Certainty
Pieper, St. L. III: 1887
The question how the theologian attains subjective certainty, how he attains personal assurance of the truth of the Christian doctrine (erkenntnis-theoretische Frage), is much discussed today. The moderns, both of the “conservative” and the “liberal” wing, raise the “problem,” and some of their spokesmen are free to confess that it is a difficult problem. But the difficulty they encounter is of their own making. It is due to their repudiation of Scripture as God’s Word. Scripture gives a clear and simple answer to the question concerning subjective certitude. Christ tells all Christians, including the theologians: “If ye continue in My Word… ye shall know the truth” (John 8:31-32). Christ here states two things. First, there is such a thing as Christian certainty, “Ye shall now the truth,” and second, that this certain knowledge of the truth (Wahrheitsgewissheit) is identical with continuing in the Word of Christ, believing His Word. Faith is certainty. And when we ask further how this faith, which continues in Christ’s Word, is brought about, Scripture again gives is a clear and definite answer. It is the Word of Christ itself which works faith in the Word of Christ (Rom. 10:17: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God”). The reason for this is that the Word of Christ, when we hear and read it and thus apprehend it with our mind, carries with it the power of the Holy Ghost. Our Christian faith, as Paul declares (1 Cor. 2:5), is not produced by, and does not stand in, “the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” So, then, it is the sure Word which produces the Christian assurance. As Luther’s axiom has it: “Man is certus passive, sicut Verbum Dei certum est active.” Elaborating this statement, Luther says: “Where this Word [of God] takes possession of the heart by true faith, it makes the heart firm, sure, and certain as it is itself, unmoved, stubborn, hard, in the face of temptation, the devil, death, and anything whatsoever, in proud confidence laughing to scorn all that spells doubt and fear, ire and wrath, for it knows that the Word of God cannot lie.”