The Merit Machine
Via On Being a Theologian of the Cross, pp. 63-64
Thesis 17. Nor does speaking in this manner give cause for despair, but for arousing the desire to humble oneself and seek the grace of Christ.
Anonymous, "The Eight Healings" (12th-14th cen.)
The natural protest of the theologian of glory against what has been said so far is that the theology of the cross is much too pessimistic, gloomy, and despairing. Must we not “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative?” “Think positively?” Engage in “Possibility Thinking?” Is this not all too hard on our “self-esteem?” It is significant that in thesis 17 Luther has already anticipated that complaint. He insists that speaking asa theologian of the cross, telling it like it is, does not give cause for despair, but rather awakens the one thing that can help, the desire for the humility to seek the grace of Christ. It is important to see that the theologian of the cross moves to take up the question of despair only after hope in the grace of Christ has been announced.
Theologians of glory can never quite understand this. Bound to the accomplishments and works of the self, theologians of glory can only look on the idea that “doing one’s best” is mortal sin or that one who puts trust in such doing only adds sin on sin as hopelessly negative and pessimistic. Theologians of glory are trapped in the “merit machine,” and thus can fight despair only by falling back on their accomplishments. That can only mean that they are doomed to ultimate despair because sin never stops and no amount of works can counterbalance it. To use again the analogy of addiction, when the optimistic encouragement to quit fails, it only increases despair and fosters hypocrisy. Fro the alcoholic the humility to confess, “I am an alcoholic,” is not a mark of despair but of hope. It is false optimism that brings ultimate despair. There is an interesting passage in Luther’s early treatise on Psalms (The Operationes in Psalmos, 1519-1521) that ferrets out the real cause of ultimate despair:
The cause of despair is not the multitude or magnitude of the sins, but the wrong affection in those who seek after good works i the time of their trouble of conscience, in order to set them against their sins as a counterbalance and satisfaction. For such imagine … that their sins have been an can be overcome by such works: and therefore, not being able to find the victory after which they lavor, and not knowing that they ought to turn to the mercy of God, desperation of necessity follows.
In the proof for this thesis Luther uses the analogy of speaking to the sick. One does not give cause for despair if one warns sick people of the seriousness of their illness and urges them to see a doctor for a cure. Despair would rather come if one is falsely optimistic and tells them that they don’t need a physician while they steadily decline toward death. We see here again how remarkably realistic and unsentimental the theologian of the cross is. The theologian of the cross knows that we do the world no good by playing the role of pious or sentimental optimists. One must “say what a thing is.” One is given the courage to be honest.
