man would have returned, the Messianic kingdom would have broken in and the Jews would have assumed primary place in it, while the Gentiles would have lived in its shadows. Jewish unbelief forfeited this possibility. Only with the turning to the Gentiles and the introduction of the apostolate did the circle of earliest Christians become a church. This turning, however, did not result from failure to convert the Jews (“Verlegenheitsprodukt gegenüber dem jüdischen Volke”) nor did it arise from a relaxing of entry requirements. It originated in the Pentecost event. The church of Jews and Gentiles is thus an entity that cannot be construed in purely historical fashion. See “Die Kirche aus Juden und Heiden,” and “Die Kirche,” Theologischen Traktaten (München: Kosel Verlag, 1951), 254, 262, 411, 416. For a commentary on “Die Kirche,” see Barbara Nichtweiss, “Kirche und Reich Gottes, Erik Petersons Traktat ‘Die Kirche,’ “ in Catholica, vol. 46, no. 4 (1992), 281 – 306. 46 Kurt Meier, Die Theologischen Fakultäten im Dritten Reich (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1996), 216.

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…no people on earth have to endure such bitter hate…. they are given myrrh and gall to drink when they thirst. And all of this is done not because they are adulterers, murderers, thieves, or rogues, but because they want to have none but Christ, and no other God.47

At Käsemann’s funeral service on February 25, 1998, Superintendent Ute Vos of Neun Kirchen used the text of Isaiah on which the Neutestamentler had preached in August of 1937, leading to his arrest. She described the deceased as free of anxiety about himself, as having continually led his “congregations,” the parishioners of Rotthausen and his students, along the way under the cross, through the wilderness, where God is near and peace may be found. On behalf of the Tübingen faculty, Prodekan Lichtenberger stated that Käsemann’s life-witness in the unity of word and deed made him great among the theologians of his century. “He himself embodied and lived this freedom of a Christian in union with the Crucified so authentically that it becomes more and more enigmatic why sectors of Pietism declared him to be their enemy.” Now, Ernst and Margrit, his wife of sixty-three years, lie in the Lustnau cemetery with Elisabeth: O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but we acknowledge your name alone.

47 Martin Luther, “On The Councils And The Church,” Luther’s Works, vol. 41, Church and Ministry, trans. Charles M. Jacobs, revised by Eric W. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 164. Thanks are due my colleague, Walter Sundberg, for referring me to this piece.

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Helmut Thielicke (1908 – 1986)

An apt image for Helmut Thielicke’s life and work comes from his own pen: on the borderline. The metaphor is true in a number of dimensions. Thielicke lived on the edges of the theological ferment occasioned by Karl Barth yet without abandoning the conversation with the nineteenth century. He lived as one who was at home in church and academy, in the pulpit and lecture podium. His travels often took him out of Germany and into Africa, Asia, North America and Australia. He engaged both classical Reformation themes and issues raised by science and medicine in the middle decades of the twentieth century. He was conversant with high culture and the deep piety of his homeland. Thielicke counted theological personalities as diverse as Paul Tillich and Billy Graham among his conversation partners, moving comfortably in the world of mainline, liberal theologians and American Evangelicalism. He lived through hunger and poverty occasioned by World War II and he enjoyed life among the wealthy citizens of Hamburg mingling with international figures in theology, government and commerce.

Early Years and Turbulent Times Helmut Friedrich Wilhelm Thielicke was born on December 4, 1908, in Wuppertal.1 His childhood was marked with poor health, a challenge that would follow him into adulthood. One of his earliest memories, the death of his grandfather, would leave its imprint on Thielicke. The death of a primary school classmate and later on, the wartime deaths of numerous of his students as well as members of the Stuttgart congregation would focus and sharpen his writings on death as well as his preaching which often engaged eschatological themes. The piety of his familial home with a father who was a “shrewd lay 1 For autobiographical material see Helmut Thielicke, Notes from a Wayfarer, trans. David R. Law (New York: Paragon House, 1995). To be abbreviated as Notes. Additional biographical material is available in Lutz Mohaupt, “Helmut Thielicke (1908 – 1986)” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie 33 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), 421 – 425; Geoffrey Bromiley, “Helmut Thielicke,” A Handbook of Christian Theologians, ed. Dean Peerman and Martin Marty (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 543 – 560.

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theologian” and a mother “stamped with a Calvinistic sobriety”2 would shape his early years. The hardships the family endured in the First World War would include the absence of his father who was drafted to serve as an artilleryman and the struggle of his mother to provide food in a time of famine. After grammar school in Barmen, Thielicke enrolled at Greifswald where his study would be cut short due to illness involving the swelling of the thyroid which impeded his breathing and required hospitalization. Yet his short time at Greifswald would prove significant for it was here that Thielicke came under the influence of the systematic theologian and Luther scholar Rudolf Hermann and the New Testament professor Julius Schniewind. Thielicke enjoyed the hospitality of the Hermann family. Later he would reflect that it was from Hermann that he learned what it was to have a passion for theology. Most impressive for young Thielicke was Schniewind: Schniewind knew how to interpret the Gospels, and in particular, to present the person and words of Jesus in a way that brought their truth alarmingly close to us–even when we were engaged in complex philological work. In our eyes he seemed like an “original Christian” in the literal sense of the word. It was as if he had been present at the events described in the New Testament and could speak as an eyewitness. In his lectures there were sometimes moments of prophetic power that took our breath away….He was for me the great religious teacher.3

Not surprisingly, Schniewind4 became a key influence throughout Thielicke’s career as both a theologian and preacher. After multiple hospitalizations and surgery, Thielicke was able to resume his studies, this time in Bonn. It was here that he would have his first contact with Karl Barth in 1932. From Bonn, Thielicke went to Erlangen in 1934 where he would study under Paul Althaus. It was at Erlangen that Thielicke’s engagement with National Socialism would demonstrate itself as early as 1935 with publication of a tract, Christ oder Anti-Christ? In Erlangen and beyond, Thielicke’s criticism of the Nazi movement would land him in conflict and inflict a toll on his personal and professional life. The Erlangen faculty included, in addition to Althaus, Wolfgang Trillhaas, Otto Procksch, Hermann Strathmann, Kurt Frör, Hans Preuss Walther von Loewenich (who would become Thielicke’s brother-in-law) and Werner Elert who was dean of the faculty. Thielicke would clash with Elert, whom he described as an “archLutheran,”5 over Elert’s involvement with the “Ansbach Recommendation of 1934” and his criticism of the Barmen Declaration. Elert attempted to block 2 Notes, 15. 3 Notes, 55 – 56. 4 Note the assessment of Schniewind by Roy Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Buruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002) where it is noted that Bultmann identified Schniewind as his “ablest opponent in the demythologizing debate” (239). 5 Notes, 74.

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Thielicke’s habilitation prompting Thielicke to refer to Elert as an “evil spirit.”6 Thielicke did successfully defend his habilitation, Geschichte und Existenz: Grundlegung einer evangelischen Geschichtstheologie in 1936 and was appointed to a post as lecturer at Erlangen where his stay would be shortlived. Althaus unsuccessfully tried to arrange for Thielicke to be transferred to Göttingen. An interview with Emanuel Hirsch quickly closed the door on this possibility. Instead Thielicke was called to Heidelberg where he would work from 1936 to 1940. At Heidelberg, Thielicke would become close friends with the New Testament scholar Günther Bornkamm and the church historian Hans von Campenhausen and he would regularly engage in philosophical debate with Karl Jaspers. It was here that Thielicke met and married Marie-Luise Hermann. In 1940, Thielicke’s opposition to the Nazi Party cost him his faculty position. Because it was diametrically opposed to the Nazi conceptuality of history and life, Thielicke’s Geschtichte und Existenz was one of the reasons for his untimely dismissal from Heidelberg. Unable to secure a church position, Thielicke ironically entered the military for a few months. After fabricating the story of how he had been infected with a venereal disease, Thielicke managed to get discharged. Once again in need of employment, Thielicke made his way to Stuttgart at the invitation of Bishop Theophil Wurm. Wurm arranged for Thielicke to be called to a congregation in Ravensburg, near Lake Constance. The two-year pastorate at Ravensburg immersed Thielicke in the full range of pastoral tasks most especially teaching and preaching. Death was a constant as Thielicke would receive word of the death of former students in the war (on one day alone, he reports that he was notified of the deaths of four former students) and as he would conduct numerous funerals for war-related fatalities. It was while he was a pastor at Ravensburg that Thielicke wrote Death and Life7 where he juxtaposes philosophical interpretations of death with the biblical message. Thielicke’s existential awareness that human life is always lived on the borderline between life and death permeates both his academic and pastoral work. Death and Life includes a long letter written in 1941 to a former student, Hans Felix Hedderich, who would perish in the war shortly after the letter was received. His early encounters with death as a child and these wartime casualties would leave a deep and abiding imprint on Thielicke that would show itself throughout his career. His sermons would reflect an eschatological edge, setting the hearers own lives in the context of eternity. Later on in the war, while in Stuttgart, Thielicke would narrowly escape death when a gathering where he was speaker was interrupted by an air raid. The organist who had just played an evening hymn as the crowd was dispersing was killed

6 Notes, 75. Also see 80 – 81, 92. 7 Helmut Thielicke, Death and Life, trans. Edward Schroeder (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970).

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along with others in the audience. Just a few weeks earlier, Thielicke recalls another experience: After an air raid attack I was helping with the clean-up operations and was standing at the edge of a huge crater opened up by an aerial bomb. It had killed an officer and fifty women auxiliary air force aides. A woman came up to me–she was the wife of the officer who had been killed–and asked me whether I was Helmut Thielicke; for I was covered with dust and grime and she did not recognize me at first. She then showed me her husband’s cap and said “This is all that was left of him. Only last Thursday I was with him, attending your lecture. And now I want to thank you for preparing him for his death.” ….What we were doing there was teaching theology in the face of death.8

This awareness that life is lived in the presence of death never left Thielicke; he writes that death escapes “from its chronological confinement in the last day and becomes something that leaves its mark upon his (man’s) entire life.”9 Six years before his own death, Thielicke would release another book on death, Leben mit dem Tod translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley and published in 1983 by Eerdmans under the title Living with Death. Including much re-worked material from the earlier volume, Thielicke also adds excursions on suicide and euthanasia. In this later book, Thielicke addresses death no longer as a young theologian but as an aging pastor who is drawing near to his own death.

Stuttgart, Tübingen, Hamburg and Beyond Thielicke would move to Stuttgart in 1942 to serve as a “theological advisor” to Bishop Wurm and remain there until 1944. In the midst of air raids, Thielicke would preach, teach the clergy and provide public lectures. It was here that Thielicke would come to recognize the need for a “public dogmatics,” that is, a systematic presentation of biblical teaching for adults. With lectures and didactic sermons Thielicke set about to demonstrate the relevance of classical Christian doctrine to human life and history. These lectures and sermons would be published after the war as Man in God’s World,10 a volume which Thielicke considered to be systematic theology for the laity. This is a project that Thielicke would continue to the end of his career as is evidenced in any number of his later, popular writings. In Stuttgart, Thielicke was kept informed of groups working for Hitler’s removal. Thielicke’s contacts in the 8 Helmut Thielicke, Man in God’s World, trans. John Doberstein (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1963), 10. 9 Death and Life, 157. 10 Helmut Thielicke, Man in God’s World, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).

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resistance movement included Bishop Otto Dibelius and Carl Goerdeler. Although often interrogated by the Gestapo, Thielicke avoided the fate of imprisonment and execution that would befall several of his companions in the struggle against Nazism. Thielicke’s home in Stuttgart was destroyed in the air raids of the summer of 1944, forcing him into an exilic life but this did not interrupt lecturing and preaching. After the war, Thielicke was called to a teaching post at Tübingen where he would serve in the company of Ernst Fuchs, Adolph Köberle, Otto Michel, Gerhard Ebeling, and the aged Karl Heim. Thielicke identified Köberele, the dean of the faculty, as a special colleague and good friend. He was drawn to Heim’s dialogue with the natural sciences. He was impressed with Ebeling’s industrious and determined Luther scholarship. Yet Thielicke judged the theological faculty as a whole “as strangely lifeless.”11 In spite of periods of severe depression during the Tübingen years, Thielicke remained productive finishing the first volume of his Theological Ethics in 1951, engaging in conversation with not only other theologians but also a wide spectrum of academics, industrialists and political figures, preaching, service as rector of the faculty, and providing leadership for the establishment of the Protestant Academy at Ball Boll. In 1954, Thielicke would leave Tübingen for Hamburg where he would be instrumental in the founding of a theological faculty at the University. Thielicke was never far from a pulpit. His time at Hamburg which would consume the remainder of his life brought him first to the old Church of Saint James and then to the city’s great Church of St. Michael although he was never on the pastoral staff of either church. It is here that Thielicke would achieve homiletical fame even in the German secular press as it was not uncommon for people to come forty-five minutes early to get a seat. It was at St. Michael’s that Thielicke preached a series of sermons on the primeval narratives of Genesis 1 – 11, later collected and translated in a volume entitled How the World Began. In this series, Thielicke showed himself to be adept in bridging the gap between lecture podium and pulpit, between a historical-critical comprehension of the text and Christian proclamation. Hamburg would provide a context for an expansion of Thielicke’s intellectual and cultural contacts keeping his theological work engaged with current philosophical and social questions but never at the expense of the working class people who flocked to hear him preach at St. Michael’s on Saturday evenings. The Hamburg years would be punctuated with frequent travel for Thielicke. He spent the spring term of 1956 as a visiting professor at Drew University in New Jersey. This was the first of numerous trips to the United States. Returning to Germany, Thielicke wrote a travel report of time in the United States under the title In Amerika ist alles anders but it was never translated. A critical conduit for Thielicke in the English-speaking world was John W. Doberstein 11 Notes, 206.

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(1905 – 1965), a professor of practical theology at The Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Doberstein had established himself as a translator by producing Bonhoeffer’s Life Together in English in 1954. A good friend of Thielicke, Doberstein rendered his sermon series on the parables in English under the title The Waiting Father in 1959.12 Prior to his sudden death in 1965, Doberstein would provide numerous translations of Thielicke’s work: Man in God’s World, Nihilism: its Origin and Nature-With a Christian Answer, Encounter with Spurgeon, How the World Began: Man in the First Chapters of the Bible, The Ethics of Sex, The Freedom of the Christian Man: A Christian Confrontation with the Secular Gods, Christ and the Meaning of Life: A Book of Sermons and Meditations, Our Heavenly Father : Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer, Life Can Begin Again: Sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, Voyage to the Far East, and Between Heaven and Earth: Conversations with American Christians. After Doberstein’s death, H. George Anderson completed his translation of I Believe: The Christian’s Creed. Anderson would go on to translate additional titles for an eager audience of clergy and laity who found Thielicke’s work to be both devotionally satisfying and intellectually serious. These included Being a Christian When the Chips are Down, How to Believe Again, and How Modern Should Theology Be? Geoffrey Bromiley, a well-known historical theologian and translator from Fuller Seminary in California, would translate Thielicke’s more heavily academic works: The Hidden Question of God, The Silence of God, The Evangelical Faith (three volumes), Modern Faith and Thought, Living with Death, and Being Human-Becoming Human: An Essay in Christian Anthropology. William Lazareth, a former Thielicke student who had a distinguished career as a theologian, ethicist and bishop, translated and abridged Thielicke’s Theological Ethics from four volumes in German to two volumes in English. The Ethics of Sex previously translated by John Doberstein was part of the original four volume set in German. This explosion of translations in the 1960s – 70s quickly made Thielicke well known in North America not so much as a theologian but as a preacher and popular apologist. As H. George Anderson said, “It was Thielicke’s sermons 12 In an e-mail correspondence of August 28, 2009, Dr. Darrell Guder, a former student assistant to Thielicke and now Dean at Princeton Theological Seminary recalled “John Doberstein did not meet Thielicke personally until after the publication of several English editions of sermon series (e. g. The Waiting Father). That first meeting took place Hamburg in 1963, when Doberstein visited Thielicke (I was living with him at the time, preparing for his five month trip to America later that year). Doberstein had just completed the translation of the Ethics of Sex, which was the first volume he had done that was academic theology, not sermons. He complained to Thielicke about the enormous difference between the German of the sermons and that of the scholarly work. I remember him saying that the sermons were a delight to translate, but that he had never worked so hard on a text as he had done on the Ethics of Sex. This led to the question, ‘Thielicke, why don’t you write your theology the way you write your sermons?’ To which Thielicke responded, “My dear Doberstein, if I wrote my theology the way I write my sermons, no academic theologian in German would take me seriously!” My thanks to Dr. Guder for this and other first-hand observations from his time with Thielicke.

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that brought him– and the rest of his theological work–to fame in America.”13 Thielicke recalls how he was not entirely happy that he was known first of all as a preacher and only secondarily as a scholar. Nevertheless, Thielicke proved to be winsome to diverse audiences in the United States. His articles appeared in the flagship magazine of American Evangelicalism, Christianity Today. His lectures were heard on a variety of university, seminary and divinity school campuses. He proved to have a wide ecumenical appeal: Indeed, as a result of my sermons, even the fundamentalists (a large, strict group which radically rejects historicocritical research on the Bible) did not shun me from the outset. They saw that I was concerned with the interpretation of biblical texts. The liberals thought: he speaks in a ‘modern’ style, therefore he is one of us. The Baptists thought: he has edited and written a commentary on the homiletics of our ‘sacred’ Spurgeon, therefore he is on our side. The Lutherans thought: the Church of St. Michael, where he gives these sermons, is on our denominational territory. So wherever I went in the United States, all denominations and schools of thought listened to me with an astonishing openness.14

Between Heaven and Earth: Conversations with American Christians grew out of Thielicke’s second visit to the United States in 1963. Largely constructed out of notes Thielicke had chronicled from discussions with people who attended his lectures, interviewed him or heard him preach, Thielicke reflects on his own observations about American Christianity of the early 1960s. He tells of Kennedy’s assassination and the sermon he delivered in the Harvard chapel on the following Sunday. He comments on questions of biblical authority, the virgin birth, the fate of unbelievers, speaking in tongues, and racial integration in the churches. It was on this trip that Thielicke was invited to sit on the platform with Billy Graham at an evangelistic crusade in Los Angeles. Thielicke made several additional trips to North America. His monograph, The Doctor as Judge of Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die, was presented at a conference at the Houston Medical Center where he was a frequent guest of his former doctoral student, medical ethicist Kenneth Vaux. In 1975, Thielicke was invited to the White House by President Carter. Frequent articles in Christianity Today would give Thielicke a revered place among more progressive American Evangelicals. Thielicke enjoyed travel; he would lecture and preach not only in Europe and North America but also in Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and South America. Thielicke understood life as an adventure to be undertaken with curiosity, delight and joyful reverence before the Creator of a diverse planet. His travelogues, African Diary : My Search for Understanding and Voyage to the Far East along with numerous episodes in his autobiography, Notes From a Wayfarer, document Thielicke’s zest for adventure and his eagerness for 13 H. George Anderson, “Foreword” in Notes, xv. 14 Notes, 295.

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theological conversation that would engage what he saw as fundamental and universal human questions of God and creation, time and eternity, life and death with people from a variety of cultures. The student revolt of 1967 would color the last two decades of Thielicke’s life. In Notes from a Wayfarer, he tells the painful saga of what he can only perceive as the beginning of the end of the German university as rioters denounced venerable academic traditions with slogans such as “Under the gowns lies the dust of a thousand years.”15 Chaotic disturbances at the university would spill over into the church. Student protest groups attempted to disrupt the services at St. Michael’s. Hecklers interrupted the sermon. Passages from Mao’s Little Red Book were shouted out by angry students. Thielicke was seen as an icon of political and cultural conservatism and a fair target for the rage of revolutionary spirits. The events of the early weeks of 1968 took their toll on Thielicke; he was hospitalized for nervous exhaustion. Thielicke thought church officials would come to his defense and support his resistance of the rebellious students. They did not. Thielicke thought that they instead courted the “leftists”16 who had demanded that the regular church be replaced with a “discussion service” to voice their grievances which Thielicke could see as nothing less than blasphemous. Thielicke was slandered in print, described as a friend of the rich and powerful, lusting after his dream of a white Jaguar.17 Thielicke would not remain silent. He denounced what he deemed to be a Marxist transformation of the Protestant Student Society. In spite of severe distractions and persistent health problems, Thielicke managed to complete the first and second volumes of his magisterial systematic theology, The Evangelical Faith, during this time; the third volume would appear in print in 1978. Frustrated with the radicalism that had overtaken the university in the late 1960s, Thielicke would come to his retirement but these years would be engaging and productive. Preaching at St. Michael’s would continue as would several lecture tours including a trip to New Zealand and Australia. In 1983, his history of contemporary theology, Modern Faith and Thought, would be published. Most significant perhaps was the Faith Information Project which Thielicke initiated in collaboration with former students in 1971. In the context of informal meetings, Thielicke would engage religious and theological questions raised by young people while at the same time helping pastors prepare for meaningful preaching. In this context Thielicke saw himself as an evangelist and apologist seeking to explain the Scriptures and make credible the claims of Christianity to a generation influenced by skepticism and 15 Notes, 377. 16 Notes, 399. 17 Notes, 386.

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uncertainty. Thielicke believed that many in this generation rejected the Christian message either because they had little knowledge of its content or they harbored erroneous misconceptions of the biblical faith. He sought to persuade the intellectually serious to give Christianity another hearing based on a more adequate understanding of what actually constitutes the faith. The fruit of Thielicke’s dialogical-catechetical work was compiled in 1976, Wer Glaubt, Denkt Weiter and translated in 1978 under the title of The Faith Letters: The Answer of Faith for Today’s Questions. Helmut Thielicke died at the age of 77 on March 5, 1986. His memory was celebrated with an Academischen Gedenkfeier at the University on December 4, 1986. Prof. Wulf-Volker Lindner brought greetings to the conference, Dr. Peter Fischer-Appelt spoke of Thielicke’s contributions to the University, Prof. Rainer Röhricht gave an overview of Thielicke’s life and work and finally Gerhard Ebeling gave a paper “Des Todes Tod. Luthers Theologie der Konfrontation mit dem Tode” discussing Thielicke’s book Life and Death in light of Luther’s understanding of death.18

Thielicke as Ethicist The same year Thielicke moved from Stuttgart to Tübingen (1945), he began work on what would become his four-volume Theologische Ethik which was brought to completion in 1964. It was Thielicke’s first and major theological project, overshadowing his systematic theology, The Evangelical Faith, which would appear later in his life. Thielicke seeks to develop a comprehensive treatment of ethics from a Lutheran perspective and in light of the challenges of secularism which lead to claims for human autonomy and self-enclosure. Secularism asserts independence for various spheres of life rendering ethics subjective. Three fundamental themes seem to undergird to Thielicke’s approach to ethics. First, there is the presupposition that justification by faith is foundational for an evangelical ethic. Justification for the evangelical ethic is not the goal but the starting point of moral action. Gift precedes task, the indicative comes before the imperative. God’s gracious claim on the sinner in Christ Jesus sets the person under a new lordship. He or she is now living by faith in Christ. Hence for Thielicke there is a new obedience predicated on the new creation brought about by the death and resurrection of Christ. Those who are in Christ produce fruit but Thielicke argues that “the confessional writings, like Paul, do not regard the ‘fruits’ as products of the converted ego but as fruits of the Holy 18 These papers were subsequently published in Zum Gedenken an Helmut Thielicke: 1908 – 1986, ed. Jörg Lippert (Hamburg: Pressestelle d. Univ., 1987).

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Spirit, and hence entirely outside ourselves.”19 The indicative and the imperative remain in the Christian life and are to be distinguished without being split. Thus whenever the imperative is isolated from the indicative or the indicative from the imperative, the absolutizing in either case leads to an autonomy of the ego, to its separation from the fellowship between God and man, to its release from all connection with the alienum. When the imperative is isolated, or relatively so, man is thrown back on his own resources for the attainment of salvation and the solus Christus is robbed of its exclusiveness. The final result in secularism is the self-creation of the ego and the freeing of ethics from theological control. The mark of an existence thus based on the imperative is uncertainty and servile fear.20 Second, evangelical ethics are eschatological ethics as the Christian lives within both the old and the new aeons. The life of the Christian is located in the new age that has broken into the world in Christ. This means a revision and new orientation of one’s existence. For to be baptized is, after all, to let oneself be called into God’s salvation history, and hence out of the old aeon. But to be called out in this way can mean only that we are delivered from the ruling powers of this aeon and set under the dominion of a new and different Lord. It means, for example, to acquire a new relation to the god Mammon, and to the powers of property and possession (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13; 12:16 – 20; Mark 10:21, 24 f). It means also that I have to revise my relationship to my body (I Cor. 6:19) and its passions (Phil. 3:19; I Cor. 6:16), to the things of the world (I Cor. 7:29ff) and anxiety concerning them (Matt. 6:25ff), to the Thou of my neighbor and to the groups to which I belong. It implies, in fact, the total revision of my existence–and this means concretely my life in the plentitude of its relationships–is completely transformed because I am now a member of another history and of another aeon.21 Yet at the same the believer lives within the old aeon of this world, of creation. There is continuity and discontinuity. The Christian life is not of the world but it is lived within the world. There is a parallel here to Luther’s simul justus et peccator but Thielicke warns against a reading of this teaching that would leave the sinner unchanged and unaffected by his or her citizenship in the kingdom of Christ. So Thielicke writes, “Ethics has its place therefore precisely in the field of tension between the old and the new aeons, not in the old alone, nor in the new alone.”22 The tension cannot be resolved by

19 Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics, vol. I, trans. William Lazareth (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 68. 20 Theological Ethics I, 82. 21 Theological Ethics I, 40. 22 Theological Ethics I, 43.

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compromise or legalism, by conformity to the world or withdrawal from creation. Instead: Ethics must rather follow the way which leads into and through the tension. With respect to the concrete tasks requiring action, ethics can show wherein that tension consists. Beyond that it can show, in a context where every action stands in need of and under the promise of forgiveness, what those actions should be like which are to demonstrate the fact that a Christian is the citizen of a new aeon and that at the same time he also honors the old aeon as the kairos of God, as the “acceptable time” which by the patience of God is still permitted to continue. The theme of ethics is this “walking between two worlds.” It is in the strict sense the theme of a “wayfarers’ theology,” a theologia viatorum. It lives under the law of the “not yet” but within the peace of “I am coming soon” (Rev. 22:20). Theological ethics is eschatological or it is nothing.23

Third, evangelical ethics is equipped to face questions that arise in what Thielicke calls, in a term borrowed from Karl Jaspers, the “borderline situation.” Borderline situations are those circumstances marked by ambiguity where one cannot act without sin for they involve conflict between obligations. There are conflicts between life and truth. There are conflicts between life and life. The borderline situation leaves no way of escape. Not to act becomes itself an act. Not to decide becomes the decision. Rather than suggesting a casuistry which would justify not only the deed but the person who acts in these situations as happens in with Utilitarianism or situation ethics, those who act are rendered guilty. The Christian then has no interest in denying sin or trying to falsify its true nature. Rather he or she lives only by the promise of forgiveness and in this confidence dares to act. These three fundamental themes are also foundational for Thielicke’s treatment of political ethics in the second volume of his Theological Ethics where he works them out in relationship to authority and autonomy, the nature of the state, war and military service, the question of revolution, and the place of political preaching. His work is oriented by Luther’s distinction between the two governments, noting the provisional character of the state. His insistence that the church not forsake the proclamation of the gospel in pursuit of worldly agendas of justice would come to fore in 1981 in his criticisms of the World Council of Churches.24A third volume in Thielicke’s ethics was translated under the title The Ethics of Sex. Grounding sexual ethics in biblical anthropology, Thielicke takes up the duality of humanity as male and female, eros and agape in sexuality, marriage, divorce, birth control, artificial insemination, abortion and homosexuality. 23 Theological Ethics I, 47. 24 See “Thielicke Questions WCC’s Political Agenda” in Christianity Today (October 2, 1981), 69 and “The WCC Finances Violence to Combat Racism: They Played Political Poker using a Stacked Deck of Leftist Ideologies” in Christianity Today (November 20, 1981), 20 – 21.

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Later in his life, Thielicke was more deeply engaged with medical ethics as is evidenced in his discussion of end of life issues in the 1968 monograph, The Doctor as Judge of Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die and of suicide and euthanasia in his book written in 1980, Living with Death. Thielicke seeks to steer a course between choosing death or aiming for death on the one hand and holding selfishly on to biological life on the other. Both approaches violate the “alien dignity” that God has given to humanity while attempting to exercise a creaturely lordship over life and death. The human being may not take his or her life for to do so would be to treat life not as something that is given but as something that is mine by right. Nor may he or she hold on to life as though it is a personal possession rather divine gift which the Creator will recall.

Thielicke as Systematic Theologian Although he is critical of Paul Tillich’s method of correlation, Thielicke sees it as a necessary task of theology in addressing the contemporary world. Yet such an address must “actualize” the Christian message within culture without “accommodating” the truth of the proclamation. To distinguish the two reactions, recognizing the pertinence of the one (actualization) and the misappropriation of the other (accommodation), the distinction of outlook must be perceived. Phenomenologically and externally the two outlooks seem to be identical twins, i. e., variant forms of one and the same process of modernization. In reality, however, they are as opposite as two antithetical ethical attitudes, namely, loyalty and disloyalty.25 The whole of the primary volume in The Evangelical Faith is an effort to develop a prolegomena that provides a framework for this task. Fundamental for Thielicke’s methodology is a distinction not between traditional and modern, or conservative and liberal but between Cartesian (“Theology A”) and non-Cartesian (“Theology B”) theology. Theology A, as Thielicke identifies it, focuses on the person or audience to whom the message is addressed. The starting point is anthropological. Here the primary question does not have to do with the integrity or truthfulness of the message but on how this message will be heard or understood. Lessing, Schleiermacher, Bultmann and Tillich are given as historical examples. Autonomous human existence is assumed in this typology. Non-Cartesian theology or Theology B is essentially conservative in that it is anchored in the integrity of the message. For Thielicke Theology B is no mere repristination of a tradition but an actualizing of the tradition in the form of contemporary address. Thielicke suggests that the Confessions are a 25 Helmut Thielicke, The Evangelical Faith, vol. I, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974), 27.

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model for this posture in that they present the truth of the Scriptures in a new context provoked by present challenges. To confess is to hold on to what is given while speaking to the moment in which we now live. Thus Thielicke defines the actualizing mode of Non-Cartesian theology. Yet the conservative glance backward cannot be content with mere quotation. It works itself out in re-presentation, or, better, in making the witness of ancient faith contemporary to the present generation. This means interpretation. Interpretation raises the question of direction. This is shaped by the present situation of the questioner, and especially by the test to which he is exposed and which makes him “pay heed to the world” (cf. Isaiah 28:19).26

Theology involves interpretation. Hence theological history is a necessary discipline as the church must understand the ambivalence of human subjectivity which appropriates God’s eternal truth. Theology is involved with both the retrieval and recovery of a treasure that has been lost or endangered while at the same time clarifying what this Word means for a particular moment in history. Cartesian theologies are finally self-enclosed, unable to apprehend any truth outside of the autonomous self. Therefore they trim and distort the biblical message so that it can no longer be heard as a Word of divine address. Thielicke asserts that Non-Cartesian theologies give priority to the message. It is a Word which comes to the human extra nos. As a historical Word coming from outside of the self it makes a claim on the hearer in such a way as to determine his or her destiny. As might be expected given his apologetic work in the face of Bultmann’s program of “demythologizing” the New Testament, Thielicke takes up an extended discussion of myth as an element of his prolegomena.27 Arguing that “the Bible itself carries out a permanent act of demythologizing and that it does so in an exemplary fashion.”28 Thielicke develops a distinction between kerygmatic myth and disarmed myth. Kerygmatic myth is represented in the stories of classical Babylonian and Greek antiquity where time is understood 26 The Evangelical Faith I, 120. 27 Thielicke’s opposition to Bultmann’s New Testament and Mythology (1942) is demonstrated in “Die Frage der Entmythologieserung des Neuen Testaments,” Theologie der Anfechtung (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1949). Here Thielicke says that Bultmann’s approach confuses faith with an existentialized consciousness of self. Thielicke also argues that Bultmann fails to distinguish between the New Testament’s Weltbild (world picture) and its Weltanchauung (world view) and replaces the New Testament world view with a modern one that has no room for transdence or divine intervention. Also see Thielicke’s “The Restatement of New Testament Mythology” in Kerygma and Myth, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), 138 – 174. This essay was requested by Bishop Wurm and read to a theological conference convened by him in Stuttgart in 1943. Other essays by Thielicke relevant to the debate on Bultmann’s method include “The Resurrection Kergyma” in The Easter Message Today: Three Essays, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Darrell Guder (New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1964) and How Modern Should Theology Be? (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969). 28 The Evangelical Faith, I, 84.

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to be cyclical. Disarmed myth for Thielicke is not to be confused with fiction but has to do with the activity of the God who is Lord over history. Kerygmatic myth leads to nihilism in Thielicke’s estimation, for the gods of the nations are human projections unable to deliver humanity from death. The Scriptures both historicize myth and guard against mythologizing the work of God in the way of other religions in the ancient world.29 Thielicke places the doctrine of the Holy Spirit at the center of his prolegomena even though he will return to this article of faith in volume three. Faith is not self produced but comes as a gift through the Spirit. The natural man cannot achieve re-presentation on his own initiative, i. e., by methodology or hermeneutical effort. The presence of the Lord in faith is a sovereign gift. Without this gift we have only a dead past and historical distance. The testimony of the Spirit is thus a protest against our own endeavor, preparation, thought or work.30 The Spirit actualizes the past work of Christ for us and in so doing creates a trust in the crucified and risen Lord. Thielicke makes it clear that the “event” of Christ dying and rising is there prior to its apprehension by the believer. Without the event, there can be no saving faith. Yet without the work of the Spirit who brings human beings to faith, the event of salvation remains ineffectual for sinners. The testimony of the Spirit is not a movement within the human soul, but the work of the One dispatched from the Father and the Son in and with “the open and outward word.” Thielicke observes “A spirit that looses itself from these (word, preaching office and sacraments) is not from God, but ‘from hell.’”31 Only where the Spirit is tethered to the Scriptures is theology guarded from the enthusiasms of Cartesian theologies. Although Thielicke does not explicitly include the law/gospel distinction as a locus in his prolegomena, he does work with this necessary distinction in his discussion of the work of the Spirit and human consciousness. The old Adam seeks to evade the law: “For natural man in the grip of his autonomy lives in the illusion that if he ought he can. He cannot accept God’s radical and unconditional law into his conscience because he is unable to hear and to recognize it as law, claim and attack.”32 It is only in the “miracle of divine contact … that God makes contact with man’s attitude even though this is one of rejection and self-emancipation and even though there is in man no place which is independent of this attitude and which might serve as a neutral antenna to catch God’s voice.”33 Here Thielicke cites the episode with Nicodemus (John 3) and the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15) to establish his point. All possibilities are foreclosed for the Adamic self. Only the Lord and 29 30 31 32 33

The Evangelical Faith I, 100 – 107. The Evangelical Faith I, 131. The Evangelical Faith I, 137. The Evangelical Faith I, 143. The Evangelical Faith I, 146.

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Giver of Life can bestow the miracle of reconciliation with God. Christ spells an end to Cartesian attempts to achieve a consciousness of God. Thielicke then follows Luther’s lead in developing the antithesis between letter and Spirit as the antithesis between law and gospel. A significant and somewhat bulky portion of volume one is devoted to questions of secularization and atheism. He specifically addresses the “death of God” theologians, Thomas Altizer and William Hamilton, noting that they overlook the fact that the problems they address, for example, God’s existentially experienced absence, are actually very old issues. Thielicke traces the history of the idea of the death of God in an extensive treatment of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers suggesting not so much a proof for the existence of God but a way of questioning the assumptions inherent in secularism and atheism. It is only in the second volume that Thielicke comes to address revelation. Continuing to pursue the question of God’s identity, Thielicke dismisses notions of revelation as “supernatural invasion” or “enhancement of nature.”34 Revelation is not comprehended by reason or nature; it has its source in God the Father. Word and faith are held together in revelation. Revelation is both the event and the apprehension of the significance of the event for the believer: Revelation does not take place merely on the event side of an external history. It is not just what we usually call the mighty acts of God. It also takes place as appropriation, as the miracle of hearing and understanding which overcomes hardening (Matthew 13:15; Acts 28:27 etc.) and opens deaf ears. It is closed to the wise and prudent, i. e., to the initiative of intellectual work (Matthew 11:25 – 27).35 Yet revelation is not a making present of God as though this were something to be accomplished by human activity. Faith remains passive and receptive to the work of God: “Faith is not the power which makes him present; it is the point at which his presence breaks through.”36 God is known only through his self-disclosure; where there is no selfdisclosure, God remains Deus absconditus concealed in “the awesome mystery of his divine majesty.”37 Echoing Luther, Thielicke says “Hence we are not to fix our gaze on the naked majesty of God. We are to flee from the Deus absconditus to the Deus revelatus in order to replace the darkness that might lead us astray by the light that allows us to see God as he is.”38 Thielicke sees the doctrine of the Trinity as a “defensive formula”39 which 34 Helmut Thielicke, The Evangelical Faith, vol. II, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977), 14 – 15. 35 The Evangelical Faith II, 38. 36 The Evangelical Faith II, 40. 37 The Evangelical Faith II, 126. 38 The Evangelical Faith II, 126. 39 The Evangelical Faith II, 135.

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guards the fullness of the biblical narrative of salvation. The Trinitarian doctrine functions both doxologically and intellectually for Thielicke. Doxologically it confesses the mystery of the God who has disclosed himself in Christ. Intellectually the doctrine functions “to safeguard the unity and singularity of God in his movement outward and yet at the same time bear witness to the salvation event which is fulfilled in creation, redemption, and self-presentation as modes of his presence, immanence, and identity.”40 Cartesian theologies represented in Schleiermacher and Ritschl fail to grasp the necessity of the doctrine for Christian proclamation; it is reduced to an attempt to explain the experience of God. In the ordering of his dogmatics, Thielicke places the discussion of the distinction between law and gospel after the Trinity and before Christology. Thielicke detects an analogy between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of law and gospel. God is known through his Trinitarian selfdisclosure. Law and gospel give human beings self-knowledge. Through the “ought” of the law the human being’s alienation from God is made manifest. Through the gospel reconciliation is not only announced but effected: “It is an efficacious Word which calls into being and puts into effect, what is not, namely, the absent peace with God.”41 Law and gospel are not abstracted into existential phenomena independent of salvation history but are revealed within this history. Reacting against Karl Barth’s collapsing of the law into the gospel, Thielicke argues for the distinction of the two for the sake of the radical newness of Christ’s promise.42 The gospel is known only in and from Christ. Thielicke’s Christology draws on Martin Kähler in working out “the historical and suprahistorical aspects of Christ’s manifestation.”43 Thielicke adopts as his systematic principle “not the doctrine of the two natures, but the doctrine of the offices.”44 Using the classical template of Christ as “prophet, priest, and king,” Thielicke examines the person and work of Jesus Christ. In doing so he engages Luther, Calvin, Schleiermacher, Bultmann and a variety of mid-twentieth century theologians. The final volume in The Evangelical Faith is devoted to pneumatology, ecclesiology and eschatology. In this volume, Thielicke returns to the locus on the Holy Spirit which was used as a theological starting point in the first volume. Applying Melanchthon’s Christological statement to the Spirit, Thielicke states “To know the Holy Spirit can only mean to know his benefits,

40 The Evangelical Faith II, 158. 41 The Evangelical Faith II, 186. 42 On Thielicke’s position on the law/gospel distinction in contrast to Barth, see Gerhard Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1969), 153 – 159. 43 The Evangelical Faith II, 290. 44 The Evangelical Faith II, 342.

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his workings, the power of his appropriating.”45 Thus Thielicke examines what he sees as the threefold benefit of the Spirit’s work: faith, love, and hope. Thielicke seeks to develop a third way that mediates between the older doctrine of verbal inspiration and newer historical-critical investigations for establishing the authority of Scripture. Ecclesiology, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper receive minimal treatment although Thielicke shows an awareness of and interest in ecumenical conversations, particularly with Roman Catholic theologians of his day, on these topics. Thielicke’s treatment of the theology of prayer and a theological understanding preaching in this volume show connections with his own sermons and devotional writings. The final section on eschatology is repetitive, to some degree, of material from Thielicke’s earlier book, Death and Life although he takes up additional questions regarding the gospel and world religions, the exclusiveness of Christianity, universalism, Satan, the problem of the demonic, the last day and eternal damnation. Strangely absent from The Evangelical Faith is a detailed discussion of classical themes of theological anthropology, although these are taken up in great detail in his 1976 work Mensch Sein-Mensch Werden, published in English as Being Human…Becoming Human (1984).

Thielicke as Practical Theologian and Preacher Never detached or distant from the life of the church and its daily struggles, Thielicke understood theology as a servant of proclamation, Christian nurture and mission. In a short booklet, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, he sounds a warning for those who would undertake the study of theology. Speaking pastorally to his students, Thielicke reminds them of the need for humility and wisdom in the theological enterprise lest sacred theology become diabolical theology. He urges students to live in the midst of Christian community and to be conversant with the Scriptures not merely as a text to be dissected analytically but as a source of spiritual life and vitality. Leiden an der Kirche. Ein persönliches Wort was published in 1965 and translated into English as The Trouble with the Church in the same year. It might be best understood as Thielicke’s reflections on questions of practical theology and preaching. Written in a conversational tone, Thielicke pokes fun at churchly busyness and “liturgical artcraft” as he calls it, of pastors who are more interested in textiles than texts.46 He gives advice on preaching, urges the 45 Helmut Thielicke, The Evangelical Faith, vol. III, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), 9. 46 Helmut Thielicke, The Trouble with the Church, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1965), 85.

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establishment of parenting groups to equip Christians to better nurture their children in the faith, and he calls for a revision of confirmation practices. Thielicke’s influence as a preacher no doubt outstripped his accomplishments as a theologian and ethicist. Thielicke’s professional life was a continuous journey from the classroom to the pulpit and from the pulpit back to the lecture hall. In a day when church attendance was increasingly sparse in Germany, the nave of the Michaelkirche was typically packed when Thielicke would preach. He was concerned for the state of preaching among his fellow clergy and he sought to improve it with his own literary work and lectures. Evidence of this can be seen in his book on the great British preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834 – 1892), Encounter with Spurgeon. Thielicke was fascinated with this nineteenth-century evangelist and teacher of preachers. In Spurgeon, Thielicke found an impressive model for what he himself desired to accomplish with his students. Writing of Spurgeon’s training of ministerial candidates, Thielicke comments: In this kind of education, work upon the spiritual dimension of existence came first. It took the form of pastoral care given to future pastors. It was a matter not merely of exhortation to life lived in constant association with Holy Scriptures–lest that life be regarded as a burdensome yoke of the law–but rather in every word of actually bringing that life into being by making the ubiquity of the Scriptures a real and living fact.47

Thielicke saw in Spurgeon a preacher who modeled the use of rhetoric in the service of the gospel: “…so spiritual rhetoric in Spurgeon is not something less than good rhetoric and workmanlike skill, but it is rather a matter of strenuous training, employing what was known in his time of the physiology of the larynx and the psychology of the listener. Except that this heathen rhetoric is baptized and made part of the activity of the community of Jesus Christ.”48 Most impressive for Thielicke was how Spurgeon’s preaching actualized the text in the presence of his hearers. The biblical narrative did not remain distant but is brought into the living presence. When Spurgeon speaks, it is as if the figures of the patriarchs and prophets and apostles were in the auditorium–sitting upon a raised tribune!– looking down upon the listeners. You hear the rush of the Jordan and the murmuring of the brooks of Siloam; you see the cedars of Lebanon swaying in the wind, hear the clash and tumult of battle between the children of Israel and the Philistines, sense the safety and security of Noah’s ark, suffer the agonies of soul endured by Job and Jeremiah, hear the creak of the oars as the disciples strain against the contrary winds, and feel the dread of the terrors of the apocalypse. The Bible is so close that you hear not only its messages but breathe its very atmosphere. The heart is so full of Scripture that it 47 Helmut Thielicke, Encounter with Spurgeon, trans. John W. Doberstein (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), 9. 48 Encounter with Spurgeon, 16.

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leavens the consciousness, peoples the imagination with its images, and determines the landscape of the soul by its climate. And because it has what might be called a total presence, the Bible as the Word of God is really concentrated life that enters every pore and teaches us not only to see and hear but to taste and smell the wealth of reality that is spread out before us here.49

Thielicke sought the same in his own sermons. In The Trouble with the Church, Thielicke addresses the demand that preaching makes on the preacher. Careful exegetical study is assumed. But finally the message of the text must be spoken to a particular people living within history. Conversations with people, literature, historical happenings and contemporary events are material for his sermons in that they are used to establish a point of contact with the hearer. One homiletician characterizes Thielicke’s preaching as “prophetic poetry to an urbanized, secularized humanity.”50 Thielicke’s preaching was often catechetical in that he attempted to retrieve and clarify Christian doctrine for an audience that did not see the relevance of dogma for life in the world of modernity. A series of sermons on the Apostles’ Creed published in English translation as I Believe: The Christian Creed was intended as something of a lay dogmatics for those who had not thought very deeply about the content of the Christian faith. An earlier series of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer published in English as Our Heavenly Father were originally preached during World War II in Stuttgart. Marked by deep pathos and urgency these sermons reflect the tension of the moment. They are also a testimony to Thielicke’s ability to speak with evangelical clarity and directness in a time of crisis assuring his flock that “God is always in the depths.”51 One of Thielicke most popular collections of sermons (it was the first series to be translated into English) is his series on the parables, The Waiting Father, where he used the parables to bring the light of God’s judgment and grace to those who live in indifference or uncertainty before God. Thielicke uses the ancient stories of Genesis as a mirror of human existence and God’s mercy in How the World Began. The Sermons in How to Believe Again and Faith: The Great Adventure come from the later period of Thielicke’s life and they focus on questions of the nature of faith, freedom, anxiety, prayer and the fear of death. Thielicke’s preaching is textual but not expository. It is conversational but at the same time pointed and invasive with proclamation. His sermons are didactic without becoming pedantic or lecture-like. Often by means of a long introduction he establishes a rapport with the hearer. Poetry, hymn stanzas, 49 Encounter with Spurgeon, 9. 50 Clyde Fant, 20 Centuries of Great Christian Preaching (Waco: Word Books, 1971), 226. To be abbreviated as Fant. 51 Helmut Thielicke, Our Heavenly Father: Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer, trans. John W. Doberstein (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1974), 151.

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and brief quotes from Luther are judiciously incorporated. It is not uncommon for Thielicke to end a sermon with a provocative question or series of questions. For example, in a sermon on the conclusion of the Apostles’ Creed (“The Resurrection of the Body, and the Life Everlasting’), Thielicke ends the sermon with: “’This night your soul is required of you’-that is the alarming summons that, at the last moment forces the farmer to reevaluate everything: the matters he had thought important during the days of his life, and those he had thoughtlessly overlooked. ‘This night your soul is required of you.’ Who are you? Where do you stand? Tonight. This night.”52 Thielicke’s Legacy Thielicke’s theological project was ambitious. He attempted to “actualize” the orthodox Christian faith in the twentieth century without accommodating it to the Zeitgeist. Whether he achieved this is another matter. One may indeed ask whether Thielicke himself, for all his opposition to Cartesian theology, completely escapes its magnetic force in his attempt to address modernity. For example, his treatment of the virgin birth is less than orthodox from a traditional Lutheran perspective while his handling of the doctrine of the Trinity employs language that seems tilted toward modalism. Compared with Tillich or Bultmann, Thielicke was certainly conservative. But he eschewed the strong confessional stance of an Elert or a Sasse. His Evangelical Theology might be best described not as a specifically Lutheran dogmatics but as an attempt to articulate a broad, Protestant understanding of Christian faith in the modern period. The weight of the work is tilted toward issues of prolegomena and, to a degree, apologetics. It is less satisfying in his coverage of various loci or topics. In the years since his death in 1986, his theological work is largely passed over unnoticed. He is not mentioned at all in Hans Schwarz’s Theology in a Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years or in Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson’s A Map of Twentieth Century Theology. Thielicke receives only a scant mention in a book note in John Wilson’s Introduction to Modern Theology : Trajectories in the German Tradition. His legacy fares better in ethics. His Theological Ethics is one of the most substantial, comprehensive treatments of ethics from a Lutheran perspective available in English. His work in ethics, although dated in a number of ways, is still consulted and engaged.53 52 Helmut Thielicke, I Believe: The Christian’s Creed, trans John W. Doberstein and H. George Anderson (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), 255. 53 See, for example, Karen Lebacqz, “Alien Dignity : The Legacy of Helmut Thielicke for Bioethics” in On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, ed. Stephen E. Lammers and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 184 – 192 and Gilbert Meilaender, Things That Count: Essays Moral and Theological (Wilmington, Delaware:

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Perhaps the most enduring aspect of Thielicke’s legacy will be his sermons. Hughes Oliphant Old credited his preaching with helping Germany recover the faith that had been compromised under National Socialism.54 The American homiletician, Clyde Fant, writes “Helmut Thielicke may well rank as one of the greatest preachers in the history of the Christian faith. His philosophy of preaching has made a profound impact both in Europe and America, and virtually all of his sermons are masterpieces.”55 In sum, Thielicke understood theology to be a servant of good preaching. It could be that he would not be dissatisfied to be remembered first and foremost for his preaching for it is there that theology validates itself.

ISI Books, 2000), 37 – 57. Also note Christian Herrmann, “Postlapsarische Schöpfungslehre und Ethik. Zur Systematisierung des Kompomisses in der theologischen Ethik Helmut Thielicke (1908 – 1986)” in 500 Jahre Theologie in Hamburg, ed. Johann Anselm Steiger (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 335 – 359. 54 Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church Vol. 6: The Modern Age (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007), 837. 55 Fant, 225. Also see Marvin J. Dirks, Laymen Look at Preaching: Lay Expectation Factors in Relation to the Preaching of Helmut Thielicke (North Quincy, MA.: The Christopher Publishing House, 1972) and Rudolf Haas and Martin Haug, Helmut Thielicke: Prediger in Unserer Zeit (Stuttgart: Quell-Verlag, 1968).

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Mary Elizabeth Anderson

Gustaf Wingren (1910 – 2000)

Reflecting on his career, Gustaf Wingren once stated, “I do not know why my interest, from the first moment of my theological studies, concerned creation thinking and the first article, but it was just so.”1 Indeed, the doctrine of creation was fundamental to his theological work. He was not narrowly a “creation theologian,” however, but one who sought to apply theology in general to daily life as concretely lived. Wingren’s primary theological question throughout his career was one of Lutheran ethics, namely, how to integrate Christian faith with human life as a whole. To use his own terms, the key was the relationship between the preached Word and creation. Wingren’s theological efforts were tied closely to his own life experiences. Born on November 29, 1910, the eldest of the five children of Gustaf and Teresia Wingren, young Wingren grew up in Valdemarsvik, a small town on the east coast of Sweden. Few in this working-class community continued their education beyond the compulsory schooling. No one in his entire extended family had attended university, much less received theological education. Nevertheless, already in his teens young Wingren desired to study theology.2 This desire was driven by an awareness of a discontinuity between Christian faith and everyday life. While those in his community were occupied with concerns such as food, health, friendship, love, and death, Sunday worship and preaching completely failed in addressing these issues. Instead, sermons were directed at the private needs of the isolated individual, the guilt of sin in particular.The life Wingren knew in Valdemarsvik, conversely, was never as an individual apart from the community and never one concerned solely with sin. Despite the failings of the preaching he heard, young Wingren was fascinated by the content of the biblical preaching texts.3 Not all the experiences of Wingren’s youth pointed to discontinuity. Even without formal training, his father was one of young Wingren’s earliest theological teachers. Although Wingren only became aware of his father’s influence in retrospect, the elder Gustaf modeled a clear understanding of the 1 Gustaf Wingren, “Den springande punkten: P”minnelser om en överhoppad bok,” Svensk teologisk kvartalskrift 50 (1974): 101. For more detail on these opening sections, see chapter four of my work, Gustaf Wingren and the Swedish Luther Renaissance (New York: Peter Lang, 2006). 2 Gustaf Wingren, “Mina ämnesval: Apologia pro vita mea,” V”r lösen 57 (1966): 494. 3 Wingren, Mina fem universitet, (Stockholm: Proprius Förlag, 1991), 34 – 35.

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connection between daily life and matters of faith. He lived and worked, trusting that God acts through anonymous human efforts in order to provide and care for the world. As Wingren reflected late in life, “My father was shaped by the Lutheran vision toward work; he was this way long before I became so through study.” He added, “I have met in this lifetime few people who in equal high degree as Papa had a sense for the divine hiddenness on the earth.”4

Theological Education Amid the Lund Theologians Because he was a gifted student Wingren was sent to Lund in 1927, to continue his education at the university preparatory school, Spyken. There he studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, biblical exegesis, and Christian theology. Two years later he matriculated at the University of Lund. He studied under the guidance of Hugo Odeberg, a New Testament scholar world-renowned for his work with the Gospel of John, and Ragnar Bring, a young dogmatics professor, who advised Wingren to investigate Marcion as a means of exploring the formation of early church doctrine. Together these lines of study would provide Wingren with the opportunity to pursue his question of the relationship of faith and life. New Testament research would serve as means to explore preaching, and Marcion, with his denial of the goodness and importance of the created world, would address issues of creation theology. Despite the value of this course of study, certain obstacles soon developed. A rift with Odeberg brought an end to Wingren’s biblical research for the time being. He continued with dogmatics, but Lund’s faculty did not have the expertise necessary to guide him in an in-depth investigation of early church doctrine. In 1938, however, Wingren received a fellowship to study in Berlin with Hans Lietzmann, who was considered the continent’s prominent specialist in the church fathers. Other influential figures were Hans Georg Opitz, Lietzmann’s docent, and Johannes Behm, a New Testament scholar. All three contributed greatly to Wingren’s understanding of the early church, guiding him as he worked on his licentiate theses, a study of the conflict between Marcion and Irenaeus.5 While in Berlin, Wingren also meet Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, and other members of the Confessing Church. Through them and his own involvement with the Confessing Church, Wingren came to know a church which appeared to be powerless but fought with the only weapon it had – the preached Word.6 Thus the time in Berlin allowed him to explore both aspects of his question of the relationship between creation and preaching, but still as parallel tracks rather than in conjunction. 4 Mina fem universitet, 22 – 23. 5 Mina fem universitet, 94. 6 Mina fem universitet, 101.

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World War II prevented Wingren from remaining in Berlin. He returned to Lund where he first completed his oral examinations in 1938, and then his licentiate theses, “Irenaeus och Marcion. Studier över skapelsetanken” [Irenaeus and Marcion: Studies of Creation Thought].7 Afterward he was ordained and left the university for a time to serve as a pastor in the Linköping diocese. About a year later, he returned to Lund to continue his academic pursuits, but with a slightly different focus. Luther would take the place of Marcion and Irenaeus as the center of his studies. The central figures of Lund’s theological faculty at this time were Gustaf Aul¦n, Anders Nygren, Ragnar Bring, and Herbert Olsson, known as the Lundensian theologians. In particular, Nygren and Aul¦n were leaders in the development in Lundensian motif research, a theological method that focused on identifying the essential element of a religion through historical analysis. With the publication of Nygren’s work on “eros and agape” and Aul¦n’s book on atonement, the method was rising to prominence.8 Wingren read both works in addition to studying with these professors. They and all the Lundensians contributed greatly to his theological development.9 Nonetheless, Wingren did not fully embrace the methods of motif research. Perhaps its primary weakness for Wingren was its failure to address his own question of the discontinuity of faith and life. In Wingren’s view, the first problem lay with the dependence on Kantian philosophy. Because philosophy initiates the question in motif research, it controls the whole theological process, and consequently determines what the historical investigation will discover.10 This critique, however, was not a complete rejection of a role for philosophy in theology. “If one takes seriously the thought of creation, in the long run one cannot be allowed to avoid discussing the relationship between philosophy and theology.”11 Still, philosophy needs to remain neutral; it 7 Wingren, “Irenaeus och Marcion. Studier över skapelsetanken,” (Licentiate thesis, University of Lund, 1939). 8 Although aspects of theological method can be seen in previous theologians, Nygren is considered the founder of motif research. It was developed to be a scientific method of theology. As noted, this method seeks to identify the fundamental idea of a religion, that which communicates the whole of the religion and sheds light on all other aspects. This is called the grundmotiv or fundamental motif. The goal of motif research is to determine the fundamental motif by analyzing the historical manifestations all aspects of the religion (ideas, practices, and so on). For Nygren, motif research was no different from any other empirical investigation; its goal was descriptive, not evaluative. For more on motif research see Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), 35 – 39. 9 Although Nygren and Aul¦n were the most prominent theologians, Wingren identified Herbert Olsson, with his emphasis on creation and ethics, as the teacher in Lund who most contributed to his formation [Mina fem universitet, 72]. For an overview, see Arne Rasmusson, “A Century of Swedish Theology,” Lutheran Quarterly 21 (2007): 125 – 162. 10 Mina fem universitet, 62 – 63. 11 Gustaf Wingren, Einar Billing. En studie i svensk teologi fore 1920 (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, 1968), 142.

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cannot control content as it did in motif research. Wingren’s difficulty was finding such a philosophy. Wingren also was troubled by the results of the method. Motif research necessarily reduced the gospel to an idea (that is, a motif), completely separate from the act of preaching. Because motif research studies theology in a purely historical and descriptive manner, it cannot address listeners in the present. But, Wingren argued, addressing listeners was the very purpose of the gospel. A theology that could not serve the proclamation of the gospel was too limited.12 Despite disagreements with the method and content of motif research, particularly as it was shaped by Nygren, Wingren did acknowledge, “And it is true. I was a real disciple of Anders Nygren.”13 He later clarified that his discipleship was limited to the study of Luther and Irenaeus, two figures given a special place in the work of all the Lundensian theologians.14 As indicated above, Wingren already had worked with Irenaeus for his licentiate. As he now began his doctoral work, he chose Luther’s teaching about Christian calling, or vocation, as his topic.15 Once again, this subject would allow him to look at the question of the relationship of faith and life. Wingren’s dissertation, Luther on Vocation, was published in 1942.16 This work was not simply on Luther’s understanding of vocation. Rather, Wingren sought to integrate Luther’s views within the context of his theology as a whole, to present Luther’s statements on calling in light of other fundamental concepts such as law and gospel, the work of Christ, freedom, sin, and so on.17 Only this approach could result in a proper interpretation of Luther’s teachings on calling. This task required Wingren to be well versed in Luther’s writings and to find a way to present the meaning and place of vocation in Luther’s theology without also needing to cover every aspect of the Reformer’s thought. To this end, Wingren discussed Luther’s understanding of vocation in three separate but related contexts: earth and heaven, God and the devil, and humanity. Through these contexts, Wingren provided a different perspective of Luther’s understanding of vocation, but each revealed a unified picture of God as a living, active Creator. For Luther, creation was not simply a one-time event “in the beginning” but a continuous activity of God. As Creator, God is constantly at work in the

12 13 14 15

Mina fem universitet, 64. Mina fem universitet, 59. Mina fem universitet, 65. Both calling and vocation will be used in this work to refer to the Swedish word kallelse, the German word Beruf, and the Latin word vocatio. 16 Gustaf Wingren, Luthers lära om kallelsen (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, 1942); Luther on Vocation (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1957). 17 Luther on Vocation, vii.

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world.18 A chief means of God’s creative activity in the world is the many vocations and offices God has provided each person. In this way the every day relationships can be seen as callings, through which God works to direct people to serve their neighbors. At the base of Luther’s train of thought is the conviction that God is the Creator who still keeps on creating life and who to that end utilizes intercourse between man and woman, the birth act, nursing one’s young, sowing and harvest, and everyday life.19

At last Wingren learned the lesson that his father had modeled his whole life.20 After completing his work on Luther’s understanding of vocation, Wingren became a docent and continued as an assistant in the theology faculty at Lund until 1951. In addition to teaching, Wingren’s next project was to return Irenaeus for further investigation. He knew that like Luther, Irenaeus had much to say about creation. In fact, Wingren once stated, “My interest in the First Article and Creation under all circumstances would have taken me to Irenaeus and Luther.”21 For Wingren, these were the two figures in all of Christian history who had addressed most clearly the importance of and meaning of creation. Even more significantly, their views of creation were fully integrated with the message of salvation in Christ. “[I]n Irenaeus and Luther the doctrine of Creation was built into the doctrines of Christ, the Gospel, the sacraments, and eschatology with unparallel consistency.”22 In this new project, Wingren sought to expand on his previous study and come to a “fundamental understanding of Irenaeus.”23 In doing so, he intended to explore Irenaeus’ relationship to the New Testament. This relationship was fundamental to the way Wingren understood the contributions of historical theologians; they served as guides to the Bible and biblical theology.24 Wingren’s study revealed that the central theological issue for Irenaeus was the relationship between humanity and the incarnation. Not surprisingly, then, this new work on Irenaeus was entitled, Man and the Incarnation. Wingren described Irenaeus’ most significant insight, “In Christ we 18 One place where Wingren saw this understanding in Luther’s writings was the explanation to the First Article in the Small Catechism. Here Luther wrote that God not only creates all creatures but also creates “me.” Part of this creative activity is in providing life’s needs as well as support and protection from evil and danger. This happens not just “in the beginning” but in the present, daily in the life of the “me” who confesses this article. See Luther’s full explanation: The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, Press, 2000), 354. 19 “Mina ämnesval,” 495. 20 Mina fem universitet, 22 – 23. 21 Gustaf Wingren, Creation and Gospel (Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979) 8 – 9. 22 Creation and Gospel, 6. 23 Gustaf Wingren, Människan och inkarnationen (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, 1947); Wingren, Man and the Incarnation (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), xx. 24 Man and the Incarnation, xii.

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encounter man as he was ordained to become in Creation.”25 Humans as created beings are not in opposition to God. Humanity was created through the Son to become the image of God, but this was disrupted by bondage to sin and the devil. As a result, the eternal Son, who is the source of humanity, becomes human in order to return creation to its original purpose, what Irenaeus called recapitulation, and thereby completing the image of God within humans. In short, salvation means becoming truly human.26 For Irenaeus this happened within the context of the church. “The Church is the actual meeting-place in the present time of man and the Incarnation.”27 This understanding of the church was rooted in Irenaeus’ view of God’s Word. Similar to Luther, he saw the Word contained within the biblical texts, but that ultimately the Word refers exclusively to that which is preached to all people, namely the gospel. Christ speaks in the gospel, and the people to whom Christ speaks are precisely those whom God has created. The clearest connection between creation and the Word was in the incarnation. But, both Irenaeus and Luther spoke about God’s creativity and the activity of Christ’s proclaimed Word not simply in the past tense but as realities in every moment.28 Here Wingren learned the meaning of theology : “Theology is the exposition of the Word of Scripture for the humans of creation in generation after generation.”29 While both his work on Luther and Irenaeus addressed Wingren’s fundamental question of the relationship between faith and life, neither did so with respect to the contemporary context. Both of those theologians were rooted in historical contexts different from Wingren’s own. Their insights, consequently, could not be applied directly to the present. Nonetheless, Luther and Irenaeus proved valuable as Wingren continued his quest.

Failure and the Solution In 1947, Wingren was invited to Basel for one term as a substitute for Karl Barth, who was serving as a visiting professor in Bonn. Wingren guided his students through the writings of Luther and Irenaeus, subjects he knew quite well but which his students found completely irrelevant. They were concerned only with biblical theology, principally the question of the meaning of the Bible as the Word preached today.30 Wingren confessed the result was a disaster : 25 26 27 28 29 30

Man and the Incarnation, xiv. Man and the Incarnation, xiii-xiv. Man and the Incarnation, 147. Mina fem universitet, 77. Mina fem universitet, 78. “Mina ämnesval,” 496.

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“With me at the lecture desk, the term became a failure, it must be admitted simply and openly, especially if one sees the whole thing from the students’ point of view. For me personally the term resulted in revolutionary profit: one learns truly a great deal from mistakes. But mistakes are a painful method by which to learn.”31 He knew the problem lay not with his students’ questions but with his own theological training. As he said later, “I failed because I was Swedish.”32 Nonetheless, Wingren’s own experiences would not allow him simply to imitate Barth and his approach. Barth had his own failings, above all his neglect of the doctrine of creation.33 Again, Wingren was confronted by the question of the relationship between creation and the preached Word. Despite his failure as a lecturer, the time in Basel proved fruitful in other respects. Wingren met weekly with the biblical scholars, Karl Ludwig Schmidt and Oscar Cullmann. Much of what he learned regarding kerygma came from these two exegetes.34 They taught him to approach the biblical texts in search of Jesus’ encounters with people because these encounters would provide a picture of how Jesus could continue to act among those gathered in his name today.35 While Schmidt and Cullmann helped Wingren with the question of preaching, they did not address its relationship to creation. However, in Basel Wingren also encountered Danish philosopher and ethicist Knud Løgstrup who helped teach him real “creation-thinking.”36 From Løgstup, Wingren learned that in order to incorporate creation fully, theology must explore not only historical and theological sources but also contemporary sources of literature, psychology, business, and politics. Further, theologians must identify negative factors leading to the destruction of creation faith.37 Following their initial meeting in Basel, Wingren continued his relationship with Løgstup, still drawing on his philosophical and ethical methods. Thus in the sleepless hours following his seminar and through helpful discussions with his German and Danish colleagues, an answer began to take shape. The solution to the question of the relationship between creation and proclamation came with the publication of Wingren’s next book, The Living Word.38 The purpose of this work was “to combine teaching about creation with the view of biblical Word as direct address, kerygma, preaching.”39 The 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Mina fem universitet, 115. Mina fem universitet, 116. “Mina ämnesval,” 496. Mina fem universitet, 132. Mina fem universitet, 140. Mina fem universitet, 132. Mina fem universitet, 134. Gustaf Wingren, Predikan (Lund: C. W. K Gleerups Förlag, 1949); The Living Word (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960). 39 “Den springande punkten,” 102.

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task demanded a break in method from his previous works, even though he continued to draw on his historical works. The core method was now constructively systematic, but because the nature of preaching was multidisciplinary, he relied also on the related disciplines of exegesis, homiletics, and history.40 Wingren began the work by discussing the nature of preaching as the act in which the biblical Word meets the people gathered. The preacher’s task is to establish a bond between the biblical text and the congregation. Wingren’s fundamental thesis was that the meeting of Word and people is the destiny of both.The purpose of the Word is to be preached. In fact, the Word demands to be preached; its essence is revealed when preaching occurs. Likewise, humanity—a humanity created by God—finds its true meaning by being encountered by this Word, for the Word that is preached is the same Word that brings life to humanity.41 Ultimately God’s Word is Christ, revealed most clearly in his death and resurrection. When this Word is proclaimed, the hearers do not just hear of the historical event, but experience it in the present: … the kerygma implies that when we speak of Christ’s death and resurrection—that unique, objective event, far back in time and distant in space—we speak of an event in the life of man, an event, that happened to the man sitting listening in the pew. We are talking about him, when we talk about Christ.42

The biblical Word speaks simultaneously of a historical event and of an event happening even now in the lives of the hearers. This experience is God’s creative act through the Word. In dying and rising with Christ, one becomes truly human. Further, one is set free to take up one’s vocation. Just as in the gospels Jesus sends those he has healed back home to their everyday lives in their communities, so too sharing in Christ’s death and resurrection calls Christians into the interconnectedness of creation.43 In the proclamation of the Word, God’s original act of creation is completed.44 With his book on preaching, Wingren finally resolved his question regarding the connection between the preached Word and everyday life. 40 41 42 43 44

Living Word, 21. Living Word, 13. Living Word, 28. Living Word, 30 – 31. Living Word, 117. Wingren drew on his historical writings about Luther and Irenaeus, building on the foundation of their central views, as he formed his explanation of the work of Christ that takes place in the preaching event. In The Living Word a greater emphasis is placed on Luther’s theme of death and resurrection than on Irenaeus’ concept of restoration or recapitulation. Still, one can see in this work that Wingren combined both ideas in describing Christ’s work; resurrection and restoration are held together under the understanding of Christ as both conqueror and creator. The combination of the theology of Luther and Irenaeus continued to take place as Wingren developed his theology further. In his later work, however, Irenaeus’ theology gained some prominence over Luther’s.

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Building on the historical works of Luther and Irenaeus, and from his own encounters with German and Danish scholarship, Wingren developed an understanding of preaching that formed a clear connection between the Word and life in creation.

Theology in Conflict and Accord In 1951, Wingren succeeded Nygren as Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Lund after Nygren left the post to assume his new duties as the Bishop of Lund. The search was a three-year process that only ended when Nygren reluctantly agreed that the appointment be extended to Wingren. Nygren’s doubts surely were due to his uncertainty regarding Wingren’s commitment to Lundensian motif research. Nygren was right to question Wingren’s commitment to motif research. Already in his inaugural address, Wingren indicated a change of direction from his predecessor. Then in his next work, Theology in Conflict, he explicitly critiqued Nygren’s theological methods along with those of Barth and Bultmann.45 The catalyst for Wingren’s analysis was the lessons he had learned from Løgstup while in Basel. Developing an explanation of creation theology required not only constructive theological work, but also critique of the efforts of those who had neglected this fundamental article of faith. Future constructive work only could continue after engaging in critique. Wingren chose Nygren, Barth, and Bultmann because of their status as the most influential contemporary theologians in Europe. He then limited his study to the anthropological and hermeneutical assumptions of these theologians, asking the question: “Are these presuppositions valid on the basis of the Bible and specifically the New Testament?”46 In choosing this particular question, Wingren first sought to critique the theologians based on their own principles. All three attempted to explain and interpret the genuine New Testament and early Christian message.47 In addition, this particular 45 Gustaf Wingren, Teologiens metodfr”ga (Lund: Gleerups Förlag, 1954); Theology in Conflict: Nygren, Barth, Bultmann, (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1958). This publication eventually led to a full debate between Wingren and Nygren in a series of articles appearing in the journal Svensk teologisk kvartalskrift primarily in 1956. The debate failed to resolved the conflict and led to a fracture in their relationship. Some years later another dispute arose between them, this time over the issue of the women’s ordination. Nygren, as Bishop of Lund, opposed the decision to ordain women and maintained his opposition even after the decision was made to ordain them in 1958. Wingren was deeply troubled by the opposition of Nygren and others in the church. In 1974, he resigned his pastoral office in protest of what he saw as the degrading treatment of female pastors. See Carl Axel Aurelius, “Wingren, Gustaf (1910 – 2000),” Theologische Realenzykolpädie (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 36:110. 46 Theology in Conflict, xi. 47 Theology in Conflict, xiv.

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focus fit well with Wingren’s own driving questions. The issues of anthropology and hermeneutics were simply another way to address the relationship between creation and the preached Word. Despite his effort to analyze the theologians’ work on their own principles, Wingren acknowledged that his study likely would reveal conflict – conflict between the theologies and the scriptural content. While this conflict might have different sources, Wingren focused only on the conflict rooted in their theological methods. Further, he proposed that any theological elements that disrupted the comprehension of the biblical material should be removed. This proposal was taken from the very theologians he sought to critique, but Wingren indicated that what they meant by this might vary.48 Wingren’s study revealed different strengths and weaknesses among all three theologians. What Nygren, Barth, and Bultmann held in common, however, was a neglect of creation in their theologies. Nygren did so by reducing the biblical message to an abstract motif whose meaning could only be assessed historically. While Barth and Bultmann did insist that the biblical message was bound to the contemporary situation, they too neglected the place of creation. Barth saw that the relationship with God was established only through the gospel, rather than initially through creation. Bultmann maintained a place for the doctrine of creation, yet because he focused on the philosophical understanding of human existence, his theology could not address people in the concrete reality of creation.49 Instead, Wingren asserted that theology starts with the actual demands which life in community imposes. To this situation the biblical message speaks: All the various biblical figures express the conviction that God has created the world and man, that he continually creates anew, and that he governs the course of events in accordance with this will in opposition to that hostile resistance in whose destructive work man has become involved because of his sin.50

The solution to the conflict of theology with the biblical message is to begin theology with the doctrine of creation. This became even clearer to Wingren in his analysis of Nygren, Barth, and Bultman. He would seek to make this correction in his next works. Not all of Wingren’s analyses of other theologians revealed this theological conflict. Twelve years after his work on these contemporary theologians, Wingren wrote Exodus Theology, a study of the theology of Einar Billing.51 Although few outside of Sweden know much about Billing, Wingren viewed 48 49 50 51

Theology in Conflict, xvii. Theology in Conflict, 68 – 69. Theology in Conflict, 82. Gustaf Wingren, Einar Billing. En studie i svensk teologi fore 1920 (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, 1928); An Exodus Theology : Einar Billing and the Development of Modern Swedish Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969).

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him as the most original of all the Swedish theologians of the twentieth century. He had long planned to work on this man so that others could benefit from Billing’s insights.52 Wingren identified two central sources for Billing’s theology : the Bible and Martin Luther. Luther, however, was read primarily as a biblical interpreter so ultimately, Billing’s was simply a biblical theology. In scripture, Billing saw a picture of a God who was living and active in the world. This was particularly true in the history of Israel, and in no event more so than the Exodus from Egypt. The Exodus was not simply about freedom from slavery, but also meant freedom for life in community. Because the God of the Exodus interceded for the lowly, such concern also was asked of Israel. God’s righteousness, which is identical with God’s mercy, demanded active concern for the stranger, the orphan, and the widow.53 For Israel no aspect of life was outside of faith. The Exodus was not limited to Israel. Billing saw the New Testament and the mission of the church too in light of this event. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection brought about a new exodus that was for all humanity. For Billing, one experienced one’s own exodus from Egypt through the forgiveness of sins.54 And like Israel, one was called into life in community through this event.55 In Billing’s “exodus theology,” Wingren saw a form of creation theology. For Billing creation was wrapped up in the Exodus. The God who led Israel out of slavery is the Creator in whose hands the whole creation rests. However, Wingren lamented that Billing did not develop the theme of the connection between creation and exodus more extensively.56 Still, Wingren acknowledged that no one had influenced his own understanding of preaching and the gospel more than Billing.57 Wingren’s hope in writing this work was that Billing could continue to serve as a model for the contemporary church as a whole. “He is at the same time inspiring and perfectible, not least in respect to his struggle with the Old Testament.”58

Mina ämnesval, 500. Exodus Theology, 29. Exodus Theology, 4. This understanding of calling is a point of disagreement between Wingren and Billing, however. Wingren asserted that in connecting calling to the gospel rather than creation, Billing endangered the place of creation. Wingren, Luther on Vocation, 69, 75. 56 Exodus Theology, 30. 57 Exodus Theology, 59. 58 Exodus Theology, 170.

52 53 54 55

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Creation, Law, Gospel, Church Wingren’s critique of contemporary theologians showed the path forward with respect to his own theology. He had to address clearly the place of creation and its relationship to the proclaimed Word. Wingren’s next constructive work was produced as two volumes – Creation and Law and Gospel and Church – intended to be read as sequels to The Living Word and Theology in Conflict.59 While Theology in Conflict focused on theological method, these next two works addressed content. In addition, Wingren made clear that only when the two works are read together can each be understood properly.60 One of the key difficulties Wingren had with contemporary theology is that it began with the New Testament, therefore requiring a philosophical framework for understanding the human situation and reducing Christian faith to a theoretical concept. Wingren insisted, however, that theology must take the Old and New Testaments together as a unified whole. The promises of the New Testament are not given in a vacuum, but are granted to humanity whose creation and sin are first described in Genesis.To begin with creation is to begin with the point from which all of God’s subsequent acts develop. Theology must begin where the Bible does, with creation. Only then can the significance of God’s work in Christ be fully realized.61 This starting point is not simply the account of creation in Genesis, but creation understood as the gift of life, a gift which establishes the relationship with God. Wingren acknowledged that this relationship with the Creator can have various forms – a relationship of wrath and judgment or one of forgiveness and mercy – but whatever the form, the relationship is continuous.62 God’s act of creation also establishes the relationships among humanity and creation. While understood as gift, all the relationships of creation also include demand or law. First and foremost is the demand of faith, to live in complete trust in God, but creation also demands that humans be responsible for one another and for creation.63 Consequently, sin may take the form of a lack of trust in God, failure to love the neighbor, or idolatry with respect to creation. Despite their different forms, all are interrelated.64 The consequences of sin again are experienced within the context of creation. The accusation of the law against human sin, also seen as the wrath of 59 Gustaf Wingren, Skapelsen och lagen (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, 1958); Creation and Law (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1961). Wingren, Evangeliet och Kyrkan (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, 1960); Gospel and Church (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1964). 60 Creation and Law, v-vi. 61 Creation and Law, 16. 62 Creation and Law, 20 – 21. 63 Creation and Law, 60, 31. 64 Creation and Law, 50 – 51.

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God, is experienced in the encounters one has with others, through creation, and ultimately in death. Nonetheless, the full depth of human sin is only realized in the preaching of the gospel.65 This gospel, declaring the work of Christ, also is only made clear in the context of creation. The incarnation purifies and perfects creation. Christ not only achieves what humanity was created to become, but also does so by being victorious over the temptations of sin. Those who belong to Christ also will share in the restoration of the resurrection and this freedom from falling. They will be restored to their proper place, in right relationship with God and creation, so that God’s creation may become whole and perfect again.66 The message of the gospel is that Christ’s work of restoration continues into the present and into every age through the sacraments and preaching, in the context of the church. Baptism becomes the clearest act of Christ’s transformative and restorative work. Baptism makes one truly human.67 The significance of baptism is seen in the connection with the death and resurrection with Christ, in the connection between creation and restoration, and in culmination of God’s ultimate purposes.68 The Lord’s Supper, then, gathers together those who have been incorporated into the body of Christ through baptism. Together they continue to experience Christ’s self giving.69 Preaching is the proclamation of God’s living Word. It is to recount the event of Christ’s life which means life and salvation for those who hear them.70 Preaching declares the forgiveness of sin and with this removal of sin comes the beginning of the return to wholeness.71 Christ’s work creates the church, “the gathering of those who have been restored, redeemed, and delivered under their Lord in whom all things have been created from the beginning.”72 The church is called to be the tool of Christ’s work in creation. Redemption is offered to the world through both the proclamation of the Word and also the service of love for others, just as Christ himself both preached and healed. Redemption is the recapitulation of creation, restoring what was destroyed through human sin.73 The call to service insures that the context of the church’s work is the created world. The incarnation requires that the church can never be separated from the world. Each baptized person is called to service to the world through the complex network of the relationships of life. Through Christ one is restored to relationship with God in faith, and is called to serve as God’s 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Creation and Law, 53. Creation and Law, 100 – 101. Creation and Law, 11. Gospel and Church, 6. Gospel and Church, 15. Gospel and Church, 73. Gospel and Church, 29, 78. Gospel and Church, 5. Gospel and Church, 154 – 156.

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creative tool for the sake of one’s neighbors. Through the proclamation of the gospel and love born out of faith, Christ continues to work through the church for the restoration of creation.74 Creation, law, gospel, and church together form the story of God’s continual activity in the world.

Continuity and Change Wingren taught at the University of Lund his entire career, retiring in 1977. Even during this time he was a frequent guest lecturer throughout North America and Europe. For decades he was also active in the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches. He also continued to write. His last two major theological works – Va¨ xling och kontinuitet [Change and Continuity] and Credo – continued the themes that he had addressed from the beginning, but did so in light of a continually changing context.75 The former work served chiefly as an analysis of and response to contemporary issues, while the latter work was intended to be a complete dogmatics for academic investigation. Wingren identified three issues paramount in this new context. The contemporary situation, first, revealed a rapidly changing place of the church’s place in society. Many were arguing for a divorce in the close relationship of church and state that had existed for centuries in many European nations. Theology needed to help the church rethink how to be the church in a context when it was not the majority faith.76 Central to responding to this challenge was creation faith. Because creation is universal, it serves as a point of continuity for all people in all times. From the beginnings of the church, creation was fundamental to the interpretation of all other aspects of Christianity : Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology.77 Wingren asserted that the contemporary church can learn a great deal from the early church fathers in this regard. Creation points to the gifts that God offers through peoples of other faiths and cultures. It reveals that the meaning of salvation is that people are made truly human rather than made religious in a particular way.78 The contemporary situation also revealed a growing tension between liberal and conservative groups in society, a conflict which had a place in the 74 Gospel and Church, 160, 173. 75 Gustaf Wingren, Va¨ xling och kontinuitet: Teologiska kriterier (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, 1972); this work has not been translated into English. Gustaf Wingren, Credo (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, 1974); Credo (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1981). 76 Va¨ xling och kontinuitet, 189 – 190. 77 Creation and Gospel, 154. Pages 154 – 159 of this work summarizes the primary points of Va¨ xling och kontinuitet and Credo. 78 Creation and Gospel, 155 – 156; Credo, 12 – 13.

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church as well. On one side, some Christians interpreted the gospel in light of a radical, liberal political ideology. On the other side, conservatives called for an “unchanging Christendom.” The future of Christianity depended on addressing these conflicts. As each side sought to defend their positions based on scripture, biblical exegesis must be a central aspect of this discussion.79 Again, Wingren saw help in addressing this issue in the early fathers. They had a fluid boundary between earth and heaven that allowed them to maintain a real eschatological hope of a new creation, rather than trivializing it as hope of a political or ecclesiastical utopia. Essential in this hope was preaching built on the significance of the resurrection. Such preaching not only moved the church forward to the future, but also was accompanied by the movement of the church outward into the world in mission and in service.80 In addition, the early fathers were able to maintain unity in the face of a multiplicity of theological views. Wingren pointed to the four gospels as evidence of this. While the gospels contain a number of views, the early church found unity within worship, in song and prayer.81 Clearly, limits existed with respect to the diversity of these views, as is expressed in the creeds. Nevertheless, even the creeds originally were intended to be incorporated within worship, as songs of praise in which God’s acts are recounted with thanksgiving.82 Finally, the contemporary situation made new demands on religious education. Realizing that education had to address modern ideologies, some pushed for focusing on such expressions as “the Christian philosophy of faith” and “the Christian philosophy of life.” However, these changes proceeded with little discussion as to how they related to historical Christianity.83 In many ways, Wingren’s work Credo was a direct response to this last issue. It was written to serve as a dogmatic textbook. The work focuses in structure and content on the early Christian creeds. Once again, Wingren’s emphases on creation and proclamation are clearly present in his expositions. In addition, he ended each section with a prayer and a hymn. These have a pedagogical function, but also are intended to demonstrate the unity that is present in a diversity of Christian perspectives. In this way, the work seeks to show how contemporary theology can help one address the connections with historical Christianity, but also speak to an evolving context.84 For Wingren, the response to the contemporary theological issues was that of continuity and change. Continuity for Christianity, paradoxically, cannot 79 Va¨ xling och kontinuitet, 10. 80 Creation and Gospel, 156 – 158. 81 Credo, 13 – 14. In Creation and the Gospel, Wingren used the example of the differing times of the celebration of Easter in the early church as evidence of this unity within diversity (156). He noted that only when the day became a state holiday was uniformity required. 82 Credo, 11, 14. 83 Växling och kontinuitet, 10. 84 Credo, 13.

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occur without change.85 Still, Wingren continued to find that this continuity was rooted in the doctrine of creation and in the proclamation of the gospel.

Conclusion Wingren died less than a month before his ninetieth birthday on November 1, 2000. Throughout his career he wrote more than ten monographs and countless articles, essays, and smaller works. He lectured and preached and was an active member in the world ecumenical movement, both in the Lutheran World Federation and also in the World Council of Churches. Unlike his predecessor, Anders Nygren, Wingren did not found a particular school of thought. Still, as a teacher, author, preacher, and member of the world church he influenced innumerable lives. Perhaps his greatest contribution, however, was his seemingly simple question: What is the relationship between Christian faith and everyday life? His question continues to puzzle many Christians to this day. Wingren’s answer came in the writing of The Living Word, which he considered his best work.86 Nonetheless, he discovered insights in his early books on Irenaeus and Luther and he continued to build upon previous discoveries in later writings. Surely Wingren’s work, particularly his emphasis on the importance of the doctrine of creation, can continue to contribute much to contemporary conversations about the relationship between faith and daily life. While we can learn from his theological insights, we should not be satisfied with them alone. Rather, Gustaf Wingren teaches us to continue to pursue the question, to learn from the past while looking to the future.

85 Va¨ xling och kontinuitet, 10. 86 Wingren, Mina fem universitet, 118.

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Mark D. Menacher

Gerhard Ebeling (1912 – 2001)

During a brief, graveside ceremony at Enzenbühl Cemetery in Zurich, Switzerland, Gerhard Ebeling was lowered into his final resting place on 8 October 2001, eight days after his death. According to Ebeling’s wishes, the funeral service held thereafter in Zurich’s Grossmünster Cathedral would “concentrate on the proclamation of the gospel and on songs of praise and thanksgiving.”1 During the final prayers of thanksgiving and intercession, the following words were spoken, Our heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, we thank you that you have given Gerhard Ebeling to us. You have blessed us with this spouse, this father and grandfather, this kinsman, this friend and colleague, this teacher, preacher, and example. … Blessed are the those who have died in you. Christ says to them, “Hold fast to me.” So now Gerhard Ebeling rests from his labors, though his works succeed him. Allow the effect of his works to be a cause for him to boast on the day of Christ that he has not run in vain and has not labored in vain. So, too, make those of us who live from his legacy to be his honor and joy ; make what we do according to his example become a fragrance from life to life.2

During his life, Ebeling wrote that “the phenomenon of prayer provides” the “hermeneutical key to the doctrine of God,” and the realization of each human being’s fundamental situation before God.3 Thus, it was with prayer that the 1 Pierre Bühler and Ulrich Knellwolf, Gerhard Ebeling – Bestattung und Trauergottesdienst am 8. Oktober 2001 in Zürich (St. Gallen: Typotron, 2001), 11 – 12 (unless otherwise indicated all translations in this essay are the author’s). Ebeling’s wishes for his funeral service reflect Luther’s understanding of Gottesdienst (worship service) “that nothing else happens therein other than our dear Lord himself speaks with us through his holy word, and we, in turn, speak with him through prayer and songs of praise,” see Gerhard Ebeling, Wort WG III 541 note 4, Ebeling cites Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, eds. J. F. K. Knaake, et al. (Weimar : Böhlau 1883ff), 49: 588, 15 – 18 [hereafter as WA]; see also Gerhard Ebeling, Dogmatik des Christlichen Glaubens, three volumes, (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1986) – reprint of the second edition by licence from J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck] in Tübingen), III: 363 [hereafter as D with appropriate volume number]. 2 Bühler/Knellwolf, 26. 3 D I, 193 – 194, 197; also WG III, 405 – 427.

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author of “A Life for Theology – ATheology for Life”4 (Ebeling’s last published address given at his receipt of an honorary doctorate by the University of Tübingen5) was entrusted to the author of life himself. Gerhard Ebeling was one of the twentieth century’s great theologians. Both as a Luther scholar and also (later) as a systematic theologian, Ebeling’s depth and breadth of academic achievement, his passion for the pastoral office (Predigtamt), and his personal integrity made him a stellar figure in a time overshadowed by the potential for technological annihilation, by the chaos of frenzied societal transformations, and by the inhumanity of brutally refined political power. Despite his central place among theologians of the twentieth century, Gerhard Ebeling continues to agitate certain people, particularly Lutheran ecumenists. Although one would not expect Ebeling to find favor with Calvinists such as Karl Barth,6 one would also not readily expect an accomplished Luther scholar and systematician, such as Ebeling, to receive a suspicious, if not hostile, reception by academics bearing the name Lutheran. So, why do some Lutherans seem to find Ebeling not merely problematic but also worthy of disparagement?7 Obviously, an essay about Gerhard Ebeling’s life, teaching, and continuing relevance cannot allow this question to be a determining factor. Such questioning, however, points to Ebeling’s significance as a person (spouse, father, grandfather, kinsman, and friend), as a pastor (preacher and example), and as a professor (teacher and colleague), and that significance stems from nothing other than the faith by which sinful human beings are justified before God. According to Ebeling, like Luther before him, the word of God in Christ calls faith into existence in the same way that the word of God the Creator calls all Being ex nihilo into existence. This faith, in turn, brings the very personhood of humans into existence (fides facit personam).8 Similarly, as 4 Gerhard Ebeling, “Ein Leben für die Theologie – Eine Theologie für das Leben,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 95 (March 1998), 158 – 166 [hereafter as Ebeling, “Leben”]. 5 Ebeling’s “farewell lecture” given to mark the acceptance of this honorary degree on 10 December 1997 (“Leben,” 158) took place fifty years after Ebeling gave his inaugural lecture at Tübingen on 9 October 1947 (Bühler/Knellwolf, 13). 6 Karl Barth, Letters 1961 – 1968, trans. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981), 62, 73, 109 – 110, 142, 144, 150, 170 – 171. 7 To cite a few examples, see David S. Yeago, “The Church as Polity? The Lutheran Context of Robert W. Jensons’s Ecclesiology” in Trinity, Time, and Church: A Response to the Theology of Robert W. Jenson, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 201 – 237. Yeago seeks to associate Ebeling’s ecclesiology with the ecclesiologies of persons sympathetic to the ideologies of National Socialism in Germany (222 note 46). See also Carl E. Braaten, “How New is the New Hermeneutic?,” Theology Today 22 (April 1965 – January 1966), 218 – 235. In a self-professed “reckless” comment, Braaten considers that “Ebeling lacks substance.” Also, Carl E. Braaten, “Lutherans and Catholics Together – What’s Next?,” Pro Ecclesia 7 (Winter 1998), 6, where Braaten states “that Ebeling is a maverick Lutheran, one who could scarcely qualify as a reliable voice for any variety of confessional Lutheranism.” 8 Gerhard Ebeling, Luther. Einführung in sein Denken, fourth edition (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1981), 196 – 197 [hereafter as Luther]. An English translation is available as

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Luther also expressed, when one engages the matter of Christian righteousness, one should be prepared to throw one’s (sinful) self away and to keep only the crucified and resurrected Christ ever before one’s eyes. This self-effacing assertion is only possible, as Luther explained, because faith in Jesus Christ actually makes Christ and the believer into one person in such an interpenetrating way that you are not to be separated from Christ, but rather you are holding fast to him as if you yourself are named Christ and conversely he [declares], ‘I am that sinner because he clings to me…’9 “Accepting Luther’s assertion that faith makes the person, this essay seeks to show that faith alone in Jesus Christ as the gospel in person”10 made Gerhard Ebeling into the person he was, and into a fighter for the reality of justification by faith in a world teeming with all manner of unbelief.11

Luther : An Introduction to his Thought, trans. R.A. Wilson, (London: Collins, 1970) (US edition – Philadelphia: Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1970). See also Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien – Disputatio de Homine, volume II, 1 – 3 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), II, 3: 205 note 385 [hereafter as LuSt II, 3] and Gerhard Ebeling Lutherstudien: Begriffsuntersuchungen – Texinterpretationen Wirkungsgeschichtliches (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1985), III: 206 note 91 [hereafter as LuSt III]. As Luther interprets Psalm 38:21, one of the seven penitential psalms, “It is God’s nature to make something out of nothing; hence one who is not yet nothing, out of him God cannot make anything. Man, however, makes something else out of that which exists; but this has no value whatever. Therefore God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life only to the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise. In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in grace. Therefore no proud saint, no wise or righteous person, can become God’s material, and God’s purpose cannot be fulfilled in him. He remains in his own work and makes a fictitious, pretended, false, painted saint of himself, that is, a hypocrite.” (Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols. Eds., J. Pelikan and H. Lehmann [Saint Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1955], 14: 163 [hereafter as LW] – see Luther, 148 – 149 note 6 – WA 1: 183, 39 – 184: 10). 9 Luther, 189 (note 19 – WA 40, 1: 282, 3 – 6) and (note 20 – WA 40, 1: 285, 5 – 7). A believer’s becoming “one” with Christ should not be construed as implying that Ebeling’s theology or his interpretation of Luther’s theology includes any understanding of a deification of the human being. “Deification of the human being (Menschenvergötterung) is no doubt the gravest infraction of the ban on images [in the First Commandment]. … This is so because imago dei means that the human being is not only a creature of God but also knows and affirms oneself as such” (D I, 387). Ebeling indicates elsewhere that the concept deus humanus, properly understood, is in full agreement with the early church’s Christology and also with its uncompromising opposition to the ancient notion of God in human form if considered to be something “synonymous with the deification of a human being. Deus humanus in a christological understanding is, on the contrary, not interchangeable with homo divinus in the sense of a deified human being” (LuSt II, 3: 553). 10 Gerhard Ebeling, Wort und Glaube IV – Theologie in den Gegensätzen des Lebens (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995), 52, 417 – 419 [hereafter as WG IV]. 11 D I, 208 – 209; Luther, 180 – 185.

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Life If faith makes the person, then for Ebeling the life lived before God as confronted by the world is the context where God’s word is, so to speak, enfleshed experientially as persons are “instituted” by God’s word itself.12 Since his dissertation during the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) in Nazi Germany,13 Ebeling often reflected this notion by quoting Luther’s assertion in the Table Talk, “Only … experience makes a theologian” (Sola … experientia facit theologum).14 Luther stated elsewhere more existentially, “One becomes a theologian through life, indeed through death and through the experience of condemnation, but not through apprehending, reading, or speculating.”15 The life of faith, filled with adversity (Anfechtung) and confronted by unbelief, is a contentious existence. Again, as early as his dissertation, Ebeling could state, “Gospel” was not by chance the Kampfwort (fighting-word) of the Reformation nor was “evangelical” likewise the self-description of the church founded thereon. The gospel pertains to that which serves exclusively as the foundation of the church, its proclamation, and its theology, namely the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.16

In other words, Jesus Christ could not come to the world as the “gospel in person” without his incarnation and subsequent crucifixion,17 and likewise Christ cannot now come to word in the world without the believer’s own existence seen as theological existence.18 Gerhard Ebeling’s “Life for Theology,” began on 6 July 1912 in Berlin12 Ebeling understands the notion of the human being “created as imago Dei” sacramentally ; in other words, analogously to the promise of the words of institution coming to the elements of water, bread, and wine to make baptism and the Lord’s Supper real and effective. To emphasize this understanding of imago dei, Ebeling quotes from Luther’s Small Catechism, “Clearly the water does not do it, but the Word of God, which is with and alongside the water, and faith, which trusts this Word of God in water. For without the Word of God the water is plain water and not a baptism, but with the Word of God it is a baptism, that is, a grace-filled (gnadenreich) water of life …” (D I, 413 – 414; see also The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 359 [hereafter as BC] Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 9th edition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 516 [hereafter as BSLK];. 13 For a discussion on Ebeling’s theological endeavors in relation to his theological and ecclesial service during and after the “church struggle” during the Nazi period in Germany, see Mark D. Menacher, “Gerhard Ebeling’s Lifelong Kirchenkampf as Theological Method,” Lutheran Quarterly 18 (Spring 2004), 1 – 27 [hereafter as Menacher, “Ebeling’s Kirchenkampf”]. 14 Gerhard Ebeling, Evangelische Evangelienauslegung – Eine Untersuchung zu Luthers Hermeneutik, third edition (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1991), 12 (note 4 – WATR 1: 16, 13 Nr. 46 or LW 54: 7 No. 46) [hereafter as EEA]. Ebeling’s dissertation provides the foundation for much understanding of Ebeling’s later works. See also Luther, 24 and D I: 42. 15 Luther, 229 (note 10 – WA 5:163, 28 – 29). 16 EEA, 359 – 360. 17 EEA, 270 – 272. 18 Luther, 24 – 27; also D II, 81 – 82, 470 – 471.

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Steglitz. As the third child of Adolf and Elsbeth (Nain) Ebeling, young Gerhard led a “happy childhood” and resided in a large Familienhaus not only with his parents and two elder sisters but also with his grandparents and other extended family.19 Since his father was a “classical teacher figure,” and his mother was a teacher before marriage, and even his two sisters and other family members were also teachers, Ebeling recounts that he definitely did not want to become a teacher.20 So, while at the Humanistisches Gymnasium in Steglitz, Ebeling initially considered a career in engineering. At some point, however, “the page turned quietly and undramatically to theology.” This change of direction transpired “certainly not apart from the influence” of his parental home but also without any deliberate attempt by Ebeling’s parents to persuade him to pursue this course of study.21 Having gained proficiency in classical languages at the Gymnasium, Ebeling began his theological studies taking upper level courses at Marburg in 1930. Ebeling cites two factors as determinative for his theological development “from the first week of the [first] semester onward through the rest of my life.” The first factor was Rudolf Bultmann’s lectures on Paul’s letters to the Galatians and to the Romans, both given in one semester, and also Bultmann’s lectures on the theme Theologische Enzyklopädie. The second factor was a seminar led by Wilhelm Maurer dealing with Luther’s writings on the Peasants Revolt (1525), for which Ebeling wrote a lengthy paper, “The Controversy [Streit] over Luther’s Interpretation of the First Commandment.”22 In the German fashion of students switching universities, Ebeling spent a semester in Berlin in 1932, and then in the spring of 1933 he ventured to Zurich where Emil Brunner engaged him in extensive work with the Weimar Edition of Luthers Werke. In Zurich, Ebeling also met his future wife, Kometa Richner.23 At the end of this year, Ebeling returned to Berlin for his final two semesters of undergraduate study.24 In 1935, Ebeling completed his initial theological examinations for pastoral ministry with the Council of Brethren (Bruderrat) of the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche) in Berlin-Brandenburg.25 In 1935 – 36, he undertook his Vikariat in Crossen-on-the-Oder, and the following year he chose to attend the Predigerseminar (preaching seminary) at Finkenwalde led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.26 Bonhoeffer was instrumental in persuading Ebeling to delay Bühler/Knellwolf, 14. WG IV, 523. “Leben,” 158. “Leben,” 159; see also EEA, 549 – 550. Frau Kometa (Richner) Ebeling was a violinist and music teacher. Although originally from Basel, she purchased citizenship in Zurich and spent most of her life resident in Zurich. 24 Bühler/Knellwolf, 14 – 15; EEA, 550. 25 Gerhard Ebeling, Predigten eines “Illegalen”, 1939 – 1945, (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995), iv [hereafter as Illegaler]. 26 “Leben,” 159; also Bühler/Knellwolf, 15.

19 20 21 22 23

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his entry into parish ministry until he had completed doctoral studies. In a letter dated 3 March 1937, Bonhoeffer expressed to officials of the Confessing Synod in Berlin-Brandenburg his general and specific concerns regarding the recruitment and training of academically able theologians: I have often considered how one could create such a possibility for Br. E. [Brother Ebeling], though without ever having raised the matter with him. Recently, an unusually opportune possibility has presented itself in that E. is going to Zurich … and can remain there for a year. [Despite his desire to enter parish ministry, I have impressed upon Ebeling the importance of advanced theological study in Zurich.] … I am of the opinion that we must now consider matters more long term. In view of the decline of theological knowledge in recent and presumably in continuing times, it is becoming ever more urgent to have a few really well grounded theologians. … We must take more care that we in the Confessing Church develop independent theologians.27

With Bonhoeffer’s encouragement and the support of the Bruderrat, Ebeling was released from his ecclesial obligations for a year in order to pursue further education for the difficult task of service in the Kirchenkampf during the Nazi period in Germany. Supported financially by his future wife, Ebeling finished his dissertation on Luther’s interpretation of the gospels by the summer of 1938. Despite the unfavorable political circumstances in Germany, his dissertation was eventually published there in 1942.28 After completing his second theological examinations with the Confessing Church in the autumn of 1938, Ebeling was ordained outside the statutory and ecclesial structures of the Landeskirche (territorial church). Thus, according to prevailing standards, he became a “doubly illegal” pastor. In addition to his primary responsibilities as an official for the Confessing Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, Ebeling also accepted a call to serve a Confessing Congregation in Berlin-Hermsdorf whose pastor of Jewish ancestry had emigrated to England. This congregation formed due to a split in the official parish of Hermsdorf whose pastor was affiliated with the “Thuringian German Christians.” Members of a neighboring congregation in Berlin-Frohnau also regularly attended services led by Ebeling,29 as did on occasion representatives from the Gestapo.30 In the spring

27 EEA, 547 – 548. The political realities in Germany at that time left Ebeling with little choice but to undertake his doctoral studies outside the country, and of the universities where he had previously studied only Zurich fulfilled this determinative criterion (548). 28 Bühler/Knellwolf, 15; EEA, 548. Ebeling began his doctoral work with Emil Brunner, but due to Brunner becoming disinterested with the developing historical nature of Ebeling’s dissertation his studies were finished under the direction of the Holl pupil, Fritz Blanke (548). 29 Illegaler, iv-v. 30 Illegaler, 165.

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of 1939, Ebeling returned briefly to Zurich where on 23 May he and Kometa Richner were wed in a ceremony in Grossmünster Cathedral.31 In addition to his ecclesial and pastoral responsibilities, Ebeling was also drafted to serve in the medical corps (Sanitätssoldat) in Berlin. During this time, the Ebelings were spared neither house searches nor interrogation by the police, with reports therefrom being communicated to Ebeling’s commanding officers.32 As the Kirchenkampf extended into the Second World War, Ebeling proved to be neither a compromising collaborator nor a “conscientious” objector. Instead, he served as a confessing churchman while simultaneously being tolerated as a compassionate soldier. From the time of his dissertation onwards, Ebeling was also keenly aware that the experiences which make a theologian press toward a theology for proclamation.33 In order to gain an impression of how Ebeling’s experiences during the Kirchenkampf were translated through his theology into his preaching, selected portions of a few of his sermons given at Berlin-Hermsdorf between 1939 – 1945 are offered in a collage fashion.34 On Easter Sunday, 9 April 1939, a few weeks after the Wehrmacht invaded Czechoslovakia, Ebeling preached on Psalm 118:14 – 24. Have we occasion to sing glad songs of victory? I am not so sure of which victories we may boast today. … In the tents of the righteous, one does not sing gladly of temporal, perishable victories but solely (allein) of eternal victories; not of carnal but of spiritual victories; not of victories in the domain of the world but solely (allein) of the victories of the kingdom of God. … When we look at our church, we are hardly in the mood for songs of victory. … People rule over our church who have no idea what church actually is. They declare congregations unable to manage their affairs. They bind the bearers of ministerial office to themselves and not to Christ. In place of obedience in faith they set the demands of institutional discipline. … In the midst of our hopelessness, however, we are met by an unparalleled message of victory from God’s word, not in the form of revolutionary ecclesial-political news reports, not as 31 Bühler/Knellwolf, 15. Upon marrying Gerhard Ebeling, Kometa Richner lost her Swiss citizenship. According to Swiss law at that time, marriage to a non-Swiss meant the forfeiture of one’s citizenship. Due to a change in the law in 1953 and to subsequent proof of no deleterious activities or affiliations, such as Nazi party membership, Frau Ebeling’s citizenship was eventually restored. 32 Illegaler, v, 165. 33 See EEA, 12 where Ebeling writes, “The Reformation discovery of the Reformer [Luther] which presses toward proclamation could only be proved as authentic through continual study of the original texts of scripture. Therefore, from the beginning [Luther’s] sermons were based upon the most intensive, theological groundwork. Such theologically oriented study of the Bible was passed on to students with no other purpose than to train preachers of the gospel who had penetrated into the subject matter of theology not merely by the accumulation of knowledge but through experience, ‘Sola … experientia facit theologum’ (4).” 34 Due to restrictions on space, this presentation of portions of Ebeling’s sermons given at BerlinHermsdorf are extracted from their textual and contextual Sitz im Leben in a seemingly injurious but also unavoidable way.

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an announcement of a change in our personal lives; instead, as a message which is almost two thousand years old which we know and yet still do not hold to be true. … Viewed in relation to God, … Viewed in relation to Christ, “Jesus is the victor!” … Even though our church is sliding increasingly into ruin, on Easter we are able to celebrate a better festival of temple consecration than the old congregation in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. Tear this temple down, Christ said, and in three days I will build a new one (Matthew 26:61). He has built us into a new temple, not made with hands – his body – the one holy, universal, Christian, apostolic church – the communion of saints. … Today, we again understand something of the comfort of the Third Article [of the Creed], of the gift which the church represents. … In recent weeks, Protestant territorial churches (Landeskirchen) and a few free churches have decided that non-Aryan Christians may no longer belong to them, that these persons may not belong to the righteous, that they may not belong to the faithful.35 … Where that happens in a church, then no longer there stand the gates of righteousness but instead the gates of iniquity ; no longer is that the church, but instead that is the “synagogue of Satan.” … We, however, are comforted! The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Christ has created a new temple. He has founded his church on a rock, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. When all the kingdoms of the world collapse, it will still be standing. The Confessing Church of Germany will also be standing there on the last day, rejected by human beings but set by God as a cornerstone. … God has made this happen, and it is a wonder to our eyes.36

In a sermon based on Matthew 6:24 – 34 given on 17 September 1939, two weeks after the beginning of World War II, Ebeling said to the congregation in Berlin-Hermsdorf: Is it really so true for us that no one can serve two masters? Are there not many people who are able to serve two or more masters? Do we not have experience in doing just that? Indeed, must it not be so on earth? Do Christians not differentiate themselves from pagans in this way? The latter depend only on the god or gods of this world, on money or on power, on one’s own ego or on the state. From these they receive their laws and can offer themselves unencumbered to this world. They know nothing of the conflicts of a Christian. … [Although a Christian lives in these same situations, a Christian also asks about God and God’s kingdom.] Is [a Christian] not obliged to serve two masters and powers, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world? Jesus, however, has said that this “and” is from the devil. This “and” makes you worse than the pagans. This “and” is suited to idols, of which many exist all next to one another at one time, but it is not suited to God, who as our lord is a jealous God. What suits God is not the little word “and” but only the little word “alone.” Where God 35 Ebeling recalls later without specifics of time, “I will not forget my whole life long – perhaps this was for me the most acute experience of divine service (Gottesdienst), how I during the time of the Third Reich spent an evening with a Christian woman of Jewish ancestry before her transport to Theresienstadt and we celebrated the Lord’s Supper with one another,” WG III, 553. 36 Illegaler, 1 – 12.

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appears, the situation is “either-or”! Either God or the world. … Jesus demands from us … an unparalleled disregard to all commitments of the world. … The commitment to God alone, to Christ alone, to Scripture alone, to grace alone, to faith alone seeks to be taken so seriously that there should be no other, second commitment in the world which is not derived solely (allein) from this first and only commitment, whence it likewise receives its binding power. … I shall not serve my neighbor because I expect something in return or because someone wants to have something from me, but solely (allein) because God wants it so. I shall not serve the state because the state wants to have it so but solely (allein) because God wants it so. God alone grants power to the neighbor, to father and mother, to teachers and superiors – God also gives the authorities their power. That power, however, does not extend one step further than God’s command. In those things which contradict God’s command, no human being has power over me, and no omission can be held or charged against me. A Christian is a free lord over all things and subject to no one but God alone. Only in this way and only to this extent is a Christian a subservient servant subject to all things and to everyone.37

For Reformation Day, 31 October 1943, Ebeling chose as his sermon text a single verse, Matthew 6:12, “Forgive us our debts (Schuld) as we forgive our detors (Schuldigern), The time of defiant, self-confident Reformation celebrations is passed. Instead of boasting in a harmless way about “our Dr. Martin Luther,” as if it were so self-evident that he is our teacher and we are really his pupils, and instead of beating ourselves on our chests to show our pride as Protestants, today it is necessary to reflect on the Reformation in such a way that we, especially as Protestants, especially as the church of the Reformation, beat ourselves on our chests and pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” I can think of no more appropriate way to observe Reformation Day than as Repentance Day. … If we consider the Reformation as having begun with Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, then we should also consider it as having really begun with Luther’s first thesis, which reads, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ says, ‘Repent,’ he desires that the whole life of his believers is continual repentance.” … According to its self-understanding, our Protestant (evangelisch) church, not only as a whole but also as individual congregations, is a caricature of what the church is and shall be according to a biblical understanding. … Our Protestant church – and we are all inexcusably included – bears the guilt (Schuld) for the brokenness of the church of Jesus Christ. I do not thereby affirm the Catholic accusation that we Protestants (Evangelischen) have fallen away from the unity of the great Roman Catholic Church and have produced divisions upon divisions as the visible fruit of such apostasy. Instead, if we are convinced that the papal church has fallen away from the truth of the gospel, then why do we bear so little sorrow about this apostasy and about the laceration of the church’s unity? Why have we become pacified with such division? … Why have we left the surname to them which expresses a genuine and essential trait of 37 Illegaler, 27 – 29.

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the church of Christ, namely that it is “catholic,” meaning a church that extends over the whole earth? … We have taken the catchword “freedom of a Christian” and have turned it into a protesting, unspiritual, purely secular, carnal freedom. We have understood this freedom as the freedom for everyone to make up one’s own faith, at one’s own discretion, and this with an appeal to “conscience”! – and then we have, nonetheless, continued to allow such individuals to call themselves Christian. … In this way, the Protestant (evangelisch) church has become a conversation forum for arbitrary religious opinions. Indeed, it has become a hotbed of all possible heresies. What has bound [the Protestant church] together is neither the gospel nor Christ but instead its opposition to the Catholic Church. In fact, according to prevailing opinion, whoever is strictly faithful to Christ and strictly faithful to the church; whoever desires ecclesia, ecclesial order, and ecclesial discipline, is best advised to become Catholic. Indeed, it has come so far in our church that seemingly every false teacher gains ministerial office, but someone who rejects the dissolution of the church’s true unity, which rests upon the unity of faith and confession, nonetheless remains excluded from ministerial office in our church. The pope has been rejected, but today a much worse master than the pope has been allowed to have favor over the church, namely a statutory bureaucracy in which those who have withdrawn their membership from the church now play a leading role. Our church is like a heap of rubble. … During this Reformation celebration – perhaps the last Reformation celebration to be observed by the Protestant church in its present form before it is wholly smashed and recast by God – how can we say anything today as the Protestant church in relation to us and to our church except this one verse, “Lord, forgive us our Schulden (debts/ guilt)”? When we today with our whole heart and in the full knowledge of what it means as the Protestant church should pray, “Forgive us our Schuld, as we forgive our Schuldigern,” then fresh ground will be broken for our prayers, and we will not only be called church, but we will also be church. God, give us such a Reformation. Amen.38

Thus preached Gerhard Ebeling as a pastor in the Kirchenkampf and as a soldier in the Second World War. Reflecting on the importance of such service, Ebeling later confided, “These sermons do not form a barrier trench between my dissertation and my later academic activities. Rather, they construct the bridge from the one to the other. That has given me grounds for particular thankfulness for these six, not completely dark years.39 With Berlin in flames in April of 1945, Ebeling’s unit was repositioned to northern Schleswig.40 After his release from military service, Ebeling traveled by bicycle from Schleswig-Holstein to Tübingen where his academic career blossomed. After completing his Habilitationsschrift with Hans Rückert, he was appointed Professor of Church History at Tübingen in the autumn of 1946. After the long periods of separation due to the war, Ebeling was eventually 38 Illegaler, 130 – 138. 39 Illegaler, 167. 40 Illegaler, 155; “Leben,” 159.

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reunited with his wife and young daughter.41 In 1950, when Ebeling became the editor of the newly revived Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, he grasped another opportunity for the next twenty-seven years to further the struggle of the Kirchenkampf against a host of tendencies in both theology and church to retreat from the adversity (Anfechtungen) of the world into a “holy sphere” of illusory security. In the introductory editorial of the journal’s first edition, Ebeling states: To submit to such tendencies would mean that one would evade the critical meaning of the Pauline doctrine of justification and that one would obscure the certainty of salvation (Heilsgewißheit) which according to Reformation understanding rests upon sola fide.42

In 1954, the theological faculty at Tübingen asked Ebeling to switch academic disciplines in order to succeed Helmut Thielicke in the chair of Systematic Theology.43 Regarding this transition and particularly what his students were supposed to have learned during his first lectures in Systematics, Ebeling would advise, If you are asked in Basel, Heidelberg, Bonn, Göttingen, or wherever, … what was presented in Ebeling’s lectures on dogmatics, I would request of you that you exercise as much critique as you possibly can and that you also do not forget to say one thing, “He endeavored to bring the relevance of the distinction between law and gospel to bear on the principles of fundamental theology. In so doing, he invoked Luther, and with Luther he invoked Holy Scripture.”44

In other words, despite his switch to systematic theology, Ebeling continued to draw upon Luther’s works and hermeneutics as a source of personal instruction and inspiration for the theological instruction of others. Ebeling would often reflect this by fondly quoting Luther’s sentiments, “Whoever knows how to distinguish the gospel from the law may thank God and know that he is a theologian.”45 As a Luther scholar and as a systematic theologian, Ebeling sought not only to be a theologian but also to nurture in others the necessary hermeneutic to become theologians. 41 Bühler/Knellwolf, 15. 42 Johannes Wallmann, “Die Wiedergründung der Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 100 (December 2003), 497 – 519, quotation from 518 which is a reprint (517 – 519) of the introductory editorial to the first issue of the journal from January 1950. See also Georg Siebeck, “Würdigung im Namen des Verlaes Mohr Siebeck” in “Gerhard Ebeling” – Hermeneutische Blätter (Sonderheft Juli 2003), 14 – 17 [hereafter as HB]; also Martin Schuck, “Was leistet die Theologie für die Kirche? Die “Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche” erscheint im 100. Jahrgang, Deutsches Pfarrerblatt 7 (2003) available on the Internet at http://www.deutsches-pfarrerblatt.de/pfarrerblatt/servlet/de.pfarrerblatt.servlet.Query?mode‘article&id’1216 43 “Leben,” 160. 44 EEA, 554. 45 Luther, 121 (note 3 – WA 40, 1: 207, 17 – 18); see also WG IV, 443 – 454.

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By this time, Ebeling’s theological and academic stature were recognized well beyond Tübingen, and shortly after his move into systematic theology came invitations to teach elsewhere. One such invitation came from the University of Göttingen, but before negotiations for Ebeling to assume Friedrich Gogarten’s chair could be concluded, Zurich moved “quickly and decisively” in 1956 to attract Ebeling back to his erstwhile place of study.46 Similarly, in order to avert a call extended to Ebeling to return to Marburg in 1961, the governing authorities in Zurich decided in April 1962 to establish under Ebeling’s direction an institute for hermeneutics (Institut für Hermeutik und Religionswissenschaft) as part of the university’s theological faculty. This institute was the first of its kind in German-speaking lands. When Ebeling eventually accepted a call in 1965 to leave Zurich in order to return to Tübingen, he there founded a similar institute based on the plans developed in Zurich.47 Not long after arriving in Tübingen, however, Ebeling was lured back to Zurich in 1968 by the offer of more favorable administrative and lecturing responsibilities. In 1969, Ebeling succeeded his teacher, Hans Rückert, as the president of the Commission for the Publication of the Weimar Edition of Luthers Werke, a post which he would hold for another twenty years.48 In his last semesters at Zurich, Ebeling produced his three-volume Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens (Dogmatics of the Christian Faith), which was originally presented as lectures conceived on one Sunday afternoon and given over four semesters from 1976 – 1978. Ebeling’s Dogmatik is a curious entity. Although Ebeling describes it as “the full harvest of my life working with theology in service to the church and in the milieu of the university,”49 its dearth of notes and of explicit exchanges with the theological literature makes for very disappointing initial reading. Furthermore, without conversant knowledge of Ebeling’s previous publications, his Dogmatik cannot be fully appreciated as the account (Rechenschaft) of his “Life for Theology” which he felt obliged to give. At best, Ebeling’s three-volume theological “monologue” is most fully appreciated if read in its entirety as Ebeling’s personal, pastoral, and professorial testimony to his life of faith in both response and service to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, those with insufficient time or insufficient fluency in the German language or both will most likely forego this opportunity to reap the benefits of Ebeling’s “Theology for Life” as offered in his Dogmatik. In 1979, Gerhard Ebeling formally retired, and apart from a semester’s guest lectureship in the winter of 1979 – 1980 again at Tübingen, he spent the rest of his life living, researching, and writing in Zurich. Paradoxically, in these 46 “Leben,” 160. 47 Ingolf U. Dalferth, HB, 11. 48 Martin Heckel, “Würdigung im Namen der Kommission zur Herausgabe der Weimarer LutherAusgabe,” HB, 18 – 19. Ebeling became a member of the commission in 1955, and he remained a member thereof after his retirement as president in 1989 until his death. 49 D I, v ; WG IV, 479.

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final decades of his life and without the benefit of research assistants, Ebeling’s passionate scholarship for Luther’s theology seemed to take on new life. Ebeling published further volumes of his Lutherstudien and other monographs bearing the real harvest of his labor of love for Luther and his theology. Not surprisingly, when the then President of the Luther-Akademie Ratzeburg, Lutheran Bishop Joachim Heubach, invited Ebeling to chair the academy’s board of trustees (Kuristorium) in 1985, Ebeling accepted, and he remained in this post until 1997.50 Ebeling’s publications from this last period of his life are some of his most valuable and most useful, but like the bulk of his theological production since the mid-1960’s they have not been translated into English. This is due partly to the eclipse of confessional theology by certain Lutherans who favor the “ecumenicism” offered by the Second Vatican Council and due partly to the abstract, “existentialistic”51 presentation of Ebeling’s own systematic theology,52 which has been described as “agony to translate.”53 Despite these difficulties, there is much to learn from Ebeling, even from the small number of his works presently available in English translation.54

Basic Teachings The preceding and limited portrayal of Gerhard Ebeling’s life, drawn mainly from autobiographical fragments scattered about his various theological works, seems inadequate, especially because experiencing Ebeling in person, no matter how briefly, can prove much more illuminating.55 The portrayal

50 Oswald Bayer, “Würdigung im Namen der Luther-Akademie Ratezeburg,” HB, 21. 51 For the term “existentialistic” in relation to Ebeling’s theology, see Ernst-Wilhelm Wendebourg, “Erwägungen zu Ebelings Interpretation der Lehre Luthers von den zwei Reichen,” Kerygma und Dogma 13 no. 2 (1967): 124B130. 52 Philip Hefner, Faith and the Vitalities of History (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 156 – 158. Despite a number of inadequacies with his interpretation of Ebeling, Hefner has succinctly described the impression often given by Ebeling’s theological presentation. On one hand, Hefner considers Ebeling’s work as the “ultimate refinement” of “theological thought that has thoroughly absorbed existentialist thinking,…” and on the other hand, the “question arises, however, … whether [Ebeling’s works’] theological investments have not been made so decisively and so exclusively, whether the commitment to one abstract philosophical category has not been undertaken so narrowly, that the end result is a somewhat desiccated and much too partisan interpretation of Christian faith to be convincing.” 53 See George A. Lindbeck in his review article “Ebeling: Climax of a Great Tradition” in Journal of Religion 61 (1981): 310. 54 No “standard” translations of Ebeling exist in English. His works available in English have been translated by several persons who not only offer at times poor representations of the German but who also offer little uniformity of translation among each other. 55 The author of this essay and his wife spent an evening with Professor and Frau Ebeling in their

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above becomes even less satisfactory when one considers that these historical elements only indirectly reflect the person who gave rise to such recordable data. If, however, it is true that faith makes the person, then arguably an examination of Ebeling’s faith should enable a disclosure of Gerhard Ebeling as the person made by such faith. Although an attempt to understand a person via that person’s faith would seem to be a precariously speculative venture, Ebeling seems to invite just such a venture. According to Ebeling, a person not only expresses oneself in one’s endeavors,56 but a theologian, when properly engaged, invests oneself responsibly and yet unmistakably in one’s own works. Ebeling explains, Theology then does not demand the most far-reaching exclusion of the person but instead, if properly understood, the most intense engagement of the person. The theologically most meaningful does not happen where the person of the theologian relates indifferently and neutrally to the word (Wort) but where the person answers for the word in such a way that the word unmistakably bears the intellectual signature (geistige Handschrift) of the author and the author’s own biography, as the situation in which the word is answered responsibly, belongs indivisibly to the theological statement.57

To take Ebeling at his word and to apply it methodologically, Ebeling’s own scholarly works should not only reveal the basic tenets of Ebeling’s faith but should also, correspondingly, disclose the person of Gerhard Ebeling in a thoroughgoing way, although abstract. Ebeling derives his understanding of the term “person” chiefly from his Luther scholarship. According to Luther, God perceives the human being without seeing or considering or respecting (respicio) the person, a concept often phrased in German as ohne Ansehen der Person.58 Clearly, this concept offers an unexpected point of reference from which to gain an understanding of the term “person” both generally and quite specifically in relation to Ebeling as person. This understanding of person goes to the cor (heart) of Luther’s and of Ebeling’s theological anthropologies. To compound this apparently paradoxical approach, Ebeling’s concept of person does not home in September 1995. Subsequent correspondence with Ebeling, though not lengthy, has also proved important to the author’s interpretation of Ebeling and his legacy. 56 See Gerhard Ebeling, Wort und Glaube, third edition (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1967), 425 [hereafter as WG]. An English translation is available as Word and Faith, translator James W. Leitch (London: SCM Press, 1963) (US edition – Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963). 57 Luther, 24. 58 LuSt II, 3: 197. In relation to WA 2: 480, 17 – 21 in note 349 Ebeling cites Luther in part, “Homo semper respicit personas, nunquam cor : ideo semper male iudicat. Deus nunquam respicit personas, semper autem cor: ideo iuste iudicat populos.” See also Luther, 217 note 21 (WA 51: 240, 17 – 26), 219 – 238 and D I: 346 – 355. Also, in relation to the conscience (Gewissen), Martin Heidegger in a rather nebulous way depicts the “call of the conscience” as active in relation to the self “ohne Ansehen seiner Person,” see Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 17th edition (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993), 274 – 275 [hereafter as Heidegger].

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involve grasping the person as an object or substance in the material world of things (Substanzontologie). Instead, a person comes into Being or gains one’s “Being-as-Person” by “Being-Together” in relation to and in relationship with God, with the world, and subsequently with one’s own self.59 Determinative for Ebeling’s relational ontology is Luther’s understanding of the Latin preposition coram as found in the Vulgate translation of the Bible. That the Vulgate employed coram to describe a “specifically biblical understanding of reality” is, according to Ebeling, “one of Luther’s early exegetical discoveries.” “Combined from con and os, [coram] means the relation of nearness, as determined through the face, through the person of a human being.”60 Besides this etymological understanding of “in the face of,” coram also bears Hebraic connotations of time with the meaning of “present” as “in the presence of.”61 Schematically, a human being lives presently in the presence of, or perhaps more literally, “faced with” being confronted by God, by the world, and by oneself. Ebeling routinely portrays these relational dynamics, respectively, as a person living coram deo, coram mundo (sometimes also coram hominibus), and coram meipso.62 In Ebeling’s relational ontology, “Being” (Sein) as “Being-Together” is also understood necessarily as “Being-Linguistic” (Sprachlichsein).63 The human being has language (Sprache) due to “Being-Together” with God and the world. Ebeling expresses this fundamental situation (Grundsituation) of the human being with a variety of terms such as “word-situation” (Wortsituation)64 and “language-situation” (Sprachsituation).65 Viewed biblically, a person’s fundamental situation as word-situation ultimately has its origin and its reality in God. When God speaks, Being is created out of nothing (ex nihilo): “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3, RSV); “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth” (Psalm 33:9, RSV); “All things have come into being through this Logos [word] and without him has nothing come into being of that which exists” (John 1:3).66 To illustrate Being as “Being-Linguistic,” Ebeling often plays with the German verb sprechen (to speak) and some of its related verb forms. The 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

D I, 220 – 223, 228 – 230, 348; D III:140 – 144; also LuSt III, 326 – 331. D I, 349; LuSt III, 234; Luther 220 – 224, 256 – 257. Luther, 220 – 224. D I, 353 – 355, Luther, 227 – 228; WG, 424 – 428; also Gerhard Ebeling, “Luther II. Theologie,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Kurt Galling editor, third edition, six volumes (Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1960), IV: 500 – 514 [hereafter as RGG]. D I, 352. Gerhard Ebeling, Wort und Glaube II (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1969), 415 – 423 [hereafter as WG II]. D I, 189 – 191. D III, 187. This scripture verse is an English translation of the same from Das Neue Testament as translated commentated by Ulrich Wilckens in conjunction with Werner Jetter, Ernst Lange, and Rudolf Pesch, 1970 (see D I, vii) which Ebeling used throughout his Dogmatik.

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human being’s capacity to speak arises firstly from one’s “Being-Addressed” (Angesprochensein)67 which subsequently invokes and evokes a person’s ability to address (ansprechen) another person. In humanity’s fundamental situation, human beings can address God because human beings have first of all been addressed by God.68 Ebeling develops and expands this application of sprechen etymologically in a three-dimensional way through the compound verbs widersprechen (to contradict), versprechen (to promise), and entsprechen (to correspond). The human being experiences life as full of contradictions, including the experience of one’s own person in self-contradiction. The human being also experiences life mutually in expectation of and in reliance upon the making of promises. Finally, of necessity, human beings exist reciprocally in varying degrees by corresponding to each other. For Ebeling, widersprechen, versprechen, and entsprechen represent linguistically, etymologically, and metaphorically the human existential realities or the “elementary human processes” which Paul describes with the terms “faith, hope, and love” in I Corinthians 13. To explain this in a preliminary fashion, one is either truthfully and faithfully a person of one’s word, like God and God’s word, or one is self-contradictory, thus deceptive, and a sower of mistrust. Further, a person of one’s word is either promissory and engenders hope, like God and God’s word, or one is false, speaks falsely, and thus breeds despair. Finally, a person of one’s word either expresses love, like God’s very being,69 or one spews forth animosity and hate.70 Taking this a step further, for Ebeling, the relational nature of “BeingTogether” and “Being-Linguistic” consequently characterize Being itself as “Being-Responsible” (Verantwortlichsein).71 In other words, the relational dynamics between the human being, the world, and God happen personally, effectually, and responsibly through language in the broadest sense of the word. To emphasize this aspect of his understanding of relational ontology and to express it linguistically, Ebeling employs two further etymological devices. First, Ebeling expresses these linguistic interactions with an etymological wordplay in German which happily has readily understandable cognates in English. Depicted metaphorically with the aid of synecdoche, all Being arises 67 Gerhard Ebeling, Das Wesen des christlichen Glaubens (Freiburg: Herderbücherei, Verlag Herder, 1993), 239 – 240 [hereafter as Wesen]. An English translation is available as Nature of Faith, trans. R. G. Smith (London: Collins, 1961) (US edition – Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961); also Luther, 291 – 294. 68 WG, 368. 69 Ebeling is very fond of quoting Luther’s description of God as “a glowing baking oven full of love,” see Luther, 309 (note 30 – WA 36: 425, 13) and Wesen, 114. 70 D I, 189 – 191, 374 – 375. For some preliminary development of this theme, see also WG, 210 – 212. 71 D I, 352 – 353.

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from the Wort (word), namely God’s word, and the human being relates to God and to the world in response “als Antwort” (as answer).72 Consequently, for Ebeling, human Being “as answer” or “as response” means that the human being is verantwortlich (responsible), and thus being human as “BeingResponsible” (Verantwortlichsein)73 is a fundamental and inescapable aspect of human existence. Ebeling often conveys this same idea with a second etymological play on words using classical and biblical Greek. Philosophically, Ebeling draws upon the Aristotelean definition of the human being as “living being having word or language” (f`ov k|cov 5wov – zoon logon echon)74 and then supersedes it using Scripture. For Ebeling, the human being not only “has word or language” but also according to biblical witness is called “to give word or language,” to give account (Rechenschaft geben), or expressed literally in Greek k|cov did|vai (logon didonai),75 “I tell you, on the day of judgement human beings will render account [k|cov] for every careless word they utter ;…” (Matthew 12:36, RSV).76 Because one’s words express oneself as person, one’s words make one responsible to assessment and judgment (Matthew 12:37), which take place ultimately coram deo. In Ebeling’s theological anthropology, these various elements comprising his relational ontology come together “in a mathematical point” (mathematischer Punkt), namely in the “conscience” (Gewissen).77 In Ebeling’s linguistic 72 WG, 343, 370; also WG II, 429; Wesen, 145, 255. 73 WG II, 418; also WG, 426 – 444. 74 WG, 440, also 343 and 368 – 371; WG II, 418; D I, 104. Although f`ov k|cov 5wov may also mean “living being having reason” in the sense of animal rationale (see Heidegger, 48), Ebeling prefers to stress the linguistic aspect which is more fitting for his theological method. According to Heidegger, f`ov k|cov 5wov represents both the “vulgar” and the philosophical “definition” of the human being (25). Heidegger states that philosophy has traditionally defined the term k|cor too narrowly, where words are considered to be similar to things (159). Heidegger, however, prefers to see k|cor (logos) as an existential constituent of Dasein which gives rise to language (160). Among interpreters of Ebeling’s work’s, there is considerable debate about Heidegger’s influence upon Ebeling’s theology. Although this debate tends to center on the term conscience (Gewissen), Ebeling’s appropriation of f`ov k|cov 5wov indicates that the relationship between these two men is somewhat broader. 75 WG, 440; D I, 104. Ebeling also considers “giving account” (Rechenschaft geben) to be a theme in Luther’s thought (see WA 53: 231, 28). 76 Wesen, 250. Ebeling had this same verse and notion in mind in the conceptualization and composition of his Dogmatik (D I, 5 – 6). 77 Luther, 56 – 57, 200; Wesen, 209 – 212, 240; WG, 428, 432 – 439. Further to notes 52 and 74, no shortage of Ebeling interpreters claim to see Heideggerian influence, if not provenance, on Ebeling’s understanding of conscience with such concepts as Stimme des Gewissens (voice of the conscience – Heidegger, 268), Gewissen als Ruf (conscience as call – Heidegger, 269 – 270), and Gewissen-haben als Freisein (having-conscience as Being-free – Heidegger, 288). Some of those who take this position are: Robert W. Funk, Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1966); Rüdiger Lorenz, Die unvollendete Befreiung vom Nominalismus. Martin Luther und die Grenzen hermeneutischer Theologie bei Gerhard Ebeling, (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 1973); Reinhold Mokrosch, Das religiöse Gewissen. Hi-

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understanding of reality, the conscience serves as the person’s “ear” or “hearing” (Gehör). Importantly, both in his interpretation of Luther’s theology and also in his own systematic theological application thereof, the “person” is nearly identical with the “conscience.”78 Ebeling thus understands the “conscience” not idealistically79 or moralistically80 but instead radically and linguistically, and thus theologically in the sense that the human being is ultimately “hearing” (Gehör), is thus someone encountered, is someone claimed, is someone subjected to judgement, and for this reason one’s existence depends upon the kind of word that reaches the human being and touches the innermost aspect of the human being: either the word which afflicts one with oneself, which throws one back on oneself, which lays unlimited claim on one as a doer and therefore even on one as the maker of oneself, [the word] which presents one with the tally of all that one has not done, of where one has failed, of what one remains guilty ; or the word which liberates one from the captivity of oneself, from being delivered over to oneself, [the word] which inaugurates a hope that is not grounded in oneself, which does not address one as someone who shall actively justify oneself by one’s works but rather as the one who lives indebted not to oneself but who has become a gift to oneself and who furthermore may understand oneself as someone who lives from this gift, from grace, from forgiveness.81

These differing or contrasting “words” which address the human being or person “as conscience” (als Gewissen)82 are experienced in reality both as an “either-or” discrimination (sola – allein – alone) and as a “both-and” reconciliation (simul – zugleich – simultaneously).83 For Ebeling, the word or “word-event” (Wortgeschehen)84 which is able to address and to confront the

78 79 80 81 82 83 84

storische und sozialempirische Untersuchungen zum Problem einer (nach)reformatorischen, religiösen Gewissensbildung bei 15– bis 19–Jährigen (Stuttgart, 1979) (Wk 637); and John C. Staten, Conscience and the Reality of God, (Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouteon de Gruyter, 1988). Herbert Schlögel in his Habilitationsschrift published as Nicht Moralisch, sondern Theologisch: Zum Gewissensverständnis von Gerhard Ebeling, Walberberger Studien 15 (Mainz:, Matthias-Grünedwald-Verlag, 1992) refutes these last three interpreters convincingly. Schlögel’s arguments also refute similar sentiments expressed by Paul Ricœur who provided the Foreword to Staten’s book. Ebeling’s understanding of the human being or person “as conscience” is an existentialistically coined term derived from his Luther scholarship, and if Ebeling’s use of “conscience” is to be understood in relation to Heidegger’s work, then so understood as a direct challenge to and as a refutation of Heidegger’s philosophically based existential interpretation by way of the existential reality of “conscience” as experienced by Luther 400 years earlier. Luther, 230; WG, 436; D II, 419 – 420; D III, 114 – 116; also WG IV, 278. Luther, 131 – 132, D II, 419 – 420. WG, 404; also Gerhard Ebeling, Martin Luthers Weg und Wort (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Taschenbuch, 1983), 74 – 75 Luther, 132; see also WG 435 – 436. WG, 289 – 293, 348, 425, 432 – 436; Luther, 56 – 57, 128 – 136; D I, 71. WG, 202, 416 – 418; Luther, 215 – 218, 255 – 258; D III, 416 – 417. WG, 348, 436. Geschehen is generally translated into English as the verb “to happen” and as the

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conscience in this way is the word of God properly differentiated as both law and gospel.85 Whether the law encounters the human being (conscience) as God’s commandment or whether it interacts with the conscience inertly as merely human language (Menschenwort), the law calls the person into question, creates uncertainty, and ultimately heralds death. Only the word of God as gospel (promise) can bring faith, can thus liberate from the law, and can ultimately offer certainty in this life and the promise of eternal life.86 For Ebeling, as for Luther, only the events of “word and faith” (solo verbo et sola fide) can create the salvation-event (Heilsgeschehen) for the justification of the person as conscience (iustificatio der persona [secundum conscientiam]) before God. This represents not only the subject matter of theology but also defines the nature of theology as “practical theology” (theologia practica), which for Luther and for Ebeling is “the only true kind of theology.”87 For Ebeling, like Luther, “word and faith” for justification by faith alone are the proper subject matter of theology because the sinful human being (homo peccator) and the justifying God (deus iustificans) comprise the proper instance for theology.88 Following Luther, Ebeling considers the fundamental sin of the human being to be unbelief (Unglaube), whether understood as peccatum radicale, peccatum personale, or peccatum naturale. In Ebeling’s conceptualization, The fundamental sin (Grundsünde) is unbelief. This arises from the fact that sin is to be understood as the destruction of Being-Together with God. Only unbelief, which does not let God be God, can destroy this Being-Together, for Being-Together with God can subsist in nothing else but in faith in his word.89

85

86 87 88 89

noun “a happening” with the plural form as “happenings.” However, with respect to its use as a suffix in theological literature, it tends to be translated as “event.” Ebeling used the suffix “-geschehen” as early as his dissertation, see EEA, 108 (Offenbarungsgeschehen) and 135 (Christusgeschehen) which reflect Bultmann’s influence on Ebeling’s early theological development; see Rudolf Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, 9th edition (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1993), I: 296 and 289, respectively. Ebeling later coined his own -geschehen terminology. WG, 432; WG IV 19 – 23; 241 – 245; also EEA 184 – 185, 198. In his doctoral dissertation (EEA), Ebeling writes that the new scopus in Luther’s hermeneutic corresponds solely to the place where God’s self-revelation happens, namely in the “office of proclamation (das Predigtamt): the office of proclamation not as a human institution but as the actuality (Tatsache) arranged and ordered by God that his word, based on Scripture present as law and gospel which binds and looses the conscience, is the new and the only scopus of allegory according to Luther” (198). WG, 444 – 446; Wesen, 116 – 117; D III, 249 – 295; WG IV, 581 – 582; Luther, 131 – 136; LuSt III, 116 – 122. EEA, 382 – 390; Luther, 67 – 69; 274 – 276; RGG IV, 506; D III, 249 – 251, 416 – 423; WG IV, 14 – 23. Gerhard Ebeling, Theologie und Verkündigung, second edition (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1963), 15B16 [hereafter as ThV]; also WG III, 174 – 179; WG IV, 287; LuSt II, 3: 2B4. See also Menacher, “Ebeling’s Kirchenkampf,” 4 – 5. D I, 374.

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Not letting God be God is sin against the First Commandment because, according to Luther, one should hold God alone to be one’s God (mich alleine für deinen Gott halten).90 This “alleine” (alone) is the foundation of all the other Reformation particulae exclusivae, most particularly solus Christus (Christ alone) who gives rise to the Reformation tenets crux sola, sola scriptura, sola gratia, solo verbo, and sola fide.91 The salvation-event as the word-event happens solely in the person of Jesus Christ, the word made flesh. As the “foundation of faith (Grund des Glaubens), Jesus alone is the witness of the faith in the pregnant sense of being the ‘pioneer and perfecter’ of the faith (Hebrews 12:2).”92 Beginning already in his historical life but then being radically transformed by his resurrection, Jesus Christ in Christian proclamation is and continues to be the word-event (Wortgeschehen) which invokes the faith-event (Glaubensgeschehen)93 which is the justification-event (Rechtfertigungsgeschehen).94 When Jesus is experienced as the word which makes certain (gewißmachendes Wort), this means that he is experienced as the gospel and thus as the foundation of faith. Such making-certain (Gewißmachen) encompasses eo ipso the relationship to the law. Jesus, as the gospel which encounters us, becomes the foundation of faith, and thus makes us certain of salvation because he meets us there where we are – in uncertainty – which is the nature of sin.95

When this word as law and gospel encounters the conscience (Gewissen), and thus encounters the person, it is experienced as the totality of reality encountering all of humanity. Whereas the encounter with the word as law paradoxically effects the certainty of one’s unbelief and thus the certainty of existential uncertainty (sin), the encounter with the word as gospel creates the certainty of faith which is the certainty of conscience which thus is the certainty of salvation.96 For Ebeling, this encounter with Jesus represents ultimately the justifying God’s Trinitarian relationship with the sinful human being and also with the world. Ebeling demonstrates this again through the application of linguistic devices and related dynamics. By employing the simultaneity of the Lutheran particula inclusiva (simul – zugleich) in conjunction with the particulae exclusivae (sola – allein), whereby according to Ebeling the former does not diminish the latter but instead brings it clearly into focus,97 Ebeling attempts 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

Wesen, 147, WG III, 180 – 194; Luther, 280 – 297; see BSLK, 560 and BC, 386. EEA, 293 – 298; Luther, 284 – 287; WG IV, 16, 241. WG, 314 – 318 (quotation from 317); D I, 80 – 84; D II, 522 – 524. Luther, 128; ThV, 7B8; also Gerhard Ebeling, Einführung in theologische Sprachlehre (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1971), 257B258 [hereafter as Sprachlehre]. D III, 224B225. ThV, 81; see also Luther, 280 – 287. ThV, 81 – 82; WG III, 349 – 361; D I, 132 – 133. Luther, 285.

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to reflect grammatically and to embody textually the reality of God’s Trinitarian relationship to sinful humanity as the construct of all three volumes of his Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens. According to Ebeling, a dogmatic of the Christian faith is properly attempted in view of one’s Being-Creature in the middle of the created world before God the Creator, however without the abolition of sin; and further in view of one’s BeingReconciled with God through Christ in the middle of the reconciled world, which senses so little of its being reconciled, however not by trivializing but chiefly by magnifying sin; and finally, in view of one’s Being-Underway in the world as both justified and sinner toward the goal and terminus where sin is abolished through death and everything is brought to fulfillment.98

Ebeling employs these hermeneutical concepts from the Reformation to construct his Dogmatik because these concepts provide the hermeneutical key for understanding the entire structure of reality. If one aligns the contradictory polarities of existence as reconciled in the particula inclusiva (simul) on a horizontal axis and if one intersects this axis vertically with the divine attributes expressed by the particulae exclusivae (solae), one is not only presented with but also is confronted by a cruciform construct or, as Ebeling describes it, a Koordinatenkreuz99 of reality. This cruciform structure of reality is for Ebeling nothing other than the hidden, yet reconciling “word of the cross” of Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 1:18) revealed nowhere else but in the word-event of Christian proclamation. The ontological importance of the word rests not upon the fact that the human being as the linguistic being has logos. According to biblical understanding, the word belongs in the being of God, was in the beginning, and remains in eternity. The word is not a late product of evolution but instead the foundation of creation - just as the word is the power of the resurrection - and it awaits us as the judgement of God at the end of the world. Regardless of the fact that we do not understand ourselves as vocabula Dei and as directed to the word of the cross as the word of reconciliation, especially in light of that which makes us speechless, whatever we may invent by words and accomplish with the word we ourselves in the end are vocabula Dei (WA 42: 17, 19). Faith alone answers and corresponds to this word. Faith extends itself not to just anything but to Jesus Christ as the word of God in person and through him to all that which the word of God offers and commands. Faith as faith in Jesus Christ lives from all that which proceeds from the mouth of God, especially the exonerating word of justification by faith alone.100

For Ebeling, the word of God alone embodied in the two natures of Christ alone intersects and reconciles the contradictory polarities of human 98 D I, 72 – 73. 99 WG IV, 575, 581 – 582. 100 WG IV, 582; see LuSt II, 3: 513 – 519.

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existence, be they unbelief and faith, sinfulness and righteousness, law and gospel, the kingdom on the left and the kingdom on the right, or ultimately death and life. The word of the cross is the reality of God’s word to all human beings who do not want God to be God and who would readily crucify Jesus in order to voice the reality of their sin. Through the reality of the word of the cross, however, God firstly contradicts the contradictory nature of human sin (widersprechen), then God promises forgiveness of sin to sinful human beings (versprechen), and finally God calls justified sinners through faith alone to correspond to their salvation in the person of Jesus Christ alone (entsprechen). The cruciform nature of reality does not happen out there somewhere in a systematic theological abstraction but instead affects each person’s innermost being as the experience of the word of the cross. When this reality (begegnende Wirklichkeit) thus encounters the linguistic human being,101 then each person as conscience experiences the polarized contradictions of human existence and consequently the uncertainty of all existence.102 In Reformation tradition, Ebeling describes these times of uncertainty as “adversity” (Anfechtung – tentatio).103 Existential certainty and experiential adversity are mutually exclusive,104 and the existential experience of uncertainty is the experience of the absence of God (deus absconditus).105 When confronted by the reality of existential adversity, one’s “god” undoubtedly becomes that or those things to which one turns “for all good” and “to find refuge in all one’s needs,” as Luther explains in his interpretation of the First Commandment.106 In life’s adversity (Anfechtung), the reality of one’s fundamental situation in the world before God, often experienced as the absolute absence of God, leads people of every day and age to express this experience existentially by turning in every way imaginable towards “god” for help in the fundamental human communication-event known as prayer. In the use of language, prayer represents the wholly unique case in which one addresses an otherwise indiscernible addressee and in which one would most decidedly dispute that one is merely dealing with a potential or imaginary addressee. In this situation, language serves not only the purpose of calling upon a personal opposite for this or that concern but serves primarily the purpose of calling upon this personal opposite itself as being real. In no other way can one demonstrate that one reckons with the reality of God unless one prays to God.107

In a sense, prayer depicts most personally the fundamental situation of each human as Being-Together, Being-Linguistic, and Being-Responsible before 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

WG, 256. Luther, 286 – 287; ThV, 81 – 82. WG IV, 21. WG IV, 21; also EEA, 385 – 391; Luther, 30 – 31, 69, 197. Luther, 306 – 307; Wesen, 250 – 256; D I, 254 – 257. BSLK, 560 – BC, 386; see Luther, 288 – 289; D I, 86 – 89. D I, 201 – 202, 213.

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God (coram deo), before the world (coram mundo), and before oneself (coram meipso). In Ebeling’s conceptualization of reality, these coram-relationships form the three main forums or fora in which each human being exists simultaneously as conscience108 and in which each person is called into question and is thus called to give account.109 Due to the destruction of BeingTogether caused by human sin, each person experiences these three fora not only as differing from one another and thus in tension, but also as contradicting one another and thus in conflict. This is particularly the case in relation to the two fora from which the human being derives one’s selfidentity externally (extra se), namely the forum coram deo and the forum coram mundo. According to Ebeling, without the proper word to interpret the adversity created by the conflict between these fora, which again for Ebeling is the word of God as law and gospel, sinful human beings consequently and inevitably commingle and confuse God with the world and the world with God110 and thus also fail to perceive and to receive their proper identity.111 Praying in the name of Jesus Christ, the specifically Christian aspect of prayer, changes humanity’s religious commingling of God and the world from a situation of inherent adversity to one of open hostility. This conflict is the fiercest kind because it is “a conflict about God” (ein Streit um Gott). The situation of Christian conflict about God erupts not only in relation to atheism but also in relation to every sort of religion, including that which passes itself off as Christian religion.112 Consequently, the Christian situation of conflict cannot be dismissed as being just a matter of incompatible religious differences which can and should coexist equally in an all-inclusive, shared reality. Instead, the Christian “conflict about God” is in reality a conflict about reality itself.113 The crux of all this conflict is the person of Jesus Christ who, as indicated above, is the “pioneer and perfecter” of the faith (Hebrews 12:2). According to Ebeling, “In that Jesus becomes the object of faith, he himself necessarily

108 109 110 111 112

Luther, 220 – 231. D I, 5 – 7, 351. WG, 425; Luther, 224 – 228; D I, 106 – 107,150 – 151; D II, 419 – 420; WG IV, 575 – 577. D I, 216 – 218, 352 – 355, 392 – 396. D I, 208 – 209. Ebeling differentiates between a generally accepted religious nature of human beings and the nature of religion as based on legalistic rites and practices (law), including those found in Christianity. The gospel as that which contradicts and thus puts an end to the law is the foundation for Ebeling’s critique of religion, including the Christian religion (see D I, 65, 111 – 139). This understanding is based on Luther’s notion that there really is no difference between “papists, Turks, and Jews” in substance because their religions are all based on law and works righteousness and not on the gospel of Jesus Christ (see WG 131 note 124 and Luther 153). 113 WG, 396 – 397, 401, 404 – 405; D I, 346; D II, 83; D III, 72 – 73. The apparently exclusive nature of the Christian faith over against all forms of religion is viewed in light of the universality of the gospel of Jesus Christ (see D I, 86 – 88; WG IV, 3 – 43).

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enters into the conflict (Streit) over reality between faith and unbelief.”114 Furthermore, because faith is personally communicable but is not vicariously viable,115 each person who believes in Jesus Christ is inevitably drawn into this Christ-centered conflict between faith and unbelief. In Ebeling’s words, [Faith] constantly finds itself in the neighborhood of unbelief. Unbelief either appears in a form of disastrous misbelief (Irrglaube), or it cloaks itself in acts of faith. Precisely there, where pure faith is truly lived, is where faith is incessantly challenged (angefochten) by unbelief and is where the believer lives in battle (Kampf) with oneself and even testifies as a witness against oneself, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24, RSV).116

Consequently, for Ebeling, one’s understanding of reality and thus one’s place in reality are determined by the relationship of one’s conscience either to the reality of faith in Jesus Christ or to the pseudo-reality of unbelief in whatever form. As already indicated, this does not mean conscience in that common, moralizing understanding as a moral codex written in the heart, but instead conscience in a radical understanding as the place where it is decided who the human being in truth is. … If one’s conscience is cheerful and comforted, then the human being is not only cheerful and comforted but the whole of reality gains another visage. … If a person’s conscience is liberated, then that person stands in absolute freedom, and no power in the world can do anything to change that. … [Faith and unbelief determine where one belongs and where one has one’s place, namely] Either with oneself and under reality’s law of coercion (Zwangsgesetz), which approaches and concerns the human being, or outside oneself and outside the law of coercion in that freedom from oneself and in that freedom from the law of sin and death which Paul has portrayed as the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom 8:21). This freedom can only be received as the faith-evoking, conscienceliberating word that is proclaimed in the name and thus in the authority of Jesus because, as Paul says, the coming of Jesus is the coming of faith (Gal. 3:23).117

In other words, if prayer is the fundamental situation of the sinful human being as conscience in the created world before God, and if prayer is the flashpoint of the conflict between God and sin experienced in the confines of human reality, and if Christian prayer becomes the faith-filled response to the liberating power of God’s word as gospel coming in the person of Jesus,118 then from Ebeling’s perspective the fundamental theological formulation which 114 115 116 117 118

D II, 83. Luther, 53 note 27; D I, 88; D III, 366; WG IV, 579 – 580. D I, 155 – 156; see also WG, 252, 395, 398 – 406; DCG III, 192. WG, 404 – 405. WG III, 420 (note 7 – WA 8: 360, 29). Ebeling cites Luther’s sentiments that faith is nothing other “than simple prayer” (denn eyttel gebet).

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offers the Christian understanding of human existence in Christian prayer is solely “justification of the sinner by God.”119 Justification by faith alone in turn places one through prayer into the adversarial struggle (Streit) of faith against unbelief in every aspect of the life lived in faith. For Ebeling, “Faith without adversity (Anfechtung) is dead faith. Living faith is faith in adversity (Anfechtung),”120 or as Ebeling explains more personally, The language-event of faith operates in such a way that faith is faith in adversity. If I want to understand and to interpret the language of faith properly, then the antagonism (Widerstreit) which the language of faith harbors within itself must come to light, and it must become clear where the victory of faith over unbelief is anticipated. A statement that cannot be interpreted as a fighting-statement is not a statement of faith. A word that cannot be led like a sword against unbelief cannot be the word of God … (Hebrews 4:12 f).121

This concept is precisely why theology demands the most intense engagement of the person because the word of faith can only enter into the battle of faith through the person of faith, and precisely this existential understanding of faith discloses the person of Gerhard Ebeling as a fighter in and for the reality of justification by faith alone.

Continuing Relevance Beginning in the Kirchenkampf and continuing for the rest of his ecclesial life, Gerhard Ebeling deployed his energy and efforts to advance almost singularly what he believed to be the proper subject matter of theology (Sache der Theologie). Again, for Ebeling, the subject matter of theology is the homo peccator and the deus iustificans. Consequently, Ebeling was neither bellicose in his theological differences with others nor was he tempted to make theology “relevant” for others as often seems the case with many of the so-called “genitive theologies.”122 Instead, Ebeling sought to apply the law-gospel hermeneutic in service of the doctrine of justification in such a way that the gospel would neither be isolated from the experience of the world nor coopted for political action by collapsing itself into the experience of the world. From 119 120 121 122

D I, 295. Wesen, 213. Wesen, 238 – 239. Menacher, “Ebeling’s Kirchenkampf,” 4 – 5. The term “genitive theologies” refers to the grammatical modification of the word Theologie through genitive (possessive) constructs in German, for example Theologie der Liberation (liberation theology).

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Ebeling’s perspective, either course inevitably turns the gospel into a pseudogospel,123 in other words, into some form of the law. As his own life attests, Ebeling did not attempt to obscure or to avoid the political realities of human existence under the law which are abundantly evident wherever human beings gather. Instead, Ebeling strove to counter the seemingly insidious ability of political realities to distract theology from “the normal activity of the church: proclamation, instruction, and the care of souls.”124 Contrary to the perception of sinful human beings, the proper subject matter of theology taken in conjunction with the proper differentiation between law and gospel offers the proper differentiation between Christian salvation and every other notion of human well-being. In other words, for Ebeling no greater power exists than the word of God which creates, reconciles, and fulfills all reality. Consequently, a life of faith empowered by this word inevitably has ramifications for the fractured, penultimate reality of human political power.125 In light of this word and faith, perhaps the single most representative testimony to Ebeling’s enduring relevance as a person, a pastor, and a professor came to the fore during the fierce debates in Germany over the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) cobbled together between 1993 – 1998 by the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. On the evening of 10 December 1997, at the reception given in Tübingen after he delivered his acceptance speech “A Life for Theology – ATheology for Life,” Ebeling summoned his colleagues to raise their collective voice against JDDJ. Ebeling’s call to arms resulted in a petition (Votum) whose final text was discussed and revised with Ebeling in Zurich. On 27 January 1998, this petition was issued under the auspices of the Institut für Hermeutik und Religionswissenschaft and quickly garnered the support of 141 (later more than 160) academic theologians from almost every university in Germany.126 The debates ignited by this petition quickly spread into the mainstream German media, particularly the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), arguably Germany’s premier daily newspaper. The FAZ was criticized by many, including Professor Ulrich Kühn (Leipzig),127 for being one-sided in 123 Sprachlehre, 248 – 249. See also WG III, 178 – 179 and Luther, 154 – 156. 124 Gerhard Ebeling, “Usus politicus legis – usus politicus evangelii,” in Umgang mit Luther (Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1983), 154. 125 WG III, 361. 126 Johannes Wallmann, “Der Streit um die ‘Gemeinsame Erklärung’” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche Beiheft 10 (December 1998): 228 – 229; see also Menacher, “Ebeling’s Kirchenkampf,” 18 – 20. An abridged English translation of this petition is available in Mark D. Menacher, “Confusion and Clarity in Recent German Ecumenism,” LOGIA: A Journal of Lutheran Theology 13 (Eastertide 2004), 25 [hereafter as Menacher, “Clarity”]. 127 Though retired at the time, Kühn was formerly Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of Leipzig and before that Dozent at the Theological Seminary in Leipzig, one of a few church seminaries tolerated by the communist government of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Kühn was given extraordinary permission to leave the GDR in the

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its negative portrayal of JDDJ. Kühn, like others, accusingly questioned whether the FAZ was, in fact, seeking to stifle “the truth” about JDDJ, charging categorically, “This question cannot and may not be suppressed, even by the authority of Gerhard Ebeling, the venerable nestor of the present declaration.”128 This petition, however, precisely with Gerhard Ebeling’s authority as a person, as a pastor, and as a professor helped set into motion a series of events that would eventually ensure, contrary to a myriad of misleading media reports, that JDDJ would not be signed. Quite simply, the “crypto-Tridentine” doctrine of justification129 contained in JDDJ is not the article of justification by faith alone, to quote Luther, which “rules every conscience and the church.”130 From the theological battles during the Kirchenkampf to the theological battles at the end of his life, the doctrine of justification by faith alone viewed through the law-gospel hermeneutic would be and would remain for Gerhard Ebeling the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae.131 These ecclesial battles reflect the existential struggles raging in the conscience of every person, of every homo peccator, living coram mundo and coram deo because this God who is revealed solo verbo et sola fide in the person of Christ alone is the deus iustificans. Faith in this God made Gerhard Ebeling into the person, the pastor, and the professor that he became. Ebeling desired that every Christian person should be united in Christ in this same faith. Ebeling expressed this desire publicly during the concluding remarks of his acceptance speech “A Life for Theology – A Theology for Life,” when he prayed, Lord, give us and those who

128 129

130 131

early 1980’s to teach for three years at the Protestant theological faculty at the University of Vienna. Kühn was ecumenically minded and has published items on the doctrine of justification in this vein with Otto H. Pesch. See epd-Dokumentationen #7/98, 7 – 8. See Reinhard Brandt, “Der ökumenische Dialog nach der Unterzeichnung der Erklärung zur Rechtfertigungslehre und nach Dominus Iesus – Ein Überblick über strittige Aspekte aus lutherischer Sicht,” in Uwe Rieske-Braun, editor, Konsensdruck ohne Perspektiven? (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001), 16 – 18, 24. Brandt refers to those who hold to the common statements in JDDJ as “Kryptotridentisten.” Brandt also cites Bishop Walter Kasper to support the notion that only those who adhere to the common statements in JDDJ are not anathematized by the Council of Trent. In a similar way, ’44 of the 1995 draft of JDDJ itself states, “Nothing is thereby taken away from the seriousness of the condemnations related to the doctrine of justification. They did not simply or altogether miss the point. Where the basic consensus is not adhered to [the condemnations] still apply today.” Since JDDJ has no doctrinal standing in either the Roman Church or in the “ecclesial communities” of the Lutheran World Federation, as the Roman Church understands them, adherence to JDDJ is purely a private matter of personal preference. WA 39, 1: 205, 20B22; see Menacher, “Clarity,” 5 – 26 and Menacher, “Ebeling’s Kirchenkampf,” 19 – 20. See Illegaler, 132, 138; also Gerhard Ebeling, Kirchenzucht (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1947), 9 – 16; D III, 196 – 197, 207 – 209, 236 – 240; epd-Dokumentationen #7/98, 1.

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come after us a life that is open for theology and a theology that is helpful for life as it is given and promised to us by you. Amen.132

132 “Leben,” 166.

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Index of Names

Aalen, Leiv 85, 92 Althaus, Paul (Jr.) 9, 10, 13, 56, 69, 94, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, passim 136 – 54, 159, 160, 179, 197, 202, 209, 221, 224, 235, 271, 272 Althaus, Paul (Sr.) 136 f. Assel, Heinrich 61, 67, 179, 180 Augustine 124, 167, 168, 256 Aul¦n, Gustaf 27 (n. 49), 293 Bachmann, E. Theodore 94, (n. 5), 163 Barth, Karl 9, 32, 56, 94, 100, 106, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 133, 138, 142, 144, 145, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 158, 183, 184, 185, 191, 192, 194, 198, 199, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 217, 219, 221, 224, 229, 233, 245, 270, 281, 285, 292, 296, 297, 299, 300, 308 Baur, Ferdinand Christian 192, 258 – 60 Bea, Augustin 158, 164 Beitz, William 49 ff. Bethge, Eberhard 224, 232 (n. 23), 237 f. Billing, Einar 300, 301 Böhme, Jakob 97, 102 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 9, 10, 13, 15, 56, 67, 68, 111 (n. 53), 157, 158, 184, 185, 197, 221, passim 223 – 46, 268, 275, 311 f. Braaten, Carl 289, 308 (n. 7) Brunner, Emil 183, 184, 202, 203, 204 (n. 32), 224, 311 Bultmann, Rudolf 13, 14, 68, 150, 152, 178, 180, 187, 189, 190, 194, 250, 255,

257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 264, 268, 281, 282, 285, 289, 292, 299, 300, 311 Calvin, John 22, 28, 65, 107, 123, 132, 133, 147, 168, 172, 285 von Campenhausen, Hans 197 (n. 7), 272 Dahl, Lina Tellefsdatter See Hallesby, Lina. Doberstein, John W. 274 f. Ebeling, Gerhard 9, 10, 14, 15, 189, 274, 278, 307 – 34 Ebeling, Kometa 311, 313, 317 Eberhard, Ilse See Iwand, Ilse. Elert, Annemarie 98 Elert, August 96 Elert, Friederike 96 Elert, Werner 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 93 – 135, 136, 139, 140, 145, 146, 159, 160, 167, 172, 179, 197 (n. 7), 202, 209, 221, 235, 271, 272, 289 Engelder, Theodore 19 (n. 5), 106 (n. 47), 170 Erasmus, Desiderius 170, 176, 241 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 253, 254, 255 Ficker, Johannes 60 f. Frank, Franz Hermann R. 84, 98, 103, 137, 151 (n. 67), 234 (n. 33) Froböß, Annemarie See Elert, Annemarie. Graham, Billy 270, 276

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Index of Names

Hallesby, Anders 70 Hallesby, Anne Marie (Mia) 72 Hallesby, Anne Marie 72 Hallesby, Christen 72 Hallesby, Christian Andersen 70 Hallesby, Helge 72 Hallesby, Johan 70 Hallesby, Lina 70 Hallesby, Ole 12, 15, 70 – 92 Harms, Ludwig Claus 11, 20 Hauge, Hans Nielsen 12, 70 Hegel, G.W.F. 8, 9, 16, 102, 178, 193, 253, 254 Heim, Karl 138, 153, 182, 274 Hensel, Paul 54 Hensel, Philemon 54 Hermann, Marie-Luise See Thielicke, Marie-Luise. Hermann, Rudolf 56, 67, 68, 180, 181, 182, 184, 271 Hirsch, Emanuel 56, 67, 68, 142, 179, 180, 272 Hitler, Adolf 13, 94, 110, 111, 114 – 17, 122, 142, 145, 146, 195, 197 (n. 7), 210 (n. 62), 225, 250, 254, 256, 273 Hoefling, Johann W.F. 10, 26 (n. 42) Hofmann, Johannes C.K. von 10, 94 (n. 6), 97, 98, 101, 104, 118, 136 Holl, Karl 10, 12, 13, passim 56 – 69, 107, 137, 156, 179, 180, 182, 183, 224 Ihmels, Ludwig 72, 83, 84, 97, 98, 103 Irenaeus 14, 292 – 96, 298, 299, 206 Iwand, Hans Joachim 9, 10, 13, 56, 67, 68 passim 178 – 94, 266 Iwand, Ilse 183 Iwand, Lydia 180 Iwand, Otto 180 Jaspers, Karl 260, 272, 280 Jordahl, Leigh 19 (n. 9), 25 (n. 40), 32 (n. 75), 36 (n. 92), 39

Kähler, Martin 138, 149, 150, 179, 285 Kant, Immanuel 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 28, 102, 178, 188, 189, 190 (n.49), 194, 253, 254 Käsemann, Dietrich 252 Käsemann, Elisabeth 253, 269 Käsemann, Ernst 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 185, passim 249 – 70 Käsemann, Margrit 251, 269 Kierkegaard, Søren 9, 10, 142, 224 Koehler, Amalia 41 Koehler, Appolonia 39 Koehler, John Philipp 11, 48 (as “Philipp Schick”) Kretzmann, Paul 35 (n. 89), 170 Kühn, Ulrich 332 f. Lessing, Gotthold 14, 28, 281 Løgstrup, Knud 297, 299 Löhe, Wilhelm 20, 21 (n. 16), 156, 161, 162 Luther, Martin 12, 24, 29, 38, 41, 46, 51, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 85, 97, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 114, 115, 127, 129, 131, 133, 139, 142, 147, 148, 156, 166, 169, 170, 174, 175, 176, 170, 179, 182, 183, 186, 194, 224, 237, 239, 240, 241, 246, 256, 268 f., 279, 280, 284, 294, 295, 298, 301, 308, 309, 310, 312, 315, 317, 319, 320, 321, 324, 325, 326, 328, 333 Maimela, S.S. 128, 132 (n. 101) Marcion 128, 292, 293 Meiser, Hans 197 (n. 7), 161, 183 Melanchthon, Philip 60, 61, 62, 107, 108, 109, 123, 148, 172, 285 Moltmann, Jürgen 9, 152, 193 Müller, Ludwig 112 (n. 56), 197 (n. 7), 235, 250 Naumann, Charlotte lotte.

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See Sasse, Char-

Index of Names Niemöller, Martin 147 (n. 48), 228, 233, 235, 250, 251 Nygren, Anders 293, 294, 299, 300, 306 Pannenbeg, Wolfhart 9, 32, 152, 154, 218 Peterson, Erik 250, 254 f., 256, 260, 263, 268 Pieper, August 17, 26 (n. 42), 38, 40, 41, 42, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53 Pieper, Francis 11, 12, 17 – 36, 37, 170 Pieper, Reinhold 17, 47 Preus, Herman 163, 167 Preus, Robert 161, 171, 172 Preuss, Hans 173, 271 Procksch, Otto 94, 159, 173, 271 Richner, Kometa See Ebeling, Kometa. Riddervold, Anne Marie See Hallesby, Anne Marie (Mia). Riddervold, Julius 72 Ritschl, Albrecht 59, 103, 179, 182, 188, 189, 285 Rocholl, Rudolph 97 Rohlfing, Amalia See Koehler, Amalia. Rückert, Hans 316, 318 Sasse, Charlotte 156 Sasse, Hermann 13, 32, 93 (n. 4), 106, 155 – 77, 226, 235, 236, 289 Schaller, John 38, 41, 48, 52, 53 (n. 43) Schick, Appolonia See Koehler, Appolonia Schjelderup, Kristian 80 Schlatter, Adolf 137, 250, 260, 262, 263 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 26 (n.42), 28, 31, 34, 83, 102, 103, 104, 118, 153, 178, 191, 225, 226, 281, 285 Schlink, Edmund 13, 15, 195 – 222 Schniewind, Julius 183, 271

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Seeberg, Erich 179, 180, 181, 182 Seeberg, Reinhold 57, 97, 125, 156 Seim, Jürgen 266, 267 Skibbe, Eugene 196, 197 (n. 7) Prager, Sophie 57 Spengler, Oswald 98, 99, 103, 104, 106 Spurgeon, Charles Haddon 275 f., 287 Stange, Carl 83, 137, 138, 151, 179, 180 Strathmann, Hermann 159, 160, 271 Strauss, David Friedrich 21 (n. 18), 28, 118 Stoeckhardt, George 38, 41, 42, 48 Tappert, Theodore 163, 165 Thielicke, Helmut 14, 140, 154, 270 – 90, 317 Thielicke, Marie-Luise 272 Thomasius, Gottfried 10, 125 Tillich, Paul 68, 153, 270, 281, 289 Trillhaas, Wolfgang 112 (n. 55), 141, 154, 271 Troeltsch, Ernst 107, 108, 110 von Harnack, Adolph 57, 125, 156 von Harnack, Theodosius 12, 97 von Loewenich, Walther 111 (n. 52), 136, 139, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147, 154, 271 Walther, C.F.W. 11, 18, 19, 21, 22, 26 (n. 45), 29 (n. 60), 37, 40, 41, 44, 46 Weber, Max 107, 110 Weigle, Wilhelm 249, 254, 255 Wingren, Teresia 291 Wingren, Gustaf 9, 10, 14, passim 291 – 307 Wurm, Theophil 197 (n. 7), 272, 273, 282 (n. 27) Zeller, Samuel 72, 90 Zwingli, Ulrich 28, 109, 140, 172

© 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550458 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550459

List of Contributors

Michael Albrecht Pastor Saint James Evangelical Lutheran Church West St. Paul, Minnesota Mary Elizabeth Anderson Assistant Professor of Religion Saint Olaf College Northfield, Minnesota Torleiv Austad Professor Emeritus Department of Theology Norwegian School of Theology, MF Oslo, Norway Matthew Becker Associate Professor of Theology Valparaiso University Valparaiso, Indiana Richard H. Bliese President, retired Luther Seminary Saint Paul, Minnesota Roy A. Harrisville Professor Emeritus Department of New Testament Luther Seminary Saint Paul, Minnesota

© 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550458 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550459

List of Contributors

Mark C. Mattes Professor of Theology and Philosophy Grand View University Des Moines, Iowa Mark D. Menacher Pastor Saint Luke’s Lutheran Church La Mesa, California John Pless Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology and Missions Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana David P. Scaer Professor of Systematic Theology Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana Hans Schwarz Professor Emeritus Faculty of Evangelical Theology University of Regensburg Regensburg, Germany Gregory A. Walter Associate Professor of Religion Saint Olaf College Northfield, Minnesota

© 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550458 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550459

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