Theological Origins of Modernity

luther and the storm of faith 115
but the devil. Indeed, for Luther, existence is a continual and unceasing
war between God and the devil for possession of man. Satan is pictured
as the ruler of this world and God the ruler of heaven. While on the surface
this notion seems quasi-Manichean, at the heart of things this cannot
be the case, since Satan for Luther must ultimately also be in God’s service.
Behind Satan lies the hidden mystery of absolute divine sovereignty. 48 Th e
question of demonic forces for Luther is thus only the obverse of the question
of God. If God is omnipotent, how can he not be the source of evil?
How can he also not be the devil?
Luther’s solution to this problem is to insist that we focus not on a theology
of glory but on a theology of the cross, not on a hidden and inexplicable
God who wills all things but on God as he reveals himself to us in
Scripture. We must see, in other words, the incarnate God. In Christ, the
hidden God conceals his majesty and transforms it into its opposite, weakness
on the cross. 49 Th is revealed God in Luther’s view is more familiar
to us and we can love him for the suff ering he underwent on our behalf.
Human beings, according to Luther, are as unable to completely know the
concealed God in all his power and glory as to please him. Th erefore it is
necessary to let God be God and man be man. 50 It is necessary for humans
to leave aside all speculation as to the hidden purposes of God and confi
ne their attention to what God has revealed and affi rmed in his word, to
focus on “God preached” and to leave alone “God not preached,” that is,
the hidden God or deus absconditus. 51 Everything God reveals of himself
transcends human comprehension, and humans must therefore humbly
accept God’s interpretation rather than their own. 52
Th e revealed God is thus the center of Luther’s theology, and his Incarnation
connects heaven and earth. For Luther, Christ functions as a
mediator between God and man, replacing the saints, while God himself
recedes into darkness. 53 Christ is God and Christ is man, but it is this connection
to man that is decisive. He is not a distant and unfeeling being,
as nominalism at times imagined him. Indeed, according to Luther, he
understood to the bitter end what it meant to be human. 54 Christ crucifi
ed thus becomes the basis of the Reformation. Luther believes that in our
pain and suff ering, and in the midst of our doubts, we can be comforted
by the fact that Christ himself suff ered and doubted. Th us, “to contemplate
Jesus is to be reminded in the midst of the most radical kind of doubt and
fear that God is with us.” 55 God is not only with us but he has promised
us salvation if we believe in him. Luther’s theology in this way grows out
of Staupitz’s claim that God owed salvation to those who believed in him
and is akin to Bernard’s mystical contemplation of Jesus. Luther’s problem,