Confessing Evangelical

In his essay, "The Catholic Luther" (see my previous post), David Yeago argues that the turning point for Luther's theology - which has been variously dated at a number of times between 1513 and 1518 - should be dated in 1518, after Luther had already become embroiled in the controversy that followed his posting the 95 Theses. At this time, a shift occurred in which the "new center of Luther's theology of grace became the heart's confident assurance of the promised mercy of God in Christ, what he will later describe simply as 'the faith which grasps Christ,' fides apprehensive Christi", in contrast to the pre-1518 emphasis on the "trusting despair" in which "the sinner afflicted by grace discerns in his afflictions the saving hand of God". What brought about this change?

The most important thing that happened to Luther in 1518 was that he rethought his theology of grace in the context of the theology of the sacraments. This is indeed new; Luther seems to have paid no serious attention to sacramental theology until he got embroiled in the indulgence controversy ... The problem in sacramental theology that proved crucial for Luther was that of the relation among the outward sacramental action, the grace of God, and the faith required of the participant in the sacrament.

Luther struggled with this issue for several months, even coming out with proposals that had a distinct air of Zwinglianism about them. But:

What finally emerged in the summer of 1518 ... seems to have been shaped primarily by reflection on texts such as Matthew 16:19: "Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven." To the question of the sacraments Luther finally responds that the concrete, external, public sacramental act in the Church is the act of Jesus Christ. When we come to the sacrament, we come to Jesus Christ: his word, his act, his authority...

This sacramental focus is crucial to understanding what Luther means by "faith" (which in turn is, of course, crucial for understanding what he means by "justification by faith alone"):

Faith is now sharply defined by this sacramental situation: faith is openness to and acknowledgment of Christ's authority in its concrete sacramental exercise. There is no other prerequisite than faith for the fruitful reception of the sacrament, because the sacrament is itself the public act in which Christ bestows his grace on the ungodly. The public sacramental life of the Church is now seen as the locus of assurance, of certitude, the place where an entirely undialectical salvific communication takes place ... [It] is in and through the public performance of the sacramental signs in the visible Church that grace is bestowed on those who believe.

The point is this: God's grace comes to us supremely through the Church's ministry of Word and Sacrament. At the very start of our Christian lives, Christ's minister baptizes us "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Week by week he absolves us, declaring that "I, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God to all of you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". He proclaims the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins to us in the sermon.

He declares our Lord's Words of Institution ("This is my body given for you ... this cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins) and then distributes the Lord's body and blood to us with the words, "Take, eat; this is the true body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, given into death for your sins ... Take, drink; this is the true blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, shed for the forgiveness of your sins.", and dismisses us from the Lord's Table with the words, "The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen and preserve you in body and soul to life everlasting."

Finally, he pronounces the blessing upon us at the end of the service: "The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you, the Lord look upon you with favour and +give you peace."

(Or rather, Christ Himself does all these things through His minister).

Thus the question of faith comes down simply to this: do you believe these promises that are declared to you by the pastor in the Divine Service, "in His stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ"? It is not some abstract conception of the Gospel that we are to believe for the forgiveness of our sins, but the Gospel as proclaimed to us (and bestowed upon us) publicly and concretely through the ministry of the church, week by week. What Luther said of Baptism can be extended to all these "sacramental signs" in the church:

"Faith must have something which it believes, that is, of which it takes hold, and upon which it stands and rests. Thus faith clings to the water, and believes that it is Baptism, in which there is pure salvation and life" (Large Catechism, Holy Baptism, 29)

Hence the objection to non-liturgical or non-sacramental (or sacrament-lite) Christianity is not what people do not say, but what they do not hear. In a very important sense, those churches are actually lacking the Gospel. Not that they deny the Gospel or are completely without the Gospel, but that they lack the Gospel in the sense and in the context in which Christ intends it to be proclaimed: not merely the stating of facts about the forgiveness of sins, but a public declaration of the forgiveness of sins in a "performative" sense by which that forgiveness is actually bestowed upon us (see the Pontificator's post on "Justification by faith as a hermeneutical rule"). Thus faith, while not absent, is weakened by having little or nothing of which to take hold, or upon which to stand and rest. That's the tragedy of non-liturgical, non-sacramental forms of Christianity.

And conversely, far from being an individualistic doctrine in tension with (or even standing in opposition to) the church and its ministry, justification by faith is supremely a doctrine of the church, a doctrine which focusses our attention on the Gospel of Jesus Christ as proclaimed in Word and Sacrament in His church.