04-2 Hermeneutics.pdf

54 LOGIAthe curse of the law, he suffered the act of “justification,”he died as the representative of all people, and therebyestablished peace between men and God. The only possibilityfor a person to become righteous before God liesin partaking of the “alien” righteousness of Christ. ...It is decisive for faith that the righteousness hereimputed is an alien one: alien righteousness is basedextra nos [outside us]. This alien righteousness exists ofitself, before it is spoken to us. First comes the “alienrighteousness” and then the “imputative righteousness.”A person is passive over against righteousness. “Alienrighteousness” is his “passive righteousness.” It is identicalwith the forgiveness of sins. In this connection,Christ is our righteousness. For God, he is simply man.In all things he shares our humanity and God declares aperson free in him (p. 196).Elert took up Luther’s concept of the joyful exchange between thebeliever and Christ.For Elert, a complete exchange takes place betweenChrist and the individual in faith. This exchange isbrought about by the Holy Ghost. ...As seen by man,faith, Christ, and justification are all one. As seen byGod, Christ, justification, and the believer are all one.Therefore, God can see Christ when he looks uponus....Becoming one with Christ means theindwelling of Christ within us but not our dissolutionin Christ (p. 200).The Opening up of CreationIn spite of concern for the environment and related issues,there has been a sad absence of a theology of the First Article.This has been partly because of the veto power against naturaltheology exercised by Karl Barth. But Elert supplies what is lackingin his theology, which links creation with justification as thenew creation.Aside from faith, there can be no certainty of salvation; faithcannot be separated from either the believer or from its content.Eyjólfsson quotes Morphologie 1:78:The subject of decision is the condemned ego, the transcendentalego, that lives only in faith and from faith inChrist, which without him, however, is subjected to thejudgment of death. The decision of faith therefore isbetween the alternatives of life or death in the strictsense. But the person who would decide in favor ofdeath has thereby destroyed himself or rather does notcome to life. But to the person who really accepts theWord of God in Christ, forgiveness applies to him.There is no longer place for a despairing question, forwith doubt the accepting ego would be obliterated. Theunquestioned applicability of the Gospel is identicalwith the certainty of faith.This interdependence of faith, justification, and Christ indicatesthe context for faith as a decision (p. 206).God does not reveal himself in revelation; what is revealed isonly the encounter with God in law and gospel. Elert distinguishedbetween Gottes-Kenntnis and Gottes-Erkenntnis. Kenntnis is aknowledge without risk and involves keeping one’s distance; Erkenntnisdemands personal involvement and the renunciation of one’sMittelpunktsdasein, one’s neutrality or sitting in the middle. Godremoves himself from every attempt to examine him as an object,where one could only stand before the Deus absconditus. Theattempt to achieve Kenntnis of God ends up in only the Erkenntnisof the world and leaves one before the law. The revelation in thegospel is the only way to come to the Erkenntnis of God. But thisdemands faith. Therefore, there can only be Erkenntnis in faith (p.211). Out of faith comes the Erkenntnis of faith; faith is not theresult of Erkenntnis but its presupposition. This in turn is alwaysrelated to Christ. Faith means that I know that God means me withthe word of atonement; the promise of justification applies to me.It is given “for you” (p. 212).“Justification means basically the restoration of the lost imageof God in man.” The image of God consists in man’s accountabilitybefore God. The restoration of the image therefore means therestoration of accountability before God, and this restores the originalrelationship between God and man, which takes place by theindwelling of Christ in the believer. The individual becomes justifiedbefore God, a creatio ex nihilo (p. 215). Thereby, like Christ wecome to the fullness of freedom in God.Justification brings new freedom of the person who is inChrist. In Elert, freedom is always in relation to something else.Otherwise, one would come to the curse of disorientation likeCain; freedom must be in connection with one’s relationship toGod.Christ freed our egocentricity from sin and therebyfreed the person in his totality. ... By the restoration ofthe image of God, the person participates in the vitalityof God, which not only increases one’s own, but finds itsgoal therein, to let God be “all in all.” In that case, allthat remains of the ethical, metaphysical, and aesthethicdistance are removed, and our vitality becomes identicalwith God’s (p. 217).This freedom can only exist within the context of love. “Thefreedom of love, to which people have been made free, reflects therelation of freedom and will that God himself has revealed inJesus Christ.... ‘Life in freedom and love is eternal life because itis the life of Christ and the life of God himself’” (p. 218).For Elert, the freedom of the believer cannot be onlyfreedom from something, but it is always freedom forsomething: namely, freedom to follow Christ. Because inour relation to the world we are free from the ties[Bindungen] of the law, and the world no longer has anypower over us, we believers simultaneously enter into anew connection with the ties of the world. Like Christ,the believer is bound to all earthly restrictions, a thingthat can also bring suffering. The forgiveness of sins isthe freedom of a person from the world in the freedomof following Christ for the world (pp. 218–219).