05-4 Theology of the..

JUSTIFICATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR EVANGELICALISM 19
rather a forensic or declaratory righteousness. For Luther justification
was the verdict by which God declared a sinner to be not
guilty, acquitted, on account of Christ, through faith alone.
The Centrality of Justification
Martin Luther made justification central to the whole theological
program: “articulus justificationis est magister et princeps,
dominus, rector et judex super omnia genera doctrinarum, qui
conservet et gubernat omnem doctrinam ecclesiasticam et erigit
conscientiam nostram coram Deo.” 32 In the Smalcald Articles,
Luther identified the article of justification as the Hauptartikel
along with the article of the person of Christ. Justification is Christology
and Christology is justification for Martin Luther (SA II, I,
1; II, II, 25). In this confession of faith Luther used the doctrine of
justification as a critical tool to repulse every false practice and
every human pretense before God (SA III, XIV, 1; cf. LC Preface).
Three major shifts in Luther’s doctrine of justification in his
lectures on Romans from 1519 have been identified by Alister
McGrath. First, Luther said that man is pure passive (purely passive)
in his justification. This means that a man is a subiectum
patiens (suffering subject) in his conversion. 33 While previously
Luther taught that man could turn toward God in his conversion
with the help of grace, now Luther taught that God turns to
man. 34 Here Luther is attempting only to rule out all synergism.
He is not implying that man is treated by God like an inanimate
object or other created being. 35 Second, Luther declared that
man’s will was held captive to grace. Third, Luther rejected the
position of the nominalists that one can do quod in se est, a position
he had previously held. He asserted that such a position is
nothing other than Pelagian. He had now come upon “a radically
new understanding of how faith comes about in the first place.” 36
The Theology of the Cross
One of the ways in which Luther’s doctrine of justification was
different from Augustine’s was that for Luther God’s righteousness
was revealed by the cross of Christ. God’s wisdom, glory, and
strength are all revealed sub contrariis, 37 in ways that contradict
human expectations. 38 The theology of the cross was the distinctive
mark of Luther’s theology of justification. Thus Walther von
Loewenich wrote in his historic study Luther’s Theology of the Cross:
The theology of the cross is not a chapter in theology but a
specific kind of theology. The cross of Christ is significant
here not only for the question concerning redemption and
the certainty of salvation, but it is the center that provides
perspective for all theological statements. Hence it belongs
to the doctrine of God in the same way it belongs to the
work of Christ. 39
Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 included this thesis:
That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who
looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were
clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened.
He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who
comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen
through suffering and the cross. 40
Theology that was not practiced under the veil of the cross was
only theology in an equivocal sense for Luther. The theology of
glory could only be theology insofar as false theology could be
considered theology at all.
One of the ways in which Luther’s
doctrine of justification was different
from Augustine’s was that for Luther
God’s righteousness was revealed
by the cross of Christ.
nb
The issue is really a question of revelation. How can God reveal
himself to humans If God is wholly other, righteous, avenging,
and consuming humans in his anger against sin, then humans
need some point of contact with God that will not cause a cataclysmic
collision between sin and righteousness. It becomes
apparent that the theology of the cross presupposes man’s fallen
state. If the wound caused by the fall is spiritually fatal, then
man’s discernment of spiritual things is fatally flawed. He cannot
discern the things of God by the powers of his own reason:
The recognition of God in his grace is a revelation from
heaven and is otherwise entirely hidden to men. ... It is a
knowledge and wisdom which the Son alone has revealed
and which all the saints from the beginning of the world had
to know. Without it they would have been lost forever. 41
How then can humans know God The wound can only be
healed from God’s side of the equation. God must reveal himself
to man, otherwise humans are left groping about for God and
finding a god constructed of the things discerned by a fallen
mind. Thus only a theologian of the cross takes sin seriously and
only a theologian that takes sin seriously can be a theologian of
the cross. The theologian of the cross never trusts his own
insights but always conforms them to God’s self-revelation. The
theologian of the cross knows that the verdict of St. Paul, “If God
is true then every man is a liar” (Rom 3:4), applies to himself as
much as to any other man. The theologian of the cross knows
that he is a sinner with a fallen intellect and will. Repentance is
the constant companion of the theologian of the cross. He never
masters theology; he can only be mastered by it and so become its
servant. Man needs a sure word of prophecy from God that he
might know God as God wants to be known.
A Revelation of Christ
Since God’s true nature cannot be reached by the study of “the
visible things of God” or from speculation and contemplation
since “their minds were darkened” (Rom 1:21), God used the foolish
and weak things to reveal himself to man, 42 putting to shame
man’s pride in his perception and intellect. God employed a concealment
in which he revealed his true self. The incarnation of
Jesus our Lord was such a concealment. God was cloaked in the