Theology done following the Wittenberg Theological Method. Martin Luther (1483-1546), priest and professor at Wittenberg University, proposed the preaching of a radical gospel: Salvation is in Christ and Christ Alone. This "categorical preaching" of Jesus Christ gathered a school of theologians which has persisted through the years as a thin tradition of faith in Christ amidst the broad stream of religious Christianity.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Question, Week #1--July 29th
The Question this week #1--July 29th is
"How does one proclaim Law & Gospel under the conditions of 1) Semantic Realism; 2)Theological Realism; & 3) Theophysical Causation?"
Let's have some responses! Come on in, join the fray!
To say "God is real" and mean that God has an existence independent of human beings implies God's address of humans in Law and Gospel is an EXTERNAL address--a word from the outside. Furthermore, this address accomplishes its purpose without human acquiescence.
Therefore, when the Law accuses, condemns, and executes sinners, who do sinners think they are to say, "But God, just wait, I can do better?" Or, when the Gospel comforts, resurrects, and gives life to saints, who do they think they are that they could do anything other than burst into praise and thanksgiving?"
To consider "God" under the condition of semantic realism confronts humanity with the terrible reality: When God is "real"--in human terms, as in flesh and blood--we must do away with him. We killed Jesus. By keeping God in the abstract realm of human ideals of thinking, doing, and feeling, humanity avoids that awful confrontation with its own complicity in Jesus' death.
When the crowd gathered at Jesus' trial shouted, "We have no king but Caesar," they echoed humanity's long assertion: "We'll have no gods but those of our own devising."
The preacher's task is expose such mortal idolatry and then give life in the Gospel to such condemned sinners.
I agree that one must presuppose the reality of God before one can make sense out of the divine externality of the address. When the other speaks, his/her words are external, of course. But these words can only bespeak God's Word on the condition of there being a God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. When one thinks about it a bit, the Law can't be God's law unless God actually exists. The same holds for the Gospel.
Theophysical causation is presupposed if one is actually going to claim that God does rescue sinners from sin, death, and the power of the devel. Rescuing is obviously a causal term. One cannot rescue without causing the other to be in a state of affairs that they would not have been in apart from the rescuing. If we have metaphysics that precludes theophysical causation, then all causal talk about God must be given a metaphorical analysis. Salvation really cannot happen.
Finally, semantic realism is presupposed if we are to claim that there is an objective problem with human existence and that there is some factual answer to the problem of human existence.
The question, as I understand it, is HOW one proclaims the Gospel under certain realistic presumptions.
Tim suggests that "The preacher's task is expose such mortal idolatry and then give life in the Gospel to such condemned sinners," which sounds like what we normally mean by Law and Gospel preaching.
He sees the task of the preacher to expose our sin, a sin which has real cosmic and eternal consequences for us.
He means by this, I presume, that it is the preachers task, acting in the stead of Christ, to declare God's Word, and then pray the living Word of God convict the hearer of their sin. It is possible, humanly speaking, for one to expose the wrong of another (positive or negative), but this task, it seems to me is different from that of the preacher. Indeed, it is specifically sin and not wrong that is to be exposed, wrong being a moral deficit, sin being a rift or rebellion against God.
But more than this I think (perhaps in preparation for October's conference), we need to be more explicit.
A proclamation appears to presume an oral address using language. How exactly does this proclamation lay bear in a corporate setting, individual sin, likely unknown to us in any detail? Is there a general accusation that hearers must apply to themselves? Let him who has ears, hear? Is there an art to it, and if an art are some better than others? What room is there for the Holy Spirit then? Must we be subtle or plain?
There is, too, another way. Rather than directly exposing our sin, we might shine the light, as well as we can know it, of God's Holiness upon our world, leaving the hearer to draw their own comparisons.
In whatever tact we take, we must start from the presumption of a Holy, transcendent God, present and alive amongst us. That is the presumption of the liturgy, the fearsome approach to the Holy of Hollies, only possible through the cleansing of our souls in the Blood of Christ, the Divine Absolution. But how many are even aware of this? We sit in our pews, moving about, chatting with our acquaintances. The divine service begins. Does the space now become filled with the Divine, or does it remain commonplace as previously?
Are these the wrong questions to ask? How does a presumption operate? Is it more our presumption that God is distant and invisible (if not inactive) or that He is a Consuming Fire? And if the former, what then of this proclamation? Is not it changed, when the context of its proclamation is altered? Or is the context to be changed or shifted by the progress of the Liturgy? If so, how? Is it deliberate and explicit or subtle?
Such questions cause us to wonder about the status of not only the liturgy, but also its venue. How and where does the transformation occur from the profane to the sacred? We have heard it said that this can occur anywhere, at any time. But can it occur outside the Word of God? The place and time of Sacraments must here play a role too. Must we draw sharp distinctions for our dull minds between the sacred and profane just so that we hear the Word as from God, and not the mouth of a man to be endured for a spell. Or is this artifice and witchcraft? If we are believers we will hear the Word of God and the sweet proclamation of His Son were it in a dingy subway station at rush hour.
We hear much of effective and ineffective preaching. Ought we ignore such distinctions as misguided or is there something to it. If misguided, what guides our proclamation? The simple Word of God? The proclamation of the Cross and what it says of our dark condition?
Finally, there is another tact taken by many. Their strategy (if I may so speak) is to make God and Christ attractive. If attractive to us sinners and theologians of glory, is this sin? So God then must come against us as an enemy, so that we flea to Christ's Blood for solace? Is this the idea or does this threaten the Unity of God? Or is it that God's Unity is opague to man, and it must always seem so this side of the Cross?
3 comments:
To say "God is real" and mean that God has an existence independent of human beings implies God's address of humans in Law and Gospel is an EXTERNAL address--a word from the outside. Furthermore, this address accomplishes its purpose without human acquiescence.
Therefore, when the Law accuses, condemns, and executes sinners, who do sinners think they are to say, "But God, just wait, I can do better?" Or, when the Gospel comforts, resurrects, and gives life to saints, who do they think they are that they could do anything other than burst into praise and thanksgiving?"
To consider "God" under the condition of semantic realism confronts humanity with the terrible reality: When God is "real"--in human terms, as in flesh and blood--we must do away with him. We killed Jesus. By keeping God in the abstract realm of human ideals of thinking, doing, and feeling, humanity avoids that awful confrontation with its own complicity in Jesus' death.
When the crowd gathered at Jesus' trial shouted, "We have no king but Caesar," they echoed humanity's long assertion: "We'll have no gods but those of our own devising."
The preacher's task is expose such mortal idolatry and then give life in the Gospel to such condemned sinners.
What say you?
Tim,
I agree that one must presuppose the reality of God before one can make sense out of the divine externality of the address. When the other speaks, his/her words are external, of course. But these words can only bespeak God's Word on the condition of there being a God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. When one thinks about it a bit, the Law can't be God's law unless God actually exists. The same holds for the Gospel.
Theophysical causation is presupposed if one is actually going to claim that God does rescue sinners from sin, death, and the power of the devel. Rescuing is obviously a causal term. One cannot rescue without causing the other to be in a state of affairs that they would not have been in apart from the rescuing. If we have metaphysics that precludes theophysical causation, then all causal talk about God must be given a metaphorical analysis. Salvation really cannot happen.
Finally, semantic realism is presupposed if we are to claim that there is an objective problem with human existence and that there is some factual answer to the problem of human existence.
Dennis
The question, as I understand it, is HOW one proclaims the Gospel under certain realistic presumptions.
Tim suggests that "The preacher's task is expose such mortal idolatry and then give life in the Gospel to such condemned sinners," which sounds like what we normally mean by Law and Gospel preaching.
He sees the task of the preacher to expose our sin, a sin which has real cosmic and eternal consequences for us.
He means by this, I presume, that it is the preachers task, acting in the stead of Christ, to declare God's Word, and then pray the living Word of God convict the hearer of their sin. It is possible, humanly speaking, for one to expose the wrong of another (positive or negative), but this task, it seems to me is different from that of the preacher. Indeed, it is specifically sin and not wrong that is to be exposed, wrong being a moral deficit, sin being a rift or rebellion against God.
But more than this I think (perhaps in preparation for October's conference), we need to be more explicit.
A proclamation appears to presume an oral address using language. How exactly does this proclamation lay bear in a corporate setting, individual sin, likely unknown to us in any detail? Is there a general accusation that hearers must apply to themselves? Let him who has ears, hear? Is there an art to it, and if an art are some better than others? What room is there for the Holy Spirit then? Must we be subtle or plain?
There is, too, another way. Rather than directly exposing our sin, we might shine the light, as well as we can know it, of God's Holiness upon our world, leaving the hearer to draw their own comparisons.
In whatever tact we take, we must start from the presumption of a Holy, transcendent God, present and alive amongst us. That is the presumption of the liturgy, the fearsome approach to the Holy of Hollies, only possible through the cleansing of our souls in the Blood of Christ, the Divine Absolution. But how many are even aware of this? We sit in our pews, moving about, chatting with our acquaintances. The divine service begins. Does the space now become filled with the Divine, or does it remain commonplace as previously?
Are these the wrong questions to ask? How does a presumption operate? Is it more our presumption that God is distant and invisible (if not inactive) or that He is a Consuming Fire? And if the former, what then of this proclamation? Is not it changed, when the context of its proclamation is altered? Or is the context to be changed or shifted by the progress of the Liturgy? If so, how? Is it deliberate and explicit or subtle?
Such questions cause us to wonder about the status of not only the liturgy, but also its venue. How and where does the transformation occur from the profane to the sacred? We have heard it said that this can occur anywhere, at any time. But can it occur outside the Word of God? The place and time of Sacraments must here play a role too. Must we draw sharp distinctions for our dull minds between the sacred and profane just so that we hear the Word as from God, and not the mouth of a man to be endured for a spell. Or is this artifice and witchcraft? If we are believers we will hear the Word of God and the sweet proclamation of His Son were it in a dingy subway station at rush hour.
We hear much of effective and ineffective preaching. Ought we ignore such distinctions as misguided or is there something to it. If misguided, what guides our proclamation? The simple Word of God? The proclamation of the Cross and what it says of our dark condition?
Finally, there is another tact taken by many. Their strategy (if I may so speak) is to make God and Christ attractive. If attractive to us sinners and theologians of glory, is this sin? So God then must come against us as an enemy, so that we flea to Christ's Blood for solace? Is this the idea or does this threaten the Unity of God? Or is it that God's Unity is opague to man, and it must always seem so this side of the Cross?
Bill Powers
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