A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism
223
A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism
223Paperback
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Overview
The book aptly captures Forde's deep Lutheran commitment. Here he argues that the most important task of theology is to serve the proclamation of the gospel as discerned on the basis of the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone. For Forde, the doctrine of justification is not one topic among other theological topics; rather, it is the criterion that guides "all theology and ministry. Throughout the book Forde applies this truth to issues of eschatology, authority, atonement, and ecumenism. Also included are seven insightful sermons that model the Lutheran approach to proclamation.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781506427058 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | 1517 Media |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2017 |
| Series: | Lutheran Quarterly Books |
| Pages: | 223 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A MORE RADICAL GOSPEL
Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and EcumenismBy Gerhard O. Forde
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2004 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8028-2688-1
Chapter One
ESCHATOLOGY: THE LAST WORD FIRSTRadical Lutheranism
Lutheran Identity in America
For some time now, Lutherans both here and abroad have been suffering from what contemporary jargon calls an identity crisis. Lutherans do not seem to know anymore what they ought to be or to do. On the international scene this is demonstrated by persistent studies sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation/Lutheran World Ministries going back some twenty years or so. John Reumann chronicles and sums up this study under the rubric, "The Identity of the Church and Its Service to the Whole Human Being." The big question precipitating the crisis is indicated by the title. It becomes most evident, no doubt, in connection with the mission of the church, particularly in the "third world." Is the church to be concerned now with proclamation or development? Individual salvation or social justice? Peace with God or peace among humans? Lutherans seem to have a difficult time deciding which way to go.
The crisis in identity is in many ways intensified on the national scene. For the most part Lutherans in America are just lately emerging from geographic, ethnic, and synodical isolation onto the broader American scene with ambitions towards "inclusivity." We used to be predominantly Germans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Finns, and a smattering of other northern European and Nordic folk, and it was probably more our geographic isolation and ethnicity that kept us together and determined our identity than our Lutheranism. Now that we are apparently about to launch out more into the mainstreams of American Christianity, the identity question is posed with heightened urgency. Who or what in this opulent religious cafeteria shall we be? Shall we be conservative, liberal, confessional, orthodox, charismatic, neo-pentecostal, fundamentalist, or "evangelical" (perhaps "fundagelical," as someone recently put it)? Shall we be sectarian or ecumenical; Protestant or Catholic; high, low, or in the middle? Lutherans are pulled in all these directions today. They seem to be looking for someone to sell out to.
Is "Lutheran" anything to be in America today? Chances are Americans don't even know how to spell it. It usually comes out "Luthern" or something like that. In the "homeland" established Lutheranism was predominantly a folk religion, a quasi-political and ethnic reality, closely identified with national and social life. Take all that away and what is left? What is Lutheranism at rock bottom? Some of my colleagues like to say - and I have echoed the thought myself - that Lutheranism is a confessional movement within the church catholic, or that its primary reason for being is that it has a dogmatic proposal to make to the church catholic, or, as Tillich used to say, it advocates the "Protestant Principle" vis-à-vis a catholic substance. But what then is the core, the substance of Lutheranism? Can a "movement" or a "proposal" or a "principle" give identity to the long haul, not to say serve the human soul for daily bread? Other Christian denominations are recognizable at least by distinctive forms of polity or perhaps even what are today called types of spirituality. Lutherans dabble pragmatically in whatever forms and types seem to work best in a given context, but canonize none of them.
Who then are we? The new church proposes to call itself "The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America." But what would that mean? "Evangelical," "Lutheran," "in America"? The debates and suggestions floated in the Commission for a New Lutheran Church are themselves indicative of the identity crisis. Several people thought we should at last drop the adjective "Lutheran" and call ourselves "Evangelical Catholics." Others thought we should probably drop both "Lutheran" and "Catholic" and just call ourselves "The Evangelical Community in Christ" or some other generic title. Some thought we should drop the adjective "Evangelical," since it is misleading today and already redundant when put together with "Lutheran." How can a Lutheran not be evangelical? But in the end we decided we are still Lutherans after all and Evangelical to boot! But what that means still seems to be a matter for debate. Is retention of the name anything more than romantic nostalgia? Even the protracted and hesitant debate over a headquarters site indicates something of our uncertainty about who we think we are, or hope to become. We feared being identified with parochial interests and looked for a "world-class city." But what business do we have to do there? The arguments seemed to assume that it would be good for us to be affected by such an environment; the question of whether we have anything to effect there was largely unanswered.
The most persistent and serious identity crisis is manifest at the grass-roots level. These Lutherans seem somewhat at a loss as to what to make of the American religious scene. For the most part they do have a sense of the importance of the evangel and seem more ready to support the outreach mission of the church than anything else. Perhaps basically conservative, they are often puzzled and confused by clergy and leadership that seem to be leading elsewhere - just where is not very clear. The incessant drive for "inclusivity" can give the impression that they have been abandoned, perhaps, for a more desirable clientele. Emerging from their ethnic past, they can be impressed by and drawn to those who can dress a cause or a human longing in appealingly religious trappings. They remember there was something vital they were supposed to be for, and thus they are tempted by those whose piety seems impressive and/or offers more solace. They are attracted by "American" religion: "fundagelicals," charismatics, the Hal Lindseys, Jerry Falwells, Robert Schullers, etc., and sometimes even by high-liturgical Anglo-Catholicism. Is "Lutheran" any recognizable thing to be any more? Garrison Keillor says he can always get a laugh when he mentions Lutherans. Why? Is it something to be apologetic about?
In an article on Lutheran identity written some ten years ago, Martin Marty saw Lutheranism standing between two forces, "... both of them attractive and capable of overwhelming Lutheranism, permitting it to remain as a shell or husk or form, but not as a confessional witness or a promise." Reformed neo-evangelicalism is one force, Marty wrote, and the most likely winner, because America is "genetically programmed to tilt toward" it, and Lutheran conservatives and even some moderates are attracted by it. The other force, in Marty's view, is a "more natural kin," but less likely to prevail: it is "a kind of evangelical Catholicity." Today it seems obvious that both of these forces are powerfully at work dividing the Lutheran house. Marty's analysis still leaves us with the question, however: Is one or the other overwhelming Lutheranism?
Without wishing unduly to complicate matters, I want to mention at least one more force today. One might call it decadent pietism. Lutherans who came to this country were for the most part pietists of one stamp or another. Under the pressure of American Arminianism, Personalism, psychologism, individualism, human potential movements, and what not, pietism simply becomes decadent. The old pietism thought it vital first of all "to get right with God" through the experience of grace in conversion. But now, since God is, in general, love and no longer wrathful with anyone, God more or less drops out of the picture as a serious factor with which to be contended. In decadent pietism, since God is "affirming" in general, the task is to "get right with oneself." The old pietism contended that conversion was to be manifest in a morally upright life of service. Decadent pietism seems to hold that the way of the Christian is to become "affirming" of others in their chosen life styles. Along with this there is very often a rather sanctimonious "third use of the law" piety centered mostly around current social causes and problems. No longer concerned with one's own sins, and certainly not the sins of those one is supposed to affirm, one shifts attention to the sins of those other entities (more or less anonymous) that inhibit the realization of our affirmed and affirming human potential. Generally, these are summed up under the rubric of "the establishment" or perhaps personified by those who happen to be in power.
Is it fair to call this a pietism? We need not quibble about the nomenclature. In any case one has only to visit contemporary churches and note the religious fervor and piety with which the view is promoted (especially among contemporary clergy, I fear) to get a sense of its power as a contending force in the battle for identity. Among Lutherans, the gospel is equated mostly with this general drive toward being permissive, affirmed, and affirming. Ministers must become therapists, church gatherings must be therapeutic and supportive if they are to meet people's needs, and ministry must be "prophetic" and have a social payoff if it is to be at all relevant.
Theological Identity: Radical Lutheranism
One could continue discussing the problem of identity endlessly, since there are so many dimensions and aspects to interpret and haggle about. My purpose here, however, is not to belabor the problem but rather to propose a way towards a solution, to suggest a course for the future that is helpful, promising, and faithful to the tradition. My thesis is that Lutherans, to be true to their identity, yes, even to reclaim their identity, or rather be reclaimed by it, should become even more radical proponents of the tradition that gave them birth and has brought them thus far. The crisis in identity indicates the necessity for staking out some turf on the ecclesiastical map. What shall we be? Let us be radicals: not conservatives or liberals, fundagelicals or charismatics (or whatever other brand of something-less-than gospel entices), but radicals: radical preachers and practitioners of the gospel by justification by faith without the deeds of the law. We should pursue it to the radical depths already plumbed by St. Paul, especially in Romans and Galatians, when he saw that justification by faith without the deeds of the law really involves and announces the death of the old being and the calling forth of the new in hope. We stand at a crossroads. Either we must become more radical about the gospel, or we would be better off to forget it altogether.
We should realize first of all that what is at stake on the current scene is certainly not Lutheranism as such. Lutheranism has no particular claim or right to existence. Rather, what is at stake is the radical gospel, radical grace, the eschatological nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen as put in its most uncompromising and unconditional form by St. Paul. What is at stake is a mode of doing theology and a practice in church and society derived from that radical statement of the gospel. We need to take stock of the fact that while such radical Paulinism is in itself open to both church and world (because it announces a Christ who is the end of the law, the end of all earthly particularities and hegemonies), it is, no doubt for that very reason, always homeless in this age, always suspect, always under attack, always pressured to compromise and sell its birthright for a mess of worldly pottage.
Lutheranism, we have said in the past, is not so much a denomination as a confessional movement with perhaps a proposal of dogma to make to the church catholic, a critical principle to apply over against a catholic substance. I wonder more and more of late whether such at once over-modest and pretentious estimates of self-identity will serve the radical nature of the gospel as Paul, for instance, saw it. Would Paul have been satisfied with such a description of his own mission? What is the catholic substance, after all? What if it turns out to be a fantastic universal synthesis between this age and the next that quietly ignores or disarms New Testament eschatology and absorbs it in its universal ecclesiology? What if all critical principles and proposals of dogma are benignly ordered somewhere in the hierarchy of truths and filed away in a Denzinger? Can there really be such a thing as a catholic church? Should not someone be asking whether it is not likely that the radical eschatology proclaimed especially by Paul will have to be pursued to the end of the age? Is what Lutherans have stood for a passing fancy?
I don't know that I am prepared to give full answers to all such questions yet, but I do want to pursue the proposition that Lutheranism especially in America might find its identity not by compromising with American religion but by becoming more radical about the gospel it has received. That is to say, Lutherans should become radicals, preachers of a gospel so radical that it puts the old to death and calls forth the new, and practitioners of the life that entails "for the time being."
We must realize there is not just external reason for our identity crisis but deep theological and, for want of a better word, existential reason. It lies simply in Lutheranism's fateful attachment to the Pauline gospel in a world whose entire reason for being is opposed to it. All who adopt such a stance will find themselves constantly on the defensive not only before the world but especially before the religious enterprises, not to say the churches, of the world. Witness already Paul's own anguished and repeated defenses of his own apostolate against "those reputed to be something."
If we are to probe to the root, the radix, of our identity crisis, however, we must dig beneath even the world's general disapproval. Theological anthropology, the understanding of human existence itself before God, is perhaps the place where the crisis becomes most apparent. The fact is that the radical Pauline gospel of justification by faith without the deeds of the law calls for a fundamentally different anthropology and with it a different theological "system" (if there be such!) from that to which the world is necessarily committed. The radical gospel of justification by faith alone simply does not fit, cannot be accepted by, and will not work with an anthropology that sees the human being as a continuously existing subject possessing "free choice of will" over against God and/or other religious goals. The radical gospel is the end of that being and the beginning of a new being in faith and hope.
This is readily apparent in virtually all of Paul's writings (especially in Romans and Galatians) when he pursues the logic of justification by faith alone to its end. The law does not end sin, does not make new beings; it only makes matters worse. Where the old continuity is maintained, sin does not end. No matter how much religious pressure is applied, sin only grows.
Continues...
Excerpted from A MORE RADICAL GOSPEL by Gerhard O. Forde Copyright © 2004 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
| Citations for Previously Published Essays | vii | |
| Abbreviations for Frequently Used References | viii | |
| Acknowledgments | ix | |
| Introduction | x | |
| Eschatology: The Last Word First | ||
| Radical Lutheranism | 3 | |
| The Apocalyptic No and the Eschatological Yes: Reflections, Suspicions, Fears, and Hopes | 17 | |
| Lex semper accusat? Nineteenth-Century Roots of Our Current Dilemma | 33 | |
| Legal and Evangelical Authority | ||
| Authority in the Church: The Lutheran Reformation | 53 | |
| Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres: Reflections on the Question of Scripture and Tradition | 68 | |
| The Irrelevance of the Modern World for Luther | 75 | |
| Atonement and Justification: Christ Unbound | ||
| Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ | 85 | |
| Loser Takes All: The Victory of Christ | 98 | |
| In Our Place | 101 | |
| Forensic Justification and the Christian Life: Triumph or Tragedy? | 114 | |
| Luther's "Ethics" | 137 | |
| Unecclesiological Ecumenism | ||
| The Meaning of Satis Est | 159 | |
| Lutheran Ecumenism: With Whom and How Much? | 171 | |
| The Catholic Impasse: Reflections on Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue Today | 189 | |
| Sermons | ||
| God's Rights: Matthew 20:1-16 | 203 | |
| Exsurge Domine!: Psalm 74:22-23 | 206 | |
| Hidden Treasure: Matthew 13:44 | 211 | |
| You Have Died: Colossians 2:20-3:4 | 215 | |
| The Day of the Lord: 2 Peter 3:8-14 | 218 | |
| Jesus Died for You | 220 | |
| Not the Well, but the Sick: Matthew 9:10-13 | 223 |