05-4 Theology of the..

20 LOGIA
human nature of Jesus Christ our Lord. The whole state of humiliation
is a concealment of God in Christ.
There is no knowing God apart from this revelation of himself
in Christ. 43 There can be no finding God-as-he-is-in-himself.
That is the God of wrath only. Luther encouraged attention to the
larva Dei (mask of God) under which a merciful God cloaked
himself that we might grasp him in his grace:
The heathen speak with God apart from the word and
promises, according to the ideas of their heart, but the
prophets speak with the God who is invested with his
promises and his word and who reveals himself through
them. This God, invested with such a gentle and such a
pleasing appearance and such a pleasing guise [larva], so to
speak—that is, with his promises—can be apprehended
and looked at by us with joy and confidence. God the
Absolute, however, is an iron wall against which we cannot
rush without destroying ourselves. That is why the devil is
anxiously trying day and night to get us to run up against
God as such [nudi Dei], to forget the promises and benefactions
shown us in Christ, and to think about God and the
judgment of God. When we do this, we are promptly lost
and we fall into despair. 44
The theology of the cross is the theology of the incarnation.
Because God conceals himself under the cross, the revelation of
God in Christ is an object of faith. It can only be received by faith.
The Child born of Mary is God, not because he appears to be so,
but because God reveals him to be so to faith.
A Revelation of the Word
Just as God in Christ is cloaked in flesh, so too the word of
Scripture is cloaked in human words and set on the plane of
human history. There can be no supra-historical or “mythical”
word in the theology of the cross. Scripture is human words
revealing the very mind and heart of God. Only faith is capable of
receiving these words as the words of God. There can be no division
between the human words and the divine intention. All the
words and only the words are God’s revelation of himself. 45
A Revelation of the Church
Because the church resides under the cross, the church too partakes
of hiddenness. The church is a spiritual kingdom whose
weapons are spiritual and whose foes are unseen. Thus the
church can only be a kingdom of faith, both defined in extent by
faith and only perceived through faith. The kingdom of Christ is
a great offense to the human will and heart, for humans seek the
kingdom of glory and stumble over the wretched little band that
is the church under the sign of the wretched, dying God of Calvary.
Lutheranism has always taught the church’s invisibility, not
as a theological truth as separate from other truths, but as an integral
part of the theology of the cross. 46
Loewenich pointed out in his book that this is the basis for
Luther’s rejection of church tradition as a source of truth. For the
true church is hidden and has always been a “forsaken city.” 47 The
church and her cross is the jewel forgotten under the visible
church’s straw and stubble. She is the pearl of great price, the
treasure hidden under the field of the world. The true church is
identifiable by its cross. In this sense the cross and its suffering is a
mark of the church.
If the church is hidden under the cross, her true spiritual gifts
must also be hidden. Loewenich observes, “Like the reality of
Christ, the reality of the Holy Spirit is a hidden reality.” 48 Her true
good works are hidden under the cloak of suffering and are not
open to sense, indeed carnal, perception. “The Lord knows the
way of the righteous” (Ps 1:6) teaches that Christian virtue is a
thing known to God and not to human reason. 49
Because God conceals himself under
the cross, the revelation of God in
Christ is an object of faith.
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The suffering and cross of the church brings her to the brink of
glory, much in the same way that the continuum between insanity
and mental brilliance seem to meet at opposite ends of the
spectrum, the mad being close to brilliant, the brilliant being
close to mad. The church comes through the worst suffering to
the brink of glory. Cloaked under the forms of word and sacraments,
the church has the dowry of eternal life.
The sacraments are also a cloaking of God’s gracious presence.
Here the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ our
Lord. 50 Here the water connected with the word is a washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, not simple water
only. The theology of the cross is the Christian way of life. The
Christian is constantly “being crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20).
Being crucified with Christ takes place in two ways: inwardly
through mortification, and outwardly through the enmity of the
world. 51 Inwardly this takes place by repentance, which is the constant
use of Holy Baptism. Outwardly the Christian seeks to be
conformed to the cruciform shape of Christ and thus incurs the
enmity of the world, which seeks to shape the Christian into its
perverse form. One can certainly see the extensive use to which
Luther and Lutheranism put this pivotal concept within justification.
The theology of the cross served to norm and interpret
other loci of the faith. 52 CONCLUSION
The article of justification “contains within itself the germs of the
leading doctrines of the Christian faith.” 53 If that is true, the content
and nature of American Evangelicalism is brought into serious
question. Justification has a limiting and norming authority
among Lutherans, as it has had at critical junctures in church history.
54 This use of justification challenges the meaning of the
authority of scripture for evangelicals, who have tended to take a
biblicistic approach to the authority of the Bible. If nothing else,
Scripture and justification are coordinated principles of authority
for Lutherans. Evangelicals would only grant that justification
should have a place under scripture along with the other doctrines
taught in the Bible. Few evangelicals would be comfortable