Faith then love

Listening to: Bach: Violin Concertos (Hahn)

Love can only be fruit, it cannot take the place of the tree of faith. But there is a constant attempt in the legal scheme to substitute love for faith [...]

[In] Luke's story of the woman in the house of a Pharisee who anointed Jesus' feet from an alabaster jar. The Pharisee, Simon, was found outstripped by the woman not only in faith, but also in his pride - the righteousness of the law (which is love). Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (Luke 7:50). Her faith came from the preached word heard earlier: "Your sins are forgiven," and this finally revealed what Jesus meant when he told Simon, "Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love" (Luke 7:47). Love, it turns out, is either understood in relation to the law - in which case it is a work and cannot bear our trust - or it is simply what happens when Christ has forgiven a sinner.

(pp.235-236, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

So, when we preach the law, we tell people to "love the Lord your God". But when we preach the Gospel we call people to "believe the Lord your God", and out of that belief (which is receiving the seed of the promise of God himself and his forgiveness) love springs spontaneously. Love is greater because love is the eternal goal (1 Cor 13:13), but it cannot be found without faith receiving the Spirit in the promise of Christ who creates it.

Christ on the brain

Death is not defeated by having you avert it, but undergo it in the flesh, and then the Spirit raises our dead bodies - because when he sees the baptized dead, he sees only Christ and cannot resist raising him...

the Holy Spirit's proper work is given a Christological fixation. It is not your human goal that matters any longer, but the Holy Spirit's goal. Your goal is flesh, and flesh is hostile to God; the Spirit's goal is "life and peace" because the Spirit's goal is Christ alone. If Christ is in you, the Spirit raises your dead bodies to life since the Holy Spirit has Christ on the brain. In opposition to this, spiritualism seeks to unlink the Spirit from Christ in order to bypass the cross in its immediate relation to God, but the Spirit's proper work never goes anywhere without Christ, and does nothing apart from resurrecting Christ. The Holy Spirit does not moonlight in another job than to witness, show, and drive everything in the universe to Christ.

(pp. 196-197, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

He's not quite PT Forsyth, but Paulson really does have a nice turn of phrase.

Union with Christ's death

Listening to: Mozart: Mass in C Minor

I think Steven Paulson's book Lutheran Theology is much stronger rhetorically and substantively in describing death, sin and alienation than life, righteousness and reconciliation. That's a real shame. I think it is also true to say that as an introduction to Lutheran theology the book is pretty dire. Despite that it is compelling reading because he can say true things in a very striking way.

Baptism into Christ is an even more offensive claim than "you have died." It says your baptism is unity with Christ, and that unity is first a unity with his death [...] Christ takes the sinner's sin, but the exchange that takes place does not leave the recipient as she was - only without sin. The sins were not just possessions of mine, but they were me. They were not appendages, but my very heart [...] For this reason the first exchange with Christ is death. Christ does not offer an escape from sin and death, like the Gnostics dreamed about, but he came down from heaven into sinners, under them, and suffered to take the sins - and with them he took "me" - or my heart [...] Christ took the world's sin including my own, even in his own body, and became a curse on the cross. I cannot reclaim as my property those old sins by the old theory of distributive justice - though strangely this is precisely what sinners desire. Sin is a matter of the heart, and when sins are removed from a sinner the heart just manufactures more like the government mint printing money. The value of money, it is said, depends upon trust in the government that stands behind it. For this reason an unfaithful heart cannot merely be cleaned off in the way soap removes dirt from the hands [...]

Christ's death on the cross took the sins of the world, but this must now be preached and given so that the person no longer remains more-or-less intact after sin is removed - endlessly able to produce false trust in idols. That heart, and so the entire person to his or her roots, must die to sin, just as Christ did on the cross. A heart after all is more than just the organ of love (as the world supposes) in the form of erotic love, it is the source of faith and so unfaith in idolatry. To destroy Adam's heart and receive the new heart in Christ, God uses nothing else but the instruments of his words preached to a sinner that are first given in baptism.

(pp. 158-160)

Stockholm Syndrome and the French Underground

Steven Paulson does have a great turn of phrase sometimes. Take these for a few examples:

"Christ gave this description when he said in Mark 3:27, that the Strong Man must be bound before his house can be pillaged, and Christ had come to do just that. Yet, it is an odd reality, called in the modern world the "Stockholm syndrome," that prisoners identify themselves with their captors, and even desire in their hearts to be imprisoned to them" (p.159, Lutheran Theology)

"Being a theologian of the cross means the Christian's life is hid under the sign of its opposite (death, bondage, suffering) so that the prisoner of sin has now become the French underground, the embedded terrorist to the body of sin, and so faith is not the end of struggle but its beginning." (p. 171, ibid)

A thief in the night

Less than an hour after I read Dave Bish's post saying that Jesus gives and doesn't take, I read this:

Christ is determined not to stop until he has taken everything of yours. He comes as a thief in the night, and thieves not only surprise us with their untimely arrival, but actually rob us of our possessions. Jesus robs us of our best stuff - our righteous deeds by the law, our good hopes that things will work out (with a little grace), and the belief that God will find us pleasing on our own account - but he also robs us of our worst...Jesus exchanges his priceless worth for our filth.

(p. 106, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

It reminds me of the legend of someone walking up to Luther and saying, "do you really mean that I have nothing whatsoever to contribute to my salvation?" And Luther supposedly answering, "I'm very sorry if I have given that impression. There's lots you can contribute. Your greed, your lust, your anger...."

It is shocking that Christ is an unusual king who gives lavishly of all that he has, but only after he has become a servant and taken our place and received our due. The good news and the offense are so tied together.

[Incidentally, when I read the Paulson quote I did wonder whether he was using the expression 'thief in the night' out of its biblical context, but when you look at 1 Thessalonians 5 the day of the Lord that comes like a thief does bring destruction and rob everyone of everything. But with the armour that belongs to God, which he gives us, we will come through the destruction to life and salvation with him.]

Past performance is no guarantee of future results

Most financial products come with the warning:

past performance is no guarantee of future results

House prices may have gone up the last 5 years, but that doesn't mean they will this year. From mere facts, we can make educated guesses about the future, but there is always at least an undercurrent of fear because of the uncertainty.

This is what life is like without a preacher, and was the disadvantage suffered by the Gentiles until the missionaries came (Romans 3:1)...

Jews have a preacher, many preachers in fact, and so they have been given God's words. The Gentiles had none, until Paul - Apostle - and thus before the preacher arrived they were reduced to investigating a fallen creation for clues as to who their hidden God was (Paul found them in Athens worshipping a statue that said, "To the unknown God"). Usually God is known by his mighty acts of the past so that even the Gentiles could learn something of God this way. The words that gave Jews an advantage in life were promises by which God could be known in terms of the future...When one is able to trust God by means of a word one speaks very differently to him - in the way husband and wife speak to one another as opposed to the way an advertisement addresses an unknown client.

(pp.54-55, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

Sadly, many unreached peoples are still in the same situation. Trembling at the sound of a falling leaf (as both Calvin and Luther said).

The proper application of the pronoun

The gospel is not just a story about Jesus written in a book called “the Bible.” The story needs a proper foundation that Luther called “the proper application of the pronoun” by which Jesus’ story is preached and given “for you.”...Christ’s story must function as law and gospel in your own life. That means that when Luther says “gospel” it includes not only Christ and what he did, but it also includes you as a sinner for whom he did it.

(p.131, Steven Paulson, Luther for Armchair Theologians)

Luther talks about this at length in his Commentary on Galatians 1:4. I apologise for the long quotation in an old translation:

But weigh diligently every word of Paul, and especially mark well this pronoun our; for the effect altogether consisteth in the well applying of the pronouns, which we find very often in the Scriptures, wherein also there is ever some vehemency and power. Thou wilt easily say and believe that Christ the Son of God was given for the sins of Peter, of Paul, and of other saints, whom we account to have been worthy of this grace; but it is a very hard thing, that thou, which judgest thyself unworthy of this grace, shouldest from they heart say and believe, that Christ was given for thine invincible, infinite, and horrible sins. Therefore, generally, and without the pronoun it is an easy matter to magnify and amplify the benefit of Christ, namely, that Christ was given for sins, but for other men’s sins which are worthy. But when it cometh to the putting to of this pronoun our, there our weak nature and reason starteth back, and dare not come nigh to God, nor promises to herself that so great a treasure shall be freely given unto her, and therefore she will not have to do with God, except first she be pure and without sin...

We must use these words of St Paul, in the which he giveth a very good and true definition of Christ in this manner: “Christ is the Son of God, and of the Virgin, delivered, and put to death for our sins.” Here, if the Devil allege any other definition of Christ, say thou, the definition, and the thing defined, are false: therefore I will not receive this definition. I speak not this without cause: for I know what moveth me to be so earnest, that we should learn to define Christ out of the words of Paul. For indeed Christ is no cruel exactor, but a forgiver of the sins of the whole world. Wherefore if thou be a sinner (as indeed we are all) set not Christ down upon the rainbow, as a judge, (for so shalt thou be terrified, and despair of his mercy) but take hold of his true definition, namely, that Christ, the Son of God, and of the Virgin, is a person, not that terrifieth, not that afflicteth, not that condemneth us of sin, not that demandeth an account of us for our life evil passed; but hath given himself for our sins...

Learn this definition diligently, and especially so exercise this pronoun our, that this one syllable being believed, may swallow up all thy sins: that is to say, that thou mayest know assuredly, that Christ hath taken away the sins, not of certain men only, but also of thee, yea, and of the whole world. Then let not thy sins be sins only, but even thy own sins indeed; that is to wit, believe thou that Christ was not only given for other men’s sins, but also for thine.”

(Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians)