In his teaching [on original sin] Luther is also very different from the teaching of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, most of us are more familiar with the Catholic teaching than we are with the Protestant teaching of Luther. Nothing is more foolish than to think that the doctrine of original sin is merely a medieval Catholic idea from which Lutherans have liberated themselves. The reformers had intended exactly the opposite in mind and even the simplest Christian knows this from singing hymns of the Reformation. The reformers won over some of the best people in all areas and classes, not because they took sin less seriously, but because they risked maintaining that sin was a powerful force to be reckoned with. In Catholic theology, original sin is understood as a congenital defect, a weakness of nature that does not really count as sin in the life of a Christian. Only when this weakness manifests itself in some external, outer deed or action, is it considered sin. What we, however, know from Luther’s intentions on original sin is that from him sin is no mere “defect” – no shortage of power to do good – but rather is a positive, passionate, will to life in which the person seeks to assert himself and to prevail. Luther coined the term “passio” meaning “passion” that describes a definite, driving inclination in a person that makes the good difficult and the bad easy. This tendency that attracts us over and over again in the wrong direction – like a magnet – is the genuine life of sin in us. Thus, for Luther, sin is an affective tendency – a wishing, a willing, and a drive that is fully present in every person. Just as faith is not a peaceful “quality” in us, so also sin is not a slumbering condition, but manifests itself as a state of unrest, impulse, striving, and of being carried away. Luther does not concede that in a Christian there is no sin or, more precisely, that there is any directly traceable trail to evil and lawlessness, as if the inclination to sin is any different for Christians than it is for pagans. It is the same impulse for both pagans and Christians, recognizable in a creature who is by nature lost-in-himself and is revealed as such. In the recognition of his sin the Christian remains still a naturally human figure – or becomes even more so through the recognition of it. Forgiveness, therefore, does not mean that the sins that the Christian perceives are any less “bad,” and it also does not mean that in contrast to others he is more certain of forgiveness from the start. Rather, it means that the Christian can count on God’s judgment and that God declares us justified, solely on the basis of His Word – even while we are sinners – and that we can live in the assurance of His unfathomable, inestimable and ever new, living Word.

For sin is not foreign to me; it is not random, clinging to my external appearance, like all sinful acts are and do. It is also not something that is beyond me, as in the tragic sense, underscoring my existence. Rather, sin is as intimate as the unity of life and self and as intimate as the unity if myself and sin. It is the condition of my existence. It lives in the “I” of a person who wants to be free of God, establishing himself as the measure of all things that cannot conceive of any other way of life, activity, productivity, formation, or becoming. The law therefore is the boundary – the frontier – in which God meets man. It is the line of death for the self’s will to live and of the self’s interest for life. Here, in the law, the living God and the living self collide. The law reveals, but only in the secrecy of a person’s self-insight, when he realizes that God and man are not one and that, indeed, they are mortal enemies. Luther calls the sins which are this identified and discovered in a condition of not wanting God to be God, the “peccatum originale,” or original sin. But this translation does not do justice to what Luther meant, because the term “original sin: is misleading. Again and again, original sin has been understood to man something having to do with a bad inheritance that is handed down through the chain of generations. Thus, the implication is that it is not I myself who sin, but my forefathers who sinned before me. But it is precisely this interpretation of original sin that Luther vehemently rejects. “Original sin” has nothing whatsoever to do with inheritance, at least not if we are able to take it in its evangelical context. Yet, this interpretation persists as one of the worst misconceptions of theology where, now and then, people try to “dress up” this despised teaching with the aid of current theories on heredity. But they are nothing more than mere word-play. If we want to avoid this confusion, we are better off translating the term “peccatum originale” word for word from the Latin. Thus it reads: source of sin or sin from its original source. The sin that is discovered is the sin that lies hidden at its source, behind all appearances. It means to understand that sin comes from out of an incomprehensible depth, as when one traces the path of a river to its source. Luther therefore means the point at which a person comprehends this source is the self – the “I” – from out of which a chasm opens that not even reason can fathom.

See also:

1. Hail, Thou Source of Every Blessing
2. The Original Text
3. The Original Text of Holy Scripture
4. On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin

The law should be able to teach a person to call upon the Holy Spirit who gives us a new heart. It should be able to take them out of themselves because this Pointing-Away-from-Myself is the task of the law, which is why it is called pedagogue and teacher! It should be able to show a person that next to and apart from the Law there is something else, someone else, namely Jesus Christ, to whom it points as an example set by God. But the person who is so smitten by his own deeds will not allow himself to be shown. He will answer the question of the law with his own accomplishments. He could be shown – but will not allow himself to be so instructed! And when it comes to the point of tragedy in the life of this person through the law, then it is understood correctly not as tragedy but as guilt. For the law is innocent. It is sin that is guilty of corrupting the person in their deeds so that not even the law is able to convict them and their sinful deeds prevail. The person who looks at his own good works is like an ignorant child who believes that one can put out a fire by blowing on it. And so it continues to be true: the more the law, the more the sin. Wherever the law exists, it gives rise to the transgression of it. Thus, the person’s help and salvation is found totally apart from the sin that binds him and he must find God somewhere else than in His revealed law. Not in the law, but in the Cross; not in deeds but in the hearing of the Gospel; not in morality, but in faith alone is the help that we need. What then is the goal of the law cannot bring us any further than to the limits of our own capabilities which for us is its ultimate meaning and goal? The answer is this: only under the law and through the law are our limitations made clear to us! It may be that a person must live and, perhaps already does live, within these limits. However, he recognizes them first through the very specific and special language with which God speaks to man in His commandments. Recognition is, in short, the positive work of the law. The law gives recognition where there was previously illusion, drunkenness, immoderation, and self-deception. I do not mean recognition in the sense of the mediation of the knowledge of facts, or of the external appearance of my life, because all of that is attainable without the law through experience, information, observation, and psychology. The recognition that the law brings does not lie on this side of the grave, but rather in the other side; for the law kills faith in oneself and satisfaction with oneself. It establishes enmity in people – the enmity of the flesh against the spirit – because it causes hatred of the self and the love of that which is not, or is not-yet. To be sure,, Luther says something here that has a double meaning: the brings recognition of sin and at the same time brings recognition of myself. It can do no more than that, says Luther, but even within these limitations the law can work a positive effect. On the other hand, the law cannot produce that which it demands because it cannot give a person a new spirit to bring about a new creation and existence or to make the heart new, true, pure and straight. It can reveal that which is right now with a clarity that portends of the final judgment. Perhaps we can only grasp Luther’s much repeated assertions about the achievements of the law when we understand that under the light of the law both powers – those of sin and of the “I” – encounter each other and merge together like two parallel lines that on into infinity. The intersection of sin as a supra-personal, universally human power, and the recognition of the self is what it means to step into the light of the law.

See also:

1. The Religion of Morality
2. The Word of God and Faith
3. Faith & Knowledge
4. The Law of Faith

Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther

The “conditions of the law” are not fulfilled by mere deeds for God sees into the heart. God asks whether what we do is done out of love – pure, great, full love. Luther hates the confidence and security a person feels through his apparently perfect life through which the person becomes insensitive, indifferent, and thoughtless about that which goes on inside him. According to Luther, “Security is the mother of all hypocrites and the basis of all hypocrisy.” The self-assuredness of a person must break in order to make room for the certainty of faith which rests not on its own justification, but upon a foreign one. For Luther it is the same argument that Jesus used against the Pharisees and has to do with the very essence of a person – not with externals. It has to do with the heart and with that which is hidden and revealed only to itself. “They do not strive to expel every inner sin, but seek out only the sin in thought, word, and deed. And, once they have identified those, they go on their own way feeling very secure.” Thus, Luther understands the law as not merely a challenge that invites a person to do good works, but as that which God’s law really is, namely, a calling that claims the entire person – his body, soul, and all his powers. For Luther, a person is to belong to God entirely. Luther does not compromise on the first commandment and because he does not compromise here, even successful adherence to the remaining commandments does not satisfy him. This is because the first commandment is contained in all of the remaining commandments. It is not a matter of “you can, therefore you should,” but rather of the action itself: “I would, but I will not.” I will not bow to the “should” that commands me. It is as Paul writes: “That which was meant to be my life has become the death of me!” For if all that stands between man and God is this “should” then he will surely stand condemned by God.

Indeed, the law is to be regarded in the same light as works. “For through the law a hatred of the law is awakened, but through faith a love for the law is infused.” For with the love of God who loves us, the love of His law is born in us. One could say that only when we have found God who does not speak in the language of the law by saying, “You should” but rather says, “I am the Lord your God,” – only then can we love the law. In the former we hear the command of a tyrant; in the latter we hear the will of the Father. Of course, here, as with works, a change is effected in terms of the Law. For the law that we love is now not the same law that was “against us,” namely, the law that we love is not the letter of the law; the law of works; the old law; the law of the flesh; the laws of Moses; the laws of sin and death; the law that condemns everyone and declares everyone guilty. The law that we love is not the law that fosters resentment and in which death is hidden and all the more so as it has appearance of spirituality (Luther has innumerable names to describe the breadth and depth of this kind of law), but is the law that we begin to love as the “law of faith.” It is the new law, the law of Christ, the law of grace, and of the Spirit. It is, as Luther says, “the living will itself and the life of experience… that is written in the heart only by the finger of God.” Very likely Luther had the pre-Christian congregations of the church with their ethical viewpoints in mind when he wrote: “Indeed, we would make new decalogues (commandments), as Paul does in all the epistles, and Peter, but above all Christ in the gospel. And these decalogues are clearer than the decalogue of Moses, just as the countenance of Christ is brighter than the countenance of Moses. Here we can now see how Luther himself understood his so-called practical writings. They were “new commandments,” with which he tries to show the love and value of God’s will to the Christian nobility, merchants, magistrates, husbands, wives, and parents. For it is at the same time a new commandment and an old one. Today we have lost the consciousness that not only the Gospel, but also the law needs to be experienced anew and constantly interpreted anew and that our greatest task as Christians lies in doing just that. To understand the Gospel in spiritual terms means for God’s Word to come always for us in a contemporary and practical sense – in the midst of our everyday lives and our jobs – so that we do not view the law as a burden under which we labor, but that fulfilling it is a joy and a comfort because we heed its commandments as free people. For the law has already been fulfilled in Christ so that it now can help us and cannot accuse us anymore.

See also:

1. Theses on Law, Gospel & Faith
2. The Word of God and Faith
3. The Life-Thread of Faith
4. Faith is a Living Power from Heaven

Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther

To speak of the righteousness of the sinner is not the exception and to speak of the righteousness of the righteous is not the rule. On the contrary, the God who is revealed in Christ makes the sinner righteous – that is the rule, without exception. In order to create, God has to destroy what we have created. God’s righteousness is not a quality that He has for Himself like a person has qualities, but in Christ God’s qualities – wisdom, power, and understanding – become ours. Just as God gives life to everything that He creates, so also He meets us as the God who makes us like Himself. We do not have the existence – this new life from God – the way we have and feel the life that we have here on earth, because we have it only in faith and in the hope that we have it, or that it has us, as our future life. Luther likes to say that we have it as a promise. Just as the pious were promised Christ in the Old Testament, so also we are promised in Christ the forgiveness of sins and the righteousness of God. Lither coins a famous formula that is essential for the newly given righteousness of man: peccator in re, iustus in spe! (sinner in reality, righteous in hope) This formula means that we are sinners in the reality of our existence, but righteous in the hope that we have in God. The life of a person exists between these two poles and is, inasmuch as faith is lived, always the victory of hope that one doesn’t see over the reality that one does see. Luther gained these insights inly after many, long battles. He thought at first that forgiveness of sins (remissio peccati) and the removal of sin (ablatio peccati) were the same thing. He thought that sin was a condition that lay beyond the person of faith, but he also recognized that out of that perspective grew self-assuredness, indolence, and pride. Then Luther found that both are present and both encompass the entire person: sin and righteousness, condemnation, and grace. As a sign of this ground-breaking discovery he coined this formula: “sinner in reality, righteous in hope!” Faith therefore means to shift my sins and God’s grace into the same time frame, because faith means that both sin and righteousness are present together. Both are real, but in the former we live in a physical sense and the latter we live by the power of hope. One is seen and the other is not seen. Because the person of faith knows both things – that being righteous means God’s Word is for us and that in the reality of sins God’s Word is against us – then he also knows that which is and remains the true reality and which one must eventually give up. Thus, the yielding of sin depends upon faith in forgiveness – but this faith is not dependent upon the yielding of sin!

See also:

1. The Coming Reality
2. The Righteous One
3. True Hope
4. Faith, Hope & Love

Via Kreuz und Auferstehung

Georges Rouault, "Crucifixion" (ca. 1920)

The Cross is the utterly incommensurable factor in the revealtion 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, and 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 blaspemer, the soldiers. Here, Satan triumps over God. Our faith begins at the point where athiests suppose that it must 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.

See also:

1. The Decisive Factor

Via The Righteousness of Faith according to Luther

Geertgen tot Sint Jan, "Tree of Jesse" (1500)

Since the good or evil of a work is of a quality that emanates from the relative good or evil of the person that performs it, the burning question of the Reformation is not “How are good works possible,” but is “How does a person become good?” How is the sinner justified? With this last question the others are already answered, not the other way around. Indeed, if it were that case that the question of good works is answered only for the individual himself we would be educating the whole world to be hypocrites. In the same way that the chances are small that a bad tree can bring forth good fruit, so also the odds are very small that a person with whom God is not pleased can do God-pleasing works. Therefore, Luther says, just as the apostle Paul says, that the works of the law are never good even if they resemble true, good works, both in intention and in effect. For, he says, who knows what such a person would do if there were no God, no punishment, no reward, and no human praise in the world! These so-called good works are forced deeds – they are not “natural” and they are not honest. Since Luther really does believe in the possibility of true good works, we must remove the “imitations.” With the imitations we see again the person in the foreground, overshadowing the ‘objective,’ ‘impersonal things,’ such as life or the unity of an ethical system. Both – faith and good works – must be present at the same time because either both are won or both are lost together. There is no halfway mark – no justification without sanctification and no sanctification without justification. The religious and the ethical questions are, at root, the same. On the other hand, when a person’s actions are excluded how can a person become good when he is not, or when, as the philosophers say, he is merely good in a hypothetical sense? For a work to be good the question of the existence of a person must be decided upon in advance; not in the form of an assumption, but in the form of a certainty. Here the decisive factor is faith. That is because when it has to do with a new being and not merely a becoming-better in a moral sense, the person cannot accomplish it by himself. “Opera non faciunt personam, sed persona facit opera” – the works don’t make the person, but the person determines the value of the work. If, of course, a person were in a position to shape his own humanity by himself then he would also be the creator of his own spiritual personality. However, that is an anti-Christian point of view and one that goes against God for those who are under the law, because, Luther says, “whoever holds that our works shape and create us, or that we are the creature of our own work blasphemes. For it is as blasphemous as saying: I am my own god and I created myself [we know that Fichte said this at the high point of his idealistic atheism.] Likewise, it is blasphemous to seek one’s own justification by works.” Thus, our works are born out of our condition and we are not born of our works.

See also:

1. Free from the Law of Works

Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther

A Reflection on Psalm 139, by Janet Ayliffe

Therefore, there is only one way to receive new life and that is through faith which is nothing less than pure receptivity; the acceptance of that which God promises in His Word to man. [Luther writes] “No work and no merit brings him the inheritance, but only his birth. Thus he obtains the inheritance in a purely passive, not in an active way; that is, just his being born, not his producing or working or worrying, makes him an heir. He does not do anything toward forgiveness of sins, righteousness, the glory of the resurrection, and eternal life – not actively but passively. Nothing whatever interferes here; faith alone takes hold of the offered promise. Therefore just as in society a son becomes an heir merely by being born, so here faith alone makes men sons of God, born of the Word, which is the divine womb in which we are conceived, carried, born, reared, etc.” The nobility of the Godly-birth is the seal of the child of God and boasting of performance is the sign of slaves. The manner in which a person stands in relationship to his works shows to whose spirit he belongs. Therefore, Luther also says in one of his theses: “when faith exists without every, even the smallest work, it is not justified and is not faith at all.” – and in the next thesis he says, “faith cannot stand without constant, great and living works.” Faith that comes from God is faith that is devoid of any work to which a person brings nothing; no accomplishment, no glory, no sacrifice, no knowledge, no law. Faith that comes from God is found in the hand that receives, the ear that hears, the heart that believes and loves and hopes. This kind of faith is satisfied with what God gives, namely, Jesus Christ. The unity of faith and Christ should therefore not be sullied through any work and should not be lost sight of for an instant. When faith turns to the world it receives what comes to it and doesn’t try to influence God like the heathen do, because it knows that Another is there that intercedes for us with God; One who is the Other and mightier even than the greatest work, namely Christ. Faith lives by virtue of Christ’s intercession before God. Heaven is no longer the goal of works, but heaven freely gives the works. Just as Christ came down from heaven to help us, faith steps down out of the world of the Word and of freedom to serve the neighbor. What God has given to faith, faith gives to the neighbor. So faith is steadfast in works, in service to the neighbor, and at the same time always celebrating, living from what Christ has done for him. Only that faith – devoid of any work – that suffers the work of God to be done in him can do the work of God on earth, which also pleases God. Thus it is true that all that does not proceed from faith is sin.

Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther

Jan van Eyck, "Crucifixion & Last Judgment" (1426)

Luther presents the appropriation of faith in a twofold manner and the background for this appropriation is always the last judgment of God. The challenge that the very first words of forgiveness pose to men is not something of a psychological phenomenon, but rather it is the soul’s nudging on the final historical judgment. The anxious conscience is the knowledge of the dies ille! (day of wrath, that very day) Thus, the righteousness of men before God always has a “forensic” character, i.e., it plays itself out in the arena of a God who judges justly! The righteousness of God is not something that a person can save up and account like money. God alone gives righteousness, which is both our and His at the very same time. But in this kind of judgment it is, paradoxically, not a matter of defining God as merciful. Quite the contrary, it is a matter of believing that God is merciful and of understanding Him from the perspective of the person of Christ. [Luther writes] For the heart of a believer, when he is blamed and accused and when proof is filed against him of evil deeds, turns away from all of this and looks to Christ and says: He (Christ) has already done enough, He is righteous, He is my defense, He died for me, He has made His righteousness my own and taken my sins as His own. If He has taken my sins upon Himself, then I don’t have them anymore and I am free. If He has made his righteousness my own, then I am righteous with the same righteousness that He is. My sins cannot devour Him, but are devoured in the abyss of his eternal righteousness because He is God, praised in eternity. And so God is even greater than our own hearts! The defender is greater than the accuser; much, much greater. What kind of relationship is this? And yet, it is true, very true. Who can accuse God’s elect? No one. Why? Because God, the One who makes righteous, is here. Who will condemn? No one. Why? Because Christ Jesus, the One who died for us, is here. If God is for us, then no one is against us (LW 25:188-189).

Against this background all expressions concerning God’s righteousness gain form and substance. They are not an object of speculation, but unfold first in their joyful power as the place where the accused person finds salvation and life. They are not true “in themselves,” but they are always first true “for me” before they are anything “for themselves.” The scene that Luther sketches is so clear: the person stands accused, but the roles are reversed. The judge takes on the defense and the accused becomes the accuser. This is what God’s righteousness means! The verdict that God pronounces is valid – even valid against one’s own heart and conscience. God stands on the side of man, right next to him and in front of him, and lays His Righteousness between sin and the person like a chasm. We are raised up, buried, protected, and guarded in Jesus Christ in whom we die in order to live and in whom we find ourselves created new: true, righteous, pure, free, good and holy.

See also:

1. The Method & Fruits of Justification
2. Canons on Justification from the Council of Trent

Via The Righteousness of Faith according to Luther

Alexander Ivanov, "The Appearance of Christ Before the People" (1837-57)

Luther has formulated the recognition of the priority of existence over action in a famous, consistent antithesis which was for him to remain a guiding star: “no iusta operando iusti efficimur, sed iusti essendo iusta operamur,” which means, “not through doing what is right are we righteous, but through the fact that we are justified we are able to do what is right.” This Being-Justified already is the precondition of doing right and this precondition does not lie inside of us, but lies outside all human possibilities. It lies, “extra nos, i.e., in Christo.” As he formulated this thesis for the fist time, Luther was very conscious of its implications and that with it he was unleashing the Gorgon’s knot of Greek, especially Aristotelian, philosophy that had entwined itself around Christian doctrine. He encountered the scholastic system at its heart because that is where the basic teachings of Greek ethics had been taken over by Christianity, namely, with the concept that virtue takes practice and discipline. For the Greeks, virtue meant ability that was won through steadfast and conscious practice in doing right. Strength and steadfastness of the soul acquired in this way builds character through a person’s habit – his “habitus.” Only through carefully planned undertakings that are supported by a wise education are we able to begin to develop the kind of habits that are characteristic of virtue: “Then the swallows cannot make their summer nests [in us].” (Aristotle) Unfortunately, we can only here briefly elaborate on the vast and consistent theme regarding the teaching of virtue that permeated Greek thought, merely in order to make clear that consequences of incorporating this system into Christian teaching (since the basic ideas of the Greek system of virtue, viewed pedagogically, are so convincing, the opinion had to emerge that it is also the case with righteousness by faith) since man exercises himself in the practice of chief Christian virtues, he attains to an inner being or condition of his nature that may be considered righteous. Thus, the person wins back what he had lost, namely, his original righteousness before God, because he is now able to practice virtue with the help and support of grace in order to carry out God’s will. In order to understand, as Luther did, why he strongly said “no” to this kind of thinking one must have experienced the powerful and gripping elation, the wonderful communion of nature and grace; the stepwise, gradual, elevating journey through the practice of heavenly virtue until – but never quite attainable – perfection is visible. He understood that in this kind of experience, something he called “opera legis” or works of the Law, the entire order of the human road to righteousness was turned around. We are not made righteous through what we do, but exactly the opposite: only from a life first captured by faith are virtuous deeds at all possible.

Via Hans Iwand, The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther

Jheronimus Bosch, "The Carrying of the Cross" (1510)

Let us remember this: the Law pushes the “I” together so closely that they become one form, one flesh and one will. God’s righteousness transforms the “I” in faith to become one with Christ so that they become one form, one flesh and one will. To the “I” falls the decisions with whom it will become one, since a neutral state in the middle is not possible, because death lurks behind sin and life in righteousness. That is the ‘decision’ of faith to which Luther calls us. He found that the sign of the decision of faith does not lie alone in teaching and in dogma (these are both able to deceive), but rather that the decision falls to the “I” of the person and to the attitude of the person to his own works. But, the decision falls in such a way that two things preclude each other like mortal enemies: faith in Christ and the desire to be something before God by virtue of one’s own works. That is why Luther hated what he called “historical” faith; an empty, neutral knowledge of Christ that does not place a person and his life in a position of deciding between righteousness by the law and righteousness by faith – a knowledge that is not won or grasped in the hour of the death of the “I.” For faith should so affect me that I know that Christ is He who stands in for me at God’s judgment – Christ is for me! – or I don’t know Him at all, I just know about Him. [Luther writes] “Such believers use faith no better than the demons and the damned. The one who assumes faith says: ‘I believe that the Son of God suffered and was raised – and there it ends. But true faith says: I believe that the Son of God suffered and was raised and all of it for me, for my sins, and of that I am certain!” Luther sees here a difference between one kind of faith and a faith that cannot be contained by a formula, since, seen from the point of view of Dogma, both say the same thing. The difference lies in this critical point: the one that is a truth for itself is not a truth, but the other receives truth in God’s “for you” and so your life becomes one with the Truth. [Luther writes] “Accordingly, that ‘for me’ or ‘for us’ if it is believed, creates that true faith and distinguishes it from all other faith, which merely hears the things done. As I often warn, therefore, the doctrine of justification must be learned diligently. For in it are included all the other doctrines of our faith; and if it is sound, all the others are sound as well.”

See also:

1. Notes on a Theme: “The Death of God”
2. It is Not Death to Die
3. Sin, Death, Grace
4. Our Righteousness

Via The Righteousness of Faith according to Luther

Luther tried to describe what happened to him. It became clear to him that this foreign righteousness was also and at the same time our righteousness, and that it did not stand outside of us, but rather in us, since God is who He is not only for Himself, but also for us. Whoever believes that God is justified in Christ must also learn to believe that he himself is justified. The righteousness of God that is revealed in Christ includes us, because it is not a righteousness that condemns, but a righteousness that creates. Because of Christ, no one can say: “God is righteous and I am not,” or, “God is holy and I am not.” The righteousness of God that is revealed to the world in Jesus Christ does not shut out the sinner, but includes him. For either it is not God that reconciles the world to Himself in Christ or there is no righteousness at all. In that case the unbeliever finds in Jesus at best “the death of a righteous one.” Similarly, if one’s sins are erased and one is sent righteousness as a gift, then Christ died for nothing. But it is a new righteousness that God gives us in Christ, one that is quite different from the righteousness that God reveals in the law. It is not only new and unprecedented in human terms which is the wonderful, paradoxical, and faith giving aspect of it, but it is also new and unprecedented in terms of the righteousness of God that is revealed in the Law. Every instance of God’s righteousness that is revealed in the Law is one according to which God, as judge, gives “each person his due.” But in Christ God does not give each person his due, quite the contrary: He lays our sins on His Son and gives us His Son’s righteousness. He reckons to us what is not ours (imputatio), namely, a foreign righteousness and He does not reckon to us that which is ours, namely, our own sins (non imputatio). No theologian since Paul has dared to say these things so boldly, so freely, or so paradoxically. Neither has anyone since Paul found the language with which to make it so closely and easily understood to the hearts of believers until Luther.

See also:

1. The Righteousness of God and Man
2. Two Kinds of Righteousness
3. We are Sinners, but He is Our Righteousness
4. Free from the Law of Works

Via Iwand, The Righteousness of Faith According to Martin Luther

Anonymous, "The Birth of Christ" (1400)

Since Luther is for us such an important teacher of the faith, we cannot leave him within the confines of denominationalism. Both friends and foes who see him thus do not do justice either to his intentions or to his teachings. Luther once wrote: “In the first place… I ask that men make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine… How then should I – poor stinking maggot-fodder that I am – come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name? Not so, my dear friends; let us abolish all party names… I neither am nor want to be anyone’s master. I hold, together with the universal Church, the one universal teaching of Christ, who is our only mater [Matt. 23:8].” Luther is not the founder of a Christian movement or party, but the reformer of the church. His doctrines are not a denominational specialty, but are common property of the church. Things have even gone so far that, in his essential teachings, Luther now stands as opposed to today’s modern Protestantism as he stood against the scholastic-Catholic system centuries earlier. Whoever thinks that he can easily challenge Luther’s confession from the standpoint of heredity tends to overlook the fact that even we, in a church that descends from him, are called through this inheritance to change and to repentance. The Jews said, “We are Abraham’s descendants” and that made them deaf to the words of Christ. Let us therefore be attentive that we do not make the same mistake regarding Luther! Luther will inly be useful to us to the extent that we are able to learn from him to understand the gospel through him. The challenge for us in the task of explaining the basics of Luther’s theology in so few pages and in its main points is this: Luther’s rich and varied, and for many, multi-layered and cumbersome doctrinal system has just one, may I say, practically immovable center. From this center everything else is simple, convincing and clear. He himself called this center the article of justification, or the righteousness of faith, the “only solid rock” upon which the entire church stands. The article on the justification of people before God is much more than and very different than a tenet, or rule, or system – it is the core that not Luther, but Another, has ordained. It is ordained by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, Himself. One could say, at the very least, that Luther rediscovered this core since the history of the Christian church shows that this core is often lost and that the article of justification is often moved to the periphery, while other teachings take over the position. This is precisely the danger in which we find ourselves again today. Today, once again, we do not take the one and only either/or article seriously and instead replace it with another either/or proposition that appears to us to be more weighty for the existence or non-existence of the church. I am not suggesting that we do not already have a good grasp of Luther’s theology and understand with accuracy its most significant points. Clearly, one dissects a body only when it is dead. The exactness of interpretation, however, is no guarantee that the church has accepted the binding nature of his theology for faith and life.

See also:

1. Our Defining Center
2. ELCA Leaves the Wittenberg Center
3. Macau Ministry Center Celebrates 10 Years

Via Hans Iwand, Righteousness of God According to Luther

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, "Moses Smashing the Tablets of the Law" (1659)

Why is God’s giving of the law necessary? Is God really revealed in the law as much as He revealed in the gospel. Or, is what we call God’s law something different from what we call political, social or natural order in the sense that every people and every state has its own order? Is there, apart from earthly law, a God-given law; one that is ordained by God and given from heaven? Luther says “yes,” and that is how he answers the Antinomians who want to reduce God’s law to the rank of political order. It is indeed a “law sent from heaven, which means that it is not a human or earthly law, like the Kaiser’s command, that can only kill the body but cannot throw both body and soul into hell, like the law of the Heavenly Master.” Luther takes up Paul’s argument that the law is holy, godly, and good and Luther also uses the word “spiritual” to describe its nature. The law originates from God’s Spirit, so we must also have God’s Spirit to do justice to it. If the law meets us like a “dead letter,” then it is essentially not the law’s fault, but the fault of man and his sinful nature. Therefore the law is not cancelled or abolished by faith, but on the contrary; in faith it receives its correct value for the first time. Only faith fulfills the law because it gives us a new heart and a new spirit in order to understand the law, providing the will to love God and worship Him.

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.

See also:

1. Dead Faith
2. The Word of God and Faith
3. The ‘But’ of Holy Scripture
4. Walk on the Road of Faith

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.

See also:

1. Words & the Word

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.

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.

See also:

1. Holy Scripture
2. The Normative Character of Holy Scripture
3. The Original Text of Holy Scripture

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)

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.

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.

See also:

1. Grace After Luther
2. Is forgiveness enough?
3. Sin, Death, Grace

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.

See also:

1. To Live With Christ
2. Dead Faith

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).

See also:

1. Christian Philosophy
2. The Theology of Facts vs the Theology of Rhetoric
3. Luther’s Pastoral Theology

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.

See also:

1. The Cause of Good Works
2. Once More Into the Breach
3. On Praise of the Law & Free Will
4. The English Works of Wyclif

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!

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.

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

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.

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)

See also:

1. Faith & Knowledge
2. The Coming Reality
3. Dead Faith
4. The Hiddenness of God in the Cross

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.

See also:

1. Faith is a Living Power from Heaven
2. Dead Faith

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.

See also:

1. The Coming Reality

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.

See also:

1. The Theo-Logic of the Cross
2. The Triumph of the Cross