A Misdirection in Seeing
Via On Being a Theologian of the Cross, pp. 72-77
Thesis 19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have actually happened (or have been made, created).
Jacques de Letin, "Moses at Mount Sinai"
Theologians of glory are always driven to seek transcendent meaning, to try to see into the invisible things of God, to get a line on the logic of God. They look at the cross and ask, “What is it all about?” They wonder what is “behind” it all. There is a reason for this, of course. If we can see through the cross to what is supposed to be behind it, we don’t have to look at it! It is, finally, a matter of self-defense. He was “as one from whom men hide their faces” (Isa. 53:3). If the cross can be neatly folded into the scheme of the self’s glory road, it will do no harm.
Luther apparently does not think it necessary at this point to spend much time refuting this position. The proof he offers for this thesis is among the shortest of the Disputation. Perhaps he assumes that by now the presumption inherent in the position ought to be obvious. At any rate, he contents himself simply with pointing to Romans 1:22, where St. Paul speaks of those who claim to be wise but are nevertheless fools. The context of the Romans passage should perhaps be filled out a bit. The fools are they who knew God but “did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools” (Rom. 1:21-22).
How shall fools be made wise? The problem is that at the deepest level we have here not just a set of teachings, theological opinion, or that which we might take or leave at will and which might be corrected by better information, but temptation. As we have already indicated, it is a matter finally of self-defense. Thus the proof concludes with just a brief parting shot about the uselessness of this method of operation in making one either worthy or wise. Peering into the “invisible things of God” only “puffs up, blinds, and hardens” (cf. thesis 22). Luther’s indication of what such invisible things might be has already been given: virtue, godliness, wisdom, justice, goodness, and so forth. Knowledge of divine essences and qualities, Luther asserts, does not make wise men out of fools. Indeed, it is more likely to make fools out of the wise! Essences and qualities are abstractions; they are what is left when all the action, particularly the suffering and the dying, has been stripped away. There is a fundamental misdirection in seeing. Our theologians must be taught where to look and what to see.
