05-4 Theology of the..

JUSTIFICATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR EVANGELICALISM 23
Scylla of mysticism and Charybdis of works righteousness. “So we
are taught here to believe in hope against hope. This wisdom of the
cross is today exceedingly hidden in a deep mystery. Nor is there
any other way to heaven than this cross of Christ. Therefore we
must beware that the active life with its works and the contemplative
life with its speculations do not lead us astray. Both are very
attractive and peaceful, but for that reason also dangerous, until
they are tempered by the cross and disturbed by adversaries. But
the cross is the safest of all. Blessed is he who understands it.” WA 5:
84; quoted in Loewenich, 120.
43. Reformed theology is a theology of glory in its rejection of
the doctrine of the personal union. Reformed theology reasons
from an abstract view of God, resulting in a functional dissolution
of the unio personalis. The same problem arises in the Reformed
doctrine of predestination which seeks to pry into the hidden will
of God, to get beyond the cloak of revelation into the pandora’s box
of God-as-he-is-in-himself.
44. WA 40 2 : 392–393.
45. The rejection of the personal union shows up again in the
cloak of old-fashioned liberalism and neo-orthodoxy, which both
purport to find the hidden meaning behind the words of the text.
They are both theologies of glory, and ultimately they lead away
from the cross and the gospel.
46. Therefore there can be no succumbing to the desire to
measure the success of the church’s mission outreach like one
counts cattle at the stock yards, by the head. Kurt Marquart,
“Church Growth” as Mission Paradigm: A Lutheran Assessment
(Houston: Luther Academy, 1994), 119–120.
47. AE 17: 186; quoted in Loewenich, 127.
48. Loewenich, 116.
49. Therefore all appeals to objective instruments for pointing
out spiritual gifts are illegitimate. All false spirituality stumbles on
the offense of the cross.
50. The visible church must continue to place itself under the
suffering of the cross if it is to remain a church of the cross. As
Luther points out, the church must continue to practice in accordance
with the suffering that the cross brings. Facile answers, leading
to false and lax practice in the church, do not bear the cross.
51. Loewenich, 121.
52. The Swiss Reformed theologian Emil Brunner, even
though he was committed to an unhappy, albeit mild, existential-
ist personalism, was constrained to admit the centrality of the
article of justification in theology. He agreed with Luther that justification
is the center of the faith and takes precedence over “all
other articles of faith” [WA 28: 271]. If in fact the articles of faith
“are to be expressions of faith, they must proceed from this centre
(justification) and refer to this as their point of origin. The special
thing about faith in justification is just the coincidence of god’s
self-communication and man’s self-understanding, the identity
of the objective-historical element of revelation and the existential-subjective
element of self-understanding. This coincidence,
however, means nothing less than a description of the fundamental
form of statements of faith in general; namely, that they must
at the same time be related to history and be existential. Anything
that has not this fundamental form is thus not a statement of
faith at all.
This means on the one hand that all statements of faith must
be Christological, developed from the centre, Jesus Christ. ...
From this standpoint the whole programme of Christian doctrine
can be seen as an expression and unfolding of justifying faith.” Emil
Brunner, Dogmatics, vol. 3, The Christian Doctrine of the Church,
Faith, and the Consummation, trans. David Cairns and T. H. L.
Parker (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962), 209–210.
53. McGrath, “The Article by which the Church Stands or
Falls,” 213.
54. McGrath lists these four consequences of the normative
nature of the article of justification: “(1) the saving action of God in
Christ is declared to be at the heart of the Christian faith, and the
priority of soteriological considerations in matters of theology,
ethics and piety thereby asserted; (2) any necessary presuppositions
or consequences of the article must be regarded as being de fide; (3)
any doctrines which are necessarily excluded by the article must be
regarded as non-Christian or anti-Christian; (4) any matters on
which the principle has no direct bearing must either be regarded
as adiaphora, or as matters to be resolved by the application of
other, secondary, criteria.” “The Article by which the Church
Stands or Falls,” 213.
55. See Bloesch, 1: 163–64.
56. See Bloesch, 1: 185, 201.
57. See David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: Or, Whatever
Happened to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
1993).