The Courage of Faith by Mary Gaebler

Author:Mary Gaebler [Mary Gaebler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4514-3862-8
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2013-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

In opposition to the interpretation offered by the German personalists, The Formula of Concord, too, as it interprets Luther’s theology, carefully rejects “those who imagine that in conversion and regeneration God creates a new heart and a new man in such a way that the substance and essence of the Old Adam, and especially the rational soul, are completely destroyed and a new substance of the soul is created out of nothing” (emphasis added).[60] Not only is the “substance and essence” of the natural person affirmed here, but it is also clear that there is continuity of this “substance” between the “Old Adam” and the new being, formed in faith. In one of Luther’s own most positive statements about that collection of human capacities we refer to as “reason,” he calls it “the most important and the highest in rank among all things and in comparison with other things of this life, the best and something divine.”[61]

Thus we find that Luther’s anthropology posits a dual reality for human beings that includes reliably persisting anthropological structures. And while, like Thielicke, Luther may reveal (especially in the early phases of his theological development) a hesitation to emphasize these, there are also many situations, particularly as Luther lives more and more into the temporal world, in which, unlike Thielicke, Luther quite willingly draws our attention to the ontic structures without thereby risking the relationally justified personhood upon which salvation rests. As we shall see, Luther’s theology of vocation, with its recognition of a wide diversity of forms (including Luther’s explicit recognition that Jesus’ vocation was unique) parallels his double anthropology. While all the faithful participate in Christ relationally, they simultaneously participate in (and express in their persons and lives) the ontological structures (or forma) of the created order. This is likewise repeated in Luther’s eucharistic theology, where the whole Christ, totally human and totally divine (as confessed in the Church’s historic creeds), remains fully present in the bread and wine. The form of this world—the body, with its ontic structures—is not transubstantiated into spirit, but remains, fully present and fully acknowledged by the church. For Luther, his distinctive two-kingdom grasp of God’s person and work—fully human and fully divine, as manifested in, with, and under the temporal and spiritual realms—finds expression appropriately in a theological anthropology that recognizes both dimensions. Persons are related both to God (or Satan) and to the world, participating in both realms in distinctive ways; while the inner self is constituted relationally, the outer, temporal self indisputably exists by way of ontic structures that are worthy of our attention, gratitude, and preservation—conceptually, and in time.

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