Thursdays with Iwand

Via Iwand’s sermon “The Loincloth”

James Tissot, "The Prophet Jeremiah" (1888)

For when this thread, the life-thread of faith, breaks, when the nail on which everything hangs is loosened, then it is the same with everything else as well. Being able to listen, listen and not act without his bidding, wanting to listen and therefore asking God, being able to hear and therefore praying to God – now that bears the weight of an eternal decision. As long as we listen, listen to Him and want to listen to Him, as long as He speaks to us in Jesus Christ, His living word, we are girded about Him as the loincloth around the hips of a man. No one will tear us from Him. Nothing can get in between when obedience binds us to God. Even Satan will try his skills in vain. And if we do not listen? If we slip away out of listening into doing or into wanting to know or into feelings or wherever temptation and recklessness lead? What is the significance of this “if” and “but” that we are invited to look here. Here we are at the end of our words.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via Hans Iwand, The Righteousness of Faith according to Luther

Andrea Mantegna, "The Resurrection" (1457-59)

We are today in a similar situation: grace, compassion, love, and mercy are words that we like to hear. They are “evangelical words.” But doesn’t “righteousness” belong to the law and in the Old Testament? Doesn’t righteousness mean that God gives each person what he earns? Don’t we really hope for God’s righteousness and continue to hope for it when it means every “iustitia distributiva” (distributive justice) in which God rewards the good and the pious, but punishes the godless and the wicked?” Would it not be just as incomprehensible for us as it was for the theologian Luther where, in Romans 1:17, it says: “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel… For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” Couldn’t we understand Luther better if he expected an entirely different Word in which God’s mercy, love, forgiveness, and compassion were revealed to him? But here it is: righteousness. If righteousness is the essence of the new revelation in Christ Jesus, then are not all other things contained in it: love, forgiveness, mercy, and compassion? Haven’t we already understood what the Gospel is or what righteousness is? After all, they are two pillars upon which the righteousness of men before God rests. However, not until both the Gospel and God’s righteousness come together–not until we seek them both in the gospel–and not until God’s righteousness for us the content of the Good News that calls us to faith will we have understood he whole gospel. So it was with Luther when this long hated, often elusive, detestable Word broke in upon him and he knew that it was not a stone, but rather the bread of life.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via Iwand, Nachgelassene Werke 2, pp. 404-405

As unlikely as one can trace Barth’s “fear” to the “anthropocentrism” of the nineteenth-century but instead to the necessity of proclamation (1 Cor. 9:16), just as unlikely can one maintain that Luther did not fear that we humans could be masters over God; in fact, if Luther had not had this fear, then the entire Reformation of the church would be senseless. “For this reason is the church today wrapped up as with clothes in the splendor of power; she is not founded on Word and Faith, not upon the Scriptures is she founded, but instead upon the arm of the world and she trusts in a bloody rule… Yet there sits sovereignty upon her until now the most holy deputy of God with his church and the foolish German people squander their blood for this monster, and of them it is sung in the Psalms: power and rule are not outside the church, i.e., only in purple is Christ ridiculed and scorned.” The fact that temptation and troubles teach us to heed the Word, they also teach us especially to heed the Word in theology. Barth’s theology has wakened the sleeping long before the storm – and enlightened the erring and gathered the scattered. In a period of apostasy, his theology has helped the church to a proper confession of faith. That which has proven itself in such a way should not, without thanks before God and man, be judged critically at that point where we cannot agree with him.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via Iwand’s sermon “The Loincloth”

But – room must still remain for the great “But” of Holy Scripture. “But without faith, it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). This “But” is not to be overlooked even here. On the contrary, this “But” is the final and deepest meaning of that most deadly serious play that Jeremiah had to produce. “But they would not listen.” The great and heart-breaking aspect to the grace and choice of God, who rich in His goodness and overflowing in His love, is that He hangs everything on one single stipulation. At the same time, this stipulation is the clasp that holds the loincloth together. If it is loosed, then everything is out, then the loincloth decays and very shortly His adornment is gone. God demands only one thing, that we listen to him. That we always listen to Him; not only when it suits us, but also when it does not suit us; not only when we are close to Him; but also when we are far from Him, so that everything that we are, do, think, want, suffer, covet, fear and love, all stand under His word! Everything – or nothing. For when this thread, the life-thread of faith, breaks, when the nail on which everything hangs is loosened, then it is the same with everything else as well. Being able to listen, listen and not act without his bidding, wanting to listen and therefore asking God, being able to hear and therefore praying to God – now that bears the weight of an eternal decision. As long as we listen, listen to Him and want to listen to Him, as long as he speaks to us in Jesus Christ, His living word, we are girded about Him as the loincloth around the hips of man. No one will tear us from Him. Nothing can get in between, when obedience binds us to God. Even Satan will try his skills in vain.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther pp. 37-38

Piero di Cosimo, "Incarnation of Jesus"

The view that a person is changed through faith is the view of the Cross. Luther drew many of his concepts regarding the flesh and suffering from the theological mystics. However, his view differs radically from the mystics in that the recovery of true humanity is attained not through the deification of man, but through the humanity of God. “Through the rule of his humanity,” (writes Luther), “or (as the apostle calls it) of his flesh, which occurs by faith, he makes us conform to himself and crucifies us, thus making real, that is, wretched and sinful men, out of unhappy and proud gods. For since in Adam we ascended to God’s likeness, for this reason he descended to our likeness, that he might return us again to knowledge of ourselves. This takes place through the sacrament of the incarnation. ‘This is the kingdom of faith in which the cross of Christ rules, throwing down the divinity we perversely desired and recovering the humanity and despised weakness of the flesh we perversely abandoned.” (WA 5:128, 36) Thus, the journey of man is summed up in the Cross: he remains his own truth and becomes a person who stands before God; a person who recognizes his total and complete humanity and can be blessed with redemption. For, “this is God’s sweetest mercy, that He endures us in our sin and takes upon Himself our ways and our life which are worthy only of rejection until He prepares us and completes us. In the meantime, we live in the cover and the shadow of His wings and escape His judgment through His mercy, not through our own righteousness.” (LW 31:63)

Thursdays with Iwand

Via Iwand’s sermon, “The Loincloth”

“Just as a man binds a loincloth about his loins – in the same way,” says God, “I have taken you to myself.” As a man takes his loincloth. And he includes what that means: “That they should be my people, to be a name for me, a praise and glory.” This means Jesus Christ too; this is the graceful bond of baptism, this is the New Testament in His blood – that we should be His people. “So that I may be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness” – did not we all learn as children that this is our ultimate, most blessed destiny? Yes, it is indeed so. God does not want to be alone, He wants to have us around Him, He wants to adorn Himself with us, He wants to make Himself a name on us, preparing praise and glory out of our mouths. It is not, as one has often said to us, God is our God because we need Him; no it is much more wonderful and beautiful: God needs us for the glorification of his name. Only God can do this. Only He can glorify His righteousness on sinners, only He can glorify His life creating power in those doomed to death, only He can prove Himself to be the truth that still exists, still shines, still triumphs in us who err and doubt. In human beings, who are characterized by weakness, fallibility, sin, death and damnation, God will glorify Himself! He will build His kingdom out of such human beings. That which is nothing God has chosen so that he makes that which is something to be nothing. Of course, this does not appeal to us all. We think entirely differently about God. We think of Him as the righteous one who leads the party of the just, as the omniscient one who stands on the side of the wise and the clever, as the immortal one who becomes incarnate in the heroes of world history. We think of God as a partisan of everything that he Himself is. As if God were nothing other than a human god, nothing other than an invention of our spirit and our wishes – as if God were not the living, graceful, merciful, actual God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts.

It is with this God alone that we have anything to do with here. With the God who has made us to be his possessions in Jesus Christ, who bows Himself down to the troublesome and burdened, who seeks the lost and carries them home, who does not become weary of calling after us, of grieving, of crying, of suffering because of us. Because He needs us. He needs us in order for Him to glorify Himself in us.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via The Righteousness of Faith according to Luther, p. 45-46

…wherever grace and forgiveness are proclaimed in the present tense, even in the Old Testament, the Gospel is present. For the Gospel does not bring a new conception of God, a new morality, or a new religion. Rather, the Newness that it brings to us is the proclamation that what was before a command and a promise is now a present reality. “Therefore, those who interpret the term ‘Gospel’ as something else than the ‘good news’ do not understand the Gospel, just as those people do who have turned the Gospel into a law rather than grace and have made Christ a Moses for us. (LW 25, 327)” When one understands this position in Luther, then it is not difficult to understand why Luther is not an Antinomianist and why his teachings, even those on St. Paul, do not neglect the teachings of the Law, but rather bring a new and a positive understanding of it. As we know, Luther had fought the Antinomianist battle with great intensity. The people with whom he had to fight this battle were not those of the Catholic Scholastic tradition, but were Luther’s own students. Their intention was to hold up Luther’s own position and to complete it – to radicalize it. With the question of Antinomianism, we are dealing with a problem at the inner core of Protestantism and one that has perhaps shaped contemporary Protestantism more than any other. The entire modern battle against the Old Testament has its roots here: “Commandments belong in the courthouse and not in the pulpit,” say the Antinomians. “Everyone that has anything to do with Moses must go to the devil and to the gallows with Moses.” They start from the position that repentance and justification flow only from the Gospel and that the law in any form does men harm. The law, they believe, make men into hypocrites, and therefore has no business being included in a theology of the Gospel. This is why they are called Antinomians (against the Law), because they will allow nothing other than the forgiveness of sins to be preached.

Thursdays with Iwand

Here Iwand recounts a story told to him by a German civil engineer who had witnessed a mass execution.

Via Iwand, ‘Vortrage und Aufsatze’ (NW 2), p.363

It all happened in a big ditch. Some steps were dug into the limestone going down into the huge grave. Down the steps each of the sacrificed ones, men, women, and children, had to go completely naked and at the bottom lie down to be shot. The man doing the shooting was an SS man who sat on the edge of the narrow side of the grave on the ground, his feet hanging down. Across his knees lay a machine gun. He smoked a cigarette. No one cried, no one pleaded for his or her life. But the witness did see a father who held a boy of about ten by the hand. The boy was fighting back the tears. The father pointed with his finger into the heavens and stroked the head of the boy and seemed to explain something to him. It is just this finger pointing to the heavens–this alone is what can be said to all this. Somehow it is a sign pointing to that One who alone holds the key in face of such nameless terror… What we don’t seem to have comprehended yet is that the sword of the tyrannical one in this murder if the Jews–that this sword was out to get the King of the Jews, our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what we haven’t grasped–that the attack on the Jews was aimed at us, the Christian Church! That which Christ brought together–Jews and Gentiles–we allowed to break asunder. As the synagogues burned, heathendom was at work trying to conquer our Christian houses or worship for themselves. A terrible myth of ‘Blut und Boden’ came like a foreign influence upon the people and overtook the country and the old gods rose up again… And if we are unchanged, then it remains firm and will continue to show its face to us, indicting us. But should repentance and new birth come into play among us–which, of course, is something we ourselves cannot do and yet for which we can beg–then even that seemingly rigid and staring past will budge and the Spirit which turns us around also blows upon the field of dead bones. There is only one comfort n the face of this vast field of guilt, sin, and death–and that is to place the judgment in God’s hand. There is that finger again! Pointing toward heaven and giving comfort that his dead shall live.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via Hans Iwand, “Wie studiere ich Philosophie” (How to study philosophy?) in Um den rechten Glauben, p. 173-182

Theology and philosophy must be in constant dialogue for ‘theology is the confident companion of the human being in his quest for the meaning of the last things, encouraging him not to delude himself and not to fall victim to scepticism,’ (p.177) Theology must find answers to these questions, answers which are found beyond all philosophical understanding, as the word of God precedes all human knowledge. The word of God is ‘the axiom of theology which it can never lose without giving itself up (p.177). There is no doubt that the philosophies of the ancient world underwent a strange transformation and resurrection through theology. Philosophy was saved by theology from falling into oblivion as a consequence of the scepticism into which it had plunged after the destruction of the antique world. (p.177). If theology ever rejects serious dialogue with philosophical perceptions, as has happened in the history of theology, science is in danger of falling into a disastrous ‘ignoramus et ignorabimus’ of great consequence (p.178). The result is a ‘reversed dogmatism.’ Born from despair, it makes itself ‘the judge and avenger of the church and theology’ (p.178).

Thursdays with Iwand

Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther, pp. 66-67

From the point of view of the righteousness of faith, the imposters and anti-Christian rivals who preach the righteousness of the law are easily recognized. The righteousness of the law has nothing to do with the fact that a person intends to be able to come near to God with good works, even if this primitive idea is fundamentally th notion of heathen sacrifice that is rooted by nature in everyone’s blood. Rather, it is a deeper and more profound shackle by which the person is imprisoned in a ring of law and of sin, even though the ideal of perfection shines in on him in his prison and holds him upright. It is what Luther calls the “necessitas operum” (the necessity of works) that binds him in works of necessity. The person himself seeks constantly to find the identity of his being in his works, for ‘if you are good’ then ‘you must show it’! And the person knows deep in his heart that he lives and strives, is happy and crestfallen, depending upon whether his works succeed or not.

If these chains that are forged from works and that imprison me could be broken from the inside (that is by my nature), and if my conscience could be freed from the “judgment of my works,” (in which not my works, but God’s would be counted for me) and if I were able to decide the verdict on my life–then I would indeed be free! Then this law, this cycle of “I” and works and conscience would indeed be broken and I could confront the works that wait for me, knowing that God’s judgment supports me, with the confidence of a master who commands his slaves. Then I would act with the greatest freedom and confidence, knowing that no work that I do can decide my fate, my salvation, or my righteousness before God. That is precisely the heavenly gift that Luther finds in the New Righteousness; the freedom of the children of God who do work simply that it may be done, but who do not need to do any work at all in order to know that they live by God’s grace.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via Iwand’s sermon on Jeremiah 13:1-11, “The Loincloth” (February 1936, Freizeit der theologische Fachschaft der Universitaet Koenigsburg in Allenstein, in Bekenntnispredigen, Heft 14, 1936. S. 4-13)

How the echo from the warning of Jeremiah sounded is reported to us. ”Come,” they said, “let us take council against Jeremiah; for the priests cannot err in the law, and the wise cannot fail in their counsel, and the prophets cannot teach injustice. Come, let us kill him with our tongue and nothing will come of all his speeches.” That is the effect, the effect of the Word of God. We human beings are commonly proud of being able to kill the one who speaks for God with
our tongue. As if something were won in this: as if the events that the Word speaks about were gotten rid of! We are proud when we are right in the end – but God is full of sorrow, when He is right in the end over against all His adversaries, against the priests, against the prophets, against the wise and unwise, all who perish in their own being right. They rejoiced that they had the power to stifle the prophet’s word and did not suspect that they themselves would soon be taken away as if they never were. Perhaps we are frightened a little at the thought of that event, perhaps we get ourselves used to seeking the truth with many, with the crowd, with those who shout down the Word of God but still cannot hinder what it announces. Because finally only one is always right in the end – God is right in the end, though we all persuade ourselves that we are right, though everyone cries: Silence, what God says will not happen, but what we say, what we plan will happen, we master fate – God? Does God have the hands to reach into the wheels of history? Does He have horses and a chariot to accomplish His will? How is God supposed to engage history? God in history – What Jeremiah had to display here for his people is God in history, but differently than philosophers of history and prophets of salvation dream of this God in history. This is not a God who brings up the rear, who gives His “Yes” and “Amen” to that which has already happened, instead His word comes first – and that which follows after is Himself. Thus He says: “I will bring upon this land all the words that I spoke about it.” That is the God of history, the God who acts because one no longer listens to his word, the God who takes His glory because one no longer gives it to Him, the God who does not follow after what we have done, but rather who acts as the active, powerful, irresistible God behind His word. For as He speaks, so it happens. That is the God of history, to whom His name matters more than everything that is on the earth, who does not allow whatever will not praise Him to live. Woe to those who despise His Word and run into the arms of the dumb, veiled, inaccessible God!

Thursdays with Iwand

B.1, Outline of a lecture on The Primacy of Christology, Thesis (1956)

1.The definitive expression that lies within Protestant theology, the authoritative theme of Christology has come to the fore.

2. The problem, which has been thrown out of the study of doctrine, exists therein, that during the time of Jesus of Nazareth’s appearance, there is a word of God in which everything that is, has its being.

3. Considering the facts, in him the word has existed from the beginning as an event within the midst of history and the world, all other things are outdated “principles.”

4. Considering the “pre-existence” of Christ there is no religious or ethical “apriori.”

5. All foreknowledge exists according to the phenomenon of his understanding.

6. The new attempt to build theology from Christology is not the first construction within protestant theology during our epoch. The characteristics of this particular epoch have allowed the dismantling of the doctrine of the two natures in respect to dogma as a specific form of the message of Christology in the theology of the Enlightenment.

7. The historicizing and ethicizing of the person of Jesus is a simultaneous event and demonstration for us of the loss of the actual center of our faith.

8. The life of Jesus movement of the nineteenth century is a grand but unsuitable substitute for that lost Christology.

9. With the loss of Christology there also must come a decline in the unity of the gospels. It declined in Jesus’ gospel and in the gospel about Jesus.

10. In the preaching of the scripture there are both.

11. For the nineteenth century there are three instructive attempts to reconstruct Christology from the basis of the doctrine of the two natures: I.A. Dorner, F. Chr. Bauer, and G. Thomasius.

12. But the way out of these efforts leads to the history of our question (Kenosis-Doctrine).

13. The fault of this theological reconstruction lies in the fact that the Godhead of Christ would namely be a fact of the revelation of God, but it would not be human.

14. All these attempts are applied to the humanity of Christ as something within the “history” of a particular datum. Thus, he cannot become the object of faith and confession.

15. It is particular and new because the beginning of the current working out of the Christological problem, in both the Godhead and humanity, will be won simultaneously in the revelation.

16. Because, in Barth, the primacy lies in the anthropology of Christology, he has overcome – and closed another question – the error of the nineteenth century and exposed a new construction of the Christological problem along the way.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther, p. 39

If we ask Luther what he understands by the Word of God he answers: “The word of God is both law and gospel.” (LW 33:105) Whoever does not make this distinction is denied the ability to attempt a correct interpretation of Scripture. (LW 33:132) Luther not only distinguishes between man’s word and God’s Word, but God’s Word must also be distinguished as to whether it is a command or a challenge, promise or pardon. Whoever does not distinguish these things is in danger of making Christ either a new lawgiver or a new Moses (precisely the criticism that Luther levels against Catholicism), or is in danger of allowing the law to fall away altogether, thereby destroying the wonder of grace and forgiveness. (LW 26:150) Luther fights this false understanding when he attacks the Antinomians who have developed their theology out of a false rendering of the law and gospel. (WA 39:1. 432ff.) Both law and gospel must remain says Luther, but each must be employed within its “boundaries.” The earthly person in his human existence must live under the law until his death and must always learn anew that he is a sinner. At the same time, the faith and conscience of the person must be free from the law because here Christ alone rules. In short, if the law does not find its limits in Christ, then all is lost.

Law & Grace, by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Thursdays with Iwand

Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther” (pg. 35-6)

People who love God with the self-serving loving of concupiscentia spiritualis are horrified at the thought of predestination. They think it is cruel and inhuman that God has mercy on those upon whom he chooses to have mercy and rejects those he chooses to reject. “Then the ‘prudence of the flesh’ says: ‘It is harsh and wretched that God should seek his glory in my misery.’ Note how the voice of the flesh is always saying: ‘my.’ Get rid of this ‘my’ and rather say, ‘Glory to Thee, O Lord!’ and then you will be saved. In another place Luther says: “To love God for the purpose of eternal salvation and eternal peace or for reasons of avoiding hell is not to love God for his own sake, but for the sake of one’s self. True blessedness is to seek God’s Will and God’s Honor in all things and to wish for nothing for one’s self – either here or in the here-after. The power of faith that gives God justice and bows to his will stands here at its most difficult, but most complete test. For the kind of love of God that accepts everything from his hand – even if it be damnation – is the love of a friend or a son (amor filialis et amicitiae). It is not a natural kind of love, nor is it a love that represents the highest order of natural love, but rather this is a love that comes only from the Holy Spirit.

Thursdays with Iwand

Summarizing his own understanding of the Word of God and faith, Iwand writes:

Faith, however, means: he shall be Lord. Thus God finds the person who even now, in the invisibleness of not-seeing, yet believing, takes him in faith to be the all-embracing fullneas of reality. Whoever believes in God believes in the truth of his word. Then, aIl reality, experience, conscience and the law may stand in opposition to it. His word, nonetheless, remains true. In the believer, the word has found its ally – the only one whom God accepts.” (Iwand, NW 1, Glauben und Wissen, p. 202)

For Iwand, the Word of God is the source of all that exists, it is the (the) “point where being and non-being are correlated to each other in transition, where that which is not, is created and that, which is, is dissolved into nothingness. This point is found, it is there. It is called: the Word of God! Therefore, faith stands in relation to the word, in an irrevocable relation, for faith presupposes the Word. Without the word faith means nothing. The Word, however, does not pre-suppose faith.” (Iwand, NW 1, Glauben und Wissen, p. 206)

Thursdays with Iwand

Excerpts from “Faith & Knowledge” (1962)

The ‘homo-religiosus’ is precisely the person under the law. This is the new ‘post-Schleiermacher-knowledge’ which makes theology today the most exciting and important matter. If that be true, what is going to happen to atheism, what to the church, what to science?… Jesus Christ alone stands among us all as true human being – this is the significance of his incarnation… Therefore, the incarnation of Christ is the very opposite of the deification of Adam. The crucified, ‘as true human being,’ stands in a world whose people gave up their own truth, the truth of the their existence, depriving themselves of the knowledge of God. Hence, he stands as true human being amidst ‘unfortunate, arrogant gods…’ Justification is the ‘incomprehensible,’ profoundly ’scandalous,’ and at the same time absolutely ‘unpractical’ and ethically ‘contestable’ in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Justification is not ‘there’ for achieving ’something,’ as thought by Ritschl and his school, such as giving the human being a good conscience that enables him, as an ethical person, to continue the struggle against his instincts and false inclinations. Hence, it is not the motivating force within the entire ethical process, but is itself a terminus, an end, the ultimate power and purpose of all purposes.

‘Faith and Unbelief’ – That in particular is the great and overwhelming significance of Luther’s doctrine of justification: it begins with an all-embracing ‘all-or nothing’ which cancels all casuistry. Just as nothing but faith justifies, so also nothing is sin but unbelief. One who believes has everything; one who disbelieves loses even that which he has.

‘The Word of God and Faith’ – Faith, however, means: he will be Lord. Thus God finds the person who even now, in the invisibleness of not-seeing, yet believing, takes him in faith to be the all-embracing fullness of reality. Whoever believes in God,
believes in the truth of his word. Then, all reality, experience, conscience, and the law stand in opposition to it, his word, nonetheless, remains true. In the believer, the word has found its ally – the only one whom God accepts.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via Hans Iwand, Glaubensgerechtigkeit nach Luthers Lehre, p. 193

Jesus Christ alone stands among us all as true human being – this is the significance of his incarnation… Ergo, the incarnation of Christ is the very opposite of the deification of Adam. The crucified, ‘as true human being,’ stands in a world whose people gave up their own truth, the truth of their existence, depriving themselves of the knowledge of God. Hence, he stands as the true human being amidst ‘unfortunate, arrogants gods.’

Via Hans Iwand, Gesetz und Evangelium, p. 278

Justification is the ‘incomprehensible,’ profoundly ’scandalous,’ at the same time absolutely ‘unpractical’ and ethically ‘contestable’ of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Justification is not ‘there’ for achieving ’something.,’ as thought by Ritschl and his school, such as giving the human being a good conscience that enables him, as an ethical person, to continue the struggle against his instincts and false inclinations. Hence, it is not the motivating force within the entire ethical process, but is itself a ‘terminus,’ an end, the ultimate power and purpose of all purposes.

Thursdays with Iwand

Via “Kreuz und Auferstehung,” Klappert, pg. 288

The cross is the utterly incommensurable factor in the revelation of God. we have become far too used to it. We have surrounded the scandal of the cross with roses. We have made a theory of salvation out of it. But that is not the cross. That is not the bleakness inherent in it, placed in it by God. Hegel defined the cross: ‘God is dead’ – and he no doubt rightly saw that here we are faced by the night of the real, ultimate and inexplicable absence of God, and that before the ‘Word of the cross’ we are dependent upon the principle ’sola fide’; dependent upon it as nowhere else. Here we have not the ‘opera dei,’ which point to him as the eternal creator and to his wisdom. Here the faith in creation, the source of all paganism, breaks down. Here this whole philosophy and wisdom is abandoned to folly. Here God is non-God. Here is the triumph of death, the enemy, the non-church, the lawless state, the blasphemer, the soldiers. Here Satan triumphs over God. Our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose that it must be at an end. Our faith begins with the bleakness and power which is the night of the cross, abandonment, temptation and doubt about everything that exists! Our faith must be born where it is abandoned by all tangible reality; it must be born of nothingness, it must taste this nothingness and be given it to taste in a way that no philosophy of nihilism can imagine.

Thursdays with Iwand

Hans Iwand, a sermon on James 2:14-26

Is there anyone among us who doesn’t want to get up in protest and answer this text with a simple, ‘No!’? The last sentence alone does us in: ‘So faith apart from work is dead.’ If it has no works! Or have we become so dull and apathetic that we simply accept these things just because they are in the Bible? ‘Faith apart from works…’ But isn’t that just the opposite of what paul preaches: that we are justified by faith alone, apart from work of the Law? In other words, not faith and works, but by faith alone. Not both/and, but rather either/or. Either a person is made righteous before God on the basis of his effort – or his righteousness before God is grace, complete and absolute grace.

Do we all of a sudden have to throw overboard everything we believe including why we call ourselves evangelical Christians and heirs of the Reformation? ‘Faith if it has works…’ – that lies there like a big rock in our path. We cannot get around it. We take offense at it.

Yet there may be others among us who are glad this finally is being said; at last this message is getting out. Now we’re really getting down to some practical Christianity. Now it’s finally a matter of our behavior toward the poor, the weak, the sick and the have-nots of this world. Now faith is going to be measured by another standard and not by the usual norm. Now it is the Christianity of deed that is the standard of faith.

Perhaps these friends among us would even say that the church would be better off if such words would be preached and taken to heart more often. And perhaps that was the consideration of the ‘Innere Mission’ (roughly translated, ‘Lutheran Social Services’) in choosing this text of this day of anniversary – so that the witness to faith might be led and characterized by the helping and saving deed. In a way we are like Goethe’s Faust who opens the Bible in the prologue of Goethes work, and is taken back by the very first sentence: ‘In the beginning was the word’ – ‘No,’ he says, ‘In the beginning was the deed.’ ‘What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works?!’

Perhaps it is the case that when it comes to this text we have to divide up into those who say ‘Yes’ to James and those who say ‘No.’ Those who go with james and those who go with Paul; those who are with Rome and those who are with Luther.

But let us hold off for a little while with our ‘Yes’ or our ‘No’ so that we can listen and hear once more before we take a hard and fast position; so that we do not simply follow inclinations or dis-inclincations, or our deep seated opinions for or against; instead, let us first of all allow ourselves to be very still before God’s Word and listen because it doesn’t say that everything depends on our works.

There is not here a commending, rather it is first and last a matter of faith. It is all about faith – the kind of faith which justifies us before God; totally and alone it is about faith. However, it is also the case that it is a matter of two different kinds: one a dead, and one a living faith. And the situation which is being addressed here in this text is that of a dead faith! This is the most terrible situation which the apostle James faces:” there is faith present, yes; there are Christian congregations, it is true, but this faith they have is like a skeleton of a dead man – it is a deceased dead faith. What a terrible combination of words: two words which are as foreign as heaven and hell or as God and the devil, such are these two words, faith and death.

Or shall we say it even clearer: it is not just that death has succeeded in conquering the body of a person; death has also succeeded in bringing under his spell that new life born of God. It’s as though death as won a second time; not just conquering the flesh, but now the spirit as well.

This is what the apostle sees; it is what he already saw back then right in the midst of the first springtime of Christianity. There in their midst was the death smell of the age-old enemy-like worm that eats itself into the blossoms and kills the fruit, a worm that doesn’t even let it become fruit. For, if faith really is faith, then it most certainly has to be, as Luther says, ‘a living, active, busy thing.’ Faith can do nothing other than to be constantly working and doing, because he who gives faith its life, namely God, is himself always working and doing. But then what in the world is it that happens when faith suddenly stops being active? What happens that it stands there like something dead, like a formula or an empty phrase? Yes, this is the greatest danger there is: the danger that the new life, the life born of Christ, could fall under the law of death. And because he sees this danger, the apostle breaks into a loud fanfare, a blast that echoes within and throughout a Christianity threatened with death, into the security of the Lutherans and those claiming Paul: the works will decide, love shown with deeds, not with words alone! and that is why this fellow speaks so suddenly and in such a way so that our first inclination is to say he is speaking like a Jew or a Roman Catholic. But he speaks like he does because in the midst of this Christian ‘Christianness’ (christliche Christlichkeit), into this evangelical attitude of faith has crept the enemy itself, the enemy who threatens to destroy the entire new structure of God. Were there no such thing as this dead faith, then the cry of James would not be necessary. Were there no such deforming of Christianity then this strange speech of James would not be needed. But that is why we do need to hear his message. And we should ask ourselves whether or not our faith, too, is in danger of becoming such a skeleton, and whether there aren’t even today congregations and fellowships of Christians that are like a field of dead bones, where faith now only flits around like a ghost in empty phrases and vacant all-too-familiar formulas but without really allowing faith to take charge and to rule life and deeds. This is the situation.

Note: we have decided to discontinue Athena Thursday, in favor of adding a neglected theological voice to the weekly chorus. Thursdays will now feature selections from Hans Joachim Iwand (1899-1960).

Thursdays with Iwand

In 1953 Hans Iwand, despite his long and filial friendship with Karl Barth, remained critical of the latter regarding his transposition of the Law and Gospel in his theology. In a letter to Rudolph Hermann, Iwand noted that the way Barth taught the Word of God as Gospel-Law
reminded him of the Antinomians. Yet, for Iwand, what Barth did in his transposition of the Law and Gospel remained the essential question
for contemporary theology. Iwand writes:

At any rate it’s clear to me that Melanchthon was wrong when he identified the commandments with the lex naturalis (natural law), even the first commandment! On the other hand it is clear that the Gospel means a righteousness which lies beyond the revealed law, a righteousness which is the presupposition to any impletio legis (fulfillment of the law)… I have thought about what Luther calls the lex sine lege (Law without Law), etc. In the doctrine of the Spirit, Luther most certainly also sees a true oneness of Law and Gospel, except that this oneness is always directed toward the coming world and reality, a coming world and reality becoming new in the resurrection.  [Hans Iwand, Briefe (NW 6), pp. 306-307]