They provided me with wonderful images the Kessler Reformation Collection. My provost, John Masterson, and dean, John Sieben both provided needed financial support for this project. And finally Keith Killinger did intensive language work to provide the excellent translation that you will read of the pamphlet. God has blessed me with so many good people in my life; all praise and honor be God’s!
Introduction
The questions that this book raises as well as the responses it begins to formulate reflect the itinerary of its author. I was raised in a Lutheran parsonage in the Midwest of the United States in a community where, for the most part, people were of European descent. I am conscious that I was born into a power-laden place within the whole web of the world community. I state this at the beginning, not in order to get it out of the way, but that the reader might keep it in sight. Questions about how my location and experience might be biasing, or, for that matter, enriching my perspective are welcomed.
I was raised in a Lutheran family.1 My mother is a life long Lutheran who lived out the unconditional love that she had learned from the story of Jesus. She lives graciously in the knowledge of a gracious God. So firm was her lived testimony that my father upon meeting her came back to the Christian church after a long absence. He soon went to college in order later to go to seminary. A Lutheran by conversion, his own witness was decisively shaped by his understanding of the God who justifies sinners. Having imbibed from this grace oriented faith from my childhood on, I later had the opportunity to discern its meaning in a more rigorously academic way at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and later at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. All of this by way of recognizing that my present struggling with Luther should be of no surprise; he is one of the those who has been present with me wherever I have gone.
In August of 1987, I left the United States for an internship in Chile. For two years I lived and learned in the Lutheran church, San Pedro, located a few blocks from the ocean. More than a decade before my arrival my own country helped Pinochet destabilize and overthrown the democratically-elected president, Salvador Allende. All of the people I met in Chile had lost loved ones in the reign of terror that the United States government had backed. Yet these people witnessed to the God of life who was with them even in death. As I thought about going back to the United States, I found that my Chilean experience called me to struggle anew with the reformer. Martin Luther, his thought and life, was what met me by the water’s end in the hazy light before dawn. He came to wrestle with me as I looked at my return home. In such dim light, it has not always clear if I am wrestling with a demon—I recall Luther’s words against the peasants, “smite, stab, and kill”—or with a messenger of God—“true theology is in the crucified Christ.” Some warn me to just let him go, and move on; allowing him to touch me too deeply might cause my theology to limp along, they warn. And yet I wrestle on, hopeful that the struggle will indeed yield a blessing. I am encouraged by others along the way who have found in Luther’s theology of the cross godly wisdom to confront the powerful and lift up the lowly.
Just as God has continued to call me to struggle with Luther, God has lead me to places where I do that in the midst of people who hear God’s voice in the languages of South America. After seminary I worked at a church in New York that was primarily made up of people from El Salvador, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic. For four years, we sought to discern together God’s call to faithfulness. The doctoral studies that first cultivated this present work were guided under the commitment and wisdom of Vítor Westhelle, a Brazilian theologian. As I finish this book I live in Texas and am surrounded by Mexican Americans and others who enrich my life immensely and who provide me with fresh perspectives from which to think about Luther.
The issues raised in my own journey, I have come to believe, reflect a struggle within many of my generation. A whole generation of Luther scholars, for example, are beginning to look at Luther in his full historic embeddedness. They are asking about the mutual influences of Reformation movements and the political, social, economic and cultural world of the time. This quest within Luther studies is indicative of a broader movement. Among many of us a hunger is awakening that longs to speak of God in a way that does not lift us out of our historical, social, and political lives, but that draws us deeper into them. We are weary of a god divorced from history or historic reality drained of spirit. We long to relate holistically to the holy God revealed in Jesus Christ. This study on the theology of the cross hopes to be one small contribution in that quest.
Thus, the purpose of this book is to examine the way that Luther’s theology of the cross interacted with his own existential, political, economic, religious and social context. Within Luther’s own world, his theology of the cross acted as a tool for radical social critique. His theology of the cross addressed not only the internal experience of the despairing individual, but also inserted itself in history in the midst of public, institutional struggles. In concrete social conflicts, Martin Luther, theologian of the cross, did not generically place all people on the same level before God, but rather took sides and attempted to reconfigure power relationships in favor of the marginalized. Those of us today who wish to place themselves faithfully in this movement must do likewise.
The book will begin with the work of prior interpreters of Luther’s theology of the cross. I have proposed three models that these interpretations have presented for interpreting the theology of the cross. A diversity of perspectives is already present in the guild. Each approach brings gifts, but also shortcomings. After expounding the basic models, I ask if we might move further in understanding the social and political functioning of Luther’s theology.
The second chapter will begin the task of a contextual interpretation of the theology of the cross. Utilizing contemporary research on the sixteenth-century context, a general map of the various power relationships—political, social, economic, ideological and religious—within which the theology of the cross was formed and performed will be suggested.
With this mapping of the context in mind, the next several chapters will articulate the theology of the cross as it arose in the early writings of Luther. Various texts will help us to articulate the contextual contours of Luther’s early theology of the cross and the way that it opened up transformative possibilities for the faithful who were poor and marginalized. We also will raise the question of the social functioning of Luther’s theology as the Reformation movement took decisive turns in its orientation toward establishing its own legitimacy. My hope is that theologians of the cross today might find wisdom for the work ahead of us so that the church might be reformed and the world transformed.
1. A book I have written directed toward a popular audience chronicles and interprets theologically the various phases of my life discussed in this introduction. See The Word of the Cross in a World of Glory.
Abbreviations
LW Luther’s Works (American Edition)
WA Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe
WA BR Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefwechsel
WA TR Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Tischreden
1
Interpretations of Luther’s Theology of the Cross
What have great interpreters of Luther’s theology of the cross understood by his project? What themes unite them? What divides them? In what way do they take into account the complex power dynamics of the sixteenth century? I have divided the six theologians to be examined into three models: crisis or conflictive interpretations, proclamation interpretations, and mystical or sacramental interpretations. I recognize that distinctions are never as clear cut as models seem to imply; yet models do alert us to broad, important options in interpretation and are useful in this sense.
Crisis or Conflictive Theology of the Cross
Loewenich
In the height of the Luther Renaissance that began the last century, Walther von Loewenich offered a fresh and appreciative