Lutherrenaissance Past and Present 9783666564154, 9783647564159, 9783525564158

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Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte Edited by Volker Henning Drecoll and Volker Leppin

Volume 106

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Lutherrenaissance Past and Present Edited by Christine Helmer and Bo Kristian Holm

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

With 2 images Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISSN 0532-2154 ISBN 978-3-647-56415-9 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de © 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U. S. A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting by textformart, Göttingen Printed and bound in Germany by Hubert & Co, Göttingen Printed on non-aging paper.

Contents Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Source Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Chapter 1 Christine Helmer Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Part One Lutherrenaissance Past Chapter 2 Heinrich Assel Die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland von 1900 bis 1960 Herausforderung und Inspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Chapter 3 Christine Svinth-Værge Põder Gewissen oder Gebet Die Rezeption der Römerbriefvorlesung Luthers bei Karl Holl und Rudolf Hermann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Chapter 4 Peter Widmann Albrecht Ritschls Rückgriff auf die Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Chapter 5 Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen Mysticism in the Lutherrenaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Chapter 6 Peter Grove Adolf von Harnack and Karl Holl on Luther at the Origins of Modernity . . 106

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Contents

Part Two Lutherrenaissance Present Chapter 7 Bo Kristian Holm Resources and Dead Ends of the German Lutherrenaissance Karl Holl and the Problems of Gift, Sociality, and Anti-Eudaemonism . . . 127 Chapter 8 Jörg Lauster Luther – Apostle of Freedom? Liberal Protestant Interpretations of Luther . . 144 Chapter 9 Ronald F. Thiemann Sacramental Realism Martin Luther at the Dawn of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Chapter 10 Christine Helmer Luther, History, and the Concept of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Chapter 11 Heinrich Assel Political Theology After Luther – Contemporary German Perspectives . . . 189 Chapter 12 Marit Trelstad Charity Terror Begins at Home Luther and the “Terrifying and Killing” Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Chapter 13 Allen G. Jorgenson Luther on Reserve Reading the Torgau Sermon on Christ’s Descent into Hell and the Resurrection (1532) in North America . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Acknowledgments This volume approaches the current scholarly interest in Luther from the distinctive perspective of the Lutherrenaissance. Centered in Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century the Lutherrenaissance is significant for contemporary discussion because it shaped the reception of Luther and Lutheran theology for the rest of the century. Yet contemporary Luther scholarship, while inheriting the Lutherrenaissance’s historical and conceptual categories, is also characterized by new approaches to Luther, specifically in recent years with a global orientation. While the subject of this volume is inspired by the original Lutherrenaissance, it surveys new ways in which Luther is studied in distinct and unprecedented contexts. This project represents an international cooperation between Northwestern University and Aarhus University. We are grateful to both universities for their hospitality and generous funding of two conferences, the first in Aarhus in October 2011, the second in Evanston in April 2012. The Evanston conference featured Michael Massing’s work on Luther. Massing, whose book on the rivalry between Luther and Erasmus is forthcoming with HarperCollins, graciously consented to a robust discussion of his portrayal of Luther. We thank the authors who contributed their papers to this volume, Volker Henning Drecoll and Volker Leppin, editors of the series Forschungen für Kirchenund Dogmengeschichte at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht for consenting to publish this volume in the series, and Jörg Persch and Christoph Spill, editors at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, for facilitating the book’s publication, the latter also for assistance in the troubleshooting inevitably connected to bilingual publication. We are grateful to Jan Dietrich for assisting with the German abstracts and to Lene Kristoffersen for help in formatting the manuscript. Richard Kieckhefer drew our attention to the fifteenth-century image of Christ’s resurrection from the triptych at the Cathedral in Erfurt. Heinrich Assel and Arnold Wiebel tracked down the historic photo taken at the 1928 meeting of the Swedish-German Luther Convention in Uppsala. We recognize and are deeply grateful for Ron Thiemann’s inspiring scholarship on Luther’s theology. Ron passed away in November 2012. We thank the editors of I. B. Taurus for the permission to publish this version of chapter one of The Humble Sublime: Secularity and the Politics of Belief. A fuller account of Thiemann’s understanding of sacramental realism is provided in this book published by I. B. Tauris in 2013. 

Christine Helmer / Bo Kristian Holm

Source Abbreviations See S. M. Schwertner, Internationales Abkürzungsverzeichnis für Theologie und Grenz­gebiete (Berlin: de Gruyter, 21992). The following additions apply: AWA EvStLN GA KGA LW SBO StA WA

M. Luther, Archiv zur Weimarer Ausgabe der Werke Martin Luthers (9 vols.; Cologne/Vienna: Böhlau, 1991–2009). W. Heun/M. Honecker/M. Morlok/J. Wieland (eds.), Evangelisches Staats­ lexikon: Neuausgabe (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006). K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte (3 vols.; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 61928–1932). E. Troeltsch, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. F. W. Graf et al. (20 vols.; Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter, 1998–). M. Luther, Luther’s Works: American Edition, ed. J. Pelikan/H. T. Lehmann (55 vols.; St. Louis, Mo./Minneapolis, Minn.: Concordia/Fortress, 2002). Bernhard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq/T. H. Talbot/H. Rochais (10 vols.; Rome: Editiones Cisterciencis, 1957–1998). M. Luther, Studienausgabe, ed. H.-U. Delius (6 vols.; Berlin/Leipzig: Evan­ gelische Verlagsanstalt, 1987–1999). M. Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. J. K. F. Knaake et al. (67 vols.; Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–1997).

Chapter 1

Christine Helmer 

Introduction The centennial anniversary of Luther’s reformation in 2017 is an occasion for celebration, but more importantly for reflection and analysis too. The original event to be commemorated was – famously – bold. When Luther made the Ninety-Five Theses public, probably by nailing them to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church on the eve of All Saints’ Day, Oct. 31, 1517, he was inviting his colleagues to a public disputation. But what was intended as an academic debate was soon swept up into a process of theological, political, and social transformations, entering the popular imagination and engulfing Europe with its unforeseen consequences. Unforeseen, but perhaps not unpredictable: for Luther had not written his theses solely for the academy, but as provocations to Rome. His prose was taken as a protest against the fiscal policy of the papacy that entangled local loyalties and finances in the building of Saint Peter’s in Rome. Economics and politics, the humanist turn to the biblical text, and the turn to the philosophy of the nominalists formed the matrix in which Luther’s thought was read and interpreted. Whatever Luther’s intentions on that day in Wittenberg, however far forward he anticipated, the inaugural event of what would become the reformation soon became as well a marker for world history. The consensus in Luther scholarship is that the reformation and its break from Rome did not occur all at once, as if immediately heralded by the sound of Luther’s hammer. Yet even the most revisionist scholars must acknowledge the significance of the hammer in the popular imagination, in his time and since. Luther has come to signify much more than an angry and presumptuous monk in late medieval Wittenberg! Why is it that Luther continues to inspire people’s imaginations? How might Luther become an interlocutor again for contemporary academic concerns rather than a figure frozen in time, whether this time is called late medieval, early modern, or something in between? This book marks the fifth centennial of Luther’s action in Wittenberg by investigating it in relation to the previous centennial, one hundred years ago. This latter commemoration was itself a significant moment in modern intellectual history. Historian and theologian Karl Holl (1866–1926) introduced a new approach to Luther; an approach that would later be known by the term coined by Erich Seeberg as the Lutherrenaissance. The new interest was directed at the turn of the twentieth century towards the historical study of Luther the man and of the “reformation breakthrough” (in the era’s term of art), conceptualized at the time

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Christine Helmer 

and long after as the epochal transition from the medieval to the early modern. Holl’s historical approach to Luther was situated amid the vigorous interdisciplinary conversations taking place at the University of Berlin between the humanities and social sciences. In the view of Lutherrenaissance scholars, Luther was to be studied as a religious figure, rather than as a systematic theologian. And more: Luther would become one of the original subjects for the empirical-historical study of religion emerging at this time, as the title of one of Holl’s books makes clear, What Did Luther Understand by Religion? (1921).1 The reconceptualization of Luther and his times had a sinister side as well, which any study of the intellectual contribution of the fourth centenary must not only acknowledge, but examine in its grim implications. The “German Luther” now discovered would soon enough be touted as national hero for the intensifying patriotic sensibilities of Germany before and after the Great War. Later, the anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany would explicitly cite Luther as key political ally. We will return to this subject again below. In addition to examining the contributions of the Lutherrenaissance to the historiography of the sixteenth century and to the making of the modern study of ­religion, the contributors to this volume also address themselves to the present. Let it be acknowledged at the start here that the Luther who was an important subject of historical and sociological study at the turn of the twentieth century has lost his broad relevance in the contemporary academy. Different reasons can be cited for this: the decrease in the significance of theology in the academy; the p ­ arochial capture and sequestering of Luther by Lutherans; and the contemporary interest in the secularization of the modern West. Fully aware of Luther’s fate in the secular academy, contributors to this volume aim to revive the question of how he may be appropriated as an interlocutor in important contemporary intellectual conversations. This means that we take at least as an opening premise the ­notion that bringing Luther back into the university from his lonely exile in hagiography and church basements has the promise of making a distinctive contribution to certain urgent academic questions today. To this end, a critical retrospective of the original Lutherrenaissance of the early twentieth century offers clues as to how Luther was taken up in academic discussions in the past as well as how these debates have affected the way Lutheran theology and the broader academy view Luther today.

1 K.

Holl, What did Luther Understand by Religion?, ed. J. L. Adams/W. F. Bense (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965 [German original: “Was verstand Luther unter Religion?,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur­ Kirchengeschichte, vol. 1: Luther (Tübingen: J. C.B Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 11921; 2–31923; 4–51927; 61932 [= GA I]) 1–110]).

Introduction

13

I. Lutherrenaissance Past A pivotal moment in the trajectory of Luther scholarship was Karl Holl’s discovery of what he considered the crucial evidence for Luther’s “reformation breakthrough.” Luther’s early lectures on Romans, which the Augustinian friar had delivered originally in Wittenberg from 1515 to 1516, were first (re)discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1910 Holl moved the lectures to the center of Luther’s reformation theology. Here they have remained ever since. Holl generated new excitement in Luther studies by his use of historical and text-critical methods; rather than compressing Luther’s disparate ideas into a formal systematic theology, Holl argued that Luther’s religion, by which Holl understood Luther to have understood as his relationship with God, underwent a dramatic change that is documented in the Lectures on Romans. The new emphasis on the shift in Luther’s religious experience was from a consciousness that was rebellious and hostile towards God to a conscience ready for sacrifice and to being a mere tool of the divine will. Holl’s view thus differs from the usual way of looking at the reformation breakthrough as the shift from a terrified conscience to a conscience appeased by faith in a righteous God. It was radical, at odds with the typical view of Luther in everything from systematic theologies, to Protestant piety and selfunderstanding, to psychological models, to children’s books. For Holl, the certainty of salvation was not really a matter of comfort for the anxious soul, but the certainty of community with the divine will. The inherent problems and critical potential of Holl’s legacy is what is discussed in this volume. Despite his radical view, Holl’s legacy consists of orienting subsequent generations of Luther scholars to the historical-genetic study of Luther. Text and historical context would be read together, with the question, moreover, of Luther’s relevance for the contemporary world in full view, specifically for the evolution of Western liberal political systems and for the inner dynamics of modern subjectivity. The influence of Holl’s conceptualizations on the following century’s Luther scholarship simply cannot be over-stated. The question of the ­“reformation breakthrough” would preoccupy scholars through the 1970s. Luther’s writings (those in any case that confirmed this view) from 1509 to 1521 were marshaled in support of a developing consensus that God’s word of forgiveness was the central reformation idea, with Luther’s answer to the question that has been called by historians the question of the sixteenth century – how do I know I am saved? – as the key breakthrough. Holl’s query went beyond the confines of this one life, moreover, extending to questions about the sources of the modern world. The key terms in this historiography were continuity or rupture: Was the young Luther’s appeal to mysticism or the terrifying deus absconditus attributable to his formation as a Catholic monk or did it represent the origins of modern Christian theology? Debates among Holl, Ernst Troeltsch, and Adolf von Harnack on the subject echo down to the present day, because at stake in what appears to be a matter of religious historiography are

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fundamental questions about the making of modernity, from the origins and development of Western liberal political systems, to psychological models of the self, to the inner dynamics of modern subjectivity. There are powerful investments on all sides of the issue. Disjuncture favors the novelty of modern rationality and freedom, supporting a Protestant identity that defines itself in distinction from medieval Catholic “servitude” to the temporal and spiritual swords that is located in a newly organized “past.” How the history of the modern West, of modern Christianity, and of Christianity’s relationship to the rest of the world, are conceptualized have much to do with the question of Luther. Holl’s methodological innovations in Luther studies occurred in conjunction with the emergence of interdisciplinary discussions at the University of Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century. Holl was in close conversation with sociologist Max Weber, as was Troeltsch. Weber’s impact on Lutheran theologians would be epitomized in Troeltsch’s Social Teaching of the Christian Church. These engagements in Berlin among sociologists, ethicists, philosophers of religion, and psychologists were key to the Lutherrenaissance. They made for an intellectual and social environment of interlocking personal and intellectual relationships that had a profound impact on the development both of theology and of the emerging modern study of religion. One of the motivations of this volume of essays on the ­Lutherrenaissance is to pay homage to this ideal of academic culture while at the same time issuing an explicit invitation to contemporary theologians and scholars of religion to engage in the kind of interdisciplinary work evident a century ago, not least in relation to each other. A rich academic culture is not, unfortunately, the entirety of the story. Forged in the political context of late Wilhelmine Germany, the Lutherrenaissance acquired a distinctive political cast that would have lasting deleterious consequences for Luther scholarship, for Germany, and for the world. Theologians in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century were regarded as public intellectuals. Their political pronouncements were crucial in shaping national sentiments. The intense debate between Karl Holl and Ernst Troeltsch on the nature of political rule is one example of the public consequences of academic arguments. Troeltsch supported the emerging democratic position later institutionalized by the Weimar Republic, whereas Holl sided with the monarch, eventually joining 3000 other German professors in signing an epistolary declaration to the king in support of World War I.2 Shortly before that another leading figure of the Lutherrenaissance, Reinhold Seeberg, signed the infamous manifesto of 93 German intellectuals.3 It was this mani-

2 Erklärung

der Hochschullehrer des Deutschen Reiches (Berlin, October 23, 1914). v. Ungern-Sternberg/W. v. Ungern-Sternberg, Der Aufruf ‘An die Kulturwelt!’ Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Historische Mitteilungen, Beiheft 18; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 1996), 144–7. 3 J.

Introduction

15

festo that Karl Barth later alluded to as the point at which he turned away from liberal theology to socialism.4 Luther would henceforth be exploited as a political ally for German national interests by theologians. The worst of Luther’s theology, the violent anti-Semitism of his later years, was explicitly cited in Nazi Germany’s hateful laws against Jews, beginning with Reichskristallnacht on the night of Nov. 9, 1938, the anniversary of Luther’s birthday. Luther was used by theologians at the University of Jena to c­ reate a Bible for German Christians that had excised the Old Testament along with a hymnbook that lifted up the violent and bellicose language of some of Luther’s hymns (such as “A Mighty Fortress”) and liturgies.5 In Erlangen where Germany’s Luther scholars were concentrated in the 1930s, Paul Althaus and Werner Elert issued explicit support for the Nazi Deutsche Christen.6 Luther was actively implicated in the Holocaust by his contemporary theological advocates, and the question of Luther and anti-Semitism would rightly from this point on weigh heavily on German Luther scholars and theologians. The Lutherrenaissance had, however, a double impact. On the one hand, some theologians belonging to the Lutherrenaissance promoted a German nationalistic agenda. On the other hand, other theologians contributing to the Lutherrenaissance formed the Bekennende Kirche. Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans Joachim Iwand were students of Holl. The subject of Bonhoeffer’s dissertation Sanctorum Communio was to a large extent informed by central themes in Holl’s theology.7 Both Bonhoeffer and Iwand played a crucial role in the democratic revision of ­Lutheranism from the inside after 1945. Alongside the rise of this ever more strident German Luther were stirrings of a more global promise to the revival of Luther scholarship. Between the world wars, the Lutherrenaissance had become an international European enterprise, connecting Germany with the northern European countries associated with Lutheranism. Luther scholars in the Baltic and Nordic nations, inspired by the new interest in Luther in Germany, sought to contextualize this research in their respective political and cultural circumstances and inheritances. Early international cooperation was exemplified by the 1928 conference in Uppsala that attracted more than one hundred Luther scholars from Germany and northern Europe. In ­Sweden, the 4 The

actual story is more complicated. See an article by Wilfrid Härle that discusses Barth’s own recollection: “Der Aufruf der 93 Intellektuellen und Karl Barths Bruch mit der liberalen Theologie,” ZThK 72 (1975) 207–24. 5 S. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 6 For Elert and Althaus, among others, see J. Stayer, Martin Luther, German Saviour: German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917–1933 (McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion; Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000). 7 See H. Assel, Der andere Aufbruch: Die Lutherrenaissance – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935) (FSÖTh 72; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994).

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Christine Helmer 

The German Luther-Academy visiting Swedish Colleagues at a Convention in Uppsala from August 21–31, 1928. Carl Stange, Rudolf and Milli Hermann, and Arvid Runestam are standing in the first row. Hans Joachim Iwand and his wife Dr. jur. Ilse Ehrhardt are standing in the fourth row to the left. © With kind permission of Arnold Wiebel.

reception of the Lutherrenaissance led to a distinct research identity associated with Lund University, of which Gustav Aulén, Gustav Wingren, and Anders Nygren are regarded as its main proponents. Regin Prenter is the most important Danish representative of the Lutherrenaissance’s internationalism. The personal and intellectual ties forged across European nations by the Lutherrenaissance were severed by war, to be revived only recently in new cooperative endeavors among German, Baltic, and Nordic scholars.8 The vision of a “global Luther” as an international community of Luther scholars is work that still needs to be done, which is to say that there is an important dimension of Luther scholarship yet to be r­ecovered from the ashes.

8 H.

Assel/J. A. Steiger (eds.), Reformatio Baltica: Kulturwirkungen der Reformation in den Metropolen des Ostseeraums (forthcoming in 2016).

Introduction

17

II. Lutherrenaissance Present This book approaches the five-hundredth-centennial of Luther’s reformation in reciprocal and critical conversation with the original Lutherrenaissance of a century ago. The retrospective that looks back to the most proximate centennial is ­intended to better understand the trajectory and influence of Luther scholarship in the long twentieth century. The Lutherrenaissance was effective in forging the consensus of an historical approach to Luther. Its influence was also ambivalent, as noted. In the volume at hand, the past is viewed with the explicit purpose of understanding how Luther was engaged by particular theologians in the academic and political context of the early twentieth century; and the present is analyzed with the distinct aim of contextualizing Luther in relation to contemporary realities. Our work is shaped by the firm acknowledgement that the present is chastened by the past as much as it is inspired by it. This critical edge necessarily ­accompanies the look back at Luther in Germany in the process of looking forward to a more global Luther. If an interest in Luther is to be revived today, if Luther is to be a dynamic dialogue partner for theologians addressing new challenges in today’s global contexts, as we think he ought to be, then he must be fitted to the new discussions and contexts in which Luther scholars are working today. The contemporary situation has its particular challenges. The question concerning Luther’s impact on the history of the West – the old issue of the continuity or disjunction between Luther and the past, the medieval Luther and the early Luther – is implicated in the polarization that characterizes theology in the twentieth century, in particular the rift between dialectical and liberal theologies. The days when Luther scholars creatively and courageously engaged the full array of intellectual resources available in the academy seem to be, at least in many instances, over. The loss of a public Lutheran voice in North America, as Richard Cimino maintains in a recent edited volume, has impoverished important discussions in the public forum today.9 The question of Luther’s possible fit to new contexts is a challenge to theologians taking seriously the globalization of the Lutheran perspective.

III. Organization The book is divided into two sections. The first, “Lutherrenaissance Past,” considers Karl Holl’s ambitions for the original Lutherrenaissance at the turn of the twentieth century. The focus is on Holl, but in his relationships with other thinkers of his time. In the first chapter of this section, “Die Lutherrenaissance als bleibende Herausforderung und Inspiration,” Heinrich Assel builds on his pivotal book from 9 See R. Cimino (ed.), Lutherans Today: American Lutheran Identity in the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003).

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Christine Helmer 

199410 by approaching Holl’s study of Luther in its broader political configuration. Assel uses Holl’s search for the “German Luther” to trace the political dimensions of the Lutherrenaissance through to the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in relation to the work of theologians Emanuel Hirsch and Hans-Joachim Iwand. While Hirsch was closely allied with National Socialism in Nazi Germany, Iwand was rector of the theological seminary of the Confessing Church in Böslau (East Prussia) and in Jordan (Brandenburg) and was prohibited after 1938 to speak in public. The remaining chapters in part one focus on features of Holl’s intellectual biography that have significant implications for the shaping of Luther studies in the twentieth century. These chapters are organized by intellectual relationships, rather than by chronology, in order to work out the web of reciprocal influences that shaped the Lutherrenaissance. The discussion between Holl and Rudolf Hermann is one instance of such exchanges, centering on an interpretation of the text that Holl deemed essential to understanding Luther’s religious experience, the Lectures on Romans. As we have seen, in modern Luther studies, the popular image of Luther’s nailing of the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church is juxtaposed with Luther’s shift in experience from God’s wrath to mercy when he arrived at a new understanding of the term iustitia dei (righteousness of God) in Rom 1:17. The juxtaposition has a historically complex origin, as Christine SvinthVærge Põder shows in her chapter. Another key figure shaping the trajectory of both Luther scholarship and German theology in the twentieth century was Albrecht Ritschl (who is the subject of the chapter by Peter Widmann). Although Ritschl is not usually counted among participants in the Lutherrenaissance, he was in fact its forerunner, particularly in his influence on the rejection of mysticism (as discussed in the chapter by Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen) and on the subsequent “liberal-theological” direction that some theologians would follow. Part one of this book ends with a consideration of the origins of a question that Luther scholars would ask as a constitutive component of their scholarship throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries: Does Luther belong in the middle ages or the modern West? The either/or formulation appears crude, but in the end, it always comes back to this, and its very starkness reveals the ­implied stakes. This question places Luther at the center of the controversy concerning the periodization of Western history and the precise location of the divide between medieval and modern periods. A chapter on Holl’s discussion with another Berlin colleague, Adolf von Harnack (by Peter Grove) examines important factors in the matter of Luther’s relevance to modernity. The second part of the book, “Lutherrenaissance Present,” considers Luther studies today. If Luther scholars can learn one important lesson from the original Lutherrenaissance, it is that Luther and theology have the capacity to engage crucial scholarly discussions in creative and forward-looking ways. This part of the book then brings Luther into the present. The constructive aim here is to place 10 See

note 7.

Introduction

19

­Luther squarely in academic conversations that are either in some way already influenced by his thought or that we think would be illumined in unexpected perhaps but useful ways by an explicit Lutheran perspective. This section begins with a review of Holl’s work with a particular focus on its interdisciplinarity (in Bo Kristian Holm’s discussion). Yet Holl’s legacy is also ambivalent. His anti-eudaemonistic ethics promoted the law/gospel dialectic that became central to Luther studies, while his rejection of the Christian mystical tradition – a position derived from Ritschl – contributed to the alienation of Lutheran theology from experience. The original Lutherrenaissance influenced both dialectical and liberal theologies of the twentieth century,11 bequeathing a legacy of reflection on and appropriation of both. The question as to whether Luther is an “apostle of freedom” and thereby a forerunner of liberal theology is best addressed in view of liberal-theological contributions to the Lutherrenaissance (as Jörg Lauster approaches it in his contribution to the volume). Section two continues with the topic of “Luther’s missing voice” in contemporary conversations, specifically in the secularization debate initiated by Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor (as addressed in the chapter by Ronald F. Thiemann), the anxious relation between theology and the modern study of religion (taken up by Christine Helmer), and in the emerging contours of political theology (the subject of the chapter by Heinrich Assel). In each chapter, a diagnosis of the current situation and a constructive proposal for a fruitful discussion is proposed. Underlying all these chapters is the view that an explicit engagement with Luther holds the promise of sharpening the historical, theological, and politi­ cal arguments of these conversations and beneficially expanding their scope. The section ends with considerations of Luther’s thought in relation to matters of serious significance to our contemporary global world. Pressing concerns for contemporary scholars working in the Lutheran tradition are feminist theology (Marit Trelstad) and the contextualization of Western theology in relation to indigenous populations, specifically First Nations in Canada and Native Americans in the United States (Allen G. Jorgenson). Participation in these conversations requires scholarly responsibility in acknowledging the historical, theological, and ethical issues that have rendered Luther and Western theology too often sources of abuse rather than liberation. The dialogue thus established in this text between the Lutherrenaissance of the early twentieth century and the contexts within which Luther scholars work today (which include all the inheritances of that earlier moment) opens a path of critique and reengagement as our world moves in crisis and hope towards the half-millennium commemoration of 2017.

11 This

is the central point of Assel’s book, Der andere Aufbruch.

Part One Lutherrenaissance Past

Chapter 2

Heinrich Assel

Die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland von 1900 bis 1960 Herausforderung und Inspiration*1 Für Christine Helmer „die Gottheit ist zerbrochen wie das Brot beim Abendmahl; wir sind die Stücke“ Herman Melville

Die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland ist, neben der Dialektischen Theologie, die andere große theologie-, kirchen- und kulturreformerische Bewegung. Sie formiert sich um 1910 und bildet bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg eine internationale, deutsch-skandinavische Formation. Zur Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland gehörten Karl Holl, Carl Stange, Emanuel Hirsch, Paul Althaus, Rudolf Hermann, auch Werner Elert, Heinrich Bornkamm, Hanns Rückert oder Erich Vogelsang, nicht zu vergessen auch Schriftsteller wie Jochen Klepper. Zu skandinavischen Theologen der Lutherrenaissance, also zu Anders Nygren, Gustav Aulén, Ragnar Bring, Torsten Bohlin, Eduard Geismar, Axel Gyllenkrok oder Arvid Runestam bestanden bis 1933 und bisweilen noch bis 1942 intensive wissenschaftliche Kontakte, die individuell und national unterschiedlich motiviert waren. Diese noch nicht ausreichend erforschte und gewürdigte Internationalität und Ökumenizität der Lutherrenaissance und die Gründe und Umstände ihres Abbruchs zwischen 1933 und 1942 ist heute von neuem Interesse. Zu wenig bekannt ist auch, dass nach 1945 heraus­ ragend wirksame Figuren wie Dietrich Bonhoeffer und Hans Joachim Iwand durch die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland mitgeprägt wurden. Ihr Erbe und ihre Wirkung ist für die tiefgreifende Revision lutherischer Theologie in Deutschland der Nachkriegsepoche 1945 bis 1960, ja bis heute, kaum zu überschätzen. Ich werde im folgenden ein Panorama der Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland von 1910 bis 1960 entwerfen. In meiner Darstellung der Lutherrenaissance standen die theologischen, religionsphilosophischen, kirchen- und kulturreformerischen Innovationen im Zentrum, beschränkt auf das erste Drittel des 20.  Jahrhunderts. Sie berechtigen es, die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland den anderen Aufbruch in die Moderne des 20. Jahrhunderts neben der Dialektischen Theolo * Die Ursprungsfassung des Vortrags wurde im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts Lutherrenaissance – Past and Present an der Universität Aarhus im Oktober 2011 gehalten, eine überarbeitete Fassung an der Theologischen Fakultät Kopenhagen im November 2011.

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gie zu nennen.1 In diesem Beitrag möchte ich zum ersten Mal und anhand noch unbekannter Quellen zeigen, wie die Lutherrenaissance von ihrem Ursprung bei Karl Holl her in intensivster Wechselwirkung mit den Modernitätstheorien von Max Weber und Ernst Troeltsch stand. Die Reflexion auf verschiedene Wege zur Modernität, auf multiple Modernitäten, und die höchst umstrittene Frage, wie in diesem Rahmen Luther und seine Wirkungen zu bewerten sind, stehen am Beginn. Dies ist die These. Zentrale theologische Lehren Luthers – exemplarisch steht hierfür die theologia crucis  – hatten so von Beginn an in der Lutherrenaissance modernitätssoziologische Relevanz und, wie sich zeigen wird, politisch-theolo­ gische Resonanzräume. Dies konnte zwischen 1933 und 1945 zu desaströsen poli­ tisch-ideologischen Konsequenzen führen. Welche Herausforderungen darin für lutherische Theologie bis heute enthalten sind, ist die eine Frage dieses Aufsatzes. Die andere Frage ist, wo und worin das Ausgangsprogramm einer methodischen Kombination von theologia crucis, Modernitätstheorie und politischer Theologie entscheidende Inspirationen für die tiefgreifende Revision des deutschen Luthertums nach 1945 enthielt, ohne dass diese Revision einfach ein „langer Weg nach Westen“ ist.2

I. Karl Holl – Max Weber – Ernst Troeltsch (1900–1926) Luther im Rahmen multipler Modernitäten Am 27. Juni 1920 schreibt Karl Holl (1866–1926), der Initiator der deutschsprachigen Lutherrenaissance, an Adolf Jülicher, den Marburger Neutestamentler und Exegeten der Gleichnisse Jesu. Anlass ist der frühe Tod des 56-jährigen Max W ­ eber (1864–1920) am 14. Juni 1920: Max Webers Tod ist mir sehr nahe gegangen. Aus seinen letzten Abhandlungen über die Wirtschaftspolitik des Judentums3 hatte ich den Eindruck bekommen, ob er nicht heimlich doch ein anderer sei, als ich gemeint hatte: ein Mensch, der im Grunde tief ernst 1 H.

Assel, Der andere Aufbruch. Die Lutherrenaissance  – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935) (FSÖTh 72; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994). 2 H. A. Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen, Bd. 1. Deutsche Geschichte vom Ende des Alten Reiches bis zum Untergang der Weimarer Republik, Bd. 2. Deutsche Geschichte vom „Dritten Reich“ bis zur Wiedervereinigung (München: C. H. Beck, 2000 [Engl.: Germany: The Long Road West, vol. 1: 1789–1933; vol. 2: 1933–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006–2007]). 3 Es handelt sich hier um die in den Jahren 1917–1920 im „Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik“ in sechs Folgen erschienenen Aufsätze zur Wirtschaftsethik des antiken Judentums, die 1921 zusammengefasst veröffentlicht wurden: M. Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen – Das antike Judentum (Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie 3; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1921[= Max Weber Gesamtausgabe I/21,1+2, hg. v. E. Otto (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005]).

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sei. Und ich freute mich auf seine Behandlung des Christentums,4 weil ich hoffte, daß er da gründlich mit Troeltschs Soziallehren aufräumen würde. Daß er bei der Darstellung der Propheten Troeltsch nur in einer lässigen Anmerkung erwähnte und im übrigen ihn bei Seite schob, ließ mich bestimmt erwarten, daß er auch beim Christentum ebenso verfahren würde. Nun ist er tot und der Soziologe Troeltsch wird als der Lebende Recht behalten.5

Ein zwei Monate zuvor verfasster Brief Holls an Jülicher, mitten aus der Arbeit am berühmten Buch über Luther geschrieben, zeigt noch drastischer, wie die Wertschätzung Max Webers mit grundsätzlicher Kritik an Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) einhergeht. Sonst bin ich immer noch mit meinen Lutheraufsätzen beschäftigt. Vielleicht sind sie daran schuld, daß auch meine wissenschaftliche Stimmung manchmal gedrückt ist. Nicht daß Luther mir über wäre, aber ich bin überall genötigt, gegen Troeltsch Stellung zu nehmen. Was der auf Grund ärmlicher Quellenkenntnis zusammengedichtet hat, ist wirklich aufregend. Aber Aussicht gegen ihn aufzukommen, ist nicht da. Er gilt nun einmal bei Profanhistorikern, Philosophen und Theologen als der gründlich unterrichtete und allein unbefangene Mann.6

In der Tat, die zentralen Abhandlungen des Luther-Buchs von Holl7 münden in Kritiken an Troeltschs Luther-Interpretation, die dieser seit „Luther und die moderne Welt“ (1908)8 im Rahmen seiner historischen Gesamtsicht der „Bedeutung des Protestantismus für die Entstehung der modernen Welt“ (1906/11)9 sowie im Kontext seiner „Soziallehren“ (1912)10 ausgearbeitet hatte.11 4 Gemeint

ist der damals geplante Bd. 4 von Max Webers Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen.

5 Karl Holl an Adolf Jülicher, 27.6.1920 (unpubliziert). Die Publikation der Briefe Holls an Jülicher

ist in Vorbereitung. 6 Karl Holl an Adolf Jülicher, 1.4.1920 (unpubliziert). 7 K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, Bd. I. Luther (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1921, erweitert und überarbeitet 2+31923, 4+51927, 61932 [= GA I]). 8 In E. Troeltsch, Schriften zur Bedeutung des Protestantismus für die moderne Welt (1906–1913), in KGA 8, 59–97, S. 53–8. 9 Ebd., 199–316, S. 183–98. 10 E. Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (UTB 1811/1812; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994); geplant als KGA 9/1–2. Zur kritischen Würdigung von Troeltsch: C. Strohm, „Nach hundert Jahren. Ernst Troeltsch, der Protestantismus und die Entstehung der modernen Welt“, ARG 99 (2008) 6–35. 11 Nahezu alle der 27 Referenzen Holls auf Troeltsch sind mehr oder minder kritisch. Troeltschs Modernetheorie verkenne den „revolutionären“ Bruch, den Luthers Gewissensreligion als Vollzugsform genuiner Autonomie darstelle (GA I, 109 f., Anm. 1). Ihm unterlaufe im Begriff von lex naturae beständig ein naturalistischer Fehlschluss, so dass er die gewissensethische Bestimmtheit dieses Begriffs bei Luther konstitutiv verkenne. Er sei völlig ignorant gegenüber Luthers frühem Kirchenbegriff, weil er die Weber’sche Typik von Kirche und Sekte unbesehen vom Luthertum her auf Luther übertrage (GA I, 243–5, Anm. 2). Er sei quellenphilologisch veraltet, z. B. in seiner Beurteilung von Luthers Predigten über die Bergpredigt (GA I, 248 f., Anm. 4). Das ideenpolitische Entweder-Oder, das zwi-

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Die genetische Interdependenz der deutschen Lutherrenaissance Karl Holls und seines bedeutendsten Zeitgenossen Max Weber wie seines bedeutendsten Anti­ poden Ernst Troeltsch ist zwar vielfach bemerkt, aber bis heute wenig untersucht. Es dürfte gerade für die Wahrnehmung der Lutherrenaissance im angelsächsischen Raum von Bedeutung sein, ob sich das von Troeltschs Modernitätstheorie be­einflusste Urteil über Luther und mehr noch über die konfessionell und theologisch beschränkt wirkende, deutsche Lutherforschung12 kritisch differenziert, wenn man den Ursprung der Lutherrenaissance in die Dreieckskonstellation Holl – Weber – Troeltsch stellt. Es wird sich zeigen: Karl Holl verstand Luther keinesfalls nur als homo religiosus; er interpretierte ihn weder konfessionell noch nationalistisch. Dabei ist nach unbekannten Wechselwirkungen zwischen Holl und Weber zu fragen, angesichts der programmatischen Distanz zwischen Holl und ­Troeltsch, aber auch angesichts der beträchtlichen Differenzen zwischen Weber und Troeltsch.13 Karl Holls „Luther“-Buch von 1921 entstand nämlich seit 1904/06 aus der sub­ kutanen Auseinandersetzung mit Max Weber – wie umgekehrt Holl seit 1911/12 auf Weber wirkte. In methodischer Hinsicht greift Holl Webers Forschungsprogramm auf, auch wenn er es an der Figur Luthers materialhistorisch gegen Webers Luther-Bild wendet. Auch Webers Sicht Luthers ist übrigens in sich uneindeutiger als es die publizierten Texte Webers nahelegen.14 Die Wechsel­wirkung Karl Holls und Max Webers hat subkutane Spuren, die Holls Hinwendung zu­ Luther methodisch wesentlich mitbestimmen. Umgekehrt ist Max Webers Begriff charismatischer Herrschaft von Karl Holl mitbestimmt. Ich möchte dies knapp umreißen.

schen Troeltsch und Emanuel Hirsch im Jahr 1923, aus Anlass von Hirschs Schrift „Die Reich-Gottes-Begriffe des neueren europäischen Denkens. Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der Staats- und Gesellschaftsphilosophie“ von 1921 und Troeltschs Rezension darüber (ThLZ 48 [1923] 23–4), ausgerufen wurde, war eine Auseinandersetzung um Deutungshoheit bei Profanhistorikern, Philosophen und Theologen. Holls Luther-Buch von 1921 kam nämlich wider Erwarten „gegen Troeltsch auf “. 12 Vgl. H. Lehmann, Martin Luther in the American Imagination (American Studies 63; München: W. Fink, 1988), 269–70, 303–12, bes. S. 310: „Die deutsche Lutherforschung um 1917 sei in den USA als exklusiv theologisch, als unfähig zur Kooperation mit säkularer Historie, als konfessionalistisch und nationalistisch wahrgenommen worden.“ 13 F. W. Graf, Fachmenschenfreundschaft. Studien zu Troeltsch und Weber (Troeltsch-Studien  3; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2012); sowie „Wertkonflikt oder Kultursynthese?“, in W. Schluchter/ F. W. Graf (Hg.), Asketischer Protestantismus und der „Geist“ des modernen Kapitalismus. Max Weber und Ernst Troeltsch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005) 257–79. 14 Max Weber an Adolf v. Harnack 5.2.1906, in M. Weber, Briefe 1906–1908, hg. v. M. R. Lepsius (Gesamtausgabe II/5; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990) 32–3.

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I.1 Charismatische Herrschaft und multiple Modernitäten Max Weber ließ sich im Jahr 1911/12 durch Holls Studie über „Enthusiasmus und Bußgewalt“ von 1898 dazu anregen, den Typus charismatisch-asketischer Bindeund Lösegewalt im wundertätigen griechischen Mönchtum für seine ProfetieTheorie fruchtbar zu machen.15 Dieses Konzept ging in die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen, namentlich in die Analyse der „Ethik und Theodizee“ der Schriftprofeten im dritten Band der Gesammelten Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie von 1921 ein.16 In Max Webers „Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft“ (1922) wird in der berühmten Weber’schen Typik patriarchaler, bürokratischer und charismatischer Herrschaft Karl Holl mit seiner Studie von 1898 „Enthusiasmus und Bußgewalt beim griechischen Mönchtum. Eine Studie zu Symeon dem Neuen Theologen“ als Anreger des Typs charismatischer Herrschaft explizit genannt.17 Man kann nur mutmaßen, inwieweit Holl durch Weber rezipiert worden wäre, wenn Webers letzter, vierter Band seiner Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen, die Wirtschaftsethik der drei christlichen Hauptkonfessionen, tatsächlich geschrieben worden wäre. Für Holls Analyse des östlichen und westlichen Christentums war nämlich die Frage nach Figuren charismatischer Macht aus asketischer Gottesliebe zentral.18 Eine komparative Konfessions-Kulturtheorie der drei christlichen Hauptkonfessionen, auch bestimmter Aspekte ihrer Wirtschaftsethik, gerade dies lassen die drei Bände der „Gesammelten Aufsätze“ Karl Holls im Umriss erkennen: I. Luther, II. Der Osten, III. Der Westen (GA I–III).19 Auch hier machte der frühe Tod das Vorhaben zum 15 E.

Otto, „Die hebräische Prophetie bei Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch und Hermann Cohen. Ein Diskurs im Weltkrieg zur christlich-jüdischen Kultursynthese“, in Schluchter/Graf, Asketischer Protestantismus, 201–55. Vgl. bereits H. Holborn, „Karl Holl geb. 15. Mai 1866, gest. 23. Mai 1926“, DVfLG 5 (1927) 413–30, S. 415. 16 M. Weber, „Das antike Judentum“, in ders., Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie  3 ­(Tübin­ gen: Mohr Siebeck, 71983 [entspricht der Ausgabe von 1921]) 292–336. Zur Genese vgl. Otto. 17 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie (Studienausgabe; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 51980), 124: „Der Begriff des ‚Charisma‘ (‚Gnadengabe‘) ist altchristlicher Terminologie entnommen. Für die christliche Hierokratie hat zuerst Rudolph Sohms Kirchenrecht der Sache, wenn auch nicht der Terminologie nach den Begriff, andere (z. B. Karl Holl in ‚Enthusiasmus und Bußgewalt‘ [1898]) [haben] gewisse wichtige Konsequenzen davon verdeutlicht.“ Tatsächlich verhält es sich genetisch umgekehrt, wie Eckart Otto zeigt. 18 Holls frühe Arbeiten von 1898 bis 1910 umreißen eine Typologie östlichen, griechischen und russischen Christentums, angeregt vom Problem charismatischer Binde- und Lösegewalt im griechischen Mönchtum des ersten Jahrtausends, ausgehend vom asketischen Ideal der vita Antonii des Athanasius, zentriert um die Gottesmystik Symeons, des neuen Theologen im 11. Jh., latent bestimmt durch die Frage nach Gewissensreligion. Die vita Antonii des Athanasius bildet den literarischen Urtyp östlicher Heiligenviten und den Idealtyp asketischer Bußgewalt und charismatischen Liebes-Enthusiasmus. 19 K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, Bd. II. Der Osten (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck, 1928); ders.: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, Bd. III. Der Westen (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1928).

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Fragment. Nur den ersten Band konnte Holl selbst publizieren. Die letzten beiden erschienen erst posthum. In diesen Fragment gebliebenen Bänden zur griechischen und russischen Orthodoxie sowie zum westlichen Katholizismus und zum lutherischen, calvinistischen und puritanischen Protestantismus lässt sich „eine große Konfessionskunde auf (sc. universal-)historischer Grundlage“ erahnen.20 Anders als Troeltschs eurozentrische Modernitätskonzeption war Holls west-östliche Konfessionsgeschichte sensibel für „multiple modernities“,21 also für genuine Modernitätspotentiale der griechischen und russischen Christentümer22 in einigen ihrer Figuren und für genuine Modernitätspotentiale der verschiedenen reformatorischen Christentümer, insbesondere bei Luther und Calvin. Gemessen an der emanzipationshistorischen Sicht Luthers von Herder über Hegel bis Feuerbach, der eurozentrischen Sicht von Troeltsch und Dilthey oder der nationalistisch-protorassistischen Sicht von Treitschke war Holls Analyse von Luthers genuiner Modernität komparativ multipel und theologisch paradoxer, weil orientiert an Wertkonflikten zwischen göttlicher Souveränität und politisch-historisch existierender, charismatisch-aske­ tischer Gewissenssubjektivität. Auch darin war Holl der Zeitgenosse Webers. I.2 Erwählungsgewissheit und „innerweltliche Askese“: methodische Mehrperspektivität Karl Holl korrigierte Webers These über die Wahlverwandtschaft von asketischem Protestantismus und „Geist“ des frühen Kapitalismus von 1904/0623 „sehr einschneidend“.24 Aber Holl erkannte zutiefst die methodische Schärfe und heuristische Fruchtbarkeit von Webers Frage nach dem Kausalnexus von asketischem Protestantismus und frühkapitalistischer Arbeitsrationalität im Ensemble anderer modernitätsbildender Faktoren. Er erkannte also die methodische Frage nach der Interdependenz von objektiver Erwählungslehre und subjektiv-existentieller Gewissheitssuche, von Erwählungsgewissheit und Reich-Gottes-Idee bzw. Kirchenoder Sektenbegriff, an. 20 Dies

schreibt Hajo Holborn (1902–1969), der Berliner Hörer Holls (1924 bei Meinecke promoviert), nach 1933 Zeithistoriker in Yale (1934–1935 Gastprofessor, 1945–1969 Professor in Yale) in seinem lesenswerten Nachruf auf Karl Holl von 1927 (s. Anm. 15), unter dem Eindruck der (bisher) verschollenen Vorlesungen Holls. Holborn hatte offenbar auch Einsicht in Max Webers Handexemplar von Holls „Enthusiasmus und Bußgewalt“. 21 Zu diesem Konzept: S. N. Eisenstadt, „Multiple Modernities“, Daed. 129 (2000) 1–29. 22 Der Zeitgenosse Holborn weist in seinem Nachruf zu Recht auf die herausragenden Analysen Holls zur russischen Gegenwartskultur zwischen 1900 und 1920 hin (Holborn, „Holl“, 415 f.). 23 M. Weber, „Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus“, in ders., Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I (UTB 1495; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 91988) 17–207; geplant als: M. Weber, Gesamtausgabe I/18, hg. v. W. Schluchter. Vgl. auch H. Lehmann, „Max Webers Weg vom Kulturprotestantismus zum asketischen Protestantismus“, in Schluchter/Graf, Asketischer Protestantismus, 33–47. 24 Holborn, „Holl“, 425.

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Was Holl an Webers Protestantismus-Studie methodisch darüber hinaus an­ erkannte, war dies: Zur komparativen Einschätzung des Charakters von Luthers Gewissensreligion reicht die Analysedimension von objektiver Erwählungslehre und subjektiv-existentieller Erwählungsgewissheit nicht aus, also jene Analysedimension einer „theozentrischen“ Rechtfertigung „von oben“ und einer gewissensreligiösen Rechtfertigung „von unten“, die für Holl anfangs so charakteristisch ist. Holls erste Luther-Abhandlung zur Erwählungsgewissheit in Luthers Römerbriefvorlesung aus dem Jahr 1909/1025 bewegt sich noch ganz in dieser Analysedimension: In der Rechtfertigungstheologie des „jungen Luther“ der Römerbriefvorlesung fand Holl 1910 den Inbegriff westlicher Gewissensreligion: Rechtfertigung gründet in der Prädestination Gottes. Gott setzt als heiliger Liebeswille geschöpfliches, als sich selbst erhaltendes Leben außer sich, um ihm, im absoluten Gegensatz gegen sich, in der Sünde als Wille zur Lebensmacht, seine Gerechtigkeit als freie und selbstlose Willensgemeinschaft mitzuteilen. Die Antinomie des Zornes Gottes über das unhintergehbare Böse verweist auf das existierende Gewissen als den Ort der Gewissheit. Im Konflikt mit Gottes Gottheit noch in die Verwerfung durch Gott einzuwilligen (resignatio ad infernum), wird im Gewissen als Erwählungsgewissheit erlebt. „Werkzeugbewusstsein“, nicht Glück oder Seligkeit, und opferbereite Liebe, nicht Selbstliebe, sind Inbegriff von Luthers Gewissensreligion. In der Auseinandersetzung mit Max Weber erkannte Holl, dass dieser Begriff westlicher Gewissensreligion bei ihm selbst methodisch reduktiv war, und zwar methodisch naiv reduktiv. Wie W. Schluchter oder F. W. Graf zeigen, ist die methodische Dreidimensionalität der Rechts-, Herrschafts-, Religions- und politischen Vergemeinschaftungs-Analyse Webers zu beachten. Weber schaut nämlich „(1) soziales Handeln von Akteuren in der Wechselwirkung mit (2) Strukturen der Handlungskoordination und (3) den Sinnkonstruktionen oder Wertideen …, die Handeln jeweils motivieren“, zusammen.26 Im Kapitalismus-Aufsatz konzentriert sich Weber perspektivisch auf eine spezifisch religiöse Mentalität und die frühe kapitalistische Wirtschaftsgesinnung, also z. B. nicht auf die Klassenbedingtheit des Religiösen und die ökonomischen Faktoren der Genese dieser Wirtschaftsgesinnung. Nur in der methodisch bewusst reduzierten Monoperspektive gilt die These von der Wahlverwandtschaft zwischen asketischem Protestantismus und Geist des Kapitalismus. Genau dies dürfte Holl durch Webers Aufsatz von 1906 seinerseits bemerkt haben. Die Darstellung von Luthers Gewissensreligion verdankt sich einer defacto-Reduktion auf eine bestimmte Analyseperspektive (Erwählungsgewissheit, Bußaskese und charismatische Gewalt), die Holl jetzt bewusst wurde. Nimmt man 25 K.

Holl, „Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewißheit“, ZThK 20 (1910) 245–91, erweitert in GA I, 111–54. 26 F. W. Graf, Art. „Weber, Max“, in RGG4 8 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005) 1317–20.

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die anderen Faktoren und Perspektiven, die Weber nennt, methodisch bewusster hinzu, wird Luthers Gewissensreligion erst in ihrer Singularität und okzidentalen Modernität greifbar. Jetzt erkannte Holl also: Es ist methodische Mehrperspektivität notwendig! Es ist die Analyse von Luthers Kirchenbegriff und seiner politischen und öko­ nomischen Berufs- und Gesellschaftskonzeption einzubeziehen. Die Analyse des Kirchenbegriffs ist zudem kirchenverfassungshistorisch, die des Berufsbegriffs frühkapitalismushistorisch zu kontextualisieren. Es ist also  – mit anderen Worten  – notwendig, genau jene Themen zu bearbeiten, denen sich Holl zwischen 1915 und 1924 in seinen Luther-Studien stellte.27 Darüber hinaus aber ist es nötig, Luthers Gewissensreligion und Kirchenbegriff sowohl als Typus wie als konfessionsbildende Dynamik in einer komparativen Konfessionstheorie zu evaluieren. „Revolutionär“ ist für Holl auch das griechische Mönchtum und sein Heros, Symeon, der neue Theologe. Aber eben nicht „revolutionär“ im Sinne der okzidentalen Reformation Luthers und Calvins.28 Jeder der Aspekte, die Holl an Luthers Gewissensreligion ausarbeitet, ist methodisch dreidimensional zu interpretieren. Die erste Dimension gewissenssubjek­ tiven und doktrinalen Sinns, also der Zusammenhang von Rechtfertigungserlebnis und gewissensreligiöser Lehrform, ist verkoppelt mit der zweiten Dimension normativer Regulierung sozialen Handelns, also dem Neubau der Sittlichkeit vom Ethos werkzeuglicher und stellvertretender Gottes- und Nächstenliebe aus. Diese beiden Dimensionen sind wiederum verkoppelt mit der dritten Dimension struktureller Handlungskoordination in religiösen, rechtlichen, herrschaftsbestimmten und politischen Vergemeinschaftungsformen. Hierher gehört Luthers Kirchen­ begriff, den Holl so dezidiert vom allgemeinen Priestertum und Königtum der Getauften, und damit vom Begriff charismatischer Herrschaft her, aufbaut. I.3 Beispiel: „Die Geschichte des Wortes Beruf “ (1924) Das bisher zu Webers und Holls Verhältnis Gesagte exemplifiziert sich in ihren Beiträgen zum Begriff „Beruf “. Webers „Problemaufriss“ im Protestantismus-Aufsatz bündelt sich in der These, dass „bei Luther der Berufsbegriff traditionalistisch gebunden“ bleibe,29 und sogar zwischen 1518 und 1530 immer traditionalistischer werde:30 Der Mensch im Beruf habe als Fügung hinzunehmen, wo hinein er sich 27 K.

Holl, „Die Entstehung von Luthers Kirchenbegriff “, in Forschungen und Versuche zur Geschichte des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (FS D. Schäfer; Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1915) 410–56, später erweitert in GA I, 1–110; ders., „Die Kulturbedeutung der Reformation (1918)“, in GA I, 468–543; ders., „Der Neubau der Sittlichkeit“, in GA I, 155–287. 28 Zum „Revolutionären“ des griechischen Mönchtums vgl. GA II, 281 (allgemein); 408 (über Symeon). 29 Weber, Protestantische Ethik, 78. 30 Vgl. ebd., 75.

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zu schicken hat. Luther wie dem Luthertum sei der Zug zur asketischen Selbst­ heiligung als Werkheiligkeit verdächtig. Für die methodische Leitfrage im Früh­ kapitalismus-Aufsatz schied also Luther und mit ihm das Luthertum aus! Daher die methodische Wende zum asketischen Protestantismus.31 In einem berühmten, etwa zeitgleichen Brief Webers an Adolf von Harnack vom Februar 1906 wird das, was im Aufsatz Ausgangspunkt ist, paradoxerweise bekräftigt und problematisiert: Ich habe das Gefühl, in mancher Hinsicht abweichende Werthurteile (sc. als Harnack) zu Grunde zu legen. So turmhoch Luther über allen Anderen steht, – das Luthertum ist für mich, ich leugne es nicht, in seinen historischen Erscheinungsformen der schrecklichste der Schrecken und selbst in der Idealform, in welcher es sich in Ihren Hoffnungen für die Zukunftsentwicklung darstellt, ist es mir, für uns Deutsche, ein Gebilde, von dem ich nicht unbedingt sicher bin, wie viel Kraft zur Durchdringung des Lebens von ihm ausgehen könnte. Es ist eine innerlich schwierige und tragische Situation: Niemand von uns könnte selbst „Sekten“-Mensch, Quäker, Baptist etc. sein. Jeder von uns muß die Überlegenheit des – im Grunde doch – Anstalts-Kirchentums, gemessen an nichtethischen und nicht-religiösen Werthen, auf den ersten Blick bemerken. Und die Zeit für „Sekten“ oder etwas ihnen Wesensgleiches ist, vor Allem, historisch vorbei. Aber daß unsre Nation die Schule des harten Asketismus niemals, in keiner Form, durchgemacht hat, ist, auf der andren Seite der Quell alles Desjenigen, was ich an ihr (wie an mir selbst) hassenswerth finde, und vollends bei religiöser Wertung steht eben … der Durchschnitts-Sektenmensch der Amerikaner ebenso hoch über dem landeskirchlichen „Christen“ bei uns, – wie, als religiöse Persönlichkeit Luther über Calvin, Fox e tutti quanti steht.32

Hier ist das Luthertum das Hassenswerte, weil es der Nation die harte Schule des Asketismus tragisch vorenthielt. Doch die religiöse Persönlichkeit Luthers stehe turmhoch über allen Anderen? Durch Webers Abhandlung ist dieses Urteil keineswegs gedeckt. Lesen wir  – angesichts dieser Spannung zwischen exoterischem und esoterischem Lutherbild bei Weber – Holls Abhandlung über das Wort Beruf von 1924! Holl umreißt – auf der Basis einer Forschung von 30 Jahren – die gesamte ostwestliche Geschichte der Begriffe klesis und vocatio samt Luthers Wortschöpfung „Beruf “.33 Es ist die vita Antonii des Athanasius, die auch hier den Ausgangspunkt bildet. In ihr werde die paulinische klesis und eine charismatische Gemeindeverfassung im 4. Jh. kirchenreformerisch wiederholt: Das Mönchtum bricht mit dem Kirchenchristentum, das die Forderungen des Evange­ liums auf ein dem bequemen Durchschnittsmenschen erschwingbares Maß herab­gesetzt hatte. Es will das Gebot Christi wieder ganz erfüllen. Vor allem das Gebot der Gottes-

31 Vgl.

ebd., 79. Weber an Adolf v. Harnack, 5.2.1906, in Weber, Briefe, 32 f. 33 Zu dieser These: GA III, 209, Anm. 4. 32 Max

32

Heinrich Assel liebe. Als Ziel galt ihm, die Richtung des Gemüts auf Gott so unverrückt festzu­halten, daß jeder Augenblick des Lebens durch den Gottesgedanken nicht nur bestimmt, sondern womöglich ausgefüllt war … Die Bedingung dafür war eine völlige Loslösung von der Welt.34

Gegen Ernst Troeltschs Herleitung der innerweltlichen Askese aus mittelalterlich-thomistischen Wurzeln wird die ideen- und kulturgeschichtliche Novität der deutschen Mystik (mit Weber) und Luthers (gegen Weber) akzentuiert. Das „revolutionäre“ Konzept allgemeinen Priestertums und stellvertretend-priesterlicher parrhesia und königlich-charismatischer exousia vollende und transformiere das griechische Ideal. Aufmerksam sollte man den Schluss lesen: Jene Forderung, die das (sc. griechische) Mönchtum ursprünglich erhoben hatte, G ­ ottes in jedem Augenblick des Lebens gegenwärtig zu haben, hat Luther gerade  – im Gegensatz zur Scholastik  – wieder erneuert. Nur … besteht die sittliche Aufgabe darin, den inneren Ruf, den man im Evangelium vernimmt, und die Stimme, die aus den Dingen selbst und ihren Notwendigkeiten zu uns dringt, in ihrem Zusammenklang zu verstehen.35

Hier erlaubt sich Holl eine Formulierung, die nur cum grano salis wörtlich zu nehmen ist: Luther habe das griechische Mönchtum aufgehoben in dem tieferen Hegelschen Sinn: so daß das Beste, was das Mönchtum gewollt und mit dessen Betonung es sich ein unbestreitbares geschichtliches Verdienst erworben hat, in seinem Berufsgedanken bejaht und überboten wurde.36

Cum grano salis! Hatte Holl doch zwischenzeitlich die ideen- und sprachgeschicht­ liche Rede von der „Aufhebung“ methodisch und perspektivisch erweitert: Erst nachdem die weltlichen Stände selbst die weltliche Arbeit im Zuge gesteigerter Stadtökonomie und Armenfürsorge neu werteten, konnte die Neubestimmung des Wortes Beruf in der deutschen Mystik und bei Luther wirksam werden.37 Tatsächlich wird also mit Webers methodischer Dreidimensionalität gegen­ Webers materiale These (einer hochmittelalterlich-monastischen Anbahnung und sektenhaft-protestantischen Durchsetzung innerweltlicher Berufsaskese) argumen­ tiert, nach welcher Luthers Berufsverständnis traditionalistisch regrediere.38 Im Effekt wird die Paradoxie Webers aufgelöst! In der Typik Webers von inner-/ außerweltlicher Mystik, von inner-/außerweltlicher Askese formuliert, lautet Holls Ergebnis: Die gewissensreligiöse Erwählungsgewissheit Luthers hebt die monas­ tische Erwählungsgewissheit auf die Stufe innerweltlicher Mystik; sie hebt die mo 34 GA

II, 191. III, 219. 36 Ebd. 37 Ebd., 200. 38 Vgl. Weber, Protestantische Ethik, 39 mit Anm.; 58 mit Anm.; 117 mit Anm. 2. 35 GA

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nastische Askese auf die Stufe innerweltlicher Askese; sie hebt das antihierarchische Charisma und die priesterliche parrhesia der griechischen Mönche ins allgemeine König- und Priestertum der Getauften. So zeichnet Holl in den Berufs-Begriff seine Version priesterlich-königlicher Freiheit der Christen ein. Charismatische Gewissensfreiheit und das Bild einer Gewissensgemeinschaft stellvertretender Hingabe füreinander sind das eine: Jeder einzelne darf dem andern ein Christus, ja – zuweilen wagt Luther … selbst dieses Kühnste – er darf ihm Gott werden. Er darf Größe zeigen, indem er wie Gott Geduld übt und vergibt, er darf Gaben spenden aus Gottes Reichtum, er darf sogar schaffen und Leben wecken, wie Gott es tut.39

Diese Freiheit ist „innerlich-geistlich“, nicht „äußerlich-weltlich“. Sie lässt sich nicht in moralischen, rechtlichen oder politischen Formen darstellen. Sie soll sich aber andererseits in strukturellen Formen der moralischen, rechtlichen oder politischen Handlungskoordination, im weltlichen Regiment Gottes „veralltäglichen“. Die Frage an Holl ist, ob und inwiefern der freie Christenmensch nicht auch der Herrschaft des Rechts, den westlichen Verfassungs-, Demokratie- und Gesellschaftsformen „dienstbar“ sein kann. Karl Holls Antwort, seine Gesellschaftstheorie, blieb hier zweideutig. Diese Zweideutigkeit habe ich anhand von Holls „Neubau der Sittlichkeit“ und seiner politischen Ethik nach 1918 hinreichend analysiert.40 Trotz der methodischen und modernitätstheoretischen Überlegenheit Holls in der Rekonstruktion von Luthers Gewissensreligion bleibt dies die Provokation Ernst Troeltschs an die deutschsprachige Lutherrenaissance um 1920.41 I.4 Offene Frage Zwei Versionen politischer Theologie in der frühen Lutherrenaissance Am Schluss seiner Kapitalismus-Abhandlung erlaubt sich Max Weber eine Abschweifung „auf das Gebiet der Wert- und Glaubensurteile“.42 Die frühen Protestanten, Luther, Calvin, die Puritaner wollten Berufsmenschen sein, – wir müssen es sein. Denn indem die Askese aus den Mönchszellen heraus in das Berufsleben übertragen wurde und die innerweltliche Sittlichkeit zu beherrschen be 39 GA

I, 101. Der andere Aufbruch, 112–40. 41 Die Rekonstruktion der politischen Ethik Luthers im modernitätstheoretischen Horizont und das Urteil über den Gegensatz von Troeltsch und Holl bleiben strittig. Paradigmatisch dafür aktuell: S. Andersen, Macht aus Liebe. Zur Rekonstruktion einer lutherischen politischen Ethik (TBT 149; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2010); J. Lockwood O’Donovan, “The Challenge and the Promise of ProtoModern Political Thought”, in dies./O. O’Donovan, Bonds of Imperfection. Christian Politics, Past and Present (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004) 137–66. 42 Weber, Protestantische Ethik, 204. 40 Assel,

34

Heinrich Assel gann, half sie an ihrem Teile mit daran, jenen mächtigen Kosmos der modernen … Wirtschaftsordnung zu erbauen, der heute den Lebensstil aller Einzelnen, die in dieses Triebwerk hineingeboren werden …, bestimmt und vielleicht bestimmen wird, bis der letzte Zentner fossilen Brennstoffs verglüht ist. … Niemand weiß noch, wer künftig in jenem Gehäuse wohnen wird und ob am Ende dieser ungeheuren Entwicklung ganz neue Prophetien oder eine mächtige Wiedergeburt alter Gedanken und Ideale stehen werden, oder aber – wenn keins von beiden – mechanisierte Versteinerung, mit einer Art krampfhaften Sich-wichtig-nehmen verbrämt. Dann allerdings könnte für die „letzten Menschen“ dieser Kulturentwicklung das Wort zur Wahrheit werden: „Fachmenschen ohne Geist, Genußmenschen ohne Herz: dies Nichts bildet sich ein, eine nie vorher erreichte Stufe des Menschentums erstiegen zu haben.“43

Weber nimmt diesen kulturkrisenhaften Ausbruch in die Werturteile und Glaubensurteile allerdings sofort zurück: Die Aufgabe wäre vielmehr: die … Bedeutung des asketischen Rationalismus nun auch für den Inhalt der sozialpolitischen Ethik, also für die Art der Organisation und der Funktionen der sozialen Gemeinschaften vom Konventikel bis zum Staat aufzuzeigen.44

Einen methodisch ausweisbaren Weg von der kausal-genetischen Analyse des­ asketischen Protestantismus und der Diagnose seiner krisenhaften Versteinerung als moderne Wirtschaftsordnung zur sozialpolitischen Ethik zeigt Weber ebenso wenig wie Holl. Historismus und Wert-Urteils-Dezisionismus bleiben unvermittelt! Dass sie diese Aporie teilen, ist der letzte Aspekt von Webers und Holls Zeitgenossenschaft. Die zwei Auswege, die Max Weber im Jahr 1906 imaginierte, wurden in der Lutherrenaissance in der Tat beschritten. Eben darin wurde die genannte Aporie virulent. „Ganz neue Prophetien“ könnten erstehen – in dieser Formel ist Max Webers späteres Konzept charismatischer politischer Herrschaft präfiguriert.45 Gemeint sind charismatische Führer, die neue Weltanschauungen produzieren, um der Massenkultur Sinn und Legitimation zu geben. Hans-Ulrich Wehler zeigt in seiner Gesellschaftsgeschichte Deutschlands zwischen 1933 und 1945, dass Weber damit wesentliche Elemente der NS-Herrschaft vorhersah. Es war Emanuel Hirsch, der Meisterschüler Karl Holls, der diese charismatische politische Herrschaft durch

43 Ebd. 44

Ebd., 204 f. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 4. Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914–1949 (München: C. H. Beck, 2003), darin „Charis­ matische Herrschaft und deutsche Gesellschaft im ‚Dritten Reich‘ 1933–1945“, 600–940, v. a. S. 603–42 sowie S. 675–84: Die Konsensbasis von Führerdiktatur und Bevölkerung: Charismatische Herrschaft – Ultranationalismus und politische Religion – Soziale Sicherheit und „Volksgemeinschaft“ – Verrat der Intellektuellen. 45 H.-U.

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seine politische Theologie46 zu legitimieren suchte. Darum geht es in den Abschnitten II und III, die sich der Epoche von 1926 bis 1945 zuwenden. Den anderen Ausweg nennt Weber „eine mächtige Wiedergeburt alter Gedanken und Ideale“. Die Synthese von Rechtfertigungslehre zu politischer Ethik war zwischen 1910 und 1926 Karl Holls Programm, ohne dass sie gelang. Zwischen 1945 bis 1960 wurde sie unter erneut anderen Vorzeichen Hans Joachim Iwands Programm. Diese politische Theologie begreift sich bei Iwand als zeitgemäße Praxis der Kreuzestheologie Luthers. Darum geht es in den Abschnitten IV und V, die sich der Lutherrenaissance von 1945 bis 1960 widmen.

II. Theologia crucis als politische Theologie charismatischer Herrschaft Emanuel Hirsch (1926–1945) II.1 Politische Theologie in der Lutherrenaissance 1934 Wer lutherische politische Theologie nach 1945 verstehen will, muss den Ausgangspunkt, die Situation zwischen 1926 und 1945 vor Augen haben. Der entscheidende Moment ist im Herbst 1934. Hier fand eine fundamentale öffentliche Kontroverse zwischen Paul Tillich (1886–1965) und Emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972) statt. Emanuel Hirsch identifizierte sich seither explizit und öffentlich als „politischer Theologe“. Er hat damit diesen Begriff geprägt. Bereits aus Deutschland zwangsemigriert, schrieb Paul Tillich im Jahr 1934 einen persönlichen offenen Brief an Emanuel Hirsch, seinen Jugendfreund. Dieser Brief wurde zu einem Fundamentalangriff47 gegen Hirschs Buch Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung von 1933, in dem Hirsch das deutsche Jahr 1933 (Untertitel) politisch-theologisch deutete. Tillich sah darin die Persiflage seiner eigenen Theologie des Kairos. „Ich weiß mich verpflichtet“, so schreibt Tillich, dieser Deutung des deutschen Jahres 46 Eine definitorische Zwischenbemerkung: Der Begriff und die Gattung „politische Theologie“ hat eine lange Tradition, die auf die Stoa (Varro) und Augustins kritische Auseinandersetzung mit ihrer politischen Theologie des Römischen Imperiums zurückgeht. Im angelsächsischen Bereich ist diese traditionsreiche Diskussion ständig präsent geblieben. Dies schlägt sich z. B. nieder im P. Scott/W. T. Cavanaugh (Hg.), Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004). Einschlägig ist hier insbesondere: Lockwood O’Donovan/O’Donovan, Bonds of Imperfection, sowie: O. O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment. The Bampton Lectures 2003 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005). Im deutschsprachigen Raum stellt die Lutherrenaissance also einen Sonderfall politischer Theologie dar. 47 P. Tillich, „Die Theologie des Kairos und die gegenwärtige geistige Lage. Offener Brief an Emanuel Hirsch von Paul Tillich 1.10.1934“, in ders., Briefwechsel und Streitschriften. Theologische, philosophische und politische Stellungnahmen und Gespräche, hg. v. R. Albrecht/R. Tautmann (Ergänzungsund Nachlaßbände zu den Gesammelten Werken 6; Frankfurt a. M.: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1983) 142–76.

36

Heinrich Assel

1933 „mit der sachlichen Schärfe entgegenzutreten, die unsere wissenschaftlichen Gespräche immer gehabt haben, und die in diesem Augenblick, wo das Ganze unserer geistigen Existenz in Frage steht, nötiger denn je ist.“48 Hirsch antwortete mit einem offenen Brief, der zu den fatalsten Dokumenten der deutschsprachigen Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert gehört.49 II.2 Motive des Konflikts zwischen Tillich und Hirsch 1934 Das eigentümlichste Motiv für die politische Theologie Emanuel Hirschs reicht ins Jahr 1914 zurück. Man stößt auf eine besonders rätselhafte Figur. Klaus Scholder, der Nestor der protestantischen Zeitgeschichtsforschung, formulierte sie in einer nachgelassenen Notiz höchst treffend. Die politische Theologie im Protestantismus – so Scholder – dürfe nicht erst vom Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs, vom Jahr 1918 her, verstanden werden. Sie sei bereits von dessen Beginn und Verlauf bestimmt. Es ist dabei vor allem auf Ideologie und Mythos des Krieges abzuheben … Der ver­ lorene Krieg hat  – so eine Grundthese  – ein ungeheures Legitimationsbedürfnis geschaffen, dem Hitler und das Dritte Reich zu entsprechen scheinen. Die Bedeutung des Gefallenen-Mythos für Hitler selber und für die sog. Bewegung ist ganz außerordentlich groß.50

Wer die politische Theologie Hirschs im Ansatz verstehen will, sollte sie als Antwort auf dieses Legitimationsbedürfnis sehen, das der Erste Weltkrieg geschaffen hat. Die ungeheure Masse der Kriegstoten schuf eine spezifisch religiöse Überlegitimation des Kriegstodes selbst. Eben darin rechtfertigten die Überlebenden ihr politisches Handeln und ihre Radikalisierung des Politischen. Die gesteigerte, radikalisierte Opferbereitschaft der Überlebenden „wiederholt“ das Selbstopfer. Im Kern der politischen Theologie Emanuel Hirschs findet sich daher eine christologische Figur: Der nachdogmatisch verstandene Jesus auf seinem Weg zum Kreuz wird zum existentialen Typus einer Opferbereitschaft. „Opferbereitschaft“ wird eine eigentümliche politisch-theologische Kategorie, die sich von der traditionellen, zivilreligiösen Hochschätzung des Soldatentodes klar unterscheidet. Diese Opferbereitschaft bleibt nämlich für die Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung zweideutig, weil sie nie, im moralischen Sinn, eindeutig gut ist. Geschichtliche Existenz ist stets Existenz im Konflikt, exemplarisch im Krieg, weshalb geschicht 48 Ebd.,

143. Hirsch, „Christliche Freiheit und politische Bindung. Ein Brief an Dr. Stapel und anderes (16.11.1934)“, ebd., 177–213. Die Debatte schloss Paul Tillich: „Um was es geht“. Antwort Paul Tillichs an Emanuel Hirsch (1935), ebd., 214–18. 50  Nachgelassene Notiz Klaus Scholders aus dem Jahr 1983, in K. Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, Bd. 1. Vorgeschichte und Zeit der Illusionen 1918–1934 (Frankfurt a. M./Berlin: Ullstein, 2 1986), X (Kursive H. A.). 49 E.

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liche Existenz stets auch ins Böse verstrickt ist. Das idealistisch-eindeutige Ethos der Opferbereitschaft wird existentiell-zweideutig, verstrickt in den industriellen Krieg und seine Gräuel. „Opfer“ und „Opferbereitschaft“ sind also nicht mehr traditionell religiöse (sühne-theologische)  oder zivilreligiöse (idealistisch-mora­ lische) Kategorien. Sie sind jetzt vielmehr konstitutiv zweideutig: Sie werden politisch-theologische Kategorien. Versöhnung und Rechtfertigung, stellvertretendes Opfer und Leben aus dem Geist Jesu werden nur vermittelt durch Entfremdung und Feindschaft, durch politische Selbstbehauptung und politischen Konflikt am Ort des politisch-theologischen Subjekts existentiell wiederholbar. Skizziert ist diese politische Christologie erstmals im Jahr 1925/26 in Emanuel Hirschs „Grundlegung einer christlichen Geschichtsphilosophie“: Wir sind durch Gott in unserm Leben jeden Augenblick hineingestellt in den Kampf zwischen Gut und Bös, und wir werden in der Entzweiung dieses Kampfes nach beiden Seiten gerissen. Indem wir das erfahren, bekommen wir eine eigene innere Geschichte und gewinnen jene eigentümliche Art von Lebendigkeit, die wir persönliches Leben nennen … Persönliches Leben ist Entscheidungsleben … Was aber auch im einzelnen als das Gute getan werden soll und mag, gut ist’s nur, wenn in seinem Tun dies geheimnisvolle Leben lebendig ist, das Gottes Leben selber ist und in Jesus Christus, wie er den Kreuz[es]weg ging, unmittelbar … sich offenbart.51

Dies ist also die These: Stellvertretende Opferbereitschaft in der Zweideutigkeit des Kampfes zwischen Gut und Böse ist die zentrale Kategorie politischer Theologie zwischen 1926 und 1945, die daher bei Emanuel Hirsch zur politischen Christologie wird, sofern hier Motive der theologia crucis Luthers transformiert und politisch-theologisch aktualisiert werden. Die Gesamtrichtung verläuft so, wie Carl Schmitt im Blick auf einen völlig anderen Kontext im Jahr 1969 formuliert: „von der Politischen Theologie zur Politischen Christologie“.52 II.3 Politische Christologie – Kennzeichen Emanuel Hirsch entwickelt die politische Theologie zur politischen Christologie. Darin ist er der Musterfall politischer Theologie im Protestantismus zwischen 1914 und 1945. Dies möchte ich in einigen Eckpunkten profilieren: Hirsch gab 1934 dem Begriff „politische Theologie“ einen klaren verfassungsrechtlichen Sinn: Politischer Theologe ist, wer den politisch-völkischen Souverän 51 E. Hirsch, „Grundlegung einer christlichen Geschichtsphilosophie. Ein Versuch“, ZSyTh 3 (1925)

213–47, S. 222–4. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II. Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder politischen Theologie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970), 11. 52 C.

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Heinrich Assel

auch als Souverän der Kirche anerkennt, also nicht primär das Staatsoberhaupt. Politischer Theologe ist also, wer den Führer der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung (nicht: den Reichskanzler) als Souverän der evangelischen Kirche anerkennt. Genauer noch: als Souverän einer zu schaffenden postkonfessionell-völki­schen Nationalkirche. Jede Äußerungsform christlicher Religion ist politisch zu bestimmen gemäß dem jeweiligen Volksnomos. Die wichtigste Äußerungsform christ­licher Religion sei im 20.  Jahrhundert die „Weltanschauung“.53 „Die Frage Welt­anschauung und Glaube ist die Schlüsselfrage zur gesamten geistigen gegenwärtigen Lage“, so schreibt Hirsch in seinem Hauptwerk „Christliche Rechenschaft“ von 1937.54 In den Mythos des Gefallenen zeichnet Hirsch das Muster der Tragik politischen Handelns ein: Das Risiko des unvermeidlichen Scheiterns politischen Handelns. Die Diagnose der krisenhaften Tragik politischen Handelns im modernen Fachmenschentum und Genussmenschentum, das Verhängnis des Politischen, teilt Emanuel Hirsch mit seinem Antipoden Max Weber. Nur wurde diese Diagnose bei ihm politisch-theologisch chiffriert: Politisches Handeln ist Handeln unter dem Verhängnis göttlichen Gesetzes. Gemessen am göttlichen Gesetz reiner Liebe, gemessen an der Sozialform des Reiches Gottes, ist das politische Handeln im imperialen Fachmenschentum verstrickt in die Zwänge der militärisch-industriellen Logik – wie man in der protestantischen Funktionselite wusste. Im industriellen Krieg verstrickt sich das politische Handeln in nicht zu verantwortende Kriegsgräuel. Das Legitimationsbedürfnis, das der Krieg auslöst, kann also überzeugend nur beantwortet werden, wenn in das Ideal der militärischen Opferbereitschaft selbst diese reale Zweideutigkeit eingezeichnet war – als Verhängnis des Gesetzes und der Schuld. Der soldatische Held ist stets zugleich potentieller Verbrecher, weil verstrickt in den in­dustriellen Krieg. Die traditionell religiöse Formel vom Gerechten, der stets zugleich Sünder ist, wird so zur politisch-theologischen Formel. Die Überschreitung des politisch Verantwortbaren kann selbst noch einmal als Opfer für das Vaterland gedeutet werden: als inneres Gewissensopfer, als rechtlich und ethisch vor anderen nicht mehr ausweisbare Gewissensdezision. Das Wagnis der Entscheidung verlangt Bereitschaft zum Risiko des nicht nur physischen Untergangs. So kann Hirsch 1937 schreiben: Jedes Handeln mit dem Ziel, vollmächtig am gemeinsamen Leben zu gestalten, ist ein Wagnis: ein Wagnis darauf, daß man die aus der Lage erwachsenden Möglichkeiten recht verstanden … habe. … Es gibt Fälle, wo sich das Wagnis so abspielt, daß … ein ganzes Volk als mitwagend in das Wagnis hineingerissen wird. Das sind die eigentlich großen Momente der Geschichte. … die geheimnisvolle Gottheit, die in der Geschichte 53 Entscheidend

hierfür: E. Hirsch, „Vom verborgenen Suverän“ (sic!), Glaube und Volk 2 (1933) 4–13. 54 E. Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, Bd. I–II, bearb. v. H. Gerdes (Tübingen: Katzmann, 1989), 307.

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waltet, sie weckt manchen zum Wagen auf, um den heroischen Willen bis in den Untergang hinein zu erproben. Ihr ist die Aufweckung des … Heroismus vielleicht ein größerer Vorgang als das Gewinnen des Ziels.55

Von daher erklärt sich ein eigentümliches Kennzeichen dieser politischen Theologie: ihr Begriff völkischer Souveränität. Seit 1932/33 vertrat Hirsch die im Protestantismus singuläre Lehre vom verborgenen und öffentlichen Souverän. Die Volkheit und ihr Gesetz sind der verborgene Souverän. In der nazistischen Führerbewegung findet dieser verborgene Souverän seinen stellvertretenden öffentlichen, charismatischen Souverän. Dieser Begriff stellvertretender charismatischpolitischer Souveränität richtete sich natürlich gegen den liberalen Begriff rechtsstaatlicher Verfahrenssouveränität. Das letzte Kennzeichen dieser politischen Theologie ist ihr Konzept absoluter Souveränität: der Gott der politischen Theologie. Absolut souveräner Schöpfer ist Gott, weil er das Gesetz verhängt, um unter dem Gesetz aus dem Verhängnis und Fluch des Gesetzes zu retten. Der Schöpfer erweist seine Souveränität im Verhängnis, in dem er frei über Tod und Leben, über Verdammnis und Rettung, über Verwerfung und Erwählung entscheidet. Bei Hirsch ist in der Tat das Gesetz und seine „Sünde“ jenes Verhängnis, unter dem eine göttliche Macht allein Leben erhält, um daraus zu erlösen. Der Schöpfer schafft jene Ausnahmesituation, in der er als Er­löser gegenüber dem geschaffenen Feind seine Souveränität erweist. Er­lösung setzt voraus, dass das Schuldverhängnis zur akzeptierten Schuld wird. Wenn Schuld­verhängnis zur akzeptierten Schuld wird, resigniert der letzte Feind Gottes, das Geschöpf. Eben darin ist dieser Feind gerechtfertigt, versöhnt und erlöst. Akzeptierte Schuld ist Versöhnung sub contrario. Der transzendente Versöhnungsakt tritt als politischer negativ in die Immanenz: in der Resignation. So übersetzt Hirsch die traditionelle religiöse Formel in politische Theologie: Der Gottlose wird kraft des Bekenntnisses zur Gottlosigkeit paradoxerweise gerechtfertigt.56 II.4 Die Aporie politischer Theologie und Christologie Hirschs politische Theologie – so lässt sich zusammenfassen – transformiert die Lehre von Schöpfung und Sünde und im Kern die theologia crucis in eine bestimmte politische Theologie und Christologie der abgründigen Souveränität des offenbaren Gottes. Die politische Theologie verleiht dem vermeintlichen politischen Wagnis des nationalsozialistischen Staatsterrors zwischen 1933 und 1934 55 Ebd.,

335–6.

56 Grundlegend ist E. Hirsch,

Schöpfung und Sünde in der natürlich-geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit des einzelnen Menschen. Versuch einer Grundlegung christlicher Lebensweisung (BSTh 1; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1931).

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(und mehr noch der Katastrophe der Jahre 1942 bis 1945) die höchste religiöse Weihe. Genau dies ist es, was Paul Tillich im Herbst 1934 voraussah: Ich kann meine Kritik in den Satz zusammenfassen: Du verkehrst die prophetisch-­ eschatologisch gedachte Kairos-Lehre in priesterlich-sakramentale Weihe eines gegenwärtigen Geschehens.57

Alles in der Kairos-Lehre Tillichs, in ihrer implizit christologischen Beschreibung des politischen Kairos zwischen Dämonie und neuer Theonomie und in seinem religiösen Sozialismus, richtete sich kritisch gegen diese priesterlich-sakramentale Weihe des Politischen bei Hirsch. Daher der fundamentale Angriff im Herbst 1934, der bis heute paradigmatischen Rang hat.

III. Theologia crucis als Theorie abgründiger Offenbarung göttlicher Souveränität? Emanuel Hirsch und Erich Vogelsang Dieses Fazit wirft die Frage auf: Welchen Charakter hat eigentlich theologia crucis bei Emanuel Hirsch? Wie interpretiert eigentlich Hirsch die zugrundeliegenden Texte Luthers? Wer hierauf nach Antwort sucht, muss auch Hirschs Schüler Erich Vogelsang (1904–1944) einbeziehen, der um 1930 Hirschs systematische Position an Texten Luthers nachzuweisen suchte. Inwiefern wird theologia crucis bei ihnen zum Inbegriff der Theologie Luthers?58 Inwiefern sind sie darin sachlich völlig unabhängig von Walter von Loewenichs These aus dem Jahr 1929, nach welcher theologia crucis nicht eine Periode der Theologie Luthers, sondern „ein (sc. Erkenntnis-) Prinzip der gesamten Theologie Luthers“ ist?59 Ich kann eine Antwort hier nur thetisch umreißen und verweise auf eine jüngere Analyse Ulrich Barths zum Thema. Sie fördert die Problematik der theologia crucis bei Hirsch und Vogelsang pointiert zutage, indem sie deren Positionen wiederholt.60

57 Tillich,

„Die Theologie des Kairos“, 152. Luther zu theologus bzw. theologia crucis: Asterisci Lutheri adversus obelisci Eckii (März/ Mai 1518), WA 1, 290,34–291,1.  – Heidelberger Disputation (April 1518), Th. 21 und 24 (5. u.).  – Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute (Mai/Juni 1518), WA 1, 613,22–3; 614,22.24. – Vorlesung über den Hebräerbrief (wohl in dieselbe Zeit gehörig), Marginalie zu Hbr 12,11, WA 57/3, 79,19–20. – Operationes in psalmos (1519), Exkurs zu ps 5,12a De spe et passionibus, WA 5, 175,32– 176,34/AWA 2, 316,22–319,3; zu ps 6,11, WA 5, 216,8–217,3/AWA 2, 388,8–389,16; zu ps 9a,8, WA 5, 299,18–300,22/AWA 2, 531,1–532,4. 59 W. v. Loewenich, Luthers theologia crucis (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1929), 7. 60 U. Barth, „Die Dialektik des Offenbarungsgedankens. Luthers theologia crucis“, in ders., Aufgeklärter Protestantismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004) 97–123. 58 Martin

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1. Ausgangspunkt für Hirschs Interpretation der theologia crucis ist weniger die Heidelberger Disputation (wie bei von Loewenich) als vielmehr die Hebräerbrief-Vorlesung. 2. Luthers Glosse zu Hebr 12,11 und der dortige Rekurs auf Jes 28,21; Ps 4,2; Röm 5,5; 1Kor 1,18, in welchen die theologia crucis umrissen sei, kann als exemplarisch gelten, weil hier die Verflochtenheit von exegetischer und systematischer Erkenntnis deutlich wird.61 3. Emanuel Hirsch wies bereits in seinem 1920 erschienenen Aufsatz Initium theologiae Lutheri darauf hin, dass Ps 4,4 f. für Luther der Schlüssel zur theologia crucis sei. Erich Vogelsang hat die Entwicklung der Auslegung dieses Psalmverses innerhalb der „Dictata“ nachgezeichnet.62 4. Das Kreuz ist hermeneutischer Schlüssel der gesamten Schrift, weil es als Grunddatum des Gottesverhältnisses Jesu zugleich die exemplarische Weise des Offenbarseins Gottes in der Welt bezeichnet. Als solches, nicht als exklu­ sives Versöhnungswerk Christi, ist es auch das Urbild alles christlichen Daseins vor Gott. Ps 4,4 f. beschreibe, kreuzestheologisch im Sinn Luthers verstanden, nicht nur das innere Leben des leidenden Christus, sondern darüber hinaus den Christenstand insgesamt.63 5. Die Kreuzestheologie betone die Verborgenheit auch und gerade des göttlichen Handelns unter der Scheinwirklichkeit der Sünde. „Das Kreuz ist das Symbol der Unkenntlichkeit jedweder Offenbarung in der Sphäre der Zwei­ deutigkeit.“64 6. Der die Zweideutigkeit des mirum konstituierende Gegensatz von Sein und Schein ist selbst ein Werk Gottes. Dieses Moment göttlichen Handelns eigens

61 Hirsch

edierte 1929 Luthers Hebräerbriefvorlesung: Luthers Vorlesung über den Hebräerbrief. Nach der vatikanischen Handschrift, hg. v. E. Hirsch/H. Rückert (Berlin/Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1929). Hebr 12,11 ist der Ort, an dem die Hebräerbriefvorlesung auf das fragliche Thema zu sprechen kommt. Dazu bemerkt Luther in der Glosse: „Dies sind zwei Gegensätze, die in der Schrift häufig begegnen: Gericht und Gerechtigkeit, Zorn und Gnade, Tod und Leben, Übel und Gut. Und ‚das sind die großen Taten des Herrn: Ein ihm fremdes Werk ist es, auf daß er sein Werk tue‘ [Jes 28,21]. ‚Denn der Geist ist willig, aber das Fleisch ist schwach‘ [Mt 26,41]. Wundersam nämlich macht er das Gewissen fröhlich, nach Ps 4: ‚In der Angst tröstest du mich‘ [Ps 4,2], d. h. schaffst du mir einen weiten Raum. Ist es doch die Eingießung der Gnade, nach Röm 5: ‚Erfahrung bringt Hoffnung, Hoffnung aber läßt nicht zu Schanden werden‘ [Röm 5,4 f.]. Dies ist die Theologie des Kreuzes oder, wie der Apostel sagt: ‚Das Wort vom Kreuz, den Juden ein Ärgernis und den Griechen eine Torheit‘ [1. Kor 1,18.23]; denn sie ist ganz und gar verborgen vor ihren Augen.“ 62 E. Vogelsang, Die Anfänge von Luthers Christologie nach der ersten Psalmenvorlesung insbesondere in ihren exegetischen und systematischen Zusammenhängen mit Augustin und der Scholastik dargestellt (AKG 15; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1929), 97–101. 63 „[Der Herr] ist nämlich wundersam in seinem Heiligen, weil er ihn in Anfechtungen versetzt und ihn solchermaßen krönt. … Crux enim Christi ubique in Scripturis occurit“ (vgl. frühere Auslegung von Ps 4,2 f. und spätere Auslegung Ps 4,4 f., wahrscheinlich 1516; StA 1,42,11–44,8 mit StA 1,44,9–45,19, Zitat: 44,10 f.15). 64 Barth, „Die Dialektik des Offenbarungsgedankens“, 111.

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namhaft zu machen und auf den Begriff zu bringen, ist die Funktion von Jes 28,21. 7. Die Verborgenheit des Werkes Gottes: Die Zweideutigkeit und Abgründigkeit der Offenbarung Gottes ist also mehr als lediglich ein nach außen gespiegelter Reflex der inneren Spannung von fleischlichem und geistlichem Verstehen auf Seiten des Menschen. Vielmehr ist letztere ebenso wie der Hindurchgang durch sie im Gewahren des mirum ein Produkt des Gegensatzhandelns Gottes selbst.65 8. Luthers theologia crucis ist seine eigentliche Offenbarungstheorie … Das Symbol des Kreuzes steht darin nur indirekt für das Versöhnungswerk Christi, in erster Linie vielmehr für die Grundform des göttlichen Offenbarungs­ handelns in einer durch die Macht der Sünde bestimmten Welt. Die Merkmale dieses Offenbarungsbegriffs haben für Luther geradezu kategorialen Status: (a) die Differenz von Sein und Schein, (b) die Kontrarietät von Offenbarungsintention und Offenbarungsmittel, (c)  die Verborgenheit göttlichen Handelns unter der Konträrgestalt, (d) die Heilsfinalität zwischen manifestem und verborgenem Werk, (e) die Hoffnungsgewißheit der Heilsfinalität beider Werke.66 Der „argumentative Kern“ sei die Lehre vom doppelten Werk Gottes. Die Unter­ scheidung von Gesetz und Evangelium sei in der Dialektik göttlichen Handelns, der Zweideutigkeit und Abgründigkeit göttlichen Offenbarungshandelns begründet. Diese scharfsinnige Analyse trifft nach meinem Urteil keineswegs den Sinn der theologia crucis bei Luther selbst (s. dazu Abschnitt IV.), aber präzise jene Interpretation der Texte Luthers, die wir bei Hirsch und Vogelsang vorfinden. Sie formuliert in all ihrer pointierten Schärfe – dies ist meine These – den Kern des Problems. Theologia crucis wird zur Offenbarungstheorie. Diese bestimmt das göttliche Offenbarungshandeln als prinzipiell abgründig und zweideutig. Offenbarung Gottes wird so zu einem politisch-theologischen Souveränitätsakt. Hirschs politische Theologie nach 1933 gründet in einer Offenbarungstheorie dieses Formats. Die Mutation zur problematischen politischen Theologie absoluter göttlicher Souveränität droht im modernen Luthertum, wo Luthers dialektische Unterscheidungen in analoger Weise zugespitzt werden, auch wenn es nur selten in der Schärfe und Konsequenz von Emanuel Hirsch, Erich Vogelsang und Ulrich Barth durchgeführt wird. Insofern ist dieser Zweig der Lutherrenaissance, der von Hirsch ausgeht (und über Vogelsang bis heute reicht), so problematisch wie exemplarisch.

65 Der

für die theologia crucis zentrale Begriff der Verborgenheit Gottes darf nicht mit dem deus­ absconditus aus De servo arbitrio verwechselt werden. 66 Barth, „Die Dialektik des Offenbarungsgedankens“, 122.

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IV. Theologia crucis als revidierte politische Theologie Hans Joachim Iwand (1945–1960) Mehr als jeder andere deutschsprachige lutherische Theologe nach 1945 stellt sich Hans Joachim Iwand (1899–1960) den Problemen der politischen Theologie in der Lutherrenaissance, um sie zu revidieren. Er knüpft dabei an Paul Tillich an und führt dessen Analysen zur proletarischen Situation und zur Theologie des Kairos nach 1945 weiter – auch über Tillich hinaus. Ich will dies zeigen, indem ich – spiegelbildlich zu Hirsch – in Abschnitt IV den Charakter der theologia crucis bei Iwand beschreibe und danach in Abschnitt V seine revidierte politische Theologie umreisse, die sich auf die öffentliche Predigt des göttlichen Gesetzes und Gebots sowie des Evangeliums konzentriert. Exkurs: Hans Joachim Iwand als intellektuelle und politische Figur Wie kann man Hans Joachim Iwand als intellektuelle und politische Figur charakte­risieren und vorstellen?67 Iwand lehrte zwischen 1923 und 1937 in Königsberg, Riga und Bloestau in Ostpreußen, zuletzt in analoger Funktion wie Dietrich Bonhoeffer als Leiter des ost­ preußischen Predigerseminars der Bekennenden Kirche. 1937 wurde er aus Ostpreußen ausgewiesen und mit Redeverbot im ganzen Deutschen Reich belegt. Von 1937 bis 1945 war er Industriepfarrer in Dortmund, also im westlichen Industriegebiet Deutschlands. Nach 1945 entfaltete er als Professor in Göttingen und Bonn bis zu seinem frühen Tod 1960 eine große akademische Wirksamkeit. Als herausragender Prediger im AdenauerDeutschland hatte Iwand eine große, aber polarisierende öffentliche Wirkung. Iwand war ein u ­ nionskirchlich gesonnener Lutheraner, ein Erstunterzeichner der Arnoldshainer Abendmahlsthesen von 1957, ein Protagonist der Friedenspolitik mit dem Osten Europas in der Christlichen Friedenskonferenz, der kongeniale Freund Karl Barths und Briefpartner Josef Hromadkas und Georg Lukács’. Er war ein Lehrer Jürgen Moltmanns, dessen Theo­ logie der Hoffnung 1964 ein weiteres Kapitel politischer Theo­logie in Westdeutschland aufschlug, das nicht mehr zur Lutherrenaissance gehört.68

Luthers theologia crucis hat bei Iwand in der Tat den Rang „eines theologischen Erkenntnisprinzips“69 – wie einer seiner letzten Texte, die Abhandlung Theologia crucis von 1959 formuliert. Ihr Ansatz in der Heidelberger Disputation, in den 67 H. J. Hillerbrand (Hg.), The Encyclopedia of Protestantism (New York/London: Routledge, 2004–),

enthält keinen Artikel zu H. J. Iwand und erwähnt ihn nur als Lehrer von Jürgen Moltmann (Bd. 3, 1456). Auch ein Artikel zu E. Hirsch fehlt, während der Artikel zu K. Holl (Bd. 2, 695–6) bedauerlicherweise auf dem Forschungsstand von 1980 ist. Das Schlagwort Lutherrenaissance wird immer wieder benutzt, aber ein Artikel dazu fehlt. Im Artikel „Lutheranism Germany“ (Bd. 3, 1194–1200) bleibt es unerklärt. 68 J. Seim, Hans Joachim Iwand. Eine Biografie (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1999). H. J. Iwand, Theologie in der Zeit. Lebensabriß und Briefdokumentation, Bibliographie, hg. v. P. Sänger (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1992). 69 H. J. Iwand, „Theologia crucis“, in ders., Vorträge und Aufsätze (Nachgelassene Werke 2; München: Chr. Kaiser, 1966), 381.

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Operationes in Psalmos und in der Auslegung der 7 Bußpsalmen wird bei Iwand sofort zur Frage nach ihrem Charakter, also nach ihrer Begriffs- und Theorieform. Die theologia crucis ist zudem von Iwands Habilitationsschrift über „Rechtfertigungslehre und Christusglaube“ (1930) über den Traktat „Glaubensgerechtigkeit nach Luthers Lehre“ (1941) bis zum späten Text von 1959 jenes Medium, in dem sich Iwand über den Charakter seiner eigenen Theologie äußert. Ich kann auch dies nur thetisch umreißen.70 Iwands Werke der Nachkriegszeit71 widmen sich einer Konstellation von Themen. Es geht um: 1. die Explikation des Wortes von der Versöhnung als Grund einer eschatologischen Öffentlichkeit, in welcher Kirche und Gesellschaft für einander offen sind, um sich je aktuell in den politischen Öffentlichkeitsformen zu begegnen; 2. die Erneuerung einer „dogmatischen“ Christologie als Grundlegung, wobei Iwands Frage nach dem zeitgemäßen Charakter christologischer Lehrsätze und Begriffsformen um das Problem Erkenntnis und Interesse, legitimer „interessierter Erkenntnis“ kreist; 3. die Erneuerung der öffentlich-politischen Praxis der Predigt des Gesetzes in der deutschen Nachkriegsöffentlichkeit mit ihren spezifischen Antagonismen („West-Bindung“, Kalter Krieg, Vorgeschichte der Ost- und Entspannungs­ politik); 4. die Frage, inwiefern die Predigt des Gesetzes die kritische Kraft (vis negativa) christlicher Liebe öffentlich geltend macht. Iwands Frage ist also, inwiefern die Predigt des Gesetzes in der politischen Öffentlichkeit als Raum der Entscheidungen der demokratischen und rechtsstaatlichen Gewalten mit ihren spezifischen Gründen und Prozeduren, und im öffentlichen Forum der zivilgesellschaftlich-medialen Meinungsbildung mit­ ihren spezifischen Gründen eine kritische vis negativa der Liebe geltend macht. Die Predigt des Gesetzes ist eine genuine Öffentlichkeitspraxis. 5. Gegen den „Antinomismus“ Hirschs wird bereits 1941 in „Glaubensgerechtigkeit nach Luthers Lehre“ das gepredigte Gesetz in seiner konstitutiven Bedeutung für die theologia crucis soteriologisch betont. Das Gesetz hat Heilsbedeutung, weil der Glaube nur durch das Gesetz die Kondeszendenz Gottes im Kreuz Jesu erlernt. Zweck und Ziel des gepredigten Gesetzes ist die kritische 70 Eine

vollständige Analyse bietet jetzt die Greifswalder Promotionsschrift: C. Neddens, Politische Theologie und Theologie des Kreuzes. Werner Elert und Hans Joachim Iwand (FSÖTh 128; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), zu Iwand, 442–858. 71 Dazu v. a.: H. J. Iwand, Gesetz und Evangelium, hg. v. W. Kreck (Nachgelassene Werke 4; München: Chr. Kaiser, 1964); ders.: Kirche und Gesellschaft, bearbeitet, kommentiert und mit einem Nachwort versehen von E. Börsch (Nachgelassene Werke, NF 1; Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998); ders., Christologie. Die Umkehrung des Menschen zur Menschlichkeit, bearbeitet, kommentiert und mit einem Nachwort versehen v. E. Lempp/E. Thaidigsmann (Nachgelassene Werke, NF 2; Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1999); ders., Theologiegeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, bearbeitet, kommentiert und mit einem Nachwort versehen v. G. C. den Hertog (Nachgelassene Werke, NF 3; Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2001).

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Selbsterkenntnis des Glaubens und dies ist die Bedingung endlicher, zeitlicher Erkenntnis des sub contrario gegenwärtigen Guten. 6. Das Gesetz klagt nicht nur soteriologisch die beständige Rückkehr zum am Kreuz offenbaren Gott und dem leiblichen Wort der Verheißung ein. Iwand geht es nach 1945 um den ethischen Urteilssinn von Röm 12,1 f., um eine politisch-ethische Urteilskraft, die utopiekritisch, aber explorativ und imagi­ nativ das politisch mögliche Gute als (verborgenes) Gutes, das Wohlgefällige als (verborgen) Wohlgefälliges, das Vollkommene als (verborgen) Vollkommenes sucht und erkennt. Iwand nennt dies eine „realistische“ politische Urteilskraft.72 7. Damit die Predigt des Gesetzes als Öffentlichkeitspraxis nicht dezisionistisch oder unausgewiesen kerygmatisch bleibt, ist ethische Mitarbeit an der Zukunft und Gegenwart der Nachkriegsgesellschaft erforderlich. Solche Predigt übersetzt sich in spezifische politisch-ethische Gründe, ohne in diesen politischethischen Gründen aufzugehen. Wie verhalten sich z. B. normative Gründe auf der Basis von Autonomie- und Würdeargumenten zu gebotsethischen Gründen, welche die verborgene christliche Freiheit der Liebe geltend machen? Christliche Freiheit ist unter autonomer Freiheit verborgen, eine absconditas nicht sub contrario, sondern sub eodem.73 8. Die bleibende Bedeutung des Gesetzes als öffentliche Gesetzespredigt und als Inbegriff einer politischen Urteilsethik bringt Iwand in die Formel eines „Weltbilds der Zukunft“, das je aktuell in der gesellschaftlichen Situation zu begreifen und politisch zu formulieren sei. 9. Diese Aspekte bilden in der Genese von Iwands politischer Theologie zwischen 1948 und 1959 eine in sich gestaffelte Denkbewegung. Sie kulminiert in der Frage nach einer politischen Urteilsethik des Gesetzes und seiner Predigt als öffentliche Praxis. 10. Die politische Weisheit des Evangeliums enthalte ein „Weltbild der Zukunft“. Diese Formel „Weltbild der Zukunft“ bildet Iwand in direkter Auseinander­ setzung mit Max Weber, seiner Diagnose einer Krise des okzidentalen Rationalismus und seiner gesellschaftlichen Wertekonflikte sowie seiner methodischen Innovation und Aporie.74 72 M. Luther, Heidelberger Disputation, These 21, WA 1, 354,21–22: „Theologus gloriae dicit malum

bonum et bonum malum, Theologus crucis dicit id quod res est.“ Vgl. G. Bader, „Was heißt: theologus crucis dicit it quod res est?“, in K. Grünwaldt/H. Frederichs (Hg.), Kreuzestheologie. Kontrovers und erhellend (FS V. Weymann; Hannover: Amt der VELKD, 2007) 167–81, S. 181: „Wenn nun gemäß der absconditas sub contrario (3.) der Kreuzestheologe zu einem solchen wird, der durch Ungleichheit eher spricht als durch Gleichheit, und nach der absconditas sub eodem (4.) zu einem solchen, der eine überwältigende Ungleichheit selbst noch aufspürt in dem gleichen, keineswegs im ungleichen Wort, dann ergibt sich daraus, dass er in einer doppelten Verborgenheit spricht: einmal verborgen unter dem Gegensatz bis zur Unkenntlichkeit, das andere Mal noch viel abgründiger verborgen unter der Einheit: verborgen bis zur Kenntlichkeit.“ 73 Vgl. ebd., 177–8. 74  H. J. Iwand, Einführung in die gegenwärtige Lage der systematischen Theologie (Nachgelassene Werke, NF 3; Göttingen: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1949/50), 299–349 (= Kapitel 2: Die

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Iwands Luther-Interpretation greift also nach 1945 programmatisch auf die methodische Innovation Webers und Holls zurück. Sie formuliert eine Alternative zu Hirschs politischer Theologie. Sie arbeitet an der Aporie Webers und Holls weiter. Webers spätem Vortrag „Wissenschaft als Beruf “ bescheinigt Iwand einen reduktiven Rationalitätsbegriff. Die beanspruchte Werturteilsfreiheit historistischer Erkenntnis und das sozialpolitische Werturteil sind aporetische Zwillinge. Mit dem (missverständlichen Begriff) „Weltbild der Zukunft“ versucht Iwand einen legitimen Begriff von dogmatischer als interessierter Erkenntnis zu formulieren. Die „dogmatische“ Begriffsform seiner Christologie, die Iwand in drei großen Vorlesungen monographisch ausarbeitet, formuliert „interessierte Erkenntnis“, welche sich in einem „Weltbild der Zukunft“ ausformuliert. Denn wie und wo anders als im Dogma sollten wir jenes Weltbild … als der zur Offenbarung Gottes in Jesus Christus gehörigen Welt bejahen können? Es werden Erkenntnissätze sein, hinter denen ein Ist steht, das so keinem anderen Weltbild entspricht: jenes Ist, das damit gegeben ist, daß Jesus der Christus ist! Daß also Gott lebt und daß er treu ist.75

Für den späten Iwand ist theologia crucis also – wie bei von Loewenich – theologisches Erkenntnisprinzip, doch als Prinzip „interessierter“ theologisch-politischer, imaginativer Urteilskraft, die je nach Situation ein „Weltbild“ einschließt. Exemplarisch dafür sei die Einleitung von Theologia crucis 1959 angeführt: Iwand möchte zeigen, dass es sich bei der theologia crucis der Heidelberger Disputation „um ein theologisches Erkenntnisprinzip“ handelt, das Luther in der Auslegung von Ps 22 der Operationes in Psalmos als politisch-theologische Unterscheidungskraft durchführe: Das Leiden Christi, das er hier (in Ps 22) geweissagt findet, versinnbildlicht (für Luther) den Abfall der falschen Kirche und ihren Versuch, aus dem Reiche Christi ein Reich dieser Welt zu machen. So ist dieser Psalm zugleich ein hervorragendes Dokument für den ursprünglichen, den radikalen Sinn seiner Unterscheidung der beiden Reiche im negativen und positiven Sinn.76

Der Charakter von Christologie als interessierter Erkenntnis und als Unterscheidung der beiden Reiche im negativen und positiven Sinn, ist am ehesten Hegels Lehre vom absoluten Geist verwandt, die Michael Theunissen als theologischpolitischen Traktat interpretiert hat.77 Mit Georg Lukács formuliert, einem bevorzugten Gesprächspartner Iwands: Religions­soziologie und das Ende des Neuprotestantismus) sowie 350–75 (= Kapitel 3: Die Krise der Wissenschaft und das „Weltbild der Zukunft“). Zu Recht weist Gerard den Hertog in seinem Nachwort zu Bd. 3, 524 f. auf diese Lebensfrage Iwands hin. 75 Ebd., 375. 76 Iwand, Theologia crucis, 381–2. 77 M. Theunissen, Hegels Lehre vom absoluten Geist als theologisch-politischer Traktat (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970). Der Begriff des Seins in der Versöhnung in Christus, der sich vom Schein der Vorstel-

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Erst wenn der Mensch die Gegenwart als Werden zu erfassen fähig ist, indem er in ihr jene Tendenzen erkennt, aus deren dialektischen Gegensatz er die Zukunft zu schaffen fähig ist, wird die … Gegenwart als Werden zu seiner Gegenwart.78

Theologia crucis ist die interessierte Erkenntnis solcher Gegenwart. Sie formuliert den Grund des Werdens des Menschen zu seiner eigenen Gegenwart. Darin wird die Gegenwart des Seins der Versöhnung, das geistliche Reich Gottes, im Status der Verheißung und des Advents möglicher politischer Zukunft des weltlichen Reichs entdeckt und sub contrario imaginiert. Dies ist „Unterscheidung der beiden Reiche im negativen und positiven Sinn“. Wie sich dies konkretisiert, möchte ich abschließend am Beispiel der Liebe als vis negativa in Iwands Vorlesung „Kirche und Gesellschaft“ erläutern.79

V. Kirche und Gesellschaft Predigt des Gesetzes und Liebe als kritische Urteilskraft V.1 Kirche und Gesellschaft: Öffentliche Theologie Wer unter dem Titel „Kirche und Gesellschaft“ eine veritable Kirchen- und Gesellschaftstheorie erwartet, wird enttäuscht. Für eine Gesellschaftstheorie würde es diesem Text viel zu viel an Verbands-, Parteien-, Bürokratie-, Rechtsstaats- und Demokratietheorie, und an Wirtschafts-, Wissenschafts-, Rechts-, Religions- und Kirchensoziologie fehlen. Es geht Iwand um eine realistische Ethik des politischen Handelns in der sich rechtsstaatlich und demokratisch, parteienstaatlich und militärisch wieder aufbauenden Nachkriegsgesellschaft Deutschlands. Im Kern sucht diese Ethik die Predigt des Gesetzes als primären politischen Vorgang zu beschreiben. Wo machen „mit der Gegenwart des neuen Äons in der Person Jesu selbst auch die Kräfte der zukünftigen Welt (Eph 2,7) ihre Dynamik geltend …?“  – dies ist Iwands Grundfrage (25). Im Kern ist politische Theologie damit Theologie des Gesetzes – scheinbar wie bei Hirsch. Doch mit völlig verändertem Vorzeichen: Die Christologie der geschehenen Versöhnung lässt danach fragen, wie in der Predigt des Gesetzes die Kräfte der künftigen Welt mitgeteilt und antizipiert werden. Die Unlung einer bloß historischen Versöhnung oder bloß zukünftigen Versöhnung löst, ist endlicher Begriff, weil er nicht reiner Begriff wird, sondern auf erneuerte Vorstellung angewiesen ist. Er ist genötigt, die Gegenwart des göttlichen Reiches in die Zukunft des weltlichen Reichs zu übersetzen, in einen Begriff und eine erneuerte Vorstellung, die den Gegensatz von Jetzt und Zukunft vermittelt. 78 G. Lukács, „Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. Studien über marxistische Dialektik“, in ders., Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (Frühschriften II; Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand, 1968) ­161–517, S. 392. 79 H. J. Iwand, Kirche und Gesellschaft (Nachgelassene Werke, NF 1; Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998) (Nachfolgende Seitenangaben im Text beziehen sich auf dieses Buch).

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terscheidung von Gesetz und Evangelium umreißt, wohin wir als gesellschaftliche Subjekte in unserem Handeln aufbrechen können. Sie konstituiert einen genuinen öffentlichen Diskurs darüber, wobei die Predigt des Gesetzes authentisches Redegenus dieses Diskurses ist. Iwand setzt dem lutherischen Konfessionalismus der 50er Jahre eine neue Fragestellung entgegen: die Frage nach der Öffentlichkeit des Wortes Gottes und des Reiches Gottes, seiner Gerechtigkeit und seines Rechts, in welcher Kirche und Gesellschaft füreinander geöffnet sind.80 Er zielt mit dieser neuen Frage gerade nicht auf Legitimation oder Delegitimation einer Staatsform oder Verfassungsform. Anders als bei Hirsch kulminiert hier politische Theologie gerade nicht in einer Theologie der Souveränität, der legitimen Herrschaft oder gar der Herrschaft über den Ausnahmezustand. Iwand zielt vielmehr auf den begrenzten, kritischen und reformerischen Gebrauch (usus) von Recht, Eigentum und Institutionen, der durch das Gesetz informiert ist. Er zielt auf eine Gebotsethik, der es um eine zu verantwortende, ethische und politische Mitarbeit im sich aufbauenden Nachkriegsdeutschland geht. Das Spektrum Iwands reicht dabei von der sachorientierten Mitarbeit bei der Integration der ostpreußischen Vertriebenen über die politische Intervention bei hohen politischen Mandatsträgern in offenen oder privaten Briefen zur Ostpolitik bis hin zum zivilen Ungehorsam in der Wiederaufrüstungs- und Atomdiskussion der 50er Jahre. Es muss allerdings erwähnt werden, dass Iwand dabei auch höchst fragwürdige politische Urteile traf und sich in dubiose Koalitionen mit Theologen der DDR verstrickte, die mit der Geheimpolizei der DDR (Stasi) kollaborierten. Iwands theologia crucis war keineswegs gefeit dagegen, im Ost-West-Konflikt ideologisch missbraucht zu werden und sich missbrauchen zu lassen. Angesichts dieses faktischen Missbrauchs zeigt sich ihre ideologiekritische und utopiekritische Anlage im folgenden Passus über die „nüchterne Mitarbeit“ an der ethischen Frage. Mitarbeit ist grundsätzlicher Verzicht auf solches Gestalten-Wollen. Wir streben nach dem Geziemenden (epieikes), nicht nach dem Absoluten [sc. sei es als ­kapitalistische oder kommunistische Utopie]. Wir haben es nicht in der Hand, daß das Ziel der Menschheitsgeschichte erreicht wird. Die ethische Frage beschränkt sich auf die Zeit, die uns gegeben ist (67, Anm. 2).81

80  Diese

neue Fragestellung ist seit J. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (stw 891; Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 181990) und W. Huber, Kirche und Öffentlichkeit (Stuttgart: Klett, 1973), geläufig. Iwands politische Ethik liegt vor diesem sozialwissenschaftlich-theologischen Paradigmenwechsel. Das ist ihre Grenze. Sie enthält aber auch uneingelöste theologische und ethische Erkenntnisse. 81   Selbstverständlich ist bei dieser Anspielung auf das „Geziemende“ Luthers Obrigkeitsschrift (1523, WA 11, [229] 245–81) und ihr Begriff von Billigkeit im Hintergrund (vgl. WA 11, 272; StA 3, 63, 4–8).

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Es werden sich also die jeweils streitenden Parteien daran gewöhnen müssen, daß wir bei beiden mitarbeiten (nämlich: bei der Christdemokratie und der Sozialdemokratie, im westlichen Kapitalismus und im östlichen Sozialismus), weil es uns auf die Arbeit, auf das [sc. geziemende] Gute, den Fortschritt […] ankommt, die zu fördern sind, und nicht auf die prinzipielle Klärung. (72)

V.2 Liebe als kritische Urteilskraft (vis negativa) Der kreuzestheologische Charakter dieser Ethik des Politischen zeigt sich an drei Grundzügen: dem Verständnis von Gerechtigkeit, von Freiheit und von Liebe. Ich beschränke mich auf das Letztere. Die Vorlesung mündet in eine Dekalogethik, durchgeführt als Ethik der Predigt des Gesetzes (142–87), konzentriert um das Doppelgebot der Liebe: Die Frage, auf die entscheidendes Gewicht zu legen ist im Verhältnis von Kirche und Gesellschaft, ist das Gebot Gottes – oder, wie ich noch lieber sagen würde: die Predigt des Gesetzes. (150)

Wie Iwand die Predigt des Gesetzes als Predigt der Gottesliebe und Nächstenliebe und wie er diese Liebe als vis negativa interpretiert, zeigt seine bleibende Prägung durch Luthers Römerbriefvorlesung. So ist also die Liebe zu Gott die ganz reine Gottesbeziehung, die allein aufrichtigen Herzens macht … ‚Denn sie liebt Gott allein und rein, nicht die Gaben Gottes …‘“ (159, mit Zitat Luthers)

Die Liebe zum Nächsten bleibe daher bildlos. Wenn sie den Anderen erreicht, so erreicht sie ihn in einer „Armut“, die ihm als öffentlich-gesellschaftliche Person nicht anzusehen war, die aber an ihm unüberhörbar wurde (164). Bildlos sei die Nächstenliebe, weil ihre Tat in der Darstellungsform des Rechts unanschaulich ist und weil ihre Gabe nicht in Rechtsform zu bringen ist, auch nicht in diejenige des Menschenrechts reziproker menschenrechtlicher Würde. Liebe unterliegt daher keinem Tauschverhältnis. Sie folgt auch keinem transzendentalen Rollentausch, den neuerdings Svend Andersens lutherisch-politische Ethik ins Zentrum stellt. Hingegen pointiert Iwand: „Den nur kann ich lieben, mit dem ich nicht tauschen möchte“ (179, Anm. 60). Dieser „Doppelcharakter des Gesetzes“, eine originäre Interpretation des Liebesgebots durch das Erste, Zweite und Dritte Dekaloggebot (vgl. 165, Anm. 48), wird abschließend als Skizze einer Dekalogethik durchgeführt (169–87). Herausgegriffen sei ein Beispiel, in dem Iwands ethische Analyse eine Eindringlichkeit gewinnt, die an Emanuel Lévinas und Giorgio Agamben erinnern mag („Die Liebe als Grund und Grenze der Freiheit“, 198–203). Iwand analysiert hier, ausgehend von der Erfahrung der Konzentrationslager im Nationalsozialismus, die Erfahrung, dass die Freiheit zur Nächstenliebe in Konflikt mit jenem „politi-

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schen Souverän“ gerät, der beansprucht, selbst außerhalb und über dem Recht zu stehen und rechtlose Zonen des Ausnahmezustands zu schaffen, so dass es lebensgefährlich wird, der Nächste des homo sacer zu sein. „Wer sein Leben liebhat, der gehe vorüber“, das ist die unsichtbare, aber allen bekannte Inschrift, die über diesen Menschen und Orten steht, wo die Liebe verboten ist: So entstehen heute mitten in unserer modernen Gesellschaft jene rechtlosen Räume, die das Thema der Freiheit in einem ganz neuen, völlig unsentimentalen Sinn aufbrechen lassen. (199)

Hier habe sich auf exemplarische Weise die Unvereinbarkeit von Rechtspositivismus und Liebe offenbart. Durch das positivistische Recht sei die Tat der Nächstenliebe auf legalem Weg kriminalisiert worden (auch Iwands Ehefrau war eine Deutsch-Jüdin). Mit der Möglichkeit der Kriminalisierung der Tat der Liebe bis hin zur Todesstrafe (und der fortbestehenden Gültigkeit dieser Urteile nach 1945) erhebe sich eine neue Freiheitsfrage, die Frage nach Liebe als Grund einer (inneren) Freiheit, die im Recht, auch im Menschenrecht, undarstellbar bleibt; und die Frage nach Liebe als kritische Grenze rechtlich verbürgter Freiheiten, die eben an dieser kritischen Grenze sich als brüchig, verletzbar, als menschlich erweisen. „Diese fürchterliche Zukunft als Möglichkeit …, jetzt schon verlorener Freiheit der Liebe, wohnt inmitten unserer Gesellschaft, und das ist ihre tiefste Brüchig­ keit“ (200). Das „revolutionäre“ Faktum (203), dass es solche Liebe unter dem Nationalsozialismus trotzdem gab und dass es solche Liebe gibt, offenbart im Gegenzug dazu eine größere Freiheit als die autonome Freiheit (und die rechtspositivistischen Freiheitsrechte). Es ist Freiheit, die sub eodem, also unter dieser Freiheit, verborgen ist. Iwands Argument markiert hier eine Grenze nicht nur des positiven Rechts, sondern sogar der Autonomie-Idee und ihres Asyl- und Hospitalitätsrechts, die übrigens auch Kant sah. Daher bleibt Liebe und Gastlichkeit für den Mitmenschen, mit dem man nicht tauschen möchte, innerhalb der Grenzen des Vernunftrechts eine „unerhörte Begebenheit“. Deutlich ist, daß Liebe nur da noch in Freiheit möglich ist  – Liebe von Mensch zu Mensch und von Bruder zu Bruder, – wo der Tod seine Macht verloren hat. Nur in dieser in der Kraft der Auferstehung des Herrn befreiten Welt ist Liebe möglich. (203)

V.3 Zusammenfassung Die Verheißung des Kreuzes bildet hier den Grund politischer Ethik der Gottes- und Nächstenliebe als vis negativa, die daher nie nur Ethik sein kann, sondern zugleich kritische politische Theologie bzw. Christologie werden muss. Nur so kann die politische Wirklichkeit der Versöhnung, die sie voraussetzt, bestimmt werden. Nur so kann ihre genuine Öffentlichkeit beschrieben werden: die Öffentlichkeit suchende und schaffende Predigt des Gesetzes der Liebe. Nur so kann der kritische

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Gebrauch des Gesetzes ausgeübt werden. Es besteht darin, der autonomen Freiheit und den rechtsstaatlichen Errungenschaften einen menschlichen Ort zuzuweisen, anstatt sie ideologisch zu überhöhen.

VI. Ausblick Ist heutige lutherische politische Theologie dem politischen Liberalismus wahlverwandt? Die Herausforderung der Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland von 1910 bis 1960 besteht darin, dass sie Luthers reformatorische Theologie, wie hier am Beispiel der theologia crucis gezeigt, kirchen- und kulturreformerisch, vor allem aber modernitätstheoretisch aktualisierte. An Max Webers Modernitätstheorie orientiert und in kritischem Wettbewerb mit Ernst Troeltsch hält die Lutherrenaissance von Karl Holl bis Hans Joachim Iwand Inspirationen für jene bereit, die heute analoge Fragen zeitgemäß stellen. Das Problem der Verbindung von deskriptiver, werturteilsfreier Analyse und orientierenden Werturteilen in den pluralen Modernitäten und ihren Krisen stellte sich bereits Max Weber. Es blieb bei ihm ungelöst. Die Lutherrenaissance partizipiert an Webers Problemen, mit der Folge, dass theologische Antwortversuche zu politischen Theologien sehr verschiedenen Formats wurden. Dieses Ergebnis bildet die Brücke zu meinem systematischen Beitrag in diesem Band: Political Theology After Luther – Contemporary Perspectives.82 Die heute nötigen Revisionen der problematischen Erbschaft der Lutherrenais­ sance im deutschen, aber auch im skandinavischen Kontext fordern ein aggiornamento der lutherischen politischen Theologien. Dies kann so geschehen, dass der Liberalismus John Rawls’ und der Republikanismus Jürgen Habermas’ den Rahmen zeitgemäßer Erneuerung bilden.83 Die Theologie des Gesetzes bei Iwand ist mit einer solchen liberalismusaffinen lutherischen politischen Theologie aber nicht ohne weiteres zu vereinbaren. Der Grund dafür liegt darin, dass bei Iwand die universale Öffentlichkeit, die Christen und Nichtchristen offen steht, letztlich eschatologisch formuliert wird.84 Die Öffentlichkeit der Versöhnung ist kreuzeschristologisch grundgelegt und wird in der Ethik des Gebots pneumatologisch ausgeführt. Iwands politische Theologie ist Hegel wahlverwandter als Kant, wenn man so will: Michael Walzers Kommunitarismus näher als John Rawls’ Liberalismus. 82 Kapitel

11 in diesem Band. durchgeführt ist dies in der neuesten lutherischen politischen Theologie und Ethik von S.  Andersen (Anm.  41). Die folgende Zusammenfassung zu Iwand ist in Auseinander­ setzung mit Andersen formuliert und profiliert. 84 Zweifellos ist darin Jürgen Moltmann Schüler Hans Joachim Iwands, ohne dass Iwands Wirkung in Moltmanns Theologie der Hoffnung und Christologie aufginge. Zur politischen Theologie Moltmanns und ihrer heutigen Diskussion: J. B. Metz/J. Moltmann/E. Schüssler Fiorenza (Hg.), Politische Theologie. Neuere Geschichte und Potentiale (Theologische Anstöße 1; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2011). 83 Hervorragend

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Iwand wählt auch nicht die Max-Weber-Perspektive der Herrschafts- und Legitimitätstheorie auf das Politische. Für ihn ist es nicht das Phänomen der Herrschaft, v. a. nicht die charismatische Macht des Handelns aus opferbereiter Liebe, sowie ihre Ausübung in liberalen Herrschafts- und Machtformen, die das Paradigma politischer Ethik bilden. Diese Fragestellung – sie war die Frage Karl Holls – schien in Sackgassen zu führen. Aus dieser historischen Erfahrung wählt Iwand ein alternatives Paradigma: In der politischen Theologie geht es primär um das politische Urteilen und um die Mitarbeit der Christinnen und Christen als Bürgerinnen und Bürger im Gebrauch der Institutionen und Rechte der rechtsstaatlich verfassten Gesellschaft im Horizont der Öffentlichkeit des Reiches Gottes und des göttlichen Gebots. Der politischen Ethik Iwands (wie z. B. auch der Ethik Bonhoeffers) fehlt zwar zugegebenermaßen der höchst differenzierte Öffentlichkeitsbegriff, welcher den heutigen pluralistischen Gesellschaften gerecht wird. Wonach heute – über Iwand hinaus – zu fragen wäre, ist etwa ein institutionell vermitteltes und insofern interpersonales Wohltun aus Nächstenschaft in einer pluralismussensiblen Weise: Wie gestaltet sich heute eine öffentlich artikulationsfähige Teilnahme lutherischer Bürgerinnen und Bürger an der politischen Öffentlichkeit, dem Raum der Entscheidungen der Gewaltausübung. Sie handeln hier als „Amtspersonen“, die sich auf die je spezifischen Gründe dieser Gewaltausübung einlassen müssen. Wonach zu fragen wäre, ist weiter eine öffentlich artikulationsfähige Teilnahme der lutherischen Bürgerinnen und Bürger am öffentlichen Forum, also an der zivilgesellschaftlichmedialen Meinungsbildung. Die Stärke der Ethik Iwands (und Bonhoeffers) liegt aber im genuinen Begriff von der Öffentlichkeit der politia Christi, also in der Frage nach einer Christenbürgerschaft, die von „innerer, geistlicher“ Freiheit ist, weil sie in den Rechtsformen und politischen und zivilgesellschaftlichen Öffentlichkeitsformen nicht restlos darstellbar und realisierbar ist. Die Nächstenliebe der Christenbürger kann ethisch überschießend sein und im Recht, ja selbst in den Menschenrechten undarstellbar bleiben. Dies zeigt sich z. B. schlagartig, wenn christliche Gemeinden Hospitalität für Fremde und Migranten gewähren, die weder Asyl- noch Aufenthaltsrechte haben. Die Frage, inwieweit die innere Freiheit und Nächstenschaft der Christpersonen eine exzessive Kraft sein kann, bleibt, ohne dass sofort das Außergewöhnliche des zivilen Ungehorsams oder gar des Widerstands im Blick sein muss, zu dem sich Iwand (und Bonhoeffer) entschlossen. Die Frage, inwieweit sich diese Freiheit an die vernünftige, politische Form des Wohltuns im Sinne liberaler Gerechtigkeit zwar selbst bindet, aber nicht konstitutiv an sie gebunden ist, ist ein provokatives Erbe jener Theologen, wie Iwand und Bonhoeffer, die aus der Lutherrenaissance kamen und angesichts der deutschen Zivilisationskatastrophe ihre politische Theologie fundamental revidierten. Sie suchten nach ihrem eigenen Weg in die Moderne „nach der Katastrophe“. Hier setzt Iwands Predigt des Liebesgebots eigentlich an. Das politische Subjekt seiner politischen Ethik sind lutherische Christinnen und Christen als Bürgerin-

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nen und Bürger und eben darin die Kirche als Ort der Öffentlichkeit des Reiches Gottes. Dies ist Iwands Perspektive, von der aus er in der Epoche des Kalten Krieges nach Kirche und Gesellschaft fragt. Der Bereich des Politischen ist keineswegs nur ein Bereich der religiösen Überzeugungen von lutherischen Bürgern in ihrer background-culture. Vielmehr ist „Kirche“ eine spezifisch öffentliche Realität einer „post-politischen Kommunikation“ (Oliver O’Donovan). „Lutherische Kirche“ ist dazu nicht primär organisationssoziologisch oder staatskirchenrechtlich zu interpretieren, sondern im Sinn einer öffentlichen, politischen Konfessionskultur in der Zivilgesellschaft. Die politische Weisheit des Evangeliums und die Predigt der Nächstenschaft ist eine „imaginäre politische Institution“ (Cornelius Castoriadis), die den soziologischen und rechtlichen Größen „Kirche“ und „Gesellschaft“ vorausliegt und gegenüber steht – wie das Reich Gottes.

Abstract The Lutherrenaissance in Germany from 1900 to 1960 Challenge and Inspiration This essay provides a new orientation in the study of the Lutherrenaissance in Germany by investigating the intense discussion between Karl Holl, who stands at the origin of the Lutherrenaissance, and theories of modernity articulated by Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch. The argument tracks how these thinkers conceived different paths to modernity as multiple modernities. Also treated is the controversy concerning how they evaluated Luther and the effects of his thought for modernity. Luther had articulated key theological doctrines that the Lutherrenaissance appropriated and that then became relevant for modern sociology. The representative example is the theology of the cross. These doctrines would also shape Lutheran political theology that in the period between 1933 and 1945 resulted in disastrous political-ideological consequences. One question addressed in this essay concerns the challenges that this inheritance ­poses for the articulation of a contemporary Lutheran theology. The other question concerns the Lutherrenaissance’s original vision of a methodological integration of the theology of the cross, a theory of modernity, and political theology. How can this vision inspire German Lutheranism after 1945 to profoundly revise its key theological beliefs and practices, without presupposing that this revision is merely a long trajectory westwards? This essay thus offers a panorama of the Lutherrenaisance from 1900 to 1960.

Chapter 3

Christine Svinth-Værge Põder

Gewissen oder Gebet Die Rezeption der Römerbriefvorlesung Luthers bei Karl Holl und Rudolf Hermann

1921 hat Holl seinen Aufsatzband Luther veröffentlicht,1 der zu einem Meilenstein der Lutherforschung und zum Anbruch der Lutherrenaissance wurde. Darin erschien in stark revidierter Form sein früherer Aufsatz über die Römerbriefvorlesung Luthers von 1515–16. Auch Rudolf Hermann hat, aus unterschiedlicher Perspektive, die Römerbriefvorlesung interpretiert. Ich werde im Folgenden die beiden Auslegungen darstellen und würdigen. Das Interesse gilt insbesondere der Frage der Gewissheit in der Rechtfertigung und der Bedeutung der Figur resigna­ tio ad infernum (bei Holl) und des Gebets (bei Hermann).

I. Heilsgewissheit und Selbstgericht: Karl Holl I.1 Die Auslegung der Römerbriefvorlesung Luthers (1910) a. Das proleptisch-analytische Urteil Die Römerbriefvorlesung führte bis zum Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts ein Dasein in Vergessenheit, versteckt in der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin. Als sie 1908 von Johannes Ficker herausgegeben wurde, stand anfänglich ihr reformatorischer Status zur Debatte. Ficker selbst hat die Vorlesung als ein Übergangszeugnis gewürdigt, u. a. weil die Heilsgewissheit in der Vorlesung anscheinend noch in Frage steht. Holl wendet 1910 dagegen ein, wie Luther wenn er 1515 noch über die Heilsgewissheit im Zweifel gewesen wäre, „er dann im Kloster einen gnädigen Gott wirklich ‚gekriegt‘ haben?“ könnte.2 Ganz schlüssig ist sich auch Holl nicht und fragt: 1 K.

Holl, GA I, Luther. Die sechste Auflage von 1932 basiert wie die sonstigen späteren Auflagen auf der revidierten und erweiterten Zweitausgabe von 1923. Der Aufsatz über die Recht­fertigungs­ lehre in der Römerbriefvorlesung ist (abgesehen von einige sprachliche Modifikationen) 1923 nicht mehr geändert worden, so dass er mit der 1921’er Version praktisch identisch ist. Daher ist es in diesem Zusammenhang nicht relevant, Unterschiede zwischen der 21’er- und der 23’er-Ausgabe zu berücksichtigen. 2 Holl, „Die Rechtfertigungslehre“ (1910), 246.

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[…] ist es nach ihm vorstellbar, daß man einen gnädigen Gott hat, ohne zugleich seines Heils gewiß zu sein? – Man darf diese letztere Frage nicht von vornherein verneinen, aber ebensowenig leichten Herzens über sie hinweggehen.3

Holl kritisiert aber die Voraussetzung der Fragestellung, die sich zu viel für die menschliche Seite der Rechtfertigung interessiert. Dies würde nach Holl der Auffassung Luthers nicht entsprechen, denn für ihn lag ein besonderer Wert auf dem göttlichen „Standpunkt“ der Rechtfertigung. Holl hat 1910 ein doppeltes Anliegen: Einerseits will er den reformatorischen Status der Vorlesung verteidigen, und deshalb für die Anwesenheit eines Begriffs von Heilsgewissheit argumentieren. Dass ihm dies kein fremdes Anliegen ist, zeigen frühere Aussagen, nach denen „nur das Selbsterlebte … unerschütterlich fest“ steht.4 Andererseits will er in Verlängerung seines eigenen früher gewonnenen Antieudämonismus diese Heilsgewissheit von Konnotationen der Glückssucht befreien (u. a. im Sinne vom Verlangen nach ewiger Seligkeit). Diesem doppelten Anliegen wird er gerecht, indem er die göttliche Logik der Rechtfertigung nach Luther in einem ersten Schritt isoliert und sich bemüht, sie einheitlich und konsistent darzustellen. Erst im zweiten Teil des Aufsatzes wird nun die Frage der Heilsgewissheit wieder aufgenommen, nun aber als etwas, das durch existentielle Krisen und Kämpfe hindurch gewonnen werden kann. Seinem Antieudämonismus gemäß muss Holl den Standpunkt Gottes in der Rechtfertigung dagegen frei von Glückseligkeitsvorstellungen, d. h. „vom sittlichen Boden aus vertretbar“5 darstellen. Das heißt nun nicht, dass Zielvorstellungen überhaupt ausgeschlossen sind, denn Holl geht es in seiner Lutherauslegung darum, dass der Rechtfertigungsakt Gottes – im Sinne der Begründung einer Gemeinschaft – die Vollendung des Menschen bezweckt, denn „[m]it dem Sünder kann Gott nicht zusammensein. Er duldet nichts Unheiliges in seiner Nähe. Tritt er mit dem Menschen in Beziehung, so heißt das auch, daß er den Menschen fähig machen will, vor ihm zu bestehen“.6 Dabei taucht aber eine neue Schwierigkeit auf: Aussagen Luthers nämlich, dass Gott nur den bereits Gerechten rechtfertigt,7 und die somit doch als Verdienstgedanke aufgefasst werden könnten. Diese Schwierigkeit löst Holl jedoch mithilfe der Konstellation eines analytisch-proleptischen Rechtfertigungsurteils8 des 3 Ebd.

4 K. Holl, „Was hat die Rechtfertigungslehre dem modernen Menschen zu sagen?“, in GA III, 558–

67, S. 559. 5 Holl, „Die Rechtfertigungslehre“ (1910), 248. 6 Ebd., 253. 7 Vgl. ebd., 251. 8 Vgl. ebd., 252–60. Die Diskussion Holls mit Ritschl über den synthetischen oder analytischen Charakter der Rechtfertigung knüpft hier an. Holl erkennt das Anliegen Ritschls an, die Recht­ferti­ gung als schöpferische Tat Gottes zu verstehen. Zugleich meint er, dass es genauer ist, das Rechtferti­ gungsurteil als „analytisch“ zu bezeichnen, weil so dem Alleinwirken Gottes am konsequentesten Rechnung getragen wird (ebd., 260).

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allein­handelnden Gottes: In göttlicher Selbstgewissheit vom Endergebnis der Gerechtmachung des Menschen kann Gott, die Vollendung somit vorwegnehmend, den noch sündigen, aber dann gerechten Menschen als Gerechten anerkennen. Für Holl ist es wegen des sittlichen Anliegens wesentlich, dass die Gnade und Gerechtigkeit Gottes sich nicht widersprechen: Die Rechnung muss stimmen! Holl will also einerseits, antieudämonistisch, den Verdienstgedanken ausschließen, andererseits muss die Gerechtsprechung einer faktischen Gerechtmachung entsprechen. b. Die Unerkennbarkeit der Gerechtigkeit und die Dialektik von Verheißung und Gebot Holl ist sich also darüber im Klaren, mit welcher Absicht Gott den Menschen rechtfertigt. Als er im zweiten Teil  des Aufsatzes die Erfahrungsdimension der Rechtfertigung behandelt, entfaltet er jedoch nicht, wie diese Absicht Gottes dem Menschen vermittelt wird. Es geht hier darum, wie sich „das Tun Gottes im Bewusstsein des Menschen spiegelt“.9 Die Spiegelung findet statt, indem der Mensch demütig das göttliche Urteil auf sich bezieht. Denn die faktische Gerechtigkeit, die allmählich im Menschen entstehen soll, ist unerkennbar. Rechtfertigungsbewusstsein gibt es nur punktuell aufleuchtend in dem spannungsvollen hin und her zwischen Glaube und Buße, sowie Furcht und Hoffnung, wo man nur Gott hat, indem man Gott sucht.10 Dass die Vergebung und Gnadenverheißung irgendwie der Inhalt einer promissionalen Zusage an den Menschen sein kann, wird nur an einzelnen Stellen beleuchtet.11 Jedoch scheint Holl eine worthafte Vermittlung vorauszusetzen. Mit Hinweis auf die Beständigkeit der Gnade Gottes betont er, dass der Mensch nach Luther sich der Verheißung fügen müsste wie einem Gebot. Von diesem imperativischen Charakter der Verheißung ergibt sich dann faktisch die Möglichkeit und Erlaubnis einer grundsätzlichen Rechtfertigungsgewissheit. c. Resignatio ad infernum Nun stößt Holl bei seiner Lutherlektüre jedoch auf die Prädestinationsanfechtung und den geheimen Ratschluss Gottes, die die gewonnene Heilsgewissheit wieder zu unterminieren drohen. Diese Spannung gilt es nicht zu beseitigen, sondern auszuhalten. Diesbezüglich legt Holl Luthers Lösung in zwei Stufen dar. Die erste Stufe besteht darin, sich im Vertrauen an die Verheißung zu halten und entspricht eigentlich dem, was Holl im Zusammenhang der imperativischen Ver­ 9 Ebd.,

263, meine Kursivierung. 267–9, 270, 281–3. 11 Beispielsweise ebd., 267. 10 Ebd.,

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heißung dargestellt hat. Diese Lösung wird nun etwas überraschend als Lösung für die „Schwachen“ von einer anderen Lösung überboten: Für die „starken Christen“ gibt es nämlich eine weitere Stufe. Demnach soll sich der „starke“, reife Christ die Möglichkeit seiner eigenen Verwerfung annehmen und für gerecht halten, denn „[d]arin zeige sich erst die Gottesliebe in ihrer vollen Reinheit, dass man den Willen Gottes selbst dann bejahe, wenn er das eigene Glück vernichte“.12 Exkurs: Holls Interpretation der Resignatio-Figur bei Luther Die Unterscheidung zwischen Schwachen und Starken überrascht auch deshalb, weil sie bei Luther an der entsprechenden Stelle über die Resignatio-Figur nicht begegnet. Die Distinktion gehört in der Römerbriefvorlesung in den Zusammenhang, wo sie auch im paulinischen Römerbrief zu finden ist, nämlich im Zusammenhang des im 14.  Kapitel er­ örterten Problems, wie die Glaubenden hinsichtlich ihrer unterschiedlichen Haltungen zu den Essensvorschriften einander berücksichtigen sollen. Luther legt dieses Problem breiter aus, so dass er die beinhaltete Paränese auch auf die gegenwärtigen Problemstellungen applizieren kann, und sowohl Starken als auch Schwachen hier die Adressaten sind.13 Es ist jedoch bezeichnend, dass er die Unterscheidung von Starken und Schwachen nicht zur generellen Unterscheidung über dieses Problem hinaus erhebt und dass er den „Starken“ in diesem spezifischen Zusammenhang keine erhabenen geistigen Vollzüge „zumutet“, außer dass sie die „Schwachen“ nicht richten (was selbstverständlich gegenseitig zutrifft). Es liegt auf der Hand, dass die „Stärke“ der Starken in dem Moment, wo sie sich über die Schwachen erheben würden, zutiefst zweideutig werden würde. An der Stelle, wo Luther die resignatio ad infernum darlegt,14 ist zwar eine Stufen­ ordnung sichtbar: Resignatio ist besser als bloß aus der Verheißung Gewissheit zu schöpfen. Anderswo15 kann er aber davon reden, dass Gott allen (oder jedenfalls den allermeisten) Menschen diesen Vollzug zumuten wolle und dies sogar vor allem von den Unvollkommenen erwünsche, so dass diejenigen, die es im irdischen Leben nicht erreichen, das Vernachlässigte im Purgatorium nachholen müssten – ja, das Purgatorium habe genau seinen Sinn als die nachzuholende resignatio ad infernum.

Dieser Vollzug soll nach Holl über die Erwählung vergewissern, weil darin die reine, desinteressierte Gottesliebe zum Ausdruck kommt. Es kommt damit eine Überschreitung des Denkzwangs von Verdienst und Vergeltung zustande – für Holl im Sinne der Unterwerfung unter den Willen Gottes und der Verwerfung des minderwertigen Wunsches nach Seligkeit (290). Insofern sieht Holl die resignatio ad infernum als die letzte und logische Konsequenz der Rechtfertigungslehre Luthers. Die Resignatio-Figur hat in der Darlegung Holls weithin den Charakter eines Gedankenvollzuges, bei dem man zum wahren Verständnis über die Rechtfertigung 12 Ebd.,

S. 388. WA 56, 492–3. 14 WA 56, 388. 15 WA 56, 391,17–34. 13 Vgl.

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kommt. Bezeichnend erweist die resignatio sich – im Vollzug – als unvollziehbar: Die Hölle ist, wenn sie in der Willensgemeinschaft mit Gott erlitten wird, „tatsächlich keine Hölle mehr“ (289 f.). Faktisch deutet Holl (im Gegensatz zur späteren Version) interessanterweise an, dass es bei der Figur eigentlich um Rhetorik von Seiten Luthers geht; eine Zuspitzung, die den Ernst der Rechtfertigungslehre „ganz scharf … fühlbar“ machen soll.16 Es geht darum, die Rechtfertigungslehre richtig zu verstehen. Aufschlussreich für Holls Ringen um die Erwählungs- und Rechtfertigungsgewissheit im Jahre 1910 sind seine Überlegungen zur Theologie Calvins im Jahr zuvor. In seiner Rede zum Calvin-Jubiläum bezeugt er seine Sympathie für diesen Reformator und für seine Prädestinationslehre, die in den Luther-Auslegungen durchschimmert: Es ist denkbar und naheliegend, dass er mit seiner Hervorhebung der Bedeutung der Prädestinationslehre für die Rechtfertigungslehre Luthers, im gewissen Umfang Luther im Lichte Calvins liest. Sowohl seine theozentrische Konzeption vom Alleinhandeln Gottes als auch die antieudämonistische Sittlichkeit findet er inbegriffen in der Theologie und im Leben Calvins, dessen doppelte Prädestinationslehre, bzw. praktische Erwählungsgewissheit, ihn gerade nicht zur Apathie, sondern zur „rastlosen Tätigkeit“ aus Berufungsbewusstsein angetrieben habe.17 Mit Hinblick auf diesen Zusammenhang lobt er die Einsichten des Zeit­genossen Max Webers, die vier Jahre zuvor in Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des­ Kapitalismus erschienen sind.18 Gerade den Zusammenhang der calvinischen Prädestinationsvorstellung mit der Vorstellung selbstloser Gottesgewissheit, die die essentiellen Komponenten seiner antieudämonistischen Fundamentalethik sind, sieht er bei Weber bestätigt. Er kritisiert jedoch als Implikation des Buches die danach verbreitete Auffassung, dass Erwählungsgewissheit die Folge (und nicht der Grund) sittlicher Tätigkeit sein sollte. So sind bereits in der Calvin-Rede von 1909 die Ansätze einer fundamentaltheologischen und fundamentalethischen Bedeutungszuschreibung zur Prädestinationslehre vorhanden. Die Vorstellung von den sich als Werkzeug Gottes wahrnehmenden „starken Christen“ von 1910 scheint zum Teil  von der nie ruhenden, gesellschaftsgestaltenden Arbeit Calvins inspiriert zu sein,19 was sich auch in den Jahren unmittelbar nach der Kriegsniederlage Deutschlands bestätigt.20 Die Konsequenzen, die diese geschichtlichen Ereignisse für Holls Luther-­Calvin-Kombination haben wurden, sind im Folgenden wieder aufzugreifen. 16 WA

56, 290. III, 264. 18 M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum, 3 2000). GA III, 264, 281. Auf die Affinität Webers zu Holl weist Heinrich Assel in diesem Band hin (siehe Kap. 2). Sie zeigt sich nicht zuletzt darin, dass die Holl’sche Kategorie des „Starken“ bei Weber als Typ cha­risma­tischer Herrschaft in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriß der verstehenden Sozio­ logie (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1922) (mit Hinweis auf Holls Enthusiasmus und Bußgewalt von 1898) wiederkehrt. 19 GA III, 262–7, 271–3, 277. 20 Beispielsweise in der resentimentsbeladenen Bewunderung für die calvinistischen Siegermächten, s. u. 17 GA

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Holl vertieft sich 1910 nicht weiter in die Resignatio-Figur. Jedoch sind bereits hier zwei Vorstellungen ansatzweise vorhanden, die Holl später weiterentwickeln wird. (1) Die Distinktion von Starken und Schwachen kann man als Konsequenz der zentralen Bedeutung des Zuwachses an faktischer Gerechtigkeit im Menschen sehen, der vom Standpunkt Gottes aus das Rechtfertigungsurteil verantwortbar machen soll (nach Regin Prenter verharrt Holl damit jedoch gedanklich in einem Verdienstschema21). (2) In der Betonung des Prädestinationsrätsels wird ein Gottesbild angedeutet, das im Widerspruch steht zur Vorstellung vom beständigen und selbstgewissen Gott, der seine Absicht, den Menschen zu vollenden auch vollzieht. Dieses noch keimhafte Gottesbild gewinnt im Laufe der folgenden Kriegsjahre mehr und mehr an Gestalt. I.2 Die Revidierung der Auslegung der Römerbriefvorlesung Luthers (1921/23) 1921 veröffentlicht Holl den Aufsatzband Luther, den Johannes Wallman als „Produkt des Kriegserlebens“ gewürdigt hat.22 Das zeigt sich exemplarisch in der Neubearbeitung des Aufsatzes über die Römerbriefvorlesung.23 Während Holl in der frühen Variante zum Schluss bloß eine vorsichtige Bevorzugung des jungen­ Luther der Römerbriefvorlesung geäußert hatte, wird 1921/23 dieser Luther zur sittlichen Wiederaufbauikone für Deutschland stilisiert und als starker Christ dargestellt, der nicht wie der ältere Luther den Standpunkt der „Schwachen“ einnimmt: Die Römervorlesung zeigt Luther noch in seiner vollen Kraft; ihre Rechtfertigungslehre atmet die ganze Heldenhaftigkeit, die Luther bewähren durfte, solange er für sich stand und die Rücksicht auf andere, auf die Durchschnittsmenschen, ihn noch nicht hinderte, auch Äußerstes zu fordern.24

Den Gedanken von „starken“ Christen und ihrer resignatio ad infernum erscheint nach dem Kriegsende im Horizont eines neuen Anliegens Holls, eine reformatorische Grundlage der Ethik auszuarbeiten. Die Figur wird nun um eine politischsozialethische Deutung erweitert. Die Erschütterung, die die Kriegsniederlage für Holl bedeutete, ist von Assel anhand von Briefen Holls dokumentiert worden. Die Ereignisse in der Zeit des Waffenstillstandes und der Novemberrevolution hat Holl als Gericht Gottes über ein in sittlichem Verfall stehendes Deutschland gewürdigt, wobei die Siegermächte England und Amerika nach dieser Deutung 21 Vgl.

R. Prenter, Spiritus Creator (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1953), 96–8. Wallman, „Karl Holl und seine Schule“, ZThK Beiheft 4 (1978) 1–33, S. 31. 23 Holl, „Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewißheit“, in GA I, 111–54. 24 Ebd., 154. 22 J.

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offensichtlich besser als Deutschland als Werkzeuge Gottes taugten.25 Ganz im Einklang mit der Calvin-Rede von 1909 können somit geschichtliche Ereignisse mit prädestinianischem Sinn gefüllt werden. Der Gedanke von Prädestination und sittlicher Tatmächtigkeit der besonders gottesgewissen Christen konkretisiert sich 1919 im Blick auf die calvinischen Siegermächte, deren Stärke und Fortschrittlichkeit als Endziel des ethischen Wiederaufbaus Deutschlands gesehen wird, weshalb den reformierten Gebieten ein besonderes Fortschrittspotential zugeschrieben werden kann („aus dem Grunde darf uns das Rheinland nicht verloren gehen“ [!]26). In Luther 1921/23 wird nun aber gewissermaßen stillschweigend der calvinische Prädestinationsgedanken mit dem lutherschen Vollzug von Anfechtung und Gewissheit zusammengedacht (stillschweigend insofern die Bezüge auf ­Calvin nun sehr sparsam werden und dabei Luther immer bevorzugt wird; umso aufschlussreicher sind die früheren, expliziten Würdigungen von den Vorzügen Calvins bei Holl). Es ist eine Wechselwirkung von Gegenwartsdeutung und fundamentaltheologischen Vollzugsstrukturen im Luther-Band wahrzunehmen, die in der Umarbeitung seiner Reformationsfeierrede von 1917 exemplarisch zum Ausdruck kommt: Was ­Luther unter Religion verstand, wird nun im Jahre 1921 durchgehend mit Bezug auf den Gerichtsgedanken dargestellt, was in 1917 nur vereinzelt vorgekommen ist.27 Dementsprechend bekommt resignatio ad infernum in dem Aufsatz über die Römerbriefvorlesung nun fundamentaltheologische Bedeutung: Die Figur wird als letztendliche Begründung und Überprüfung von Gewissheit unerlässlich. Dies hat wiederum Folgen für die Ethikbegründung, denn gerade aus der Selbstverneinung soll sich nun Handlungsgewissheit ergeben. In seiner revidierten Re­ formationsfeierrede und besonders in „Neubau der Sittlichkeit“28 begegnet man somit dem Gedanken der resignatio ad infernum im Sinne eines Integritätsopfers bei hervorragenden Persönlichkeiten, die sich als Werkzeuge Gottes wahrnehmen. Sittlichkeit kann demnach sub contrario in einem wagenden Akt kulminieren, der nach außen nur als Übertretung wahrzunehmen ist.

25 Assel,

Der andere Aufbruch, 118–23. „Luther und Calvin“, in ders., Kleine Schriften, S. 67–81, S. 81. Die zuerst 1919 (in Staat, Recht und Volk, hg. v. U. v. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Heft 2) erschienene Schrift fasst die Rede in dem­ selben Jahr zusammen, die Holl 1921 zu „Der Neubau der Sittlichkeit“ umgearbeitet hat. Was in dieser Schrift wie ein Vorwurf gegen die Passivität Luthers (die nach Holl u. a. das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment zur Folge hatte, vgl. ebd., S. 78), aussieht, nimmt Holl im Lutherbuch zurück, vgl. GA I, 97. 27 Holl, Was verstand Luther unter Religion? (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1917), vgl. Holl, „Was verstand Luther unter Religion?“, in GA I, 1–110. Obwohl Holl seine Reformationsfeierrede von 1917 um mehr als das Doppelte erweitert hat, fängt er immer noch mit der ursprünglichen, anredenden Einleitung an – ein nicht zu unterschätzender rhetorischer Griff bei einem Band, der faktisch keine andere Einleitung als diese Jubiläumsanrede hat. Vgl. C. Põder, „Die Lutherrenaissance im Kontext des Reformationsjubiläums: Gericht und Rechtfertigung bei Karl Holl, 1917–1921“, KZG 26 (2013) 191–200. 28 Holl, „Neubau der Sittlichkeit“, in GA I, 155–287. 26 Holl,

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In der Auslegung der Römerbriefvorlesung kommt dementsprechend auch ein neues Gottesbild zum Vorschein. Holl überbietet nun eindringlich seine eigene Argumentation für die Heilsgewissheit mit Hinweis auf das Prädestinationsrätsel, das alles wieder ungewiss werden lässt. 1921/23 betont er: In der Undurchdringlichkeit des göttlichen Ratschlusses lag für ihn [d. h. Luther] ein Wert, den er nicht zu mißachten geneigt war. Die „Majestät“ Gottes kam darin zum Ausdruck, die eine allzugroße Vertraulichkeit zwischen sich und den Menschen nicht duldete.29

Damit soll gerade die auf göttlicher Verheißung begründete Gewissheit ins Wanken kommen: „Gott birgt unerschöpfliche Tiefen in sich, und er führt dazu den Menschen absichtlich ins ‚Dunkel‘ hinein, d. h. er bringt ihn in immer neue Lagen, wo seine bisherige Gotteserfahrung nicht ausreicht.“30 Es sind hier nicht bloß die Bedingungen menschlicher Erfahrung, die anders eingeschätzt werden, sondern der Gottesbegriff ist geändert: Fort ist der genau rechnende, aber gütige Kreditor, der schließlich selbst für die endzeitliche Rückerstattung bürgt. Statt­dessen wird nun ein aktualistisches Bild vom handelnden Gott dargelegt, der nach undurchschaubarer Logik über den Menschen je und je verfügt, der auserwählte Menschen zum werkzeuglichen Handeln unmittelbar durch das Gewissen beruft und denen er auch sub contrario Handlungsweisen zumuten kann, für die sie auf keine vorgegebene Grundlage rekurrieren können, ja, die wie Übertretungen aussehen. Bezeichnenderweise kann die Gerechtmachung des Menschen daher als direkte Einwirkung des göttlichen Willens im menschlichen Inneren dargestellt werden.31 Diese kulminiert nun mit der resignatio ad infernum, die in der revidierten Fassung mit gesteigertem Nachdruck beschrieben wird – was gewiss als Horizont für den Gedanken vom Integritätsopfer aus „Neubau der Sittlichkeit“ verstanden werden will. Die Nachdrücklichkeit zeigt sich in einem abgrenzenden Vergleich mit der resignatio-Tradition der Mystik, den Holl in den Text eingebaut hat. Bei der Mystik sei die resignatio nur „ein frommes Spiel, bei dem man heimlich ganz sicher weiß, daß es doch nicht Ernst wird“32. Bei Luther dagegen sei die Verwerfung eine real mögliche Aussicht, auch für den Gerechtfertigten, den das Urteil Gottes fortwährend betrifft. Nach dieser Logik kann die Heilsgewissheit, die sich im Vollzug dieser Überwindung herstellt, dann eigentlich auch keine Zielgewissheit (auch nicht diejenige der sittlichen Vollendung) mehr beinhalten. Sondern sie ist „das Bewußtsein einer unlösbaren Gemeinschaft mit Gott… Sie ist heldenhafter als die auf der ersten Stufe gewonnene; sie hat das ganze Gefühl der persön-

29 Holl,

„Die Rechtfertigungslehre“, in GA I, 149. I, 136. 31 Vgl. GA I, 120–1. 32 GA I, 151. 30 GA

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lichen Unwürdigkeit und den entschlossenen Willen zur höchsten Opferbereitschaft in sich“.33 So hat sich Holl 1910 noch nicht ausgedrückt. Wo er damals noch nüchtern Überlegungen über den rhetorischen Charakter der Resignatio-Figur anstellen konnte, werden solche Würdigungen 1921/23 vermieden, weil er nun selber rhetorisch geworden ist. Er will seinen Lesern Handlungsgewissheit im Sinne einer unmittelbar im religiösen Affekt sich ereignenden Gottesüberwältigung einprägen. Dies tut er durch die Darstellung eines souverän und unverfügbar waltenden Gottes, der durch auserwählte Menschen handelt. Und er tut es, indem er solche Menschen als „starke Christen“ ikonisiert, die ebenso unverfügbar den Willen Gottes vollstrecken. Dadurch unterminiert er strikt genommen einen zentralen Teil seiner eigenen Lutherdarstellung. Denn seine Ausführung vom Anspruch der Verheißung Gottes auf gehorsames Vertrauen und infolgedessen vom Weg des Glaubens zwischen Furcht und Hoffnung sind im Prinzip eine umfassendere und dialektisch elaboriertere Version des sogenannten „Trostes für die Schwachen“, das immerhin darin besteht, „im kühnen Glauben die Verheißung Gottes zu ergreifen und aus ihr nicht bloß Rechtfertigungs-, sondern auch Erwählungsgewissheit zu schöpfen“ (!) mit der späteren Hinzufügung: „Wer es zu fassen vermag, daß er erwählt sei, der ist auch erwählt.“34 Diese Spannung werde ich im Folgenden im Lichte der Lutherdeutung Rudolf Hermanns würdigen. Um eine Vergleichsgrundlage zu schaffen, sind die Hauptzüge sowohl seines Aufsatzes über „Das Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Gebet“, als auch seines Buches Luthers These ‚Gerecht und Sünder zugleich‘ kurz zu skizzieren.

II. Das Gebet der Sünder: Rudolf Hermann II.1 „Das Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Gebet nach Luthers Auslegung von Römer 3 in der Römerbriefvorlesung“ Obgleich Rudolf Hermann die Bezugnahme Holls auf die religiöse Erfahrung teilt, stellt er einen anderen Typus von Lutherdeutung dar. Im Unterschied zur Vorstellung einer wortlosen Erfahrung des Einverständnisses mit Gott bei Holl vertritt Hermann ein Verständnis von Erfahrung im kommunikativen Vollzug. Dieses Verständnis bildet er in intensiver Beschäftigung mit der Römerbriefvorlesung in den Jahren 1925–1926. Ausdrücklicher als Holl berücksichtigt er somit in seiner­ Luther-Auslegung die Rolle von Sprachformen in der Rechtfertigungslehre. Er notiert, dass „Luthers ganzer Reichtum an eigenen Gedanken sich gerade in seiner 33 GA 34 GA

I, 152. I, 149, vgl. 1910, 287–8, meine Kursivierung.

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Exegese entfaltet“.35 Berücksichtigt man die Weise, wie Luther sich auf die Bibel bezieht, erweisen sich die Konturen eines impliziten Gesprächs, eines dialogischen Gegenübers von Mensch und Gott in der Römerbriefauslegung. So jedenfalls nach der Beobachtung Rudolf Hermanns in seinem Aufsatz „Das Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Gebet nach Luthers Auslegung von Römer 3 in der Römerbriefvorlesung“.36 Die Grundthese, die Hermann hier in drei Schritte ausarbeitet, ist, dass die Rechtfertigung bei Luther nicht ohne das Gebet zu verstehen sei. Rechtfertigung ist demnach ein relationales Geschehen, das nicht isoliert von der Haltung des Menschen zu ihr, bzw. von der Bitte um Sündenvergebung, geschieht. Damit erklärt sich zunächst der sonderbare Zug anscheinender Subjektivierungen, wo Luther Eigenschaften Gottes mit der menschlichen Stellungnahme zu Gott verknüpft: Wer Gott als gerecht anerkennt, ist selbst gerechtfertigt (und umgekehrt). Nach Hermann: „Es muss sich also bei diesem Anerkennen um einen sehr beziehungsreichen Akt handeln.“37 „Mensch“ ist demnach nur in einem Gegenüber zu Gott vorstellbar, das unmittelbar kommunikativ beschrieben wird. Der Mensch gehört somit mit seiner Stellungnahme in den Rechtfertigungsakt hinein – das ist Hermanns personalistische Auffassung (die später bei Regin Prenter Wiederklang findet). Weil die Gerechtigkeit Geschenk Gottes ist, muss die menschliche Anerkennung als Bitte und Lob geäußert werden. Darin, in dem Anerkennen Gottes, ereignet sich aber zugleich die menschliche Selbsterkenntnis. Somit ist das Gebet mit der zentralen Bedeutung der Buße für die Recht­ fertigung in der Römerbriefvorlesung verbunden. In Luthers an die Philosophie anknüpfendem Schema von Werden, Sein und Nicht-Sein steht Buße für das „Werden“ der Rechtfertigung (in der Mitte zwischen dem Nicht-Sein der Sünde und dem Sein der Gerechtigkeit), auf das der Gerechte immer wieder rekurrieren muss.38 In Hermanns Auslegung ist dieses Werden das Suchen und Finden des Gebets, das mit der Rechtfertigung korreliert.39 Hermann veranschaulicht diese Konstellation mit Hinweis auf die zugleich lobende und bittende Anrufung „Wie gerne sind wir leer, damit du die Fülle seiest in uns“.40 Demnach haben Sündenerkenntnis und -bekenntnis nur im dialogischen Gegenüber, in der Ausrichtung auf Gott ihren Sinn als echte und damit auch freudige Buße, und nicht als kreisende Selbstverklagung.41 35 R. Hermann, „Das Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Gebet nach Luthers Auslegung von Römer 3 in der Römerbriefvorlesung“, in ders., Gesammelte Studien zur Theologie Luthers und der Refor­ mation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960) 11–43, S. 11. 36 Vgl. ebd., 13. 37 Ebd. 38 Vgl. WA 56, 442. 39 Vgl. Hermann, „Das Verhältnis von Rechtigung und Gebet“, 25. 40 Ebd., 29, vgl. WA 56, 219. 41 Vgl. Hermann, „Das Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Gebet“, 30. Dies ist ebenso die Pointe in Hermanns ungefähr gleichzeitigem, aber erst posthum veröffentlichten Aufsatz „Rechtfertigung und Gebet“, in ders., Gesammelte und nachgelassene Werke, Bd. II (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981) 55–87.

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Drittens hat das Gebet eine Schlüsselfunktion als „Wirklichkeit“ der Korrelation zwischen Glauben und Werken.42 Indem dieses Verhältnis als Korrelation ausgelegt wird, löst sich das Dilemma, dass Glaube einerseits als werkfrei aufgefasst wird und andererseits aus dem Glauben die guten Werke sich irgendwie ergeben müssen. Nach Hermann macht das Gebet „die Umkehr des Sünders aus einem Gedanken zur Tat“,43 im Gebet vollzieht sich also die tathafte Überwindung, die der Überwindung der Buße in den Glauben hinein entspricht. Mit dieser Auslegung kann Hermann dann auch die bei Luther begegnende Auffassung erklären, dass die guten Werke die Rechtfertigung vorbereiten. Dies ist somit nicht im verdienstlichen Sinne gemeint – als ein vorreformatorischer Rest, wie man denken könnte – sondern weil die Gerechten sich immer als Sünder wahrnehmen und um Gerechtigkeit bitten, haben auch ihre Werke den Sinn eines Suchens und Bittens.44 Wenn die Bitte um Sündenvergebung sich zugleich mit Handlungsgewissheit verbindet, bekommt das Gebet fundamentalethische Bedeutung. Die Bitte trägt dabei dem vorläufigen Charakter des neuen Lebens Rechnung. II.2 Luthers These „Gerecht und Sünder zugleich“ Damit berührt Hermann schon 1925 das Thema seines fünf Jahre später erschei­ nenden Buches, Luthers These „Gerecht und Sünder zugleich“. Das Zugleich von Sünder und Gerecht im christlichen Leben erklärt Hermann auch hier mit Hinweis auf das suchende und bittende Ausgerichtetsein auf Gott hin. Das Buch ist eine detailreiche Analyse vor allem der Römerbriefvorlesung und der Latomus-­ Schrift, die Hermann in der Kontinuität der Römerbriefvorlesung liest; die Darstellung ist somit nicht auf die Auslegung der Römerbriefvorlesung zu begrenzen. Um die Auffassung von Rechtfertigung und Gewissheit zu skizzieren, soll hier eine Zusammenfassung anhand der drei von Hermann selbst in der Ein­ leitung45 erwähnten Hauptperspektiven ausreichen, die alle von der Dialektik des simul durchzogen sind: erstens die Pointe, dass das Verhältnis zwischen Gott und Mensch zeitlich ist, zweitens der Bezug des Zugleichs auf das „Glaubensleben des Einzelnen“ und das damit zusammenhängende Verständnis des „Ich“, und drittens der Hinweis auf die christologische Verankerung der Gerechtigkeit des Sünders.46

42 Hermann, 43 Ebd. 44 Vgl.

„Das Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Gebet“, 33.

ebd., 36. Luthers These, 7–9. 46 Diese Reihenfolge entspricht der Reihenfolge aus der Einleitung und drückt die theologische Priorität für Hermann aus: Die Schöpfung kommt vor der Christologie. Mit dem Vorbehalt, dass alle drei Perspektiven ineinander verflochten sind, werde ich versuchen, sie sukzessiv darzustellen. 45 Hermann,

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a. Die Zeitlichkeit des Zugleich Die Zeitlichkeit gehört zu den grundsätzlichen Bestimmungen des Zugleichs von Sünder und Gerechtem. Es geht nicht um ein zeitloses Ineinander von Sünde und Gerechtigkeit, sondern um das spannungsvolle Werden47, in welchem die Gerechtfertigten begriffen sind. Hermann kann u. a. von dem Zugleich als von einer Epoche der Zwischenzeit reden – zwischen der Vergebung bzw. der Taufe und der eschatologischen Vollendung. Über das Zugleich hinaus kommt man also während des zeitlichen Lebens, Hermann zufolge, nicht. Dafür wird die ­Epoche des Zugleichs von dem eschatologischen Ziel als von ihrer Erfüllung her bestimmt.48 Das Sündersein verbindet dagegen die Person mit der Vergangenheit vor der Recht­fertigung, wie es in Luthers Verwendung des Bilds vom Samariter und dem Kranken entfaltet wird49, das zugleich den Kampfcharakter dieser Zwischenzeit­ illustrieren soll (auch ein sich wiederholender Zug der Auslegung Hermanns). Dem Willen zur Gesundheit wird von den von der Krankheit herkommenden (krankhaften) Wünschen entgegengewirkt. Die infirmitas solcher Krankhaftigkeit ist deshalb als Sünde aufzufassen, weil sie, in Hermanns Darlegung, von der Verderbnis (vor der Rechtfertigung) stammt. Gerecht ist die Person dagegen von der Richtung oder dem Ziel auf Gott her. Von diesem Ziel ergibt sich die zeitliche Einheit des Lebens. Das Werden der gerechtfertigten Person ereignet sich somit in einer zeitlichen Spanne, in der auch Glaube und Heilsgewissheit eben zeitlich zustande kommen und nicht etwa wie ein Zauberschlag von Oben.50 Näher bestimmt kommt das Personsein im Gebet zustande, mit Hermanns Worten ist „das Zu-Gott-du-sagen die Bedingung … für mein Zu-mir-selbst-ich-sagen“.51 Das zeitliche Ereignis vom Ich-Bewusstsein geschieht aber nach Hermann inner­ halb einer „geschichtlich verflochtenen Menschheit“.52 Hermanns Auffassung von heilsgeschichtlichen Epochen muss hier wegen einer interessanten Parallele zu Holl erwähnt werden: Es gibt demnach Zeiten „des Zorns“,53 wo die Gerechten – anscheinend schicksalshaft  – schuldig werden müssen, ähnlich wie das sittliche Agieren der Starken bei Holl als Übertretungen zum Vorschein kommen muss. Wo die Sittlichkeit bei Holl jedoch gerade so, im Integritätsopfer des Einzelnen ihre Kulmination erreichte, knüpft Hermann bei dieser Vorstellung an das Gebet als Klage an, die stellvertretend für alle Mitmenschen ergeht. Er deutet damit eine

47 Vgl.

die auch in diesem Buch herangezogene Stelle, WA 56, 442; Hermann, Luthers These, 245. ebd., 176. 49 Vgl. ebd., 196–7. 50 Vgl. ebd., 98 f., 108. 51 Ebd., 108. 52 Ebd., 207. 53 Ebd., 124–6. 48 Vgl.

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Inter­pretation vom klagenden, solidarischen Gebet als der (einzig) möglichen Antwort auf die Theodizee-Frage an.54 Anhand seines Zeitbegriffs kann Hermann schließlich ein Fortschrittsver­ ständnis entfalten, das die denkbaren Fallgruben vermeidet. Von einem Zuwachs an geheimnisvollen Gnadenkräften ist nicht die Rede, auch nicht von einem selbstgefälligen oder selbstbeobachtenden Wachstum.55 Sondern Fortschritt heißt in Hermanns Terminologie zeitliches Werden; also nicht ein Mehr und Mehr, sondern eher ein Länger und Länger, ein kämpfendes „Weiterkommen“,56 das auf dem bittenden Einbezogensein des Menschen in dem fortschreitenden Wirken Gottes mit seiner Schöpfung beruht. Im Beten ist die Person auf die Zukunft Gottes gerichtet. Darin erweist sich das Fortschreiten als die Bewegung der Buße, so wie sie in der Römerbriefvorlesung verortet ist – d. h. als das Werden zwischen dem Nicht-Sein der Sünde und dem Sein der Gerechtigkeit.57 Der Charakter der Werke als Vorbereitung auf Rechtfertigung  – nach der Römerbriefvorlesung  – erweist sich in diesem Licht nicht als vorreformatorischer Rest: Es ist damit keine Verdienstlichkeit oder Ausgleichslogik gemeint, sondern die Werke erhalten ihre Motivation aus der Suche nach der Gerechtigkeit Gottes, – und müssen damit nicht wie bei Holl von der zweifelhaften reinen Gottesliebe motiviert sein.58 b. Das „Ich“ des Zugleichs – Hermanns tauftheologischer Ansatz Wer ist nun das gerechtfertigte „Ich“, das im Rahmen dieser Zeitlichkeit im Werden ist? Jedenfalls ein Ich, das nicht von seiner Sünde zu trennen ist.59 Eine entscheidende Frage wird für Hermann, wie der im Zugleich von Sünder und Gerechtem existierende Mensch nun auch wirklich einheitlich und ganzheitlich als Person, d. h. keiner von beiden – Sünder und Gerechter – etwa als überpersönliche und überindividuelle Hypostasierung oder Idealität, aufzufassen ist. Er bezieht sich dafür auf die Bedeutung der Taufe als Identitätsbegründung: Als „Lebensimpuls“ und „Wegweiser“ verbindet die Taufe die Vergebung des Sünders mit der schöpferisch-initiierenden Handlung des „Ich neu ins Leben“-Rufens.60 54 Hermann bleibt hier bei der Andeutung. Eine elaboriertere Variante dieser Luther-Interpretation bez. des Verhältnisses von Gebet und Theodizee-Frage ist neuerdings (anhand von einer Deutung von Rom 8,26 bei Luther, WA 53, 206 f., die aber im inhaltlichen der Deutung in der Römerbrief­ vorlesung entspricht ) von Jaqueline A. Bussie vorgenommen worden in „Luther’s Hope for the World. Responsible Christian Discourse Today“, in C. Helmer (Hg.), The Global Luther (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009) 113–29. 55 Vgl. Hermann, Luthers These, 268–9. 56 Ebd., 235. 57 Vgl. ebd., 237, 243. 58 Vgl. ebd., 241–2, vgl. auch 276. 59 Vgl. ebd., 82. 60 Ebd., 81.

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Die Einmaligkeit der Taufe korrespondiert mit der Ganzheitlichkeit ihrer Bedeutung. Die Wahrnehmung von sich selbst als zugleich Sünder und Gerechtem kann somit nur von dem ganzheitlichen Ich-Bewusstsein des  – in Luthers Termino­ logie  – „geistlichen Menschen“ aus geschehen, und zwar im Sinne einer Selbstunterscheidung, in welcher der geistlicher Mensch sich als fleischlich beurteilt.61 Die Ich-Erkenntnis, die darin zum Tragen kommt, ist eschatologisch begründet, wie Hermann es anhand des Bildes der Morgendämmerung aus der Römerbriefvorlesung darstellt.62 In Hermanns Interpretation ist die Person in der Dialektik von Wissen und Nicht-Wissen über sich selbst gestellt, das Wissen jedoch heißt sich auf die Zukunft Christi als des Kommenden zu beziehen. In diesem Zwielicht wird dann auch das sichtbar, was diesem Sich-Beziehen widerstrebt, nämlich die Verselbstständigung des Ichs im Horizont des Endlichen und der Gegenwart. Diese ständige Übergangsbewegung von Sünder zum Gerechten durch Gebet wird in einem tauftheologischen Ansatz von Hermann präzisiert,63 wo in Frage steht, wie das ständig wiederholte Werden (der Übergang zwischen Sünde und Gerechtigkeit) im Gebet mit der Einmaligkeit der Taufe korrespondiert: Wie ist die Möglichkeit wiederholter Abkehr nach dem einmaligen Sterben und Auferstehen mit Christus zu bewältigen? Dies geschieht nach Hermann bezeichnenderweise durch eine Aussage; eine Aussage die, angesichts des wiederholten Sündigens, auf die Bedeutung der Taufe als einmaliges Hineinnehmen in die Gemeinschaft Christi rekurriert: Das Bekenntnis-Formular: „Ohne Christus sind wir nichts“. Dies ist eben ein Beispiel von Aussprache, die Negativität zugleich umfasst und überwindet und somit ein Werden aus dem Nicht-Sein in das Sein der Gemeinschaft mit Christus vollzieht. Was anscheinend wie ein der initiierenden Vergebung nachfolgendes Verlorengehen aussieht, wird von dem Zusammenhang der Christus-Beziehung qualifiziert und somit überwunden. Die Überwindung geschieht dabei mit Rekurs auf Aus­sprache: Das Bekenntnis-Formular: „Ohne Christus sind wir nichts“ ist als Aussage des abgekehrten, einmalig Gerechtfertigten über seine Lage eben im Aussprechen tathaftes Rekurrieren auf die Überwindung des Todes, die die Einbeziehung in den Christus-Zusammenhang bedeutet. Belangreich ist dabei auch die „wir“-Form, die die Aussage in der gemeinsamen Kommunikation der Gemeinde verankert. c. Die Christologie des Zugleichs Das Hinblicken auf Christus (und dementsprechend das Wegblicken von sich selbst) ist somit ein Thema mit mehreren Variationen im Buch. Das „geistliche Ich“ kann Hermann daher als den glaubenden Blick auf die Gnade bzw. auf Chris 61 Ebd.,

217. 229. 63 Vgl. ebd., 178–80. 62 Ebd.,

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Christine Svinth-Værge Põder

tus beschreiben.64 Die Konzeption des Fortschreitens der gerechtfertigten Person ist mit dem Gedanken des Hinblickens auf Christus verbunden: Daran hängt überhaupt die ganze Bewegungsmetaphorik von Werden, Fortschreiten, Hingezogen werden (die mit der Zentralstellung der Buße und auch des Betens zusammengehört). Die Bewegtheit der glaubenden Existenz liegt daran, dass sie ihr Zentrum außerhalb ihrer selbst wahrnimmt.65 Im abschließenden Abschnitt über „Das ‚Zugleich‘ und das Gebet“ wird die Bewegung des Gebets als genauer Vollzug des Von-Sich-Absehens und des Auf-Christus-Hinblickens dargestellt.66 Darin ereignet sich dann auch, dass die Betenden sich ihrer Gerechtigkeit gewiss werden. Wie beziehungsreich sich Hermann diesen Akt vorstellt, kommt  – auf der Linie des früheren Aufsatzes über Rechtfertigung und Gebet – in der folgenden Formulierung zum Ausdruck: Solche Offenbarung [der Gerechtigkeit Gottes] aber kann nur im Bekenntnis zu ihr verstanden werden. Und dies Bekennen ist Bekenntnis Gott selbst gegenüber, Gebet, Mitteilung der Gerechtigkeit an den Sünder.67

Bekenntnis, Gebet und Mitteilung der Gerechtigkeit an den Sünder  – menschlicher und göttlicher Akt ereignen sich hier simultan in einem unanschaulichen, reziproken Vollzug. Es leuchtet ein, dass die mitgeteilte Gerechtigkeit genau in diesem Akt dem Betenden zu eigen wird, doch in einer solchen Weise, dass sie nicht aufhört fremd zu sein. Suchen und finden ist bei Hermann ineinander verwoben.68 Die Gerechtigkeit, die Gott in der Rechtfertigung beim Menschen anerkennt, ist seine, bzw. Christi, eigene Gerechtigkeit, die dem Menschen zum Teil wird, indem der Mensch um sie, bzw. um Vergebung, bittet.69 Hermann legt also die menschliche Existenz im Zugleich von Sünder und Gerechtem als eine komplexe und dynamische Ganzheit dar: Der Selbstbezug ist von einer Gottesbeziehung bestimmt, die nicht als objektive Wirklichkeit abgesehen von der darin einbezogenen, sündigen und gerechten, Person zu verstehen ist. Diese Beziehung, die sich somit nicht nur in der Vergebung, sondern auch im Gebet verwirklicht, wird, gerade wenn sie zeitlich verstanden wird, für die Lebenswirklichkeit bedeutend.

64 Vgl.

ebd., 227. ebd., 278–80. 66 Vgl. ebd., 298. 67 Ebd., 299. 68 Vgl. Hermann, „Das Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Gebet“, 25. 69 Vgl. Hermann, Luthers These, 113. Diese Konstellation entspricht der Dialektik von gratia und donum in der Auslegung Hermanns: Gerade wegen der Gnade bleibt die Gabe Gabe und wird nicht zum statischen Besitz, vgl. 85, 167. 65 Vgl.

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69

III. Gewissen oder Gebet: Vergleich und kritische Perspektive Wie Hermann das Zugleich von Sünde und Gerechtigkeit entfaltet, nähert er sich zum Teil der Auffassung Holls von dem proleptischen Rechtfertigungsurteil, aber gewiss mit eigenen Akzenten. Wie Holl kann Hermann die Gerechtmachung des Menschen als einen allmählichen Prozess sehen, der im Ansatz bereits vollendet ist.70 Er gibt Holl darin Recht, dass das Fortschreiten des christlichen Lebens als „stetes Zurückgreifen auf den Anfang“ verläuft.71 Anders als Holl kann er jedoch den Anfang dieses Prozesses mit der Taufe identifizieren.72 Auch Hermann ist wichtig, dass die Sündenvergebung und Heilung des Menschen nicht unvermittelt nebeneinander zu stehen kommen.73 Der Prozess verläuft bei beiden in der stän­digen dialektischen Spannung von Furcht und Hoffnung, aber er grenzt sich – darin vorsichtiger als Holl – gegenüber Deutungen der inneren Affekte als Wirkungen Gottes ab.74 Schließlich kann Hermann ähnlich wie Holl fragen, wie der sündige Mensch in der Gemeinschaft mit Gott stehen kann.75 Die Antwort lautet jedoch bei Hermann anders, weil er, seiner personalistischen Sprachtheologie zufolge, explizit betont, dass die Rechtfertigung gar nicht ohne den Sünder zu denken ist. Um die Divergenzen zwischen den Auffassungen Holls und Hermanns zu klären, lohnt es sich, einen kurzen Blick auf die Replik Hermanns zur Debatte um Holls Recht­ fertigungsverständnis von 1929 zu werfen: Exkurs: Hermanns Einwände und Ergänzungen zu Holl Hermann bezieht sich in „Beobachtungen zu Luthers Rechtfertigungslehre“76 auf die Debatte zwischen Holl und W. Walther anlässlich der Erscheinung des Lutherbuchs Holls. Es geht vornehmlich um die proleptische Rechtfertigung. Hermanns Einwände und Ergänzungen zu Holl sind die Folgenden: 1. Kann Gottes Vergebung wirklich gnädig sein, wenn sie nur in seiner Allmacht und Ewigkeit begründet wird?77 Diese Begründung bedeutet ein Zurückgehen sowohl hinter die Schöpfungsmacht als auch hinter den Vergebungswillen Gottes. Besser sagt man nach Hermann, „daß dem Gott der Vergebung, also dem Gott, der Jesus Christus gesandt und in ihm sich selbst ganz kundgegeben hat, nichts unmöglich ist“.78 70 Vgl.

ebd., 70. 268. 72 Vgl. ebd., 70. 73 Vgl. ebd., 80. 74 Vgl. ebd., 114–16. 75 Vgl. ebd., 65. 76 R. Hermann, „Beobachtungen zu Luthers Rechtfertigungslehre“, in ders., Gesammelte Studien, 77–89. 77 Vgl. ebd., 78. 78 Ebd., 79. 71 Ebd.,

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2. Holl hebt als das Einzigartige am Rechtfertigungshandeln Gottes die Aufnahme des Sünders in die Gemeinschaft mit Gott hervor. Hermann ist damit einverstanden, ergänzt Holl aber mit dem Hinweis auf das offenbarende und schenkende Handeln Gottes durch Christus als die Weise, wie Gott den Sünder aufnimmt79 (Holl scheint dies nur im Sinne einer Verdienstanrechnung durch Christus zu verstehen). Ebenso berücksichtigt Holl nicht, dass Gott durch das Wort von Christus den Glauben erweckt und damit dem Menschen ein neues Ich gibt. Wenn Gott nur deshalb vergibt, weil er kann, gefährdet es den Wundercharakter der Vergebung. Die Wirklichkeit kommt der Möglichkeit zuvor. 3. Hermann hat nichts gegen die vorgreifende Rechtfertigung einzuwenden. Aber er findet, dass Holl einseitig auf die selbstgewisse Vorausschau Gottes fokussiert, ohne den Glauben des Menschen einzubeziehen. Bei Luther ist aber die Einheit der beiden wichtig. In der Rechtfertigung kommt es nicht nur darauf an, dass Gott sich der Zukunft gewiss ist (und deshalb rechtfertigen kann), sondern auch, dass der Mensch sich in der Rechtfertigung seiner Zukunft gewiss wird.

Die Differenz zwischen Holl und Hermann erweist sich unmittelbar am deutlichsten an den verwandten Denkstrukturen der beiden: Beide arbeiten mit einem zeitlichen Rahmen für die Rechtfertigung als ein Werden des Menschen, das im Sinne Luthers als immer zu wiederholende Umkehr und Buße zu verstehen ist. Es ist bereits evident geworden, dass sie die Grundlage dieses Prozesses unterschiedlich verstehen: Bei Holl ist die Vergebung auf der realen Vollendung des Menschen begründet, die das für Gott bereits gegenwärtige Ziel des Rechtfertigungsurteils ist. Bei Hermann ist die Rechtfertigung die bittende und anerkennende Kommunikation zwischen Gott und Mensch, die der Sinn der Rede von der schenkenden Zusage der fremden Gerechtigkeit Christi ist. Letztere ist zugleich das Ziel eines Suchens und Bittens des gerechtfertigten, aber noch sündigen Menschen. Ein Wortverkehr kommt ins Spiel, der in ständiger Bewegung sowohl das Neue schöpferisch begründet als auch das Alte überwindet. Auch Holl stellt die gerechtfertigte Existenz als eine ständige Dialektik des Suchens und Findens dar. Die Rechtfertigung wird als Stiftung einer persönlichen Gemeinschaft zwischen Gott und Mensch verstanden. Die Kommunikation – zwischen Gott und Mensch und zwischen den Menschen untereinander – ist jedoch eine Schwachstelle dieser Gemeinschaft: Weder Verkündigung noch Gebet werden genügend beleuchtet. Das allmähliche Gerecht-Werden wird nach Holl allein von Gott verursacht. Mit Blick auf Holls frühere Aussage, dass „nur das Selbsterlebte … unerschütterlich fest [steht]“, stellt sich die Frage, was den Menschen zur ständigen Umkehr motivieren soll: Die Alleinwirksamkeits-Theozentrik hinterlässt eine Lücke bezüglich des kommunikativen Verkehrs in Verkündigung und Gebet, die sich nur schwer schließen lässt. Als Ausweg bieten sich deshalb das innere Wirken Gottes im Gewissen und der Affekt der Gottesliebe. Die Vorstellung, dass der Glaubende diesbezüglich auf die Probe gestellt werden müsste, spiegelt ab, dass der Mensch angesichts des alleinhandelnden Gottes grundsätzlich 79 Vgl.

ebd., 80.

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71

allein steht. Die Gemeinschaft kann sich demnach nur in ihrem ultimativen Aufdie-Probe-gestellt-Werden verwirklichen und vergewissern. Die resignatio ad infernum wird notwendig. Auf diesem kritischen Hintergrund eines kompensatorischen Verständnisses der Resignatio-Figur ist kurz zu rekapitulieren, was eigentlich das Reizvolle an der resignatio ad infernum (etwa auch für Luther in der Römerbriefvorlesung) ist. Die Resignatio-Figur habe ich oben als eine Überwindung des Denkzwangs von Lohn und Strafe beschrieben – und somit als einen kognitiven Gewinn. Die resignatio ergibt sich aus einem willentlichen Sich-in-den-Willen-Gottes-Fügen und ist damit ein existentieller Nachvollzug der dritten Bitte des Vaterunsers. Die Überwindung geschieht nach Holl in dem Moment, wo die resignatio ad infernum sich als unvollziehbar erweist  – genau gesagt, wird sie im Vollzug als unvollziehbar erlebt, d. h. sie ist einmalig und unwiederholbar, weil danach nicht mehr auf den Ausgangspunkt rekurriert werden kann – und darin ist sie innerhalb des ganzen Stroms von ständiger Buße einzigartig. Nicht zuletzt wird sie bei Luther hochgeschätzt als Nachbildung des Todes und der Auferstehung Christi. Es liegt auf der Hand, dass sie als einmaliges Sterben und Auferstehen mit Christus eine existentielle Nachbildung des Bedeutungsgehalts der Taufe ist. Nach Luther ist sie in der Tat Durchgang zum Heil, denn sie ist der einzig mögliche Sinn des Purgatoriums.80 Die resignatio ad infernum zu vollziehen heißt demnach, ganz individuell und intern eine sakramentale Wirklichkeit zu vollziehen. Der Vorzug dieses internen, wortlosen Vollzugs vor der faktischen Taufe und dem faktischen Gebet kann im Lichte der jeweiligen Infragestellungen der kirchlichen Institutionen – in der Lage Luthers und wohl auch Holls – verständlich sein. Gegenüber der Taufe und dem Gebet, wie sie bei Hermann reflektiert werden, ist der interne Vollzug jedoch defizient, weil die kommunikative Gemeinschaftsdimension außerhalb des Blickwinkels bleiben muss. Diese vereinzelnde Tendenz zeigt sich bei Holl etwa daran, wie er die Prädestinationslehre Calvins verwendet und mit dem Rechtfertigungserlebnis Luthers innerhalb des stark theozentrischen Horizonts vom Alleinhandeln Gottes zusammendenkt. Denn dadurch wird die Simul-Dialektik von der glaubenden Existenz in das Gottesbild gerückt. Gott nimmt den Menschen an und zugleich behält er das Recht, ihn zu verwerfen. Schließlich entscheidet dann praktisch die Fähigkeit des einzelnen Menschen, mit diesem unberechenbaren, allwirksamen Gott im Gewissen zu leben, über seine Rechtfertigungsgewissheit. Ironischerweise spiegelt sich diese vereinzelnden Tendenz in der Calvinismuskritik des sonst von Holl gelobten Webers, der feststellt, dass die Prädestinationslehre zur Isolierung des Individuums führe, weil die einzig auf Gottes Ratschluss beruhende Gewissheit auf keinen Fall in zwischenmenschlicher Kommunikation, bzw. durch die Zusage der Kirche, gewonnen werden könne.81 Sehr anschaulich ist der Hinweis auf Bunyans Pilger, der nur mit den Fingern in den Ohren der Ewigkeit 80 Vgl.

WA 56, 391–2. Die protestantische Ethik, 62–4.

81 Weber,

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Gottes entgegenlaufen kann.82 Die soziale Tatkraft und Gestaltungsfähig­keit der calvinischen Reformierten stehen demnach nicht zu dieser Vereinzelung in Wieder­ spruch, denn sie darf nicht anders motiviert sein als durch den Wunsch, Gott zu ehren.83 Während Weber jedoch einen Widerspruch zwischen dem lutherischen demütigen Sünder und dem calvinischen selbstsicheren Heiligen, der durch rastlose Tätigkeit zur Gewissheit gelangt, beobachtet,84 versucht Holl  – der immer noch 1919 diesen Widerspruch bestätigt85 – in seinem Luther 1921/23 die angeblichen Gegensätze zu vereinen: Damit wird die im unanschaulichen ResignatioVollzug begründete Selbstverneinung zur konstitutiven Komponente der Handlungsgewissheit und somit des „Neubau[s] der Sittlichkeit“, den Holl in den Jahren nach der Kriegsniederlage anstrebt. Bei Hermann kann man wenigstens den Ansatz zu Begründungsstrukturen von Sprache und Kommunikation wahrnehmen  – nämlich mit dem Motiv des Aus-Sich-Heraustretens Gottes und des Menschen in Bitte und Lob und im Hinweis, dass nicht nur Verständigung sondern auch reale Veränderung nur durch Aussprache stattfinden könne.86 Holl dagegen, dem es noch mehr als Hermann um Erläuterung der Antriebe zum sittlichen Handeln geht, sieht die Verbindung von Menschen untereinander hauptsächlich in der Selbstlosigkeit verankert.87 So sehr es ihm um Schaffung sittlicher Gemeinschaft geht, erscheint sein „starker Christ“ – der allein die für die sittliche Vollendung notwendigen Selbstopfer vollziehen kann – letztlich als isoliertes Individuum: Er muss, um die schöpferische Gemeinschaftsgestaltung leisten zu können, von einer Rücksichtnahme auf Gemeinschaft (auf die Schwachen, die „Durchschnittsmenschen“88) ungebunden sein. Weil keine sprachliche Verständigung angezeigt wird, bleibt es bei Holl beim negativ-individuellen Begründungsvollzug. Diese Vollzugfigur wird dann zur Komponente der unterschwelligen Bewegung von theologischer zur politischzeitgeschichtlichen Deutung. Als Holl 1921 die Frage nach der Rechtfertigungsgewissheit erneut beantworten soll, bietet sich somit die Vorstellung vereinzelter Führerpersönlichkeiten an, die in selbstopfernder Tatkräftigkeit eine Gemeinschaft zur Sittlichkeit erziehen sollen.

82 Ebd.,

64. 64–5. 84 Ebd., 70–1. 85 Holl, „Luther und Calvin“. 86 Vgl. die Darstellung seines tauftheologischen Ansatzes oben, S. 66–7. 87 Vgl. bes. Holl, „Der Neubau der Sittlichkeit“, in GA I, 283–5. 88 Holl, „Die Rechtfertigungslehre“, in GA I, 154. 83 Ebd.,

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Abstract Conscience or Prayer The Reception of Luther’s Lectures on Romans by Karl Holl and Rudolf Hermann This essay examines the reception of Luther’s Lectures on Romans by Karl Holl and ­Rudolf Hermann. The foundational question concerns how certainty of justification occurs, meaning: the negation of all false security regarding one’s state of salvation. Holl published the original version of his influential work on Luther’s Lectures on Romans in 1910. In this work, he paid particular attention to justification and the certainty of salvation. Holl interprets Luther through the conceptual lens of a religious and ethical anti-eudaemonism, and points to an existential dialectic of anguish and hope as the way in which the believer may come to certainty. The experience of justification culminates in the resignatio ad infernum (taking freely upon oneself divine punishment) which Holl interprets in 1910 as a rhetorical issue, intending to make clear the severity of justification. In 1921 Holl rewrote and republished this work on Luther, giving quite a different interpretation. Seeing the German defeat after World War I as God’s punishment on Germany, he substitutes the resignatio ad infernum for the ultimate trial of faith for “strong Christians” and (now ethically-politically interpreted as sacrifice of one’s integrity) the foundation of a new ethics. The aporia of Holl’s position is sharpened when it is compared to the theology of prayer in Rudolf Hermann’s interpretation of Luther. Whereas, according to Hermann, certainty is seen to take place in the oral communication occurring in the flow of human time, Holl’s notion of surrendering to God’s judgment in an internal act of conscience, and as such without time or speech, implies the elitist isolation of particularly certain individuals as the foundation of a believing community.

Chapter 4

Peter Widmann

Albrecht Ritschls Rückgriff auf die Reformation Die Lutherrenaissance wird meist in Verbindung gebracht mit den Versuchen nach 1900, die liberale Periode des Theologietreibens zu überwinden. Dabei tritt in den Schatten, wie stark gerade das 19. Jahrhundert von einer neuen Zuwendung zur reformatorischen Theologie geprägt war. Insbesondere der Beitrag Albrecht Ritschls verdient in diesem Zusammenhang auch heute sorgfältige Beachtung. Nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil von Ritschl her manches an der Lutherrenaissance fraglich werden könnte. Einige Vergleiche mit Karl Holl werden diesen Punkt verdeutlichen. Im 19. Jahrhundert kann man allenthalben ein neuerwachtes Interesse an der Reformation beobachten. Denn dass die konfessionelle Orthodoxie des 17. Jahrhunderts unhaltbar geworden war, das mussten am Ende der Aufklärung alle protestantischen Theologen eingestehen – manche freilich sehr widerwillig und mit Ausflüchten. Der auf der Inspirationstheorie beruhende Schriftbeweis wurde nicht mehr ernsthaft vertreten; das aus dem Doppelkanon abgeleitete Bild von Weltzusammenhang und Geschichtsverlauf, das noch in der Barockzeit kulturelles Gemeingut und nicht nur kirchliche Lehre war, wurde in steigender Radikalität durch wissenschaftlich erworbene Einsichten zurückgedrängt; und insbesondere das Gefüge der Hauptdogmen, wie es von der orthodoxen Dogmatik als Ausfluss der Offenbarung entwickelt worden war – vor allem Erbsünde, Inkarnation, Satisfaktion, Erlösung – riefen nach neuer Deutung und Begründung. Wenn aber die alte Orthodoxie unhaltbar ist – folgt daraus die Auflösung des Protestantismus oder gar die Abschaffung des Christentums? Alle protestantischen Theologen wehrten sich gegen diese Konsequenz; freilich auf sehr verschiedene Weise. Einig waren sie sich darin, dass sie einen Unterschied zwischen der ursprünglichen Reformation und der späteren Orthodoxie machten; oft verbunden mit der Behauptung, dass die Orthodoxie einen Rückfall in mittelalterliche Scholastik und Geistigkeit darstelle, die doch von den Reformatoren bekämpft worden seien. So entstand ein tiefgreifendes Interesse daran, die Abstandnahme von der eigenen orthodoxen Tradition durch Rückgriffe auf die Reformation, insbesondere die Luthers, zu legitimieren, und damit zugleich ein haltbares und zukunftfähiges Verständnis des Christentums aufzubieten. Im Zusammenhang des Reformationsjubiläums 1817 hörte man viele, freilich untereinander oft uneinige, leidenschaftliche Stimmen in dieser Richtung. Angestoßen durch die gleichzeitige katholische Neubesinnung – mit ihrer umfassenden Anklage, die Reformation sei nichts anderes gewesen als Auflösung des

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Christentums – wurde es ein zentrales Anliegen evangelischer Theologie, das geschichtliche Recht der Reformation darzutun. Im Unterschied zur alten Kontroverstheologie, welche die evangelische Lehre schlicht als die wahrhaft biblische, rechtgläubige und kirchliche zu verteidigen suchte (deshalb war es für die Vertreter der protestantischen Orthodoxie wichtig gewesen, als Sprecher des katholischen Glaubens aufzutreten, und nicht etwa als Exponenten eines konfessionellen Sonderstandpunktes), ging man im 19. Jahrhundert, angetrieben nicht zuletzt durch die damals neu einsetzende historische Erforschung der europäischen Kirchenspaltung, davon aus, dass die Reformation eine neue Entwicklungsstufe der christlichen Kirche darstellt; man suchte nur zu zeigen, dass es sich um eine wegen mittelalterlicher Fehlentwicklungen notwendige Erneuerung handelte, die zudem auf das ursprünglich Christliche  – insbesondere bei Jesus selbst  – zurückging1. Erst in diesem Zusammenhang wurde es üblich, dass sich protestantische Theo­ logie als konfessionell bestimmt verortete. Albrecht Ritschls Theologie hat eine unverwechselbare Stelle im umfassenden Bemühen der evangelischen Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts, eine neue und haltbare Vergegenwärtigung des Reformatorischen zu leisten. Er distanziert sich nämlich auf charakteristische Weise von anderen Versuchen im Dienst des­ selben Bemühens; und zwar weithin so erfolgreich, dass viele damals sehr kräftige Strömungen für uns nur noch als vergangene da sind. Viele halten heute al­lerdings  – bewusst oder unbewusst gesteuert durch die Kritik an Ritschl in der Zeit der dialektischen Theologie, die ihrerseits bestimmten Einwänden der Luther­renaissance, v. a. Karl Holls folgte  – Ritschls Position selbst für veraltet und für eine Fehl­deutung der Reformation; aber es lohnt sich, das noch einmal nach­zuprüfen. Eine Aufzählung wichtiger Gegenpositionen mag zu einer ersten Zeichnung von Ritschls Profil dienen: 1) Luther als Repräsentant der Befreiung in Politik, Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft und so als Urheber der Aufklärung. 2) Reformation als Überwindung von Religionswahn und Spekulation zugunsten von Moral und sozialer Verantwortung (theologischer Rationalismus). 3) Reformation als nationaler Aufbruch, als Aufstand des germanischen Geistes gegen die lateinisch-romanische Kultur (insbesondere im Einzugsbereich der Romantik). 4) Reformation als Bewegung der Subjektivität (Erhebung zum Absoluten) (z. B. Baur und Marheineke). 5) Reformation als Erneuerung wahrer Frömmigkeit und als Rückkehr zum ursprünglichen Christentum (Weiterwirken pietistischer Motive in der Erweckungsbewegung).

1 An

dieser Stelle ist der Rückgriff auf die Reformation mit der historisch-kritischen Exegese und besonders mit der Leben-Jesu-Forschung verbunden.

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6) Neulutherischer Konfessionalismus mit seinem reformierten Seitenstück (von Ritschl charakterisiert als eine pietistisch motivierte künstliche Repristinierung orthodoxer Gedankenformen) (z. B. Hengstenberg, Philippi, Fr. Frank, Th. Harnack). Ritschl korrigiert alle diese Ansätze, ohne doch berechtigte Einsichten und An­ liegen bei ihnen zu verkennen. Im Ganzen freilich vertritt er eine Sicht der Reformation, die gegen alle diese Deutungsversuche läuft. Als Ritschl 1883 anlässlich von Luthers 400. Geburtstag seine repräsentative Göttinger Festrede hielt (die endete mit einem monumentalen „In diesem Zeichen wird der Protestantismus siegen“), regte sich leidenschaftlicher Protest nicht nur bei den Vertretern des politischen Katholizismus, sondern auch bei Liberalen, Nationalen, Erweckten und lutherisch-Konfessionellen. Ich gebe einen knappen Überblick über Ritschls geschichtliche Darstellung der Reformation (die Nachweise aus dem ersten Band von Rechtfertigung und Ver­söhnung2). Ritschls Versuch, auf die Reformation zurückzugehen, ähnelt zunächst der repristinatorischen und konservativen Theologie: er will nämlich die Reformation als religiös-kirchliche Bewegung zur Erneuerung des Christentums begreifen und vergegenwärtigen, weshalb er zentral nach Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung fragt – und zwar unter entschiedener Abweisung der moralischen und spekula­ tiven Neudeutungen dieser Begriffe, wie sie seit Spätaufklärung und Idealismus im Schwange waren. Doch gegen die Repristinatoren und Neo-Lutheraner versucht Ritschl zu zeigen, dass das Luthertum – bereits in der orthodoxen Periode und dann erst recht in dessen neugotischer Restauration – eine Fehlentwicklung des reformatorischen Ansatzes darstellt. Insbesondere an zwei Punkten erscheint ihm die Verdrehung und Verarmung: – Erstens. Der rechtfertigende Glaube ist nicht wesentlich als ein Glaube an bestimmte Lehren – insbesondere christologische – zu verstehen, wie es der damalige Konfessionalismus mit seiner Betonung des Bekenntnisses auffasste. Die Degeneration der lutherischen Kirche zur Schule und Lehranstalt, die Ritschl vor allem auf Melanchthons Wirkungen zurückführte,3 kann nur überwunden werden, wenn der Glaube grundlegend und fortdauernd als Gottvertrauen verstanden wird; näher als Zutrauen zu dem Gott, der Liebe ist. Es ist dieser Glaube, den Jesus seiner Jüngergemeinde eröffnete und ermöglichte; durch seine Selbsthingabe er A. Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (3. Bde.; Bonn: Marcus, 1882–1883). 3 An dieser Stelle, und überhaupt in einer umfassenden Kontrastierung von Luther und Melanchthon, hat Ritschl übrigens der Lutherrenaissance vorgearbeitet. Deren Vertreter, vor allem Karl Holl, hätten sicher gut getan, in dieser Sache Ritschls ausgewogener Linie zu folgen; vgl. etwa Holls übertrie­benes und ungerechtes Urteil, Melanchthon habe Luthers Rechtfertigungslehre verdorben (GA I, 128). 2 2

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schloss Jesus die sündenvergebende Kraft dieses Glaubens, und machte so Gottes Ziel – das Reich Gottes – zu dem ihren. – Zweitens. Der göttliche Akt der Rechtfertigung muss zwar von dem Vorgang der Wiedergeburt unterschieden und erst daraufhin mit ihm verbunden werden; aber dieser Zusammenhang wird missverstanden, wenn man das neue Leben des Gläubigen unter den Gesichtspunkt der Gesetzeserfüllung rückt. Vielmehr gilt es, die ethische Zweckbeziehung der religiösen Relation von Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung auszuarbeiten. In dieser Hinsicht hat Ritschl das Erbe der Aufklärung, insbesondere in der Gestalt Kants, zur Geltung zu bringen versucht. In der Überwindung des Misstrauens Gott gegenüber, wie es in der Gewissheit der Rechtfertigung Leben gewinnt, also in dieser Aussöhnung mit Gott liegt ethische Energie; und die geht verloren, wenn die Versöhnungslehre um Sühneleistungen an eine erzürnte Gottheit kreist.4 Ritschls Rückgang auf die Lehre von Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung in der Reformation soll die zukunftsweisende Neuheit des reformatorischen Aufbruchs dartun. Das hindert Ritschl aber nicht daran – Kontinuitäten mit dem Mittelalter anzuerkennen; – Unfertigkeiten, Inkonsistenzen und Widersprüche bei Luther und den anderen Reformatoren nachzuweisen und sich insofern reformatorisch zu ihnen zu verhalten; – unverlierbare Beiträge in späteren Gestalten und Entwicklungen protestan­ tischer Theologie aufzusuchen und geltend zu machen. An diesen drei Punkten unterscheidet sich Ritschl markant von der späteren Luther­renaissance, wo die Tendenz vorherrschte, Luther ganz vom Mittelalter abzuheben, seine inneren Widersprüche als Reflexe tiefster Einsichten zu stilisieren, und ihn auf Kosten der protestantischen Entwicklung, insbesondere in Idealismus und Liberalismus, groß zu machen. Ritschls geschichtliche Einordnung der Reformation sieht aus wie folgt: 1. Die reformatorische Rechtfertigungslehre ist neu, aber keine häretische Abweichung (I.86–119). Es war um 1500 eine Neuerung, die Rechtfertigung als unterschieden vom Vorgang der Wiedergeburt zu beschreiben. Aber darin lag so wenig eine (möglicherweise häretische)  Abkehr von der katholischen Lehre, als dieser Gesichtspunkt den praktisch-asketischen Absichten des Mittelalters (s. besonders Bernhard von Clairvaux und Franz von Assisi) zugrunde lag, wo sie den Gläubigen empfehlen, 4 Die beiden genannten Punkte weisen in vielem voraus auf die spätere Lutherrenaissance, werden aber von Ritschl weit zurückhaltender formuliert als etwa bei Karl Holl. Vor allem fehlt bei Ritschl (m. E. zu seinem Vorteil) die anti-eudämonistische Zuspitzung: der Glaube an den Gott, der Liebe ist, bleibt bei ihm immer seliges Gottvertrauen. Deshalb lässt er sich auch nicht auf die ungesunde Radikalisierung des Ethischen in Holls „Gewissensreligion“ ein.

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ihr Vertrauen allein auf die Gnade Christi zu setzen, nicht aber auf die Resultate ihrer frommen Anstrengungen. Doch dieser Gesichtspunkt führte vor Luther nie zu einer selbständigen Lehrbildung, weshalb die Rechtfertigung weiter als Phase im Vorgang der Wiedergeburt dargestellt wurde. Das Fatale daran war, Luther zufolge, dass der Gläubige nie der zugesagten Vergebung gewiss werden kann, solange diese immer noch abhängt von einem daraus folgenden Ergebnis. 2. Rechtfertigung im reformatorischen Sinn darf nicht verwechselt werden mit mystischen Erfahrungen der Seligkeit (I.119–29). Bei Mystikern wie bei Reformatoren „soll man der Seligkeit gegenwärtig gewiss werden“, sagt Ritschl (121). Aber die Mystiker begnügen sich damit, „die eigentlich nur zukünftige Seligkeit in momentanem Genuss vorwegzunehmen“. Anders die Reformatoren: „Der Glaube aber, in welchem man die Rechtfertigung durch Christus erfährt, soll die Seligkeit dem gegenwärtigen Leben einverleiben, um so auch die zukünftige sicher zu stellen“ (121). Es kommt also nicht auf den Genuss an, sondern auf die praktische Betätigung und Aneignung der Seligkeit. Die gegenwärtige Seligkeit wird lebendig erfahren (a) „in der durch keine Schuld mehr gehemmten Freiheit der Verehrung Gottes“ und (b) in der Freiheit über die Welt: beides drückt das durch die Versöhnung in Christus entbundene Gottvertrauen aus (123). Den Unterschied der beiden „analogen Methoden der gegenwärtigen Heilsgewissheit“ (123) verkennen die evangelischen Theologen oft, weil der mystische Weg seit ca. 1600 in die evangelische Kirche eingedrungen ist (weshalb man Anklänge daran beim jungen Luther überschätzt). Gewiss ist die Mystik bei den Evangelischen unvollständig, weil sie die wesentliche monastisch-eremitische Praxis ablehnen; aber dadurch entsteht keine gesunde Mystik, sondern nur spielerische Kontemplation. 3. Luthers Rechtfertigungslehre hat keine wirklichen Vorläufer im Mittelalter (I.129–37). Die gängige Rede von „Reformatoren vor der Reformation“ beruht auf einer Verkennung von Luthers Neuerung. Denn die Ablehnung der Werkgerechtigkeit im Horizont der mittelalterlichen Justifikationslehre, die man bei Waldensern und Franziskanern, bei Wiclif und Hus, und sehr betont bei Wessel, Goch, Savonarola und anderen findet, führt bei diesen eben nicht zu einer Unterscheidung des göttlichen Aktes der Rechtfertigung vom Vorgang der Wiedergeburt, so gewiss sie das Ziel der göttlichen Begnadung in der Befähigung des Glaubenden zum Erwerb von Verdiensten sehen.5

5 Ritschl

behauptet also nicht mit Wortführern der späteren Lutherrenaissance, Luthers Reformation sei eine Neuschöpfung im Vergleich zum Mittelalter gewesen. Er begnügt sich zu Recht mit der Behauptung, Luthers Neuerung habe in der Präzisierung eines in den besten Traditionen mittelalterlicher Bußfrömmigkeit latenten Gesichtspunktes bestanden (siehe sogleich Punkt 4).

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4. Die Reformatoren überwinden eine mittelalterliche Zweideutigkeit und entlasten so das Verhältnis des Glaubens zu Gott (I.138–40). Reformatorischerseits hat man die Überschätzung der Verdienste meist der Scholastik im Ganzen angelastet. Demgegenüber haben die katholischen Lehrer (realistischer Observanz) schon im 16. Jahrhundert mit Recht geltend gemacht, dass diese Überschätzung nominalistisches Sondergut ist und nicht die gesamte katholische Theologie repräsentiert. Dabei verschwiegen sie indes, dass die nominalistische Schule Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts durchaus als katholisch galt, sodass eine weitgehende Werkgerechtigkeit jedenfalls nicht ausgeschlossen war. Das Schwanken zwischen den zwei Varianten katholischer Lehre ist unausweichlich, solange die Rechtfertigung nicht klar abgehoben ist von der Befähigung des Menschen zu verdienstlichem Tun. Doch wären die Reformatoren auch klar gewesen über die Variationsbreite katholischer Lehrbildung, so hätten sie dennoch jedes Recht gehabt, das Schwanken der katholischen Kirchenlehre zwischen Gnadenwirkung und Verdienstlichkeit zu rügen und „die theologische Lehre in Einklang mit dem praktischen Gnadenbewusstsein zu setzen“ (139). Das aber forderte die Unterscheidung von Rechtfertigung und Wiedergeburt. Das reformatorische Unternehmen machte nur unzweideutig und ausdrücklich klar, was implizit (deshalb ständig von Verdunkelung bedroht) in der katholischen Gnadenlehre lag: dass, wenn der wirklich Gerechte sein Vertrauen nicht auf seine Verdienste setzt, sondern sich allein der vergebenden Gnade tröstet – und das haben die katholischen Lehrer wie auch die katholische Liturgie und Gebetspraxis ja empfohlen  – dieser Gerechte sich damit als Sünder bekennt; er rekurriert dann auf ein göttliches Urteil, das über jenes andere Urteil über die vom heiligen Geist bewirkte reale Veränderung des Menschen hinausgreift: das Urteil der Rechtfertigung ist dem nachfolgenden Urteil über das Werden des Gerechten vor- und übergeordnet. Nur so kann der Gläubige seiner Stellung vor Gott gewiss werden. Das Tridentinum schreibt nur das Schwanken der katholischen Lehre fest und bringt keine Klärung, und das entspricht dem durchgehenden Interesse des antireformatorischen Katholizismus, die genannte Zweideutigkeit festzuhalten, weil man sonst das Streben nach Verdiensten bedroht sieht. Die Reformatoren unterscheiden so das vorangehende Urteil der Rechtferti­ gung von dem nachfolgenden Urteil über den Wiedergeborenen; ersteres bezeichnet Ritschl, eine kantische Distinktion aufnehmend, als synthetisch (weil es etwas über den Sünder aussagt, was im Begriff des Sünders nicht liegt, sondern hinzugetan wird), letzteres aber als analytisches Urteil Gottes über den durch Glauben Wiedergeborenen und Gerechten (weil vom Gerechten genau das prädiziert wird, was im Begriff des Gerechten beschlossen liegt). Ritschls Verwendung dieser Distinktion wird bis heute oft missverstanden, als ob er das synthetische Verständnis behauptet und das analytische abgelehnt hätte (so wurde es auch mir in meinem Studium beigebracht). Das „analytische“ Urteil über den aktiv Gerechten hat er so wenig verneint, dass er es als wesentlich für die durch den heiligen Geist bewirkte Veränderung des Glaubenden erklärt; an diesem Punkt völlig einig mit der theo-

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logischen Tradition. Er hat nur, und zwar mit Recht, behauptet, dass dem Angefochtenen der Rekurs auf dieses Urteil nicht genügen kann. Vor und unabhängig von diesem Urteil braucht er die Gewissheit, vor Gott – wegen Gott und nicht wegen seiner Sündfreiheit – angenommen und so gerecht zu sein. Was Luther Ritschl zufolge der damals herrschenden Kirchenlehre vorwirft, ist weder, dass sie das analytische Urteil „der Gerechte ist gerecht“ vertritt, noch dass sie das synthetische Urteil „der Sünder ist gerecht“ vergessen hätte; sein Vorwurf richtet sich gegen die unklare Vermengung und Verwischung beider Urteile, weshalb auch der lebendige Zusammenhang beider verfehlt wird. Dies ist für Ritschl der fruchtbare Punkt, an dem es weiterzuarbeiten gilt. Er hält es für eine von den Reformatoren zwar angepackte, aber nicht durchgeführte Aufgabe, den gegliederten Zusammenhang von Rechtfertigung und Wiedergeburt theologisch und ethisch zu durchleuchten. Ritschl ist deshalb nicht verantwortlich für das vulgäre Missverständnis im neueren Protestantismus (den z. B. Bonhoeffer in seiner Polemik gegen die „billige Gnade“ angreift), als ob das „synthetische“ Urteil der Rechtfertigung den Vorgang der Wiedergeburt überflüssig mache oder gar verurteile (vgl. Ritschls umfassende Darstellung der Rechtfertigung als synthetisches Urteil in Rechtferti­ gung und Versöhnung III § 16, S. 77–83).6 6 Merkwürdigerweise

meinte die Lutherrenaissance in der Gestalt Karl Holls an diesem ent­ scheidenden Punkt Ritschl tadeln zu sollen (s. GA I, 119–25). Luther könne ebenso gut sagen, „Gott rechtfertigt den Sünder, wie Gott rechtfertigt den Gerechten“ (125), das synthetische und das analytische Urteil widersprächen sich also nicht. „Aber die letztere Form ist in Luthers Sinn die theologisch genauere“ (125). Das habe Ritschl nicht genügend verstanden und deshalb die Auffassung der Rechtfertigung als eines analytischen Urteils bekämpft (125 Anm 1). Zwar habe er recht daran getan, den göttlichen Akt der Rechtfertigung als schöpferischen zu sehen, der synthetisch ausgedrückt werden kann; aber er habe außer Acht gelassen, dass Gott bei seinem Willensakt ein Ziel hat  – eben die Christusförmigkeit des neuen Menschen; weil dieses Ziel für Gott schon erreicht ist, muss das Urteil über den Gerechtfertigten letztlich ein analytisches sein (125 Anm. 1). – An diesem Tadel ist zunächst zu tadeln, dass er sich nur ungenau auf Ritschls Aufstellungen, wie ich sie referiert habe, bezieht. Ganz unverständlich bleibt Holls Einwand, Ritschl habe übersehen, dass Gott bei seinem Reden und Tun immer ein Ziel hat; ist doch dieser Gesichtspunkt der Nerv im Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung. (Fast noch weniger verständlich ist es, dass niemand Ritschl gegen Holl in Schutz nahm; oder auf eine Weise wie die von Ritschls Sohn Otto, die alles nur noch schlimmer machte; 125 Anm.  1).  – Unklar bei Holl bleibt vor allem, ob sein Tadel sich bereits gegen Ritschls zentrale Behauptung richtet, dass Luther einen Unterschied zwischen Rechtfertigung und Wiedergeburt macht; sollte Holl das gemeint haben, würde das nicht weniger besagen, als dass Luther nur eine Variante der mittelalterlichen Justifikation, also nichts Neues vorgetragen habe; und das wollte Holl doch wohl nicht vertreten. Falls Holl aber Luther einen Unterschied zwischen Rechtfertigungsurteil und Prozess der Wiedergeburt machen sieht, löst sich seine Einrede gegen Ritschl in nichts auf. Denn in diesem Fall muss er angeben, was Rechtfertigung im Unterschied zum Werden des neuen Menschen besagt, und das weigert er sich eben zu sagen, indem er auf das schöpferische Tun Gottes in der Rechtfertigung abhebt. Er unterdrückt so eben das, was Ritschl mit seiner Rede von der Rechtfertigung als einem synthetischen Urteil meint. Damit verweist Ritschl höchstens indirekt auf den schöpferischen Charakter von Gottes Tun; primär und mit wohltuender Nüchternheit spricht er von der Rechtfertigung als einem Erfahrungsurteil (bei Kant sind alle Erfahrungsurteile synthetisch). Denn Rechtfertigung begegnet in dem Geschehen der Sündenvergebung, im

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5. In der Rechtfertigung widerfährt dem Glaubenden die Genugtuung durch Christus (I.141–5). Zunächst könnte die reformatorische Lehrbildung nur als eine formelle Verschiebung erscheinen, nämlich als die Zusammenziehung von christologischer Satisfaktion und individueller Gerechtmachung (zweier Lehrpunkte, die etwa bei Thomas von Aquin weit auseinander liegen). Doch hinter dieser Umbildung liegt eine grundlegende Neuorientierung. Die Rechtfertigung, als Ausdruck des sünden­ vergebenden Leidens Christi, ist jetzt nicht mehr nur eine lehrmäßige Erklärung dessen, dass der sündige Mensch als gerecht behandelt wird, sondern zuvor das Geschehen, dass der Mensch als Glied der Gemeinde das befreiende Urteil Gottes erfährt, aus dem er neu leben kann. „Denn die Rechtfertigung durch Christus bloß unter der Bedingung des empfänglichen Glaubens ist gemeint als eine in sich geschlossene durchgehende Erfahrung des Gläubigen“ (142). Dagegen hat die scholastische Justifikation keine entsprechende Erfahrungsbasis: zwar soll der Gläubige der empfangenen Absolution vertrauen, aber bei der erforderlichen Werktätigkeit ja nicht auf dieses Vertrauen bauen. Die römisch-katholische Lehre von der Justifikation soll nämlich erklären, wie und durch welche Mittel aus einem Sünder ein aktiv Gerechter wird, der als solcher auch von Gott der Wahrheit gemäß beurteilt werden kann. Hingegen der reformatorische Sinn der religiösen Erfahrung von der Rechtfertigung ist der, dass der Gläubige, welcher als solcher wiedergeboren und Glied der Kirche, welcher durch den heiligen Geist fähig und wirksam ist, gute Werke zu erzeugen, wegen der fortdauernden Unvollkommenheiten derselben nicht in ihnen, sondern nur in der mittlerischen vollkommen gerechten Leistung Christi, die er sich durch den Glauben aneignet, seine Geltung vor Gott, seine Gerechtigkeit und den Grund seiner stetigen Heilsgewißheit findet (142).

Nur auf diese Weise kann die Rechtfertigung etwas anderes als eine doktrinäre Explikation, nämlich Trost der Gewissen sein. Man hat Ritschl oft (besonders von Theodosius Harnack, dem die Erlanger Neolutheraner und andere Konservative folgten, aber auch viele Anhänger der dialektischen Theologie) angekreidet, dass er das Subjekt des Gerechtfertigten in einem schon Wiedergeborenen und tätig Gerechten findet; aber zu unrecht. Ritschl sieht richtig, dass bei Luther erst und allein die Selbstbeurteilung als Sünder die Frage nach Rechtfertigung auslöst; und Textzusammenhang der Absolution als eine Erfahrung des in der Kirche stehenden Gläubigen (s. sogleich unter Punkt 5). Ihm – der sich als Angeklagten verstehen und betragen muss – wird gesagt: du bist freigesprochen. Das ist ein synthetisches Urteil, nicht deshalb, weil der Betroffene Vorstellungen von einem schöpferischen Handeln Gottes hat, sondern weil er als er selbst und zugleich als ein anderer angesprochen wird. Erst wo dieses synthetische Urteil angenommen wird, kann es zu einem neuen Leben des Glaubenden kommen; und so zu analytischen Urteilen über das Gerechtsein des Gerechten. Holl behält so sicher recht darin, was schon Ritschl in weit genauerer Weise hervorhob, nämlich dass sowohl das synthetische wie das analytische Urteil an seinem Platz unumgänglich ist. Aber er verkennt völlig Ritschls Pointe, dass das allem Neuwerden vorangehende Urteil der Rechtfertigung synthetisch sein muss.

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diese Frage ist nur in dem zum Glauben Erweckten, in dem überzeugten Glied der Gemeinde lebendig. 6. Die Neubildung der Reformation besteht darin, das Zentrum der kirchlich-religiösen Praxis – die Zusage der Sündenvergebung – zur Leitidee der christlichen Lehre zu machen (I.143–5). Die religiös-praktische Vergewisserung der Gewissen musste nun, um die zweideutigen Aufstellungen der Scholastik zu korrigieren, lehrmäßig gefasst werden. Doch diese Aufgabe wurde nur in Ansätzen gelöst. Zwar wusste man, dass man der unklaren Mischung von Rechtfertigung und Wiedergeburt eine gegliederte Reihe entgegensetzen musste: Zuerst die Genugtuung durch Christus; dann die Erweckung des Glaubens; sodann das Geschehen der Rechtfertigung als Anrechnung von Christi Gerechtigkeit; erst dann die Wiedergeburt als die habituelle Erneuerung des Gerechtfertigten. Doch begnügte sich die Theologie der Reformationszeit meist damit, diesen Zusammenhang aus dem subjektiven Bedürfnis des Gläubigen zu begründen, nicht aber aus dem systematischen Zusammenhang der christlichen Lehre. Die protestantische Tradition hat hier viele Versäumnisse; oft wurde sogar der Gedanke der Rechtfertigung selbst verschoben. „Vielleicht kommt es sogar darauf an, die vollständigen Beziehungen derselben für die Gegenwart erst wieder zu entdecken“ (143). Ritschls Rückgriff auf die Reformation zielt also darauf, ihre Leitidee als Zentrum des christlichen Lehrsystems darzustellen, anders als es in der traditionellen Lehrbildung und Erbaulichkeit gelungen war. Und zwar will Ritschl – im Gegenzug gegen die immer noch scholastisch orientierte protestantische Orthodoxie – von der sich selbst auslegenden Schrift ausgehen, insbesondere von der Lebensleistung Jesu, wie sie im Licht des biblischen Zusammenhangs hervortritt. 7. Die reformatorische Erneuerung des Christentums in Lehre und Leben behauptet den Boden der Reichskirche und damit den Anschluss an das kirchliche Dogma (I.145–53). Die Reformatoren haben die gewordene katholische Kirche und Gesellschaft nie völlig verneint, sondern grundsätzlich bejaht und von hier aus reformiert. Nur so konnten sie sich von Täufern, Spiritualisten, Separatisten usw. absetzen und den Verdacht abweisen, sie wollten eine neue Religion stiften.7 Auch wollten die Re­ formatoren nie Propheten sein, aus deren Vollmacht ein bisher nicht Mögliches

7 Die spätere Lutherrenaissance, insbesonder in Karl Holls imposanter Erscheinung, hat die Bedeutung dieser Einschränkung nicht voll erkannt. Es war eine für jede Würdigung Luthers gefährliche Überspitzung, wenn Holl im Jahr 1910 unter dem Eindruck der neu gefundenen Vorlesung über den Römerbrief behaupten konnte, Luther habe „die katholische Heilslehre restlos durch eine neue ersetzt“ (GA I, 111). Man kann nicht scharf genug festhalten: Falls Luther einen derartigen Anspruch erhoben haben sollte – für den sich bezeichnender Weise kein Beleg beibringen lässt – so hätte er eben damit seine eigene Legitimität preisgegeben.

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hervorging; vielmehr haben sie derartige prophetische Ansprüche als schwärmerisch verworfen. Man muss deshalb nach den geschichtlichen Umständen fragen, die erkennen lassen, „dass unsere Reformatoren als solche den Boden der Kirche behauptet, dass sie denselben weder mit dem der Sekte noch mit dem der Schule vertauscht haben“ (144). „Welches ist der Maßstab dafür, dass sie in der Lossagung von der römischen Gestalt der Kirche nicht zugleich die Trennung von der Katholizität der Kirche vollzogen?“ (144). Als Antwort genügt der Verweis auf die gesamtchristliche Absicht der Reformatoren nicht (einen solchen Anspruch erhoben ja auch die verschiedenen Schwärmer, Häretiker und Separatisten). Vielmehr muss sich zeigen, „ob die Reformatoren auch gemäß einem hergebrachten und auch für ihre Gegner nicht durchaus verwerflichen Grundsatze den Boden der allgemeinen Kirche behauptet haben“ – sogar nachdem sie selbst als Häretiker verstoßen waren. Haben sie hier wirklich etwas anderes praktiziert als Täufer, Spiritualisten, Sozinianer usw. (145)? Die Antwort liegt in der festgehaltenen Beziehung auf die „christliche Gesellschaft“ (146). Diese fällt zwar im Papalismus zusammen mit der römischen Kirche als Reichskirche; aber im Lauf des Mittelalters machten sich auch die Kaiser und danach die Territorialfürsten – als Träger der sog. Reichsadvokatur für die christliche Lehre – dafür mitverantwortlich, oft um die kirchlichen Schäden der päpstlichen Herrschaft zu heilen; das christliche Reich war nicht mehr ausschließlich durch die päpstliche Kirchenleitung definiert, sondern ein – prinzipiell zwar nicht anerkannter, aber dennoch faktisch wirksamer – Spielraum kirchenreformerischer Bemühung war eröffnet. Den Boden der Reichskirche hielten die Reformatoren schon dadurch inne, dass sie leidenschaftlich auf dem kirchlichen Dogma bestanden, welches sie zwar als Formulierung des sündenvergebenden Evangeliums verstanden, aber dennoch als öffentliche Reichsverfassung in Anspruch nahmen. Darin lag nicht nur die Unterwerfung unter die reichskirchliche Verfassung, sondern vor allem die Wahrnehmung einer öffentlich-rechtlichen Verpflichtung der christlichen Gemeinde, als deren Glieder die Fürsten der Reformationszeit auftraten und in Anspruch genommen werden wollten. Für Ritschl war diese mittelalterliche Bedingung der Reformation weiterhin entscheidend, obwohl er so gut wie wir wusste, dass seit den europäischen Religionskriegen und Revolutionen nicht mehr ungebrochen von einem corpus christianum die Rede sein konnte. Auch wenn das christliche Bekenntnis nicht mehr Bestandteil des Staatsrechtes ist, so bleibt doch für die christliche Gemeinde die Pflicht bestehen, sich als mitverantwortlich für die bürgerliche Gesellschaft zu betragen. Entsprechend ist das christliche Ethos weiterhin lebensnotwendig für das Überleben der Gesellschaftsordnung, auch unter den Bedingungen der neuzeitlichen Verfassungen. So hat Luther  – wie auch die anderen Reformatoren  – am „historisch-kirchlichen Typus“ festgehalten (148) und so der Degeneration zur Sekte vorgebeugt. Nur als Glied der Kirche – konkret der vorgegebenen reichskirchlichen Ordnung –

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kommt der Einzelne zum Glauben. Das drückte Luther aus, wenn er die Vorordnung von Wort und Sakrament vor dem Glauben der Individuen betonte (148). Diese Kirche bestand als der unverlierbare Kern der geschichtlich gewordenen Reichskirche, an welcher die Reformatoren ihr Recht hatten und festhielten, indem sie es unternahmen, die fundamentalen Bedingungen dieser Kirche gegen die hinzugekommenen Entstellungen ihrer Lehr- und Lebensformen wirksam zu machen (149).

Doch fehlte ihnen meist ein „klares politisches Bewusstsein“ ihrer reichsrechtlichen Stellung (149); das hatten eher die Fürsten und ihre Juristen; Zwingli und Calvin mehr als Luther und Melanchthon. 8. Die Rechtfertigung im reformatorischen Sinn erzeugt eine umfassende Neubestimmung des christlichen Ethos (I.153–203). Die Predigt von der Rechtfertigung geschieht in der Kirche als der Versammlung der schon Bekehrten. Luther stellt die Rechtfertigung dar „als den religiösen Regulator des christlich-subjektiven Gesamtlebens, welcher durch dasselbe hindurchwirkt, nicht aber als ein Phänomen, welches am Abschlusse der Bekehrung des Sünders eintreten soll“ (154, gegen die Bekehrungs- und Erweckungs-Theologie gerichtet). Die dabei obwaltende „religiöse Selbstbeurteilung“ (156) führt das Beste der mittelalterlichen Tradition fort, wobei Luther freilich die bleibende Unvollkommenheit der aktualen Gerechtigkeit des Glaubenden stärker hervorhob; und das ließ ihn viel entschiedener als die Vorgänger alles Gewicht auf die Rechtfertigung durch Christus legen. Eben diese Ausschließung der Werkgerechtigkeit bedeutet bei Luther, „… dass der Glaube des Wiedergeborenen nicht bloß das empfängliche Organ für die Rechtfertigung durch Christus, sondern zugleich das drastische Organ alles christlichen Lebens und Tuns ist“ (157). Denn der auf Christus Vertrauende ist eben entlastet von dem Ungenügen, welches durch das Streben nach Werkgerechtigkeit kompensiert werden sollte. So gewinnt der Gerechtfertigte nicht nur Gewissheit des Heils, sondern auch eine neue Unbefangenheit des Handelns und einen selbständigen Impuls dazu (158). „Der Glaube … ist die dem Christentum gemäße religiöse Anerkennung unserer Bestimmtheit durch Gott in ethischer Beziehung“ (164). Im Glauben wird sich der Christ seiner ethischen Bestimmung so bewusst, dass er sich zugleich als Sünder beurteilt, der von Gnade lebt. So eignet er sich das synthetische Urteil der Rechtfertigung an (165). Die Herrschaft über die Welt, insbesondere über die aus ihr entspringenden Übel durch das Vertrauen auf Gott ist die praktische Zweckbeziehung der Rechtfertigung. … Denn wer mit Gott versöhnt ist, der ist es auch mit dem Lauf der Welt, welcher von Gott zu seinem Besten geleitet wird (185).

Die Aussöhnung mit Gott, die immer das Ziel der Rechtfertigung ausmacht, ist ja nicht erschöpft in der neuen Freiheit des Gewissens in der Gewissheit des Zugangs

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zu Gott; hinzu kommt die freudige Bejahung der göttlichen Weltordnung und ihrem Gesetz (190–91). Beides muss als Einheit verstanden und ausgedrückt werden (sonst treten Rechtfertigung und gute Werke in Gegensatz); aber den einheitlichen Gedanken vermochten die Reformatoren nicht zu formulieren (und am wenigsten Melanchthon). Diese Einheit liegt im göttlichen Liebeswillen, der sich sowohl in der sittlichen Weltordnung wie in seinen Gnadenerweisen ausdrückt; das Bewusstsein der Sünde wie auch die Notwendigkeit der Satisfaktion ist im Grund nur aus der Verfehlung dieses Liebeswillens begreiflich. Ritschls Rückgriff auf die Reformation, insbesondere seine eingehende Wiedergabe der Rechtfertigungslehre Luthers, diente dem Ziel, das Selbstbewustsein des existierenden Protestantismus zu bilden und aufzurichten, um sowohl den Tendenzen zur Selbstaufgabe des Protestantismus, wie den verfehlten (katholisierenden, sektenhaften, schulmäßigen) Erneuerungsversuchen entgegenzutreten. Die Neuerung der Reformation war zwar im Lauf der Geschichte vielfach missdeutet und verbogen worden, repräsentierte aber für Ritschl weiterhin die stärkste Zukunftsmöglichkeit des Christentums, für die einzutreten sich lohnte. Ritschl griff der späteren Lutherrenaissance darin vor, dass Luther als Kor­ rektiv der gesamten Geschichte des Protestantismus  – und darüber hinaus der neuzeitlichen Kultur  – aufgeboten wurde. Freilich war Ritschls Antimodernismus weit moderater als etwa Holls Anschauungen, weshalb er auch eine aufklärerische und liberale Linie  – insbesondere in Kants Ethik – in seine reformatorische Theologie integrieren konnte. Genau diese Verbindung Ritschls mit der liberal-theologischen Tradition war dann im 20. Jahrhundert der große Stein des Anstoßes insbesondere für die dialektischen Theologen, so sehr, dass Ritschl geradezu als der Vertreter des Liberalismus, der er nun einmal nicht war, angesehen und verdammt wurde. Man kann fragen, ob nicht eine an Ritschl orientierte Verarbeitung des Reformatorischen einen klärenden Impuls für das Selbstverständnis des Protestantismus nach der dialektischen Theologie hätte darstellen können.

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Abstract Ritschl’s Appropriation of Reformation Theology At the end of the Enlightenment all Protestant theologians were aware that it was impossible to retain confessional orthodoxy. In order to show that this did not mean abandoning Christianity as a whole, they turned to the Reformation period to understand it as a legitimate renewal of Christian faith with great potential for Christianity’s future. Albrecht Ritschl agreed with the conservatives that both a Protestant stance is only tenable as an interpretation of redemption and that its ethical and speculative distortions must be rejected. Ritschl insisted on a new assessment of the Reformation understanding of justification and reconciliation, but articulated two arguments against the conservatives: 1) Faith is not adherence to Christological doctrines but trust in the God who is love; 2) The act of justification is to be distinguished from (and after this connected with) the process of renewal. Ritschl wanted to show that God’s justification of humans has its aim in reconciliation; reconciliation incorporates humans as participants into God’s reign. He considered the Reformation’s new understanding of justification as a continuation of the best medieval traditions of devotion and religious practice, but freed from their dangerous ambiguities.

Chapter 5

Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen

Mysticism in the Lutherrenaissance The scholars associated with the Lutherrenaissance sought to rehabilitate ­Luther’s theology vis-à-vis Catholic and Reformed theologies. As contributors to this enterprise, they hardly published a book or an article that did not deal with the Mystik1 in one way or the other. Some were drawn to the topic because they had discovered that Luther’s reformation theology had been inspired by Mystiker such as Bernard of Clairvaux. Others treated the topic because they rejected any real connection between Luther and mysticism. This article considers how some of the most prominent theologians of the Lutherrenaissance understood and employed the Mystik discourse. I first briefly sketch a genealogy of the term mystique/­ mysticism/Mystik in the period leading up to the Lutherrenaissance. These specific terms have their own reception and development histories that influence the discussion of mysticism during the Lutherrenaissance. I then analyze how Mystik was treated by the most active participants in the Lutherrenaissance of the 1920s and 30s, namely, Reinhold Seeberg, his son Erich Seeberg, and Erich Vogelsang.

I. La mystique, Mysticism, and Mystik The noun “mysticism” (and its derivative “a mystic”) is a modern construct that does not have a linguistic analogue in classic ecclesiastical usage. This lack ­explains why the term has never been ultimately defined. Only the adjective mysticus is found in medieval Latin as the terminus technicus for the hidden or spiritual meaning of a text. The liberal religious culture of seventeenth-century France gave rise to the noun, a substantivized adjective, la mystique, that the French Enlightenment took in the allegorical sense of feeling (sens).2 The French la mystique denotes both the typology “mysticism” and the person “a mystic” and bears no similarities with modern English “mysticism.” It has otherwise been assumed since Michel de Certeau’s terminological excavations that the term and its analogues in European languages immediately became commonly used in the seventeenth century. How 1 There

are differences in the referents, connotations, and associations of the term “mysticism” in different languages. I use Mystik for the German/ic, mystique for the French, and “mysticism” for the English context throughout this article. 2 M. de Certeau, La fable mystique: XVIe-XVIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 107–55.

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ever, de Certeau was concerned with determining the fable mystique created in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and never employed the generic term le mysticisme that would be equivalent to “mysticism,” only the historically specific term la mystique. The English “mysticism” would “be far too generic and essentialist a term to convey the historical specificity.”3 De Certeau took an historical interest in demonstrating the shift in the understanding of la mystique that took place in the seventeenth century, “the double ‘fiction’ of images from the past and ­scientific models.”4 His focus was on the Roman Catholic polemic against “mystical” practices of Quietists and how this discourse was readily adopted by prominent Enlightenment authors such as Pierre Bayle, who thus provided the basis for constructing an identification of a particular group of pious souls as mystique.5 The English noun “mysticism” first crystallized around mid-eighteenth-century criticisms of forms of religion that were deemed particularly enthusiastic.6 English Enlightenment discourse already contained hints of  a critical contrast between false and true religion. But it was a relatively minor player, Henry Coventry, who first employed the term mysticism as part of a sustained criticism of the sectarian fanaticism of movements, such as the Quakers and the Methodists. Coventry contrasted what he called “the seraphic entertainments of mysticism and ecstasy” with the “true spirit of acceptable religion,” by which he meant the rational religion of publicly established institutions.7 German Protestant theology adopted these perspectives for its own agenda. The term Mystik was first used in Germany by Friedrich Schleiermacher, who employed it in an apologetic sense for the sublime religious Gefühl and the expression of loving Selbstvergessenheit in opposition to rational theology.8 The early Schleiermacher defined Mystik within  a love paradigm as distinct from Mysti­ zismus, while the later Schleiermacher defined it within  a soteriological and ecclesial paradigm.9 When German Idealism adopted Romanticism’s enthusiasm for medieval religiosity and Mystik, Hegel, who felt an affinity with Eckart and Boehme, adopted the term to designate the passage between religion and phi­ 3 See

translator’s note in M. B. Smith, The Mystic Fable: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), ix–x. 4 Certeau, La fable mystique, 19 and 24. Certeau also points to the influx of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, 15–18. 5 Ibid., 25–44, 149–53. Certeau refers to P. Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique (16 vols.; Paris: Desoer, 1820–23 [Original: 1697]), 13.428. 6 Cf. L. E. Schmidt, “The Making of Modern ‘Mysticism’,” JAAR 71 (2003) 273–302, esp. on pp. 277–8. 7 H. Coventry, Philemon to Hydaspes: Or the History of False Religion (London: J. Roberts, 1736), 56 and 60. 8 F. Schleiermacher, Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (PhB 255; Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1970), 94 (third speech). 9 F. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube (1831–32) (de Gruyter Texte; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999). Cf. C. Helmer, “Mysticism and Metaphysics: Schleiermacher and a Historical-Theological Trajectory,” JR 73 (2003) 517–38, on pp. 530–3.

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losophy as  a replacement of his temporary expression, “enthusiasm.”10 The later anti-metaphysical, liberal theologians tied Mystik to worldly religious experience as the expression of an individual’s religious spirit. Albrecht Ritschl’s critical reaction to Schleiermacher and to Pietism became the reigning paradigm: Die Mystik also ist die Praxis der neuplatonischen Metaphysik und diese ist die theoretische Norm des prätendierten mystischen Genusses Gottes. Dass nun das allgemeine Sein, in welchem der Mystiker zu zerschmelzen wünscht, als Gott angesehen wird, ist eine Erschleichung.11

Ritschl aimed to disconnect metaphysics from Mystik. Yet he was successful only to the extent that he negatively defined Mystik in terms of a tendency to escape from or subordinate to the empirical world. On the other hand, from his neo-Kantian perspective Ritschl operated with his own type of Mystik12 that he invoked against both Lutheran Orthodoxy and Pietism. His constructive theology integrated Mystik into the Lutheran doctrine of justification that he then situated within an ethical paradigm. He thus interpreted the unio mystica as the individual’s ethical union with Christ, granted by God’s gracious word. This mystical union manifested the kingdom of God on earth – in line with Luther’s (and against Melanchthon’s!) understanding of justification as “Christ’s marriage with the community” in which the “reciprocal exchange of goods takes place.”13 Ritschl’s statement of  a deep division between Christian faith and pretended Mystik was, perhaps unintended, followed by Adolf von Harnack. Though Harnack claimed that Mystik could not be discerned according to nationality and confession,14 he nontheless defined Mystik as the essence of all Catholic piety: individualism, “feeling,” pantheistic metaphysic, asceticism, Christology reduced to the birth of Christ in the soul, and “Illuminism.” Harnack conflated “mystical theology” with scholastic theology and deemed it incommensurable with Protestant faith. Any Lutheran who claimed to be a Mystiker, yet who did not convert to Catholicism, was a dilettante.15 Parallel to his ideological view of history as constituted by epoch-making events, not by facts,16 Harnack read the pantheistic tenden 10 E.g.

G. W. F. Hegel, “Jakob Böhme,” in id., Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 3 (Werke 20; Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1971) 91–119. Cf. A. Weeks, German Mysticism from Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Literary and Intellectual History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 228–30. 11 A. Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik: Zur Verständigung und Abwehr (Bonn: Marcus, 1887), 27–8. 12 For a detailed discussion of Ritschl’s neo-Kantian view of Mystik vis-à-vis Schleiermacher, see Helmer, “Mysticism,” 519–23. 13 Ritschl, Theologie, 48–52, on p. 52. 14 A. von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (3 vols.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), 3.433. 15 Ibid., 3.434–6. 16 Harnack’s view of history and engagement in World War I in 1914 and Germany’s animosity toward France, England, and Belgium before 1914 is discussed in J. C. O’Neil, “Adolf von Harnack and the entry of the German State into War, July-August 1914,” SJT 55 (2002) 1–18.

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cies and ritualistic aspects that he saw in the Eastern tradition, and which he found objectionable, into the theologies of Augustine and Bernard. Hence, Mystik took on different meanings and connotations since its origin as an abstract construct. The term became part of the value struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism at the beginning of the twentieth century in continental Europe. Each side claimed the term as a mark of superiority. While Catholic polemicists portrayed Luther as a corrupter of the faith, evil and mentally unstable, some theologians of the Lutherrenaissance attributed to Luther a Mystik that was a better version of Catholic Mystik. They thus claimed German Lutheranism to be superior to Catholicism. This argument for the superiority of German Lutheranism on the grounds of a better Mystik differed from the strategy of dialectical theologians who portrayed Protestantism and Lutheranism as superior on the grounds of radical difference from Catholicism. When the dialectical theologians opposed the liberal theologians, they also opposed the fanatic religiosity they attributed to the liberals. Thus, dialectical theologians, such as Emil Brunner, distanced their theology of the word from Mystik because they adopted the term in the way Ritschl and the liberal theologians had defined it. Instead of epistemologically questioning Mystik as a religious term, Karl Barth and Brunner would criticize Mystik as being far too experiential and this-worldly.17 The theologians of the Lutherrenaissance, who with Karl Holl as their chief ideologist shaped their theology in stark opposition to the dialectical theologians, were cultivating the Mystik discourse, however on their own terms. They appropriated from Ritschl’s and Harnack’s theological polemic an anti-Catholicism that was identified with distinct types of Mystik. With an overtly nationalist interest they constructed a hierarchical system of Roman and German Mystik, which in the 1930s was brought to its culmination by the decidedly German Christian, E ­ rich Vogelsang.18

II. Bernard, Luther, and Mystik in the Lutherrenaissance Karl Holl launched the so-called Lutherrenaissance in 1910, equally moved by Ernst Troeltsch’s culturally-situated ethnocentrism and Heinrich Denifle’s and Hartmann Grisar’s anti-Lutheran polemics.19 Holl’s interpretations of Luther and Mystik were highly toned by his political views, advocating for World War I and joining the Vaterlandspartei in 1917 as he did. With a proclivity to German na 17 K.

Barth, Der Römerbrief (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 21922); E. Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 21928). Cf. A. Oepke’s critique of Barth’s and dialec­tical theology’s rejection of Mystik in Karl Barth und die Mystik (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1928). 18 E. Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” LuJ 19 (1937) 32–54. 19 H. Denifle, Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwicklung (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1906); H. Grisar, Luther (3 vols.; Freiburg i.B: Herder, 1911–1912).

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tionalism,20 Holl presented Luther as the quintessential German hero and interpreted Lutheranism as  a religion of moral obligation. Holl construed Lutheranism in ethical terms, appealing favorably to Mystik discourse. The blade of Holl’s interpretation was directed against Denifle’s conflation of scholastic theology with medieval Mystik that regarded Luther as the personification of its depravity. Specifically Denifle, who was actually the first to study Luther’s Lectures on Romans, accused Luther of having stolen the perdite vixi acclamation on his deathbed from B ­ ernard’s sermon 20 to the Song of Songs, therefore an imposter and a liar. The antagonism to Denifle’s work is prominent in Holl’s 1910 article on Luther’s doctrine of justification. Holl followed in Ritschl’s footsteps and called for a “­ total view” (Gesamtanschauung) of Luther’s theology as distinct from scholasticism and Mystik.21 In this text, Holl was concerned with how to understand God’s will and predestination in order to answer the question when salvation is experienced in concreto. He found the answer in Luther’s Lectures on Romans by connecting Luther and Mystik in a bizarre interpretation that saw Luther apply Tauler’s resignatio ad infernum to God’s will and just judgment.22 The certainty of being elected (Erwählungsgewissheit) is experienced only by the strong Christians who during an attack of doubt about being elected (Erwählungsanfechtung) are able to surrender to God’s rejection. Precisely at this point of surrender that is a sacrifice (Opfer) are they united with God’s will. During and after World War I, Holl added a political overtone to his interpretation. He no longer identified the resignatio ad infernum experience as mystisch, but as “under attack” (angefochten). Only those, who like Luther could reach the height of Erwählungsanfechtung, almost against their will, could be certain of salvation. In other words, Holl’s answer to the question concerning when salvation is experienced in concreto is this: it takes place in the strong Christian, when he has “the total feeling of personal unworthiness and the decided will to make the ultimate sacrifice.”23 At the beginning of the Lutherrenaissance, scholars stressed a total discontinuity between Luther and Mystik in order to safeguard Luther’s theology as a pure theology. During this early phase, theologians, namely Harnack, Loofs, and Reinhold Seeberg regarded Bernard of Clairvaux as a Mystiker and writer of edification liter 20 Cf. T. Kaufmann, “‘Anpassung’ als historiographisches Konzept und als theologiepolitisches Programm: Der Kirchenhistoriker Erich Seeberg in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des ‘Dritten Reiches’,” in T. Kaufmann/H. Oelke (eds.), Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker im “Dritten Reich” (Gütersloh: Kaiser, 2002) 122–272, esp. on pp. 152–3. 21 K. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgeschichte,” in GA I: 111–54, esp. on p. 111. Cf. Holl, “Die Neubau der Sittlichkeit,” in GA I: 182–3. 22 GA I: 150–1, on Luther’s comment on Romans 8:28 (WA 56: 388). 23 GA I: 152: “das ganze Gefühl der persönlichen Unwürdigkeit und den entschlossenen Willen zur höchsten Opferbereitschaft in sich.”

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ature (Erbauungsschriftsteller), not as a theologian. Thus they did not mention Bernard in their respective histories of dogmas.24 However,  a development in the Mystik discourse can be marked by distinct stages. First, the Mystik discourse intensified in the wake of Rudolf Otto’s ­epochmaking Das Heilige from 1917 and in conjunction with Ernst Troeltsch’s intellectual inclinations toward Mystik.25 Second, there was a shift of paradigm from the mere theological to the political anti-Marxist due to the war catastrophe and the growing need of articulating a concept of community in the bourgeois elite after 1918. Holl introduced the terminology of a specific deutsche Mystik versus a romanische Mystik in his monumental centennial lecture in 1917. Both this lecture and his political interpretation became paradigmatic,26 repeated almost verbatim by Erich Vogelsang as we shall see below. Still, two different trajectories evolved in 1917, the Holl discontinuity line and the Seeberg continuity line, that gave rise to a vivid discussion amongst scholars of the Lutherrenaissance. In this endless discussion, each scholar picked his alleged Mystiker as protagonist or antagonist, while they all assiduously referred to each other in an enlarged circularism.27 Holl’s critique of Catholic piety was directed toward both Roman and German Mystik, finding that even the latter had failed to renew the Catholic church and its misconceptions of merit and self-love.28 He criticized Erich Seeberg’s more positive view of the so-called Roman Mystik and attacked Reinhold Seeberg for seeing a link between Luther and the deutsche Mystik in Ockam.29 Accusing Roman Mystiker of having particular feelings and a split self, Holl rejected any medieval Mystik. The only Mystik he would accept was what he labeled  a Pauline Christusmystik that presupposed  a theological relation between divine honor and human guilt, as did Luther. Yet Holl never justified his views on Mystik by appealing to primary texts. He happened in passing to make Bernard one of the major antagonists, using him as controversial means to stress the superiority of Luther’s Christology over Catholic conceptualizations.30 Thus, 24 Erich

Seeberg, Reinhold Seeberg’s son, later referred to Bernard with a few appreciative remarks in his work, Luthers Theologie (2 vols.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), 2.16. 25 E. Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1912) discerned between three church types: church, sect, and Mystik. 26 Cf. H. Assel, “Vom Nebo ins gelobte Land: Erfahrene Rechtfertigung – von Karl Holl zu Rudolf Hermann,” NZSTh 39 (1997) 248–69, on p. 253. 27 See E. Seeberg, Luthers Theologie, 2.1–2. Cf. H. Assel, Der andere Aufbruch: Die Lutherrenaissance  – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935) (FSöTh 72; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 40. 28 K. Holl, What did Luther Understand by Religion? (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1977 [German original GA I: 1–110]) esp. on pp. 17–18, 20–21, 22–24 (= GA I: 3, 5, 7–8). 29 Ibid., 17–18, 24–30, 45–46, 60 (= GA I: 5, 10–12, 33, 43, 49). Se also GA I: 43. Cf. E. Seeberg, Zur Frage der Mystik: Ein theologischer Vortrag (Leipzig: Deichert, 1921), and R. Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. IV/I (Leipzig: Deichert, 1917). 30 Ibid., 76–8 (= GA I: 69–71).

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while Holl in 1911 lifted up Bernard and Gerson as examples of the truth that Luther had appreciated in the Catholic Church,31 he now in 1917 accused Bernard of not taking Christ’s humanity as the revelation of God’s will as seriously as Luther.32 Although Luther had emphasized Bernard’s theology as centered on the humanity of Christ from crib to cross, Holl could not fathom seeing such a link between Luther and Bernard.33 In Holl’s definition, the “mysticism of mystics” (Mystik der Mystiker) was “an artificial increase of sentiments” to be considered incompatible with Luther’s theologia propria and search for truth.34 While Ritschl had judged Bernard to be no theologian but a “traitor of characteristic Catholic devotion,”35 Holl identified Bernard as the typos of dubious Mystik and of Catholicism in general. Ironically, Bernard was also considered a dubious Mystiker by the neo-Scholastics at the turn of the twentieth century, until the prominent French neo-Thomist, Étienne Gilson, rehabilitated him as  a theologian of the highest esteem alongside Thomas Aquinas.36 Gilson articulated his claim with a theological polemic that mirrored his Lutheran counterparts. Bernard’s théologie mystique, according to Gilson, was rooted in a Catholic theology that was radically different from and better than Lutheranism. The common perception of Mystik in the 1920s consisted of a distinction between a lower romanische Mystik – sometimes, when linked to Pietism, narrowed down to bernhardinischer Mystik37 – and a higher deutsche Mystik.38 Carl Stange, following the Seeberg line, regarded Mystik so integral to Luther’s higher form of theology that he in opposition to Ritschl distinguished between Mystik and 31 K.

Holl, “Die Visitation ist eine Dauerlösung, ihre Artikel sind kein staatliches Gesetz,” in GA I: 326–80, esp. on p. 369. 32 Holl, Religion, 76 (= GA I: 71) contrasts Luther with Catholicism, Calvinism, Orthodoxy, and Pietism. 33 For Bernard’s focus on Christ’s humanity, see e.g. De diversis 29,3; Cant. 11,7; 20, 4–6; 43,4; and In Vig. Nativ. 1,1. Evidence that Luther was familiar with these texts and that they opened his eyes to the doctrine of justification by faith is found in, for example, his Sermons on the Gospel of John ­1537–38 (WA 46: 782, 20), his First Lectures on the Psalms (WA 55/I: 352), and his Lectures on Genesis (WA 43: 581). Franz Posset stresses that the WA edition of Luther’s Lectures on Romans (WA 56: 137) entered Luther’s use of Bernard’s sermon on the annunciation (Ann 1) incorrectly, thus abbreviating the Bernard quote regarding Rom 8:16 that most decisively influenced Luther’s doctrine of justification; see F. Posset, The Real Luther: A Friar at Erfurt and Wittenberg (Saint Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 2011), 111–12. 34 Holl, Religion, 45–46 (= GA I: 33). 35 A. Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (3 vols.; Bonn: Marcus, 2 1882–1883), I.109–10. 36 É. Gilson, La théologie mystique de Saint Bernard (Paris: Vrin, 1934). 37 C. Stange, Albrecht Ritschl: Die geschichtliche Stellung seiner Theologie (Leipzig: Dieterische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1922), 14. The same generic terminology is found in the WA comments, following Vogelsang’s classification, as is evident from Reinhard Schwarz’s and Siegfried Raedke’s editorial introduction to WA 55 I/1: ix–lxv, on pp. ix and xxi (on Vogelsang’s editorial work), xxvii (on “bernhar­ dinischer Mystik”). 38 Holl, Religion, 24–30, 84 (= GA I: 10–12, 86); and Kaufmann, “Anpassung,” 175.

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­ atholic piety, identifying the latter as pagan.39 During this decade, Mystik someC how shaped the prolegomena to an anti-Catholic as well as anti-Calvinist Lutheran theology;40 and in the wake of both psychological and religious studies, it was more debated and contested than ever.41 Mystik was the most important theme in the 1930s. Reinhold Seeberg reconfirmed his esteem for German forms of scholastic theology as a higher form of Mystik with the expression “the so important German Mystik.”42 From 1933 on, Erich Seeberg and Erich Vogelsang integrated the prevalent Mystik discourse43 with the race ideology and politics of National Socialism.44 E. Seeberg, who controlled the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, greatly influenced the intellectual-historical (geistesgeschichtliche) research in church history in the 1920s and 30s, including the perception of deutsche Mystik. He aimed to present the real Luther and to propagate not merely a Lutherrenaissance but a Lutherrevolution.45 Luther was regarded at the apex in a line of deutsche Mystiker46 that included Eckhart, Tauler, and Boehme,47 without devaluing Bernard.48 But it was Vogelsang who had the major impact on twentieth-century Lutheran research in Mystik with his development of the Holl trajectory in articles in the Lutherjahrbuch and, most importantly, in comments in the WA. After World War II, Luther scholarship depoliticized Vogelsang’s position (in an amnesia about his heavy commitment to National Socialist ideology) and credited him with clarifying Luther’s rare references to the theologia mystica as well as establishing a tripartite Mystik system discernable in Luther’s more 39 Stange,

Albrecht Ritschl, 14–15. I: 128–9. Both Holl’s study and the entire Lutherrenaissance were arguing by way of theolo­ gical controversy (kontroverstheologisch). Cf. E. Vogelsang, Die Anfänge von Luthers Christologie nach der ersten Psalmenvorlesung (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1929), 2; and E. Seeberg, Luthers Theologie in ihren Grundzügen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1950), 2–3. 41 Oepke, Karl Barth und die Mystik, 19, referring heavily to Otto’s book, Westöstliche Mystik, from 1926. 42 R. Seeberg, Die religiösen Grundgedanken des jungen Luther und ihr Verhältnis zu dem Ockamismus und der deutschen Mystik (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931), 12. 43 According to Quiring, scholars operated with twenty-six forms of Mystik (Otto). No phenomenon was “more modern to speak or write about than ‘Mystik’.” In his article “Luther und die Mystik,” ZSTh 13 (1936) 150–227, on p. 150, Quiring connects Mystik to building an “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der deutschen Glaubensbewegung.” He was influenced by Vogelsang, and refers also to Gustaf Aulén’s “Glaube und Mystik,” ZSTh 2 (1925) 268–80. 44 See E. Vogelsang, Umbruch des deutschen Glaubens von Ragnarok zu Christus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1934). Cf. Kaufmann, “Anpassung,” 139. 45 E. Seeberg, Luthers Theologie, 2.vii–viii. It was actually E. Seeberg, who coined the term Lutherrenaissance. In retrospect he thought that his father, Reinhold Seeberg, was the real initiator of the­ Lutherrenaissance in his work from 1917. Reinhold, according to Erich, paved new ground by trying to “chisel the inner connection” between scholasticism and Mystik in understanding Luther. See Seeberg, Luthers Theologie, 3. 46 E. Seeberg, Luthers Theologie in ihren Grundzügen, 75, 89, 92, 145, and 439. Cf. Kaufmann, “Anpassung,” 156–62. 47 E. Seeberg, Luthers Theologie in ihren Grundzügen, 169, 185, and 367. 48 Ibid., 9 and 16. 40 GA

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complex Theologia Deutsch.49 Like the typologies conceived by the Swedish Lund scholars, namely Gustaf Aulén’s three types of reconciliation and Anders Nygren’s distinction between eros and agape,50 Vogelsang’s typology of Mystik made a lasting impression on Luther scholarship. Like Lutheran Orthodoxy in the seventeenth century, the Lutherrenaissance in the twentieth century constructed systems that could compete with scholasticism.

III. Mystik Discourse in the 1920s and 1930s The Seebergs and Vogelsang In a portrayal of theology after World War I, Reinhold Seeberg expressed a certain fatigue with both an epistemologicalization of theological principles in the tradition of Hegel and a psychologicalization of religiosity “under the uncertain ­label ‘Mystik’” in the tradition of Schleiermacher. Seeberg suggested that the theological focus should be an intellectual history that regarded Reformation theology from the perspective of a religious “total view” (Gesamtanschauung) as Holl had originally done. Church history was to be regarded as a study of ideas (Geistes­ geschichte), rather than a historical investigation (Historismus).51 R. Seeberg still considered Luther a student of the German Mystiker, Ockam,52 yet he contested both Denifle’s characterization of Luther as an Ockamist and Ritschl’s rejection of any relation between Luther and Mystik.53 R. Seeberg’s own understanding of German Mystik was shaped by his outspoken nationalist pride. For him, Mystik was a spiritual tendency expressed by two main ideas in the concept of God: the im 49 Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” 38 (referring to WA 9: 98, 20). It was, however, W. Köhler’s student, Horst Quiring, who conducted the preliminary research in “Luther und die Mystik.” Vogelsang’s system was in retrospect rehabiliated by W. v. Loewenich (who originally distanced himself from the Mystik discourse) in his famous postscript to the fourth edition from 1954 of Luthers theologia crucis (Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1982), 201–207, on p. 203. Later his system was cultivated by both H. A. Oberman, for example in his paper from the International Congress for Luther Research in 1966, “Simul gemitus et raptus: Luther und die Mystik,” in I. Asheim (ed.), Kirche, Mystik, Heiligung und das Natürliche bei Luther: Vorträge des Dritten Internationalen Kongresses für Lutherforschung, Järvenpää Finnland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967) 20–59, on p. 38; and K.-H. zur Mühlen for example in his Nos extra nos: Luthers Theologie zwischen Mystik und Scholastik (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1972), 110. 50 Like Vogelsang, Nygren follows the Holl trajectory and presents a Luther who heroically fought against Catholic piety, which for him included both German and Roman Mystik. Such a piety “puts the self ’s ego in the place of God” from its inception: A. Nygren, Den kristna kärlekstanken: Eros och agape II (Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelse, 1947), 501. For details on the German-Scandinavian connection, see Assel, Der andere Aufbruch, 28–30. 51 R. Seeberg, “Zur Frage nach dem Sinn und Recht einer pneumatischen Schriftauslegung,” ZSTh 4 (1927) 3–59, on pp. 3–4. 52 R. Seeberg, Die religiösen Grundgedanken, 3–14, on pp. 3 and 12: in the sense of an “impression and expression of a life union with God.” 53 Ibid., 29–30.

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manent Mover and the transcendent absolute Being “zu dem über alle diese Erscheinungsformen hinweg es die Geister drängt zu letzter Vereinigung mit ihm, dem reinen Geist oder dem reinen Intellekt.”54 Without defining Mystik beyond this spiritual union with God as pure spirit or pure intellect, Reinhold Seeberg proceeded to distinguish between the young ­Luther’s understanding of Scripture and faith and that of the so-called mystics. The Mystiker, he asserted, understood Scripture as law and faith as a single performance (Einzelausführung). Also pertaining to other theological loci such as the concept of God, sin, theology of the cross, grace and justification, and the church, Seeberg underlined a radical difference between Luther and Mystik. Though acknowledging that Luther had certain similarities with Ockam and Mystik, Seeberg identified Luther’s theology as ethical in character due to its emphasis on the double commandment of love, while Mystik was solely metaphysical, emphasizing love of self and desire.55 Reinhold Seeberg’s claims are speculative constructions. There is no textual evidence for his contention that Luther’s perception of faith should be regarded as fundamentally different from that of the so-called mystics. Particularly his view that mystics perceive faith as  a single performance can be easily dismissed by ­taking a look at Bernard. Bernard emphasized faith as a daily struggle and on­going process. He understood the experience of faith, specifically faith in God’s forgiveness of sins and God’s promises, as God’s gift: “I too believe that man is saved through faith alone.”56 R. Seeberg, however, was not interested in seeing just how central the French abbot’s understanding of justification was for Luther’s reformation doctrine. III.1 Mystik and the Cross Erich Seeberg’s understanding of Mystik was far more complicated. In his early years, he published a study of seventeenth century Mystik’s inner connection to historical consciousness.57 Later, he conducted a theological-historical study of medieval Mystik with the specific intention of criticizing Mystik discourse. He wanted to claim that Mystik and Lutheran Protestant Christianity were complete oppo 54 Ibid.,

12. 30, 33. 56 Ep. 77, 8: “credens et ipse sola fide hominem posse salvari,” in SBO VII: 184–200. Bernard reiterates his teaching in his sermon 66 to the Song of Songs, a text arguing against the (presumably Abelard’s) idea of God’s salvation taking place as an election of the few (cf. Holl’s idea of God’s election of the strong Christian, “Erwählung”) and a Donatist understanding of ministry by sectarian groups in Germany from 1143 to 1145; see esp. Sermo super Cantica Canticorum 66, 7–9 (SBO II: 182–4). The similarities between the ideas that Bernard is warning against and the ideas of the German Lutherrenaissance invite reflection. 57 E. Seeberg, “Gottfried Arnolds Anschauung von der Geschichte,” ZKG 28 (1920) 282–311. 55 Ibid.,

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sites. Despite his efforts to write his own independent study of Luther, E. ­Seeberg was heavily influenced by Holl’s and his father’s findings for his historical perspective, the “total view” (Gesamtanschauung) that he constructed without regard for such petty methods as historical criticism.58 To underpin his independence, the young Seeberg picked his own hero, Jakob Boehme, and went against the current by looking for unmystische features in Boehme’s thoughts that he not surprisingly deemed to be traces of Luther’s ideas.59 But in his later book on Luther’s theology from 1929, young Seeberg picked other protagonists. He analyzed the God concept of the scholastics Aquinas and Biel as well as the German Tauler before testing out these views on the three motifs Holl had discovered in Luther’s Lectures on Romans: the hidden God, God and evil, God and revelation. E.  ­Seeberg toned down Holl’s dramatic idea concerning the Tauler gloss on the resignatio ad infernum, and made a case for its symbolic value by tying it to the pious rather than to the strong Christian.60 Nevertheless, he rendered Luther’s God in terms as sinister as Holl had previously done. Like Holl, E. Seeberg made a sharp distinction between a true concept of God, specifically Luther’s God of wrath and hiddenness (deus absconditus), and the intimate God of Mystiker, humanists, and enthusiasts (Schwärmer).61 Ambivalent toward Holl, young Seeberg esteemed German Mystiker such as Tauler higher than for example Aquinas, though Tauler was not at the level of Luther, yet questioned both Holl’s and his father’s German nationalist perspective.62 E. Seeberg contested the relation that his father had established between Mystik and scholasticism, while nonetheless attesting to some sort of continuity between Luther and Mystik. Luther, according to E. Seeberg, represents the culmination of the mystische idea of the abnegatio sui, that sinful human beings are not like God, by a sharp contrast between humans and God. Luther’s Anfechtung is the epitome of a theology63 that highlights God as the God of judgment and predestination and who works solely through the opposite of divinity in the incarnate and crucified Christ.64 Human beings in Luther’s theology are constantly engaged in the struggle against the self. They acknowledge their sinfulness on the path of humility and self-abnegation. The kind of belief in and obedience to the hidden God that E. Seeberg had in mind was “mystical recognition” (das mystische Erkennen) as the “essential core of the conscience” (syntheresis).65 Seeberg was thus inspired 58 E.

Seeberg, Luthers Theologie: Motive und Ideen, vol. 1: Die Gottesanschauung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1929), 5*. 59 E. Seeberg, Zur Frage der Mystik (Leipzig: Deichert, 1921), 4–5. 60 E. Seeberg, Luthers Theologie, 1.44–5. 61 Ibid., 1.108–9 and 119. 62 Ibid., 1.41. 63 Ibid., 1.115–25. According to E. Seeberg, Luther’s “Song of Songs” is one of sorrow (121). 64 Ibid., 1.212–13, in line with Holl. 65 Ibid., 1.142. Syntheresis was the scholastic term for an essential, uncorrupted core in the human conscience that could serve as a “divine spark” of doing good. The idea of such an essential core termed syntheresis was indirectly repudiated by Luther in his discussion with Eck during the Diet at Worms in 1521 (WA 7: 838).

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by Holl’s way of seeing Christ as the object of faith; as the crucified and hidden God, Christ is also the justification of humans. Seeberg, like Ritschl before him, curiously referred to Luther’s “well-known similitude of bridegroom and bride”66 without explicily referring to Bernard as source for this analogy. In fact, Seeberg mentioned Bernard only once in a passage in which he wondered why Tauler did not emphasize a union of wills to the extent that Bernard did. The strong will of the true German was a central theme to the National Socialist ideal of a “Religion des Blutes.”67 From 1929, focus in Luther research was on Luther’s understanding of the cross. Holl had conducted the preliminary work that was now followed up by E. Seeberg and Vogelsang. Seeberg saw the theology of the cross as Luther’s “productive transformation” of Tauler’s deus absconditus and thus a transformation of Areopagitic Mystik. Vogelsang, together with an outsider to the Lutherrenaissance group, ­Walther von Loewenich, were even more radical than Holl in contrasting Luther’s theology of faith in Christ with an “unclear” (verschwommen) Mystik.68 Vogelsang’s dissertation from 1929 focused on new findings from Luther’s Lectures on the Psalms in continuation of E. Seeberg’s work on the Lectures on Romans.69 It was inspired by Emanuel Hirsch, Vogelsang’s Doktorvater, with whom he shared the National Socialist ideology. Vogelsang found the Leitmotif of Luther’s theology in the theology of the cross, and determined its originality in Luther’s tropological exegesis of Christ’s work and particularly in the German perspective of Luther’s theology. Like Seeberg, Vogelsang viewed Luther’s soteriology from the perspective of divine wrath, verdict as punishment for sin (Sündenstrafe) and double predestination, thereby opposing his position to Ritschl’s intellectualism and moralism.70 With Holl, Vogelsang acknowledged Bernard’s and Gerson’s influence on Luther’s understanding of justification as Christ being spiritually born in the believer or in other words, the believer being reborn in Christ through faith.71 However, Vogelsang interpreted Luther’s soteriology in  a way that radically differed from Bernard and Gerson. The “soft sweetness” of Mystik72 decisively contrasted with Luther’s position on three issues: 1) Both Mystik and Luther agree on the importance of faith, but Mystik focuses on inner ecstatic and ascetic experience, while Luther stresses faith through the external, unmystische word; 2) Both agree 66 Ibid.,

1.213. 1.37. Cf. below, note 87. 68 The expression is from Vogelsang, Die Anfänge, 75. Cf. von Loewenich, Luthers Theologia Crucis, 170–1, 179. Loewenich’s 1929 book on Luther’s theology of the cross was shaped by dialectical theology. He also adopted Holl’s and Stange’s views on Luther’s theology, integrating these positions with Brunner’s (and Vogelsang’s) negative view of Mystik. 69 Vogelsang, Die Anfänge, “Vorwort” and 79. 70 Ibid., 36, 105–6, 181–2. 71 Ibid., 66. Vogelsang who was well aware of Luther’s veneration for Bernard notes that Luther­ cited Bernard 13–15 times and Gerson at least once in his Lectures on the Psalms. 72 Ibid., 63–9, 105. 67 Ibid.,

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that God is the sole subject of the human’s spiritual birth, but Mystik claims that spiritual birth takes place gradually through meditation, while Luther insists that it occurs every day as the justification by grace of the passive believer who deserves only wrath and punishment;73 3) Mystik determines justification as  a spiritual birth, while Luther understands justification to be the beginning of God’s work in the believer. Faith, according to Luther, is connected solely to Christ.74 Thus Vogel­ sang’s conclusion regarding Luther’s understanding of faith is opposed to Holl’s view that Luther had a Christusmystik.75 III.2 Bridal Mysticism (Brautmystik) or the Theology of the Cross E.  Seeberg and especially Vogelsang refined the system of affective Mystik and speculative Theologia Deutsch. When interpreting Luther’s theology as a theology of contrasts, Seeberg introduced a new contrast between mystisch and un­mystisch. Vogelsang too enhanced this conceptual distinction, and both scholars significantly shaped the Mystik discourse of the 1930s as inflected by their National Socialist ideals. The modus operandi was still that of contrasting generic assertions about Mystik with carefully chosen citations from specific texts: namely, the Lectures on Romans and the Heidelberg Disputation,76 supplemented with The Freedom of a Christian together with the Lectures on Genesis and the Lectures on the Psalms, all of which were read through the lens of De servo arbitrio, a celebrated Luther text in this group. Sharing the fascination of the middle ages that permeated the Zeitgeist, neither E. Seeberg nor Vogelsang would deny the findings of the new Luther research that situated Luther in relation to figures such as Bernard, Tauler, and Gerson. Yet, the question concerned in what way Luther was influenced by the so-called mystics. On this point, they diverged. Seeberg followed his father, seeing a continuity between Luther and Mystik, while Vogelsang followed Holl, seeing a rupture between the two. Thus a struggle emerged between two ways in which Luther research was inflected by National Socialism. The neologism “bridal mysticism” (Brautmystik) entered the discourse from 1936, the year of the Hitler regime’s plan toward a war of conquest. Ritschl paved the way towards the Brautmystik idea with his view of the ethical marriage between Christ and the individual. E. Seeberg then highlighted Luther’s analogy between bride and bridegroom in 1929. However, to my knowledge, Quiring was the first figure to explicitly use the term Brautmystik, and 73 To

the contrary, Bernard viewed earthly life from the perspective of the goodness of the body/ flesh: “While in the flesh it [the soul] moves by faith which necessarily acts through charity, for if it does not act, it dies” (1 Cor 5:7 and Gal 5:6), in De diligendo Deo 9,30 (SBO III: 111–54). 74 Vogelsang, Die Anfänge, 66–74. 75 Ibid., 76. 76 Vogelsang highlighted these two texts as the object of the new research, “Luther und die Mystik,” 51.

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did so twice, both times in relation to Gerson.77 Before Quiring, Wilhelm Herrmann had written about the difference between Bernard’s and Luther’s reciprocal bridal-love (Brautliebe), though deeming Luther likely to have sunk into the papist practice and be colored by “the Catholic prophet’s” contemplative understanding of “Christ-love” (Christliebe).78 But when E. Seeberg in 1937 employed the term once (in a footnote relating Brautmystik to Luther’s theology as a warrant for his own marriage ideals), he provoked a vehement reaction from Vogelsang. Vogelsang’s formulations in his reaction to Seeberg had a lasting impact on the negative stereotyping of Brautmystik as well as the proliferation of a number of clauses of the type “and-mysticism” that we encounter in studies on mysticism even today. E. Seeberg’s second volume to Luther’s theology from 1937 was a sequel to the first pertaining to its content, but Vogelsang emerged as this volume’s important discussion partner. Converted to Hitler’s regime in 1933, young Seeberg now defended his father against Vogelsang’s criticism and asserted a “Germanization” of Luther’s theology. The Reformer’s thought was to be closely connected to the German Mystik that must be distinguished from the psychological focus of Roman Mystik, although both German and Roman forms had the Areopagitic Mystik with its paradox of life and death in common. E. Seeberg stressed the German intellectual-historical worth (Geistesgeschichtlichkeit) of Eckhart, Franck, and Boehme as well as their common commitment to the idea, the history of symbols. Also important in Seeberg’s account was the influence of Areopagitic paradox and experience in German Mystik. The passage has become famous in which he poignantly called Luther, to whom no “yes” is without  a “no,”  a theologus teutonicus.79 But Seeberg also proposed against Vogelsang that justification must be tropologically understood as taking place in Christ’s incarnation as well as in his crucifixion; thus justification is tied to both this concrete life and to spiritual belief. Hence, Seeberg firmly rejected the resignatio ad infernum as a Mystik source of inspiration for Luther and concluded, with an implicit aside to Vogelsang, that it had been a big mistake to interpret the First Lectures on the Psalms as if Luther were speaking literally, let alone at length, about following Christ in his fate of death, hell and resurrection.80 Although Seeberg held onto Holl’s idea that salvation is dependent on God’s predestining will against even the Mystik of Ockam, he preferred to read Luther’s doctrine of justification in spiritual terms of the e contrario God. God’s justifying act is tied to life and love, as bride is joined to groom in the analogy of marriage, which to Seeberg was an expression of the order of God. The vision of the Christ of faith gave Seeberg a glimpse of a commonality between Luther and Mystik as rep 77 Quiring,

“Luther und die Mystik,” 151 and 161. Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott in Anschluss an Luther dargestellt (Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1908), 223–5. Herrmann quotes Luther’s praise of Bernard on p. 223. 79 E. Seeberg, Luthers Theologie, 2.15, 63, 182, 366–7. Hegel labeled Boehme a philosophus teutonicus. 80 Ibid., 2.39–47. 78 W.

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resented by Bernard.81 Seeberg detected the most sublime expression of the justifying and hidden God who works by contrast in Luther’s nuptial image of the union between active man and passive woman. In this complete exchange between bride and bridegroom, Seeberg suggested a vestige of the medieval affective Brautmystik.82 Seeberg’s main point, however, was that Luther creatively transformed Mystik as a “productive transformation” (produktive Umbildung).83 Luther eventually seceded from this image when he concentrated exclusively on faith as the glue of the marriage.84 Seeberg, who rejected the idea of turning the Volkskirche into an explicit National Socialist project, thought that he by accentuating the affective dimension of Luther’s doctrine of justification could adjust Christianity to the new German spirituality and its Volksmythos. He, who knew from experience that one could not trust Nazis, was deceived.85 Vogelsang reacted immediately to Seeberg’s criticism. In continuity with Holl and Hirsch, he deconstructed Seeberg’s link to Luther-Mystik point by point in the 1937 Lutherjahrbuch. His deconstruction was so subtle, however, that he did not mention Seeberg’s 1937 work at all, and only once referred to Seeberg’s book from 1929. One has to read his article in the Lutherjahrbuch in conjunction with Seeberg’s book to see just how vehement his repudiation of Seeberg is. Vogelsang endeavored on the surface to stay on equal footing with the Seebergs86 and their common political ideology. Yet already in his Kampfschrift from 1934 that expressed National Socialist ideals of “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden), Vogelsang felt compelled to vigorouly contest the linking of Eckart and German Mystik with Luther as other National Socialist ideologues had done, such as the Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg, to whose circle the Seebergs belonged, and Heinrich Bornkamm.87 In his 1937 text, Vogelsang flatly stated that Luther with Gerson distinguished between the contemplative theologia mystica associated with Dionysius the Areopagite, and the practical theologia propria. He denounced every “dogmatic prejudgment,” for example the connection between Luther and Mystik, and rejected not Bernard, but Eckhart, who “was unknown to [Luther].”88 Vogelsang systematized the Mystik typology that Seeberg and Quiring had already used into the tripartite hierarchy of Areopagitic, Roman, and German Mystik. He aimed to expose the rupture between Luther and the “so-called Mystiker,” who Luther knew and 81 Ibid.,

2.13–16, 154–5, 371. 2.95–6; 136–9. Seeberg employed the term Brautmystik only once in note 156 on p. 139. 83 Ibid., 2.438. 84 Ibid., 2.184–8. 85 Kaufmann, “Anpassung,” 218–21, 265. 86 Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” 32–3, 48–9, 52–4. Cf. E. Seeberg, Luthers Theologie, 2.6. 87 Vogelsang, Umbruch des deutschen Glaubens, 5–7, 13, 24–6, 51–2, 69, which appeared one year after his other National Socialist Kampschrift, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1933). Rosenberg was responsible for the NSDAP’s spiritual and ideological education from 1934. For details on the Rosenberg connection, see Kaufmann, “Anpassung,” 252–3 and V. Leppin, “In Rosenbergs Schatten: Zur Lutherdeutung Erich Vogelsangs,” ThZ 61 (2005) 132–42. 88 Vogelsang, Umbruch, 32–3. 82 Ibid.,

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studied. In this undertaking, Vogelsang did not stand back methodologically from any scholastic, meticulously producing similarities and differences, including differences that Luther according to him had been mistakenly negligent of. To sum up Vogelsang’s results: Vogelsang acceded that Luther was inspired by the so-called Areopagitic Mystik, but claimed that Luther repudiated its ecstatic theologia negativa for three reasons: 1) its monastic ideal (Mönchsethik) that set aside God’s order of creation (Berufsethik), here echoing Bernard and Bonaventure;89 2) its metaphysical emphasis that ended up disavowing death, sin, and God’s judgment;90 and 3) its affective nature that built on illusionary visions rather than on the word of the incarnate and crucified Christ.91 Vogelsang deemed this lowest ­ uther’s form of Mystik a “satanic contrast” to Luther’s theology of faith,92 claiming L Mystik to be unmystisch (and therefore “unbernardisch”) due to its focus on the verbum externum.93 Vogelsang’s description of Roman Mystik was less negative. But in order to demonstrate that Luther’s attitude to it was eventually a “yes and no” (versus Seeberg), he fabricated  a veritable patchwork. He acknowledged Luther’s veneration for Bernard’s doctrine on the incarnate and crucified Christ and, coherently, for his understanding of death and judgment. Yet Vogelsang quite surprisingly ­ ernard: ascribed Luther’s definition of Mystik (in the gloss to Tauler’s sermons) to B “theologia mystica est sapientia experimentalis et non doctrinalis.”94 Thus, while Quiring correctly stated that Luther referred to Gerson for this definition in his gloss to Tauler,95 Vogelsang constructed  a connection to Bernard. The formulation, however, is not from Bernard’s oeuvre, inasmuch as a term equivalent to Mystik, let alone Brautmystik, was unknown to him. But Vogelsang aimed at twisting Seeberg’s point by “positively” highlighting Bernard as the source of Luther’s discovery of faith’s experiential pro me, identifying the individual’s personal conviction as Luther’s true mystical theology.96 Vogelsang’s real aim was to depict Bernard’s influence as a mistake by portraying a Luther, who in his gratitude for the grand discovery, allegedly forgot about Bernard’s Roman features: his teaching of free will, grace without predestination, and his understanding of monasticism. ­Luther’s positive evaluation of Bernard, so Vogelsang, simply was  a “productive misunderstanding,” that overlooked its inherent Catholic hierarchical nature.97 It 89 Ibid.,

35–6. 36. 91 Ibid., 37. 92 Ibid., 37. 93 Ibid., 52–4. 94 Ibid., 38. 95 Quiring, “Luther und die Mystik,” 195. 96 Bernard stressed that faith required Christ as crucified, both as the one who combats evil and as the redemption for the individual, pro me, and for humanity, pro nobis, in e.g. his sermon to the Song of Songs 43,4. 97 Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” 39–40. Cf. Quiring, “Luther und die Mystik,” 161. 90 Ibid.,

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is worth noticing how Vogelsang justified this transformation of Seeberg’s claim of “productive transformation” by assigning responsibility to two Catholic archenemies: John Eck and Denifle, not Bernard. Yet, like Holl, Vogelsang purposefully stigmatized Bernard as the typos of Catholicism, and he summed up the differences between Luther and Roman Mystik in his typical threes. 1) He replicated Holl’s claim by distinguishing between the spiritual nature of Luther’s religious sensibilities and the corporeality of Roman Mystik that lacked the dialectic between word of judgment and word of grace (versus Seeberg’s claim of Geistlichkeit). With this claim Vogelsang erased his earlier credit to Bernard and instead underlined Gerson’s special position. 2) Vogelsang contrasted the erotic characteristic of “viktorinische und bernhardinische Mystik” (i. e. Brautmystik) with ­Luther’s nonerotic version (versus Seeberg’s claim of the priority of the nuptial imagery over the theology of the cross). 3) He claimed that Roman Mystik, like the Areopagitic, was oriented to the “uncreated word” as its goal, while Luther had the incarnate and crucified Christ. Even when Roman Mystik treated of the incarnate and crucified Christ, this was but  a detour around its neglect of Christ’s humanity (­versus Seeberg’s claim of the paradox of Mystik and Bernard as a productive inspiration). To substantiate this assertion, Vogelsang listed Bonaventure, Bernard, and Gerson, thus circumventing the fact that Bernard cited 1 Cor 2:2 and Gal 6:14 several times throughout his oeuvre, unambiguously promoting a Pauline theology of the cross.98 Vogelsang treated the German Mystik by highlighting the above three points as decisive criteria for proclaiming Luther’s eminence. Bernard emerged as the paradigmatic example in opposition to this German Mystik, and Vogelsang cast him as the stereotype of Mystik. The stage was set for giving Seeberg the coup de grace: Not Bernard with his affective Brautmystik, but Tauler was favored by Luther. Vogelsang adduced two significant reasons for that: 1) Brautmystik, the judging Christ, and the free will were marginal concerns in Tauler’s theology; and 2) Tauler was German and wrote in German.99 Vogelsang’s article is a “busy text” that operates at several layers and integrates highly diverse elements, particularly in the second part. Here he deconstructed the mystisch in Luther as unmystisch by condensing his prior three points together with well-known points from both E. Seeberg’s and his own work from 1929 (without references) in a formula pertaining to three loci: the concept of God, anthropology, and Christology. As to the concept of God, Vogelsang simply echoed Holl, explicating the idea of the hidden presence of God in combination with Tauler’s resignatio ad infernum and its kinship to Luther’s spiritual scrupulosity and readiness to will God’s will and honor. Shifting from the quasi-theological to the more 98 Cf.

U. Köpf, “Schriftauslegung als Ort der Kreuzestheologie,” in D. R. Bauer/G. Fuchs (eds.), Bernhard von Clairvaux und der Beginn der Moderne (Innsbruck/Wien: Tyrolia Verlag, 1996) 194–213, on p. 196. 99 Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” 41–2.

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or less overtly political,100 Vogelsang asserted the human sense of guilt and shame before the wrath of God that turns into the present God in Christ as the significant point in Luther’s theology in contrast to all Mystik, including Tauler and Bernard. He coupled this thought with his well-known motif of double predestination, as well as with the Holl-inspired motif of risking the corporal and moral rejection of God whom one must hate or want to renounce (sic!).101 As to anthropology, Vogelsang treated another key theme from the Lectures on Romans, the syntheresis.102 However, he in relation to this theme made an ­utterly vague distinction between Luther and Mystik (the term hardly defined in the article). Vogelsang instead expended his scholarly energy in tying a Braut­mystik to Bernard while untying it from Luther (in  a response to Seeberg’s focus), but treating it impressively free of historical contextualization, insight in the medieval homiletic genre, or employment of biblical metaphors. When explicating Luther’s Christology in its alleged opposition to Roman and German Mystik, including Tauler, Vogelsang’s analysis is also strikingly vague. The term Brautmystik is not mentioned, except in  a note with inverted commas, “Brautmystik.”103 Acknowledging how Luther borrowed images from Mystik (response to Seeberg), he wraps ­Luther’s nuptial image into his Leitmotif of the cross. Thus, in Vogelsang’s rendition the bride is absent. Present in the bridal chamber, the place of the conscience, is only Christ the bridegroom whose embrace means death and hell before forgiveness of sins. To Vogelsang, the Christus mysticus is Christ proclaimed as hidden and present, a sermon the Mystik failed to preach (versus Seeberg’s claim of Vogelsang’s misreading of the Lectures on the Psalms). Hints of war rhetoric also permeate Vogelsang’s text. The focus shifts from the marital union to the struggling, suffering, and obedient Son who serves his neighbor and sacrifices himself. 1937 was after all the year of the National Socialist war memorandum, and the Brautmystik seems to have become the ammunition in whatever war was fought for Luther. In 1938, the year of the Third Reich’s first expansion, followed Friedrich Ruhland’s dissertation, Luther und die Brautmystik, with the unsurprisingly same conclusion as Vogelsang’s work.104

100 Ibid.,

42–9, on pp. 42–3. 44–6. 102 Cf. above note 65. 103 Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” 49, note 5. 104 F. Ruhland, Luther und die Brautmystik: Nach Luthers Schrifttum bis 1521 (Giessen: Hessische Ludwigs-Universität, 1938), 143 and 145. 101 Ibid.,

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VI. Concluding Remark Mysticism is a highly problematic construct that has never been clearly defined, hence easy to bend in any direction that different players want. Not only was the term alien to the so-called mystics, but also the modern constructs fluctuate and are often employed in dangerous constellations, as is the case of the Lutherrenaissance. Particularly the uncritical and generic employment of the construct Mystik irrespective of time, place or scope, whether by the Holl discontinuity line or the Seeberg continuity line, displayed historical and theological myopia. Though the Lutherrenaissance offered moments of sublime Luther research, it quite often resulted in restrictive readings or even misrepresentations of Luther’s theology. Both the Lutherrenaissance and its antagonists, the Catholic polemicists, had an agenda that later generations appropiated without critical distance. There is in Luther scholarship today a need to recognize the dangerous cocktail of the Lutherrenaissance’s nationalist or confessionalist ideology and to analyze its Mystik discourse. Critical investigation into the origins of modern Luther studies is a pressing desideratum.

Zusammenfassung Mystik in der Lutherrenaissance Mystik ist ein artifizieller Terminus aus dem 17.  Jahrhundert, der als hauptsächlich un­ definierte, anti-katholische Kategorie eine bedeutsame Rolle in der Lutherrenaissance spielte. Die Theologen der Lutherrenaissance haben kaum Artikel oder Bücher publiziert, die nicht irgendwie die Mystik und ihr Verhältnis zu Luther zum Thema haben. Zunächst geschah dies im konfessionellen und nationalistischen Wertekampf gegen katholische Polemiker, aber auch in internen Diskussionen zwischen zwei Luther-Interpretationsspuren, die sich jedoch über die Superiorität des deutschen Luthertums einig waren: die Karl-HollSpur, die eine Diskontinuität zwischen Luther und Mystik propagierte, und die ReinholdSeeberg-Spur, die eine Kontinuität zwischen Luther und deutscher Mystik propagierte. Seit 1933 waren beide Spuren durch Erich Vogelsang und Erich Seeberg mit dem National­ sozialismus eng verbunden. Aber während Seeberg die Mystik als eine positive Inspira­ tionskraft für Luther verstanden hat, hat Vogelsang diese Inspiration als einen Fehlgriff Luthers angesehen. Die Diskussion hat sich 1937 zugespitzt, als Seeberg gegen Vogelsangs spezifische Lutherinterpretation mit ihrer Akzentuierung von Tod und Kreuz für die affektiven Elemente in Luthers von Mystikern inspirierte Brautmetaphorik und das Paradox von Leben und Tod optierte, um das Christentum dem nationalsozialistischen Volksmythos anzupassen. Der deutsche Christ Vogelsang hat in dem Aufsatz „Luther und die Mystik“ aus dem Luther-Jahrbuch 1937 eine solche affektive „Brautmystik“ abgelehnt (ohne Seebergs Kritik und fast ohne seinen Namen zu nennen) und im Gegenteil für L ­ uthers­ „unmystische“ Kreuzestheologie und die Opferbereitschaft des Sohnes in der Verkündigung optiert.

Chapter 6

Peter Grove

Adolf von Harnack and Karl Holl on Luther at the Origins of Modernity I. Introduction “The modern age began with Luther’s Reformation,” Adolf von Harnack claims in “Die Reformation und ihre Voraussetzung,” one of his contributions to the celebration of the centenary of the Reformation in 1917.1 In his What did Luther Understand by Religion?, another contribution written for the same occasion, Karl Holl explains that Luther stands out so sharply from the Middle Ages and appears so much as the transformer of the whole life of the mind that it is impossible to associate him with the Middle Ages. His conceiving of religion primarily in terms of conscience signifies … the decisive breakthrough, not only with respect to the Middle Ages, but with respect to the whole standpoint of the Catholic church; it provides at the same time the foundation of an autonomy that is more than merely an imperfect preliminary form of the autonomy espoused by the Enlightenment.2

The title of this chapter alludes to Harnack’s claim, but, as I will argue, the claim does not give a full and accurate picture of his view of the relation between Luther and modernity. Once I have engaged Harnack, I turn to Holl. My aim is to examine these German theologians on a topic that emerged as central to discussions of Luther at the turn of the twentieth century, namely the relationship of the Protestant Reformation to both middle ages and modernity. This examination and comparison require an initial qualification. In what follows I will not investigate the personal relationship between Harnack and Holl.3 Nor will I attempt to explicate Holl’s position from Harnack’s position, or the other way round. Thus I will neither answer the question as to whether Harnack’s contribution paved the way for Holl’s interpretation, nor whether the later Harnack’s 1 In

A. v. Harnack, Erforschtes und Erlebtes (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1923), 72–140, on p. 110. (Quotations from all German texts are translated by author.) 2 K. Holl, What did Luther Understand by Religion? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977 [= GA I: 1–110]), 110 n. 75 (= GA I: 110 n.). 3 Cf. H.  Karpp (ed.), Karl Holl (1866–1926): Briefwechsel mit Adolf von Harnack (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1966).

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thesis concerning Luther at the origins of modernity is inspired by Holl’s work.4 Furthermore, I will not investigate the question as to whether Holl conceives his exposition of Luther as an explicit alternative to Harnack’s theory.5 Rather, my method consists of an analysis and comparison of the two positions – Harnack’s and then Holl’s – on periodizing the Reformation in relation to both precedent and antecedent epoch, a problem that is significant for any systematic-theological interpretation of Luther today.

II. Adolf von Harnack Adolf von Harnack was a church historian with a specialization in early Christianity. He admitted that he was no expert on Luther and the Reformation.6 Yet there is a chapter on Luther in Harnack’s History of Dogma from 1886–1890. This chapter is significant for our problem because it assigns to Luther a prominent place in a comprehensive history that extends from antiquity to, more or less, Harnack’s own time, and in doing so, the text implicitly contributes to a theory of modernity.

4 Harnack evaluates the articles in K. Holl’s Luther, vol. 1 of his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte (3 vols.; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1921–1928) – including the treatise translated into English as What did Luther Understand by Religion? – as “the most penetrating investigations of Luther’s Christianity and doctrine” and highlights Holl’s book with reference to “the controversy over the relation of Luther and his Reformation to the middle ages and to the modern age which­ Troeltsch has stimulated in several comprehensive investigations and presentations” (A. v. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte [GThW 4.3; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 61922], 456–7). 5 This is claimed but not shown by H. Assel, “Zorniger Vater – Verlorener Sohn: Harnacks Beitrag zur Lutherrenaissance zwischen Theodosius Harnack und Karl Holl,” in K. Nowak/O. G. Oexle/ T. Rendtorff/K.-V. Selge (eds.), Adolf von Harnack: Christentum, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft: Wissenschaftliches Symposion aus Anlaß des 150 Geburtstages (VMPIG 204; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003) 69–83, especially on p. 77. 6 A. Harnack, History of Dogma (TLL 2, 7–12; 7 vols.; Boston: Little, Brown & Co.: 1905), 5.IX. Harnack published other texts on Luther. An important example is his “Martin Luther in seiner Bedeutung für die Geschichte der Wissenschaft und der Bildung,” in id., Reden und Aufsätze (2 vols.; Giessen:­ Alfred Töpelmann, 21906) 1.141–69. On Harnack’s interpretation and appropriation of Luther, see E.  P. ­Meijering, Der “ganze” und der “wahre” Luther: Hintergrund und Bedeutung der Lutherinterpretation A. von Harnacks (MNAW.L NS 46.3; Amsterdam/Oxford/New York: B. V. Noord-Hollandsche Uit­gevers Maatschappij, 1983); W.-D. Hauschild, “Adolf (von) Harnack,” in id. (ed.), Profile des Luthertums: Biographien zum 20. Jahrhundert (LKGG 20; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998) 275–300; M. Schröder, “‘Wiedergewonnene Naivität’: Protestantismus und Bildung nach Adolf von Harnack,” in A. v. Scheliha/M. Schröder (eds.), Das Protestantische Prinzip: Historische und systematische Studien zum Protestantismusbegriff (Stuttgart/Berlin/Köln: W. Kohlhammer, 1998) 119–35; U. Barth, “Aufgeklärter Protestantismus und Erinnerungskultur,” in id., Aufgeklärter Protestantismus (Tübingen: Mohr S­ iebeck, 2004) 3–23, on pp. 14–17.

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II.1 Harnack’s Luther at the Origins of Modernity As a first step, I explain Harnack’s quotation, with which I began this chapter.7 This quote dovetails with the consensus about the usual division of the history of the West into antiquity, the middle ages, and modernity, despite attempts to revise this division. The problem that continues to perplex scholars concerns the origins of the modern era. Harnack summarizes three options. The first possibility concerns the rise of the large European nation states, their national literatures, and the blossoming of art and science from the Italian Renaissance onwards. This position, characteristic of Jacob Burckhardt, has modernity beginning already in the fourteenth century. The second option conceives the modern era as starting at the time when religion and church lost their dominance in society and when civil freedom and tolerance were introduced. Wilhelm Dilthey and Ernst Troeltsch represent this view that sees modernity beginning in the second half of the seventeenth or in the eighteenth century. The third option with Hegel as its representative had remained dominant since the nineteenth century. Harnack prefers this third position that places the Lutheran Reformation at the origins of modernity.8 Harnack gives a precise identification of date and place: the modern age began on October 31st, 1517. “It was instigated by the hammer blows on the door of the Wittenberg castle-church.”9 Even if one takes the popular form and the rather pompous centenary rhetoric of Harnack’s article into consideration, there are good reasons for being skeptical of this 1517 dating. The emergence of modernity is an extremely comprehensive and complex process. Modernity developed through numerous phases and took many centuries, and a single starting point would be impossible to ascer­tain. Given these historiographical considerations, however, it is possible to identify elements of truth in each of the three options Harnack mentions. This latter more sympathetic view frames my interpretation of specific nuances in Harnack’s exposition. Harnack makes some concessions concerning the question of historically dating the starting point of modernity. “In some ways,” Harnack writes, the modern age can be considered to have begun “already some time before Luther.”10 In other ways, however, modernity is “still nascent.”11 Just as important is the remark “that one can only call a single man the founder of a new epoch cum grano salis, because apart from him a whole host of conditions is always necessary to give rise to a new era.” One may accurately, however, “situate Luther more than any other person at 7 For

the following cf. Harnack, Erforschtes, 110; cf. S. Skalweit, Der Beginn der Neuzeit: Epochengrenze und Epochenbegriff (EdF 178; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982). 8 Cf. also A. Harnack, The Constitution & Law of the Church in the First Two Centuries (Crown Theological Library 31; London/New York: Williams and Norgate/G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), 171. 9 Harnack, Erforschtes, 110. 10 Ibid., 111. 11 Ibid. Harnack, writing in 1917, adds that the modern age “seems to be blown up by the horrifying world war.”

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the beginning of modernity.”12 There is also one significant characteristic about Harnack’s article compared to other contributions celebrating the fourth Luther centenary. Harnack’s piece does not portray Luther in nationalistic traits.13 Incidentally, the same claim can be made about Holl’s portrayal of Luther in 1917.14 To sum up: Luther according to Harnack “laid the foundation for the modern age and began to build it up.” Therein lies “his epoch-making greatness.”15 Yet Harnack specifies Luther’s accomplishment in exclusively religious terms. “Through a deep inner experience [Erlebnis]” Luther gained “a new form of faith and piety and a new relation to the world.”16 Harnack refers to this inner experience by alluding to Luther’s idea about “having God” and summarizes what is gained through the experience in three points: 1) the determination of faith as the confidence of the individual who is part of a community; 2) the understanding of the church as oriented exclusively towards the preaching of the forgiveness of sins; and 3) the ethic of natural systems.17 The characteristics of modernity are, according to Harnack, Suum cuique: everything that exists has its own rights and shall develop independently and freely – the individual, the family, the law, the state, the church, the school and the academy, art and every kind of vocational work.18

Conceived in this way, the emergence of modernity must be understood from the new perspective on the Christian religion mentioned above: “Religion returned to itself. Precisely this necessary and beneficial limitation and easing of its burdens emancipated all areas that religion, to its own damage, had previously misappropriated.”19 Thus Harnack’s claim is a thesis about the Protestant legitimacy of the modern age. Harnack explicates the Reformation’s effect in the following way: With Luther, “slowly but consistently” develops on the one hand the “independence of person 12 Harnack,

Erforschtes, 136. As Harnack mentions with an implicit reference to Georg Jellinek and others, civil rights of freedom emerged explicitly from a Calvinist understanding of freedom. Yet­ Luther’s libertas christiana lies at the origin of this Calvinist notion (ibid., 136, 138). 13 Cf. ibid., 135–6; C. Nottmeier, Adolf von Harnack und die deutsche Politik 1890–1930: Eine biographische Studie zum Verhältnis von Protestantismus, Wissenschaft und Politik (BHT 124; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 452–3. Harnack’s earlier expositions of Luther identify him with “the alliance … reached between Protestantism and Germany” (Harnack, History, 7.170–1; translation modified), but this claim about Luther is rather modest compared with other positions proposed at the time; cf. H. Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte: Mit ausgewählten Texten von Lessing bis zur Gegenwart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 21970), 83–4. This fact corresponds to Harnack’s detailed portrayal of Luther; cf. below II.2. 14 Cf. Holl, Religion, 110 (= GA I: 110); G. Maron, “Luther 1917: Beobachtungen zur Literatur des 400. Reformationsjubiläums,” ZKG 93 (1982) 177–221, on pp. 205–6. 15 Harnack, Erforschtes, 112. 16 Ibid. 17 Harnack, Erforschtes, 113–23. 18 Ibid., 110–11. 19 Ibid., 112.

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ality and one’s own conscience,” and on the other hand “the independence of all larger areas of life.”20 The first characteristic concerning individual freedom informs the way modernity is seen in philosophy, sociology, and theology. Both then and now, this view highlights a subjective and individualizing tendency as a key characteristic of modernity. How far can this development be traced back to the Reformation? In my view Harnack’s emphasis on human subjectivity has a legitimate foundation in Luther’s understanding of Christianity,21 and it seems plausible to ascribe to the Reformation an influence on the individualizing tendency. But the development of modernity cannot be explained solely by this factor. A new appropriation, for example, of the Stoic conception of conscience has also played an important role.22 The second characteristic mentioned by Harnack concerns the emerging auto­ nomy of large areas of life against the backdrop of Luther’s new understanding of religion. This characteristic must be evaluated in a way similar to the first, individualizing tendency. The autonomy from religion of larger social spheres is discussed by primarily contemporary sociologists, under the heading of “secularization” and “functional differentiation,” and seen as a fundamental characteristic of modernity. Scholars looking at the Reformation point to Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms as one example of the origin of modern secularization.23 Thus the Reformation is an important but not sole factor in the development of this aspect of modernity. We have, however, not yet dealt with the truly interesting point in Harnack’s view of the relation between Reformation and modernity. This point is developed especially in his History of Dogma. II.2 History of Dogma as Theory of Modernity The historiography of dogma, as Harnack tells us, depends entirely “on the arrangement of the material.”24 His History of Dogma divides the history of Christianity into three broad periods of antiquity, middle ages, and modernity.25 But this scheme, although important for Harnack’s discussion of the main phases of the 20 Ibid. 21 Cf.

also Holl’s interpretation of Luther’s concept of religion (see below III.1). D. Henrich, “Über Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterhaltung: Probleme und Nachträge zum Vortrag über ‘Die Grundstruktur der modernen Philosophie’,” in id., Selbstverhältnisse: Gedanken und Auslegungen zu den Grundlagen der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (Universal-Bibliothek 7852; Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1982) 109–30. 23 Cf. U. Barth, “Säkularisierung I: Systematisch-theologisch,” in TRE 29 (1998) 603–34, on p. 622. 24 Harnack, History of Dogma, 1.12. 25 The German expression for the modern age, Neuzeit, did not become common in historiography until the last third of the nineteenth century; cf. R. Koselleck, “‘Neuzeit’: Zur Semantik moderner Bewegungsbegriffe,” in id., Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (stw 757; Frankfurt 22 Cf.

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history of dogma, does not serve as the structure of the History of Dogma. In this work, Harnack actually divides the history of dogma in a different way. The first major division in the history of dogma, dealt with in the first volume of History of Dogma, is the period in which dogma first emerges. This ­period lasts until the beginning of the fourth century. According to Harnack Christianity as “the religion of the gospel” presupposes “a personal experience” and deals with “disposition and conduct.”26 Christianity was also “from the beginning” a “reflective religion,” so that it became necessary for “thought” to “grasp” Christian religion.27 Dogma – and Harnack is thinking specifically of the Christological dogma – constitutes a form of this grasping of the Christian religion, but a special form that does not simply follow from original Christianity. Dogma does not just mean doctrinal propositions and confession. Rather, it is a conceptual formulation of the Christian religion that is characterized by unconditioned validity and must be accepted as truth. Greek philosophy and science shape the articulation of d ­ ogma.28 Harnack concludes: Dogmatic Christianity is therefore a definite stage in the history of the development of Christianity. It corresponds to the antique mode of thought, but has nevertheless continued to a very great extent to the following epochs.29

Harnack’s second main division comprises the development of dogma that he subdivides into three subordinate periods. The first of these periods, the subject of the second volume of History of Dogma, concerns the formation of dogma in the Eastern Church until the sixth century. The two other subordinate periods, concerning the development in the West, are the subject of the third volume in the History of Dogma. The first of these subordinate periods of the West is dominated by A ­ ugustine. This period comprises the middle ages, which Harnack con­ ceives as beginning in the sixth century.30 The second period in the West that starts in the sixteenth century actually spells the end of the development of the dogma. Decisive for this specific period is, according to Harnack, the Reformation.31 The Reformation rejects the external authority of dogma32 and thus marks “the new epoch,” the “beginning of the modern age.”33 Here Harnack’s historiography of dogma turns out to be a theory of modernity from theological perspective. This a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1979) 300–48. Harnack uses the designation as early as 1870; cf. A. Harnack, Marcion: Der moderne Gläubige des 2. Jahrhunderts, der erste Reformator: Die Dorpater Preisschrift (1870) (TUGAL 149; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2003), 185. 26 Harnack, History of Dogma, 1.16. 27 A. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (SThL; 3 vols.; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 41909–1910), 1.19. 28 Cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, 1.1, 14–18. 29 Ibid., 1.16. 30 Cf. ibid., 1.5; 5.3, 6. 31 Ibid., 1.6; 5.3. 32 Ibid., 7.24–5. 33 Ibid., 7.21; Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3.690.

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theory is particularly concerned with modern developments in religion as a dedogmatizing procedure. This procedure is currently discussed in a more general form in the sociology of religion.34 The period that begins in the sixteenth century exhibits a “threefold issue [Ausgang]”35 of the history of dogma, namely, the Reformation, Tridentine Roman ­Catholicism, and Socinianism. The Reformation must be considered as the “legitimate issue” of the history of dogma because it is grounded in the religious interests that contributed to the formation of the dogma in the first place.36 Harnack also makes this point in the main thesis of the chapter on Luther: The Reformation …, as represented in the Christianity of Luther, is in many respects an Old Catholic, or even a mediaeval phenomenon. When it is, however, judged of in view of its religious kernel, it cannot be seen as such. Rather, the Reformation is a restoration of Pauline Christianity in the spirit of a new age.37

This claim demonstrates aspects of Harnack’s exposition of Luther in History of Dogma that are significant for my analysis. First, Harnack considers the Reformation according to “its religious kernel.” ­Luther by this connection gains the status of religious reformer: He restored “the religious way of understanding the gospel, the sovereign right of religion in religion.”38 According to Harnack then, Luther’s contribution is principally beyond dogma. But Luther’s accomplishment is not primarily theological: “What he presented to view was not new doctrine, but an experience.”39 The consequence of this insight, as Harnack claims, is that one should not begin with the doctrine but with the experience of justification.40 Second, a line can be drawn from the consideration of the Reformation with regard to “its religious kernel” to a notion that is fundamental to Harnack’s whole historiography: the notion of reduction. Reduction means “the exclusion of un­ essential elements and, complementary to that, the establishment of new definiteness within the remaining elements.”41 Luther undertook the kind of reduction Harnack has in mind with respect to the polyvalent phenomenon that the Roman Catholic church took as religion. The result of Luther’s reduction is the follow 34 Cf. Barth, “Säkularisierung,” 621. In a discussion with Troeltsch, Harnack justifies his division of

history and his claim about Luther as beginning a new epoch by referring to a change of another kind, namely institutions: that instead of the church, there are from now on churches; Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3.691. For Harnack institutions belong to an epoch’s most important historical material and “research into institutions is the backbone of history”; Harnack, Erforschtes, 14–15. 35 Harnack, History of Dogma, 7.1. 36 Ibid., 7.168. 37 Ibid., 7.169; translation modified, emphasis in the original. 38 Ibid., 7.172. 39 Ibid., 7.186. 40 Ibid., 7.29 n. 1. 41 C.-D. Osthövener, “Adolf von Harnack als Systematiker,” ZTK 99 (2002) 296–331, on p. 302.

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ing: “The Christian religion is living assurance of the living God, who has revealed Himself and opened His heart in Christ – nothing else.”42 Luther also made similar reductions in ecclesiology and ethics.43 It lies implicitly in Harnack’s view that ­Luther’s method of excluding what was inessential or antiquated in Christianity links evaluation of religion with a judgment about the entire era.44 Harnack has more to say about Luther’s accomplishment in conceiving religion: It is “a very one-sided and abstract view of Luther … when we honour in him the man of the new time, the hero of an aspiring age, or the creator of the modern spirit.”45 Harnack emphasizes Luther’s limitations especially as regards doctrine. These limitations include  – and this is my third point  – his relation to dogma. The claim about the Reformation as an Old Catholic phenomenon refers to a fact of which Harnack was certainly aware: that Luther not only retains dogma; he revives it.46 Thus Luther, according to Harnack, is not consistent with his own understanding of religion when one takes doctrine into account. Finally and despite all of Luther’s criticisms of medieval theology, Harnack views Luther as dependent on the medievals. An important example that Harnack cites is Luther’s doctrine of the Eucharist. Harnack claims that Luther in this doctrine connects the dogma of Christ’s two natures to scholastic speculation and that this connection has unfortunate consequences for subsequent Lutheran formulations of Christology. “Owing to this [Luther’s move],” Harnack claims, “Lutheranism was for almost two hundred years thrown back into the middle ages.”47 The task was left to later Protestantism to break completely with dogmatic Christianity.48 This break occurs in the Enlightenment, as some remarks in Harnack’s text make clear.49 To sum up: Harnack’s Luther ends up demonstrating more ambivalent characteristics than Harnack’s “Die Reformation und ihre Voraussetzung” might disclose. An expression that Troeltsch most likely first used to describe original Protestantism is a propos here: Harnack’s Luther is Janus-faced: one face looks back at the middle ages, the other forwards to modernity.50 It is not only Dilthey and Troeltsch but already Harnack who should be credited with breaking with the assign 42 Harnack,

History of Dogma, 7.183–4. 7.187, 189, 192. 44 Cf. Osthövener, “Harnack,” 301. 45 Harnack, History of Dogma, 7.170. 46 Ibid., 7.25, 173–4. 47 Ibid., 7.243. Troeltsch changes this claim into a claim about the effect of the Reformation in general; cf. E. Troeltsch, Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit (1906/1909/1922) (Kritische Gesamtausgabe 7; until now 12 vols.; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1998–2010), 7.111. 48 Thus Harnack “in the name of the Reformation” must “insist on a revision of its results” (A. Harnack, unsent letter to C. E. Luthardt, 30th March 1881, in U. Rieske-Braun [ed.], Moderne Theologie: Der Briefwechsel Adolf von Harnack – Christoph Ernst Luthardt 1878–1897 [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1996] 31–6, on p. 35). 49 Harnack, History of Dogma, 1.4, 26–30; 7.28 n. 1. 50 Cf. Troeltsch, Protestantisches Christentum, 83. 43 Ibid.,

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ment common in discussions of that time that Luther and the Reformation belong to modernity. Harnack at this point builds on Albrecht Ritschl’s contribution. Thus Harnack’s thesis from 1917 does not give a full picture of his view on this matter. Should it rather be understood as an expression of Holl’s view?

III. Karl Holl Karl Holl, like Harnack, was a church historian who specialized in the early church. Only gradually Holl became the Luther scholar that everyone today acknowledges him to be. Holl locates Luther within a conception of the history of Christianity that is comprehensive, but not as worked out as Harnack’s conception. Holl’s conception is constituted by three substantive claims. First, he claims that Christianity’s primary motif, already expressed in Jesus’ preaching, is the notion of both God’s strict judgment and merciful love. Second, both ideas about God – judgment and love – inform the history of Christianity but, already from the second century on, distortions result from theology’s appropriation of the philosophical concept of God and of the idea of human merit before God.51 Third, Luther not only recovers Pauline Christianity; rather, in him “the unmitigated impulses of primitive Christianity came alive again with triumphant power,” not precluding, however, Luther’s “conscious or subconscious retention of whatever he found valuable in the medieval development.”52 When compared with Harnack’s view of ­Luther and the Reformation, Holl’s studies are unique by virtue of their probing historical and systematic-theological Luther interpretation focused on the doctrine of justification.53 51 Holl,

Religion, 17–32 (= GA I: 2–14); id. The distinctive Elements of Christianity (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1937 [= GA II: 1–32]). Although his view depends partially on Harnack, Holl aims to conceive an alternative to Harnack. For Holl, Harnack’s conception implies “that the history of the Church exhibits a constant falling-away from the Gospel” (ibid., 56 [= GA II: 30]). Harnack rejected such an interpretation of his work; cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, 1.22; 5.XI–XII. 52 Holl, Religion, 47–8 (= GA I: 35), cf. ibid., 32–48 (= GA I: 15–35). 53 Holl’s critical remarks on Goethe’s ideas about religion and on the idea of the eternal value of the individual – both ideas emphasized by Harnack – indicate that Holl intended his interpretation as  a critique of Harnack; cf. K. Holl, Was hat die Rechtfertigungslehre dem modernen Menschen zu­ sagen? (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1907), 16–18. On Holl’s interpretation of Luther, see D. Korsch, Glaubensgewißheit und Selbstbewußtsein: Vier systematische Variationen über Gesetz und Evangelium (BHT 76; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1989), 145–213; U. Barth, Die Christo­ logie Emanuel Hirschs: Eine systematische und problemgeschichtliche Darstellung ihrer geschichtsmethodologischen, erkenntniskritischen und subjektivitätstheoretischen Grundlagen (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), 15–40; H.  Assel, Der andere Aufbruch: Die Lutherrenaissance  – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935) (FSÖTh 72; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 59–163; M. Ohst, “Die Lutherdeutungen Karl Holls und seiner Schüler Emanuel Hirsch und Erich Vogelsang vor dem Hintergrund der Lutherdeutung Albrecht Ritschls,” in R. Vinke (ed.), Lutherforschung im 20. Jahrhundert: Rückblick – Bilanz – Ausblick (VIEG Abteilung für abendländische Religionsgeschichte Beiheft 62; Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2004) 19–50.

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III.1 Religion of Conscience An important result of Holl’s interpretation has to do with the central element in Luther’s break from the middle ages, as Holl sees it: Luther’s theory of religion as “religion of conscience.”54 As far as I can tell, this expression appears for the first time in Holl’s writings in 1921, in the first edition of his main work, ­Luther,55 namely in the article entitled “What did Luther Understand by Religion?,” acknowledged as “initiating the Lutherrenaissance:”56 Luther’s religion is religion of conscience in the most pronounced sense of the word, with all the urgency and the personal character belonging to it. It issues from a particular kind of conscientious experience – namely, his unique experience of the conflict between a keen sense of responsibility and the unconditional, absolute validity of the divine will – and rests on the conviction that in the sense of obligation, which impresses its demands so irresistibly upon the human will, divinity reveals itself most clearly; and the more profoundly a person is touched by the obligation and the more sharply it contrasts with one’s “natural” life desires, the more lucid and unambiguous is the revelation.57

In order to understand this dictum, it is best to begin by considering the method Holl uses. Holl writes on the one hand about “Luther’s religion.” This designation refers to the preceding part of the essay on Luther’s religion58 that treats “Luther’s religious development.”59 The above quotation from Holl’s text on the other hand introduces a discussion of “Luther’s new overall concept of religion.”60 The essay thus applies the genetic method Holl proposed in 1906, a method that consists in a going back to “Luther’s own original experience [Erlebnis], from which his theory grew.”61 For Holl, the application of this method means a rigorous study of the early Luther. We do not find this focus in Harnack, and also in opposition to Harnack, Holl’s recommendation shows an interest in the doctrine Luther develops. Religion for Luther, according to Holl’s dictum, is located in the human conscience. Conscience is the bearer of religion in anthropological terms. Luther scholarship has affirmed Holl’s important claim, but not necessarily his explication.62 54 Cf.

above n. 2. I: 30 (1st edn. [1921]). 56 Assel, Aufbruch, 140. 57 Holl, Religion, 48 (= GA I: 35); Holl’s original italics added. A footnote to the first sentence includes a quote from Luther: “The way to heaven is the line of an invisible point, namely of the conscience.” 58 Ibid., 32–47 (= GA I: 15–35). 59 Ibid., III (= GA I: III). 60 Ibid., 47 (= GA I: 35). 61 K. Holl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre im Licht der Geschichte des Protestantismus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1906), 3. 62 Cf. E. Hirsch, Drei Kapitel zu Luthers Lehre vom Gewissen, Lutherstudien (2 vols.; Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1954), especially 1.134; M. G. Baylor, Action and Person: Conscience in Late Scholasticism and the Young Luther (SMRT 20; Leiden: Brill, 1977), 7–8, 217. For Baylor’s critique of Holl, cf. ibid., 217–18, 234–43. 55 GA

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First, the thesis implies that Luther understood religion as a practical matter in the broad sense of the word. Second, religion is a matter of individual human self-relation or subjectivity. Holl thus rightly, in my view, identifies in Luther a strong emphasis on the individual in religion, an emphasis that – as we saw in connection with Harnack – is an important characteristic of modernity. Holl’s emphasis does not reduce a reading of Luther’s theology to individualistic terms. Holl points out that Luther’s discovery of a new idea of religious community is just as important.63 The young Luther made a distinction between syntheresis and conscientia, a distinction that connects him to late scholasticism.64 This distinction is presupposed in Holl’s understanding of conscience, although the distinction remains mostly implicit.65 Through syntheresis the human person has some knowledge of God and God’s command.66 The law is “by nature already written on every man’s heart.” This capacity is “inborn” and “natural” and in this sense “immediate.” Conscience thus constitutes a necessary “point of contact” for the preaching of the gospel. It must, however, be informed by the Christian command of love. Conscientia is the “accusing conscience,”67 executing the human’s self-judgment.68 In short, conscience, in Holl’s interpretation of Luther, is reflexive practical self-consciousness. Holl begins his detailed exposition of Luther’s concept of the religion of conscience with a discussion of the idea of God presupposed by the concept – Holl connects this idea of God to the origins of Christianity – and then he discusses the formation of religion as such.69 The religion of conscience is most importantly, according to Holl, the consciousness of obligation, interpreted in the terms of the First Commandment. Religion is primarily duty.70 This definition for Holl implies a delimitation of religion from the human desire for happiness,71 from the “natural life desires.” Two passages in Holl’s discussion of this theological Kantianism are particularly instructive. Both passages concern “the nerve center of ­Luther’s whole view,” “the point where his religion most clearly shows itself to be a religion of conscience.”72 These phrases refer in general theoretical terms to the 63 Cf.

GA I: 288–325. Baylor, Action. 65 Cf. Assel, Aufbruch, 152. Holl does not explicate the scholastic inheritance informing Luther’s notion of conscience. Holl in general emphasizes Luther’s independence from Ockhamism; cf. Holl, Religion, 60–1 (= GA I: 49–51). 66 Holl, Religion, 64 n. 36; 70 (= GA I: 54 n. 1; 61). For the following GA I: 246–7, cf. ibid., 155–6, 178; Holl, Religion, 70, 112–13 (= GA III: 245–6). 67 Cf. Holl, Religion, 113 n. 4 (= GA III: 245 n. 2). 68 Ibid., 45 (= GA I: 32). 69 Ibid., 50–62, 62–86 (= GA I: 37–52, 52–84). 70 Cf. ibid., 79 (= GA I: 73–4). Holl’s emphasis on religion as duty reflects a one-sided interpretation of Luther. Yet against the common criticism that Holl more or less reduces religion to ethics (cf. the summary in O. Wolff, Die Haupttypen der neueren Lutherdeutung [TSSTh 7; Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938], 358–61) Holl rightly emphasizes that the idea of religion of conscience conceives “religion as religion” (GA III: 245–6). 71 Holl, Religion, 63 (= GA I: 53). 72 Ibid., 69 (= GA I: 60). 64 Cf.

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fact that Luther “was not able to transcend the self because his sense of responsibility made him hold on to his self-feeling.”73 The first passage74 does not actually expose the nerve center of Luther’s religion of conscience. It can, however, shed some light on the concepts mentioned in the second quotation. The entire passage contextualizing this quotation contains a discussion of psychological progress that corresponds to Luther’s understanding of religion. Holl considers Luther’s doctrine of original sin. Progress consists in the recognition that the soul continuously acts and moves. This activity is initiated by a particular will, an urge for self-preservation and self-assertion in the world. It is this self-assertion that produces a human’s “life desires.” Holl emphasizes the structure of self-relation, calling it a selfish “self-feeling.” This self-relation is restrictive in a self-perpetuating way.75 In spite of syntheresis it determines everything in the human individual, bringing it constantly “under the spell of the self.”76 This will although primarily unconscious77 is still the reason for accountability. The human being is “responsible for himself as one whole.” When he recognizes this responsibility, the human acknowledges that the “whole person is completely reprehensible in the sight of God.”78 The second passage appears in a longer discussion of justification79 in which Holl – dependent on Ritschl – explains God’s forgiveness as the divine recognition of the human person.80 The passage refers to “the question of the meaning of the self in religion.”81 In one of the first chapters of the essay Holl explained that it is the accomplishment of the German mystics to ask the question of the self for the first time in the history of the West.82 Picking up the thread from the discussion of “the nerve center” of Luther’s religion of conscience, Holl now proceeds to reconstruct an answer that he attributes to Luther. In order to follow Holl’s moves, I distinguish the question into two parts: the first part concerns the self, the second part concerns its self-relation, or to use the other term Holl uses for this self-relation, namely self-feeling. Luther’s answer to the first part of the question, Holl recounts, is that the self is preserved in justification even though the natural self-feeling is condemned. This answer contrasts with the answer given by the mystics, an answer that entails the destruction of the self. The problem for Luther is that the mystics’ position also 73 Ibid.

(= GA I: 60); translation modified. Religion, 69–73 (= GA I: 60–6). 75 Ibid., 70 (= GA I: 61): “a tenacious selfishness, straitening or constricting it to the self.” 76 GA I: 64. 77 Holl is possibly alluding here to depth psychology of his time; cf. Barth, Christologie, 23. 78 Holl, Religion, 73 (= GA I: 66); translation modified. 79 Ibid., 80–6, on pp. 84–6 (= GA I: 75–84, on pp. 81–84). 80 Ibid., 85 (= GA I: 83), cf. GA I: 114–15, 117, 182; U. Barth, “Das gebrochene Verhältnis zur Reforma­tion: Bemerkungen zur Luther-Deutung Albrecht Ritschls,” in id., Protestantismus, 125–46, on p. 132 n. 12. 81 Holl, Religion, 84 (= GA I: 81). 82 Ibid., 27–8 (= GA I: 11). 74 Holl,

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implies a dissolution of human guilt and sin.83 For Luther, the self is self-identical and a continuously acting subject.84 This subject, Holl interprets Luther, is maintained “as consciousness and will”; “the psychological unity of the person” is preserved.85 This idea of the self is a necessary condition of self-responsibility. The second part of the question has to do with Holl’s claim that God’s forgiveness, according to Luther, “results in a most unique development of man’s religious self-feeling, indeed of self-feeling as such,” namely a “selfless self-feeling.”86 Holl’s paradoxical formulation does not refer to a self-feeling without a self, but to one that is different from the human’s natural selfish self-feeling. The new self-feeling is selfless in the sense that it is not an expression of the human’s self-assertion. It must be considered “as a gift” and its “basis … always remains outside ourselves.”87 So, the selflessness of the religious self-feeling does not mean that religion is no longer about the human’s conscious self-relation, but that religion constitutes the self-relation in a radically new way. The concept of religion of conscience which Holl ascribes to Luther represents  a theory of religion as  a theory of religious subjectivity.88 III.2 Holl’s Luther at the Origins of Modernity In my analysis so far I have attempted to show how Holl actually locates Luther at the beginning of modernity.89 But this picture is not the whole story. The first page of Holl’s Luther valorizes the stature of the Reformer in grand tones that resonate throughout the book:

83 Cf.

ibid., 28–9, 68–9 (= GA I: 11–12, 60). ibid., 69 (= GA I: 60): “What he had done, he, this identical Martin Luther, had done.” 85 Ibid., 84, 86 (= GA I: 81, 84). 86 Ibid., 84, 86 (GA I: 81, 84); translation modified. 87 Ibid., 85 (= GA I: 83); cf. ibid., 95 (= GA I: 94). 88 Assel also for the most part, although not exclusively, interprets Holl’s exposition of Luther in terms of subjectivity, but judges it to be fundamentally aporetic: Holl’s notion of religion as an Er­lebnis of conscience ends up in “the circles of traditional theory of reflexion and subjectivity.” The “circles”­ Assel invokes refer to Dieter Henrich’s and Konrad Cramer’s early analyses of explanations of the epistemic structure of subjectivity as self-consciousness in the philosophy from Descartes to Neo-Kantianism (Assel, Aufbruch, 475, cf. ibid., 38–41). However, Holl hardly deals with this problem, and the circularity Assel reconstructs in Holl does not really correspond to the circularities analyzed by Henrich and Cramer (cf. ibid., 140–157). Assel concludes that conscience in Holl’s conception of religion in Luther’s thought is circular (ibid., 154, 157, 158), that it has a circular structure (ibid., 155, 158). The philosophical discussion of subjectivity, however, does not deem the phenomenon to be circular, but that certain explanations of it are. For a critique of the simple alternative guiding Assel’s entire discussion of the Lutherrenaissance, namely the alternative between a theology of subjectivity or a theology of the word of God cf. Ohst, “Lutherdeutungen,” 28–9 n. 34. 89 Holl often speaks about how Luther “breaks through” medieval or Catholic views; cf. n. 2 above with for example GA I: 69 n. 4; 343, 367 n. 1; 370 n. 2; 476, 481. 84 Cf.

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Despite all his limitations, made evident by four centuries of subsequent life and thought, he far excels our present generation in original creative power. In remembering Luther we do not memorialize the dead but deal with one who is very much alive and with us.90

First, Holl’s book constantly criticizes Troeltsch’s understanding of Luther. But this opening passage also, consciously or unconsciously, establishes  a distance from Harnack’s view of Luther that is restricted by his late medieval historical context. Holl seems to turn Harnack’s picture of Luther upside down. Against the backdrop of Holl’s growing alienation from Harnack especially after the First World War,91 it is possible that Holl at this point in fact deliberately distances himself from Harnack. Second, Holl argues for a Luther who has modern features, but he also makes the point that Luther has a surplus in relation to modernity. It is not quite easy to capture the meaning of this superiority and its implications for Holl’s view. I will discuss two examples to help shed light on this matter. The first example concerns how Holl applies a specific modern idea, the idea of autonomy, to Luther. Luther’s religion of conscience founds an autonomy that equals the understanding of human autonomy propounded in the Enlightenment.92 Or rather, Luther’s version is superior, representing an autonomy “in higher” or even “highest style.”93 Enlightenment autonomy represents a step backwards in relation to Luther.94 The meaning of this claim becomes clear from Holl’s discussion of the Enlightenment thinker who is paradigmatically connected to the idea of autonomy, namely, Immanuel Kant. In “Der Neubau der Sittlichkeit,” delivered as a paper in 1919, Holl distinguishes between two elements in Luther’s ethic: the unconditional law and “the freedom and joy of volition,” the latter only possible against the background of conscience’s feeling of being accepted by God.95 According to Holl, Kant upholds Luther’s ethic, but misses the second element – “the freedom and joy of volition” – because he emphasizes submission to the law. So far Holl criticizes Kant using arguments similar to those used by post-Kantian thinkers, for example Schiller, and so far the claim of Luther’s superiority makes sense: Kant fails to consistently uphold his idea of autonomy. But Holl’s critique goes further. Kant’s ethic attacks eudaemonism. Yet Holl judges Kant’s claim – that the dignity or self-esteem of the human depends on submission to the law – to unfortunately result in a eudaemonism, indeed, a sophisticated eudaemonism. For Holl, the only way to escape eudaemonism is to ground ethics on the idea of God’s gift. This criticism of Kant is hardly a valid one. My main point, however, con-

90 Holl,

Religion 15 (= GA I: 1). Nottmeier, Harnack, 477. 92 Cf. above n. 2. 93 GA I: 214, 227. The comparison here is with the Catholic church of Luther’s time, but the argument is similar to Holl’s critique of the Enlightenment and of Kant. 94 K. Holl, Kleine Schriften (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1966), 74. 95 GA I: 155–287, on pp. 179–80, cf. Holl, Religion, 111–13 (= GA III: 244–6); id., Schriften, 72. 91 Cf.

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cerns Holl’s constructive contribution. While the conception of the Christian ethic he ascribes to Luther may be plausible, Kant’s idea of autonomy is part of an ethic that is universal in its scope, and thus the important question concerns whether one, without watering down the idea of autonomy or self-legislation, can apply it to such a religiously founded ethic. My second example is Holl’s discussion of Luther and the idea of the state, a discussion that also displays an ambivalence of affirmation and criticism of modern thought and society. Holl’s text, The Cultural Significance of the Reformation, known only in versions from his Luther,96 is relevant at this point. A contribution with such a title is, of course, also of general interest for our problem, and it is comparable to Harnack’s “Die Reformation und ihre Voraussetzung.” Its perspective is somehow wider. Holl wants to show detailed consequences of Luther and the Reformation in modern culture, consequences that are not exhausted by the social differentiation stressed by Harnack. Also Holl’s emphasis differs from Harnack’s. Harnack argues that although the Reformation initiated particular important beginnings of modern thought and culture, it did not actualize them. The actualization was left to later periods. Holl claims that many parts of modern culture can be considered as effects of the Reformation. For this claim he refers to Max Weber’s study on Protestantism and capitalism.97 Holl seems to consider his own investigation as a contribution to a “generalization” of Weber’s view,98 a contribution that criticizes some of Weber’s “specific cases” but agrees with him on the “basic premises.”99 For Holl, in accordance with Harnack, “Luther threw two major, closely connected ideas as active forces into the stream of culture: a new concept of personality and  a new concept of community.”100 These discoveries, according to Holl, also inform the foundation of Luther’s theology. Holl attempts to identify the elements in modern culture that are derived from the Reformation101 by tracing them back to tensions between the two ideas. He finds the Reformation’s influence in the state, in economic life, and in different parts of spiritual culture. The spiritual culture that concerns Holl’s investigation is an element that strikingly differs from Harnack’s position. Harnack emphasizes as Luther’s “most palpable limitation” that he does not fully assimilate “the elements of culture which his age offered.”102 On the contrary, the Reformation according to Holl shows “how 96 K. Holl, The Cultural Significance of the Reformation (Living Age Books 25; New York: Meridian,

1959) (= GA I: 468–543). 25 (= GA I: 469). 98 Cf. ibid. (= GA I: 469); Holl uses this expression about Weber’s continued work. 99 Ibid. (= GA I: 469), cf. Holl, Significance, 89 (= GA I: 507). Holl’s relationship to Weber deserves a comprehensive investigation. As the following indicates, such an investigation would show fundamental differences between them. 100 Holl, Significance, 30 (= GA I: 473). 101 Cf. ibid., 109 (= GA I: 518). 102 Harnack, History, 7.176. 97 Ibid.,

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moral impulses are able to influence even the highest forms of spiritual creating.”103 He discusses these impulses in relation to general education, linguistics, history as a science, philosophy, and art.104 Luther’s conception of the idea of the state, according to Holl, had a double impact. Luther deepened the understanding of the state and limited its power.105 The latter refers to the fact that, in Holl’s view, Luther and the Reformation, as well as the Enlightenment, paved the way for freedom of conscience and religion.106 Holl also mentions the contribution of Calvinism to the idea of human rights,107 an idea that for him means a “dissolution” of the state.108 Holl’s first claim concerning Luther’s understanding of the state sees Luther’s position as fostering the state’s independence from the church, namely, the visible church.109 But Luther’s most important contribution at this point is for Holl something else: the origin of  a theory of the state that is “particularly noteworthy today.”110 Luther raises the question of the state’s legitimacy.111 In his answer Luther does not have reason’s ideas about “the birth rights of man, people’s sovereignty, contracts of rulers, and similar things”112 in mind but the way the state facilitates the extension of the invisible church, the Kingdom of God into the world.113 Thus Luther has given the decisive impulse for “the development of the constitutional state into  a cultural state,”114 and “his concept of the state, emphasizing the community in the people [Volk], is closer to the ultimate meaning of Christianity than the other concept for which ‘freedom’ is everything.”115 Holl’s claim that Luther sets up a cultural goal for the state also refers to  a religious goal,116 and the claim that he recom 103 GA

I: 518. Significance, 109–51 (= GA I: 518–42). 105 Ibid., 45 (= GA I: 479). 106 Ibid., 53–7 (= GA I: 484–6). 107 Ibid., 71–2 (= GA I: 496). 108 Ibid., 74 (= GA I: 497). 109 Ibid., 45–6, 49 (= GA I: 479–80, 481). 110 Ibid., 46 (= GA I: 480). Holl’s writings on Luther and the state reflect the dominant Protestant view of the time concerning the Weimar Republic: this modern liberal-democratic state is irreligious and unable to uphold German culture, and the church must remedy this defect; cf. K. Nowak, Evangelische Kirche und Weimarer Republik: Zum politischen Weg des deutschen Protestantismus zwischen 1918 und 1932 (AKG(W) 7; Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1988), 76–81 et passim; K. Tanner, Die fromme Verstaatlichung des Gewissens: Zur Auseinandersetzung um die Legitimität der Weimarer Reichsverfassung in Staatsrechtswissenschaft und Theologie der zwanziger Jahre (AKZG 15; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), on Holl especially 206–9, 213–20. For Harnack’s endorsement of the republic, cf. Nottmeier, Harnack, 462–514. 111 Holl, Significance, 46 (= GA I: 480). 112 Ibid., 50 (= GA I: 482). This is part of a critique of Troeltsch and Weber; cf. ibid., 48–51 (= GA I: 481–3). 113 Ibid., 48–9 (= GA I: 481). 114 Ibid., 53 (= GA I: 484); translation modified. 115 GA I: 467. 116 Ibid., 472; Holl, Significance, 48–9 (= GA I: 481). 104 Holl,

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mended an ethic for the political and the economic system refers to the religious ethic Holl reconstructs as Luther’s.117 Both systems should not exist independently from Christianity.118 To conclude: it is more appropriate to attribute the thesis about Luther at the origin of modernity to Holl rather than to Harnack. But with this thesis, Holl’s view is not exhausted either. His discussion of the problem maintains that the different parts of culture and society should continue to be dependent on religion, that Christianity remains “the concealed motive force for the whole higher develop­ uther ment of humanity,” a force that is “superior to all mere rationality.”119 Thus L cannot be the founder of the primary characteristics of modern culture as it has ­actually developed in the West. Or, to phrase the problem from Holl’s point of view, Luther maintains a surplus in relation to the modern age. Luther’s significance surpasses both his time and our time, in other words, it is a timeless significance.120

IV. Theological Historicism or Lutherrenaissance When the claim is made that something represents a renaissance of something else (as in the general idea of “renaissance”), the claim exhibits the following structure: this thing, distinguishing its past from its present, orients itself towards a more distant past that, as a timelessly valid norm, is posited as immediately present.121 The later Holl pleads for this kind of orientation towards Luther’s thought. Thus it is indeed appropriate to apply the term Lutherrenaissance to Holl’s work on Luther.122 As a contribution to Luther scholarship Holl’s work seems superior to Harnack’s. Holl’s contribution also enjoyed  a tremendous impact. Nevertheless Harnack’s exposition of Luther implies legitimate criticisms of Holl,123 one of which I will mention in my conclusion. Historicism is a scholarly enterprise, related to the German academy. Johann Gustav Droysen expounds historicism’s method in his historical hermeneutics.124 This hermeneutics explains the knowledge of history as grounded on the re­flexive 117 Cf.

Holl, Significance, 28–30 (= GA I: 471–3); GA I: 263–6. id., Significance, 29–30 (= GA I: 472–3); Korsch, Glaubensgewißheit, 208–11. 119 GA I: 2. 120 Cf. Tanner, Verstaatlichung, 214: “What really belongs to the Reformation was for Holl nothing historical but a timelessly valid connection of fundamental insights in the structure of the moral personality that anticipated and surpassed the main ideas of a specifically modern culture.” 121 Cf. e.g. H. Günther, “Renaissance,” in HWP 8 (1992) 783–90. 122 For the term and its use in theology and theological historiography cf. J. Wallmann, “Karl Holl und seine Schule,” ZTK Beiheft 4 (1978) 1–33, on pp. 2–3 n. 6; Assel, Aufbruch, 17–20. 123 Cf. A. v. Harnack, “Karl Holl: Rede bei der Gedächtnisfeier der Universität Berlin am 12. Juni 1926,” in id., Aus der Werkstatt des Vollendeten (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1930) 275–88, on pp. 280–1. 124 J. G. Droysen, Historik: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe (until now 2 vols.; Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1977–2007), for the following cf. e.g. 1.7–11, 105–8. 118 Cf.

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constructive structure of historical remembrance. This explanation has recently inspired scholars to conceive of a “culture of remembrance.” In the words of Ulrich Barth: “To remember means to regard one’s own present as result of the past.”125 When the person is doing this, something that occurred in the past is not only posited as present. The person also distinguishes this thing from herself, objectifying it as past and distant. Thus “history’s content of meaning always stands in the tension between actualized and sunken significance.”126 As we have seen, Harnack – as a representative of theological historicism – was early in focusing his exposition of Luther on this ambivalence. The idea of renaissance does not seem to agree with the structure of historical knowledge and remembrance, and Harnack’s criticism implicitly applies this point to Holl’s Luther: historicism from its hermeneutic premises must question an emphasized Lutherrenaissance like Holl’s, by asking whether it – with its “direct recourse to Luther, without the ‘roundabout way’ of historical mediation through four centuries”127 – does not simplify the problem of Luther interpretation and remembrance today.

Zusammenfassung Adolf von Harnack und Karl Holl über Luther und den Anfang der Neuzeit Der Aufsatz untersucht die epochenmäßige Einordnung der Reformation bei Adolf von Harnack und Karl Holl. Anlässlich des Reformationsjubiläums 1917 vertritt Harnack die These, die Neuzeit fange mit Luther an, und führt die neuzeitliche Entwicklung im Sinne der Subjektivierung und sozialen Differenzierung  – teilweise mit Recht  – als Folge auf ­Luthers neues Glaubensverständnis zurück. Harnacks Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, das bei der Reformation zur Modernitätstheorie in theologischer Perspektive wird, zeigt je­ doch, dass diese These nur die eine Seite seiner Auffassung darstellt. Zwar bedeutet L ­ uthers Werk auch von der Dogmengeschichte her gesehen einen Einschnitt, insofern Luther im Prinzip mit dem Dogma bricht; er führt den Bruch aber nicht konsequent durch. Harnack sieht Luther also in einer Ambivalenz von Mittelalterlichem und Neuzeitlichem. Dass die Reformation den Beginn der Neuzeit markiert, entspricht eher der Auffassung, die Karl Holl in seinem Buch Luther vertritt. Nach Holl durchbricht Luther in vielerlei Hinsicht das Mittelalter und begründet Denk- und Lebensformen, die man als wesentlich neuzeitlich auffassen muss – vor allem diejenige, die Holl als Gewissensreligion fasst, ein Begriff, der die Theorie der christlichen Religion als Theorie religiöser Subjektivität konzipiert. Bei anderen Teilen von Holls Lutherinterpretation erkennt man aber, wie er Luther, ihm da-

125 Barth,

“Erinnerungskultur,” 5. 5–6. 127 K. Nowak, “Die ‘antihistoristische Revolution’: Symptome und Folgen der Krise historischer Weltorientierung nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg in Deutschland,” in H. Renz/F. W. Graf (eds.), Umstrittene Moderne: Die Zukunft der Neuzeit im Urteil der Epoche Ernst Troeltschs (Troeltsch-Studien 4; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1987) 133–71, on p. 168. 126 Ibid.,

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rin zustimmend, moderne Begriffe religiös überbieten sieht, zum Beispiel die der Autonomie und des Staates. So spielt Holl Luther gegen die moderne liberal-demokratische Staats­ theorie aus. Letztlich ist Luther nach Holl der modernen Welt überlegen. Diese pointierte Art der Lutherrenaissance, die sich bei Karl Holl findet, stellt der Aufsatz mit Verweis auf Harnacks Historismus in Frage.

Part Two Lutherrenaissance Present

Chapter 7

Bo Kristian Holm

Resources and Dead Ends of the German Lutherrenaissance Karl Holl and the Problems of Gift, Sociality, and Anti-Eudaemonism

I. Karl Holl as Paradigmatic Example Karl Holl initiated the German Lutherrenaissance with his analysis of Luther’s Lectures on Romans. Holl’s working context was the Humboldt University in Berlin, a hotbed of academic discussion. Here scholars, such as Ernst Troeltsch and Georg Simmel, came to live and work. They were in conversation with Holl, Max Weber, and other prominent figures who were interested in the relation between religion and society, and together, they opposed a solely materialistic understanding of historic development as claimed by Marxist thinkers. This article considers Holl’s participation in the interdisciplinary debates of his time. My aim is to use Holl as paradigmatic example to inspire both Luther studies and the contemporary study of the relation between theology and sociality. Holl’s research can be read as a first attempt in the history of Luther scholarship to consider Luther in relation to the fundamental question of giving and reciprocal sociality. This question was significant in Holl’s day as it precipitated the emergence of the new discipline of sociology. Yet Luther scholars too participated in this discussion on a topic that is now only beginning to gain credence as important for contemporary theology. It is more the tensions in Holl’s theology, rather than his answer to the question, that I consider to be relevant for contemporary thought. Holl’s thought in my view represents a theological approach to the fundamental problem in sociology and theology: the problem of the relation between reciprocity and pure gift; economy and non-economy; exchange and non-exchange. This dichotomy played  a crucial role in twentieth-century Lutheran theology. “Justification is pure gift,” Luther scholar Leif Grane wrote in his commentary to Article IV of the Augsburg Confession.1 “I can love the person with whom I do not want to have a relationship of exchange,” wrote Hans Joachim Iwand in his article

1 L.

Grane, The Augsburg Confession: A Commentary (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 1987), 59.

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on church and society.2 Grane and Iwand represent a common position concerning the antithetical relation between gift and reciprocity. Antithesis is the common uncontested axiom in almost every piece of writing on reformation theology in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. This antithesis is also closely related to Holl’s search for an anti-eudaemonistic theology. The antithesis also presupposes the prevalence of Kant’s distinction between an egocentric and a theocentric religion, or between a “religion of favor-seeking” and a “religion of good conduct,”3 which finds its pivotal expression in Holl’s coining of the German equivalent to divine monergism, Alleinwirksamkeit.4 Holl thus serves as paradigmatic example of the modern reduction in Lutheran theology (also in modern thought) of the term “gift” to the unilateral, an-economic sense, namely pure gift. This reduction can be seen to inhibit Holl in resolving the problem of relating gift and sociality. It is however the steps in his search to which I will pay close attention. Social anthropology after Marcel Mauss was preoccupied with the ambivalences in the concept of gift. Must gifts be unilateral in order to be deemed gifts, or are they merely elements in a universal gift-exchange? Are gifts good, or does gift-giving have to do with establishing power relations? Lutheran theologians have only recently considered this ambivalence. Holl serves as a remarkable first attempt to relate Luther to this discussion. At the time of his activity in Berlin in the early twentieth century, the emerging discussion of the new discipline of sociology had not resulted in any elaborate theory of gift-giving. It was still untouched by the later debate’s opposition between Mauss’s emphasis on the gift and Lévi-Strauss’s emphasis on exchange as the primary social phenomenon. Nevertheless it is important to understand Holl’s work against the backdrop of his era. The Kantian distinction between eudaemonistic religions of blessedness and anti-eudaemonistic religions of ethics played into discussions of gift. Also the discussion was beginning to take shape around the scientific analysis of the preconditions for society. We know that Karl Holl took part in critical discussions of the theories of Weber and Troeltsch.5 Published texts disclose his awareness of sociological problems discussed at the time. The relation between theology and sociality was, for example treated in a dissertation written by one of Holl’s students,

2

H. J. Iwand, Kirche und Gesellschaft (Nachgelassene Werke, NF 1; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998), 179, n. 60: “Den nur kann ich lieben, mit dem ich nicht tauschen möchte.” See also H.  Assel’s chapter, “Die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland von 1900 bis 1960,” in this volume (ch. 2). 3 Cf. W. F. Bense, “Editor’s Introduction,” in K. Holl, What Did Luther Understand by Religion?, ed. J. L. Adams/W. F. Bense (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) 1–14, on p. 3. 4 W. Bodenstein, Die Theologie Karl Holls (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968), 200, n. 30. On Holl’s antieudaemonistic reading of Luther see C. Põder’s chapter, “Gewissen oder Gebet: Die Rezeption der­ Römerbriefvorlesung Luthers bei Karl Holl und Rudolf Hermann,” in this volume (ch. 3). 5 See GA III: 153–4 and chapter 2, p.  24–7 in this volume, with reference to Holl’s correspondence with Jülicher; see also Bodenstein, Die Theologie Karl Holls, 142–54.

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Communio Sanctorum, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1927.6 Holl discusses the relation between theology and sociality in his own works on Luther and the church.7 Although Holl addresses this relation, his anti-eudaemonistic understanding of gift in theology prohibits him from establishing any real connection between the concept of divine giving and sociality. In this regard, Holl’s anti-eudaemonism can be considered analogous to Anders Nygren’s work on eros and agape. Although Nygren wrote his book many years after Holl, Nygren’s sharp distinction between eros and agape led to the unfortunate consequence that Lutheran theologians were quite late in discovering the potential in the Lutheran tradition for entering the gift debate.8 Lutheran theologians have only recently engaged in the widespread contemporary discussion of gift.

II. Understanding the Doctrine of Justification as “Social Theory” Gift studies offer a perspective that can treat the doctrine of justification as a kind of sociology. “The doctrine of grace is,” according to the philosopher and sociologist Marcel Hénaff, “the theological version of the theory of the gift-giving relation.”9 This statement can be slightly reformulated in a Lutheran context: the doctrine of justification is the Lutheran version of the gift-giving relation. Holl would agree, but at the same time he would emphasize that divine giving is the paradigm for a type of ethical (sittlich) giving that is necessarily unilateral. II.1 Feuerbach, Anti-Eudaemonism, and the Ambivalence of Consolation Holl’s search for an adequate understanding of religion can and should be seen in close connection to Feuerbach’s critique of religion. Luther’s doctrine of justification is, according to Holl, based on a moral perception of God that opposes human wish or convenience (Bequemlichkeit).10 Although Holl refers to Feuerbach in only one footnote of the three volumes of his Gesammelte Aufsätze (GA), the nineteenth-century “master of suspicion” plays a significant role in Holl’s thought. According to Holl, Feuerbach’s understanding of religion seems to be what Luther 6 D. Bonhoeffer, Communio Sanctorum: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, ed. C. J.

Green (DBWE 1; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1998). 7 K. Holl, “Luther und das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment,” in GA I: 326–80, and “Die Entstehung von Luthers Kirchenbegriff,” in GA I: 288–325. 8 A. Nygren, Eros and Agape (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953). 9 M. Hénaff, “Religious Ethics, Gift Exchange and Capitalism,” AES 44/3 (2003) 293–324. 10 K. Holl, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewißheit,” in GA I: 111–54, on p. 114.

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understood by “heathen” religiosity, not Luther’s own idea of religion in so far as it was based on the idea of duty and not of blessedness. Significant is the fact that Holl’s sole reference to Feuerbach is found in a footnote also referring to Georg Simmel, the distinctive professor extraordinarius in Berlin and cofounder of the discipline of sociology, who I will later discuss.11 From Holl’s view of Luther’s true religion, Holl judges Feuerbach’s homo religiosus to come close to a eudaemonistic homo economicus. Holl can thus see Luther as an answer to Feuerbach. Holl understands divine grace in absolute contrast to any kind of reciprocal gift economy including the reciprocity playing into the concept of eudaemonism. Holl’s position on divine grace thus results in positioning Luther’s theological partner, Philipp Melanchthon, on the wrong side of the reformation track. It was J. C. K. von Hoffmann who first placed Melanchthon is this position.12 Von Hoffmann claimed that Melanchthon misrepresented Luther’s theology in making the consolation of the anxious soul the center of his theology. Instead von Hoffmann emphasized the radical character of the young Luther’s theology as the evangelical alternative to Melanchthon’s position. However, in the history of Lutheran Protestantism, the false understanding of grace that von Hoffmann assigned to Melanchthon left Protestantism without any protections against the charge of eudaemonism. II.2 Holl’s Dual Perspective Melanchthon’s alleged emphasis on consolation, according to Holl, led to a neglect of the divine side of justification: Justification as an act of God. In fact, Melanchthon only referred to the theocentric perspective when it was necessary to underwrite the certainty of forgiveness.13 Melanchthon’s position greatly limited ­Luther’s theology. The two dimensions – ego and God – are not equivalent. The same process of justification is seen differently from either the self ’s or God’s perspective. God knows what human beings cannot know. When scholars thought they could find inconsistencies in the work of the young Luther, they simply neglected the 11 Holl,

Religion, 66 n. 39 (= GA I: 57 n. 3). Although Holl criticizes Simmel’s understanding of religion, Holl is aware of Simmel’s position: “Feuerbach’s analysis of religion accordingly applies to what Luther himself calls ‘heathen’ religion. This rejection of the natural desire to live and the corresponding emphasis on the idea of duty implies at the same time that religion, as conceived by Luther, is not a derivative or composite of other drives. Its distinguishing mark is precisely its simplicity, its immediacy of feeling, its emotional straightforwardness, Naturally, religion can be dissolved in the way Simmel has attempted to dissolve it, just as a ‘more deeply probing psychology’ can dissolve the ethical into the eudaimonistic. But no one actually committed to religion is likely to recognize his own religion in such a portrayal.” The English translation omits the last sentence: “For the same reason the religion is not based upon a ‘stance’ [Einstellung], that the human being completes at will, but, where it is genuine, upon a being set [Eingestelltwerden]” (trans. by author). 12 Cf. Bodenstein, Die Theologie Karl Holls, 110–11. 13 GA I: 113.

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co-presence of these different perspective.14 Holl shows here an awareness of  a dialectic between two different perspectives that are opposed to each other, but that are true at the same time. In this regard, Holl’s understanding of Luther can be related to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, particularly in relation to the practice of gift-giving. Both the objective truth of reciprocal relation and the subjective truth of unilateral giving are equally correct when a gift is given. Bourdieu thinks that neither the objective nor the subjective alone can theoretically explain how social practice works. Successful social practice is bound to the participant’s ability to “misrecognise” the objective reality.15 Bourdieu’s solution to the disagreement between Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss has to do with whether gift or reciprocity is the primary sociological phenomenon.16 We find in Holl at least an awareness of the difficulty in emphasizing both unilateral giving and the understanding that justification implies new fellowship of the self with God as well as in the church. Holl’s interpretation of Luther as juxtaposed onto Melanchthon must be viewed critically. The juxtaposing strategy results in a rather typological interpretation of Luther. This typology is helpful in drawing necessary distinctions in Lutheran theology. Yet it points to a fundamental problem in relation to gift and economy. By making eudaemonism the key theological problem, Holl also presents a problem for sociology.

III. From Unilateral Gift to Social Mutuality Holl’s struggle with eudaemonism is common to theologians trying to solve the theological problem of the gift economy.17 The problem can be briefly characterized in the following way. Reciprocity seems to ruin the gift-character of gifts. Thus divine giving must be kept free from reciprocity. At the same time mutuality as the social form of reciprocity is the key element in sustaining sociality. It is difficult to understand the divine giving as capable of establishing community when reciprocity is excluded from the notion of divine giving. 14 GA

I: 116.

15 P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 5–6. 16 M.

Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London/New York: Routledge, 2002); C. Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969). 17 It seems to be the case that an emphasis on divine unilateral giving presses theologians to integrate some kind of mutuality into their understanding of justification, for example Luther, Barth, Prenter, and Holl. For Barth see C. Põder, Doxologische Entzogenheit (TBT 147; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2009), and ead., “Reziprozität im Gebet: Die Dialektik des Gebens und Empfangens bei Karl Barth,” in B. K. Holm/P. Widmann (eds.), Word  – Gift  – Being, (RPT 37; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) 145–64. For Luther see B. K. Holm, Gabe und Geben bei Luther (TBT 134; Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter, 2006). For Prenter, see id., “Den Gud der er kærlighed: Regin Prenter og Luther,” in N. H. Gregersen (ed.), Lutherbilleder i dansk teologi 1800–2000 (Copenhagen: Anis, 2012) 255–72.

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This brief sketch is, however, already inaccurate, since it introduces a concept of mutuality between pure gift and reciprocity. Holl lacks this concept of mutuality as do most Luther scholars in the twentieth century. The lack of this concept results in both interpretational and theological problems. A glimpse of the necessity of community can be seen in Holl’s theological concept of giving. There appears to be a link from the early search for an anti-eudaemonistic religion with its solipsistic tendency to a later focus on the concept of community. Luther’s Lectures on Romans were published in 1908.18 The discovery of these lectures helped Holl solve  a crucial problem in his theology. The problem concerned Holl’s search for a radical anti-eudaemonistic form of religion that could match the Kantian criterion for a true religion of conduct. Holl agreed with the earliest interpreters of Luther’s lectures, Friedrich Loofs and the editor Johannes Ficker, that certainty of salvation was to be regarded as the line dividing Luther’s reformation theology from his pre-reformation thinking. Unlike Loofs and Ficker, who were unable to find certainty of salvation in these early lectures, Holl argued that the Lectures on Romans disclosed the true reformation character because of the distinction between two types of salvation’s certainty: Melanchthon’s position and Luther’s position. The certainty of being chosen for eternal life and blessedness, namely the position proclaimed by Melanchthon, is different from being certain that God will facilitate one’s moral fulfillment, Luther’s true position that according to Holl coincides with an anti-eudaemonism.19 The first type of certainty is suitable for the weak, while Luther’s version is better suited for the strong and mature Christian. Holl finds in Luther’s early use of the concept of resignatio ad infernum a model for religious ethical unilateral giving that is compatible with a distinct sense of community.20 The resignation idea refers to a person who surrenders to the divine will to the point that he can even accept being condemned to hell if this person believes condemnation accords with the divine will. This person loves God with utmost purity and experiences an unbreakable community of wills with God.21 The community of wills is, according to Holl, the idea of community that can be related to the true content of salvation. This union of wills is conceivable as the culmination of a personal Existenzgeschichte, which is a story of conflict between human will and God’s will.22 Certainty of salvation is certainty of God’s final conquering of the self-seeking will. It is not certainty of eternal blessedness.

18 J.

Ficker (ed.), Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief 1515/1516 (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1908). I: 134–8. 20 GA I: 148–54; see also C. Põder’s excursus on page 57 in this volume. 21 GA I: 152; on this particular topic, see H. Assel, Der andere Aufbruch: Die Lutherrenaissance – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935) (FSÖTh 72; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 101–11. 22 H. Assel, “Vom Nebo ins gelobte Land: Von erfahrene Rechtfertigung von Karl Holl zu Rudolf Hermann,” NZSTh 39 (1997) 250–6. 19 GA

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By emphasizing the self-sacrificial resignatio ad infernum, Holl’s understanding of the human self in relation to God’s justifying act acquires distinctive heroic features. The human eye sees hell (infernus) as the end point of heroic self-sacrifice; the divine eye sees that this hell is no longer hell. The resignatio ad infernum never really separates the individual from God. According to Holl, Luther’s understanding of the new community with God goes beyond the position of the mystics. Rather than identifying the resignation with a mystical intensification of the inner imagination, Luther, according to Holl, gets at an experience that is entirely unlike what the human imagination can conjure up: an experience of divine fellowship in the midst of absolute unilateral self-sacrifice. To the mystic, self-sacrifice is play, for Luther, a matter of uttermost gravity, an experience of a fundamental lack. For Luther, on Holl’s reading, the one who experiences the resignatio has simultaneously the experience that he is not separated from God.23 Yet Holl concedes to the German mystics that they had the same agenda as he did. They also “opposed the desire for reward and the selfish quest for blessedness” and saw these desires “as the worst enemies of the true love of God.”24 Holl acknowledges resonances with the mystical tradition, but detects an inconsistency in this tradition that he wants to avoid. “It [i. e. German mysticism] fought against eudaemonism in religion but ended up intensifying it to the highest degree.”25 Holl intends to establish an understanding of divine economy that is ambivalent enough to include the idea of “non-economy.” The French philosopher Jacques Derrida formulated this idea in his interpretation of the Aqeda-story in K ­ ierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.26 The search for an alternative “economy” – a formulation that is not Holl’s, but Derrida’s – is almost in full accordance with the young Luther’s position. Holl can therefore refer to Luther’s juxtaposition of the concept of justice in the gospel with the concept of justice used by lawyers and philosophers. The juridical and philosophical connotation refers to justice as a quality instead of a relation. Justification means God’s recognition (Anerkennung) of the human (reputari iustum). This kind of recognition is a judgment that immediately establishes community (Gemeinschaft).27 It is not a value judgment by which God and the human remain strangers. The establishment of this community with God can only be created by a free divine act. God acts towards the human in a way that is completely opposite to what the human actually deserves.28 Justification is the pure gift of grace (reines Gnadengeschenk). As such it opposes the form of community based on human merit, since community in this sense has to do with the juridical sense of justice. Justification is suspicere, recipere, assummere, acceptare, 23 GA

I: 152. Religion, 27 (= GA I: 10). 25 Ibid., 29 (= GA I: 12). 26 J. Derrida, The Gift of Death (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 109. 27 GA I: 114–15. 28 GA I: 115. 24 Holl,

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divine acceptance and inclusion. The divine act establishes true and complete community. For Holl this sense of justification captures Luther’s expression that faith is equivalent to “having” God.29 Holl explains in the corresponding footnote that for Luther “to have God” means a “community with the divine will” (Willensgemeinschaft mit Gott). Holl’s view can be contrasted with Augustine’s reduction of the idea of having God to the mere joy of seeing God. There are, however, a few problems in Holl’s argument. First, Holl limits Luther’s view of community by the idea of “having God.” Second, Holl thinks that the idea of “having” comes from the idea of joined wills. Third, Holl neglects Luther’s use of “seeing” as a primary theological concept. Holl’s neglect of the role of “seeing” in Luther’s theology can be connected to the fact that Luther’s use of sight implies the consolatory dimension of his theology that Holl identifies with Melanchthon. Yet this identification misses the main point in Luther’s pastoral care. Luther wrote many letters in which seeing plays a crucial role. Luther’s way of doing theology has to do with relation between visible economy and successful giving. Luther emphasizes external visibility. He thinks that a specific kind of “objective” reciprocity sustains rather than destroys community between God and the human.30 Holl seeks, however, to adequately formulate God’s free gift. In this search, God’s Alleinwirksamkeit corresponds to obedience on the human side. Faith, according to Holl, must therefore be identified as a divine gift.31 Holl mentions in this context, somewhat ironically,  a term that later research on Luther (for example by Ernst Bizer and Oswald Bayer) invokes as common to both Luther and Melanchthon: the promise (Verheißung), the word as promissio. God situates the human person in relation to God’s intention of grace through human obedience by faith. The human is moved to a new state that is experienced (erlebt) as a source of moral strength (Quelle sittlicher Kraft). This strength is demonstrated by the Christian’s new will, carried by joy and freedom from the self. Both grace and judgment are according to Holl closely related in the gospel.32 The “recognition” of the sinful human being means simultaneously forgiveness. Forgiveness presupposes the need for forgiveness on the part of the one who is forgiven. Holl, however, finds this understanding overlaid by conflicting statements in Luther’s doctrine of justification. Luther, as we know, is not the most systematic of thinkers. But conflicting statements do not imply a lack of systematic thinking.

29 Ibid.

30 Cf. B. K. Holm, “Zur Funktion der Lehre bei Luther,” KuD 51 (2005) 17–32; id., “Der Trost kommt vom Sehen: Zu Katechismussystematik und Lehrbegriff,” in J. v. Lüpke/E. Thaidigsmann (eds.), Denkraum Katechismus (FS O. Bayer; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) 109–24. 31 GA I: 119: “Gott selbst bringt ihn durch sein überzeugungskräftiges Wort, durch seine ‘Verheißung’ hervor. Der Mensch kann nichts dazu tun, als sich durch Gott vom Ernst seiner Absicht überführen zu lassen. In dem Gott dies bewirkt, zieht er den Menschen tatsächlich in des Verhältnis zu sich herein.” 32 See GA I: 117 and Assel, “Vom Nebo,” 258.

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Yet Holl thinks that Luther is the better theologian when compared to Calvin and Melanchthon because the coherence in Luther’s writings is more than pedagogical simplicity.33 Luther recognizes the necessary and simultaneous existence of two opposing perspectives. The major focus in Holl’s interpretation of Luther’s Lectures on Romans is the young Luther’s attack on the basic selfishness inherent in all human actions. Holl acknowledges that Luther’s commitment to the simultaneity of two different perspectives results in contradictions in Luther’s theology. He nevertheless imports into his own thinking the same problems that Luther handled in his early theology: How can one simultaneously stress the unilateral character of God’s justifying action and this justification’s reality as a reestablished community, when community demands some kind of participation through reciprocation or mutuality? Holl wrestles with the same problems as his colleagues in contemporary sociology. Georg Simmel shows his familiarity with this discussion in his excurse on faithfulness and gratitude in his book Soziologie, published in the same years as Ficker’s edition of Luther’s Lectures in Romans. Gratitude, in the first place, supplements the legal order. All contacts among men rest on the schema of giving and returning the equivalence. The equivalence of innumerable gifts and performances can be enforced. In all economic exchanges in legal form, in all fixed agreements concerning a given service, in all obligations of legalized relations, the legal constitution enforces and guarantees the reciprocity of service and return service – social equilibrium and cohesion do not exist without it.34

The importance of interaction in social relations is not merely of interest to sociologists or social anthropologists. It is also an important matter for theology. Two strategies seem to exist for conquering self-interested economy: either theology opposes any kind of reciprocity, as in for example the idea of total resignation, or economy is overcome by a “logic of surplus.” Holl can easily be put into the first alternative, but one can also read him as an attempt at combining both. His essay on Luther’s understanding of religion can be read in this way.

IV. Reciprocity and Gift in Holl’s What Did Luther Understand by Religion? Reciprocity, understood formally, is an ambiguous concept. The same gift can be both given from the heart and altruistic or given with the end of manipulation or self-serving, depending on the context and trust or confidence of the participants. 33 GA

I: 117.

34 G. Simmel, “Faithfulness and Gratitude,” in id., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: Free Press,

1950) 379–95, on p. 387 (= Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung [Berlin:­ Duncker und Humblot, 1908], 443).

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Much Lutheran theology in the twentieth century ignored the complication of ambivalence. The unproblematic use of the term “pure gift” demonstrates this avoidance. We can see Holl’s sensitivity to ambiguity in his efforts to formulate an alternative to eudaemonistic versions of religion. IV.1 Wrath and Love of the Charitable God Holl thought that Luther understood God in more profound terms than his predecessors. Luther opposed the aesthetic neo-Platonic view of God, according to which the richness of God is the essential and distinctive mark of the divine. He also broke with the view that regarded the richness of God as an essential, if not the outstanding attribute of God, and which admired this richness in the variety of levels of being coexisting in the world. For him, as for primitive Christianity, the only basis for a world-view was the unconditional ethical standard.35

Wrath and love coincide in Luther’s understanding of God. Like Theodosius ­Harnack, Holl distinguishes between wrath and wrath, between God’s severe wrath and the specific merciful wrath through which sinners are made righteous out of divine love. Merciful wrath is an intriguing aspect of Luther’s understanding of divine love. While human beings are as they are, self-interested and sinful, divine love proves its power by not refraining from doing harm. Holl drives the dialectic of divine love to its extreme in order that it confronts the self-seeking human being.36 Luther’s understanding of God is even deeper. God’s magnaminity is not to be understood as originating from his heavenly throne where God sits in splendid isolation: “Rather, he is great because he is able to produce autonomous life outside himself and to guide it upward to himself.”37 Holl’s understanding of Luther on this point seems to involve at least some understanding of divine grace in terms of divine generosity, and therefore also of fullness or richness. God is magnanimous in bestowing favors and benefits (Wohltaten). Thus Holl’s concept of God is intimately connected to the concept of giving: God proves himself to be God most conclusively when he dispenses blessings (Wohltaten), for thus he shows himself to be the One who can always give, who alone can really give, and who is generous enough always to be first with this gifts. That God does this is his prerogative and his “glory.”38

35 Holl,

Religion, 54 (= GA I: 41). 55: “At the same time, one can see how Luther’s concept of love is deepened by its connec­ tion with wrath. Strength of will and wholesome severity give to love a pedagogical dimension. Love now is understood as a power that does not hesitate to inflict hurt in order to liberate its objects from itself and raise it above itself.” (= GA I: 42). 37 Ibid., 56 (= GA I: 43). 38 Ibid. 36 Ibid.,

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The God who gives is the God who loves. Holl thinks that love is the depth of the divine nature. God’s love is evident in all God’s actions, since God as actus purus is both action and will.39 Luther according to Holl was the first theologian in history to see divinity as pure benevolence. But Holl’s concept of divine benevolence has some tensions. The tensions result from Holl’s distinction between giving out of abundance and giving oneself. God’s charitable giving is according to Holl not a giving out of divine plenitude. Divine giving is total divine self-giving. Holl clearly makes this claim in a footnote missing from the English translation. In this footnote, Holl criticizes the liberal God of the scholastics: “The ‘liberal’ God of the scholastics gives only from his surplus, the God of love in Luther gives himself and that totally.”40 Holl unfortunately does not elaborate on the implications of his theology of total divine self-giving. It seems reasonable to interpret the idea of self-giving in terms of Holl’s emphasis on the moral character of Luther’s religion. An odd form of reciprocity emerges. The response to the total giving of the self-giving God is the total self-giving of the human being in surrender to the divine will. Holl’s “anti-liberal” God reveals a Trinitarian deficit. How can one think about a God who gives the divine self entirely without ensuring that a Trinitarian subject does not lose the divine self entirely in its total self-giving? Holl offers no answer to this question. IV.2 Holl’s Luther Original Sin as Selfish Desire, Honor as Duty Holl understands original sin as social sin. For Holl, social sin is analogous to the concept of divine self-giving, yet also contrasts sharply with it. Holl sees original sin as the human refusal of God’s gift as well as human ingratitude. Religion has at its core the duty of recognizing and thanking the gracious, giving God. Thus religion must be placed – and this is my and not Holl’s conclusion – in a relationship of exchange in which God gives to humans and human beings give thanks by symbolically giving themselves back to God. Holl explains this reciprocal structure by his understanding of religion as duty in sharp contrast to any kind of selfish desire for happiness (Glückseligkeitsverlangen).41 Human beings must honor God, not for their own sake, but for God’s. The implication is, that “honor” becomes, according to Holl, more fundamental than love. The decisive anti-eudaemonistic orientation in Holl’s theology corresponds to this emphasis on divine honor. It is ironically this concept of honor that introduces a kind of mutuality into Holl’s understanding of justification.

39 Ibid. 40 GA

I: 43 (trans. by author). Religion, 63 (= GA I: 53).

41 Holl,

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Human beings fulfill their duty by giving honor to God. Thus they create the mutuality that grounds community. The kind of mutuality that Holl has in mind, however, exists only under the existence of its apparent contradiction. Human beings give honor to God when they ascribe goodness to God at that moment when they can only see God under the opposite, as judge. God establishes community at precisely this moment of judging. God creates an “experience of conscience” (Gewissenserlebnis) that runs contrary to all moral and religious experience of value.42 The sincere believer shall believe that it is God who is encountered in the Anfechtung. The believer shall believe that the judgment is God’s last word. The believer shall nevertheless believe that judgment is not the last word. The God ­ uther’s who is encountered in the divine wrath is not really God.43 Holl’s work on L religion has a similar intention to his reading of Luther’s Lectures on Romans. In both texts Holl aims to formulate an economy that is ambivalent enough to integrate non-economy. A reward is offered to those unconcerned with it.44 The individual is related to God through Anfechtung. The individual must switch the view of the present Anfechtung for the opposing (and hidden) reality. The believer must admit personal unworthiness. Yet he “must acknowledge” the new sense of self-awareness “as gift.” The new joy “must be conjoined to the feeling of deepest unworthiness.”45 IV.3 The Perspective of Human Reception Holl further underlines his argument by switching the perspective of divine giving to the perspective of human receiving. While justification is a matter of God’s acceptance of sinful human beings, the emphasis on God’s Alleinwirksamkeit prompts an understanding of human reception. Holl looks at human reception in terms of religion. If human religion is primarily a human duty, then reception has to be an activity. Gratitude is the crucial term here. The new community is established by the God who justifies: It follows that our participation in the relationship with God should begin with gratitude. … He feels that conscious, express recognition and affirmation of God’s gifts is the honor that God asks above all else; it is the act in which his desire for personal fellowship with human beings finds fulfillment.46 42 Cf. Assel, Der andere Aufbruch, 469: “Gott stiftet Gemeinschaft gerade in seiner Verwerfung und konstitutiert ein Gewissenserlebnis wider alles sittliche und religiöse Wert- und Selbsterleben.” 43 Holl, Religion, 82 (= GA I: 78). 44 See above (Derrida, Gift of Death); cf. Holl, Religion, 65 (= GA I: 56 with reference to WA 18: 694,30 ff.): “Luther clarified this conception by means of a comparison with the New Testament idea of reward. To be sure, God rewards faithful service. But this reward must come ‘by itself.’ It is given only to those who do not seek it.” 45 Holl, Religion, 85 (= GA I: 83). 46 Ibid., 87 (= GA I: 85–6).

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Holl refers at this point to Luther,47 but he could just as well have mentioned Georg Simmel. In his “Excursus on Faithfulness and Gratitude,” Simmel stresses the role of gratitude as necessary for society. Communities would fall apart without thanks. Simmel links the phenomenon of gratitude to the fundamental function of gift giving in an important footnote: Giving, itself, is one of the strongest sociological functions. Without constant giving and taking, within society – outside of exchange, too – society would not come about. For, giving is by no means only a simple effect that one individual has upon another: it is precisely what is required of all sociological functions, namely, interaction. By either accepting or rejecting the gift, the receiver has a highly specific effect upon the giver. The manner of his acceptance, gratefully or ungratefully, having expected the gift or being surprised by it, being satisfied or dissatisfied, elevated or humiliated – all this keenly acts back upon the giver, although it can, of course, not be expressed in definite concepts and measures. Every act of giving is, thus an interaction between giver and receiver.48

Holl agrees with Simmel by taking gratitude as crucial to a society’s flourishing, but Holl relates gratitude specifically to duty. Thus he integrates some kind of exchange into an understanding of the renewed community with God. Human gratitude has no limits. Even misfortune must be regarded as God’s benevolent gift. The idea of God’s giving, even in the case of Anfechtung, has to do with Holl’s understanding of the Christian as divine tool and instrument (Werkzeug). The aim of justification is “consciousness of being an instrument” (Werkzeugsbewußtsein). It is not love of self, but love that is prepared to sacrifice the self. Holl’s anti-eudaemonistic agenda prevents him from substantiating his understanding of community. The concept of anti-eudaemonism seems to be necessarily oriented to the individual’s inner fulfillment. Holl’s position thus runs the risk of solipsism, or at the very least, the aspect of resigning self-giving opens Holl’s theology up for criticism of a legalistic understanding of imitation, as Regin Prenter later argued. According to Prenter, Holl’s notion of the resignatio emphasizes human imitation of divine self-giving. The result is that the radical character of divine grace is compromised. If the aim of justification is human imitation of divine self-giving, then an aspect of the human self escapes divine judgment.49 Prenter’s criticism articulates an aspect I have already mentioned. By focusing on imitation in human self-giving, Holl unintentionally incorporates an aspect of reciprocity in his understanding of justification. The resignatio ad infernum is reciprocal at its core, and precisely through the denial of its reciprocal aspects. Holl is aware that his position is open to the criticism of individualism. To compensate for this one-sidedness, Holl claims that Luther’s theology has an antiindividualistic dimension that overcomes the individualism characteristic of both 47 WA

30 II: 602,30. “Faithfulness and Gratitude,” 398 (= German original, 444). 49 R. Prenter, Spiritus Creator (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg: 1953), 41. 48 Simmel,

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renaissance and mystical traditions.50 The question remains as to whether Holl’s view is correct. IV.4 Church as Community of Mutual Exchange It should come as no surprise that community arises as a crucial term in Holl’s understanding of the church. Holl understands this community as a community of souls. There are no limits in this community for how high the Christian can be raised within the church. The Christian is elevated to the point of participation in God in being God for the other: Luther used the strongest possible expressions to stress the gloriousness of this kind of service. Everyone may be a Christ to the other; occasionally Luther, not without biblical warrant, even ventures the bold assertion that one may become “God” for another. A person may manifest greatness by exercising, like God, patience and forgiveness; gifts out of God’s treasure-house may be dispensed; even life may be created and called forth, as by God himself.51

Holl appreciates Luther’s esteem for service to neighbor. He, like Luther, is committed to seeing the good of the neighbor as an implication of the striving towards ethical fulfillment. Thus Holl cannot be accused of neglecting the neighbor for the sake of one’s own ethical fulfillment. Holl develops his idea of community in a text that addresses the cultural legacy of the Reformation. In this text we remarkably see him mirroring several points that can also be found in anthropological works on gift-giving relationships.52 We find an almost sociological awareness of the fact that it is exchange that keep societies together. The true community of the church is, according to Holl, a community of souls. It is a totally free community, but at the same time dependent on the mutual interchanges constituting it. Through the Word of God, which has become powerful in their hearts, the members are gathered together without coercion; the choicest treasure has been given them, yet they never attain perfection in it; and thus they are impelled of themselves to a spiritual exchange, to a constant giving and receiving.53 50 Cf.

Holl Religion, 97 (= GA I: 98): “Always an opponent of selfishness, Luther was especially opposed to the religious selfishness whose only concern is one’s own salvation. A true Christian seeks the salvation of others as much as one’s own; according to Romans 9:3, one should even be ready to sacri­fice one’s own salvation if others could thereby be saved. …, he was also the principal advocate of the community concept in religion. No one saw more clearly than he the weaknesses and dangers of an exclusive individualism. It was he and none other who overcame the individualism of the mystics and of the Renaissance.” 51 Ibid., 100 (= GA I: 101). 52 K. Holl, The Cultural Significance of the Reformation (New York: Meridian Books, 1959) (= German original in GA I: 469–543). 53 Ibid., 35–6 (= GA I: 476).

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The church is  a community characterized by mutual giving and receiving. Holl finds it necessary to balance Luther’s understanding of how Christians are “God” to the other with the ambiguity of power relations. He liked to use the expression that in love one was permitted to become “god” for another. But he used the same catchword to identify the danger lurking in every act of love. He had  a clear awareness for the benevolence of the donor always led him into the temptation to pose “god” to the other, i. e. to consider himself superior and to oppress the other or even to make him his dependent. To give “simply” so that one forgets one’s self in the other seemed to him a fine art that would only be learned through strict self-discipline.54

Holl appropriates Luther’s awareness of the gift’s ambiguity in his own work.55 He thereby anticipates the problem that Marcel Mauss made the subject of his famous essay on gift. The problem of gift is also the cornerstone of the gift-skepticism in Nietzsche and Emerson.56 Holl explains that the individual’s self-giving in the resignatio ad infernum can be read as a way of overcoming the “Giver-Problem” by assigning a “Giver-Status” to the recipient of God’s grace. According to the logic of Holl’s argument, the Giver-Status can only be given in the via negativa. The “objective” realization of the community with God can only be articulated as the community of wills, even in damnation. Holl’s sense of the ambiguous character of giving outpaces much of later Lutheran theology that deploys a less problematic idea of the pure gift. His awareness of the necessary simultaneity of two perspectives  – the anthropocentric and the theocentric  – resembles the distinction between an internal and an external perspective in sociological gift-studies. Holl’s anti-eudaemonism prevents him from claiming a positive relation of human giving within the community of God. The anti-eudaemonistic emphasis is associated with the idea of disinterested giving. Giving in this sense does not require a sense of community. Luther did not have this problem because consolation and pastoral care played a much more important role in his theology. Holl in contrast had extreme reservations against any kind of personal benefits that resulted from giving. Thus he is unable to understand the recipients’ “giving” as participation in divine giving in a positive sense, despite the fact that being a “tool and instrument” for the divine will involves a strong sense of participation. In the end Holl sees divine giving as an aspect of divine “Sittlichkeit,” not “Sittlichkeit” as an aspect of divine giving. His ethical understanding of religion ultimately resists an elaboration of the relation between gift-giving and community. Holl is caught in the grip of the categorical imperative. In order to overcome this Kantian restriction, he 54 Ibid.,

39 (= GA I: 478). explicitly refers to WA 51: 394. 56 R. W. Emerson, “Gifts,” in id., Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1983) 534– 8; Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathrustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keine (Kritische Studienausgabe VI; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980); cf. N. H. Gregersen, “Radical Generosity and the Flow of Grace,” in Holm/Widmann, Word – Gift – Being, 117–44. 55 Holl

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needs a concept of “categorical giving,” to use a phrase coined by Oswald ­Bayer,57 that can interpret grace in such generous terms that justification can be understood in positive terms as integrating its receiver’s giving. Such a concept of justification would open  a new vision of divine economy that could imply  a more positive evaluation of seeing and consolation than the interpretation offered by Holl. Holl lacks this openness. The “economy” cannot be objectified. It cannot be visible because visibility ruins the relation. Holl’s position anticipates Bourdieu’s study on the theory of gift exchange.58 Bourdieu, like Holl, sees objective reality in solely economic terms. An objectified divine “economy” would, according to Holl’s ­anti-eudaemonistic logic, “burden” the human being with consolation, since consolation of the anxious soul is for Holl the same as self-interest. At the same time, the reciprocity between God and the human seems much too direct in Holl’s work. Luther did not share Holl’s reservations because he operated with the consolatory dimension of a specific objective “economy” in the proclamation of the gospel. The giving and justifying God includes human beings in the divine communication of giving and receiving.59

V. Conclusion Holl’s legacy for contemporary scholarship, both theological and interdisciplinary, rests more with the tensions he exhibits than the solutions he proposes. Holl correctly discerned the deep social character of Luther’s doctrine of justification. He paved the way both for relating the doctrine of justification to questions pertaining to social issues and for analyzing theological concepts with the help of social structures. A fruitful engagement with Holl, however, requires distance from his anti-eudaemonistic agenda. Holl’s theology requires, like Lutheran theology in the twentieth century, a concept of mutuality that navigates between contract and trade, on the one hand, and the idea of unilateral giving, on the other hand. Holl’s anti-eudaemonism prevented him for seeing just how close he came to articulating this concept. In order to get at such a concept, the role of consolation in Luther’s theology needs to be explored. Holl must be surpassed here if consolation is to be appreciated as a positive aspect of Luther’s theology. Holl is stuck in the dilemma that the mutuality of the renewed community with God can only be visible by negation and is therefore impossible to describe. Holl’s dilemma of relating selfgiving and community in economic terms can be solved by deploying a concept of a positive and “visible” mutuality or “economy.” An understanding of economy in visible terms does not imply the destruction of sociality, as knowledge about the “objective economy” does in Bourdieu’s theory on social gift-giving. Rather, it 57 O.

Bayer, Schöpfung als Anrede (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 89–108. footnote 15. 59 See, for example, Holm, Gabe und Geben. 58 See

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can serve as the necessary precondition for establishing and sustaining real community. Divine giving in the form of an “objectified economy” can relate creation and Trinity in Luther’s theology. Both a theocentric and anthropocentric perspective can thereby be appreciated in their simultaneity, both in the interpretation of ­Luther and in contemporary theology.

Zusammenfassung Ressourcen und Sackgassen der deutschen Lutherrenaissance Karl Holl und die Probleme der Gabe, der Sozialität und des Antieudämonismus. Dieses Kapitel untersucht die anti-eudämonistische Theologie und Luther-Interpretation Karl Holls aus der Perspektive der heutigen Gabe-Diskussion. Das Interesse Karl Holls an der Relation zwischen Theologie und Sozialität wird als Inspiration für die heutige Diskussion hervorgehoben, gleichzeitig aber sein Anti-Eudämonismus als eine Hürde sowohl für eine adäquate Luther-Interpretation als auch für eine theologische Integration der Sozialität beleuchtet. Holls Widerstand gegen jeden Versuch, die Alleinwirksamkeit Gottes durch eine Dimension von Wechselseitigkeit zu schwächen oder zu präzisieren, führt ihn zu einer konsequenten Ablehnung der Seelsorge als reformatorischen Zentralbegriff, sodass er davon ausgeht, vor allem Melanchthon sei auf der falschen Spur der Reformation. Holls Verständnis von der notwendigen gegensätzlichen Differenz zwischen der menschlichen resignatio ad infernum und der göttlichen Gemeinsamkeit in der Willenskonformität mit Gott konvergiert in weitem Sinne mit Hauptgedanken in Pierre Bourdieus PraxisTheorie. Holl wird hier hervorgehoben, weil er die Dualität zwischen zwei verschiedenen Grundperspektiven wahrnimmt, aber nicht wegen seiner Lösung. Bei Holl steht am Ende der göttliche Wille zur Gemeinschaft im scharfen Gegensatz zu seiner Hervorhebung der menschlichen Selbstpreisgabe. Dass er aber eine gemeinschaftliche Perspektive zu integrieren versucht, zeigt ein Vergleich mit dem berühmten “Exkurs über Treue und Dankbarkeit” in der Soziologie Georg Simmels. Die strenge Betonung der Alleinwirksamkeit Gottes versucht Holl durch eine Hervorhebung der Wechselseitigkeit in der Kirche auszubalancieren. Was Holl fehlt, ist ein differenzierter Begriff der Gabe, der es erlaubt, beide Grundperspektiven gleichzeitig positiv wahrzunehmen. Wird ein solcher Begriff in Holls Theologie und Lutherinterpretation integriert, führt dies in letzter Konsequenz jedoch zur Verabschiedung seines Anti-Eudämonismus.

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Luther – Apostle of Freedom? Liberal Protestant Interpretations of Luther

Since the earliest philosophers we know that no human ever steps into the same river twice. We are usually able to deal with the continuous flow of history in both private and public life. But sometimes we must accept the situation that nothing will be as it was before. The nineteenth century represents this kind of momentous change for the history of the West. The old world has passed, a new world is approaching. A book that was widely discussed in 2009 in Germany was Jürgen Osterhammel’s Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19.  Jahrhunderts, in English translation, The Transformation of the World: A History of the 19th Century.1 The award-winning German historian describes in detail how scientific and technological revolutions fundamentally changed life and how the speedy growth of population resulted in new economic, social, and political challenges. These changes dramatically shaped Western civilization. We know that during the last years of the eighteenth century, Friedrich Schleiermacher, the famous church father of modern German Protestantism, left the salons of the Romantic circles with a lantern, walking home along meadows and paths through the nights of Berlin. A century later he would have traveled home with the subway in a city numbering more than two million inhabitants. If Schleiermacher had lived near Lake Michigan at the turn of the nineteenth century, the contrast might have been even more extreme. Instead of debating with inspirational poets, wise philosophers, and beautiful women, he would probably have chatted with soldiers and traders in  a small fort  –  a place where less than one hundred years later a huge city would arise with some buildings so high they would seem to scrape the sky. Another recent book on the radical changes occurring in the nineteenth century is by historian David Blackbourn. His book The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany2 is a historical masterpiece that de 1 J.

Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008); id., The Transformation of the World: A History of the 19th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). 2 D. Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).

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scribes changes in the German attitude towards nature. The book is very successful in Germany. This experience that most of the best books on German history and civilization have recently been written by English and American authors is, by the way, rather unusual. Dam-building, the colonization of the moors, the elimination of wild animals in the forests, the construction of railroads and canals, and urban developments are some of the wonderful examples Blackbourn mentions that exhibit how quickly and how completely life changed in the nineteenth century. The human victory over nature is only one example illustrating the radical transformation in history that can help us to understand the development of Protestant theology in the nineteenth century. In the history of Protestant theology in Germany, the Lutherrenaissance can be pointed to as an example of an intellectual change that dramatically shaped theology in the twentieth century. In this essay, I investigate the emergence of a particular movement that both informed and developed from the Lutherrenaissance that has come to be known as “liberal Protestantism.” Although the term Lutherrenaissance can be used in a narrow sense to identify the specific application of historical resources to study Luther’s religious biography, it can be broadly seen to have inspired different Protestant theological orientations at the turn of the twentieth century. One such orientation, named “liberal Protestant” by later dialectical theologians, is useful for capturing the insights of specific theologians working out of the German Lutherrenaissance. The first part of this chapter provides an outline of major intellectual and theological commitments of liberal Protestantantism. The second part situates particular representatives of the Lutherrenaissance, namely Adolf von Harnack, Ernst Troeltsch, and Rudolf Otto, in view of both their respective interpretations of Luther as well as their liberal-theological positions. My thesis in this section concerns their appropriation of Luther as “the apostle of freedom.” In the third section, I offer some suggestions (liberal, of course), for what contemporary Lutheran theology can learn from the liberal Protestants identified with the Lutherrenaissance from one century ago.

I. Liberal Protestant Theology The tradition of Protestant academic theology in Germany has for at least a hundred years been a robust and splendid tradition in the discipline of theology in general. Great theologians often used its specific methods and content for articulating and explaining their own positions. Even today in Germany we are still accustomed to seeing the history of theology as rather isolated from cultural, political, and social factors. In a kind of cultural turn – and here we have learned much from North American scholars – we have come to accept the fact that theological thinking did not fall from heaven, but is embedded and contextualized in the complex web of human interpretations of the world. This insight is, in my opinion, the best argument for why we should teach and study Christian theology alongside re-

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ligious studies. Theology for around two thousand years has conceptualized how humans and the divine are related. And for more than one thousand years, Christian theology has existed in the institutional form of a university faculty, assigned the task of expressing the attitude of Western civilization to the divine, to transcendence, to the infinite and to eternity, specifically explaining how women and men think of God and identifying the practical consequences of these religious ideas. Understanding religious commitment is essential for understanding our culture. The main idea in liberal Protestantism is the reconciliation between the modern mindset and the Christian religion. Liberal theology emerged as a response to the profound transformations taking place in the world in the nineteenth century. The technological revolution of industrialization represented the victory of the natural sciences. Humankind can only rule the world when humans understand and guide the immanent causality of things. It was no longer necessary to explain the world by referring to a transcendent concept. Persons could manage their lives quite successfully without believing in an ideal deity governing the world. Furthermore, first historicism and then Darwinianism pointed out that everything in the world is absolutely relative. The world is a giant process without beginning and end – at least not a beginning or end that humans can comprehend. With these industrial, technological, and intellectual developments, humans saw the modern world in terms of disenchantment and metaphysical homelessness. The dynamic developments in modern art, for example, beautifully show how much the human interpretation of the world had changed. The idea of a harmonious cosmos was radically erased by a skeptical human subject, quite lost in a hostile world he could not understand. Christianity responded to these profound cultural transformations in many ways. None of the various theological schools and movements associated with modern Christianity could simply return to  a premodern version of Christianity. Even Christian fundamentalism is not a premodern phenomenon, but a child of modern times, born at the end of the nineteenth century, long before Islamic fundamentalism arose in response to the consequences of modernity in the Arab world. Liberal Protestantism is one such movement within Christianity that responded to the challenges of modernity. Its father is Friedrich Schleiermacher, our lonely wanderer through the preindustrial nights of Berlin. The agenda of liberal Pro­ testants, or “liberal theology” as the movement is usually called, integrates a variety of intellectual strands that preceded it, namely the respect for reason’s capacities (and limits) is an inheritance from the Enlightenment; attraction by the power of feeling is inherited from Romanticism; German idealism can also be identified as playing an important role. The appropriation of these inheritances from Enlightenment and modern intellectual developments shows that liberal theology regarded modernity as an opportunity to transform Christian thought. Liberal theology consists of four main points:

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(1) Religion is based on personal experience. Theologians interpreting religious experience operate with a divine and transcendent dimension that distinguishes this kind of experience from other experiences. I mention here that German protagonists of liberal theology, for example Ernst Troeltsch and Rudolf Otto, enthusiastically appreciated William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. (2) The category of religious experience necessitates the distinction between the foundation and the expression of religion. Religious experience can never be captured or exhausted by interpretations of it. The Christian tradition is helpful in offering possible ways to articulate and interpret the experience, but each generation of Christianity is responsible for finding its own adequate expressions. In the sense that language cannot definitively grasp experience, liberal theology can be seen to have affinities with the kind of negative theology that is found throughout the history of Christianity. (3) Liberal Protestants advocate the disposition of freedom to critically engage one’s own religion. (4) The power of religious experience inspires humankind to work and act for good in the world – even against a resistant world. Ethics is an important dimension of liberal theology. These four elements show that liberal Protestantism aims to be both Christian and modern. The world’s transformation is to be seen as an opportunity, not an obstacle, for Christianity’s development.

II. Liberal Protestant Interpretations of Luther Luther was an extraordinarily important figure for liberal Protestants. Statues of Luther are dated to this time, showing him as a strong, inflexible, and brave individual fighting against the powers of emperor and pope: one against all. This picture of Luther was appropriated in the context of emerging European nationalism. Thus Luther became a crucial benchmark for German nationalism.3 Adolf von Harnack is the most famous representative of liberal Protestantism. Although as a professor he stood aloof from rural forms of nationalism, he discerned the connection between Luther and the German spirit.4 Harnack was born in 1851 (died in 1930), the son of the famous Luther scholar, Theodosius 3 For an important work on the various images of Luther in the intellectual history of Germany, see

H. Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1955). 4 Cf. A. von Harnack, What is Christianity? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 282 [German original 1900]).

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Harnack. In 1914 right before the outbreak of the First World War, the emperor Wilhelm II knighted him. Harnack is a prototype of liberal Protestantism, an imposing character, a splendid scholar in church history with an amazing knowledge of sources, an elegant author of classical works, and an expert on academic life in Germany. He occupied a professorial chair for patristic theology at the University of Berlin. For a while he was president of the University as well as president of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. From 1900, he was general director of the Royal Library, which today is the state library of Berlin and the most important library in Germany, as well as president of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Society, today known as the Max-Planck-Society, one of the most important research institutes in Germany. This one person, professor for Protestant theology, held positions which today are among the top four jobs in German academic life. These facts can help us to understand what cultural Protestantism means. The following anecdote captures the influence of Harnack’s theology in public life. In 1888 while a professor in Marburg (every important Protestant spent some time in Marburg), the faculty in Berlin wanted to appoint him to a professorship (which is the ambition of every German academic). But the conservative hierarchy of the Prussian church tried to block the appointment. The emperor finally stepped in, supported by the chancellor Bismarck, and personally signed the nomination with the note: “I do not like yes-men.”5 Harnack’s most famous work is The Essence of Christianity. In less than the one decade that followed the initial publication in 1900, the book was printed in more than 60,000 copies, including translations. The book presents  a magnificent picture of the history of Christianity. Jesus communicated the gospel with un­ believable simplicity: The kingdom of God is near, each human soul has infinite value in the eyes of God, and one’s status as a child of God gives one the freedom to practice the new justice of love. The history of later Christianity is regarded as a falling away from this original divine message. The founding of an institution, the formation of doctrines, the dogma and later engagement in political power, all these developments, at least in some form or another, were perhaps necessary for Christianity’s survival. Nevertheless, this inevitable historical development also ended up falsifying and corrupting Jesus’ gospel message. It was Luther who recovered the essence of Christianity in two dimensions: “first as Reformation and secondly as Revolution.”6 With his concept of the word of God Luther brought religion back to its essence.7 The core of Christianity is the inward experience that one’s entire personality is accepted by God. The renewal of and return to the great and simple gospel had a revolutionary impact on the church:

5 A.

v. Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack (Berlin: Hans Bott Verlag, 1936), 171: “Ich will keine Mucker.” 6 Harnack, What is Christianity?, 268. 7 Cf. ibid., 269.

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Protestantism reckons upon the Gospel being something so simple, so divine and therefore so truly human, as to be most certain of being understood when it is left entirely free and also as to produce essentially the same experiences and convictions in individual souls.8

The acceptance of the freedom of the gospel had revolutionary consequences:9 it tore down the hierarchical priestly system, it protested against all forms of external authority, it abolished any ritualism as holy works, and it destroyed all sacramentalism. For Harnack’s Luther, the medieval link between divine grace and material elements was an act of “enslavement of the soul.”10 Finally by abolishing monasticism, the Reformation assigned new value to the secular calling of Christians. But Harnack detected an ambiguity in the Reformation at precisely this last point concerning Christian vocation. The conclusion stated by this honest historian is not surprising: “We get nothing from history without paying for it,”11 and Harnack assessed the price for the Reformation to be fairly high. He chalked up the Reformation’s demerits to: the division of a united Western civilization, the union between church and state in Protestant Europe, and an overemphasis on the interiority of faith. Luther was also held up for criticism, even if some confessional Lutherans accused Harnack of being one of Luther’s detractors.12 Harnack regarded Luther as a remarkable religious genius, but only a mediocre theologian, unable to play the role of charismatic leader of the new movement.13 In brief: Luther was not as coherent as he should have been on the basis of his own religious experience. He often confused gospel and doctrine. His emphasis on Scripture had an inner tendency towards biblicism. And his fundamental unwillingness to have anything to do with the “enthusiasts,” the so called left wing Reformers, led him to fall back on the sacramentalism and institutionalism he had initially protested. Harnack’s portrayal of Luther is characteristic of liberal theology and thus has similarities to the Luther depicted by another liberal theologian, Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923). Troeltsch was fifteen years younger than Harnack, and was the leading figure of the liberal Protestant intellectual direction in the philosophy of religion, theology, and the theological openness to sociology. Troeltsch first lived for twenty years in Heidelberg in the same house with his friend and colleague Max Weber. In 1915, he too ended up in Berlin, taking up a professorship in philosophy. Harnack’s Luther is very similar to Troeltsch’s, except that Troeltsch paints his image of Luther in more vibrant colors. Troeltsch also highlights the new and revolutionary aspects in Luther: the inward, spiritual religion of faith, the impor 8 Ibid.,

275. ibid., 277–81. 10 Ibid., 279. 11 Ibid., 285. 12 Cf. ibid., 289. 13 Cf. ibid., 286–8. 9 Cf.

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tance of conviction and conscience, and religious individualism.14 Luther, according to Troeltsch, held that “faith is the source of energy in the struggle for life.”15 Yet Troeltsch also detected doctrinal and institutional aspects of Luther’s thought that later became  a problem for the Lutheran tradition. He noted, for example, that “the Atonement becomes the central doctrine of Protestantism and the idea of vicarious achievement is … here developed to its fullest extent,”16 but he also knew that Enlightenment thinkers, particularly Immanuel Kant, criticized this doctrine as amoral and inhuman. Harnack and Troeltsch differ on one significant aspect in their interpretations of Luther. The point of debate had to do with Luther’s place in the cultural history of Western civilization. For Troeltsch Luther stands in many aspects in continuity with medieval religion: for example, the theory of atonement as mentioned above. Luther’s primary theological question, namely how one can be righteous before God, is characteristic of medieval thought. The Reformation produced a new cultural climate in Europe, but Luther, according to Troeltsch, does not stand at the origins of modernity. Troeltsch saw more modern features in the religion of the enthusiasts, and he, himself a Lutheran, attributed more importance for the genesis of the modern world to Calvinism than to Lutheranism. In the second volume of one of his main work, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, he spends much time on the development of Puritan, Baptist, and Free Church Protestantism in America. He admitted that their insistence on religious experience and the voluntary aspect of communitarian life could be seen as a more consistent appropriation of Reformation ideas than had been realized in the large dominant churches in Germany. Troeltsch was the first and for a long time the only German theologian with a global perspective. After all, the crucial point for him is that modern German Protestantism begins in the Enlightenment and then is developed by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Luther and the so-called “Old Protestantism” is an important, but an intermediate phase in the history of Protestantism. Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) is the third representative of liberal Protestantism who must be mentioned in relation to the Lutherrenaissance. Otto was only four years younger than Troeltsch and is, besides Rudolf Bultmann, Marburg’s most famous twentieth-century theologian. A recent conference held in Marburg in October 2012 honored this great theologian whose reception seems to be more predominant in the English-speaking world than in Germany.17 In his work, Otto 14 E.

Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, ed. G. Allen/U. Macmillan (2 vols.; London/New York, 1931 [German original 1912]; reprint: Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 2.470 (citations from 1992 edition): “… inwardness of communion with God which is independent of man or of a priesthood.” 15 Ibid, 2.1013. 16 Ibid., 2.476. 17 See the volume of essays that were originally delivered at the conference: J. Lauster/P. Schüz/R. Barth/C. Danz (eds.), Rudolf Otto: Theologie  – Religionsphilosophie  – Religionsgeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013).

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brings together different influences, and not always in systematic order. He can thus almost be described as a “freak” thinker – perhaps this is also a trait of liberal theology. Otto’s concept of religion follows in the footsteps of Schleiermacher and the liberal tradition, but also tries to move beyond these two positions. Otto begins his main work, whose title is translated into English as The Idea of the Holy, by criticizing Schleiermacher as a kind of subjective solipsist. Religion is for Otto the experience of the numinous, the holy, and primarily expressed in religious feelings. The feeling “in itself indubitably has immediate and primary reference to an object outside the self. Now this object is just what we have already spoken of as ‘the numinous’.”18 On the one hand, religion is a subjective act, the feeling accompanying interpretation of an inner experience. On the other hand, this experience is caused by something outside the individual. Religion is a subjective interpretation, but it has an external reference point; it is something like a reaction, an ­answer, a reflex – of course, always under the conditions of individual subjectivity. Famous is Otto’s basic description: the human reaction to the numinous emerges as a harmony of contrasts, as the feeling of tremendum et fascinans, the combination of “daunting ‘awefulness’ and majesty” and “something uniquely attractive and fascinating.”19 The Idea of the Holy is  a detailed phenomenology of religious feeling that is based on a fundamental insight. Religion is more than its rational and doctrinal expressions, there is – so the subtitle of the book – always something “non-rational in the idea of the divine.” Luther’s influence on Otto is significant on precisely this point. Otto is a good example of how one can be a faithful Lutheran without being a stubborn confessionalist. Furthermore, Otto was very interested in Luther from his earliest academic work on Luther’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Idea of the Holy also contains a long chapter on Luther20 with a remarkable admission: Indeed I grew to understand the numinous and its difference from the rational in ­Luther’s De servo arbitrio long before I identified it in the “qadosh” of the Old Testament and in the elements of religious “awe” in the history of religion in general.21

Otto praises Luther for his profound understanding of religious experience. ­Luther’s religious genius consisted of a deep feeling of the non-rational element in the divine, the contrast between a revealed and a hidden side of God, and the divine majesty and energy transcending the human capacity for expression. Otto’s scholarship on Luther is intriguing because it has implications for the theory of religion that he later outlines in The Idea of the Holy.

18 R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and

Its Relation to the Rational (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969 [German original 1917]), 10–11. 31. 20 Cf. ibid., 97–112. 21 Ibid., 103. 19 Ibid.,

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III. What Can We Learn from the Liberal Protestants of the Lutherrenaissance? In this section I discuss in detail what I have assumed all along: the Luther appropriated by the liberal Protestants at the turn of the twentieth century is worthy of serious study today. Such a study might even lead to the writing of one of the wonderful books of the German academic tradition that has thousands of footnotes! At this point in my story, however, I turn to address the question of relevance. What does this all mean for us today? What can we learn today from the liberal approach to Luther of a century ago? One of the most extraordinary German minds of the present day, Jan ­Assmann, wrote  a famous book on cultural memory that was published in Germany in 1997.22 In his book Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, Assmann claims that we can learn from the long-established hermeneutical that there is no pure and objective relation to the past. We always see history through our own eyes, our expectations, our desires; even professional historians cannot escape the hermeneutical circle, but they can critique their own biases and assumptions. Admittedly historians are interested in knowing what really happened, but this aim is only one aspect of historical approach to the past. Assmann describes that humans want to learn more from the past. We want to know where we are coming from and who we are. Cultural memory helps to secure identity. On the basis of Assmann’s work, I conclude with four points concerning the relevance of studying the liberal Protestant aspect to the Lutherrenaissance: (1) Liberal Protestants are Protestants. This tautology means that for liberal Protestantism the Reformation and particularly Luther’s personality are the origin of its identity. There can be no naive return to the time preceding Luther’s revolution of the Christian religion. (2) Thus Luther is a crucial point of reference for liberal Protestantism that aims to describe Luther’s character and in so doing, recover its own identity. Liberal theologians find in Luther the answer to how they differ from other expressions of Christian faith. The fundamental difference is freedom. It is not the popular image of Luther’s battle against Rome and emperor that profoundly influenced national German Protestantism at the turn of the twentieth century. Rather, the liberal theologians thought that Luther had liberated religion from  a hierarchical communication of divine grace, from clerical authority, and from dogma’s restrictions. Luther returned religion to the inwardness of communion with God. Liberal

22 J. Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011 [German original 1997]).

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Protestantism considers its identity as a religion of freedom in this theological and religious, not political, sense. And Luther is its apostle. (3) For liberal Protestants, Luther is an important resource for viewing the life of religion. This particular resource is not only the power of self-affirmation; it is also a mirror, which shows how things are in reality and how they differ from the ideal. Tradition has a corrective function in the process of cultural memory. Tradition not only confirms, but also rebuilds and corrects identity. In this regard, the liberals were willing to learn from Luther. An intriguing example of this corrective use of tradition is a comment Troeltsch once made on the historical debate between Luther and Erasmus. As a typical liberal theologian, one would assume that Troeltsch would support Erasmus, particularly because Troeltsch appreciated the writings of the European renaissance and humanism that figured importantly in modern Protestantism. But Troeltsch oddly defends Luther’s position. Luther, according to Troeltsch, gets deeper into the core of religious experience and so reveals the fragility of the harmony Erasmus argues between human autonomy and divine grace.23 In a similar vein, Otto observes that Erasmus overestimates the rational side of the divine, while Luther knows much more about the majestic and energetic dimensions to God.24 It is up for discussion whether Troeltsch’s and Otto’s views adequately represent Erasmus’s position. Yet interesting for our purposes is that Otto together with Troeltsch, whose sympathies lie with the humanist tradition, see Luther as a constant inspiration to rethink and correct their own positions. Tradition is more than a memory from folklore; it is a permanent incentive for our own thinking. (4) A characteristic of the liberal theologians’ appropriation of Luther is that they could turn the apostle of freedom against himself. Luther represents a dis­ position that Troeltsch describes in this way: “The life beyond this world is, in very deed, the inspiration of the life that now is.”25 Troeltsch values Luther’s dis­ position as more important than his particular doctrines and teachings. The freedom Luther advocated for “the Christian” is also true for his own person and thought. Liberation can also mean liberation from one’s own doctrinal tradition. I return to the remarks at the beginning of this essay: no person ever steps into the same river twice. Liberal Protestants were conscientious historians who knew that Luther believed in witchcraft and claimed he saw the devil in the Wartburg ­castle. Liberal Protestants experienced the dramatic transformation of the modern world, the increasing speed of mental changes. Yet they differed from each other in their evaluations of the Reformation. Harnack wanted to conserve Luther’s 23 E. Troeltsch, “Das Verhältnis des Protestantismus zur Kultur,” in id., Gesammelte Schriften (4 vols.;

Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1912–1925) 4.247–55. 24 Cf. Otto, Idea of the Holy, 24. 25 E. Troeltsch, Social Teaching, 1006: “Das Jenseits ist die Kraft des Diesseits.”

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Reformation as  a resource on its own terms. Troeltsch went further and evaluated the so-called “New Protestantism” over Luther’s Reformation. This claim could be the reason why he is considered the central enemy of the early twen­ tieth-century Luther­renaissance. Otto clashed with Troeltsch concerning the question whether Luther is to be understood as a medieval or an early modern thinker. On one point, however, the liberal theologians are united. They saw an unbridgeable gap between Luther and their own lives and world and did not expect an answer from a man in the sixteenth-century for the questions of their time. What they did learn from Luther was his religious disposition. His inward conviction, not his concrete doctrines and time-dependent expressions, was the object of liberal admiration.26 Evangelical freedom means: religious expressions are secondary acts of the human mind; they must change in the course of history. Each era has the task to seek productive dialogue with its own tradition and with contemporary attitudes towards living articulations of inward religious experience. This is what liberal Protestantism learned from Luther and what it might even turn – if necessary – against Luther. It might be careless or even dangerous to end this essay with Nietzsche. But you should expect nothing less from a liberal Protestant! The second of his Untimely Meditations, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” is one of his best and probably one of the most beautiful German texts of the nineteenth century.27 We need history, Nietzsche writes, to look back with faithfulness and love if we want to understand who we are and why we are how we are. But then we also must destroy links with the past if we want to breathe fresh air and if we want to take responsibility for our own lives. The liberal Protestants did both with Luther. This is what we can learn from them today.

26 To mention just one example: Long before the inner-Lutheran discussions of the twentieth century, the liberal Protestant theologians observed that they could not articulate the message of justification using concepts of the medieval legal system, but that justification had to be expressed in terms of modern experience. They therefore understood justification as the meaning of life that cannot be produced by humans through their own doing. Justification is the deep experience of being suspended in a higher and transcendent dimension. 27 In F. Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, ed. D. Breazeale (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 57–124.

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Zusammenfassung Luther – Apostel der Freiheit? Liberal-protestantische Lutherinterpretationen Liberaler Protestantismus ist eine der relativ wenigen starken intellektuellen Entwicklungen zu Beginn des 20.  Jahrhunderts, die zum Umfeld der Lutherrenaissance gehört und auch Renaissance-Charakter hatte. Adolf von Harnack hob die religiöse Freiheit hervor, die Luther gebracht habe, Rudolf Otto die Tiefe der religiösen Erfahrung. Diese Vorzüge Luthers erkannte auch Ernst Troeltsch an; er betonte aber stärker die historische Einordnung Luthers in das Denken des Mittelalters. Aus diesen Ansätzen ergibt sich zusammengenommen ein interessanter Umgang mit Luther. Luther wurde einerseits zum Apostel der Freiheit, wobei zwei Dimensionen besonders hervorgehoben wurden: 1.  Luthers eigene religiöse Erfahrung, die ihn von kirchlichen, sakramentalen und dogmatischen Zwängen befreite, 2. die Freiheit der lutherischen Tradition, mit Luther verantwortlich umzugehen und ihn eher als Ressource für die Wiederherstellung des eigenen Zugangs zu religiöser Erfahrung zu betrachten. Ihm werden also wesentliche Impulse für das religiöse Denken des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus zugeschrieben, zugleich wird aber auch ausgesprochen, was Luther von der Gegenwart trennt. In dieser relativierten Lutherverehrung liegt der besondere Umgang liberaler Theologie mit ihrer eigenen Vergangenheit.

Chapter 9

Ronald F. Thiemann

Sacramental Realism Martin Luther at the Dawn of Modernity

I. Post-Secularity: Re-telling our Story Human beings live by stories. Stories bestow identity; they tell us who we are, where we belong, where we have come from, and where we might next be headed. Personal narratives, as the feminist philosopher Judith Butler reminds us, are the means by which we “give an account of ourselves” because they combine the tales we tell as well as the tales told about us. Narratives, whether personal or social, always require “others” because identity is inescapably social even political. We are who we are, Hannah Arendt asserts, when we become actors in a public world. Agency, the ability genuinely to “act,” is played out in the polis, the public realm within which diverse actors seek to create some shared identity out of the multiplicity, even cacophony, of competing stories and conflicting actions. Intellectual historians are, in a way, story-tellers for the broad sweep of social and cultural traditions that constitute, for example, Western modernity. We are all aware that in recent decades a sea change has taken place in the story or narrative intellectuals tell about the modern West, one that includes the story about the place of religion in highly complex, differentiated, technologically advanced societies. The shorthand term for the story we have told about ourselves for nearly a century is “secularity,” the shorthand term for the new story that seems to be emerging is “post-secularity,” a term that functions (as all such “post” terms do) to tell us more about what we are not than what we are or better who we are becoming.

II. Charles Taylor’s Immanent Frame For decades now the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has been one of our most important theorists of early modernity and the rise of secularity. In his two classics, Sources of the Self 1 and A Secular Age,2 Taylor offers a broad account of the 1 C. Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1989). 2 C. Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). For three excellent critical discussions of Taylor’s work see M. Warner/J. van Antwerpen/C. Calhoun

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role of movements of reform within Western Christendom in creating the conditions that led to the rise of the modern secular world. In a wide-ranging, complex, and controversial argument, Taylor has sought to explain how the “conditions of secularity” have come to shape both religious belief and unbelief in the modern age. Taylor offers a historico-philosophical argument which seeks to identify the “social imaginary” within which we all live, breathe, and have our being in modernity. By “social imaginary” Taylor means the basic framework within which ordinary people imagine the social world in which they live. An imaginary, Taylor suggests, “is carried in images, stories, and legends” and defines the “common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.”3 Social imaginaries provide the common sense, the mores, the habits, the unspoken expectations of how people in a certain society, culture, or nation should behave. Taylor calls the social imaginary of the modern world “the immanent frame,”4 a term by which he seeks to account for the world shared by believer and unbeliever alike, a world in which religious belief is optional, more a personal choice than a social necessity. In addition the immanent frame shapes a new kind of person, which Taylor calls “a buffered self,” one cut off from transcendent sources of meaning and fullness. All residents of modern Western democracies are, Taylor argues, inevitably formed within  a social world that creates buffered, disciplined, and instrumental citizens who seek to create societies designed for the mutual benefit of all. All members of modern societies, whether religious or not, are shaped by the powerful forces of this secular age. Taylor writes I have been drawing a portrait of the world we have lost, one in which spiritual forces impinged on porous agents, in which the social was grounded in the sacred and secular time in higher times … and this human drama unfolded within a cosmos. All this has been dismantled and replaced by something quite different in the transformation we often roughly call disenchantment.5

Taylor frames this project with a deceptively simple observation. The change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one possibility among others … One way to put the question that (eds.), Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010); S. G. Davaney, “The Religious Secular Divide: The US Case,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 76 (2009) 1327–32; and P. E. Gordon, “The Place of the Sacred in the Absence of God: Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age,” JHI 69 (2008) 647–73. 3 C. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 23. 4 Not long after the publication of A Secular Age the Social Science Research Council established a blog entitled The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere, online at http://blogs. ssrc.org/tif/. This blog has created a forum for continuing discussion of the important issues raised by Taylor’s book. 5 Taylor, A Secular Age, 61.

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I want to answer here is this: why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?6

The sources of secularity, Taylor argues, lie in the view of God developed by the nominalists in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century. In Sources of the Self Taylor makes the strong and surprising claim that the reformers’ doctrine of salvation by grace alone rejects any notion of mediating between the sacred and profane. The centrality these thinkers grant to faith seemed to require an outright rejection of the Catholic understanding of the sacred, and hence also of the church and its mediating role. The Catholic theology of the sacraments, particularly the sacrament of the altar, whereby a power has been given to the church to bring about communion between God and humans … was an abomination.7

Taylor’s historical account in A Secular Age is slightly more nuanced and relies heavily on two sources: Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism8 and Marcel Gauchet’s The Disenchantment of the World.9 Both these thinkers point to various movements of religious reform in the late medieval church as central culprits in the rise of modern secularity, and Taylor follows in their train. He writes The Reformation as Reform is central to the story I want to tell – that of the abolition of the enchanted cosmos, and the eventual creation of a humanist alternative to faith. The first consequence seems evident enough: the Reformation is known as an engine of disenchantment. The second is less obvious and more indirect. It passes through the attempts to re-order whole societies which emerge in the radical, Calvinist wing of Protestantism … [A]ll branches of Reform push towards disenchantment … [and set forward an] ideal of living non-sacramentally.10

Weber famously pointed to Luther’s notion of vocation as a central element in the emerging Protestant ethic of “worldly asceticism.” One thing was unquestionably new [in the Lutheran Reformation]: The valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume.11 6 Ibid.,

3, 25. Sources of the Self, 216. I will show later in this chapter how deeply wrong this observa­tion is. 8 M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958). 9 M. Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (New French Thought; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 10 Taylor, A Secular Age, 77, 266. 11 Weber, Protestant Ethic, 80. 7 Taylor,

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In an oft-quoted phrase, Weber described the world-altering effect of Luther’s doctrine of vocation. Christian asceticism, at first fleeing from the world into solitude … now … strode into the market-place of life, slammed the door of the monastery behind it, and undertook to penetrate just that daily routine with its methodicalness, to fashion it into a life in the world.12

But this new worldly asceticism, while unleashing powerful political and economic forces, had a melancholic underside, the consequences of the “disenchantment (Entzauberung, literally demagification) of the world.” Weber opined, The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world.” Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.13

Taylor follows Weber’s account to a great extent but adds an insight gleaned from Gauchet, namely that the movements of reform introduced new more stringent norms of ethical behavior into the lives of ordinary folk, thus creating the conditions that led to various modern forms of the “disciplinary society.” Taylor’s narrative goes roughly as follows. The world of medieval Latin Christianity was one in which ordinary folk participate in an enchanted world of magic, mystery, and mayhem. Spirits and demons lurk at every turn and lay people use charms, potions, and incantations to keep the spirits at bay. In addition, they engage in festive celebrations and magical rituals (think Mardi Gras or Carnival) that put people in touch with the uncanny, the extraordinary, and the chaotic. These ludic celebra­tions allowed the venting of energies that might otherwise undermine public order, but they were also characterized by drunkenness, sexual license, and occasional violence. Movements of reform within Latin Christianity beginning in the fourteenth century sought to bring such behavior under control by applying ethical standards previously limited to monks and religious to ordinary folk or lay Christians. These reforms favored ascetic forms of spiritual life 12 Ibid.,

154. Weber, “Science as Vocation,” in id., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth/ C. W. Mills (New York: Routledge, 1948) 129–56, on p. 155. My Harvard colleague Peter Gordon has rightly pointed out that Weber attributes disenchantment primarily to the Calvinist reforms and not to ­Luther or Lutheranism. “It’s true that Weber credits Luther for the Beruf idea, but Weber also explicitly denies that Lutheranism itself could perform the further work of disenchantment that emerged from this idea’s application to commercial life. This is because, on Weber’s view, Lutheranism proved unable to surmount its (Augustinian) inheritance of disdain for worldly commerce. This overcoming was only achieved in Calvinist preaching (not even in Jean Calvin’s own writing).” Peter Gordon, email message to author, January 10, 2011. I agree completely with Gordon’s comments about Weber. I would only mention that Taylor doesn’t make the distinction between Lutheranism and Calvinism with the same degree of precision. 13 M.

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and strongly discouraged the festive, playful, and anarchic aspects of medieval piety.14 There is much in Taylor’s analysis that is rich and accurate, and he surely captures well some of the shifts that take place between the medieval and modern periods. He does, however, overstate the ways in which reform movements become ascetic and iconoclastic in their aesthetic. When Taylor characterizes the reform aesthetic as non-sacramental and excarnational (rather than incarnational) he seriously misreads one important stream of reform spirituality, what I call its sacramental realism. Indeed, I argue that the maintenance of a sacramental sensibility is fundamentally important to the notions of realism that begin to emerge in both art and theology in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is a profound mistake to label either thought of the reforming friars or the thought of Luther and the early Lutherans as non-sacramental and excarnational, as I hope to show in the following section.

III. Martin Luther: Theologian of the Everyday III.1 Medieval Reform and Lay Spirituality Taylor is surely correct in suggesting that a fundamental shift in Western culture begins with the aesthetic, political, and spiritual changes that take place in the ­thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but to call these changes “secularizing” is inaccurate and misleading. The tenth and eleventh centuries were  a period of crisis within the Roman ­Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. Clashes between clergy and princes, and between the papacy and the emperor, occurred on matters of the investiture of bishops, of the buying and selling of church offices (simony), and of clerical concubinage and sexual misconduct. The triumph of the Gregorian reforms (Pope Gregory VII [1073–1085]) resulted in a more centralized papacy, a sharper division between clerical and lay authority, and a sustained assault on the very structure of feudal society and the family relationships upon which it was built.15 As lay prerogatives dissipated, clerical power  – and especially the authority of the papacy – grew in equal measure. The elimination of lay investiture, the establishment and policing of clerical celibacy, and the creation of the College of Cardinals secured papal control over all the key offices of the church and institutionalized the Gregorian reforms. 14 These

reforms are one of the central concerns of the Tridentine decree: “On the Invocation, Venera­tion, and Relics, of Saints and on Sacred Images.” 15 John O’Malley treats the Gregorian Reform as one of the two “great Reformations” within Roman Catholicism, the other being Luther’s Reformation. See J. W. O’Malley, “Developments, Reforms, and Two Great Reformations: Towards an Historical Assessment of Vatican II,” TS 44 (1983) 373–406.

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Despite these important advances in church authority, the following centuries remained  a time of turmoil and ferment in both church and empire.16 The twelfth century saw the rapid growth of towns and cities across the empire. As urban populat­ions grew,  a new working class of artisans, lawyers, and merchants emerged, one that created more fluid social organizations which would soon replace the kinship groups that undergirded the feudal system.17 Precisely as lay ecclesial power waned, lay spiritual movements gained increased vigor. Gregory had invoked the model of the “primitive church” as the basis for his reforms, and had further encouraged celibate clergy to live together in community and to follow the lifestyle example of the early apostles. The idea that the Christian life involved a renunciation of worldly goods and secular power became the basis for a new movement, the vita apostolica.18 This movement urged a life based on the suffering, spirituality, and penance of the early apostles, one of voluntary poverty and service to the neighbor. It found especially eager adherents among town-dwelling laity and non-cloistered clergy and fostered new forms of radical lay piety of worldly renunciation and evangelical fervor. The renewed spiritual life of urban lay Christians presented unprecedented challenges to the church’s pastoral care.19 Initially a group of unofficial itinerant preachers arose to meet the needs of urban lay spirituality, preachers who stressed a new consciousness of what it meant to be  a Christian, of what were Christian beliefs and the Christian way of life. Ordinary individuals were again to be important and would help to spread the word of God, as in apostolic times … [A] way was being pointed towards the acceptance of the possibility of the laity also being able to lead a spiritual life of secular action. The vita apostolica was to be open to all.20

Ultimately, however, a more organized approach to the needs of the laity emerged, and in the thirteenth century the mendicant orders – the Dominicans, Franciscans, 16 These

centuries also witnessed the Crusades and the Inquisition. an excellent introduction to this important era, see B. Bolton, The Medieval Reformation (Foundations of Mediaeval History; London/New York: Edward Arnold/Holmes & Meier, 1983). 18 In addition to Bolton, see C. H. Lawrence, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society (The Medieval World; London: Longman, 1994). 19 Ibid., 7, 18: “The negative factor that helped the spread of heresy was the failure of many of the orthodox clergy to meet the spiritual needs of the laity. Paradoxically, the Gregorian Reform had aggravated this problem. In their efforts to eradicate the abuses of lay patronage, to exalt the sacerdotal office and raise the standards of pastoral care, the reformers had drawn the attention of the laity to the shortcomings of the clergy. Gregory VII had, in fact, invoked the assistance of the lay people in opposing unworthy candidates for bishoprics and in bringing public opinion to bear upon priests who flouted the rule of celibacy. The Gregorian papacy thus helped to create  a climate of opinion that stimulated spiritual aspiration and was critical of the failings of the secular clergy … The rise of an articulate town-dwelling laity in search of personal religion and critical of the assumptions of monastic spirituality presented the medieval Church with  a pastoral challenge it was ill-equipped to meet.” 20 Bolton, The Medieval Reformation, 21, 25. 17 For

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Augustinians, Carmelites, and Servites  – were established and officially recognized by the church at the Second Council of Lyon (1274).21 During the same period groups of women founded communities, Beguinages, that required adherents to renounce personal wealth and to cultivate a humble and frugal lifestyle. Some of these communities of Beguines supported themselves by begging but many received gifts and endowments from wealthy patrons. Ultimately the Beguinages allied themselves with the Dominicans who, though they had rejected cloistered living for their male members, demanded seclusion and enclosure of their female orders.22 Hugh Lawrence has helpfully summarized the message and impact of the mendicant friars. The impact of the friars upon the history of Western Christendom must be measured against the problems of the thirteenth-century church … They were  a revolutionary answer to  a potentially revolutionary situation. For the spiritual and intellectual turbulence of the twelfth century, which had accompanied the growth of towns … had also awakened the religious aspirations of a more articulate laity, which the traditional monastic theology and the existing apparatus of the Church seemed unable to satisfy. It was the achievement of the friars, through their teaching and example, to satisfy this quest for personal sanctification and to direct it into orthodox channels … At the heart of the message the friars brought was a belief that the Christian life was not a monopoly of a professional elite, but was accessible to all; that the interior life of the spirit, even the higher experience of the contemplative life, could be pursued in the secular world through the sanctification of common tasks and the faithful performance of ordinary duties.23

Compare Lawrence’s account with the following comments by Taylor. Then the action of the mendicant preachers, which had more than one kind of impact on the hierarchical church, not all by any means stabilizing. But one effect was certainly to open up new and very effective channels of communication with the base, through the preaching of itinerant friars, often better educated than the parish clergy (and often in a condition of rivalry with these poor secular priests). Through them the message of the new, more exigent practice was very effectively spread throughout the length and breadth of Latin Christendom. If we see this attempt by an elite to make over the base as a kind of distant preparation for a world in which something like the Bolshevik party can emerge, then we can see the friars as a form of late-medieval agit-prop.24

21 The

mendicant friars were anticipated by two important lay movements, the Waldensians and the Humilitati, both of whom adopted forms of voluntary poverty. The Waldensians were suppressed as heretical, but the Humilitati, after a period of suppression, were offered papal privileges which allowed them to continue their ministry of preaching. See ibid., 55–66. 22 Lawrence, The Friars, 74–9. For a broader review of religious women during this time see Bolton, The Medieval Reformation, 80–93. 23 Lawrence, The Friars, 225–6. 24 Taylor, A Secular Age, 64–5.

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Why Taylor, who is usually eminently fair even to positions with which he disagrees, should caricature and trivialize the mission and spirituality of the friars in this fashion is difficult to fathom. On its face the movement engendered by lay piety and organized through the mendicant friars seems unlikely as a source of disenchantment and desacralization, and yet Taylor points precisely to the growth of lay spirituality as a major shift on the road to secular modernity. Though it couldn’t be clear at the time, we with hindsight can recognize this as a major turning point in the history of Western civilization, an important step towards that primacy of the individual which defines our culture.25

Oddly, Taylor connects the growth in lay piety to the Thomistic “synthesis” between nature and grace. To be sure Thomas was a Dominican friar, and the influence of his Aristotelian-shaped theology on the medieval universities and on all subsequent Catholic theology is unquestioned. But Taylor writes, Take the new Aristotelian-Christian synthesis which takes its most influential form in Thomas. This brought about what one could call an autonomization of nature … Autonomization of nature was the first timid step towards the negation of all super-nature. Of course, people at the time wouldn’t have put it in these terms; they had to have some acceptable reason relating to God. But what was really pulling them was a growing interest in nature-for-itself.26

Somehow Taylor sees the extension of the vita apostolica to the educated lay mas­ ses as a source of the primacy of the modern individual; and, moreover, he sees Thomistic theology, especially his natural theology, as a source of the modern conception of autonomous nature. Taylor also implicates the rise of realist art in the emergence of a modern view of nature as autonomous. “So the autonomy of nature had genuine and powerful spiritual sources. But so did the new ‘realism’ in painting and sculpture.”27 While he doesn’t develop this point in great detail, it is clear that Taylor understands the late medieval and Renaissance fascination with perspective, the details of the human form, and the portrayal of ordinary scenes as contributing to the disembedding of nature from its divine, spiritual source. That the portrayal of the Virgin and Child shows real observation of contemporary models, that there is variety and individual portraiture in religious painting, that what is represented is no longer just some universal, normative feature of the person or being concerned, as in the awesome Christ Pantocrator on the cupola of Byzantine churches, but the traits of live individuals begin to appear; all this is frequently taken as the emergence of an extra-religious motive, alongside the religious purpose … This interest in

25 Ibid.,

94. 91. 27 Ibid., 93. 26 Ibid.,

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the variety and detailed features of real contemporary people did not arise alongside and extrinsic to the religious point of the painting; it was intrinsic to the new spiritual stance to the world.28

Compare this account of the rise of naturalism as ingredient to the new lay piety to the account given by Richard Viladesau in his The Beauty of the Cross. Giotto’s art, like much art already in the thirteenth century, attempted to induce a sense of pathos. What Giotto added was the naturalism of his representation. Still, his crucifixes, however naturalistic, retain  a sense of quiet dignity …The new naturalism in painting added a further dimension to the practice of meditation on Christ’s suffering … This was already an important element in early Franciscan spirituality … [Believers] should imaginatively act out their presence at the events of the passion: they should sit beside Jesus, comfort him, take his place in carrying the cross, and so on … Visual realism would obviously be an aid in the practice of the imaginative meditation encouraged particularly by the Franciscans and Dominicans.29

While these forms of spirituality could lead to more gruesome depictions of the crucifixion and unhealthy forms of spiritual imitation, they also generated the spiritual world of the pieta and the stabat mater.30 Whatever one’s theological ­judgment about these spiritual and artistic practices, it is difficult to see them as forerunners of modern notions of autonomy. If anything the relation between the viewer and the art, and thus between the believer and Christ, is deepened and intensified through this spiritual practice. This form of realism, far from encouraging notions of autonomy – of nature, human bodies, or viewing subjects – fostered forms of relational spiritual imagination. The great art historian E. H. Gombrich characterizes this relation as the “imaginative identification” between the viewer and the subject of the painting. Realist art creates the demand 28 Ibid.,

93–4. Taylor also explicitly indicts Giotto’s realist painting as encouraging a disembedded form of naturalism (90, 94, 144). 29 R. Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts – From the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 155, 157. 30 E. Cousins, “The Humanity and the Passion of Christ,” in J. Raitt (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (World Spirituality: An Encyclopedia of the Religious Quest 17; New York: Crossroad, 1987) 375–91, on pp. 386–7: “By the end of the thirteenth century, devotion to the humanity of Christ was solidly established in Western spirituality, and its focus was fixed on the passion of Christ … This devotion spearheaded a revolution in art, becoming the focus for the shift toward a realistic depiction of Christ’s humanity, leading to the great pieta of Michelangelo and the crucifixion scenes which dominated in late medieval and renaissance art.” Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross, 133: “Of paramount importance for its subsequent history was the famous late-thirteenth century sequence … ‘Stabat Mater Dolorosa’ … This poem quickly became widely known throughout the West, and inspired many (presumed) imitations as well as vernacular translations. In contrast to the laments that present a dialogue between Jesus and Mary, and which are aimed at teaching the need for the passion, it gives classic expression to the believer’s spiritual identification with Mary at the foot of the cross, suffering along with her son.”

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for what I have called the dramatic evocation, the return to the desire not to be told only what happened according to the Scriptures, but also how it happened, what the events must have looked like to an eyewitness. I agree with those who connect this decisive change with the new role of the popular preacher in the thirteenth century. It was the friars who took the Gospel story to the people and spared no effort to make the faithful relive and re-enact it in their minds.31

To be fair to Taylor, he understands that these developments remain deeply embedded in Christian practice and theology, but he remains convinced that the influence of the mendicant friars unleashes notions of the human and of nature that anticipate modern notions of autonomy. But his account of the disembedding of these notions from their spiritual home remains, in my judgment, unpersuasive. Taylor seems so eager to generalize about the rise of the modern world that he neglects the spiritual diversity that arises in the late middle ages and endures into the modern era. Taylor’s most balanced account of the medieval developments is found at the end of his second chapter “The Rise of the Disciplinary Society.” Taylor writes about the influence of the mendicant friars upon the realist art of Giotto and his successors and the impact of their encouragement of lay spirituality upon later groups like the Brethren of the Common Life which aim precisely to integrate the life of prayer more closely into everyday life. The Reformation itself is strongly marked by this goal, which emerges in what I have called the affirmation of ordinary life. A Christian worships God in his everyday existence, in work and family life. None of this is to be considered profane. Now I believe there is a connection between this aspiration, and some of the profound shifts in representation, which one can see in Western painting in these centuries … In the centuries which follow, Renaissance Italian and later Netherlands painting moves out of the orbit of the icon … [and] portrays [Christ, Mary, and the saints] … [as] very much present in our time, as people whom we might meet in our own world … It bespeaks a rather strong In­ carnational spirituality, an attempt to see/imagine Jesus and Mary as having really been among us, hallowing the ordinary contexts of life, in which we also live.32

Still, Taylor thinks that these new forms of spirituality and representation make themselves vulnerable to secularization because they no longer depict the independence of the divine life from our own ordinary experience. For Taylor the ­sacred and divine must be truly transcendent, genuinely other, in order to remain genuinely divine. While he admires such incarnational instincts he also thinks that an incarnational world can too easily become a world without God, an immanent frame characterized by autonomous nature and buffered selves. 31 E. H.

Gombrich, “Paintings on Walls: Means and Ends in the History of Fresco Painting,” in id., The Uses of Images: Studies in the Social Function of Art and Visual Communication (London: Phaidon Press, 2000) 14–47, on p. 29. 32 Taylor, A Secular Age, 144.

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In this painting, transcendence and immanence are together. But it is in the nature of things that as the interest in immanence grows, frequently for its own sake, a tension should arise … The world as so represented comes more and more to be the world as lived, in which spirits, forces and higher times are less and less directly encountered.33

Taylor does indeed recognize that these shifts in piety and theology relate to the deeply incarnational character of Christian life and theology. But surprisingly ­Taylor finds little of the mysterious, uncanny, or mystical in these new forms of devotion and theological reflection, especially as they persist into the modern era. Or better, Taylor seems to think that these new approaches have little or no defense against subsequent efforts to turn “graced nature” into “mere nature” or lay devotion to the cross into human autonomy. Taylor sees a modern world in which even religious devotion has become disembedded from the spiritual world of which it had previously been a part. The Reformation as Reform is central to the story I want to tell – that of the abolition of the enchanted cosmos, and the eventual creation of a humanist alternative to faith … All branches of Reform push toward disenchantment, Protestants in a more radical fashion. This enormously facilitates the collapse of the two spheres into each other, because a great deal of what marked off the “spiritual sphere” was that its members dealt with the sacred, present in concentrated form in certain times, places, persons and actions, in feasts and churches, clergy and sacraments … [These movements of reform held up] an ideal of living non-sacramentally.34

This passage makes clear that transcendence for Taylor requires a separate spiritual sphere, one clearly demarcated from the worldly context within most Christians – both lay and clerical – live their lives. Taylor’s idea of incarnation requires a paradoxical juxtaposition between sacred and mundane, between spiritual and worldly, between transcendence and immanence. This analysis resists  a strong notion of the divine as the mystery of the mundane, the hidden truth of the everyday, or the depth dimension of the ordinary. But it is precisely this conception of divinity as hidden “in, with, and under” the ordinary that defines the very meaning of sacraments for these movements of reform. III.2 Luther’s Reform and Sacramental Realism Taylor’s reading of the thirteenth and fourteenth-century movements of reform is important because he is most concerned to show how the Protestant reformers, especially Luther and Calvin, undermine the entire sacramental system of medieval Catholicism and prepare the way for the “buffered self ” and the “immanent 33 Ibid., 34 Ibid.,

145. 77, 266.

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frame.”35 The charges of being “non-sacramental” and “excarnational” apply primarily to these sixteenth-century figures and only indirectly to their earlier forebears. But, as I hope to show in this section a close look at the theology of Martin Luther gives little or no credence to Taylor’s anti-sacramental accusations. Luther was, of course, an Augustinian friar so there is little doubt that the theology and spirituality of the friars played a crucial role in his own theological development.36 Luther’s devotion to the Scriptures and his pastoral conviction that the Bible should be used to cultivate a Christ-centered spirituality in believers can be traced to the practices he encountered as a member of the Augustinian community. His criticisms of the abuses of the late medieval church resonate deeply with the reforms urged by the mendicant preachers in the fourteenth century. And his sacramental theology and spirituality clearly stand in the line of Franciscan conceptions of Christian devotion to the humanity of Christ. “No, comrade, wherever you place God for me,” Luther wrote, “you must also place the humanity for me.”37 Here you must take your stand and say that wherever Christ is according to his divinity, he is there as a natural, divine person and he is also naturally and personally there, as his conception in his mother’s womb proves conclusively …. Wherever this person is, it is the single, indivisible person, and if you can say, “Here is God,” then you must also say, “Christ the man is present too.” And if you could show me one place where God is and not the man, then the person is already divided and I could at once say truthfully, “Here is God who is not man and has never become man.” But no God like that for me!38

For Luther there is no presence of God that is not also the presence of the human Jesus. For Luther the miracle of the incarnation demands that we reject the division between natural and supernatural in all matters Christological. Thus Christ’s bodily presence in the Eucharist is neither a supernatural event nor a natural symbolic remembrance, but the “real presence” of the still-incarnate though resurrected Christ “in, with, and under” the ordinary elements of bread and wine. For Luther one need not transcend the natural in order to find the supernatural; rather the divine itself is hidden within the mystery of the incarnate Christ. Christ’s presence is mediated through “sacramental realism.” Luther is an advocate of the humble sublime, the humilis et sublimis. Luther’s view of the Eucharist flows directly from his Christology, and his Christology is one of radical incarnation. Luther understands that God’s presence 35 Ibid.,

772: “In all [movements of reform] there lurks a proto-totalitarian temptation. Luther and Calvin were surely right to condemn the theology of spiritual superiority which infected late-medieval monasticism, but they ended up discrediting celibate vocations as such, greatly reducing the range of Christian lives. And their Reformation has helped to produce, via another stage of ‘reform,’ today’s secular world.” 36 See J. Wicks, “Brother Martin: Augustinian Friar,” LuthFor 42 (2008) 33–6. 37 LW 37: 219 (Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper [1528] [= WA 26: 333]). 38 LW 37: 218 (= WA 26: 332).

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is always mediated through particulars – in the incarnation Jesus’ flesh and blood, in the Eucharist the ordinary elements of bread and wine. In addition Luther believes that we experience God’s saving presence in the Eucharist always and only by faith in God’s promises. God is present everywhere in the world, Luther argues, but in the sacraments he is present for us (pro nobis). While God is present in a stone or a leaf that presence is not the gracious saving presence of the one who has promised to be with us and for us in Jesus Christ. What makes God’s presence sacramental and saving is our faith that God’s promises are trustworthy. Jesus’ words in the gospels, “do this in remembrance of me” serve as both command and promise. “Do this as I have commanded and I will always be graciously present for you in Christ’s body and blood, the bread and wine of the communion rite.” Luther’s sacramental understanding of “real presence” draws upon a long tradition of theological conceptions of God’s hiddenness. Like Gregory of Nyssa in The Life of Moses, Luther claims that we can only know God sub contrario, under God’s opposite, for to see God face-to-face is to be overwhelmed by God’s holiness. God graciously allows us to see “God’s backside” (posteriora dei), the “visible and manifest things of God, seen through suffering and the cross.”39 In the ­Eucharist, Luther argues, we experience the genuine presence of Christ in the eating of the ordinary elements of bread and wine. Though Christ has ascended to the right hand of the Father he is nonetheless present, really present as he has promised to be, in these simple earthly elements. Luther vigorously rejects any notion that bread and wine are merely “signs” that symbolize or memorialize the risen and ascended Christ. On the contrary, they [the heretics] should produce Scripture which reads, “This represents my body,” or “This is a sign of my body.” … For even if we put on all the glasses in the world, we would find none of the evangelists writing, “Take, eat; this is a sign of my body,” or “This represents my body.” But what we clearly find without the aid of any glasses, so that even young children can read it, is, “Take eat; this is my body.”40

Thus for Luther Christ’s presence is mediated through simple earthly things like water, words, wine, and bread. The ascended and thus “absent” Christ is present again (re-presented)  through promise, word, and earthly elements in the sacraments. The notion of “sacramental realism,” that Christ’s mediated presence is “hidden” under the ordinary and everyday, is of fundamental significance to the theology and art that emerge from the movements of reform, including those earlier Catholic reforms of the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Thus Charles Taylor is surely wrong when he characterizes these movements as “disenchanted” and “non-sacramental.” Quite the contrary. While the reformist aesthetic eschews any direct depiction of the divine presence, it is deeply sacramental in the way in which 39 LW

31: 52 (Heidelberg Disputation [1518]; thesis 20 [= WA 1: 354]). 37: 33 (That These Words of Christ, ‘This is My Body,’ etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics [1527] [=WA 23: 95]). 40 LW

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it points to the divine always and only “in, with, and under” dimensions of ordinary experience. Luther’s Christology and his Eucharistic theology function therefore to “sacra­ lize” the everyday. For Luther Christ’s humanity, and not just his divinity, truly saves humankind from sin and destruction. In formulating this theology in which flesh and blood, bread and wine, words and water truly save, Luther believes he has provided a theology that has the pastoral power to reassure, console, and comfort those who long for salvation. For the only God whom we can truly love and trust is a God clothed in the familiar, ordinary and everyday. Behold Christ lying in the lap of his young mother, still a virgin. What can be sweeter than the Babe, what more lovely than the mother! … Watch him springing in the lap of the maiden. Laugh with him. Look upon this Lord of Peace and your spirit will be at peace … I would not have you contemplate the deity of Christ, the majesty of Christ, but rather his flesh. Look upon the Baby Jesus. Divinity may terrify man. Inexpressible majesty will crush him. That is why Christ took on our humanity, save for sin, that he should not terrify us but rather that with love and favor he should console and confirm … See how God invites you in many ways. He places before you a baby with whom you may take refuge. You cannot fear him, for nothing is more appealing to man than a babe. Are you affrighted? Then come to him, lying in the lap of the fairest and sweetest maid. You will see how great is the divine goodness, which seeks above all else that you should not despair. Trust him! Trust him! Here is the Child in whom is salvation. To me there is no greater consolation given to mankind than this, that Christ became man, a child, a babe, playing in the lap and at the breasts of his most gracious mother. Who is there whom this sight would not comfort? Now is overcome the power of sin, death, hell, conscience, and guilt, if you come to judge this gurgling Babe and believe that he is come, not to judge you but to save.41

III.3 Luther on Vocation Luther’s incarnational and sacramental theology also yields an ethic of vocation to the neighbor in need. In Luther’s understanding of vocation one sees a continuation of the spirituality of the everyday urged by the mendicant friars. That Christians dedicate their lives in service to the neighbor is the key idea in Luther’s conception of vocation. Because salvation is solely God’s accomplishment – by grace, through faith, for the sake of Christ – our works do not and cannot earn us any merit before the Almighty. Yet works remain a necessary part of the Christian’s life. Works of love are designed not to seek favor with God but rather to serve the neighbor in need. Having been set free by the saving grace of God, all baptized Christians have a responsibility to use their freedom in the service of the neighbor.

41 M. Luther, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book, ed. R. Bainton (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,

1948; reprint: Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg, 1997), 33.

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As works do not make a man a believer, so also they do not make him righteous. But as faith makes a man a believer and righteous, so faith does good works … Therefore he should be guided in all his works by this thought and contemplate this one thing alone, that he may serve and benefit others in all that he does, considering nothing except the need and the advantage of his neighbor … Here faith is truly active through love.42

All baptized Christians  – popes, bishops, priests, princes, burghers and farmers – have an equal responsibility lovingly to serve the neighbor in need. But each is called to serve within his or her own specific situation in life. Luther uses various terms to describe those situations  – order (Ordnung), office (Amt), station (Stand) – but it is within such situations that we are to discern our call or vocation (Beruf). All persons occupy various stations in life; one might simultaneously be an employee, a spouse, a parent, a citizen, a friend. But no matter what one’s situation we are all always in relation to the neighbor in need, and in each situation it is our responsibility to serve that neighbor in love. To take a crude example again: If you are a manual laborer, you find that the Bible has been put into your workshop, into your hand, into your heart. It teaches and preaches how you should treat your neighbor. Just look at your tools – at your needle or thimble, your beer barrel, your goods, your scales or yardstick or measure – and you will read this statement inscribed on them. Everywhere you look, it stares at you. Nothing that you handle every day is so tiny that it does not continually tell you this, if you will only listen. Indeed, there is no shortage of preaching. You have as many preachers as you have transactions, goods, tools, and other equipment in your house and home. All this is continually crying out to you: “Friend, use me in your relations with your neighbor just as you would want your neighbor to use his property in his relations with you.”43

Faith gives to the believer new sight, a new way of looking at the world, a fresh way of seeing everyday objects and ordinary persons in the light of Christ. What was once simply a workbench now becomes a means of serving the neighbor in need. What was once simply a dirty diaper now becomes an invitation to service to one’s child and spouse. Luther could wax particularly eloquent when reminding husbands of their domestic responsibilities. When … our natural reason … takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bit-

42 LW 43 LW

31: 361, 365 (The Freedom of a Christian [1520] [= WA 7: 32/62, 34/64]). 21: 237 (The Sermon on the Mount [pub. 1532]; to Matt 7:12 [= WA 32: 495–6]).

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terness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful, carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.” What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou has created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised.”44

Luther recognizes that ethics always operates within the confines of everyday, ordinary life, and that our life situations and our particular contexts can change dramatically. But the constant, Luther argues, is the necessity to discern the commandment (Befehl) of God within each situation and thereby to discern our calling or vocation (Beruf). Luther understands that it is often difficult to discern what God would have us do in any particular situation, but it is our inescapable responsibility to do just that. Indeed, Luther argues, God hides from us under “masks” so that his will cannot be known simply by following a set of rules or principles. All our work in the field, in the garden, in the city, in the home, in struggle, in government – to what does it all amount before God except child’s play, by means of which God is pleased to give his gifts in the field, at home, and everywhere? These are the masks of our Lord God, behind which he wants to be hidden and to do all things … God bestows all that is good on us, but you must stretch out your hands and take the bull by the horns, i. e. you must work and lend yourself as a means and a mask to God.45

Through his teaching on vocation Luther undermines an entire set of distinctions that are commonplace in both the medieval and modern worlds: sacred and secular, spiritual and temporal, exceptional and ordinary, powerful and weak, honorable and despised. Luther’s “theology of the cross” teaches the revelatio Dei sub contrario specie, i. e. the revelation of God under the appearance of its opposite. God only makes God’s “backside” (posteriora dei) available to us, so we must always look beyond the surface in order to discern where the will of God lies.46 In 44 LW

45: 39–40 (The Estate of Marriage [1522] [= WA 10 II: 295–6]). 31/1: 436,7–19 (Exposition of Psalm 147 [1532]; trans. by author). Gustaf Wingren remarks, “Luther liked to think that the most commonplace matters in the world often contain just such invisible and hidden secrets, where man least expects it. God abides in the deep, and he makes his noblest jewels of ‘nothing’ of that which is poor and rejected.” G. Wingren, Luther on Vocation (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1957), 183. 46 Writing more than 400 years after Luther the German Lutheran theologian, Dietrich Bon­hoeffer expressed similar sentiments in the context of Nazi Germany. “The will of God may lie very deeply concealed beneath a great number of available possibilities. The will of God is not a system of rules 45 WA

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Christ by faith the Christian sees the world with new eyes, as a place where the hidden God dwells within the everyday, ordinary, and commonplace, and especially within those places where the neighbor in need suffers. The ethical responsibility of all the baptized is to discern the will of God in each situation where one encounters the neighbor, knowing that works of love are done not for one’s own benefit but only for the benefit of the one in need. By now I hope to have shown that the movements of reform that emerge within Catholic Christianity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and culminate in the Lutheran reformation are not, as Charles Taylor and others have claimed, “excarnational” and “secular.” Rather they are deeply Christological, incarnational, and sacramental. If we continue to think in simple binaries like divine/human, ­sacred/secular, transcendent/immanent we will miss the important theological inno­vations of the leaders of these movements of reform. The incarnational logic of Christianity resists a simple separation of divine and human, spirit and flesh, sacred and secular by focusing on the deep interpenetration of those apparent opposites. Charles Taylor’s failure to understand that the “divine” is not necessarily “transcendent” but may lay deeply “hidden” behind and within the ordinary blinds him to the “sacramental” elements within the piety, practices, and productions of the late medieval and early modern movements of reform. By depicting the world of ordinary experience through the eyes of Christian faith Luther sought to provide  a “cruciform” lens through which to see and act within the world. For these reformers God’s presence lies hidden “in, with, and under” the ordinary and everyday. God is not “beyond” our everyday lives but rather hidden deeply “within” them. Those who believe that in Christ God has brought life out of death, hope out of sorrow, and love out of cruelty are now called to see the world, the everyday and ordinary, with new eyes, the eyes of faith – and to live lives of hope and love directed to the neighbor in need. To be sure, this view undermines many of the safe distinctions that we have come to rely upon, particularly the distinction between the sacred and the secular, but it seeks to replace those dichotomous categories with integral notions like incarnation and sacrament. In so doing this view seeks to relocate the sacred not beyond but within our everyday experience. Thus the legacy of Martin Luther at the dawn of modernity is not an excarnational, non-sacramental secularity but a deeply incarnational “sacramental realism.”

which is established from the outset; it is something new and different in each different situation in life, and for this reason [we] must ever anew examine what the will of God may be.” D. Bon­hoeffer, Ethics, ed. E. Bethge (The Library of Philosophy and Theology; New York: Macmillan, 1955), 161.

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Zusammenfassung Sacramentaler Realismus Luther in der Dämmerung der Modernität Dieser Aufsatz liefert einen kritischen Blick auf Charles Taylors A Secular Age. Taylor behauptet, dass die protestantische Reformation für eine nicht-sakramentale weltliche Askese sprach, die zur „Entzauberung“ der Moderne beigetragen habe. Luthers Lehre von der Menschwerdung und der Sakramente jedoch sowie seine Theorie der Berufung führten zur Entwicklung eines deutlich lutherischen sozialen Imaginären (social imaginary), die den Alltag und das Gewöhnliche als Instrumente der göttlichen Gnade und Zwecke betrachtet. Die Reformen der Laienfrömmigkeit und Kunst im dreizehnten und vierzehnten Jahrhundert bekunden eine spirituelle Vielfalt, die in Luthers Theologie gipfelte und bis in die Neuzeit weiterlebte. Luther erkennt durch seine Theologie des Kreuzes die Formen der göttlichen Gegenwart als Vergebung und Trost. Jesus am Kreuz ist die göttliche Gegenwart „unter dem Gegenteil“ (sub contrario) der göttlichen Herrlichkeit, während Christus sakramental gegenwärtig „in, mit und unter“ den üblichen Elementen von Brot und Wein ist. Gott verleiht menschlichen Zweck mit einer Berufung, die eine Implikation, aber keine Bedingung für das Heil ist. Die Augen des Glaubens sehen die gewöhnlichen sozialen Rollen von Mutter, Prinz, Bauer und Wirt oder von anderen Rollen als Instrumente im Dienste der Nächsten. Luthers Theologie des Alltags und seine Ethik des Gewöhnlichen sind als das „demütige ‚Erhabene‘“ (humble sublime) ein leistungsstarker Beitrag, der den zeitgenössischen Theorien der Moderne entgegentritt.

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Luther, History, and the Concept of Religion I. Contested History Luther scholarship has reached the consensus in recent years that the Reformer’s thought is far more indebted to medieval philosophy and Catholic theology than had been imagined. At the same time, Luther remains popularly associated directly with modernity. Much care has been taken among Luther scholars to make sure that Luther is not too quickly identified with the modern temper – he was Catholic, not Protestant, and advocated reform, not the rejection of the late medieval Catholic Church; he was a metaphysician and promoted disputation as a genre of education at the University of Wittenberg, where he recited pages of William of Ockham verbatim from memory. Yet all this historical work – in the name of critical scholarship and ecumenical rapprochement – has not convinced the broader discussion concerning Luther’s place in history. No longer  a medieval Catholic, Luther remains a Protestant modern, or at least Protestant modernity’s inspired prophet, heralding the modern turn to the subject, to freedom, and to the public space. The contemporary discussion I am referring to is re-telling the story of modernity. The question at stake is what it means to be modern in view of a western development of critical reason, which entails explaining how and when critical reason succeeded in distinguishing between sacred sanctuary and secular public space, between a medieval self surrounded by magic and the supernatural, on the one hand, and modern subjectivity insulated against superstition by a disenchanted ontology, on the other. The overarching narrative is one of secularization, and the current discussion continues to assign responsibility for this development to the Protestant Reformation. This is not  a new position, of course. German Lutheran philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, already at the beginning of the nineteenth century advanced the claim that Luther’s gospel of freedom spelled the start of the modern West.1 While Luther’s primary theological concern was to proclaim the freedom of the Christian in an “inner” sense, Hegel’s argument went, the self ’s new in 1 For

Hegel on the Protestant reformation as the origin of modernity, see the relevant citations in P. C. Hodgson, “Luther and Freedom,” in C. Helmer (ed.), The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009) 32–48, on pp. 33–4.

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ner freedom would also require expression in its external relations. The freedom acquired by the gift of faith and determinative of new subjectivity meant freedom from both self and neighbor in the sense of mutual dependencies, and consequentially freedom for service of the neighbor in love. Inner freedom is spontaneously, necessarily, and inevitably evident in works of love that put the neighbor, not the self, at the center of one’s world. Luther’s Freedom of a Christian (1520) treatise was thus read as the manifesto for the modern autonomous self necessarily correlated with freedom in social and political relations. The emergence of this popular image of Luther as harbinger of modernity in western consciousness may be traced to a distinct moment of Luther scholarship that dovetailed with the emergence of the question of modernity. This was the early twentieth century Lutherrenaissance. Participants in this scholarly discussion included Rudolf Otto and Max Weber, Karl Holl and Ernst Troeltsch, who were concerned with identifying modernity’s characteristics in view of criteria of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Engaging with the newly forming academic disciplines of sociology, religious studies, economics, and anthropology, these theologians and philosophers of culture centered their principal concerns on Martin Luther. How did Luther’s biography, they asked, capture the essential elements for the construction of the modern self in society? The fascination with Luther’s religious biography correlated with the interest in assigning to the Protestant reformation the status of the origin of modernity. With Luther, the argument went, modernity had finally emerged from the Catholic middle ages.2 The Lutherrenaissance’s discussion of the modern narrative was preoccupied with discerning religious novelty to a key moment in western development, a discussion that was not without an ideological interest in promoting a Germanic Luther. The religious freedom of and for modernity, not the freedom from religion, characterized the discussion that took place at this time. Freedom had a religious and ethical orientation; its shaping of the modern temper was not secular, but religious. The Lutherrenaissance’s account of modernity offers an alternative to the secularization theory invoked today. It indicates how consideration of Luther’s religion might break up facile opposition between sacred and secular that informed later mid-twentieth century claims of secularized modernity. Luther’s role in complicating modernity is relevant again today. Luther’s concern with the “everyday,” as Ronald F. Thiemann points out in his article in this volume, complicates both the description of the spiritual lay reform that flourished prior to the Reformation and the flat reduction of the modern self to the Calvinist ascetic. Luther inherited the spiritual forms of lay piety and mediated them to his contemporaries in his theology of the “ordinary.” The divine presence, actively forgiving in sacramental real 2 Troeltsch

differed from Otto on this assessment of Luther. Troeltsch assigned Luther to the medieval mindset, while Otto considered Luther at the origins of modernity. See Holl’s summary of this debate in K. Holl, What Did Luther Understand by Religion?, ed. J. L. Adams/W. F. Bense (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977 [= GA I: 1–110]), 109–10 n. 79 (= GA I: 109–10).

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ity and the divine ordination of worldly vocation inform an alternate reformation view of divine-human relationship. Grace and vocation characterize the spiritually attuned life of the neighbor-oriented Lutheran, who works for the good of the neighbor because she is already set free from the self through Christ.3 Philosopher Michael Gillespie analyzes the cultural and philosophical nominalism that informed both Luther and the modern temper. Gillespie argues in The Theological Origins of Modernity that the unstable tension in nominalist thought between divine and human freedom remains unresolved as the motor driving modernity’s history.4 The theological issue of human freedom is related to the development of modern reason in divergent strands of empirical, rational, and critical reason, while the emphasis on divine voluntarism leads to an unpredictable divine-world relationship that requires theological work to understand. Modernity, as Gillespie argues, is driven by  a unique theological and philosophical problem that emerges before Luther and endures in diverse articulations through European Romanticism. Gillespie, Thiemann, and others take religion and theological reason as constitutive of, rather than in opposition to modernity. Their work is noteworthy for situating Luther as their historical point of departure. As in the Lutherrenaissance, Luther is again indispensable for periodizing the history of the West, uneasily perched as he was between late-medieval nominalism and early modernism, not at ease in either period, so that his personal biography, religious struggles, and conceptual shifts are taken as an epoch-making phenomenon. Yet one more aspect of this reappropriation requires mentioning before I turn to Luther’s theology for the purpose of constructing not a history of the West, but a new concept of religion. In his recent book, The Unintended Reformation, Brad Gregory offers a history of modernity with an explicit twist. Modernity, in contrast to medieval Christendom, Gregory avers, is characterized by pluralism, difference, individuality, and freedom. The old order of a Catholic synthesis between faith and reason is lost in modernity; the church has been called to account before the tribunal of reason and secularism mounts an assault on traditional religious belief and practice.5 The villain in Gregory’s story is Luther. Although he did not intend the provocative consequences of his reformation of Catholic theology and liturgy nor foresee the splintering of the West into political and ecclesial fragments, Luther irredeemably opened Pandora’s box of religious pluralism and social-political secularism. 3 R. F.

Thiemann, “Sacramental Realism: Luther at the Dawn of Modernity,” ch. 9 in this volume. M. A. Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 272: “The underlying assumption of the secularization thesis is that god does not exist and that religion is merely a human construction … Rather than enter into this fruitless debate, I want to explore a different possibility. The argument presented in the first half of this chapter suggests that the apparent rejection or disappearance of religion and theology in fact conceals the continuing relevance of theological issues and commitments for the modern age.” 5 B. S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How  a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012). 4

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Gregory’s book is of interest in this contemporary proliferation of histories of modernity both because it is an example of Catholic neo-romanticism,  a longing for a by-gone Catholic medieval synthesis, and because it deploys a historiography that construes and assumes a fundamental disjunction between the medieval period “as a whole” and modernity “as a whole.” The power of this vision is striking, especially given the last decades in medieval studies, which have deconstructed the myth of a Catholic harmonious synthesis. We know now that medieval Catholicism was far more plural than had been assumed. A uniform normative Catholicity is more plausibly attributed to Trent at the cusp of modernity rather than read anachronistically back into high scholasticism. Furthermore, historians of early modernism have taken great scholarly pains to show that the medieval to modern development is not one of an Archimedean discovery or a Cartesian novelty. Rather, continuity and discontinuity are inextricably bound together braided in complicated and locally particular ways. So historiography of Gregory’s “unintended” reformation should give some pause for reflecting its underlying question and assumptions. Does Gregory’s study offer  a history of religious ideas that correlates with historical events and developments in society, culture, and politics? Or is the aim of his study to uncover the error at the foundations of modernity, perhaps with the goal of redirecting the trajectory in a very different direction? Is the aim of Gregory’s book to bypass modernity’s historical developments and return to a by-gone medieval Catholic period? Gregory’s historical survey of modernity is driven by genealogical interest. His account is not a history of ideas, but a prescription that requires the conceptual disjunction between medieval and modern periods for the genealogical (rather than critical) purpose of valorizing the medieval and denigrating modernity. The conceptual force of Gregory’s story rests in the prescription of a detour around an “unintended” modernity and the appropriation of the world of medieval Catholicism. Methodologically Gregory’s account abdicates the con­ temporary struggle with the problems of a historically real, albeit contingent, modernity, as it re-writes the history of modernity as a choice between two historical options. This comes with the prescription of the true alternative of a bygone era as a historically viable option for today. Gregory pits prescription against historical development, a choice between a construct of the past and a history of the past. The issue at stake in specifically religious values allegedly constitutive of a historical period is that they can further be simply appropriated in another day and age. The approach to history is selective by flattening the diversity of the past into a single monolithic construction that is informed by values imported into it from the present. Its crux is a concept that makes the confrontation between two historical periods a choice in the present. It also presupposes the concept of religion as worldview. The religious history characterized by scholars of the Lutherrenaissance points to an alternative genealogy of modernity that makes use of a concept of religion not as worldview but as a function of history. The concept of religion is deployed to

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unearth the suspicious foundations upon which history has allegedly proceeded. The reality of history as contingent development is pitted against the historical choice to appropriate the past in the present. History cannot be transformed into the construction of a choice that is indifferent to its historical location. The history of religion proceeds in  a way that differs in order of kind from the genealogical unmasking of  a concept that has erroneously informed the entire series that follows. Gregory’s methodology reflects a common contemporary Christian theological position that I have referred to as the “epistemic advantage model” of theology.6 According to this specific theological understanding, religion functions as a world­ view, access to which is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Once entrance is gained, adherents gain competence in the specific discourse that has shaped the worldview, learning the rules that govern the production of discourse, and they see their entire world through the discursive lens that they have been given and they have learned. Language, not reality, is primary. The concept, not history, constitutes the real. Religion becomes a matter of competing worldviews. What has changed since the Lutherrenaissance’s preoccupation with history and contemporary theology’s advocacy of religion as a worldview? Although the tracking of this historical development is beyond the scope of this essay, an analysis of the relation between theology and religion can show just how the development of theology mutually depends on the development of the concept of religion. I now turn to the thought of twentieth-century American theologian George Lindbeck in order to demonstrate that his understanding of theology as it developed with specific ecumenical interests in the 1970s is explicitly informed by a concept of religion that was proposed by cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Lindbeck appropriated Geertz’s understanding of religion as the intimate relation between a coherent matrix of religious signs and symbols and the function they exert on human meaning-making capacities.

II. Ecumenical Underpinnings When George Lindbeck published The Nature of Doctrine in 1984 he could not have anticipated the impact his book would have on an entire generation of theologians.7 The son of a Lutheran missionary in Shanghai, a Protestant observer to the Second Vatican Council, and a Lutheran historical theologian with training in medieval theology, Lindbeck had been frustrated with the theological paradigm of the ecumenism of his day. The ecumenical model characteristic of the 1950s was 6 See

my Theology and the End of Doctrine (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2014). G. A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in  a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984 [reprint as 25th Anniversary Edition; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2009]). Citations in this essay are taken from the 1984 edition. 7

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the search for a doctrinal Grunddifferenz, a fundamental difference between Lutheran and Roman Catholic Churches that could be isolated, analyzed, and then overcome.8 The search for the Grunddifferenz was, of course,  a legacy of nineteenth-century German typologies of religion that culminated in the evaluation of Protestant Christianity as the apex of religious development. In Schleiermacher’s typology of religious development, for example, the distinguishing feature between Protestant and Roman Catholic theological orientations was the relation of believer to Christ. In a Protestant conception, the relation was immediate; in a Roman Catholic conception, the Church was the necessary mediator.9 The incipient Protestant bias towards the doctrine of justification and its accompanying Pauline concept of freedom skewed the typology in favor of Protestant superiority. Lindbeck saw  a major difficulty with the Grunddifferenz search. The Grunddifferenz model assumed that linguistic propositions, or doctrines, referred univocally to objects in the relations stipulated by the proposition. The ecumenical-theological privileging of this model proved to end consistently in an impasse because, as Lindbeck claims, “the problem is not with the reality but with the comprehensibility of this strange combination of constancy and change, unity and diversity.”10 A proposition was deemed to be authoritative transhistorically, regardless of historical, cultural, and linguistic differences. Either full agreement or capitulation to the doctrine in question are the only two options. “Thus, on this view, doctrinal reconciliation without capitulation is impossible because there is no significant sense in which the meaning of doctrine can change while remaining the same.”11 The search for  a propositional Grunddifferenz must necessarily result in claiming truth for one side of the ecumenical discussants and falsity for the other side. Lindbeck’s ecumenical proposal consisted instead of envisioning a theological model that regarded religion as a “cultural-linguistic system.” The significance of this proposal for the ecumenical rapprochement between at least Lutherans and Roman Catholics cannot be underestimated. The model permitted Lutherans to understand that Roman Catholic theology was not predicated on a works-righteousness model and that justification along with scriptural authority functioned normatively in Catholic theology. In turn it allowed Roman Catholic theologians to understand that a Lutheran doctrine of justification systematically presupposed an Augustinian doctrine of sin and that it advocated Christological and Trinitar 8 See Robert Jenson’s analysis of the “basic flaw” in this search for the Grunddifferenz in R. Jenson, Unbaptized God: The Basic Flaw in Ecumenical Theology (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1992). 9 F. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh/J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), § 24; for a detailed study of Schleiermacher’s anti-Catholicism see J. A. Lamm, “Schleiermacher on ‘The Roman Church’: Anti-Catholic Polemics, Ideology, and the Future of Historical-Empirical Dogmatics,” in B. W. Sockness/W. Gräb (eds.), Schleiermacher, the Study of Religion, and the Future of Theology: A Transatlantic Dialogue (TBT 148: Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2010) 243–56. 10 Lindbeck, Doctrine, 15. 11 Ibid., 17. 

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ian agency, as well as stipulating ethical norms for believers. The result was the signing of the “Joint Declaration on Justification” between the Lutheran World Federation and Roman Catholic Church, represented by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in Augsburg in 1999. Both churches deemed justification in Lindbeck’s terminology as “doctrinal reconciliation without capitulation,” thereby mutually acknowledging that in spite of differences, justification was the central content of the Christian religion and that Christ was the agent of salvation.12 While Lindbeck’s ecumenical vision was concretely realized in 1999, the impact of his theological model reached far beyond the bounds of ecumenical theology. The “cultural-linguist model,” as Lindbeck termed it, was taken up by theologians in North America and Europe concerned with the demise of doctrinal normativity in an age of secularization. The pressing question for which Lindbeck’s model served as answer was how Christian identity could be maintained amid a cultural pluralism that was predicated on secular foundations of modernity. The presupposition was a culture that had transformed Christ in the process of translating the goods of Christianity into cultural idioms. Theologians who were committed to scriptural and doctrinal truth saw in Lindbeck’s model a way to recover a Christianity that had not relinquished its goods to modern culture. Lindbeck gave an “unapologetic” defense of the Christian tradition and provided the conceptual means to see doctrine in terms of a “rule theory” regulating Christian discourse. The primary source for Lindbeck’s “cultural-linguist” model of doctrine was, however, not a sacred text. His inspiration was cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz.

III. Theological Slippages The relation between theology and religion is as old as Plato’s Republic at least. Ever since theology came to be regarded as the discipline describing and analyzing religion as its subject matter, theology has taken on the conceptual task of assigning stability to the concept of religion for the purpose of scholarly work. Without a stable concept, the phenomenon of religion cannot be discerned, investigated and compared. From its origins in Greek antiquity, theology as a conceptual discipline has taken on the task of articulating a concept of religion in order that the reality of religion can come more clearly into view. Theologians had come a long way from their reformation inheritances of distinguishing between true and false religion by  a Christological criterion. In the eighteenth century Protestant Orthodoxy set up a distinction between general and special revelation in religion, thereby more carefully and less pejoratively distinguishing between Judaism, Christianity, and other religions. The legacy of Protestant Orthodoxy would then become the backbone of early nineteenth-century 12 Ibid.,

18; The Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000).

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typologies of religion. Schelling distinguished between philosophies of mythology and philosophies of revelation. Hegel wove a typology of religion into a historical system: world history was the necessary unfolding of Geist, as articulated in his concept of religion. It would, however, be the psychological and transcendental concept of religion that Friedrich Schleiermacher developed for his 1820 Christian Faith and 1822 Dialectic that proved workable for the later orientation of the study of religion to empirical study. Schleiermacher’s concept of religion has influenced, as Jörg Dierken has recently shown,13 some of the major trends in the early twentieth-century study of religion, among them Durkheim’s sociology of religion, Freud and James’s psychology of religion, the typology of religious feeling as in Rudolf Otto’s work, and the neo-Kantian reception of Schleiermacher’s thought in the history of religions school. Given the legacy of theologians constructing concepts of religion that would prove viable for theological study and possibly for the comparative study of religion, as is the case with Otto, it should not come as a surprise that George Lindbeck sought to articulate  a theological concept of religion that would facilitate ecumenical rapprochement. Again, he found his inspiration in the cultural anthropology of C ­ lifford Geertz. Although Lindbeck’s reception of Geertz was additionally influenced by philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle (who himself is given primary citation in Geertz’s Interpretation of Cultures with the famous example about the “wink”14), it was Geertz’s theory of religion that figured prominently in The Nature of Doctrine. Lindbeck wrote, in a full Geertzian mode, “Stated more technically, a religion can be viewed as a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought.”15 Yet the move from culture to religion, from Geertz to Lindbeck, is one that requires close analysis. When Geertz adapted his theory of culture to religion, he identified specific concepts that figured significantly in his account of religion. When Lindbeck appropriated Geertz’s thoughts, on the other hand, these concepts can be seen to have a distinct “slippage,” thereby shaping the way in which Lindbeck orients Geertz’s account of religion into a linguistically privileged doctrinal paradigm. I identify three slippages, each contributing to Lindbeck’s Lutheran understanding of religion as a worldview. Geertz’s own concept of religion is an adaptation of his overarching theory of culture. In his 1973 collection of articles entitled The Interpretation of Cultures that Lindbeck draws upon, Geertz writes that culture is “a system of inherited con­ ceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life.”16 The key 13 See his article “Transcendental Theories of Religion: Then and Now,” in Sockness/Gräb, Schleier-

macher, 165–78. 14 C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books Classics; New York: Basic Books, 1973), 6–7. 15 Lindbeck, Doctrine, 33. 16 Geertz, Interpretation, 89.

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term “system” that defines culture should not be taken in the sense of a linguistically-articulated series of propositions, as Lindbeck accurately points out, but as an implicit psychological and cosmological framework that functions epistemologically as a coherent conceptuality giving meaning to life and thought. As such, the framework is not private, but shared. Geertz notes that the cultural system precedes the individual; it is inherited, both inchoately as presupposed and as articulated in already available symbolic forms. Geertz here draws on the phenomenological tradition that defines the self in deep connection with one’s environment in ways that precede the subject-object distinction of discursive reason. An individual exists in his thrownness (Geworfenheit, to use Heidegger’s terminology) in a world that precedes him and others together with him. Communication in symbolic form also precedes individuality. Symbolic communication – which is not restricted to language but can include ritual, gesture, and bodily expressions  – is likewise  a trope Geertz borrowed from phenomenology. For Heidegger and Bultmann, the key distinction between two types of language is instrumental and symbolic. Instrumental language is referential language to items that are used in the world. This is language used as a means to an end. Symbolic expression presupposes a deeper ontological connection between person and environment that is communicated through the subject-object distinction presupposed by discursive forms, but resists participation in this particular distinction. Symbolic communication puts into expression the particular subjective orientation to an environment, to a world, in total to culture. The central clue exposing Geertz’s commitment to symbolic communication that resists the subject-object distinction is his reference to “moods and motivations.” Moods and motivations are the primary ways of a self ’s being-in-the-world. The appeal to moods and motivations as preceding subject-object instrumentality, as the phenomenological tradition would have it, orients subjectivity in a totality of a world. Thus for Geertz, moods and motivations are primary orientations of subjectivity in the world, with the difference being that “moods are ‘made meaningful’ with reference to the conditions from which they are conceived to spring” and “motivations are ‘made meaningful’ with reference to the ends towards which they are conceived to conduce.”17 Both moods and motivations are pre-linguistic in the sense that they establish subjectivity in intimate connection with environment and require antecedent and subsequent symbolic articulation and communication. They capture in non-instrumental forms the particular fundamental orientations of subjectivity to one’s environment, articulating ontological structures of subjectivity that relate to cosmological views. Moods and motivations, not linguistic constructions, are captured symbolically that in turn function to construct and shape subjectivity in its orientations to the world at its ontological level. Geertz extends this theory of culture into religion, attuned particularly to both the subjectivity and cosmological aspects of religion. “Religion cannot be treated 17 Ibid.,

97.

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as a formalizable symbolic system … by isolating its elements,” but is an area of life that has the cultural power to create meaning in the everyday as that meaning is relevant to a social group. Meaning in religion is particularly generated in relation to the metaphysical dimension of religious symbols that “tunes human actions to an envisaged cosmic order and projects images of cosmic order onto the plane of human experience.”18 Meaning has a transcendent dimension that orients subjectivity to the more than the everyday. One can see this in everyday questions concerning aspects of life that elude explanation. Metaphysics lures in the search to understand that which exhausts the capacity of human rational control. Why is there existence rather than nothing? What is death? Why does evil persist in God’s good creation? Subjectivity and metaphysics, self, world and God, are intimately related in Geertz’s adaption of his theory of culture to the religious aspect of life. The first slippage that occurs when Lindbeck adapts Geertz’s theory of religion for an ecumenically relevant concept of religion is especially consequential for the “religion as worldview” theory. This significant slippage emerges from Lindbeck’s strategy of amplifying Geertz’s theory of culture to an all-encompassing religious framework. This is explicit in chapter 6, “Towards a Postliberal Theology.” Whereas in earlier chapters of The Nature of Doctrine Lindbeck had suggested that religion functions like culture in the way Geertz describes, it was not immediately clear that religion can have an all-encompassing and culturally coherent function. This dimension is made explicit when Lindbeck turns to the discussion of meaning. Meaning is more fully intratextual in semiotic systems … than in other forms of ruled human behavior such as carpentry or transportation systems; but among semiotic systems, intertextuality (though still in an extended sense) is greatest in natural languages, cultures, and religions which (unlike mathematics) are potentially all-embracing and possess the property of reflexivity.19

It is at this point of meaning-making that Lindbeck invokes an extended dis­ cussion of system and of how religion can function as a system. In view of their comprehensiveness, reflexivity, and complexity, religions require what Clifford Geertz, borrowing a term from Gilbert Ryle, has called “thick description,” and which he applies to culture, but with the understanding that it also holds for religion.20

In the subsequent paragraph it becomes apparent that for Lindbeck Geertz’s t­ heory of culture is appropriated for religion as an all-encompassing system. In quoting Geertz on culture as a context, Lindbeck slips in “[including religion]” in square parentheses, with the upshot in the concluding words, “It is rather the full range of the interpretive medium which needs to be exhibited, and because this range 18 Ibid.,

90.

20 Ibid.,

115.

19 Lindbeck,

Doctrine, 114.

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in the case of religion is potentially all-encompassing, description has a creative aspect.”21 Where in earlier chapters Lindbeck assents to Geertz’s more limited understanding of culture in its function of constructing subjectivities, in the later chapters he resorts to equivocating culture and religion, and amplifying religion as an all-encompassing context in which meaning is immanent. Religion has become a worldview. Yet in Lindbeck’s account religion as worldview is characterized by a distinct attribute that would be quite foreign to Geertz. A second slippage occurs at this point. In Geertz’s understanding of culture, symbolic communication as constitutive of subjectivity and metaphysics plays primarily with moods and motivations. In Lindbeck’s chapters, the terms he chooses to describe language are distinctly cognitive and linguistic – they are, in short, Lutheran. A religion is above all an external word, a verbum externum, that molds and shapes the self and its world … The verbum internum (traditionally equated by Christians with the action of the Holy Spirit) is also crucially important, but it would be understood in a theological use of the model as a capacity for hearing and accepting the true religion, the true external word, rather than (as experiential-expressivism would have it), as  a common experience diversely articulated in different religions.22

The chapter on “Many Religions and One True Faith” (4) explicitly uses the L ­ utheran phrase fides ex auditu in the context of how saving faith is communicated: “that when the fides ex auditu is emphasized, then explicit faith is understood, not as expressing or articulating the existential depths, but rather as producing and forming them.”23 The idiosyncratic element that Lindbeck adds to Geertz’s understanding of culture is Luther’s idea of the verbum externum. Lindbeck slips the “external word” into the concept of religion as semiotic system. The implication of this move is that Geertz’s symbols are now taken as the preaching of the gospel, specifically Luther’s word of the gospel that declares the sinner’s justification is now taken as the Christian discourse shaping the religious worldview. The third slippage that moves Geertz’s culture into a Lutheran theological concept of religion is the function Lindbeck assigns to the verbum externum. Rather than a kerygma preached in a Sunday sermon, the verbum becomes the explicit language that constitutes the all-encompassing system of religion. Meaning is thoroughly immanent within the system. Any articulation of meaning-making occurs within the frame provided by the verbum externum. It is at this juncture that the function of the Christian biblical canon is made explicit as constitutive of the Christian worldview. The account of the transhistorical persistence of religion is made in terms of language of a distinct sort.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid., 23 Ibid.,

34. 60.

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This helps explain why purely customary religions and cultures readily dissolve under the pressure of historical, social, and linguistic change, but it also suggests that canonical texts are a condition, not only for the survival of religion but for the very possibility of normative theological description.24

The paradigmatic case of canonical texts with transhistorical capacity to constitute a worldview is privileged as the verbum externum. As Lindbeck writes, “We need now to speak in more detail of how to interpret a text in terms of its immanent meanings – that is, in terms of the meanings immanent in the religious language of whose use the text is a paradigmatic instance.”25 He then makes another definitive move: The same considerations apply even more forcefully to the preeminently authoritative texts that are the canonical writings of religious communities. For those who are steeped in them, no world is more real than the ones they create. A scriptural world is thus able to absorb the universe.26

We have come a long way from Geertz’s understanding of culture and the semiotic system that frames meaning to Lindbeck’s understanding of religion as an allencom­passing worldview that is constituted by the linguistic primacy of the verbum externum, whose meaning is determined by the scriptural canon. The result of the move from cultural anthropology to theology is that the linguistic level of the Christian canon is equivocated with Christianity as a worldview. All meaning is sought in its immanence within the system, while intertextuality becomes the appropriate hermeneutical method for describing and constructing meaning. “Scripture creates its own domain of meaning and that the task of interpretation is to extend this over the whole of reality.”27 Nothing less is offered here than a ­Lutheran worldview.

IV. Epistemic Primacy Where Lindbeck allows the Bible to construct Christianity as  a worldview, his student, Bruce Marshall, takes the religion as worldview concept in a radical “epistemic” direction. The language of “epistemic primacy” is Marshall’s. In his book Trinity and Truth, Marshall looks specifically at the “church’s narrative identification of Jesus, and with him of the triune God,” rather than at biblical texts, in order to argue that the specific creedal documents function to render the Christian worldview. Marshall explicitly appeals to their “primacy” in shaping the entirety of Christian discourse because they adhere to the coherence principle that funds 24 Ibid.,

116. 115. 26 Ibid., 117. 27 Ibid., 117. 25 Ibid.,

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their truth: In Jesus “all things [beliefs] … hold together.”28 Creedal claims acquire their coherence because of the single subject matter, “Jesus.” Once the Christological coherence principle is in place, then creedal claims that cohere become the ways in which all other beliefs about the world are ordered. Marshall argues that the creeds function to orient all belief and action into a coherent religious world­ view. As he writes, “Ordering all of our beliefs around the gospel of Christ requires a massive reversal of our settled epistemic habits and inclinations, of our usual ways of deciding what is true.”29 What is intriguing about Marshall’s position is that the concept of religion as a worldview is taken as uncontroversial and applied to underline the normativity of Christian creeds as constitutive for the contemporary church. The idea that religion is a worldview has seeped into the discussion about modernity on Luther’s own terms of the “external word.” Luther’s word has been translated into the linguistic practices shaping a worldview. This skews the terms of the modernity discussion into a binary opposition between liberal modernity and medieval/contemporary Christendom. When once his theology caused scandal, Luther’s theology now nails down the dogmatic coffin. The epistemic service of a religious worldview is for Marshall a coherent structuring principle for thought and action. A religious practitioner is seen as someone who is well-versed in the particular language that deploys a linguistically coherent worldview. Yet entrance into that particular “world” is ascribed theologically to God, to the third person of the Trinity to be exact. The Holy Spirit is the divine person who facilitates the move from a prior worldview to a Christian worldview. Marshall explicitly appeals to the Spirit as the Trinitarian person responsible for effecting a dramatic conversion. In his words, “Only the Holy Spirit is up to the epistemic effort involved.”30 To the Spirit is assigned the epistemic role of conversion from one worldview to another, while the conversion from one linguistic paradigm to another is secured theologically by the fact that the Spirit is the divine person who “speaks.” The Spirit, as the Creed records, “has spoken through the prophets.” Furthermore, the Spirit also takes on the role of revealing the Christological and Trinitarian claims in such a way that they function epistemically in the new world­ view to which the Christian has been converted. The epistemic primacy of revealed dogmatic propositions structures and orients the myriad possibilities in the concrete language of faith toward unifying coherence. Rather than circulating the fresh air of freedom in Christ, the Holy Spirit guarantees doctrinal normativity. The contemporary North American theological use of Geertz ends up with a theological concept of religion as a Christian worldview, constituted by the canon as is the case with Lindbeck, and structured epistemically by creedal formulations 28

B. D. Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 117, 118. 29 Ibid., 124. 30 Ibid.

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as is the case with Marshall. Marshall’s epistemic interest is captured by his invocation of the Spirit as agent of conversion. Once inside, all meaning is immanent within the coherent system. Theology is assigned the task of analyzing the constitutive grammar of the particular worldview on the terms stipulated by the epistemic shift. Intra-mural description of received creedal formulas, not the production of doctrinal knowledge, is theology’s role.31 The theological translation of Geertz’s anthropology is ironic for a number of reasons. Geertz’s model is a contribution to ethnographic method. Geertz recommends that the ethnographer acquire a disposition of attunement to the other. The ethnographer tracks back and forth between two cultures in an effort to provide a “thick description” of the relations between symbol and mood, between idea and practice, between individual and community. The epistemic advantage model has translated the bilingual ethnographer into an insular theologian who authorizes the normative claims that he is describing. Even God is rendered a function of the theologian’s worldview, determined exclusively by the words of Bible and creeds. Second, the merging of theology’s task with epistemic interests has, in my estimation, led to the increasing marginalization of theology from a plurality of conversation partners. The epistemic advantage model ironically cuts itself off from rich possibilities presented by others and simultaneously denies the possibility of contributing to broader conversations. Only conversion from one model to the Christian worldview secures the coherence required in order to maintain a self in one world. Once cultural and academic idioms are “absorbed” into the Christian worldview, there is no point in conversing with the other as other. Difference must be reduced to sameness in order for a common conversation to occur at all. Third, the contemporary theological problem with pluralism seems to be  a ­direct consequence of the theological cooption (including slippage)  of the concept of religion as a worldview. The problem occurs when this concept of religion is mapped historically onto the West so that different worldviews become periodized throughout Western history. In terms that are predominant among theologians today, the medieval period is constructed as a monolithic worldview pitted against the modern worldview of liberal Enlightenment. When these two concepts are mapped onto narratives of the West, they inform a rupture that divides medieval from modern. The division is then taken to support the “medieval” view that is preferred over the modern liberal view. The criterion for the alleged historical division has to do with the coherence of belief principle invoked by Marshall. Coherence as a function of creeds that have epistemic primacy in a Christian worldview is pitted against modernity’s pluralism that threatens coherence, secularization that erodes traditional belief, and translation into cultural idioms that undermine biblical truth. The dominant position in contemporary theology is clear: theology must resist the effects of modernity by reclaiming faithfulness through conversion to the medieval worldview. 31 For a

detailed treatment of this argument, see my Theology and the End of Doctrine.

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V. Lutherrenaissance Today The challenge of the Lutherrenaissance of the past was the historicist turn. The challenge confronted by the Lutherrenaissance of the present is the disparagement of modernity and the erosion of the public space in the name of religion’s resurgence. The gods who have been banned have returned with a vengeance.32 The original Lutherrenaissance engaged its historical context with a creative interest in Luther’s religion, the religion that Luther inherited and changed. Given the contemporary theological context that resists creatively addressing modernity, the Lutherrenaissance today should forge a path in this direction and take a critical look at the theology of religion that haunts the theological problematization of modernity. Together with historians of the reformation and scholars of religious studies, Lutheran theologians should be interested in religion today, in order to work out concepts of religion that do justice to subjectivity and cosmology, while also taking into account that religion has many ways of being in the world.

Zusammenfassung Luther, Geschichte, und der Begriff von Religion Dieser Aufsatz untersucht, wie die ursprüngliche Lutherrenaissance zu einer Kritik an dem heutigen dominanten „Modell des epistemischen Vorteils“ in der Theologie anregen kann. Die Frage ist eine historische; sie betrifft die Periodisierung der westlichen Geschichte in Mittelalter und Moderne, die auf einer Auslegung der Theologie Martin Luthers basiert. Steht Luther am Ursprung der Moderne, wie viele Wissenschaftler der Lutherrenaissance behaupten, oder repräsentiert er eine Theologie, die auf dem verbum externum aufbaut, wie der zeitgenössische nordamerikanische lutherische Theologe George A. Lindbeck behauptet? Lindbeck schließt sich dabei dem Religionskonzept des Kulturanthropologen Clifford Geertz an. Von daher entwickelt er ein ökumenisch-theologisches Modell, das die Religion als ein diskursiv konstruiertes Weltbild definiert. Die lutherische Trope wird als spezifische „Überschreitung“ zwischen Geertz’ Verständnis von Religion und Lindbecks Verständnis der Lehre als „Grammatik“ des religiösen Weltbilds analysiert. Diese spezifische Trope wird dann verwendet, um die angeblichen „historischen“ Ansprüche der modernen Geschichten vom westlichen Christentum als eine konzeptionelle Präferenz für ein katholisches und mittelalterliches Weltbild zu entlarven. Eine solche Vorliebe spiegelt einen ahistorischen Zugang zur christlichen Religion. Der Aufsatz schließt mit einem Appell, die zentrale Erkenntnis der Lutherrenaissance wiederzuentdecken, dass Religion als eine Funktion von Geschichte (und Realität) zu verstehen ist.

32 See the subtitle of John Smith’s book: Dialogues Between Faith and Reason: The Death and Return of God in Modern German Thought (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011).

Chapter 11

Heinrich Assel

Political Theology After Luther – Contemporary German Perspectives

I. God’s Freedom and Sovereignty and the Freedom of the Christian “‘Freedom is merely a divine name’ – it is in this sentence from De Servo abitrio that German Idealism’s philosophy of history fails.” This is the opening sentence in Emanuel Hirsch’s famous volume of essays, “Idealistic Philosophy and Christianity,” from 1925.1 This statement is a beacon of Lutheran political theology. Hirsch articulates this claim in the spirit of a Lutherrenaissance that inherited the idealistic philosophy of history. In my first essay in this volume (ch. 2) I discussed the disastrous consequences of political theology for Hirsch’s thought in the decade between 1933 and 1945. Yet the following claim can also be correct: Luther’s concept of the freedom of God, understood as a concept of divine sovereignty, and the question of human liberation or bondage within both political existence and the worldly regiment of God, is the catalyst for a particular kind of political existence of Christian ­people in early modern and modern societies. Let us begin with Luther’s Freedom of a Christian. This text is a good starting-point for us because many Lutheran political theologians after 1945 looked carefully at this text. In my previous essay, I tried to make this point using Hans Joachim Iwand as example.2 It is important to take seriously the particular theological tradition that is based on Luther’s text on Christian freedom.3 1 E.

Hirsch, Die idealistische Philosophie und das Christentum: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Gütersloh: Der Rufer, 1926). On Hirsch’s political theology from 1926 to 1945, see pp.  36–40 of my chapter two (“Die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland von 1900 bis 1960: Herausforderung und Inspiration”) in this volume. 2 On Hans Joachim Iwand’s political theology from 1945 to 1960, see pp. 43–7 in this volume. 3 At the conference in Evanston on which the second part of this volume is based, the American journalist Michael Massing fundamentally criticized the anti-Erasmian stance of Luther’s theology. Massing had in mind the political-theological controversies in contemporary US society. Nevertheless we must admit the problematic, even disastrous effects that Luther’s theology had on German society in the twentieth century. Both my essays aim to show that from 1900 until today, the Lutherrenaissance has contested the legacy and legitimacy of Luther’s political theology, taking in particular his De servo arbitrio as text to debate.

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The freedom of God can be taken as the justice of God when specific types of media-performative realities of God’s word are considered. Luther articulates the performative reality of God’s word as follows in the Freedom treatise: The “virtues” of God’s word are divine righteousness and freedom, and they are communicated to believers through the word. When the word declares sinners to be righteous, they are freed from their bondage. The word recognizes them as just and free, acknowledging them freed for both the kingly-priestly offices of Christ and the freedoms (libertates) that are its benefits. The gospel frees where there is faith. The law arrests the sinner who is responsible for his own guilt even while sin has dominion over him and discloses human servitude under evil. The law shows that humans must be freed to freedom. When people are freed for Christian freedom, they participate in Christ’s priestly and kingly community. Emanuel Hirsch proposed this meaning of divine freedom and sovereignty against the idealist-philosophical concept of freedom. Divine freedom and sovereignty in Hirsch’s sense are not only absolute. God has bound divine freedom and sovereignty to the performative ­reality of the word as gospel and law. As gospel and law, the word reveals and communicates the infinite creative freedom of God. Divine freedom frees humans to creative and finite freedom in the word, in its ways of working (gospel and law), and in performative realities (sermon, sacrament, prayer, commandment, musical forms, etc.). Luther distinguishes this Christian freedom into the freedom of the inner, spiritual human and the freedom of the external, corporeal human. In view of these performances, the word sets the “inner” freedom of faith free. Spiritual freedom, namely freedom of the inner, spiritual human being before God, is certain and cannot be taken away by any worldly-political or hierarchical-religious power. Spiritual freedom cannot be externalized and cannot be represented in the form of worldly rights. Luther emphasizes in both the Freedom treatise and in the 1523 treatise On Temporal Authority that right either in its worldly-political or in its churchly-hierarchical form cannot take the place of inner Christian freedom. Luther’s treatise goes on to relate inner freedom to external freedom of the bodily, external human. The paradox has to do with how inner freedom is bound to external love of neighbor. Luther’s treatise on temporal authority specifies the outer love of neighbor as an obligation to worldly justice that is included in the worldly regiment of God. If one combines Luther’s idea of external worldly freedom from the Freedom treatise with the idea of the worldly regiment of God as worldly justice from the Temporal Authority treatise, the result is Luther’s thesis concerning external freedom as the freedom of  a political human being. Let us recall the paradoxical double-thesis structuring Luther’s treatise on Christian freedom.4 Luther’s notion of external freedom excludes any notion of an

4 At

the conference, Robert Orsi noted critically that I had focused my account of Lutheran poli­ tical theology in Germany on religious and political freedom while not paying as much attention to

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extra-legal state of nature (status naturalis). An extra-legal state of nature means – as Hobbes put it: a concept of political sovereignty that first creates the rule of law ex nihilo or in other words, the emergency situation of the war of all against all. Luther’s concept of freedom contrasts with Hobbes’s concept of political sovereignty in the following way: for Luther the external human being always exists within a legal status and within a given divine wordly regiment; she therefore lives with a specific political status (which is remarkably different from the political status e. g. of a Hobbesian citizen). The Christian can only be “a ministering servant to all things and subject to everyone” by existing in this legal and genuine political status of the worldly regiment of God. My topic addresses the way in which spiritual and worldly regiment include the concept of divine freedom and sovereignty. Political leadership (Herrschaft, ­sovereignty) has the legitimate power to protect people from  a power that was ­established beyond the field of politics. A power beyond the field of politics would be a quasi-divine power claiming its own authority to establish and even create law. But human power can only have executive power to follow the law within the worldly regiment of God. It does not have absolute legislative character. When human power legislates any law, it must refer to an “already given” law. The Lutheran doctrine of the worldly regiment of God must be taken in this sense. No legislation can emerge from a lawless state of exception and emergency (Ausnahmezustand, status naturalis). Luther’s doctrine of God’s worldly regiment differs in my opinion from Hobbes’s claim that Carl Schmitt appropriated at the beginning of the twentieth century. According to Schmitt, political sovereignty represents divine sovereignty, but in secularized form. Political sovereignty can create the right in an absolute sense in the emergency situation of lawlessness without being obliged to the divine sovereignty that it is supposed to represent. As such, political sovereignty is also not bound to the concretion of rights in human dignity. Luther has a very different idea. God’s worldly regiment means for legislation that the human lawgiver … has to make sure that he does not pass any law for anybody without following the justice preceding his legislation … He (sc. the human lawgiver) can only make space for this justice insofar as he seeks op-

social justice and economic participation. Although I implicitly deal with these problems in my remarks on the theory of (civil) rights, Orsi’s contextualizing remarks point to an important issue: The political-theological debate in Germany (that has since 1989 attempted to overcome the former West-East split) often appeals to the concept of freedom as a framework for dealing with other topics. ­Martin Greschat, a pioneer in German contemporary church history, has also recently made this argument in M. Greschat, “Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte: Konzepte, Themen und Aufgaben,” in H. Assel (ed.), Leidenschaft für die Theologie (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012) 119–46, on pp.  126–30. A typical example of this argument can be found in  a book written by the current Federal President  Joachim Gauck, himself  a former pastor from East Germany: Freiheit: Ein Plädoyer (Munich: Kösel, 62012).

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position to his own legal system (e.g. the human lawgiver acknowledges the sphere of religion as sphere of its own right, especially with the right to oppose in special cases on grounds of religious freedom). It is in this opposition that the discovery of justice is carried out. Thus, in this respect, he is not the sovereign ruler but is already ruled, … who has received the law.

God’s worldly regiment means that any human exercise of legislative power in the worldly realm has “always been dependent on a word which they did not establish, but which they find and which contradicts the law in such a manner that it cannot remain anonymous law.”5 The legislative power is responsible for guaranteeing the right, while the church in its citizenship function has the duty to remind the legislative power of its responsibility for the right and peace, and thereby to recall God’s word and command. I underline this difference between Hobbes and Luther in order to show how my claim differs from that of Emanuel Hirsch. Hirsch’s claim of divine freedom and sovereignty is actually similar to that of Schmitt’s especially as Hirsch developed his political theology between 1923 and 1934.6 Hirsch’s main idea is that in an exceptional situation, the worldly sovereign can creatively posit the right without being bound to a more fundamental right. Thus after the destruction of the Weimar Republic, Hirsch regarded political sovereignty between 1929 and 1933 as an exceptional circumstance. He determined sovereignty to rest not with the state but with the National Socialist movement and its “Führer.” During 1923 and 1924 Hirsch appropriated Schmitt’s ideas while transforming Schmitt’s political theology from a Catholic into a Lutheran political theology7 with three aspects: 1) Hirsch articulated the concept of “decision”; 2) He articulated the concept of “exceptional circumstance” that connoted political sovereignty; and 3) he determined the analogy between political-judicial and religious forms of authority. Schmitt and Hirsch agreed on the idea of an anti-liberal political-theological concept of divine and political sovereignty, and thereby became prominent Nazi intellectuals along with Martin Heidegger after 1933. Thus here I add the dimension of Hirsch’s radical anti-liberal concept of politics to the interpretation of the quotation found at the beginning of this essay. “‘Freedom is merely a divine name’ – it is in this sentence from De Servo abitrio that German Idealism’s philosophy of history fails.” According to Hirsch, Luther’s political theology contradicts every con-

5 Citations

from H. G. Ulrich, Wie Geschöpfe leben: Konturen evangelischer Ethik (EThD 2;­ Münster: LIT, 22007), 432 (trans. by author). 6 C. Schmitt, Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 71996); id., Der Begriff des Politischen (Munich/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1932); id., Politische Theologie II (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970). 7 E. Hirsch, Review of Schmitt, Politische Theologie, ThLZ 48 (1923) 534–5; and Review of Schmitt, Geistesgeschichtliche Lage; Römischer Katholizismus, ThLZ 49 (1924) 185–7.

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cept of the political autonomy of free citizens, the liberal rule of law and of republican constitution. The contemporary discussion of political theology is surprisingly informed by new editions of Schmitt’s work, for example Paul W. Kahn’s anti-liberal pamphlet, Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty.8 Kahn reproduces the problematic claims that Hirsch advocated, for example Hirsch’s proposal for political theology, the state’s power that can demand the sacrifice of its citizens, the claim that the political sovereign has absolute creative power to posit the right, and the claim that democracy is a dictatorship of the proletariat. In contradiction to this new appropriation of Schmitt, I propose an alternative political theology on the basis of Luther’s idea of divine sovereignty and Christian freedom.

II. Hidden sub eodem Christian Freedom and Political Human Rights Contemporary Lutheran political ethics in Germany (as characterized by Hans Günter Ulrich) as well as Jürgen Habermas’s theory of law begin with political sovereignty always within “law.” The explanations, however, for these positions are different. Habermas insists in his book from 1992, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy9 on the dual nature of legal and moral freedom: these freedoms are concretized in human rights as rights of freedom and they are distinguished through  a general principle of discourse as the principle of democracy. Habermas understands the people’s sovereignty in the procedural terms of a “deliberative democracy.” The constitution must uphold the greatest possible equality among citizens and their subjective freedom to act. Membership rights and civil rights should convey institutionalized forms of opinion-making and decision-making and will, while civic public and everyday worlds (Lebenswelten) should uphold concrete freedoms. What role does Christianity play in public politics? Habermas answered this question differently before and after September 2001. In 1992, he seemed to reduce the public politics of Jewish and Christian religions to one of many concrete freedoms in a civil society. After September 2001, Habermas acknowledged the possibility that the public political sphere can include discussions with religious traditions regarding the good and exemplary life, that is to say, concrete freedoms as in, for example, the freedom of the Christian. Habermas writes:

8 (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

9 J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen

Rechtsstaats (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 41994 (= Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 21996]).

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Postmetaphysical thinking is ethically modest in the sense that it is resistant to any generally binding concept of the good and exemplary life. Holy scriptures and religious traditions, by contrast, have articulated intuitions concerning transgression and salvation.10

They give “sufficiently differentiated expression of and sensitivity to squandered lives, social pathologies … and deformed and distorted social relations.”11 This “post-secular” turn can already be detected in the legal theory Habermas articulated in 1992. At that time Habermas emphasized the law’s political negotia­ tion (politische Aushandlung) and the issue of a sufficiently differentiated public political language of democratic decision-making. Discursive negotiations conducted by free human beings and oriented to the search for justice presuppose free citizenship. As free citizens, humans have civil rights and liberties. Human existence is already situated in the political status by virtue of these rights and freedoms. The medium that sets the conditions for discursive negotiations is already endowed with the civil liberties belonging to the political form of existence. Habermas writes: The co-originality of private and public autonomy first reveals itself when we decipher, in discourse-theoretical terms, the motif of self-legislation according to which the addressees of law are simultaneously the authors of their rights. The substance of human rights then resides in the formal conditions for the legal institutionalization of those discursive processes of opinion- and will-formation in which the sovereignty of the people assumes a binding character.12

Human rights are not to be interpreted as moral, pre-existent rules, but rather as judicial rules which are part of the legal framework. Thus, morality is not simply the pre-condition for justice. Rather, norms of action branch out into moral and legal rules. From a normative point of view, this corresponds to the assumption that moral and civic autonomy are co-original and can be explained with the help of a parsimonious discourse principle that merely expresses the meaning of postconventional requirements of justification.13

The political ethic informing the German Lutherrenaissance between 1920 and 1945, indeed through 1960, was not established on any of the following conditions: the people’s procedural sovereignty, a constitution that upheld the greatest possible equality and subjective freedom of action, in short, it did not offer a theory of democracy. I have shown using the example of Hans Joachim Iwand that important steps were necessary in order to facilitate the church’s participation in the 10 J.

Habermas, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion: Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2005), 115 (trans. by author). 11 Ibid. 12 Habermas, Faktizität, 135 (= Between Facts, 104). 13 Ibid., 138 (= Between Facts, 107).

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political public and to understand the church’s preaching of the commandments as a public political practice. The achievement of Lutheran ethics is to understand that the freedom of  a Christian is hidden in democratic human freedoms and rights: Christian external freedom is not hidden under its opposite (sub contrario), but underneath human freedoms granted by a democracy (sub eodem).14 Once we have grasped this point, we can see that the Lutheran motif concerning the concealment of Christian freedom in the theology of the cross has an aspect of truth. The inner Christian freedom cannot be represented by human civil rights: “The a priori of the status politicus relates to … the external human being. He was put into this status. Otherwise, it would be possible to make a justifying recourse to the inner human being.” The inner human being “is and will remain inalienable.”15 The inner human being of Christian freedom is neither represented by moral duty and moral freedom nor symbolized by human rights. Theologians like Karl Holl, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Hans Joachim Iwand agree on this point. These German theologians emphasize both the Christian’s royal freedom beyond (moral) good and evil and the Christian’s priestly freedom beyond the (legal form of) religious freedom. This notion of inner and external Christian freedom does not dovetail with Habermas’s Janus-faced idea of rights guaranteed by  a political freedom that also has moral content and  a legal frame. But theologians like Iwand also had to acknowledge that external freedom can be represented by these ­Janus-faced rights with  a moral content and  a legal frame. Christian freedom therefore might be hidden not sub contrario, but sub eodem: under human rights and freedoms. What can the Lutheran theological dialectic between inner religious freedom and external political freedom, between spiritual person and worldly human being, contribute to the current discussion of political freedoms? Can Christian ­political freedom become real as the political realm of Christ, as politia Christi (a term coined by Ernst Wolf16)? Can this actualization also take place within the form of political law, taking on genuine theo-political form?

14 On

the interpretation of this dialectic figure in Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation (1518), cf. p. 45 in this volume. 15 Ulrich, Wie Geschöpfe leben, 433. 16 E. Wolf, “Politia Christi: Das Problem der Sozialethik im Luthertum” (1948/49), in id., Peregrinatio, vol. 1: Studien zur reformatorischen Theologie und zum Kirchenproblem (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 21962) 214–42.

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III. A Constitution Oriented to Maximizing Human Freedom? “Liberal” Freedom and “Universal” Freedom Kant’s answer to the question of human freedom is a fascinating one in view of current Lutheran political ethics.17 The political freedom of a Christian is put into practice by the permanent task of “a constitution allowing the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with laws by which the freedom of each is made to be consistent with that of all others.”18 The ongoing task to promote the greatest possible human freedom is based on an initial consensus between the “liberal” and “republican”19 theories of justice, law, and politics (e. g. John Rawls and “liberal” Lutheran theologians like Svend Andersen; or e. g. Jürgen Habermas20 and the Catholic philosopher of law, Walter Schweidler,21 who might be called “republican”). The legal constitution as republic is the legal form of the greatest possible freedom for all citizens.22 The idea of a legal constitution as republic as idea of a legal form of the ­greatest possible freedom for all citizens reflects the shift from theonomy to autonomy as principle of constitutional theory. Theonomy defines every (theological) concept on which human religious and political freedom is grounded and rationally justified in divine freedom and sovereignty. F. W. Graf has analyzed the different models of theonomy in German nineteenth and twentieth-century theologies.23 Autonomy eliminates divine freedom as rational context for justification and its ground; the divine has its function only in the context of the actualization of human freedom.24 According to contemporary German constitutional theory, every reference to divine freedom has been eliminated as foundation and principle of the republi 17 I

have shown this in relation to Svend Andersen’s position, cf. pp. 51–3 in this volume. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan, 1929), 312. 19 I take the term “republican” in the European sense of  a political order that is legitimated by freedom, oriented to the common good, and organized according to different offices. Thus the term “republic” is contained in the name “Bundesrepublik Deutschland” (Federal Republic of Germany). The BRD has another constitutional principle in addition to the principle of republic, namely in the sense of the first proposition of the Foundational Law: “human dignity is untouchable.” Both principles occur together. The American constitution (1787/91) does not explicitly relate the constitution to human dignity. 20 Habermas introduced the contrast between liberal and republican as normative models into the discussion of democracy in J. Habermas, “Drei normative Modelle der Demokratie,” in id., Die Einbeziehung des Anderen: Studien zur politischen Theorie (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1996) 277–92. 21 Schweidler is  a member of Robert Spaemann’s school. Spaemann is perhaps today’s most in­ fluential Catholic conservative intellectual in Germany. 22 To this definition R. Gröschner, Art. “Republik,” in EvStLN, 2041–5. 23 F. W. Graf, Theonomie: Fallstudien zum Integrationsanspruch neuzeitlicher Theologie (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1987). 24 See I. Kant’s doctrine of postulates in his Critique of Practical Reason; see A. Ritschl’s and A. Harnack’s thesis that Christian freedom has its function within the context of historical realization and perfection but not within the context of the foundation of autonomous freedom. 18 I.

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can constitution and transformed into a preliminary reference to a supreme nonpolitical instance of moral and legal responsibility of the legislative power (e.g. the reference in the Preamble of the German Basic Law to the responsibility before God). There are, however, hidden connections between the contemporary theories of a legal constitution as republic and Luther’s early modern thesis about divine freedom and sovereignty exercised in the distinction between God’s spiritual and worldly regiment that do not apply to the alternative between theonomy and autonomy. Walter Schweidler gives an example of this hidden connection and articulates this point in a very concise concluding proposition of his essay: “The Divine Freedom: Towards a Basic Motif of Political Metaphysics.” Schweidler describes divine sovereignty and freedom by which human beings as political creatures find themselves in a legal relationship of reciprocity among themselves. Divine freedom sets free and liberates the political freedom of human creatures. However, he does not describe this as a foundation of human freedom (as “theonomy”). He reformulates the Lutheran thesis according to which we find ourselves transplanted into the worldly regiment in  a legal relationship of external freedom and political status. He refers implicitly to the paradoxal thesis that our spiritual, inner, new created (neu geschaffene) freedom has its counterpart in a worldly, created (geschöpfliche), and legal freedom. I cite only the final and very dense conclusion of his learned and subtle essay: [1] In a legal relationship I do not perceive a power that was transferred to us from the outside, but [2] one by self-limitation in its [divine] nature in everyone of us [3] originally as his own released mental and spiritual power. This power allows [4] the other fellow citizens to influence my own life-cycle in such a way that I will have [5] insight and know the error regarding [6] the things I am allowed to do.25

Thus Schweidler shapes the Reformation tradition of  a paradoxically internal and external freedom in  a new way by using Leibniz’s idea of the self-limitation of divine freedom as explanation for divine freedom and worldly freedoms. ­Schweidler takes his key point of departure from Leibniz’s intriguing view of divine freedom as self-limiting [see above point 2]. This negative basis serves as ground for human freedom as political freedom and seems to take up Luther’s idea of divine self-limitation in the word of promise and covenant in the direction of the divine self-limitation as  a general limitation that opens the possibility of a constitution of right that secures freedom of individual creatures who actualize their freedoms. Leibniz takes the individual inner spiritual freedom in the sense of a republican community that helps others actualize their freedoms [=3]. Thus he interprets Luther’s idea of inner spiritual freedom of a Christian in the 25 W. Schweidler, “Die göttliche Freiheit: Zu einem Grundmotiv der politischen Metaphysik,” in id.,

Das Unantastbare: Beiträge zur Philosophie der Menschenrechte (Münster: LIT, 2001) 23–72, on p. 72 (italics, numbers and translation are my own).

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sense of the politia Christi. Inner spiritual freedom is hidden in the external and bodily freedom of the worldly regiment. The main point of Leibniz’s understanding of freedom rests with its dual nature: the inner spiritual freedom is set into  a legal and reciprocal relationship of citizens in  a republic of maximized freedoms [= 4–6]. Leibniz has a concept of universal freedom as a legal relationship between free human beings who exist in legal relationships among themselves. These legal re­ lationships guarantee the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with the law of this republic, whereby law has to do with the divine self-limitation that establishes human right to and actualization of individual freedom, the moral law that regulates the way individual freedom is actualized to help or destroy the freedom of others, and the principle of right grounding the republican constitution. Leibniz uses a theology of creation to frame his universal idea of greatest possible freedom. He reshapes the Lutheran idea of the worldly regiment of God in order to secure the widest possible measure of both non-coercive options of choice within the legal realm and the individual freedom necessary for striving towards one’s relative perfection. This political self-determination must be put into practice in every life relation. Humans must take responsibility for reciprocally supporting their fellow ­citizens. The striving for freedom involves risk. Political practice has to do with the in­ dividual’s freedom to imagine and then actualize the good life, while the good life represents divine freedom in  a polis of self-determined and fellow citizens. This striving for concrete freedom in its religious and secular forms is set free by the divine creative self-determination. The divine freedom chooses its perfection by binding and limiting itself to “the word of the gospel” and in “the law of the covenant” – as potentia et libertas dei which is defined in the gospel and the law of love. Schweidler describes Leibniz’s negative reasoning of divine freedom as a “negativistic” (meaning a political metaphysic that does not prescribe an affirmative theonomical ground for human rights) political metaphysics of human rights and human dignity. He states “that the state has to keep the distance between the mere option and the personal self-realization, which has to be handled by the citizens themselves.”26 This distinction between mere options and personal self-realization is crucial because the distinction between  a “libertarian” concept of maximized individual options of freedom and a republican concept of the reciprocity of personal self-realization and self-perfection starts here. With this distinction, Schweidler claims that any citizen may live personal freedom not only as an option of choice. A libertarian misunderstanding of the idea of the greatest possible freedom would be the intensification of options of freedom, in other words an “optionalist” notion of freedom. One example of an option could be the freedom to consume. Maximizing the options of consumption might there 26 Schweidler,

“Die göttliche Freiheit,” 28 (trans. by author).

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fore seem as if freedom is maximized, as in the slogan: “I shop, therefore I am.”27 But the freedom to follow an empathic orientation to the good life is not an option. It is a fundamental moral decision. The freedom to live a good life in the sense of a religion, e.g. Christianity, Judaism, or another religion, is fundamentally different from an optionalistic choice. Citizens do not only choose between different options. They also exist in  a ­political sphere of constant conflicts concerning the individual, personal, good life. The political sphere is thus characterized by unresolvable controversies regarding competing ideas of the good life. These controversies inevitably shape the political practices of citizens.28 By taking seriously Leibniz’s concept of the republic, we must conclude that controversies should not be resolved because they shape the political practices of citizens. A libertarian concept of freedom would see personal freedom as merely optionalistic and would try to solve conflicts in an optionalistic way. A republican concept of freedom in Leibniz’s sense insists that the state must maintain the distance between mere option and personal self-realization, which is handled by the citizens themselves. I conclude: Schweidler proposes  a concept of divine freedom adequate to  a ­political metaphysic of human dignity, human rights, and a republican constitution securing the most possibilities for freedom. He appropriates Leibniz’s (and indirectly Luther’s) political theology but avoids their theonomical justification for human dignity and rights that can be accused of a religious ideology. This move characterizes the contemporary German post-secular discussion that situates an understanding of the constitutional principle of human dignity and the social freedoms connected to it (for example the question concerning one’s rights to assisted suicide)  against  a merely libertarian optionalistic understanding. Schweidler attempts to show how the principle of human dignity, left intentionally ambiguous in the formulation of Germany’s Basic Law, is informed by the religious and political-theological tradition from Luther and Leibniz. Attempts to link the principles of human dignity and the right for freedom to religious and political-theological traditions are called republican. Thus for example, Habermas’s discourse theory of human rights and the state of right is a republican one. The example of the Catholic philosopher of right, Schweidler, shows how unique the German discussion can be concerning the inheritances of political theology and natural right. In this discussion, confessional positions sometimes overlap as they articulate positions that contrast with libertarianism.29

27 This

is the provocative slogan of the conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. Mouffe, On the Political (London: Routledge, 2005). 29 K. Tanner, Der lange Schatten des Naturrechts: Eine fundamentalethische Untersuchung (Stuttgart et al.: W. Kohlhammer, 1993). 28 C.

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IV. The Royal Christian Freedom and Its Representation I have so far concentrated on the Lutheran idea of God’s freedom and sovereignty as basis for understanding how Christian freedom in both kingly and priestly forms is related to both spiritual and worldly regiments. I then related Christian freedom to the dual principle of German Basic Law: the republican principle and principle of human dignity that are concretized in basic human rights. It has only been after 1945 that German Lutheranism has overcome the tendency to interpret these two principles in the sense of an authoritarian state or totalitarian dictatorship (E. Hirsch). And only in 1985 did the German Lutheran Church publish an official text that mediated the connection from its tradition to the two principles of democracy and the people’s sovereignty by addressing the republican principle and the value connection of Basic Law to its fundamental articles.30 A criticism against my Lutheran position could be formulated by Catholic philo­sopher Charles Taylor and Anglican theologian Oliver O’Donovan: how did Lutheran social theory become historically effective as the social imaginary of ordinary citizens? Charles Taylor adopted the concept of social imaginary in M ­ odern Social Imaginaries (2004) and then in A Secular Age (2007)31 in order to analyze the modern process of disenchantment.32 I adopt the term imaginary (1) because my focus is on the way ordinary people “imagine” their social surroundings, and this imagining tends to be conveyed in images, stories, and legends. Also (2) theory is usually associated with a minority of thinkers, whereas the social imaginary is shared by large groups of people; and (3) the social imaginary makes both common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy possible. Taylor appeals to the social imaginary to show that elements in early modern social theory become effective as social imaginary (the economy as objectified reality, the public sphere, public and private, the people’s sovereignty). Oliver O’Donovan articulates a criticism that dovetails with Taylor’s position: “The more dominant the constitutional question, the more abstract the political discussion, and the further removed from reality.”33 O’Donovan’s starting point is the imaginative representation of political authority, rather than constitutional theory or questions of democratic legislation. He constructs a concept of political authority from political Christology, particularly from Christ’s royal priesthood and its representation.

30 Vgl.

T. Jähnichen, Art. “Demokratie (Theologisch),” in EvStLN: 336–42. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durhum, N. C.: Duke University Press, 2004), 23; cf. id., A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2007), 159–211. 32 See Ronald Thiemann’s analysis of Taylor’s A Secular Age and his contrasting proposal in his article on Sacramental Realism, ch. 9 in this volume; on Max Weber’s relation to Karl Holl, see my article, ch. 2 in this volume. 33 O. O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment: The Bampton Lectures 2003 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005), 164–5. 31 C.

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Political awareness always has this double object, people and government, two corresponding subjects that cannot be collapsed into one. … Through its agency the people assumes a concrete judicial form. The representative bears the people’s image, makes the people visible and tangible, to itself and to others. Yet the representative does not bring the people into existence, but simply makes it appear. The notion of representation in the Western political tradition is grounded on the relation of redeemed humanity to Christ, the representative of all humanity in his death and glorification.34

O’Donovan interprets Christ’s political representation as Christ’s kingship and priesthood, which includes the congregation’s imaginative political self-perception. This understanding of representation is – following O’Donovan – still present in Hobbes, whereas since Locke Christ’s political representation is replaced by social contract theories of political legitimation, representation, and the people’s sovereignty. The false turn lies in thought that representation is founded in the will. It is founded in the imagination. That the representative may act for us, and we in him, it is necessary, that we see ourselves in him.35

What is at stake in interpreting forms of political authority as imaginative representations of Christ’s kingly-priestly offices? O’Donovan’s position contrasts with liberal theories since Locke that derive political sovereignty from social contract. His position also does not do justice to the distinction between spiritual and worldly regiments that characterize the Lutheran tradition and legitimize the secularity of the worldly regiment. Critics of the Lutheran position thus seem to have difficulty distinguishing between spiritual and worldly freedom. They cannot conceive spiritual freedom as hidden in, with, and under worldly forms of freedom.36 O’Donovan cannot understand that the community of Jesus Christ simultaneously represents the spiritual kingly-prieshood of Christ (as worshipping community) and is constituted in the worldly terms of a political institution (as a cultural institution or people’s church). But this is the case in Germany where all Lutheran churches have a legal constitution. The important question for today’s German Lutheran Church is: In what sense is the church to be regarded as a political entity in society and in what sense is this social reality to be regarded as a spiritual reality, namely a spiritual representation of Christ’s kingly priesthood? And following this question: If the church is to be conceived as a political entity, in which sense is it bound to the republican constitution that formulates the basic rights of political subjects? How are the worldly social realities of the church (its constitution and laws) to be distinguished from 34 Ibid.,

157. 159. 36 See Thiemann’s critical discussion of this question vis-à-vis Taylor and the sacramental issue of “in, with, and under” in his essay on pp. 166–9, as well as section VI of this essay. 35 Ibid.,

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and related to the spiritual social realities of the church (its imaginary representations)? Inner Christian freedom lives in the word and sacrament of the church service, in the gospel’s rhetoric, and in the performative ritual of Holy Communion! Both political freedom and inner freedom must be critically related to each other. My critical position vis-à-vis O’Donovan is that I evaluate differently the modern political development of republican and democratic division of power and the constitutional form of sovereignty and authority. I claim that the church can be regarded as politically constituted and that its legitimate authority can be conceived in terms of secular forms of right. This political aspect does not necessarily diminish an understanding of the spiritual essence of church. There is another issue at stake in regard to the critical distinction I am advocating between political secular freedom and the spiritual freedom of Christians. The significant question for Lutheran theology concerns how Christians can articulate a confession of their historical guilt as citizens in historical situations of crisis, as in for example Nazi Germany.37 This question concerned theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans Joachim Iwand in the 1940s and more recently the German Lutheran Church in the second half of the twentieth century. The question is particularly pressing for the churches in view of public political and media practices that often dispute authentic expressions of guilt and underline the opposition between victim and perpetrator. Is it possible that a ritual confession of guilt, spoken “before God” can become a political and public confession that is articulated before both God and fellow humans? Can the political, public rhetoric of guilt be understood in theological terms as sin, so that divine forgiveness can transform guilt and pave the way for a new political beginning? Forgiveness creates a new political start! God cannot be seen as the sole emergency measure when the constitution can no longer address the enormity and complexity of guilt entanglements. When citizens confess their guilt as sin before God and when the public forum does not take the religious confession in a politically exclusive sense, only then can a new start be possible. Can such a situation of public confession be imagined? Can the public language of “repentance” mean something more than  a legal term, more than criminal law and the International Court of Justice? Jürgen Habermas writes: “When sin was completely transformed into moral, legal and political guilt, something was lost.”38 What does he mean? 37 D. Bonhoeffer, Ethik, ed. I. Tödt/H. E. Tödt et al. (DBW 6; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1992), 126–7; H.-J. Iwand, “Entwurf zum Darmstädter Wort 1947,” in id., Friede mit dem Osten: Texte 1933–1959, ed. G. den Hertog (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1988) 20–2; cf. C. Neddens, Politische Theologie und Theologie des Kreuzes: Werner Elert und Hans Joachim Iwand (FSÖTh 128; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 753–68. Cf. G. Besier/G. Sauter, Wie Christen ihre Schuld bekennen: Die Stuttgarter Erklärung 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985); M. Beintker, “Neuzeitliche Schuldwahrnehmung im Horizont der Rechtfertigungsbotschaft,” in id. (ed.), Rechtfertigung und Erfahrung (FS Gerhard Sauter; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1995) 137–52. 38 J. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen: Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2001 (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2002), 24 (trans. by author).

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I offer one possible interpretation: What was lost was the radical aspect of the new creation of forgiveness. This loss also entailed the radical case of new creation in political terms. There can be no overcoming of guilt in the situation of civilization’s social collapse, for example, in the collapse of Germany’s political-theological culture in 1918, 1945, and 1989. Is there any possibility for society’s reconstitution within existing social institutions? Is it possible for the church to function in political culture as a proclaimer of divine forgiveness and thereby point to this radical creative reconstitution? It is important to consider this precise possibility for the church in the face of the Lutheran church that survived these collapses by remaining institutionally inert and conservative. The main point here is that the church’s imaginative representation of Christ’s kingly-priesthood has a legitimate place in the political sphere. The question is how social guilt can be confessed as sin before God and whether this confession of guilt can be a site at which forgiveness can be experienced as a renewing social power. An aspect of the spiritual regiment, namely the vicarious priestly confession of guilt as sin, can also have a function in the worldly regiment.

V. A Public Political Rhetoric of Faith and the Social Imaginary Epochal situations are, well, exceptional situations. The question I address in this section concerns the more ordinary context in which a Lutheran political theology can be extended into public political discourse. This question is even more pressing in light of Taylor’s diagnosis that modern Western societies have reached an advanced state of secularization. So far I have appealed to two thinkers, Luther and Leibniz, who have been helpful in understanding how inner spiritual freedom can be related to the republican constitution of the worldly regiment. I now turn to a third theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, to handle conflicts in a ­politically liberal society that cannot be resolved legally. I have already alluded to the problem of an optionalist scheme to resolve conflicts between concrete freedoms. This apparent resolution takes the heat off the debate about the ethical principles of ­political coexistence by remaining at the discursive level of political and ethical options. Nevertheless there are conflicts between concrete freedoms that cannot be resolved merely at the procedural legal level but must admit the ethical and religious conflicts that inform political conflict. Liberalism is reductive if it forbids discussion of ethical and religious issues in the public arena. But my question is: is there a place for (maybe even permanent) ethical and religious dissent? The question of dissent is significant for addressing the problem of political conflict. When the position is held that disagreements cannot be resolved, there seems to be an underlying assumption concerning the way that one person perceives another. One speaks of the “strange” reason of another person when one cannot put oneself in the other person’s shoes. Someone else’s strange reason con-

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fuses my way of life. The point of the concept of universal freedom has to do with the way in which this “strange” is assigned to citizens and not to the state. Habermas has since 2001 warned German politics of its tendency to political reductionism, and has proposed rights for cultural, ethnic, and religious minorities that are more than merely choices between different options. Thus he has demanded a new public political spirit on the part of secular citizens that has to do with the capacity to translate relevant issues from a religious context into a public, accessible language.39 Public political language enables us to carry out or endure the contradictions between plural religious and secular concepts of a good life and embodied freedoms. Yet language is more than a translation problem from a religious to a secular public language. I doubt that the language of repentance and of a radical new start can ever be translated adequately into public political secular language. The metaphor of translating is therefore misleading.40 Habermas explains the translation metaphor only with reference to a certain uni-directional concept of public language: the different religious discourses must be translated in the one direction of the standard concept of public language. Differences between values are flattened and truth claims are diminshed when translated into the thin, general, and rational context of meaning.41 Thus Habermas frankly admits that translation of  a religious language into public political language always eliminates key elements of the religious imaginary. This reductionism plagues the importance of his proposal. Here are my recommendations for  a contemporary political theology from L ­ utheran perspective: (1) Lutheran political theology should conceive Christian external, worldly freedom in a republican model of a legal constitution of universal freedoms, human dignity, human rights, and deliberative democracy. (2) It must recall the imaginary representation of inner Christian freedom  –  a way of participating in Christ’s royal priesthood – which transcends legal and 39 J. Habermas, “Kulturelle Gleichbehandlung – und die Grenzen des Postmodernen Liberalismus,”

in Naturalismus und Religion, 279–323, on p. 322: “Eine liberale politische Kultur kann sogar von den säkularisierten Bürgern ewarten, dass sie sich an Anstrengungen beteiligen, relevante Beiträge aus der religiösen in eine öffentlich zugängliche Sprache zu übersetzen.” Habermas, Naturalismus und Religion, 115–6, which is the concluding sentence to a section on the pre-political fundamentals of the democratic constitutional state (introduction to the conversation with Josef Cardinal Ratzinger): “To translate man’s being in the image of God into the equal and unconditional dignity of all men is such a rescuing translation.” (“Die Übersetzung der Gottesebenbildlichkeit des Menschen in die gleiche und unbedingt zu achtende Würde aller Menschen ist eine solche rettende Übersetzung.”) 40 The problem of translating between different languages is discussed in detail by J. Simon, Kant – die fremde Vernunft und die Sprache der Philosophie (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2003). 41 Habermas, “Kulturelle Gleichbehandlung,” 320–1: “Die Folgelasten der Toleranz verteilen sich … nicht symmetrisch auf Gläubige und Ungläubige”, sondern asymmetrisch, weil die Gläubigen “den höheren Preis zahlen”, nämlich die eigenen Wahrheitsansprüche und “das eigene Ethos nur begrenzt ausleben zu dürfen und die praktischen Folgen des Ethos der anderen hinnehmen zu müssen.”

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moral representations of freedom in human rights or moral social imaginary and defines a genuine religious imaginary as a politia Christi of Christian fellow citizens (allgemeines Priestertum aller Getauften). (3) It must address the intriguing questions of translation between a public political language and the religious imaginary of inner Christian freedom. (4) It must address processes of social and institutional renewal in  a constitution oriented to maximizing human freedom and describe the function of the church as the political realm of Christ within these processes. The church claims to be an institution constantly living by the forgiveness of sin that ­radically reconstitutes human reality. The church is constantly living by religious imaginary realities such as the word of God and the sacraments. Thus, understanding the church means understanding the question of “institutionalizing as creative process” (Hans Joas and Cornelius Castoriadis42). The thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher now becomes relevant. A Lutheran­ political theology that takes into consideration all of the above four requirements can be seen to approximate Schleiermacher’s theory of church as imaginary representation of Christ (Kirche als Selbstdarstellung und Mitteilung Christi). Christine Helmer has pointed to the importance of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics that constitute his theory of language and has emphasized the problematic Schleiermacher reception by Lutheran theologians, such as Oswald Bayer and George Lindbeck.43 Relevant for this context is Schleiermacher’s concept of the “divinatory”: the divinatory is the imaginative disclosure of the textual world of canonical Scripture, which is socially inhabited. Although this application of Schleiermacher to both Lindbeck and Bayer’s theory of the worship service would be contested by these two Lutheran theologians, I think it can adequately capture their understanding. The divinatory can be seen as the treasure (Kunstschatz) of liturgy and worship. Divination (Sinn-Verstehen) has to do with a textual and ritual imaginary, with establishing the imaginary reality of the Christian spirit in the public space of church. The Christian community originates, emerges, and exists from this treasure, continually developing it through the ages. Yet while Helmer emphasizes language theory in relation to Schleiermacher’s Dialectic, I prefer to emphasize the importance of Schleiermacher’s Philosophical Ethics and Christian Ethics. This interpretation would prioritize language in relation to a theory of goods, a theory of concrete freedoms, and a theory of social in-

42 H.

Joas, “Institutionalisierung als kreativer Prozeß: Zur politischen Philosophie von Cornelius  Castoriadis,” in id., Pragmatismus und Gesellschaftstheorie (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992) 146–70. 43 C. Helmer, “Transformations of Luther’s Theology in View of Schleiermacher,” in ead./B. K. Holm (eds.), Transformations in Luther’s Theology: Historical and Contemporary Reflections (AKThG 32; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2011) 104–21, on pp. 114–19.

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stitutions as they evolve, exist, and then disappear.44 Schleiermacher makes a case for this relation between ethics and language in his Christian Faith in his famous sentences on “the evolving, existing, and disappearing” of the church as public spirit of Jesus Christ.45 Divination, namely the imaginary reality of the communal Christian spirit, informs the real center of the church as organization and as institution. The church is an institution that is continuously re-creating itself anew. Sunday after Sunday, the church exists from word and sacrament. Text and ritual shape the context of meaning that inspires the church’s social imaginary. Imagination and divination further inspire the reality of the church’s social existence; they interpret particular acts of confession or diaconal work as symbolized actions of faith and love.46 Particular acts are further integrated into the presupposed matrix of all actions, as in, for example, the recitation of the confession of faith constitutes the Christian community “today” while it is integrated into the presupposed matrix of all Christian confessions of faith.

VI. Sacrament as the Community’s Imaginary Institution and Representation of Christian Freedom I turn to the Lord’s Supper as example of how the community deploys its social imaginary and thereby represents Christian freedom. In view of my topic of political theology I consider the sacrament as a political-theological performance and analyze it from Luther’s semiotic perspective. We can only understand Luther’s early modern categories of political authority and imaginary representation if we take worship into account, namely the ritual representation of divine presence. Luther was committed to the reality of the divine presence in his understanding of holy communion. Yet the Marburg controversy between Luther and Zwingli on the real presence47 did not specify their doctrinal differences as scholar of early modern hermeneutics Lutz Danneberg sighs, “No one can ever clarify for me the Marburg controversy between Luther and Zwingli concerning the phrase, ‘This is my body’!”48 Rather the different positions can be assessed by analyzing the theory of signs that frames this key Ref 44 M.

Moxter, Güterbegriff und Handlungstheorie: Eine Studie zu Schleiermachers Ethik (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992). 45 F. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube (1830/31) (KGA I/13 1–2; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), § 113–63. 46 For a description of Schleiermacher’s theory of representation (Darstellung) in the church in view of his doctrine of Holy Communion, see H. Assel, “‘Genuss ohne allen Schmerz’: Unverständlichkeit in Schleiermachers Darstellungstheorie am Beispiel Abendmahl,” in H.  Assel/H.-C. Askani (eds.), Sprachgewinn (FS G. Bader; Münster: LIT, 2008) 178–201. 47 Luther never spoke of the “real presence,” a term that has been anachronistically attributed to him, but distinguished his position on “divine presence” from that of Zwingli and Aquinas. 48 Lutz Danneberg cited in J. v. Soosten, “Präsenz und Repräsentation,” in D. Korsch (ed.), Die Gegenwart Jesu Christi im Abendmahl (Leizig: Evanglische Verlagsanstalt, 2005) 99–122, on p. 103.

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ormation controversy. We distinguish between three models: (1) Luther’s “trope performativity model” (Tropus-Performativität), which means that sacramental presence is a genuine performance of the power of God on the cross in particular rhe­torical figures (tropes, metaphors) of the words of institution (as performative ­reality); (2) Zwingli’s “sense meaning model” (Sinn-Bedeutung) that has to do with the meaning that emerges from the congregation as it remembers and represents ­Jesus’ last supper; and (3) Aquinas’s “substance form model” (Substanz-Form), which explains transubstantiation with the distinction between substance and accidents and the words of the institution that function as the form of the transubstantiation process. For Luther, the rhetorical enactment of the sacrament actualizes the divine presence in the social situation of the congregation. The words spoken in the sacra­ment make God physically tangible. They emphasize the power of speech in the person of Christ (as words of institution). Thus Luther stresses the performative power of the words of institution, rather than their meaning. The power of faith is the answer to the power of language in the promise of forgiveness articulated in the sacramental words. Yet the intriguing point of Luther’s understanding of divine presence has to do with divine freedom and sovereignty. The paradoxical doctrine of the divine presence in bread and wine is a claim concerning divine freedom and sovereignty. Yet Luther can only articulate this claim of divine presence at the particular site of the ritual in paradoxical formulas (recall the paradoxical formulation of Christian freedom). God’s sovereignty, Von Soosten writes, remains not in the interpretational framework of the self-mastery of God (potentia absoluta), but undergoes an inversion in favor of the self-commitment (potentia ordinata) to the worldliness of his own nature. This inversion, which does not dissolve the asymmetric relation of freedom and self-commitment, but interprets it in the perspective of the self-commitment, is only theologically predicable if the logic of dialectics (sc. of sovereignty and self-commitment) is opened towards the rhetoric of the paradox: God is not determined by the ends of the earth and simultaneously “is present essentially at all the ends of the earth in any through every creature” (cf. WA 23: 135,35–136,2) … The culture of presence … insists on the genuine character of this event, which … results in responsive effects, which do not have to be decoded with regard to their meaning, nor can be fastened ontologically.49

Faith is the mind-body response of an acceptance. Divine word and responding faith approach each other and come to mutual agreement; they connect with one another and alternately cross and surpass each other.50 The political-imaginative presence of divine freedom is available in liturgical performativity as well as in linguistic tropes and metaphors of the words of institution. The imaginary 49 Von

Soosten, “Präsenz,” 119–20 (trans. by author). 112 (cf. “fides creatrix divinitatis in nobis,” WA 40/I: 360,5).

50 Ibid.,

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takes place as public language in which the politia Christi becomes visible. It is instituted in the performance of the words of institution and, at the same time, becomes visible.

Zusammenfassung Politische Theologie nach Luther – Aktuelle deutsche Perspektiven Der Beitrag beschreibt programmatisch eine zeitgemäße lutherische politische Theologie aus dem Geist der Lutherrenaissance und bezogen auf den Kontext des wiedervereinigten Deutschland seit 2001. Im deutschen Kontext ist Jürgen Habermas’ Diagnose einer neuen post-säkularen Situation öffentlicher politischer Diskurse prägend. Die neue Offenheit gegenüber genuin religiösen Traditionen von Freiheit, z. B. der inneren Freiheit der Christenbürger in der politia Christi, verbindet sich mit der Erwartung, die religiösen Metaphern und Symbole dieser imaginären Freiheit in öffentliche Diskurse und Argumente zu übersetzen. Die damit verbundenen Herausforderungen, die Habermas unterschätzt, werden im Gespräch mit Cornelius Castoriadis’ Theorie des politisch Imaginären diskutiert. Als Beispiel wird das Abendmahl als Sakrament und als imaginäre politische Institution und Repräsentation dargestellt.

Chapter 12

Marit Trelstad

Charity Terror Begins at Home Luther and the “Terrifying and Killing” Law

While some acts of terrorism fill the news, others occur in silence.1 For women around the world, home is the most dangerous place. In the U. S. alone, governmental research groups estimate that 4.8 million women each year suffer rape or physical assault by an intimate partner.2 Indeed, terror begins at home. In his Disputations Against the Antinomians, Luther uses the word “terror” almost obsessively in his descriptions of the theological use of the law where God is the agent of terror, who wields the law as a weapon of wrath. This “terrorizing and killing law” is seen as profoundly unsettling but positive because it drives us to Christ. God terrorizes us through the gift of the law. Luther writes that “God terrifies by threats, comforts by promises, admonishes by afflictions [and] attracts by benefits.”3 Unfortunately, the perpetual enactment of this dynamic of the law and gospel presents a problematic image of God’s relationship to humanity. From a feminist point of view, this cannot help but look like a theology of abuse. This chapter explores the intimate connections between terror, domestic violence, Luther and the law. Herein, I propose two theses: First, that the law before or outside the context of the gospel presents a model of coercive power that lacks genuine authority and therefore efficacy. Indeed, this chapter claims that the law can only be effective within the surrounding context of the gospel. Like the cross that only gains meaning within the overall story of God’s covenantal love, the law is preceded by the gospel and is followed by the gospel. It offers a gospel-law-gospel dynamics as a corrective to Luther; it does not advocate the abolishment of the 1 The

title is a play off the English language adage, “Charity begins at home.” “Executive Summary: Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey,” published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Institute of Justice, page v, states: “The U. S. medical community treats millions of intimate partner rapes and physical assaults annually. Of the estimated 4.8 million intimate partner rapes and physical assaults perpetrated against women annually, approximately 2 million will result in an injury to the victim, and 552,192 will result in some type of medical treatment to the victim.” Online at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/181867.pdf (accessed April 18, 2013). 3 M. Luther, “Fifth Set of Theses,” in H. Sonntag (ed.), Only the Decalogue is Eternal: Martin Luther’s Complete Antinomian Theses and Disputations (Minneapolis, Minn.: Lutheran Press, 2008) 133–7, on p. 136. 2 The

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law but rather  a better understanding of its necessary contextualization.4 And, second, this paper uncovers a new understanding of Luther’s writings on the law, claiming that they contain both a descriptive function and a performative function. While the descriptive function echoes and supports feminist concerns for truth-telling and accountability, the performative function of the law should be rejected since it offers a dynamics of abuse as a model of God. The violent language and actions encouraged through these writings on the law have been exaggerated by the Lutheran tradition in ways that support violence against women and others. Let me begin with  a story. As  a seminary student, I traveled directly from  a class in pastoral counseling with women, wherein we had learned the stages of domestic abuse, to a Lutheran preaching course. In the counseling course, we reviewed the stages of domestic violence which involve aggressive, belittling, or violent behavior, followed by excuses that blame the victim for the abusive behavior, and lastly the honeymoon stage which creates a false sense of peace and intimacy through exaggerated demonstrations or declarations of love.5 In short, the dynamic involves beating, blaming the victim for the violence, and ends with a bouquet of flowers. In a preaching class at seminary, I was taught Luther’s idea that the law-gospel dynamic is to shape Lutheran preaching. My professor calmly stated that the purpose of Lutheran preaching was to drive people to their knees and make them need the gospel. At the time, I was stunned at the similarity between the domestic violence cycle and the law-gospel dynamics and have thought about it for decades. Feminist theologians have spent decades analyzing the glorification of abusive power in Christian models of God and these provide a valuable guide to not only interpret and apply Luther to today’s context but also use the best scholarship to challenge and correct his theological errors in hopes that we do not continue some of the potentially abusive ideas contained therein.6 As stated in this volume’s introduction by Christine Helmer and Bo Kristian Holm, Lutheran theology has been sometimes protected from the very revisions that would allow it to live and be relevant in the contemporary world.7 For example, international Lutheran women scholars have noticed the stunning pau 4 In

the United States, some Lutherans accuse others of being Antinomian heretics even today. In fact, the law/gospel dynamic is a hot issue, especially among theologically and socially conservative Lutherans who argue that the liberal Lutherans just preach love. The law is also used to challenge some understandings of family, gender, and sexuality issues. In particular, the law is invoked in opposition to gay and lesbian ordination, rights to marriage, or blessings by the church. 5 See http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects. htm #cycle (accessed April 18, 2013). 6 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s feminist “hermeneutic of suspicion” encourages us to openly question biblical and theological texts that are used for oppressive purposes. See her In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Construction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1994). Rosemary Radford Ruether also argues that if theology does not address women’s oppression, or worsens it, it cannot be considered redemptive. See her Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983). 7 See ch. 1, “Introduction.”

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city of reference to their work in much of Lutheran scholarship still today. In addition, women’s historical writings in relation to the Lutheran tradition have received little attention in the past and in the present. Within the last years, however, the careful work of Kirsi Stjerna reveals that there is much to discover concerning women’s impact on the Reformation.8 For the most part, however, the birthing and rebirth of Lutheran scholarship oddly seems to have been done entirely without women. In addition, while the Lutherrenaissance’s historical method brought Lutheran studies to new levels of sophistication and exploration, its emphasis on interdisciplinary studies has not been applied to theological reform and challenge. Lutheran theology has lagged in its genuine integration of feminist and liberation theological insights where other mainline Christian traditions have opened themselves to transformation by these voices. The entire theological conversation in the past forty years has shifted around us. Rather than be reformed, Lutheran theologies often lie inert beside contemporary theologies or they use feminist or liberationist ideas to affirm some aspect of Lutheran theology. Contemporary theologies are rarely engaged as a truly transformative resource to critically analyze and reform Lutheran theology itself. More often than not, theological value for the tradition appears to be based mainly on proof-texting today’s ideas by their alignment with Luther’s words in sixteenth-century Europe. But a re-birth or renaissance of the same calcified ideas will not do. At the very least, we can examine some contemporary challenges to key Lutheran theological tenets in the hope of establishing a discursive space. Paul Tillich wrote about the danger of a reactive literalism where people of faith deny any challenges to their religious beliefs with aggressive defensiveness. In a similar vein, feminist theological pioneer Mary Daly spent a good amount of time addressing the idolatry and “methodolatry” that comes from patriarchal reification of certain images of God or theological methods. All of these theologies urge us to check and test and challenge our theological methods and doctrines perpetually, being genuinely open to change. My own scholarship has always rested at the intersection of Lutheran, feminist, and process theologies. In terms of foundational assumptions, process theologians assume that change is constant and signals creative development. By contrast, that which does not change dies. In Modes of Thought, Whitehead writes “The essence of life is to be found in the frustrations of established order.”9 Lutheran theology is neither so fragile nor so rigid that we need to protect it from genuine encounter with theologies that call it to reform.

8 K. 9

Stjerna, Women and the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009). A. N. Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: Free Press, 1938), 119.

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I. Key Themes in Luther’s Writings about the Law In his 1537 and 1538 Antinomian Theses and Disputations and his 1539 writing “Against the Antinomians,” Luther sets out to address those who are so infatuated with the gospel that they are omitting the importance of the law altogether. Luther specifically states that his earlier works were being over-quoted by some Reformation theologians. Indeed, he specifically juxtaposes his Antinomian Disputations to The Freedom of a Christian. His 1520 treatise The Freedom of a Christian elicited, in his estimation, an over-emphasis on freedom and grace in the Reformation. As will be noted later, Luther’s writings on the law in the 1530s were seen by some of his Reformation peers as a theological back-tracking from the radicality of the theological message of grace. In his works overall, Luther writes that the theological function of the law is to “make guilty those who are smug and at peace, so that they may see that they are in danger of sin, wrath, and death, so that they may be terrified and despairing, blanching and quaking at the rustling of a leaf.”10 Denis Janz writes, “In Luther law and gospel are related as humility is to exaltation, as fear is to hope, as wrath is to mercy.”11 There is much repetition throughout the six disputations Luther writes concerning the role of the law. By the sixth disputation, our verbose Luther is finally worn down and often responds in short, terse single sentences. The form of a scholastic disputation sets out propositions and then examines and defends them by countering potential objections or opposing views. Across the years and disputations, one sees certain repeated themes. First, Luther is very clear that the law does not justify the sinner – in fact, it does the opposite, it condemns and accuses. Thinking that the law is a part of the process of justification is a confusion of the categories of law and gospel. He references Paul and other biblical writings that speak of the end of the law in Christ. The law, however, is still necessary in that it humbles humans and drives them to Christ and it displays the weighty wrath incurred by sin that Christ was made to bear on behalf of the sinner. Thus, the enormity of the gift of grace is made evident. Here Luther consistently argues that the theological function of the law is to illumine sin. Luther writes, “For to reveal sin is nothing else … than to be law or to be the effect and power of the law in the most proper sense.”12 It serves an epistemological function that shifts one’s view of self and world. Second, Luther tries to distance himself from those who reference his early works and speak only of grace and claim the law is no longer necessary after Christ. He states that Jesus fulfills the law but does not annul it. Christ redeems us by fulfilling the law on our behalf and, post-justification, the Holy Spirit comforts 10 LW

26: 148 (Commentary on Galatians [1531/35] [= WA 40 I: 257,19–21]). D. R. Janz, The Westminster Handbook to Martin Luther (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 83 – referring to LW 31: 51 (Heidelberg Disputation [1518]). 12 Luther, “Second Set of Theses,” in Sonntag, Decalogue, 79–82, on p. 80. 11

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us and assists in producing the good intentions and good actions that the law requires.13 Luther states that the Holy Spirit enables us to delight in the law because “souls are recreated with [the law] in view and this Spirit gives them the will that they might do it.”14 This reflects Luther’s understanding of the regenerate life in the second thesis of The Freedom of a Christian where Luther describes the Christian as joyfully serving the needs of the neighbor as an outpouring of the freedom that comes to shape one’s very being in the gospel. In paradise, Luther envisions that we will joyfully and naturally fulfill the law as our will and God’s will be perfectly aligned. In this world, however, we need both law and gospel because we live in an imperfect world. A third theme in Luther’s writing to the Antinomians concerns the evil of this world and the daily assaults by the devil on Christians through physical temptations and through false theologies. He often states that he is so tired of combating the devil that he simply wishes for death to be released from it. All of his major theological opponents are personally named in these disputations and condemned as a tool of the devil. In terms of the law, those who disregard the law are portrayed as slick-tongued comforters who seek to provide security. And here security, more than any other word, is always depicted as negative.15 The fourth theme concerns the context of Lutheran preaching. While Luther often claims that law and gospel must both be always and simultaneously preached to the pious and impious alike,16 he also states that the preaching of the law and gospel needs to be contextualized in light of the condition of the recipient. The law is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To some, one must preach the gospel because they are weak, downtrodden or live under the heavy weight of the law already. To the arrogant and ignorant, however, one must preach the law.17 In his classic text The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, nineteenth-century Lutheran theologian, C. F. W. Walther echoes Luther’s insistence on the contextualization of preaching. He warns against preaching the law to those who are already downtrodden and states that “to the broken-hearted not a syllable containing a threat or a rebuke is to be addressed, but only promises conveying consolation and grace, forgiveness of sin and righteousness, life and salvation.”18 In addition, he states that teachers and theologians who emphasize the law over the 13 Luther,

“First Disputation,” 33–77, on p.  54; id., “Second Set,” 80; id., “Second Disputation Against the Antinomians,” in Sonntag, Decalogue, 83–124, on pp. 115, 122. 14 Luther, “First Disputation,” in Sonntag, Decalogue, 33–77, on p. 42. 15 Comfort, however, is seen as positive when it is offered to those tormented by the law and who are weak and downtrodden. For the secure, those who do not recognize their need of salvation or who are proud or secure, comfort linked to security is dangerous and negative. 16 Luther, “Fifth Disputation against the Antinomians,” in Sonntag, Decalogue, 139–97, on p. 174. 17 Luther urges restraint in preaching the law to the afflicted in multiple disputations, for example, see Luther, “Second Disputation,” 88–9. 18 C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 1928), 101 (lecture 12, thesis 8). (Reference is to the English translation of the 1897 lectures.)

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gospel pervert, offend, and desecrate their office. The consolation, joy, and comfort of the gospel is to be prominent so that people will experience the power of the gospel in their lives.19 Beyond the context of the recipient, Luther also discusses the importance of the historical context of Lutheran proclamation. He states that his earlier writings, such as The Freedom of a Christian, had heavily emphasized freedom and grace because people were so under the weight of the law from the Church already. He contrasts that time to the late 1530s when he thinks the Reformers have gone too far, almost doing away with the law altogether. From this we can gather that Luther was concerned that the emphasis of Lutheran preaching is sensitive to the historical context and the needs of the people. It is not an indiscriminate method of theology or preaching. In the case of the oppressed, Luther’s insistence that the law’s severity needs to be contextualized bears some resemblance to the work of feminist theologians ­Valerie Saiving, Susan Nelson, and Judith Plaskow who each claimed that the sin of pride was not the luxury of women and disempowered men.20 Rather, the sin of hiding was lifted up as their primary sin. The sin of hiding is the result of internalized oppression that makes women and some men believe that they have no right to even have a sense of self. Universally linking pride to sin can be used by the powerful to humiliate and reinforce oppressive social systems. Likewise, preaching the severity of the law can become perverted; thus theologians are to be alert to the personal and social context of their message. In the last key theme, Luther writes against those who reverse the order of law and gospel as well as those who claim that the gospel is sufficient to illumine sin as well as justify. He claims that the gospel is pure freedom and grace and cannot do its opposite. He wanted to maintain a strict distinction of gospel from law for understandable, contextualized reasons in his theological fights with the Church over the role of works. Luther also worried that Johannes Agricola’s writings on the priority of the gospel would lead to moral laxity.21 Timothy Wengert’s scholarship, addressing the Agricola and Luther disagreement, sheds good light on the details of that argument.22 Luther and Melanch 19 Ibid.,

411 (lecture 39). the following three three classic texts: V. Saiving, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” JR 40 (1960) 100–12; reprint in C. P. Christ/J. Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising (San Fransisco: Harper SanFransisco, 21992) 25–42; S. Nelson, Healing the Broken Heart: Sin, Alienation, and the Gift of Grace (Atlanta, Ga.: Chalice, 1997); J. Plaskow, Sex, Sin, and Grace: Women’s Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (Washington D. C.: University Press of America, 1980). 21 Martin Bertram’s introduction to Luther’s treatise Against the Antinomians in Luther’s Works: American Edition historically contextualizes Luther’s writing by stating that Luther saw both theological error and the danger of “moral laxity” in the Antinomian arguments which he attributes primarily to his frenemy Agricola: M. H. Bertram, “Introduction to ‘Against the Antinomians’,” in LW 47: 101. 22 T. J. Wengert, Law and Gospel: Philipp Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1997). 20 See

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thon argued that only a terrified, contrite, humbled heart of the condemned sinner would elicit a human to turn to God for grace and mercy in order to cling to it. ­Luther was passionately involved with this argument against Agricola’s proposal that the gospel preceded the law. Philipp Melanchthon firmly defended Luther’s position. Martin Bertram writes that Luther was reportedly so disturbed by Agricola’s persistent disagreement that he personally wrote a statement of recantation that he forced Agricola to sign. From the public arguments with Agricola, however, some scholars have postulated that these debates may belie that Luther did not experience unmitigated support of his theological reformers concerning the ordering of law and gospel.23 Agricola argues that repentance springs from justification and the gospel – it does not precede it. Indeed, in Luther’s own theological arguments, he so often emphasizes the interiority and priority of grace – and the proper consideration of works as subsequent to grace – that these claims about the law’s sequential priority are puzzling in many respects despite Luther’s own writings Against the Antinomians and centuries of Lutheran scholars who have supported this order. David R. Brondos states that, traditionally, Lutheran theologians have not argued against the sequential order of law and gospel because the gospel has primarily been conceived in terms of forgiveness of sins. While still acknowledging the role of gospel and law both as necessary, Brondos states that “in contrast to what Melanchthon and others affirmed, one might come to saving faith in Christ by hearing the gospel first, only then to understand the law, without ever passing through the experience of a terrified conscience.”24 He likens this to an infant who, from infancy, experiences unconditional love without knowing that forgiveness and patience precede one’s own understanding of imperfect actions and desires. Added to this claim of Brondos, we may want to consider the Lutheran practice of infant baptism in relation to the Lutheran tradition of claiming law as sequentially prior to gospel. Luther own insistence on infant baptism reminds us that the good news of grace sets the context for our lives; it is not our action or consciousness and, in the case of infants, it is certainly not terrorizing and humbling which precede the experience of grace lavishly poured out. From a different angle, Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon argues that God’s acts in creation and in grace lead us to assume all of humanity’s intrinsic equality. While she does not argue that grace precedes the law, she states that grace allows us the honesty to see our sins, to see ourselves in roles as simultaneously oppressor and oppressed. Moreover, grace leads to boldly and tirelessly name the systems of sin and evil around us. As Christians, we feel the contrast between God’s gifts of grace 23 Bertram,

“Introduction,” in LW 47: 105. Here Bertram points out that Luther’s contemporaries, in the middle of the debate, elected Agricola as Dean of the Faculty of Arts. 24 D. R. Brondos, Redeeming the Gospel: The Christian Faith Reconsidered (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2011), 133.

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and equality and its opposite: patriarchal, economic, racial, and social oppression. She writes: Graced with the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of the poor, one is empowered to transform anger and frustration into a never fading struggle for action … This is the grace that enables and calls upon people and bestows upon them the power to identify rampant forces of evil, sin and tyranny and to denounce it. Grace is also the grace of the prophet, the unpredictable empowerment by God of this world’s stutterers to speak out in word and print and to defy the powerful.25

In a gospel-law-gospel dynamic, it is the context of love and knowledge of God’s love, grace and promises which reveal the ways that the world does not match what “ought to be.” Likewise, this chapter claims that, if the promises of God truly precede the law, grace, precedes judgment and suffering. Against the backdrop of covenantal love, abuse and oppression stand out, accentuated. The theological sense of the law, to illumine sin in our world, is much stronger when one begins with justification by grace and gospel.

II. Descriptive and Performative Functions of the Law in Luther In these disputations, Luther consistently references two clear uses of the law. First there is the civil law that governs the institutions and government. Second, Luther expounds on the theological use of the law. When read closely, however, there is great variety within this second use of the law. I propose that there are two additional categories within Luther’s theological uses of law that emerge when one engages  a feminist lens that critiques coercive relational power. Throughout all his work on the theological function of the law, Luther’s offers descriptive and per­ formative functions. First, there is the descriptive function of the law – which is used to elicit the difficult truth telling that is necessary for accountability, ethics, and liberation. In the descriptive sense, he states that the theological function of the law is to illumine sin. Luther writes, “For to reveal sin is nothing else … than to be law or to be the effect and power of the law in the most proper sense.”26 It serves an epistemological function that shifts one’s view of self and world. He writes that if we eliminate the law, we conceal sin and delude ourselves. A descriptive application of the law advocates for an honest appraisal of the world’s hurts and our own collusion in a manner that is certainly consistent with feminist work. Employing a descriptive function of the law, feminist theologians within and outside the Lutheran tradition have sought to name and understand personal and 25 M. J. Melanchthon, “The Grace of God and the Equality of Human Persons,” Dialog 42 (2003) 8–19, on p. 12. 26 Luther, “Second Set,” 80.

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social sin honestly. Within Lutheran feminist theology, work on Luther’s epistemology of the cross27 parallels this function of the law. Essentially, feminist appreciations for Luther’s theology of the cross focus on two elements: first, the cross symbolizes that God meets us even in our darkest moments offering comfort, strength, and redemption;28 and, second, feminist Lutheran theologians have lifted up Luther’s call in his Heidelberg Disputation for theologians of the cross to “call a thing what it is.”29 In terms of this second aspect, several feminist Lutheran theologians in the past two decades have pointed to Luther’s cross-epistemology as supporting the bold naming of sin and oppression. In other works, I have pointed out potential harm from cross-focused soteriologies and have argued that the cross is not the only place God is revealed, according to Luther.30 Nonetheless, the epistemological function of both the law and the cross for Luther bear some re­semblance and are also consonant with much feminist work on the subject of naming sin. Mary Solberg, in her book Compelling Knowledge: A Feminist Proposal for an Epistemology of the Cross argues that  a Lutheran epistemology leads to ethical action.31 She describes the painful difficulty of seeing one’s role in oppression without hiding from or justifying it. From knowing that God will be present, even at our darkest moments and in our deepest shame, we can bravely enter into knowledge of reality and begin to see what actions of amelioration are necessary. Only when one clearly sees and incorporates a clear knowledge of reality can one move into ethical action. As an example, she uses her own experience as a U. S. citizen coming to terms with the United States’ collusion with despotic governmental actions in the nation of El Salvador during its Civil War from 1980–1992. Deanna Thompson, in Crossing the Divide: Luther, Feminism and the Cross, also emphasizes the importance of bold knowledge where we seek to understand reality as it is, fully acknowledging social and individual sin.32 Here she finds great consonance between Luther’s epistemology of the cross and feminist theology’s in 27 Some

Luther scholars use the term “theology of the cross,” but as I have argued elsewhere,­ Luther’s discussion of a “theologian of the cross” is actually an epistemological challenge and approach that counters the scholastic approach to the knowledge of God which he terms a “theology of glory.” See my “Lavish Love: A Covenantal Ontology,” in M. Trelstad (ed.), Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2006) 109–24, on p. 113. 28 For Lutheran feminist works that explore this aspect of the cross, see A. Guðmundsdóttir,­ Meeting God on the Cross: Christ, the Cross, and the Feminist Critique (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), and A. Vargas, “Reading Ourselves into the Cross Story,” in Trelstad (ed.), Cross Examinations, 154–63. 29 LW 31: 41 (= WA 1: 354,21–2). 30 M. Trelstad, “Putting the Cross in Context: Atonement Through Covenant,” in M. J. Streufert (ed.), Transformative Lutheran Theologies: Feminist, Womanist and Mujerista Perspectives (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2010) 107–22. 31 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). 32 (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2004); see also D. Thompson, “Becoming a Feminist Theologian of the Cross,” in Trelstad, Cross Examinations, 76–90.

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sistence that patriarchal power and structures of oppression be unveiled and addressed. Likewise, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda has argued that an epistemology of the cross insists that we name white privilege, economic structures, and other sources of poverty and oppression in order to elicit repentance and changed ethical action on behalf of our neighbor.33 In Luther’s descriptive use of the law and his advocacy for “calling a thing what it is” rather than hiding abuses in our justifications and theories, one is encouraged to face structural, relational, and personal sin head-on, repent and seek to bring our lives in line with what is just and loving. We are to see the sins that are hidden or supported by patriarchal, racial, social, religious, and cultural structures and how these inform our corporate and personal lives. In order to understand Luther’s descriptive sense of the law, one could employ a ruler or a grading system as a good analogy. Neither the grading system itself nor the inventor of the grading system intend to humble or motivate a particular student. The student and professor communicate through this medium and, ideally, it provides a constant that defines the relationship, ensuring just evaluation and clear communication concerning course expectations. A student’s own self-positioning in relation to the grades may bring either disregard for the professor or increased motivation for learning. Likewise, Luther found himself bristling and fuming at God through his perception of the law though, later, he perceived the law as a joy and a gift. The grading system is passive in the sense that it is a standard that is made known. We are humbled by our knowledge but no one, not even God, is humiliating us actively. Luther writes about this descriptive function of the law, “For the law is given and comes in order to show you your unbelief, despair, anger, hatred, malice. What is therefore the cause? Who does it? You and I. Who shows it? The law.”34 In these descriptive examples in Luther’s work, he writes that humans are the effective cause of the despair and pain associated with the law. When the law is revealed to us, our very nature responds in joy or fear and anger. God does not make the law condemning but it is rather our very nature that encounters the law in this light.35 Humans are both cause and agent of the law’s effectiveness rather than God. Alfred North Whitehead also offers an image of judgment emerging from love. Within process theology, God receives and feels the actions of the world and God feels these in light of what God envisions as the best possibility that could have been; the felt discrepancy between the two is a form of judgment. This is not a wrathful judgment. According to Whitehead, “It is the judgment of a tenderness 33 C. Moe-Lobeda, “A Theology of the Cross for the ‘Uncreators’,” in Trelstad, Cross Examinations, 181–95. 34 Luther, “Fifth Disputation,” 166. 35 Here he uses the analogy of limestone that burns when water is poured on it due to its very nature, but the water itself (like the law) does not cause the burning. Luther, “Fifth Disputation,” 181.

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which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage.”36 In other parts of his Disputations about the law, however, Luther advocates a performative function of the law that is abusive in nature – it models an abusive God in that God Godself actively wields the law as a tool. Even as God terrorizes and humiliates us with the law, so we are to wield this tool to terrorize the impious and pious alike as well as those beyond the church. In the church, he states that the “impious” are the majority who are proud and self-satisfied and they must be taken down a notch. When Luther encourages this performative function, he states that God is the cause of the terror rather than humanity. In a revealing passage, Luther writes: It is necessary that God appears at one time, searches the hearts and marrows of the bones and strikes with the experience or power of the law, thus throwing out and beating up, so that we might come to know that we lack help and might learn to flee to Christ.37

Where God beats us up, the Spirit is offered as consolation and gift. Luther writes that “God terrifies by threats, comforts by promises, admonishes by afflictions [and] attracts by benefits.”38 In this performative function, Luther does not depict a passive, descriptive, epistemological function of the law wherein one comes to fully know oneself and the world. Rather, Luther here seems to flashback to his own experience of God’s wrath that left him begging for mercy. It could be that Luther’s own understanding of God’s love and the dynamics of law and grace stem from his family background where love, wrath, and shame were wholly mixed.39 When coupled with his own dramatic, emotional conversion experience from wrath to grace, his statements concerning the performative use of the law seem to be a reentrenchment into the very grounds he struggled to escape. It is as if he could not quite grasp the radicality of his own concepts entertained in The Freedom of a Christian some fifteen years earlier. In his book Redeeming the Gospel: The Christian Faith Reconsidered, David R.  ­Brondos also proposes  a biographical and theological connection concerning Luther’s understanding of the law and gospel. He writes: Luther himself believed he was under God’s law, which constantly stood accusing him. His terrified conscience found peace only when he came to believe the gospel message that God graciously forgave him his sins and declared him righteous for Christ’s sake. This involved a change in the way he viewed God, first as wrathful and then as merciful 36

A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (Gifford Lectures 1928–29), ed. D. R. Griffin/D. W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978), 346. 37 Luther, “Second Disputation,” 122. 38 Ibid. 39 His relationship with his father, filled with fear, wrath and  a struggle for acceptance, is well documented in every biography of Luther.

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and forgiving, and was also related to his understanding of Christ’s work: in his death, Christ endured and appeased God’s wrath at human sin, in essence transforming the ­angry Judge into a gracious Father.40

While his dramatic theological conversion was clearly influential for Luther, and later all Western history, it is unclear as to whether this is the one and only way one can come to realize the grace of God fully and whether this path, or any for that matter, can be universally effective for all to experience the grace of God. These types of claims have been rightly problematized by third-wave feminism, postmodern critiques, and post-colonial theologies. As referenced earlier, theological methods and claims need to be tested for veracity in a variety of contexts; while the proud may need humbling to see their need for Christ, the overly-humbled are certainly not served by universalizing this method. Thus, C. F. W. Walther wrote that grace should be preached to the downtrodden. Unfortunately, the Lutheran theological tradition has also amplified the violence of Luther’s imagery concerning the performative use of the law. There is a suspicious over-enthusiasm for language of wrath and violence. Walther himself uses much of Luther’s own wording but adds more dramatic abusive imagery. He writes that God’s law functions to terrify and to strike down, like a hammer that shatters one to the core, leaving humankind desolate and begging for the mercy of God. Once this has been accomplished, grace (gospel) is offered. Walther advocates preaching the law in “full sternness” and states that “[i]f you do this, you will be handling a sharp knife that cuts into the life of people … From the effects of your preaching they will go down on their knees at home” and “see how awfully contaminated with sins they were and how sorely they needed the gospel.”41 With this theological tradition, it is no wonder that Lutheran preaching was taught as the tool to “[d]rive people to their knees and make them need the gospel.”42 Unfortunately, the perpetual enactment of this dynamic of the law and gospel presents a highly problematic image of God’s relationship to humanity. The difference between the descriptive function and performative function is dramatic. It is one thing for loved ones to hold themselves accountable to each other’s expectations of love, trust, and respect in a relationship. It is quite another thing for one partner to wield expectations over the other as a tool for abasement and humilia­ tion – killing and striking at their self-esteem so that they would be all the more grateful for their abuser’s love – and to do this without end. A performative procedure of shoving down and helping up contains no care for the other’s integrity and agency. 40 Brondos,

Redeeming the Gospel, 132. The Proper Distinction, 79, 81, 83. 42 This quote comes from a course on Lutheran preaching, “Homiletics,” with instructors Gracia Grindal and Cathy Malotky, Lutheran Northwestern Theological Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota, spring 1993: lecture by Grindal, April 19, 1993. 41 Walther,

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From a feminist point of view, this cannot help but look like a theology of abuse. While the descriptive function of Luther’s law is to be honest in terms of suffering in the world, the performative function enacts the suffering it describes. Abasement and humiliation is not a necessary antecedent for someone to understand the depth and unqualified nature of love. Indeed, education materials on intimate partner violence clearly name this as a sign of abuse, a lust for power and control, not love. What would we think of a parent who sought to strike their child down, to terrorize and thoroughly humiliate them, to drive them to dependence and a gratitude for their love? If we use Luther’s image of a marriage between Christ and humanity as presented in The Freedom of a Christian, we may want to question the quality, health, and safety of the relationship. Let me offer one analogy that comes to mind. Recently, a friend recounted how her ex-husband had grabbed her hair, pushing her to her knees and shoving her face in the toilet. He wanted her to see that she had not cleaned it well. Certainly it revealed her “errors,” it terrorized and humiliated, but does any amount of flowers and applause later erase this debasement? As models of God inform our social and familial structures, here is where terror, domestic violence, and the law come together in Lutheran thought. Indeed, work on Luther and the law is a feminist mine-field. There are some safe and enlightening places and others that are dangerous – that maim us if we follow him there. I would ask that we Lutherans not accept these abusive images of God within Luther’s performative writings on the law and confront those who invoke these images so that we might not exacerbate the situation of terror in which many of our sisters, brothers, and children live.

III. Contextualizing the Law within the Brackets of Gospel Across the Disputations, Luther argues that the Bible places the law prior to the gospel. By the sheer amount of time he spends addressing this issue we get some hint that he had some contest from other Reformers. In fact, he claims the very notion that the gospel precedes the law is a dangerous “toy of the devil” wherein Christians “perceive nothing in Christ but sweet security” and so when death comes “they sink helplessly into hell.”43 While he quotes some passages of Paul’s writings quite a bit, he does not fully address Paul’s writings to the Galatians where Paul himself seeks to counter the “Judaizers” of his time who seek to prove that one needs to first follow the law prior to the gospel. Paul states that the Old Testament promises and covenant of God precede the law by 430 years (Gal. 3:17). ­Luther addresses this briefly stating that they had a natural law inscribed on their hearts prior to this and he tries to bring the existence of his definition of the law back to the fall in Eden. Here, I cannot agree with him. Creation and the company 43 LW

41: 111 (Against the Antinomians [1539] [= WA 50: 471]).

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of God, the extension of promise and covenant, precede the law and the cross. Jewish biblical scholars such as Amy-Jill Levine have also stressed that Judaism in Jesus’ day and our own clearly understood that the covenant preceded the law.44 God’s offer of the law, the rules of the relationship or parameters, would only make sense within the covenantal framework. From a Christian standpoint, the law only makes sense and only gains efficacy when rooted in the gospel which Jesus Christ both is and fulfills. Carter Heyward once wrote that genuine authority is gained only through a relationship of trust and respect.45 In fact, laws and authority require the preexistence of trust. Relationship and trust is primary – authority follows. Outside of trust, laws become unilateral, manipulative coercion that can indeed force one to perform certain actions but the power to elicit our genuine response, repentance, and change can only come from the context of trust, if not love. Sheer wrath does not inspire internal transformation. And unilateral actions of power and anger are the actions of a tyrant, not actions of love which enfold the worth and value of the other. An external power may force or require obedience, but only a trustworthy relationship elicits our deepest desires for right relationship with God and with others. We hold ourselves most accountable to those whom we love and trust. Thus, the law – an authority that may have the power to reveal the ways we are not living up to expectations – needs to be rooted first in love and trust in order to be effective. Feminist theology and ethics, however, offer insights on the role of “anger in the work of love” to use the famous title of ethicist Beverly Wildung Harrison’s article.46 Harrison argues that the emotion of anger signals that all is not well in our relationships. When trust, respect, or mutuality is ruptured, our feelings respond. If we did not care about the other and the relationship, we would be indifferent and detached. But anger, within the context of a mutual and loving relationship, is a form of emotional knowledge that can lead us to examine the situation further and call us into conversation and accountability, seeking to rectify and mend what is broken. Anger “expressed directly is a mode of taking the other seriously, of caring.” With expression of our deep feelings, “we can act to alter relationship, toward reciprocity, beginning a real process of hearing and speaking to each other.”47 Anger that seeks to humiliate or injure is not constructive or trustworthy – it is an act of unilateral power. It is a sign of sin and abuse, not love. The key here is that healthy anger is within the context of a mutual relationship of respect, care,

44 A.-J.

Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (San Fransisco: Harper, 2006). 45 C. Heyward, Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God (San Fransisco:­ Harper, 1989). 46 B. W. Harrison, “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love,” in C. Christ/J. Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (New York: Harper, 1989) 214–25, on p. 214. 47 Harrison, “The Power of Anger,” 220–1.

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and love. Without the preceding relationship, such anger would be ineffectual at best, manipulative and abusive at worst. Abuse is not God-like nor redemptive. And, as the source of love, good and hope, God does not seek to abuse and humiliate humanity. In examining Luther’s understanding of the law, we need to remove the religious justification for abuse for both victim and perpetrator. God’s love, like any good love, does not require humiliation on the recipient’s part. God seeks a covenantal relationship with humankind that, like the story of the exodus, provides liberation from oppression rather than simply exchanging one relationship of abuse for another. The rules of the house are contextualized in love and care for the integrity of the beloved, grounded in that which we can trust, and thereby we can live into them honestly and with the difficult, deep delight Luther describes.

Zusammenfassung Nächstenliebe Terror beginnt zu Hause Luther und das „erschreckende und tötende“ Gesetz Dieser Beitrag untersucht die intimen Verbindungen zwischen Terror, Gewalt, Luther und dem Gesetz. Zwei Thesen werden entwickelt: Erstens, dass das Gesetz vor dem Evan­gelium bzw. außerhalb des Kontextes des Evangeliums ein Modell der Zwangsgewalt darstellt, dem echte Autorität und damit jede Wirksamkeit fehlt. In der Tat behauptet dieser Beitrag, dass das Gesetz nur im Kontext des Evangeliums wirksam sein kann. Wie das Kreuz, das nur innerhalb der Gesamt-Geschichte von Gottes Bundes-Liebe Gestalt und Bedeutung gewinnt, so geht auch das Evangelium dem Gesetz voran und folgt ihm. Dieser Beitrag entwirft deshalb als Korrektiv zu Luther eine Dynamik von Evangelium-Gesetz-Evangelium. Er befürwortet keine Abschaffung des Gesetzes, sondern ein besseres Verständnis seiner notwendigen Kontextualisierung.48 Zweitens deckt dieser Beitrag ein bislang übersehenes Verständnis von Luthers Schriften über das Gesetz auf, das sowohl eine beschreibende als auch eine performative Funktion enthält. Während die beschreibende Funktion die feministischen Anliegen für Wahrheit und Rechenschaftspflicht spiegelt und unterstützt, muss die performative Funktion des Gesetzes abgelehnt werden, weil es eine Dynamik des Missbrauchs bietet. Feministische Theologinnen haben jahrzehntelang die Verherrlichung der missbräuchlichen Macht in christlichen Modellen von Gott analysiert, und sie bieten eine wertvolle Orientierungshilfe nicht nur zur Auslegung und Anwendung von Luthertexten im heutigen Kontext, sondern auch dazu an, Luthers theologische Fehler aufzuzeigen und zu korrigieren – in der Hoffnung, dass wir nicht die potenziell missbräuchlichen Ideen in seiner Theologie weitertreiben. 48 In

den Vereinigten Staaten beschuldigen auch heute noch einige Lutheraner andere als Ketzer und Antinomer. In der Tat ist die Gesetz-Evangelium-Dynamik ein heißes Thema, vor allem unter theologisch und sozial konservativen Lutheranern, die den liberalen Lutheranern vorwerfen, einzig und allein Liebe zu verkündigen. Das Gesetz wird auch dazu verwendet, gängige Vorstellungen von Familie, Gender und Sexualität zu kritisieren. Insbesondere wird das Gesetz gegen die Rechte der Homosexuellen zur Ordination, zur Ehe und zum Empfang des Segens in der Kirche aufgerufen.

Chapter 13

Allen G. Jorgenson

Luther on Reserve Reading the Torgau Sermon on Christ’s Descent into Hell and the Resurrection (1532) in North America

I. Introduction What might a “Lutherrenaissance” mean in North America? In a continent forever fixated on the theme of novelty and expansion – to the detriment of those who inhabited the Americas in modes of recollection and harmony – this question is an ethical one. It is also a dogmatic and theological question because the history of Christianity is inscribed in the land in North America. Many theological institutions (including the one where I work) are located on lands once deeded to Indigenous peoples, and churches across the land (such as the one I attend) celebrate God’s liberation on the dispossessed property of those sequestered into reservations. To ponder a Lutherrenaissance in North America without attending to the occidental propensity to take what isn’t ours, to give what isn’t wanted and to usurp silence with speech is to do  a grievous injustice to the gospel itself. This chapter proffers a path into a renaissance of Luther studies that takes locus seriously: where we do theology matters.1 “Luther on Reserve” reads in two directions in North America. On the one hand, professors and students might first hear this phrase with a library in mind, mindful of the reserve shelf where assigned reading is made available to students, who may or may not avail themselves of the opportunity to engage the uncharacteristically “reserved Luther.” On the other hand, those in North America attentive to the sordid histories of this continent can’t help but be mindful of the reservation systems of both Canada and the United States of America, designed to hold Aboriginal Americans at bay until their successful assimilation. In this instance, Luther and reserve might not sit together so well. Luther has probably not spent so much time on the reserve as other religious figures. Some suggest that this is as it should be, but I disagree.2 Yet my disagreement is founded on the assumption 1 The

earliest Lutheran doctrinal theology, from 1522, by Philipp Melanchthon is entitled Loci Communes, or in English, Commonplaces. 2 Cf. G. E. “Tink” Tinker, American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty (Maryknoll: ­Orbis Books, 2008), 90.

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that students of Luther need to spend some time on reserves not so much to proclaim the gospel, as to be exposed to new ideas, rituals, and worldviews that allow a return to Luther with the new eyes formed by the gift of estrangement. This essay is intended as this kind of exercise with a view to a fresh reading of Luther’s Torgau Sermon on Christ’s Descent into Hell and the Resurrection (1532). Guided by the conviction that  a faithful reading of Luther entails sustained attentiveness to both the context of Luther’s writing and the context of Luther’s reader in North America, I begin with the latter. I first explore what I consider to be the fundamental, if forgotten, context of life in North America, outlining briefly some contours of the religious worldviews of those who hosted Europeans who responded to their hospitality with hostility. This exercise will give us the gift of estrangement, which will help us to read Luther afresh. I next explore the context of the so-called Torgau sermon. I then interpret the sermon, reading it with one eye on the text and the other on the new context. My conclusion follows the path of an estranged return to my North American context. I begin with an exploration of the context in which I read Luther in North America.

II. Context and Aboriginal Americans Some forty years ago Douglas John Hall invited North Americans into the exercise of contextual theology. Hall recognized at that time that North Americans imported European theologies of hope into a land where the official creed of optimism was in need of  a tonic that tempered rather than fueled the American “can do” attitude. While contextual theology has been de rigeur in many quarters, too few theologians come to grips with the fundamental dispossession of Native American lands that mars our context. Histories of racism, imperialism, and consumerism that have marred both world and church flow from this dark chapter in North America. Time spent with Aboriginal Americans will serve as an important corrective. But what do we experience when we visit reserves in North America? To begin with, it must be affirmed that visiting Indigenous Americans is an immersion in diversity. Yet even so, there are some general contours that identify the spiritualities and worldviews of most Aboriginal Americans. In what follows I sketch out five, and contrast them with caricatures of the modern western mindset: (1) attention to space and harmony in contrast to time and progress; (2) diverse community in contrast to rugged individualism; (3) storied existence in contrast to a mania for Historie; (4) original sanctity in contrast to original sin; and finally (5) a focus on deep creation in contrast to obsession with redemption. It is noted that these distinction are somewhat artificial, and purposely so. They serve as heuristic devices clarifying the degree to which the modern westerner often unknowingly inhabits a rather different world than people schooled in traditional cultures. It is to be admitted, of course, that many Aboriginal Americans really live in both worlds simultaneously. It is also noted that Luther was not raised on the thin gruel

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of Manifest Destiny and so was differently mannered than we are.3 To some degree, then, an articulation of the worldviews of Aboriginal Americans will provoke sympathies for some of Luther’s views while not, admittedly, all of them. I begin this exploration by turning to the Aboriginal attention to space and harmony. (1) Vine Deloria Jr. has proposed that students of theology have a fundamental choice: will time or space be the principal lens through which reality is apprehended?4 Other Aboriginal voices have proposed that the choice is not as stark as that suggested by Deloria.5 In either event, there is in Aboriginal thought an at­ tentiveness to space that makes the modern western interest in time curious to the extreme. Indeed, some occidental theologians are beginning to ponder how certain theological topoi look when viewed through the lens of space.6 What is increasingly clear, to those who ponder such topics, is that an overly sharp interest in time in modern western thought comes hand in hand with an interest in history as progress. Time is decidedly experienced as linear, as opposed to circular (as it is in Indigenous communities). And so, it is noted that Aboriginal thought, with its attention to space, does not preclude the importance of time. Time is experienced as circular, to the end that the circle becomes a broader cipher for explicating existence. In like manner, occidental thought does not preclude attention to space in its preference for time. Yet space is differently construed in modern western notions: it is largely understood from an economy of lack. At the cusp of modernity, the earth was conceived to be a limited resource, and so land was to be parceled out, or grabbed by those who mustered the necessary tools for conquest. Aboriginal cultures, in contrast, have never understood land to be owned.7 Land is rather like our mother, who gives us life and provides for her children. And as a loving mother, she provides enough for all, so that an expectation of balance and harmony is anticipated when living on the land. The land provides, in season, according to our needs. A kind of balance obtains for a life lived in harmony with the land; and accordingly those who live on the land aim for a harmony among themselves. We turn next to consider the diverse community of those living on the land. 3 G. Vizenor’s Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994) outlines how the theme of a Manifest Destiny prescribes certain actions in accord with this particular meta-discourse in the U. S. A. 4 V. Deloria Jr., God is Red: A Native View of Religion (Golden, Col.: Fulcrum, 2003), 57. Cf. also Tinker, American, 8. 5 “Introduction” in C. S. Kidwell/H. Noley/G. E. “Tink” Tinker (eds.), A Native American Mythology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), 13. 6 Cf. V. Westhelle, Eschatology and Space: The Lost Dimension in Theology Past and Present (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012). Cf. Also A. G. Jorgenson, “Empire, Eschatology and Stolen Land,” Dialog 49 (2010) 115–22. 7 H. Cardinal, “Okimaw Win and Post-colonial Nation-building,” in D. Schweitzer/D. Simon (eds.), Intersecting Voices: Critical Theologies in  a Land of Diversity (Toronto: Novalis Press, 2004), 197–8. Cf. Also J. Rieger, “God and Power, Prophets, and Native Lands,” in D. K. Ray (ed.), Theology that­ Matters: Ecology, Economy and God (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009), 69.

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(2) Aboriginal thinkers begin with community. The rugged individual is not an ideal within the worldview of Indigenous thought. This is not to gainsay the place of the individual, but it is always construed as the individual emerging from the community and acting for the sake of community. Moreover, the community admits individuality in the guise of a community of diversity.8 This stands in contrast to the worst of North American individualism, wherein the claim to individuality is writ large in communities that do not tolerate difference. Taiakiake Alfred notes that Indigenous worldviews incorporate the co-existence of opposites that presumes difference.9 This fundamentally different way of viewing the world is evident in the differing political imaginations of Aboriginal and western political thought.10 Historically, many western cultures have a head of state, whereas Aboriginal communities often had different leaders within the same community: for war, for hunting, for religious purposes. Diffused leadership mimicked the harmony of creation and functioned well for the flourishing of the community. The Indigenous way of being is informed by a communal memory of the need for diverse gifts. The difficult life of hunting/gathering communities precluded the possibility of a life lived in isolation from others. Rugged individualism was not and is not a possibility for those who live on the land in the Arctic. Diversity for such communities is seen to be a gift insofar as it was only as a community that physical existence was possible. Yet these communities of diversity managed to maintain cohesion. How was this possible? We turn now to consider their focus on storied existence. (3) Aboriginal author Thomas King has declared that the “truth about stories is that that’s all we are.”11 King understood this to be true, not only of Indigenous communities, but of the human community. Yet there is something different about the Aboriginal interest in story. To begin with, story is set over against history. Some thinkers in First Nations regard history as a tool of colonialism.12 This is an important, yet difficult assertion to assess. On the one hand, Indigenous thinkers are generally far more aware of the histories of the Americas that have had to do with them: such as Treaties,13 residential school atrocities, occupations, wars, that have been forgotten by occidental thinkers. Their unease with history, then, should be read in concert with their concern for the conceptual loss of space to 8 Deloria,

Red, 194–7. Alfred, Peace, Power and Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 22009), 12. 10 Alfred, Peace, Power and Righteousness, 90. 11 T. King, The Truth About Stories (Toronto: Anansi, 2003), 2. 12 Tinker, Liberation, 28.  13 It is useful to recall Regin Prenter’s insight that Hebrew does not have  a word for “history” but uses, instead, “covenant” where we might expect “history.” It is beyond the scope of this essay to ponder the relationship between these two key words, which might establish  a new way of getting at the theme of history in Christian thought. Cf. R. Prenter, Creation and Redemption (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 237. 9 T.

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time, wherein time is apprehended under the guise of progress and encoded in a Historie that marches purposefully forward. An Indigenous accent on land, then, is of a piece with locating the story of the people in the relationship with the soil they trod. Places will be markers of, or perhaps witnesses to, certain formative events in the community. Place helps to tell the story that is the people. Moreover, the story is best told. Gerald Vizenor has noted that there is a drift in occidental thought from the aural to the seen, even while he asserts that the written is not an advance over the oral.14 Stories told are preferred to those written insofar as the former demand face to face encounter. Moreover, certain Aboriginal creation stories are told over a series of days. The performance is only mastered by a teller who has been schooled in patient hearing. The many creation stories of the peoples of the Americas narrate the genesis of the land as well as the people, plants, and animals that inhabit it. Despite great diversity of the stories, there is one thing they all share: the absence of a story of the fall. (4) Aboriginal thought traditionally does not include a “fall.” Generally, in the place of original sin, elders will talk of humans as being created whole.15 Humans are innately good, and remain good by attending to the rituals and practices that sustain community. Fall from this state is not inevitable, but can happen. When it does, it can be rectified by following the appropriate rituals that enable the redress that renews community. The notion of being born in original sin has not been a part of the storied existence of the First Nations of the North American continent. Moreover, wrongdoing is more commonly conceived as an illness or perhaps a misunderstanding. As such, it can be corrected by right teaching or rituals that enable healing.16 More broadly conceived, this lack of a notion of original sin funds a view of evil that is differently nuanced than that of Christian thought. Supernatural beings are often ambiguous in character, in one instance appearing beneficent and in another malicious. God, for those cultures in which there is something approaching monotheism, is not vested with the adjectives of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, even while some of these might apply for some thinkers. Perhaps this theme of original sanctity is the one, of the five categories discussed, which seems strangest to traditional Christian thought, even while its sentiment might be shared by some who profess Christ. This focus on being born whole is a corollary of the final point of emphasis: a deep appreciation for creation that counters an inordinate interest in redemption. (5) Creation is central for Indigenous thought. Moreover, creation is not conceived as a single moment at the beginning of the history of the universe.17 Cre 14 Vizenor,

Manners, 69, 72. “Foreword,” in R. Ross, Dancing with  a Ghost: Exploring Aboriginal Identity (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2006), xiii. 16 Ross, Dancing with a Ghost, 71, 193. 17 G. E. “Tink” Tinker, Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2004), 91. 15 B. H.  Johnston,

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ation is ongoing, as is the case with Luther.18 Indeed, Luther seems to be a thinker who appreciates the importance of creation as a partner with redemption, rather than a seeming condition for the possibility of redemption, a mere footnote to the drama of redemption. Luther and Aboriginal thinkers seem to share a deep appreciation of creation, in contrast to too much Christian thought, which marginalizes the significance of creation from both dogmatic-theological and practical-theological perspectives.19 Despite this rapprochement, however, there is  a significant distinctive in Indigenous thought that differs from Luther’s approach and the broader Christian tradition: the Aboriginal refusal to give homo sapiens a special place in the order of the cosmos. Birds, fish, and mammals are all considered brothers and sisters. Stories are told about them as willing to give themselves as sacrifices to human beings, late-comers to the cosmos, in order to ensure human survival. Indeed, the land itself relates to humans. The land admits a kind of intentionality that is lost on many occidental thinkers, even though something of this is found in the Bible.20 Redemption from original sin does not play a role in traditional Aboriginal thought. It is not needed to resolve the conundrum of the exit from Eden that serves as a fundamental trope in Christian thought. Redemption is not thereby absent, but is construed more generally as the resolution of conflicts in a manner attentive to the need for opponents to save face.21 Creation as gift is fundamental to the Indigenous imagination in a way that is often lost to occidental sensibilities. This theme will be especially important in the following reading of Luther’s Torgau Sermon. One concluding comment regarding Indigenous insights will prepare us for what follows. It is noted that the above sketch might give the impression that Aboriginal religious thought is fundamentally alien to Christian thought. Things, of course, are more complicated than they first appear. Some Aboriginal thinkers consider Christianity diametrically opposed to traditional North American religions. Other Aboriginal theologians have thoroughly eschewed traditional beliefs. Still others creatively integrate the two religious worldviews. In what follows I engage Luther’s text with eyes attentive to themes that I might otherwise miss but now attend to by grace of an encounter with a religious other that I construe to be, in itself, a gift of the Creator.

18 Cf.

N. H. Gregersen, “Deep Incarnation: The Logos Became Flesh,” in K. L. Bloomquist (ed.), Transformative Theological Perspectives: Theology in the Life of the Church, vol. 6 (Minneapolis, Minn.: Lutheran University Press, 2009) 167–82, on p. 167. 19 This point is developed in G. Wingren’s Creation and Gospel: The New Situation in European Theology (New York/Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 1979); and Creation and Law (Philadelphia: Muhlen­berg Press, 1961). 20 Rom 8:22–23 and Ps 148 are two examples wherein creation is given voice in Scripture. 21 Ross, Dancing, 11, 15, 154.

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III. Luther’s Torgau Sermon In what follows I consider the context of Luther’s so-called Torgau Sermon, being first attentive to the place in which contemporary readers of Luther and Luther­ anism will likely encounter it: The Book of Concord. I first note that it is somewhat misleading to talk of one’s encounter with Luther’s Torgau Sermon in The Book of Concord. It is conspicuous by its absence, being merely mentioned in “The Solid Declaration” and “The Epitome.”22 In a footnote to this citation in the Solid Declaration, the editors note that the so-called Torgau Sermon was actually preached in Wittenberg on Easter of 1532.23 Robert Kolb comments that Georg Rörer made notes from the March 31, 1532 sermon that were then used as a basis for the third of the three sermons deemed to be commentary on the Creed by editors of the Weimarer Ausgabe.24 The other two sermons were possibly preached in Torgau in 1532. This collection of three sermons was first published in 1533 and then republished in 1551 in response to the Osiander controversy.25 What occasioned these publications and their referral in The Book of Concord? What were the contexts attending the reception of the “Torgau sermon”? In the first instance, we recall that this sermon was preached at an Easter Sunday morning worship service. It has, as its text for consideration, the short phrase from the Apostles’ Creed: “descended into hell, on the third day risen from the dead.” Its Sitz-im-Leben was a celebration of Easter, in the context of a church in a university town. The publication of the sermon presumes an audience outside of the context of  a worship service. Moreover, it becomes identified as the Torgau Sermon in light of the likely location of the other two sermons published with it. The sermon was used in both intra-Lutheran and Lutheran-Calvinist debates to identify whether the descent was proper to Christ’s exaltation or humiliation.26 In 22 See

“The Solid Declaration,” Article IX in R. Kolb/T. J. Wengert (eds.), The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2000) 634, 5 and “The Epitome,” Article IX, in Book of Concord, 514. 23 Book of Concord, 635 n. 306. 24 See R. Kolb, “Christ’s Descent into Hell as Christological Locus in the Era of the ‘Formula of Concord’: Luther’s ‘Torgau Sermon’ Revisited,” LuJ 69 (2002) 101–18, on p. 113 n. 37. Cf. also E. Vogel­ sang, “Luthers Torgauer Predigt von Jesu Christo vom Jahre 1532,” LuJ 13 (1931) 114–30. The sermon is found in English in R. Kolb/J. A. Nestigen (eds.), Sources and Contexts of The Book of Concord (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2001), 245–55. Rörer’s notes are found in WA 36: 159–64. The text upon which the Sources translation is based is found in WA 37: 62–73. An edited version of the sermon is found in the Jena “Hauspostille.” Cf. D. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 3 (Frankurt/ Erlangen: Heyder, 1854), 279–96. Cf. also Ilmari Karimies, “Christ’s Victory over Hell and Ours Too: Luther’s ‘Torgau Sermon’ on Christ’s Descent into Hell,” online at https://tuhat.halvi.helsinki.fi/portal/ files/13152943/Paper_ Christ_s_Victory_ over_ Hel (accessed 11.04.2012). 25 See Kolb, Sources, 245 and Kolb, “Christ’s Descent,” 113 n. 37. 26 See Kolb, “Christ’s Descent,” 105 n. 14: “The issue of the soteriological significance of Christ’s descent into hell cuts across the usual ‘party lines’ of the period; Melanchthon, his Philippist disciples, as well as Gnesio-Lutheran students of his like Chemnitz, interpreted it as part of Christ’s triumph;­

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Right wing from the Triptychon Altar in the Erfurt Cathedral © Constantin Beyer

further controversies, a link was drawn between this Calvinist view and their understanding of the Eucharist.27 In  a sense, the Torgau Sermon becomes  a marginalized text in Lutheranism. Modern readings of the text are rare. There are exceptions, notable by their infre-

Johannes Brenz (1499–1570) and Andreae shared a position similar to that of their Calvinist opponents in viewing it as a part of his suffering …” 27 Cf. Kolb, “Christ’s Descent,” 110: “ … to the Mansfelder that the ‘Sacramentarians’ were determined not to concede the true presence of the entire person, in both natures, in more than one place – the grave and hell – after his death. The ‘Confessio de sententia ministrorum verbi …’ drew the parallel with the ‘Sacramentarian’ belief that after Christ’s death and ascension to the right hand of God in heaven he could not reveal himself visibly on earth or be present bodily and truly.”

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quency.28 Moreover, a series of enigmas attend the Torgau Sermon. It is displaced in being located in a place where it was not preached. It exists only as a footnote to its most frequent source of reference – “The Formula of Concord” – for students of Luther and his followers. And finally, it is excised from its original context as an Easter sermon, and so divorced from its original context of speaking to the celebration of Easter.

IV. Reading the Torgau Sermon in North America Luther’s sermon begins in the most unusual way: “Because we have buried the Lord Jesus Christ and have heard how he departed this life, we must also get him out of the grave again and celebrate the day of Easter.” (245) Hearers of the word are invited to ponder the impossible task of getting Christ out of the grave – yet again! With this beginning, Luther draws us into the sermon in which he identifies  a series of impossible possibilities that are identified with our existence. These “impossible possibilities” mark those boundary experiences wherein we face seemingly impossible tasks, yet paradoxically discover  a source of strength precisely in our weakness. The first example of such an impossible possibility comes early in the sermon, where Luther asserts that we have buried Christ and the task is given to us to “get him out of the grave again.” This drives us to grace. The following exploration of these impossible possibilities is indebted, in a significant way, to a theme I learn from Indigenous Americans: the gift of circularity. Aboriginal Americans are suspicious of the occidental pre-occupation with linearity, especially in the mode of progress. I think that this is a well-placed critique of North American culture and that it names well an important prejudice we need to admit when we read theological texts, such as the Torgau Sermon. Lutherans, in particular, approach Luther with the need to see in his theological exhortations the rigorously consistent move from law to gospel. This habit of interpretation gets in the way when we read the sermons of Luther. I think we should follow the ad­ monition a Cree gentleman once gave me in telling me that if you want to catch anything hunting, you are best to travel in a circle: we do well to attend to Luther’s circularity in interpreting this sermon. In sum, Luther introduces, and re-introduces impossible possibilities that drive us to grace. We note first how early in the sermon Luther underscores our need to attend to a simple understanding of the descent into hell, one that eschews “precise and subtle descriptions” (247). Yet, all the same, he notes that because of the impossi 28 In

addition to Robert Kolb’s recent work on the Torgau Sermon see C. C. Christensen, “Luther’s Theology and the Uses of Religious Art,” LQ 22 (1970) 147–65; D. G. Truemper, The descensus ad infernos from Luther to the Formula of Concord (S. T. D. Thesis; Chicago: Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1974), and G. W. Forell, “The Formula of Concord and the Teaching Ministry,” SCJ 8 (1977) 39–47.

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bility of understanding this supernatural event – especially in light of an inability to understand what happens on this side of the grave – we realize that this event remains a matter of faith. Related to this is the problem of the “physical” in the text. The first third, or so, of the sermon involves Luther’s consternation with this category. He notes early in the text that the descent “did not happen in a physical manner.” (246) But still … because we must comprehend this with our own thinking and picture it to ourselves so that it can be presented to us in words, and because nothing can be understood or thought of without images, it is appropriate that we view these things in words that depict how he descended into hell, broke the gates of hell, and destroyed them. (247)

Luther goes on to depict the danger of spending too much time pondering the physicality of hell. He asks “How can the gates stay shut; what are they made of?” Such speculations feed incredulity and so he retorts We, praise God, are indeed not so crude that we believe or say that it happened physically. … We leave such questioning and fussing and interpreting aside and speak simply with that which can be pictured through the crude pictures that this article offers. (247)

Luther states how we can use language rather like Jesus uses parables. We should engage evocative images that invite the imagination into the liminal space where possibilities emerge that otherwise are restricted by the severity of logic and the impossibilities of the physical. Still, Luther displays some anxiety about this need to image what is not physical. He worries that a physical understanding will raise unhelpful questions about Christ. He then defensively mimics his interlocutors’ articulation of the impossible possibility of Christ descending to hell. These are questions aiming to doom Christological coherence: “Did the soul, or the divinity of Jesus descend, and what did he do in hell?”29 Luther wants to present the theme of the descent in such a way that these leading questions are avoided, yet he has himself articulated them in so doing! He responds with a blunt confession: That means I believe in the entire person, God and human creature with body and soul inseparable, born of the virgin, suffered, dead and buried. Therefore I am not supposed to divide up his person but instead simply to believe and to say that this very Christ, God and human creature in one person, descended to hell. (248)

Luther has circled around two themes simultaneously: the impossible possibilities of physically sketching out what cannot be depicted physically and that of making sense of the hypostatic union in the moment in the Creed that most stretches its logical possibility: the descent into hell. These two themes merge as he notes 29 Of

some significance regarding this question are Aquinas’s reflections on the descensus ad infernos as found in Summa Theologicae III, q. 52 wherein he notes that Christ does not enter every part of hell, but saves beyond the regions he visits by virtue of his effect.

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However it may have happened that this human creature was lying in the grave and then descended into hell, we should and must let stand. We cannot fathom or understand it. For it is indeed not to be comprehended in a physical way. We have to depict it in a crude and physical manner and speak of it in parables. (249)30

Again, the impossible possibility of the task must not be lost on us. We need to depict this supernatural event in physical terms, yet these physical terms will be ridiculed. Luther further attempts to articulate, and best, the best of the “inopportune smart aleck,” who mocks his own necessary images and rips to pieces the pictures that advance the simple in faith. Slowly he circles what has been in sight from the start: “Believing in him is the chief thing. It is useful and gives the power that we have from this: that neither hell nor the devil can take us and all others who believe on him captive nor can they do us harm.” (249) This belief is circumscribed by the impossibility of explaining this article of the Creed alongside the necessity of imaging it for hearers. How are we to explain that evil cannot hold Christ or us captive? Is this really our experience? Yet as we hear this text in North America, we ask of necessity: “What are we to make, not of our fear of being held captive; but of our memory of the sad history of holding others captive; not of our being dispossessed, but of our dispossessing others; not of our being killed but of our complicity in killing the ethnic, the religious, the cosmic other?” Recognizing this, we feel as if in a hell of sorts: To be sure, hell in and of itself remains hell and holds the unbelievers imprisoned there, as well as death, sin, and all evil. They remain there and rot, and they may terrify and harass us in the flesh, in our outward person, beating us and biting us. Nonetheless, in faith and in the spirit, they are completely destroyed and torn apart, so they cannot harm us anymore. (250)31

It is interesting to note that Luther does not allow the Christian to skirt death and hell. We are to press through it. Death and hell are necessarily endured. Moreover, they are endured even in the angst of this very sermon: it evokes precisely the unease of discovering that enduring death and hell too is an impossible possibility. Of course, this theme was written into the very first paragraph of the sermon. There Luther reminded us of our need, yet again, to get the one out of the grave whom we buried, the one who while buried “descended into hell so that he might redeem us who lay imprisoned there.” (246) We need to raise from the grave the only one 30 Cf.

WA 37: 65,13–17: “Wie es zu gangen sei, das weis ich warlich nicht, weder es auch nicht er­ dencken noch aus reden koennen. Aber grob kan ich dirs wol malen und inn ein bild fassen, von verborgen sachen sein klar und deutlich zu reden.” 31 Cf. WA 37: 66,15–20: “Denn obb wol die helle an sich selbs die helle bleibt and die ungleubigen gefangen hellt, wie auch der tod, sunde und alle ungluck, das sie darinn bleiben und verderben muessen. Und uns auch selbs nach dem fleisch und eusserlichen menschen schrecket und drenget, das wir uns da mit schlahen und beissen muessen. Doch ist solchs im glauben und geist alles zustoert und zurissen, das es uns nichts mehr schaden kan.”

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who can raise us from the grave. Circularity obtains here. Death and hell are existential qualifiers of human existence that mark both our collusion in the illusion that we are innocent, and the dark acknowledgment that sinning is what we do as humans. All the while we experience the very wounds we inflict on others. Luther provides some respite: But our Lord Christ did not simply leave it at that, that he died and descended into hell (for in the end that would not have done us any good). He also came back from death and hell. He was brought again to life, and he opened heaven. (250)

Luther’s thought here returns to the resurrection while presuming the incarnation: because Christ “stuck himself into our flesh and blood and took all our sins, punishments, and misfortune upon himself, he had to help us escape.” (251) The necessity of the descent is an echo of the divine decision to be kenotic in a way that brings no gain to Christ.32 Enduring the impossible possibility of illustrating what happens here is enabled by two complementary images. On the one hand, the Christian is described as the one who has “Christ is risen” written in letters in a cosmic font in her heart,33 even while it is also true that she finds herself wrapped up with “He is risen.” Christus resurrexit becomes identified with both our interior and exterior. Even when we see a corpse “lying there like a dead piece of wood” (251–2), we see not a corpse, “but life and a beautiful, lovely garden or a green meadow, and in it nothing but new, living, happy human creatures.” (252) The earthy imagery that attends this must not be lost on the reader. Luther pushes the cosmic significance of the resurrection to the end that he exclaims that Christ “has taken everything along with himself. Through his resurrection, both heaven and earth, sun and moon, must become new.” (252) Further, along “with us, all creatures who now are subject to futility, and who long for the glory that is ours, will be freed from this decaying existence and be glorified.” (252) One might ponder whether we really haven’t stumbled upon  a linear L ­ uther at this point. Has Luther moved us from the impossible possibilities (of thinking about eternity with physical images, of seeing Christ in hell, and of enduring death and hell) to a telos that is so all embracing that it distracts us from the impossible possibilities with the breadth of the vision of grace? Yet Luther reminds us again of the corpse. “Look, we should get used to thinking such thoughts of faith against outward, physical perspectives of the flesh, which simply place death before our eyes.” (252) The corpse perdures and demands faith. Luther comes full circle to confirm that “when you grasp the word in faith, you get another point of view.” (253) This point of view becomes habitual as the resurrection takes

32 Cf.

Luther, “Explanation to the Second Article of the Creed in the Large Catechism,” in Book of Concord, 435. 33 Cf. WA 37: 67,33–4: “… mit grossen buchstaben inns hertz schreiben und so gross mache als­ himel und erden …”

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hold.34 Yet while this perspective allows believers to see life in death, they continue to see death in life. Luther then invites his hearers to consider the mundane pictures that illustrate their quotidian existence: he points them to the life of farming. Year after year, farmers toss perfectly good seed in the soil where reason knows it will rot. Yet reason itself is astounded when the dead seed pushes forth the stock that demonstrates that corruption is the condition for the possibility of life.35 The fact that Luther couches this spiritual truth in an agrarian metaphor – replete with circularity – undoes our occidental propensity to chart salvation in linear categories. Indeed, this impossibility was already articulated in his assertion that God has initiated Christ’s resurrection “so that we might daily rise in him through the Word and Baptism” (252), a point that simply echoes the startling starting point of the sermon which invoked us to get him out of the grave “again.” When the cycle of life is reconfigured, death is no longer our master. Luther invokes the examples of many saints, and so invites the Christian simultaneously to look backward and forward in time. He wants Christians to look down to the earth, from which the fecundity of nature bespeaks spiritual truths, and up to the heavens from which comes a spiritual wisdom hidden in mystery, which “reason and this world … cannot grasp.” (255) In fact, Luther affirms that the faith that embraces this mystery “is our great comfort because we are certain that we are being afflicted for no other reason on earth than because of the Lord Christ and the faith we have received.” (255) The crux of this triumphant ending is found in the confession that we, who are identified with Christ, suffer the ignominy of the label heretic, yet precisely this necessary evil is our joy. The sermon, in sum, is a tale of the existential condition of suffering impos­sible possibilities. Both the descent of Christ into the pits of hell and his resurrection from the dead simultaneously constitute the cipher that buoys hope and invites derision. The Christian life is the cycle that is constituted by this existential condition of human life. Now I turn to consider what it means to read this Torgau ­Sermon in North America.

34 Cf. WA 37: 69,35–9: “Welches ist eben ein stuck der aufferstehung und anfang des newen lebens,

welchs auch newe sinne und gedancken machete, welche sonst niemand haben kondte, wer nicht bereit durch den glauben hinuber were und die aufferstehung ergriffen hetter und also auch den auswendigen menschen mit sich zoege, das er dem selben nach dencken und leben muesse.” 35 Cf. C. Helmer, “More Difficult to Believe? Luther on Divine Omnipotence,” IJST 3 (2001) 2–26, on p. 15: “In his resurrection sermons, Luther deviates from the discussion’s order and privileges Paul’s order from corruption to generation. From the everyday experience of generation, Luther recasts the usual experience of corruption in order to draw an inference to a state of affairs transcending organic death.”

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V. On Renaissance and Resurrection Students of Luther who discern a Lutherrenaissance in certain quarters of church, academy and public do well to ponder its future. In closing, I bring together some insights from both the Torgau Sermon and from Indigenous North Americans as I consider the impossible possibilities of a Lutherrenaissance. What learnings might sustain such a renaissance, such a rebirth? God graciously provides many resources for the enrichment of human life together. Today still, those who wish to see the Lutherrenaissance flourish can look to the Aboriginal American community for clues. First Nations thrive on the edge, and a Lutherrenaissance in North America will be a liminal event. Aboriginal Americans can afford us the insights we need. In this concluding section I look to the key Aboriginal theological points (Section II) in sketching the contours of a renaissance of Luther and his singular focus: the gospel. What are the conditions under which the Lutherrenaissance will contribute to the flourishing of the gospel in North America? What will Luther learn of resurrection on the reserve? First we consider the turn to space. I have already alluded to space when analyzing a certain displacement in the history of the Torgau Sermon. A Wittenberg sermon is now identified with Torgau. In like fashion, a European apprehension of the gospel now takes place in North America. Moreover, this sermon now read in North America is read in a displaced community. Mainline Christianity is being sidelined in North America and we discover that a Lutherrenaissance occurs at the margins of society. Luther’s musings on Christ’s descent to hell also teach us to anticipate Christ on the edges of human existence; in those hard places where sin, death, and all evil invade our existence. The Lutherrenaissance flourishes insofar as it finds itself on the edge of existence. It is informed not by an abstract “theology of the cross,” but by the crucified who live their lives on the edge. These experiences on the edge make students of Luther into theologians of the cross by exposing our own complicity in the displacement of those in the Americas and beyond.36 Baptism is first a death. Yet baptism is not only a death insofar as it registers our sin as individuals, but also a death of individualism. Aboriginal Americans have a hard time making sense of the myth of the ­rugged individual that has been the hallmark of North American triumphalism. A Luther­ renaissance that flourishes eschews precisely this individualism. Great strides in this direction have been made in many recent publications.37 Collaboration will be 36

G. O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997), 60. 37 Cf. N. H. Gregersen/B. K. Holm/T. Peters/P. Widmann (eds.), The Gift of Grace: The Future of Lutheran Theology (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005); C. Helmer (ed.), The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009); C. Helmer/B. K. Holm (eds.), Transformations in Luther’s Theology: Historical and Contemporary Reflections (AKThG 32; Leipzig: ­Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2011); M. J. Streufert (ed.), Transformative Lutheran Theologies: Feminist, Womanist, and Mujerista Perspectives (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2010).

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the hallmark of a new way of doing theology. Moreover, recent developments in Luther research have been exemplary in demonstrating a willingness to listen to marginalized voices from the past. Careful readings of medieval theology and philosophy have provided profound corrections to past readings of Luther that have lost sight of the Luther who had his feet firmly planted in a world that was altogether other than ours. Now is the time for students of Luther to ponder where their feet are placed. Just as Luther research has benefited from hard historical work, it can also benefit from hard contextual work. It is too easy to cleave ­Luther studies off from constructive theology. It seems to me that both projects are poorer for this. Indigenous insights remind us that the harmony that is a part of the architecture of creation precludes the possibility that anyone can work in isolation from others, and so invite us to ask ourselves whom we have systematically excluded. Who has been refused voice in our midst? Moreover, has our writing given adequate attention to the theme of voice in telling our story? As we consider what we can learn from Indigenous Americans regarding the art of narrative, we do well to remember that Aboriginal thinkers speak often of the danger of privileging the written over the oral.38 It is interesting to ponder the fact that Luther too preferred to speak of the church as a Mundhaus (a place of speaking) rather than a Fedderhaus (a place of writing).39 Such an assessment does not preclude the utility of meta-discourse, nor disparage Luther’s proclivity for the disputation as a mode for theological investigation. Indeed, there is something of a narrative character in, for instance, Aquinas’s Summa. Still, ears need to be trained to listen for narrative arcs. In this sense, it may be necessary for scholars of ­Luther to go beyond Luther by way of Luther and advocate the need for the church to be an “Ohrhaus” (place of hearing), or perhaps a “Ruhehaus” (a place of silence). Hearing is the condition for the possibility of preaching just as surely as silence sustains the structure of speech. A little time spent on any Aboriginal reserve will soon confirm that Christians have demonstrated little patience for either contemplative silence or active listening. Luther’s profound interest in preaching speaks to the need for hearers of the word to be habituated in the practice of listening, which does not preclude, but presumes the gift of silence. Perhaps one of the places where students of Luther will have the greatest difficulty with Aboriginal perspectives will be in dealing with the theme of original sanctity. Luther’s treatment of theological topics, for example, law and gospel, word and sacrament, Christology, do not seem to countenance what we deem to be a difficult circle to square with the Christian treatment of sin in light of the ex 38 Cited

in Vizenor, Manners, 72. Creation and Gospel, 94: “The Gospel was instead a story told at every morning service the year around. And it is a great mistake to believe that such an arrangement is suitable only for illiterates. A highly sophisticated modern intellectual may only discover this for himself when, for instance, he sees Jesus’ story performed on the stage of a theatre. It is then that he meets it in its original form. Suddenly the epic character of the story is regained and the human picture functions again.” 39 Wingren,

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perience of evil. Yet there may be room for at least a dialogue, if not a rapprochement in Luther’s treatment of creation as explicated by Wingren: It is necessary first to emphasize the continuing goodness of this work of Creation which comes through men before we attempt to define the relationship between Creation and Judgment, and in particular to define what constitutes sin and wrath. … For the goodness is God’s in His work of Creation, encountering and subduing in the world of men the attitude of hostility to the Creator, and making use of it to endue life with power to resist death.40

Wingren invites us to ponder that the gift of creation has a perduring value despite human propensity for evil. It might be deemed that Aboriginal spirituality and the Christian gospel point – from different perspectives – to a similar truth: God sustains creation and intends its flourishing. Indigenous Americans do not see the world with rose colored glasses. They understand that human evil has deep repercussions that require healing from the Creator. Lutheran Christians do not see the world as evil and materiality as intrinsically opposed to spirit. Sacramental theology precludes such an assessment. Yet even if a rapprochement cannot be admitted, differences can be respected and appreciated insofar as engaging thought that differs allows one the better to understand the self. But is salvation only about the self? I noted above that a deep appreciation for creation seems to mark Aboriginal sensibilities. On the contrary, some certain Christians often demonstrate an in­ ordinate interest in the redemption of homo sapiens to the point of a disturbing disinterest in creation. Luther’s Torgau Sermon demonstrates that this latter need not be the case for a Christian theology. A cursory review of sermon titles, bestselling books, and religious programming on television confirms that North American Christians are little interested in a theology of creation and generally understand creation to be  a resource to be used at our whim. The Aboriginal notion that humans are not the only actors in the drama of creation seems implausible for many Christians. Yet if creation groans with labor pains, according to St. Paul (Rom. 8:22), might it not be eminently sensible to ask why it is that we have not made more of the image of the earth as our mother? What is problematic with this image? Could it be that engaging this image seriously would make manifest our commodification of life itself? Yet, even beyond this, presuming creation to be a peer with redemption provides students of Luther with fresh insights for understanding significant developments in his thought and reassessing the utility of certain themes for a contemporary appropriation of Luther’s thought.

40 Wingren,

Creation and Law, 48.

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Zusammenfassung Luther auf Reserve Das Lesen von Luthers Torgauer Predigt über Christi Höllenfahrt und Auferstehung (1532) in Nordamerika In diesem Kapitel verwende ich die Torgaupredigt Luthers, um die Lutherrenaissance in einen Kontext für ein nordamerikanisches Publikum zu setzen. Ich merke an, dass eine zuverlässige Lesung Luthers die Aufmerksamkeit auf den Kontext Luthers und den Kontext des Lesers von Luther erfordert und beginne mit Letzterem. Ich schlage vor, dass nordamerikanische Theologen wegen der Enteignung des Landes der Ureinwohner auf diese Bevölkerung hören müssen. Dies ist die erste Stufe einer Kontextualisierung der Lutherrenaissance in Nordamerika. Von der indigenen Weltanschauung kann man folgende Aspekte lernen: Wichtiger ist Raum als Zeit, Harmonie als Progress, mannigfaltige Gemeinschaft als krasser Individualismus, Geschichte als Historie, Erbreinheit als Erbsünde und die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Schöpfung als Hoffnung auf Erlösung. Aus dieser Perspektive lege ich die Torgaupredigt aus. Ich bemerke darin eine Kreisförmigkeit, die so ähnlich wie die autochthone gedacht ist. Die Methode Luthers ist nicht linear, sondern zirkulär. In dieser Predigt kommt Luther immer wieder auf „unmögliche Möglichkeiten“ zurück. Diese unmöglichen Möglichkeiten entfalten das Bedürfnis, eine bildliche Beschreibung der spirituellen Realitäten zu entwerfen, um das Bild Christi in Todesbanden ertragen und die Bedrohung von Tod und Hölle erdulden zu können. Diese Anfechtungen treiben den Hörer zur Gnade, so dass er Leben im Tod und Tod im Leben sieht. Am Ende ziehe ich folgende Schluss­ folgerungen: Eine Lutherrenaissance wird sich in Nordamerika an der Grenze der Gesellschaft entwickeln, den Individualismus ablehnen, die Sprachlosen rücksichtsvoll anhören, Differenzen willkommen heißen und auf die Schöpfung wie auf die Erlösung achten.

Selected Bibliography Assel, H., “Den Text der Menschwerdung lesen lernen: Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre in Joh 1 als Aufgabe der Inkarnationschristologie,” in H.  Assel/S. Beyerle/C. Böttrich (eds.), Beyond Biblical Theologies (WUNT 295; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012) 75–135. –, Der andere Aufbruch: Die Lutherrenaissannce  – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935) (FSÖTh 72; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994). –, “Eliminierter Name: Unendlichkeit Gottes zwischen Trinität und Tetragramm,” in I.U Dalferth/ P. Stoellger (eds.), Gott Nennen (RPT 35; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 209–48. –, Geheimnis und Sakrament: Die Theologie des göttlichen Namens bei Kant, Cohen und Rosenzweig (FSÖTh 98; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001). –, “Politia Christi und Symbolik des Todes Jesu: Zwei Anamnesen zur Transformation der Luther­ renaissance,” in C. Helmer/B. K. Holm (eds.), Transformations in Luther’s Theology: Historical and Contemporary Reflections (AKThG 32; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2011) 60–84. –, “The use of Luther’s thought in the 19th century and Lutherrenaissance,” in R. Kolb/I. Dingel/ L. Batka (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 551–72. –, “Vom Nebo ins gelobte Land: Von erfahrene Rechtfertigung von Karl Holl zu Rudolf Hermann,” NZSTh 39 (1997) 250–6. Barth, U., Aufgeklärter Protestantismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). –, Die Christologie Emanuel Hirschs: Eine systematische und problemgeschichtliche Darstellung ihrer geschichtsmethodologischen, erkenntniskritischen und subjektivitätstheoretischen Grundlagen (Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter, 1992). Baur, F. C., Der Gegensatz des Katholizismus und Protestantismus nach den Prinzipien und Haupt­ dogmen der beiden Lehrbegriffe (Tübingen: Mohr, 21836). Blackbourn, D., The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006). Bodenstein, W., Die Theologie Karl Holls im Spiegel des antiken und reformatorischen Christentums (AKG 40; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968). Bolton, B., The Medieval Reformation (Foundations of Mediaeval History; London/New York: Edward Arnold/Holmes & Meier, 1983). Brock R. N./R. A. Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering and the Search for What Saves Us (Boston: Beacon, 2002). –, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of this World for Crucifixion and Empire (Boston: Beacon, 2009). Bussie, J. A., “Luther’s Hope for the World: Responsible Christian Discourse Today,” in C. Helmer (ed.), The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009) 113–29. Deloria Jr., V., God is Red: A Native View of Religion (Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum, 2003). Frank, F. H. R., Die Theologie der Konkordienformel (4 vols.; Erlangen: Blaessing, 1859–1865). Geertz, C., The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books Classics; New York: Basic Books, 1973). Gillespie, M. A., The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Gregory, B. S., The Unintended Reformation: How  a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012). Habermas, J., Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion: Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2005).

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Habermas, J., Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen  Rechtsstaats (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 41994 [= Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 21996]). Harnack, A. v., “Die Reformation und ihre Voraussetzung,” in id., Erforschtes und Erlebtes (Giessen:­ Alfred Töpelmann, 1923) 72–140. –, History of Dogma (7 vols.; Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1905 [German original: Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (3 vols.; Freiburg i.B.: J. C. B. Mohr, 1886–1890]). –, What is Christianity? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986 [German original: Das Wesen des Christentums, ed. C.-D. Osthövener (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 32012). Harnack, T., Luthers Theologie, new edn. (2 vols.; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1927). Harrison, B. W., “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love,” in C. Christ/J. Plaskow (eds.), Woman­spirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (New York: Harper, 1989). Hermann, R., Gesammelte Studien zur Theologie Luthers und der Reformation (Göttingen: Vanden­ hoeck & Ruprecht, 1960). –, Luthers These “Gerecht und Sünder zugleich (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 21960). Herrmann, W., Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott, im Anschluß an Luther dargestellt (Stuttgart/Berlin: J. G. Cottasche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 5+61908). Hirsch, E., Die idealistische Philosophie und das Christentum: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1926). Holl, K., The Cultural Significance of the Reformation (New York: Meridian Books, 1959 [German original in GA I: 469–543]). –, “Die Entstehung von Luthers Kirchenbegriff,” in GA I: 288–325. –, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewißheit,” ZThK 20 (1910) 245–91. –, “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewißheit,” in GA I: 111–54. –, Die Rechtfertigungslehre im Licht der Geschichte des Protestantismus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 21922). –, Kleine Schriften, ed. R. Stupperich (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1966). –, “Luther und das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment,” in GA I: 326–80. –, What Did Luther Understand by Religion, ed. J. L. Adams/W. F. Bense (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977 [German original in GA I: 1–110]). Holm, B. K., Gabe und Geben bei Luther: Das Verhältnis zwischen Reziprozität und reformatorischer Rechtfertigungslehre (TBT 134; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2006). Joas, H., “Institutionalisierung als kreativer Prozeß: Zur politischen Philosophie von Cornelius Castoriadis,” in id., Pragmatismus und Gesellschaftstheorie (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992) 146–70. Kaufmann, T., “‘Anpassung’ als historiographisches Konzept und als theologiepolitisches Programm: Der Kirchenhistoriker Erich Seeberg in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des ‘Dritten Reiches’,” in T. Kaufmann/H. Oelke (eds.), Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker im “Dritten Reich” (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 2002) 122–272. Kolb, R., “Christ’s Descent into Hell as Christological Locus in the Era of the ‘Formula of Concord’: Luther’s ‘Torgau Sermon’ Revisited,” LuJ 69 (2002) 101–18. Korsch, D., Glaubensgewißheit und Selbstbewußtsein: Vier systematische Variationen über Gesetz und Evangelium (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989). Lauster, J./P. Schüz/R. Barth/C. Danz (eds.), Rudolf Otto: Theologie, Religionsphilosophie, Religionsgeschichte (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2013). Lawrence, C. H., The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society (London: Longman, 1994). Leppin, V., “In Rosenbergs Schatten: Zur Lutherdeutung Erich Vogelsangs,” ThZ 61 (2005) 132–42. Lindbeck, G. A., The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2009).

Selected Bibliography

243

Luther, M., “Confession concerning Christ’s Supper” (1528), in LW 37: 151–372 (= WA 26: 261–509). –, “The Estate of Marriage” (1523), in LW 45: 11–49 (= WA 10 II: 275–304). –, “Exposition of Psalm 147” (1532), in LW 14: 107–35 (= WA 31 I: 430–56). –, “The Freedom of a Christian” (1520), in LW 31: 327–377 (= WA 7: 1–38, 42–73). –, “Heidelberg Disputation” (1518), in LW 31: 35–70 (= WA 1: 353–374). –, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book, ed. R. Bainton (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1948; reprint: Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg, 1997). –, “Martin Luther’s Torgau Sermon on Christ’s Descent into Hell and Resurrection,” in R. Kolb/ J. A. Nestigen (eds.), Sources and Contexts of The Book of Concord (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2001) 245–55 (= WA 37: 62–72). –, “The Sermon on the Mount” (1532), in LW 21: 1–294 (= WA 32: 299–544). –, Solus Decalogus Est Aeternus: Martin Luther’s Complete Antinomian Theses and Disputations, ed. H. Sonntag (Cygnus Series; Minneapolis, Minn.: Lutheran Press, 2008 [= WA 39: 342–584]). –, “That These Words of Christ, ‘This is My Body,’ etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics” (1527), in LW 37: 3–150 (= WA 23: 46–283). Marshall, B. D., Trinity and Truth (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Meijering, E. P., Der “ganze” und der “wahre” Luther: Hintergrund und Bedeutung der Lutherinter­ pretation A. von Harnacks (Amsterdam/Oxford/New York: B. V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1983). O’Donovan, Oliver, Ways of Judgement: The Bampton Lectures 2003 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005). Osterhammel, J., The Transformation of the World: A History of the 19th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 [German original: Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008]). Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969 [German original: Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (Beck’sche Reihe 328; Munich: C. H. Beck, 22004]). Põder, C. S.-V., “Die Lutherrenaissance im Kontext des Reformationsjubiläums: Gericht und Rechtfertigung bei Karl Holl, 1917–1921,” KZG 26 (2013) 191–200. Prenter, R., Spritus Creator (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1953; reprint: Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2001). Ritschl, A., Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (3 vols.; Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 21870–1874, 31882–1889). Ross, R., Dancing with a Ghost: Exploring Aboriginal Identity (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2006). Schweidler, W., Das Unantastbare: Beiträge zur Philosophie der Menschenrechte (Münster: LIT, 2001). Seeberg, E., Luthers Theologie in ihren Grundzügen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1940). –, Luthers Theologie: Motive und Ideen I. Die Gottesanschauung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & ­Ruprecht, 1929). –, Luthers Theologie II (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 21969). Simmel, G., “Faithfulness and Gratitude,” in id., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: Free Press, 1950 [German original: Soziologie: Unterschungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftigung (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1908) 438–47]) 379–95. Sockness, B. W./W. Gräb (eds.), Schleiermacher, the Study of Religion, and the Future of Theology: A Transatlantic Dialogue (TBT 148; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2010). Streufert, M. J. (ed.), Transformative Lutheran Theologies: Feminist, Womanist and Mujerista Perspec­ tives (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2010). Taiaiake, A., Peace, Power and Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 22009). Tanner, K., Die fromme Verstaatlichung des Gewissens: Zur Auseinandersetzung um die Legitimität der Weimarer Reichsverfassung in Staatsrechtswissenschaft und Theologie der zwanziger Jahre (AKZG.B 15; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989).

244

Selected Bibliography

Taylor C., Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). –, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). Tinker, G. E. “Tink,” American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008). Trelstad, M. (ed.), Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006). Troeltsch, E., The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (2 vols.; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992 [German original: Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1912]). Viladesau, R., The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts – From the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Vogelsang, E., “Luther und die Mystik,” LuJ 19 (1937) 32–54. –, “Luthers Torgauer Predigt von Jesu Christo vom Jahre 1532,” LuJ 13 (1931) 114–130. –, Die Anfänge von Luthers Christologie nach der ersten Psalmenvorlesung (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1929). –, Umbruch des deutschen Glaubens von Ragnarok zu Christus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1934). Wallman, J., “Karl Holl und seine Schule,” ZThK Beiheft 4 (1978) 1–33. Walther, C. F. W., The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel (Saint Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 1929; reprint as Law & Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible [Saint Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 2010]). Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958 [German original: Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus (Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum, 32000]).

Notes on Contributors Heinrich Assel is Professor and Chair of Systematic Theology at the University of Greifswald in Germany, and was Dean of the Faculty of Theology from 2010–2012. He has also been a visiting professor in Jerusalem at the Abbey Dormitio Mariae. He is author of Der andere Aufbruch: Die Lutherrenaissance – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935) (Vanden­hoeck & Ruprecht, 1994) and editor-in-chief of Verkündigung & Forschung, the journal of the Gesellschaft für Evangelische Theologie. His research and publication interests include: Christology, hermeneutics, Lutheran confessional culture, theories of modernity, Christian and Jewish religious philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and the ethics of individualized medicine. Peter Grove teaches systematic theology in the section for Protestant Theology at the University of Flensburg in Germany. His most important publication is ­Deutungen des Subjekts: Schleiermachers Philosophie der Religion (de Gruyter, 2004) and he is author of numerous publications on modern theology and philosophy of religion. His current research project is on liberal theology in Germany around 1900. Christine Helmer is Professor of Religious Studies and German at Northwestern University. She is author of Theology and the End of Doctrine (Westminster, 2014) and is editor (or co-editor) of numerous volumes in the areas of Schleiermacher studies, philosophy of religion, and biblical theology. Her most recent publications on Luther are two edited vol­ imes (Fortress, 2009), and together umes: The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern T with Bo Kristian Holm, Transformations in Luther’s Theology: Historical and Contemporary Reflections (EVA-Leipzig, 2011). Her current research interest is on the relation between the Luther­renaissance and the origins of the modern study of religion. Bo Kristian Holm is Associate Professor of Dogmatics and leader of the research group “Reformation Theology and Confessional Culture” in the Department of Culture and Society at the Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University in Denmark, and Vice-President of Luther-­ Akademie Sondershausen-Ratzeburg e. V. His scholarly works focus on Lutheran theology from both historical and contemporary perspectives, and on the relation between theology and theories of gift giving. His is author of Gabe und Geben bei Luther: Das Verhältnis zwischen Reziprozität und reformatorischer Rechtfertigungslehre (de Gruyter, 2009), and editor (or co-­editor) of several books including The Gift of Grace (Fortress, 2005), Word – Gift – Being (Mohr Siebeck, 2009), and with Christine Helmer, Transformations in Luther’s Theology (EVA-Leipzig, 2011). Allen G. Jorgenson is Assistant Dean and Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He is author of Awe and Expectation: On Being Stewards of the Gospel (Wipf and Stock, 2010) and co-translator with Iain G. Nicol of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s On The Doctrine of Election (Westminster, 2012). In 2012 he was recipient of an Association of Theological Schools/Lilly Theological Scholars’ Grant for a project entitled “Taking Place Seriously: Luther, Schleiermacher and Indigenous Insights.”

246

Notes on Contributors

Jörg Lauster is Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Marburg, and is currently Dean of the Protestant Theology Faculty and Director of the Rudolf-Bultmann Institute for Hermeneutics. He has published numerous articles and books on topics in biblical hermeneutics, theology in the twentieth century, particularly the religious thought of Ernst Troeltsch and Rudolf Otto, and religious phenomenology, including Zwischen Entzauberung und Remythisierung: Zum Verhältnis von Bibel und Dogma (EVA-Leipzig, 2008). He has also recently co-edited the volume, Rudolf Otto: Theol­ ogie, Religionsphilo­sophie, Religionsgeschichte (de Gruyter, 2013). Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology in the Department of Culture and Society at the Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University in Denmark. She has published widely in the fields of medieval and Reformation theology as well as contemporary systematic theology and ecumenism, particularly pertaining to ecclesiology and eschatology. She edited Gudstankens aktualitet (Anis, 2010) [The Relevance of the Idea of God] together with Bo Holm and is currently working on an English revision of her book Bernhard af Clairvaux: Teolog eller mystiker? (Anis, 2008) [Bernard of Clairvaux: Theo­logian or Mystic?] for Brepols. Christine Svinth-Værge Põder is Professor of Systematic Theology at Copenhagen University in Denmark. She was a postdoctoral researcher and associated member of the research group “Reformation Theology and Confessional Culture” at Aarhus University from 2008– 2012. She is the 2008 recipient of the Ph.D. award from the Aarhus University Research Foundation and is author of Doxological Hiddenness: The Fundamental Theological Significance of Prayer in Karl Barth’s Work (de Gruyter, 2009). Her current research interest is the reception of Luther’s Lectures on Romans in the Lutherrenaissance, with  a specific focus on Karl Holl and Rudolf Hermann. Ronald F. Thiemann (1946–2012) was Benjamin Bussey Professor of Theology at Harvard University and served as Dean of Harvard Divinity School from ­1986–1998. An ordained Lutheran pastor and a specialist on the role of religion in public life, he was appointed in 2010 as the North American representative to the Lutheran Roman Catholic International Commission on Christian Unity by the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican. His most recent work is The Humble Sublime: Secularity and the Politics of Belief (I. B. Tauris, 2013). Marit A. Trelstad is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and Chair of the Religion Department at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Her scholarly work combines feminist, process, and Lutheran theologies and is focused on Christology, the doctrine of God, theological anthropology, Lutheran theology, and politics in Namibia, as well as science and religion. As a contributor and editor, she published Cross Examina­tions: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross ­Today (Fortress, 2006) and contributed a chapter on soteriology to Transformative Lutheran Theologies (Fortress, 2010). Peter Widmann is Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology at Aarhus University and was Dean of the Faculty of Theology from 1994–2002. Among numerous publications in Danish, he is author of Thetische Theologie (Chr. Kaiser, 1980), and is contributing co-editor of both The Gift of Grace (Fortress, 2005) and Word – Gift – Being (Mohr ­Siebeck, 2009).

Index of Names Abelard 96 Adams, J. L.  12, 128, 175, 242 Agamben, G.  49 Agricola, J.  214–215 Albrecht, R.  35 Althaus, P.  15, 23 Allen, G.  150 Andersen, S.  33, 49, 51, 196 Andreae, J.  231 Antwerpen, J.v.  156 Arendt, H.  156 Asheim, I.  95 Askani, H.-C.  206 Assel, H.  15–16, 17–19, 24, 58–59, 92, 95, 107, 114, 116, 128, 132, 134, 138, 191, 206, 241 Francis of Assisi  77 Assmann, J.  152 Athanasius of Alexandria  27, 31 Augustine of Hippo  35, 90, 111, 134, 159, 179 Aulén, G.  16, 23, 94–95 Bader, G.  45, 206 Bainton, R.  169, 243 Batka, L.  241 Barth, K.  15, 43, 90 Barth, R.  150, 242 Barth, U.  40–42, 107, 110, 112, 114, 117, 123, 131, 241 Bauer, D. R.  103 Baur, F. C.  75, 241 Bayer, O.  134, 142, 205 Bayle, P.  88 Baylor, M. G.  115–116 Beintker, M.  202 Bense, W. F.  12, 128, 175, 242 Bernard of Clairvaux  77, 87, 90–94, 96, 98–104, 246 Bertram, M.  214–215 Besier 202 Bethge, E.  172 Beyer, C.  231 Beyerle, S.  241 Biel, G.  97 Bizer, E.  134 Blackbourn, D.  144–145, 241 Bloomquist, K. L.  229

Bodenstein, W.  128, 130, 241 Boehme, J.  88, 94, 97, 100 Börsch, E.  44 Böttrich, C.  241 Bohlin, T.  23 Bolton, B.  161–162, 241 Bonaventure 102–103 Bonhoeffer, D.  15, 23, 43, 52, 80, 129, 172, 195, 202 Bornkamm, H.  23, 101, 109, 147 Bourdieu, P.  131, 142–143 Breazeale, D.  154 Brenz, J.  231 Bring, R.  23 Brock, R. N.  241 Brondos, D. R.  215, 219–220 Brunner, E.  90 Bultmann, R.  150, 182 Bunyan, J.  71 Burckhardt, J.  108 Bussie, J. A.  66, 241 Butler, J.  156 Calhoun, C.  156–157 Calvin, J.  28, 30–31, 33, 58, 60, 71–72, 84, 135, 159, 167 Castoriadis, C.  53, 205, 208 Cavanaugh, W. T.  35 de Certeau, M.  87–88 Chemnitz, M.  230 Christ, C. P.  214, 222 Christensen, C. C.  232 Cimino, R.  17 Cousins, E.  164 Coventry, H.  88 Cramer, K.  118 Dalferth, I. U.  241 Daly, M.  211 Danneberg, L.  206 Danz, C.  150, 242 Davaney, S. G.  157 Deloria Jr., V.  226–227, 241 Denifle, H.  90–91,  95, 103 Derrida, J.  133, 138 Descartes, R.  118 Dierken, J.  181

248

Index of Names

Dilthey, W.  28, 108, 113 Dingel, I.  241 Dionysius the Areopagite  101 Droysen, J. G.  122 Eck, J.  97, 103 Eckart, D.  101 Eckhart, M.  88, 94, 100 Ehrhardt, I.  16 Elert, W.  15, 23 Eisenstadt, S. N.  28 Emerson, R. W.  141 Feuerbach, L.  28, 129–130 Ficker, J.  54, 132 Forde, G. O.  237 Forell, G. W.  232 Franck, S.  100 Frank, F. H. R.  76, 241 Frederichs, H.  45 Freud, S.  181 Fuchs, G.  103 Ganzfort, W. H.  78 Gauck, J.  191 Gauchet, M.  158–159 Geertz, C.  178, 180–184, 186–187, 188, 241 Geismar, E.  23 Gerson, J.  93, 98–103 Gerth, H. H.  159 Gillespie, M. A.  176, 241 Gilson, É.  93 Goch J.o.  78 Gombrich, E. H.  164–165 Gordon, P. E.  157, 159 Gräb, W.  179, 181, 243 Graf, F. W.  26–29, 123, 196 Grane, L.  127–128 Gregersen, N. H.  131, 141, 229, 237 Gregory VII  160–161 Gregory, B. S.  176–177, 241 Gregor of Nyssa  168 Greschat, M.  191 Griffin, D. R.  219 Grindal, G.  220 Grisar, H.  90 Gröschner, R.  196 Grove, P.  18 Grünwaldt, K.  45 Guðmundsdóttir, A.  217 Günther, H.  122 Gyllenkrok, A.  23

Habermas, J.  48, 51, 193–196, 199, 202, 204, 208, 241, 242 Härle, W.  15 Hall, D. J.  225 Harnack, A.v.  13, 18, 26, 31, 89–91, 106–114, 119–120, 122–124, 145, 147, 155, 196, 242 Harnack, T.  76, 81, 136, 147–148, 150, 242 Harrison, B. W.  222, 242 Hauschild, W.-D.  107 Heidegger, M.  182, 192 Hegel, G. W. F.  28, 46, 51, 88–89, 95, 100, 108, 174, 181 Helmer, C.  19, 66, 88–89, 174, 178, 187, 205, 210, 236, 237, 241 Hénaff, M.  129 Hengstenberg, E. W.  76 Henrich, D.  110, 118 Herder, J. G.  28 Hermann, M.  16 Hermann, R.  16, 18, 23, 54, 62–72, 73, 242 Herrmann, W.  100, 242 den Hertog, G. C.  44, 46, 202 Heschel, S.  15 Heun, W.  196 Heyward, C.  222 Hillerbrand, H. J.  43 Hirsch, E.  17, 23, 34, 35–42, 43–44, 46, 47–48, 98, 101, 115, 189–190, 192, 200, 242 Hitler, A.  36, 99–100 Hobbes, T.  191–192, 201 Hodgson, P. C.  174 Hoffmann, J. C. J. v.  130 Holborn, H.  27–28 Holl, K.  11–14, 17–19, 24–30, 32–35, 43, 46, 51–52, 55–62, 65, 69–73, 75–77, 80–82, 85, 90–93, 95, 97–99, 101, 103, 105–107, 114–124, 127–130, 140, 175, 195, 200, 242 Holm, B. K.  18, 131, 134, 141, 142, 205, 210, 237, 241, 242 Honecker, M.  196 Hromadkas, J.  43 Huber, W.  48 Hus, J.  78 Iwand, H. J.  15, 17, 19, 23, 35, 43–52, 127–128, 189, 194–195, 202 James, W.  147, 181 Janz, D. R.  212 Jähnichen, T.  200 Jellinek, G.  109 Jenson, R.  179

Index of Names Joas, H. 205, 242 Johnston, B. H.  228 Jorgenson, A. G.  19, 226 Jülicher, A.  24–25, 128 Kahn, P. W.  193 Kant, I.  50, 51, 77, 79–80, 85, 116, 118–119, 128, 141, 150, 196 Karimies, I.  230 Karpp, H.  106 Kaufmann, T.  91, 93–94, 101, 242 Kidwell, C. S.  226 Kierkegaard, S.  133 King, T.  227 Klepper, J.  23 Köhler, W.  95 Köpf, U.  103 Kolb, R.  230–232, 241, 242, 243 Korsch, D.  114, 122, 206, 242 Koselleck, R.  110 Kreck, W.  44 Kruger, B.  199 Lamm, J. A.  179 Lauster, J.  18, 150, 242 Lawrence, C. H.  161–162, 242 Leibniz, G. W.  197–199, 203 Lehmann, H.  26, 28 Lempp, E.  44 Leppin, V.  101, 242 Lévinas, E.  49 Levine, A.-J.  222 Lévi-Strauss, C.  128, 131 Lindbeck, G. A.  178–186, 188, 205, 243 Locke, J.  201 Lockwood O’Donovan, J.  33, 35 Loewenich, W.v.  40–41, 46, 95, 98 Loofs, F.  91, 132 Lukács, G.  43, 46–47 Luther, M. (see Luther’s Writings in Index of Subjects) Lüpke, J. v.  134 Macmillan, U.  150 Mackintosh, H. R.  179 Malotky, C.  220 Maron, G.  109 Marshall, B. D.  185–187, 243 Massing, M.  189 Mauss, M.  128, 131, 141 Meijering, E. P.  107, 243 Meinecke, F.  28 Melanchthon, M. J.  215–216

249

Melanchthon, P.  76, 84–85, 89, 130–132, 134–135, 143, 214–215, 224, 230 Metz, J. B.  51 Moe-Lobeda, C.  218 Moltmann, J.  51 Morlok, M.  196 Mouffe, C.  199 Moxter, M.  206 zur Mühlen, K.-H. 95 Neddens, C.  44, 202 Nelson, S.  214 Nestigen, J. A.  230, 243 Nietzsche, F.  141, 154 Noley, H.  226 Nottmeier, C.  109, 119, 121 Nowak, K.  107, 121, 123 Nygren, A.  16, 23, 95, 129 O’Donovan, O.  33, 35, 53, 200–202, 243 Oelke, H.  91, 242 Oepke, A.  90, 94 Oexle, O. G.  107 Ohst, M.  114, 118 O’Malley, J.  160 O’Neil, J. C.  89 Orsi, R.  190–191 Osiander, A.  230 Osterhammel, J.  144, 243 Osthövener, C.-D.  112–113, 242 Otto, E,  24, 27 Otto, R.  92, 94, 145, 147, 150–151, 153, 155, 175, 181, 243 Parker, R. A.  241 Pedersen, E. M. W.  17 Peters, T.  237 Philippi, F. A.  76 Plato 180 Plaskow, J.  214, 222, 242 Põder, C. S.-V.  17, 60, 128, 131, 243 Posset, F.  93 Prenter, R.  59, 131, 139, 227, 243 Quiring, H.  94–95, 99–102 Raedke, S.  93 Raitt, J.  164 Ratzinger, J.  180, 204 Rawls, J.  51, 196 Ray, D. K.  226 Rendtorff, T.  107

250

Index of Names

Renz, H.  123 Ruether, R. R.  210 Rieger, A. J.  226 Rieske-Braun, U.  113 Ritschl, A.  17, 18, 55, 74–86, 89–91, 93–95, 98–99, 114, 117, 196, 243 Ritschl, O.  80 Rörer, G.  230 Rosenberg, A.  101 Ross, R.  243 Ruhland, F.  104 Runestam, A.  19, 23 Rückert, H.  23, 41 Ryle, G.  181, 183 Sänger, P.  43 Saiving, V.  214 Sauter, G.  202 Savonarola, G.  78 Scheliha, A.v.  107 Schelling, F. W. J.  181 Schleiermacher, F.  88–89, 95, 144, 146, 150–151, 179, 181, 203, 205–206 Schluchter, W.  26–29 Schmitt, C.  37, 191–193 Schmidt, L. E.  88 Schüssler Fiorenza, E.  51, 210 Schröder, M.  107 Schüz, P.  150, 242 Schwarz, R.  93 Schweidler, W.  196–199, 243 Schweitzer, D.  226 Scott, P.  35 Seeberg, E.  11, 87, 92–94, 95–105, 243 Seeberg, R.  14, 87, 91–94, 95–105 Seim, J.  43 Selge, K.-V.  107 Sherburne, D. W.  219 Simmel, G.  127, 130, 135, 139, 143, 243 Simon, D.  226 Simon, J.  204 Skalweit, S.  108 Smith, J.  188 Smith, M. B.  88 Sockness, B. W.  179, 181, 243 Solberg, M.  217 Sonntag, H.  09, 212–213, 243 Soosten, J. v.  206–207 Spaemann, R.  196 Stange, C.  19, 23, 93–94, 98 Stayer, J.  15 Steiger, J. A.  16

Stewart, J. S.  179 Stjerna, K.  211 Stoellger, P.  241 Streufert, M. J.  217, 237, 243 Strohm, C.  25 Symeon the New Theologian  27, 30 Taiaiake, A.  227, 243 Tanner, K.  121–122, 199, 243 Tauler, J.  91, 94, 97–99, 102–104 Tautmann, R.  35 Taylor, C.  18, 156–160, 162–166, 169, 172, 173, 200–201, 203, 244 Thaidigsmann, E.  44, 134 Theunissen, M.  46 Thiemann, R. F.  18, 175–176, 200–201 Thomas Aquinas  81, 93, 97, 163, 206–207, 233, 238 Thompson, D.  217 Tillich, P.  35–36, 40–41, 43, 211 Tinker, G. E. “Tink”  224, 226–228, 244 Tödt, H. E.  202 Tödt, I.  202 Treitschke, H. G.v.  28 Trelstad, M.  19, 217–218, 244 Troeltsch, E.  13–14, 24–26, 27–28, 32–33, 51, 90, 92, 107, 108, 112–113, 119, 121, 127–128, 145, 147, 149–150, 153, 155, 175, 244 Truemper, D. G.  232 Ulrich, H. G.  192–193, 195 Ungern-Sternberg, J.v.  14 Ungern-Sternberg, W.v.  14 Vargas, A.  217 Viladesau, R.  164, 244 Vinke, R.  114 Vizenor, G.  226, 228, 238 Vogelsang, E.  23, 40–42, 87, 90, 92–95, 105, 114, 230, 244 Wallman, J.  59, 122, 244 Walther, C. F. W.  213–214, 220, 244 Walther, W.  69 Walzer, M.  51 Warner, M.  156 Weber, M.  14, 24–35, 38, 45–46, 51–52, 58, 71–72, 120, 127–128, 149, 158–159, 175, 200, 244 Weeks, A.  89 Wehler, H.-U.  34 Wengert, T. J.  214, 230 Werner, E.  15

Index of Subjects Wessel (see Ganzfort, W. H.) Westhelle, V.  226 Whitehead, A. N.  211, 218–219 Wicks, J.  167 Wiclif, J.  78 Widmann, P.  17, 131, 141, 237 Wieland, J.  196 Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, U.v.  60 Wilhelm II  148

251

William of Ockham  92, 95–96, 100, 174 Wingren, G.  16, 171, 229, 238–239 Winkler, H. A.  24 Wittgenstein, L.  181 Wolf, E.  195 Wolff, O.  116 Zahn-Harnack, A.v.  148 Zwingli, U.  84, 206–207

Index of Subjects Abendmahl (see Lord’s Supper) Absconditus (see Hiddenness) Absolution 80–81 Abundance 137 Abuse  19, 221–223 Agape  95, 129 Agency  156, 180, 220 –, political 38 Alleinwirksamkeit (see Monergism) Allgemeines Priestertum (see Priesthood of all believers) Anfechtung  56, 60, 91, 97, 138–139, 240 Anger  218, 222 Anthropology  103–104, 128, 140, 178, 181, 185, 187–188 Anti-eudaemonism  18, 55, 58, 73, 128–129, 132, 139, 141–143 Antieudämonismus (see Anti-eudaemonism) Antinomianism  44, 209–210, 212–215, 221 Antinomismus (see Antinomianism) Anti-Semitism  12, 15 Asceticism  28, 31–34, 158–159 Askese/Asketismus (see Asceticism) Atonement 150 Auferstehung (see Resurrection) Aufklärung (see Enlightenment) Authority  160, 192, 200 – of dogma  111 –, Church 161 –, political  200–201, 206 Autonomie (see Autonomy) Autonomy  50, 110, 119–120, 153, 163–166, 194, 196–197 Baptism  66–67, 71, 215, 237 Bekennende Kirche (see Confessing Church) Bekenntnis (see Confession) Benevolence  137, 141

Beruf (see Vocation) Buße (see Penance)  Calvinism  71, 121, 150 Catholicism  79, 90, 93, 103, 112 –, medieval 176–177 Certainty  64, 80 – of election  91 – of salvation  13, 54–55, 61, 65, 73, 91, 132 Christ Christ to the other  140 –, crucified 102–103 –, incarnate  102–103, 168 –, humanity of  93, 103, 164, 167, 169 –, kingly priesthood of (see C., royal priesthood of) –, royal priesthood of  200–204 Christian religion  109 Christianity  116, 146, 180, 185, 237 –, essence of  148 –, history of  110, 148, 224 –, medieval 159 –, Pauline  112, 114 –, primitive  114, 136 Christologie (see Christology) Christology (see also Luther, Christology of)  46, 67–69, 89, 111, 167–168, 186 –, political  37–40, 50, 200 Christusmystik  92, 99 Church  30, 53, 84, 140, 192, 201–202, 206 –, community of the  140 –, function of the  205 –, Roman 83 –, visible 121 Citizenship 194 Civilization, western  144 Comfort (see also Consolation)  13, 213–214, 217 Commandment  56, 171 Communication, symbolic  182

252

Index of Subjects

Community  34, 55, 120, 131–135, 140, 187, 227 – of wills  58, 132, 134 – with Christ  67 – with God  61, 69–70, 72, 133, 141 –, Christian 206 Confessing Church  15, 17, 43 Confession 68 Confessional culture  27, 53 Confidence  62, 76, 76, 109 Conscience  73, 106, 110, 115–119 –, experience of  138 –, freedom of  121 –, religion of  29 Consolation  62, 81, 129–130, 141–142, 169, 214, 219 Creation  39, 69, 143, 228–229, 238–239 –, theology of  198, 239 Creator  39, 80 Cross  39, 42, 50, 69, 98, 223 –, theology of the (see also theologia crucis) 105 Cultural system  182 Cultural-linguistic model  179–180 Culture 184 –, theory of  182–183 Darwinianism 146 Death 234–236 – penalty 50 Democracy  194, 200 Descent into hell  224, 232–233, 237 Desire  115–117, 133, 137–139 Despair  218, 212 Deus absconditus (see also Hiddenness, divine)  13, 97, 98 Dialectical theology  23, 75, 81, 85, 90, 145 Dialektische Theologie (see Dialetical thelogy) Disenchantment  146, 157–159, 163, 166, 169, 173–174, 200 Divinatory, the  205 Divine attributes  63 Doctrine  82, 113, 149, 178, 180 Dogma (see also Doctrine)  110–111, 113 Domestic violence  210 Dominion –, charismatic  26, 27, 35 –, political  34, 190–191 Duty  116, 130, 137–139 Economy 138 –, divine  133, 142 Eigenschaften Gottes (see Divine attributes) Election, doctrine of  28

Empirical world  89 Enlightenment  77, 86, 87–88, 113, 119, 121, 146, 150, 187 Enthusiasm 89 Entzauberung (see Disenchantment) Epistemology of the cross  217 Equality  193, 215 Erfahrung (see Experience) Erfurt Cathedral  231 Eros 95 Erstes Weltkrieg (see World War I) Erwählungsgewissheit (see Certainty of election) Erwählungslehre (see Election, doctrine of) Estrangement 225 Ethical action  217–218 Ethical fulfillment  140 Ethics  65, 72, 120, 147, 171, 205 –, political  35, 49, 52, 193, 196 Ethik (see Ethics) Ethos 84 Eucharist (see Lord’s Supper) Eudaemonism  119, 130–131, 133 Evangelium (see Gospel) Everyday, the  183 Evil  213, 215–216, 228, 236–327, 239 Exchange 49 Existence, human  194 Experience  98, 112, 115, 133, 148, 151, 155 – of the numinous  151 –, ordinary 172 –, religious  89, 147, 153 Faith  65, 76, 84, 89, 98–99, 170, 207 – and reason  176 Fellowship (see also Community)  72 – between God and human  69–70 Feminist theology  19, 217 Fides ex auditu 184 Forgiveness  134, 203, 205 –, divine 69 Fortschritt (see Progress) Freedom  33, 50, 84, 147, 152–153, 155, 175, 179, 201–202, 208, 214 –, autonomous 45 –, Christian  45, 190–191, 193, 195, 206 –, divine  197, 199 –, evangelical 154 –, gospel of  174 –, human 196 –, kingly (see Freedom, royal) –, political 197 –, priestly  33, 195, 200

Index of Subjects –, religious 175 –, royal  195, 200 –, secular 202 Freiheit (see Freedom) Fundamentalism 146 Future, of God  66 Gabe (see Gift) Gebet (see Prayer) Gebot (see Commandment) Gemeinschaft (see Fellowship) Generosity 136 Genetic method  115 Genugtuung (see Satisfaction) Gericht (see Judgment) Gesellschaft (see Society) Gesetz (see Law) Gewissensreligion (see Conscience, religion of) Gewissheit (see Certainty) Gift  135, 139, 143 –, pure  127–128, 136, 141 –, pure g. of grace  133 – -exchange 128 – -giving 131 Glaube (see Faith) Gnade (see Grace) God 136 –, as love  76, 86 –, forgiveness of  117–118 –, freedom of  189 –, gift of  119, 137, 139 –, idea of  116 –, judgment of  114 –, love of  219, 223 –, philosophical concept of  114 –, presence of (see also Presence, divine)  103, 167, 172, 175, 206–207 –, twofold work of  42 –, word of  13, 148, 190, 192, 205 Gospel  42, 83, 149, 209, 214–215, 222–223 – and law  190 Gott, doppeltes Werk G.es (see God, twofold work of) Grace  84, 134, 153, 176, 216 –, divine  130, 136 –, doctrine of  79 Gratitude 138–139 Guilt 203 Handeln (see Agency) Harmony 226 Hearing 238

253

Heilsgewissheit (see Certainty of salvation) Hell  58, 133, 234–235 –, descent into  240 Hermeneutical circle  152 Heroism  39, 133 Heroismus (see Heroism) Herrschaft (see Dominion) Hiddenness  41, 45, 50, 166, 172 – sub contrario  45, 47, 60–61, 168, 171, 173, 195. – sub eodem  45, 50, 193, 195 –, divine (see also Deus absconditus)  42, 168, 171 Historical criticism  97 Historicism  122–123, 146 History 227 – of the West  144 Hölle (see Hell) Holy Communion (see Lord’s Supper) Holy Spirit  186–187, 213, 219 homo religiosus 26 Honor 137 – to God  138 Human 63 – rights  121, 193–194 – self 133 –, sinful.  69, 81 (see also Sinner) –, spiritual 67 Humanity of Christ  167 “Humble sublime” 168, 173 Humiliation 223 Ich (see Self) Idealism  75, 88 –, German 146 Idealismus (see Idealism) Imitation 139 Incarnation  166, 168 Incarnational logic  172 Indigenous people  19, 224–239 Individual  71–72, 187, 227 Individualism  139, 227, 237 Individuum (see Individual) Industrialization 146 Institution, words of  207 Iustitia dei 17 Joint Declaration on Justification 180 Judgment 134 –, divine 59 Justice, theories of  196 Justification  29, 35, 55, 57, 62–64, 70, 73, 76–80, 82, 84–86, 96, 100, 117, 129–130, 133–134, 139, 142, 180

254

Index of Subjects

–, doctrine of  89, 100, 114, 129, 142, 179 –, experience of  112 Kairos  40, 43 Katholizismus (see Catholicism) Kingdom of God  38 Kirche (see Church) Konfessionskultur (see Confessional culture)  Kreuz (see Cross) Kreuzestheologie (see Cross, theology of the; see also Theologia crucis) Krieg (see War) Land 226 Language 233 Law  42, 44, 45, 47, 190, 193, 209, 223 – and gospel  210, 212–213, 220 –, end of  212 –, natural 221 –, use of the  216 Lehre (see Doctrine) Liberal Protestantism  144, 152, 155 Liberal theology  17, 18, 90, 146–147, 151 Liberalism  51, 75, 85, 203 Liberalismus (see Liberalism) Liberation 153 Libertarianism 199 Liebe (see Love) Liebesgebot (see Love, commandment of) Life 236 –, good 199 –, ordinary  165, 171 Lord’s Supper  113, 168, 202, 206, 208 Love  47, 49, 52, 114, 136, 137 –, commandment of  49, 52 –, divine 136 –, neighborly  49, 190 –, pure 38 –, works of  170 Luther –, Academy 19 –, biography of  175 –, Christology of  92, 104, 113, 168–169 –, religion of  115 –, soteriology of  98 –, theology of  100 –, writings of: –– Antinomian Theses and Disputations 209, 212, 215, 221 –– Auslegung der 7 Bußsalmen 43 –– Commentary on Galatians 212 –– Confession concerning Christ’s Supper  167

–– De servo arbitrio  99, 151, 189, 192 –– Dictata super Psalterium 41 –– Heidelberg Disputation  41, 43, 45, 46, 99, 168, 195, 217 –– Large Catechism 235 –– Lectures on Genesis 99 –– Lectures on Hebrews  41 –– Lectures on Romans  13, 17, 29, 54, 57, 98, 99, 104 –– Lectures on the Psalms  98, 99, 104 –– Ninety-Five Theses 17 –– On Temporal Authority  48, 190 –– Operationes in Psalmos  44, 46 –– That These Words of Christ, ‘This is My Body’, etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics 168 –– The Freedom of a Christian  170, 189, 212–214, 219, 221 –– Torgau Sermon on Christ’s Descent into Hell and Resurrection  225, 229–232 Lutheran Orthodoxy  89 Lutheranism 93 Magic  159, 174 Majesty, divine  151 Marital union  104 Marxism 127 Mensch (see Human) Merit  114, 133 Metaphysics 183–184 Middle ages  18, 77–79, 83–84, 106, 123, 160, 188 Mittelalter (see Middle ages) Modern culture  120, 180 Modernität (see Modernity) Modernity  18, 27, 51, 123, 156, 160, 165, ­173–177, 188 –, legitimacy of  109 –, making of  14 –, origins of  108 –, theory of  24, 26, 110 Möglichkeit, unmögliche (see possibility, impossible) Monasticism 149 Monergism  134, 143 –, divine 128 Mutuality  131, 135, 138, 142 Mysticism (see also Mystik)  17, 32, 61, 78, ­87–91, 94, 99, 101–102, 104–105 Mysticism, bridal  99, 102–105 Mystik –, aereopagitic 102 –, bernhardinischer  93

Index of Subjects –, German  92–94, 103–104, 117, 133 –, Roman  93, 103–104, 117, 133 National Socialism  95, 98–99, 101, 104–105, 192 Nationalism 147 Nationalsozialismus (see National Socialism) Naturalism 164 Nature  145, 163, 166 –, divine 137 Neighbor 218 Neuzeit (see Modernity) Nominalism  79, 158, 176 Normativity 186 Öffentlichkeit (see Public Square) Opferbereitschaft (see Willingness to be sacrificed) Oppression 214 Orthodoxie (see Orthodoxy) Orthodoxy 74 Participation 141 Pastoral care  134, 141, 143, 161 Penance  63, 66, 71 People 121 Personality 120 Pietism 89 Piety, Catholic  92 –, lay 163 Pluralism, religious  176 Politia Christi 205 Politische Theologie (see Theology, political) Possibility, impossible  232–236, 240 Post-secularity 156 Power – relations 141 –, legislative 191–192 Prädestination (see Predestination) Prayer  54, 63, 65, 68, 73, 213, 238 Predestination  29, 56, 58, 60, 71, 91, 100 –, double 104 Presence –, bodily 167 –, divine 206–207 Priesthood of all believers  30, 32 Pro me 102 Process theology  218 Progress  66, 68 Promise  56, 61, 70, 82, 134, 216 –, of forgiveness of sin  82 Protestant Ethics  158 Protestant Orthodoxy  180 Protestantism  34, 90, 179

255

–, cultural 148 –, New 154 Protestantismus (see Protestantism) Public language  208 Public political language  204 Public space  188 Publich square  52 Quietism 88 Realism 164 Rebirth  77, 79, 80, 82 Rechtfertigung (see Justification) Reciprocity  127–128, 131, 135 Reconciliation 95 Redemption 229 Reformation 11, 75–76, 82, 106–107, 109–112, 120– 121, 123, 140, 150, 158, 165–166, 1­ 73–174, 211 – breakthrough  11, 13 Regiment 197 –, worldly  191–192, 198 Reich Gottes (see Kingdom of God) Relation 133 Religion  60, 117, 127, 129, 137–138, 178, 180, 188 – as a “cultural- linguistic system”  179 –, as a worldview  178, 183 –, formation of  116 –, psychology of  181 –, sociology of  181 –, study of  14, 19, 181 –, theory of  118 Religious belief  157 Religious community  116 Remembrance 123 Renunciation 161 Repentance 215 Representation, political  201 Republic 196–199 Republicanism 51 Republikanismus (see Republicanism) Resignatio ad infernum  29, 54, 56–57, 59–62, 71–73, 91, 97, 100, 103, 132–133, 139, 141, 143 Resignation (see also Resignatio ad infernum) 39 Responsibility 170 Resurrection  71, 224–225, 235–237, 240 Rights, natural  199 Romanticism  146, 176 Sacraments  168, 205, 206–208 Sacrifice  91, 193 Salvation 132 –, doctrine of  158

256

Index of Subjects

Sanctity, original  238 Satisfaction 82 Scholasticism  74, 81, 89, 91, 94, 97, 116, 177 Scholastik (see Scholasticism) Schöpfer (see Creator) Second Council of Lyon  162 Secularity 156 Secularization  19, 110, 165, 174–176 Security  213, 221 Seeing 134 Seelsorge (see Pastoral care) Self  66, 118, 182 –, new 70 – -feeling 117–118 – -giving, divine  137 – -interest 142 – -relation 117 – -sacrifice  133, 139 Selfishness  135, 140 Selfless 118 Sermon on the Mount  170 Service of neighbor  170, 175 Signs, theory of  206 Simul  64, 71 Sin  39, 62, 203, 214 –, original  117, 228–229 Sittlichkeit (see Ethics) Social imaginary  156, 173, 200, 203, 206 Social Theory  129, 200 Socialism 40 Sociality  127–129, 142–143 Society  47, 127 Socinianism 112 Sociology  127, 130, 131, 135 Souveränität (see Souvereignty) Sovereignity  39, 48, 189, 197 –, divine 40 –, political 191 Sozialismus (see Socialism) Space  226, 237 Speculation, scholastic  113 Sphere, political  199 Spirituality  101, 160–166, 167, 239 State 120–121 Story 227–228 Subjectivität (see Subjectivity) Subjectivity  110, 116, 123, 151, 175, 182, 184 –, religious 118 Sünde (see Sin) Supernatural 168 Taufe (see Baptism) Tausch (see Exchange)

Terror 219 Terrorism 209 Theologia – negativa 102 – propria 101 Theologie (see Theology) Theology  14, 129, 146, 180, 187 – of the cross (see also Theologia crucis) 53, 195, 217, 237 –, contextual 225 –, history of  145 –, medieval 113 –, monastic 162 –, negative 147 –, political  19, 24, 33, 35, 43, 47–48, 50–51, 189, 193, 204, 208 –, public 47 –, Roman Catholic  179 –, sacramental 169 Theonomy 196–197 Time 226 Todesstrafe (see Death penalty) Trinity  143, 186 Trost (see Consolation) Trust  85, 222 Truth 131 Two kingdoms doctrine  110 Verborgenheit (see Hiddenness) Vergebung, Gottes (see Forgiveness, divine) Verheißung (see Promise) Vertrauen (see Confidence) Violence 220 Vis negativa  44, 47, 49–50 Vita apostolica  161, 163 Vocation  30–32, 149, 169, 171, 176 Verbum externum  102, 184–185, 188 War 36–38 Weimar Republic  14, 121, 192 Wiedergeburt (see Rebirth) Willingness to be sacrificed  36–38 World War I  14, 36, 91, 95, 119, 148 World War II  94 Wrath  136, 220 –, divine  98, 219 Zugleich (see Simul) Zukunft (see Future) Zusage (see Promise) Zusage der Sündenvergebung  (see Promise of forgiveness of sin)