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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2009
This article examines Luther's theology of the cross in relation to his treatment of vocation and explores the contemporary utility of both. It is argued that theologians who reduce Luther's theology of the cross to an existential descriptor fail on two accounts. First, they do not comprehend the manner in which a theology of the cross does not describe anxiety but rather induces it so as to create theologians of the cross out of theologians of glory. Second, a reduction of a theology of the cross to an existential descriptor fails to apprehend the public significance of the same insofar as a theology of the cross is intimately related to Luther's treatment of vocation and its concomitant explication of the two reigns of God. Luther's treatment of vocation points to the manner in which the Christian is shaped by the cross in the give and take of human community. This is not to gainsay certain deficiencies in Luther's treatment of vocation. Chief among these are Luther's tendency to restrict language of vocation to individuals and his insistence on vocational intransigence. A contemporary engagement of the cross and vocation entails both a critical analysis of the manner in which the private has now eclipsed the public and an attempt to move beyond Luther by way of Luther in underscoring the gift of ecclesial vocation.
1 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Discipleship, ed. Kuske, Martin and Tödt, Ilse, English edn ed. Kelly, Geffrey and Godsey, John D., trans. Green, Barbara and Krauss, Reinhard (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), p. 43Google Scholar: ‘Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, as principle, as system. It means the forgiveness of sin as a general truth; it means God's love as merely a Christian idea of God.’
2 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology, ed. Reuter, Hans-Richard, English edn ed. Floyd, Wayne Whitson Jr., trans. Rumscheidt, H. Martine (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996)Google Scholar, p. 131: ‘Here, not in its method of thinking, but rather in the obedience of thinking, the scholarly discipline of theology does differ fundamentally from everything profane.’
3 Forde, Gerhard O., On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 60Google Scholar.
4 David S. Cunningham has demonstrated that theology is, above all else, a task in faithful persuasion. Cf. Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 15, 37.
5 Ibid., p. 76.
6 David S. Yeago, ‘Ecclesia Sancta, Ecclesia Peccatrix’, Pro Ecclesia 9/3 (Summer 2000), pp. 331, 332.
7 LW 31, pp. 37, 38, from Martin Luther, Luther's Works (Saint Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1958–86).
8 LW 33, p. 68.
9 LW 31, p. 49. Cf. WA 1, p. 360: ‘Liberum arbitrium post peccatum in bonum potentia subiectiva, in malum vero semper activa’, from Martin Luther, Dr. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–1993).
10 Forde, Theologian of the Cross, p. 69.
11 LW 31, p. 53.
12 LW 31, pp. 56, 57. WA 1, p. 364.
13 And so Luther will assert that once ‘a Christian begins to know Christ as his Lord and Savior, through whom he is redeemed from death and brought into His dominion and inheritance, God completely permeates (durchgottet) his heart’. LW 24, p. 87.
14 LW 31, p. 52.
15 Cf. Ebeling, Gerhard, Luther: An Introduction to his Thought, trans. Wilson, R. A. (London: Collins, 1970), p. 227Google Scholar. And so, for Luther, Christ's cry of despair on the cross evidences the concealment, rather than the absence of God (LW 12, p. 126).
16 Loewenlich, Walther von, Luther's Theology of the Cross, trans. Bouman, Herbert J. A. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976), p. 49Google Scholar.
17 Yeago, David S., ‘The Catholic Luther’, in Braaten, Carl E. and Jenson, Robert W. (eds), The Catholicity of the Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 27Google Scholar.
18 Ebeling, Luther, p. 236.
19 Von Loewenlich, Luther's Theology of the Cross, pp. 11, 19.
20 Yeago, Catholicity, p. 20.
21 Forde, Theologian, p. 1, n. 1.
22 Ebeling, Luther, pp. 162–4.
23 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, ed. von Soosten, Joachim, English edn ed. Green, Clifford, trans. Krauss, Reinhard and Lukens, Nancy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), pp. 48Google Scholar, 49: ‘The person exists always and only in ethical responsibility; the person is recreated again and again in the perpetual flux of life’.
24 Cf. Froehlich, Karlfried, ‘Luther on Vocation’, in Wengert, Timothy J. (ed.), Harvesting Martin Luther's Reflections on Theology, Ethics, and the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), p. 121Google Scholar, who notes that the description of vocation as a doctrine is, in and of itself, a surprising appraisal.
25 Wingren, Gustaf, Luther on Vocation, trans. Rasmussen, Carl C. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1957)Google Scholar.
26 I use ‘realm’ here with its spatio-restrictive connotations in distinction from ‘reign’, which I reserve for Luther's treatment proper.
27 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Ethics, ed. Tödt, Isle, Tödt, Heinz Eduard, Feil, Ernst, and Green, Clifford, English edn ed. Green, Clifford J., trans. Krauss, Reinhard, West, Charles C., and Stott, Douglas W. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), p. 60Google Scholar.
28 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 393. Althaus also considers the two reigns interdependent. Cf. Paul Althaus, Die Ethik Martin Luthers (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1965), pp. 64, 65.
29 Ebeling, Luther, p. 177.
30 Wingen, Luther on Vocation, p. 85.
31 Paul Althaus notes that, for the very early Luther, the world was Satan's province. Through his development of the doctrine of the two reigns, it quickly becomes apparent that God, not Satan, is Lord of both reigns. Cf. Althaus, Die Ethik Martin Luthers, p. 57.
32 Wingren, Luther on Vocation, pp. 29, 54, 66.
33 Ibid., p. 28.
34 Ibid., p. 2. It is important to note that this specifically theological use of Beruf is lost in modern German. Bonhoeffer (Ethics, p. 289) alerts us to this and provides a fresh reading of Beruf, which I will explore below. Cf. LW 13, p. 370, where Luther insists that Christians alone know that their Stand is divinely ordered.
35 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3, ed. Rüter, Martin and Tödt, Isle, English edn ed. De Gruchy, John W., trans. Douglas Stephen Bax (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997)Google Scholar, p. 99: ‘The other person is the limit that God sets for me, the limit that I love and that I will not transgress because of my love.’
36 LW 13, p. 378.
37 LW 24, p. 220.
38 LW 24, p. 394.
39 LW 12, p. 273. Cf. also LW 12, pp. 71–4.
40 Wingren, Luther on Vocation, p. 58.
41 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 357.
42 Wingren, Luther on Vocation, p. 66.
43 LW 24, p. 221.
44 Wingren, Luther on Vocation, pp. 66, 91.
45 LW 3, pp. 62, 216–18. Luther will even assert that ‘Actually the pope and the bishops should remain in their place; only they should acknowledge this King, humbly bow before Him, and embrace His Word.’ LW 12, p. 74.
46 Althaus, Die Ethik Martin Luthers, p. 29.
47 Ibid., p. 47.
48 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 289.
49 Froehlich, Harvesting, p. 128.
50 Taylor, Charles, The Malaise of Modernity (Concord, ON: Anansi, 1991), p. 81Google Scholar.
51 Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 218Google Scholar.
52 Sennett, Richard, The Corrosion of Character (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998), p. 31Google Scholar.
53 Ibid., p. 83.
54 Ibid., p. 99.
55 Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)Google Scholar.
56 Ibid., p. 28.
57 Ibid., p. 38.
58 Ibid., p. 12.
59 And so consumers buy portable phones, computers, etc. that are discarded after a time as if they were used up.
60 Ibid., p. 33.
61 Ibid., pp. 39, 40.
62 Ibid., p. 41.
63 Ibid., pp. 154, 155.
64 Illich, Ivan, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 40, 41Google Scholar.
65 Titus 3:14; 1 Thess. 4:11; Eph. 4:28.
66 Cf. LW 30, p. 74 where Luther asserts that ‘if there were no evil people, one would not need a government’. Elsewhere, he designates all three estates as ‘ordained by God’. Cf. LW 41, p. 177. However, ‘ordination’ in this instance might refer to God's action towards preservation in the absence of peace. Cf. LW 13, p. 45.
67 LW 12, p. 26.
68 Cf. Luther's insistence, as a theologian of the church, that the government establish a community chest for the welfare of the poor. Cf. LW 45, pp. 159–94.
69 Despite Althaus's assertion that the church has a vocation to preach to the world (Die Ethik Martin Luthers, pp. 152, 155), Luther generally used the term vocation in relationship to individuals.
70 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, p. 77, where he refers to the church as a collective person.
71 LW 14, pp. 114, 115.
72 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, pp. 155, 156.
73 Ibid., p. 160.
74 Ibid., p. 158.
75 Bonhoeffer suggested that Christ's relationship to the world is concretised by four mandates: work and culture, marriage, government and church. He also notes that these mandates, as modes of vocation, cannot be sources of free conscience insofar as their obligations are manifold and so demand compromise (ibid., p. 292). Consequently, not our Beruf, but the Ruf of Christ frees us (ibid.). All of this presupposes an understanding of Bonhoeffer's distinction between the ultimate and the penultimate.
76 Ibid.