Theological Origins of Modernity

114 chapter four
than Christian humanists such as Erasmus. Reason, and particularly
syllogistic reason, cannot come to terms with God, for when the mind
tries to think its way to God it arrives at a dead end. 43 In the same vein
natural theology fails because it assumes an analogical relation between
creator and creation that does not exist. Moreover, both act blasphemously
in seeking to understand God when he does not vouchsafe knowledge of
himself. Th ey are really only forms of sinful human pride. 44 Luther also
rejects the two other traditional paths to God, ecstatic mysticism and fi deism.
Ecstatic mysticism in his view is dangerously subjective and blasphemously
imagines a human capacity to climb up to God or to throw oneself
into the abyss of divine being. Fideism, by contrast, rests on a skepticism
that is ultimately atheistic and a reliance on religious traditions that are
oft en contradictory and mistaken.
Luther’s understanding of God rests on the recognition of God’s absolute
sovereignty, that is, upon the nominalist notion of divine omnipotence.
What follows from this? In Luther’s view literally everything, that
is to say, everything that occurs happens as a result of God’s willing it to
be so. Th e purposes of such an all-overpowering God, in Luther’s view,
are necessarily unfathomable: “For as in His own nature God is immense,
incomprehensible, and infi nite, so to man’s nature He is intolerable.” 45 He
argues that we thus must abstain even from a search into God’s majesty,
for as the Scriptures make clear, “No man may see me and live.” God’s
power is so profound and inexplicable that it would destroy the man who
sought to comprehend it. God thus conceals his majesty—he is a hidden
God, a deus absconditus.
Th is was the God that so terrifi ed the young Luther, the omnipotent
and transrational God of nominalism. In Luther’s later thought this God is
superseded although he is never truly eliminated. Indeed, this hidden God
remains the controlling if incomprehensible force behind all things, and in
his unpredictable omnipotence generates a vast and irremediable unease
that is strengthened by Luther’s insistence that it not be considered. 46 Only
this God is truly free, and the grounds of his actions are totally beyond
human ken. For us, he is thus not a personal God at all but resembles the
Greek concept of fate governing and determining all things. 47
Th e diffi culty with such a notion of divine omnipotence is that it makes
God responsible not only for all of the good in the world but for all of the
evil as well. Augustine sought to solve this problem by attributing freedom
to the human will in order to free God from the imputation of doing or
causing evil. Luther’s denial of human freedom removes this as a possible
explanation for him. Th e source of evil for Luther is neither man nor God