Book of Faith: Lutherans Read the Bible

I was part of an ELCA consultation in January on the above mentioned topic. This initiative is in response to a memorial from the North Carolina Synod and also responds in part to the divergent and puzzling ways in which ELCA Lutherans read the Bible in the recent debates about homosexuality. There were sixty or more of us there—pastors, teachers, associates in ministry, churchwide officials, Augsburg Fortress representatives, and lay people—tossing around ideas about Lutheran hermeneutics, the Bible in worship and preaching, the Bible in the training of the young, and the like. It was a warm up for a five-year initiative aimed to foster Bible reading in the ELCA and to clarify how we might read the Bible for and from its center. So: Lutherans, read the Bible! And: Here’s how Lutherans should read the Bible! The articles in this issue focus on how Luther read the Bible to construct his theology and on the Bible itself.

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen explains in detail the new perspective on Luther developed by Tuomo Mannerma and other Finnish theologians. Luther’s understanding of salvation, in this view, can be expressed not only in terms of the doctrine of justification, but also in terms of Christ’s real presence in us. Justification for Luther means a “real-ontic” participation in God through the indwelling of Christ in the heart of the believer through the Spirit. Luther himself did not make a distinction between forensic and effective justification, but he argued that justification includes both. Through grace the sinner is declared righteous, and through “gift” a person is made righteous. Therefore, justification means not only sanctification, but also good works. The new perspective on Luther has helped recover pneumatological resources in the Reformer’s theology. Hence spirituality is an essential part of Lutheran theology and piety. Since Christians are living in the world they are involved with people who are sinful and less than perfect. Therefore, the church of Christ in the world can not be anything else except a hospital for the incurably sick.

In response to Kärkkäinen’s address, given at the 2006 Leadership Conference at LSTC, Lisa Dahill notes that many people interested in spirituality do not turn first to Luther. Lutheran theology and spirituality since the Reformation have shunned pieties of glory, reminding other Christians that the greatest saint is still always a sinner. But the Finnish Luther research allows Lutherans to speak from the heart of our own tradition about sanctification, participation in the very life of God, and union with the indwelling Christ. The primary gift of this approach is a renewed and robust Lutheran conception of the relationship between the believer and Jesus Christ. Jesus intends our union with himself to be a love pervading our entire being. This response to Kärkkäinen, however, challenges the idea that every person already knows how to love oneself. It is because of a lack of authentic self-love that people fall into the compulsion of narcissism. We are unable to pay attention to Jesus in our own experience because we think we should transcend ourselves and be solely oriented to others’ needs. The heart of the practice of discernment is radical: God’s deepest desire is always my health, liberation, and salvation—and that of the world.

Richard D. Swanson retells the infancy narratives of Jesus, drawing on his own experience of performing the Gospel of Luke and endeavoring to reconstruct these stories in their Jewish milieu. Name etymologies play a role in understanding Jewish names in the story (note the spellings Mariam for Mary and Elisheva for Elizabeth), as do kinship, seen through the lens of Native America culture. What would Mary say were she to look on the ways we have accommodated our hopes to a world that insists on remaining upside-down? Luke knew that the messiah could only be born in the depths of disaster. The story of Mary and Elizabeth invents us as people who have a family that holds us as we demand that God’s promises be kept, it waits with us as we wait, and works with us as we work to turn whatever we can right-side-up.

Jeffrey K. Mann investigates Luther’s treatment of the Holy Spirit in regard to justification and sanctification. Faith is something done for us and within us by the Spirit of God, but the believer is not a passive agent. Faith does not save, but it is the means through which God grants salvation. The grace one receives from God is the change in one’s status before God. The gift is the internal change, through faith, which assists the person in overcoming sin. It is gratitude to God for what Christ did on Calvary that is the basis of sanctification. Luther was convinced that a religious message that did not proclaim the complete forgiveness of sins without any human work or merit could not produce the genuine and free acts of love that come from believing the gospel. Luther’s desire to glorify God in his discussion of sanctification has been used to justify moral apathy or quietism among some of his followers. Luther told his congregation in Wittenberg that he would stop preaching in their church if he did not witness greater fruit among the faithful. There is a danger that the law will lose its accusing nature and simply become advocacy for the social agenda of the church.

Paul S. Chung discusses the relationship between Christian mission and non-Christian cultures and religions and the need for a new mission paradigm. For Luther the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit are the basis for the mission of the Son and the Spirit for the world. Luther’s Trinitarian theology calls for prophetic diakonia, discipleship, and willingness to conform to the prophetic way of Jesus Christ in the world. Luther’s understanding of people as the created co-workers of God encourages us to take seriously the liberating dimension of Christian mission by challenging the injustice of the socio-economic order. God cooperates with human beings for the preservation of creation, while rejecting this cooperation in regard to justification. In modern mission studies, the relationship between Christianity and world religions has become a major topic. Several proposals on this question suggest a universal relativizing of all different religions and faith orientations. Luther reflected on the irregular grace of God as seen in the other. Christian mission is ultimately a witness to the work of the Triune God in Jesus Christ for the sake of the world. Within the framework of God’s mission, the other religions should be recognized as signposts in preparation for the coming of God’s eschatological salvation announced by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God’s irregular voice from religious others helps enrich and deepen the universal message of the Gospel.

As several pointed out at the ELCA consultation, a five year initiative on the Bible does not mean that we should stop reading the Bible after five years. Gerhard Ebeling once pointed out that church history is in many respects a history of how the church has interpreted the Bible. Future church history will be shaped by the same question—how we interpret the Bible and how often we read it. Henry David Thoreau once remarked that he knew of no book that had such universal favor and so few readers. We hope and expect that writers in Currents in the next five years will have much to say on the topic: "Bible: Book of Faith." Consider this an invitation to you loyal readers to join the discussion on these pages.

Ralph W. Klein
Editor

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