Luther and Ethics
Sorry for the silence. There is much to read and a bit to write this week, more than has left me time to write up anything of what’s been flying through my head. I’m working tonight and tomorrow on a short paper about some of Luther’s earlier writings, 1517-1520, a bit of which I’ll post this weekend.
A few preliminary thoughts, though. My persistent frustration with Luther’s understanding of ‘works’ has been their utter uselessness, the way he speaks powerfully and prophetically on moral issues at times—with regard to money and the church, for example—but undercuts his own exhortation by denying them any visible value. He’s so concerned to insist that ‘works’ do not justify or save that he usually fails to say what ‘works’ do. Thus even when he’s able to speak positively about human works, as he does quite beautifully in “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” those works are still disconnected from any positive relation to God or the world. Even in rightly stressing the complete gratuity of every work of faith in “The Freedom of a Christian,” none required but every one offered as a free gift to God, the ‘free’ work also ends up being ‘free’ of consequence. It’s not until the end of this document that practical Christian witness is tied back to the work of Christ itself, and in the end he does it movingly:
See, according to this rule the good things we have from God should flow from one to the other and be common to all, so that everyone should “put on” his neighbor and so conduct himself toward him as if he himself were int he other’s place. From Christ the good things have flowed and are flowing into us. He has so “put on” us and acted for us as if he had been what we are.
Now if only we could re-bind this faith and these works which Luther has torn so far apart. For surely faith, as commitment and surrender, is a kind of work; and every work is a fruit of the Spirit which helps sustain faith. (I’m still talking past Luther, abusing his language and misunderstanding his paradoxes.)
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We’re studying Luther right now as well. His radical dualism between soul and body, inner “man” and outer “man”, the Christian sphere and the public sphere, is devastating. His understanding of works completely tears any ethical commitment from a definition of salvation. From what we read of him, he does try to give works importance by understanding it as that which sanctifies the body (in contrast to our souls that are sanctified by faith) and as acts of love to our neighbor (which gives it importance in sustaining the Chrisitan community). However, at the end of the day, salvation is a status that is inaffected—positively or negatively—by what we do, which is something I cannot agree with.
There are times when he seems to make amazing claims and insights to the Christian life, but sadly his dualism often times restrict them. I think that Luther is where mainstream evangelicalism, unwittingly, gets most of its theology.
I need to update my page, too. =/
Thanks, Jay—this is a helpful word as I’m trying to formulate my own thoughts here. I actually think Luther’s right to emphasize and preserve the utter gratuity of salvation, an alien righteousness given to us by God rather than anything achieved, so in this sense unaffected—positively or negatively—by what we do. I even think he’s right to “tear any ethical commitment from a definition of salvation,” insofar as we replace this with a kind of ethical surrender (as I think Luther does): some commitment to righteousness can only grow from godless arrogance, where confessing our insufficiency and clothing ourselves in the righteousness of God throws us back on the power of the Holy Spirit. This perhaps too deeply undercuts human agency, but the interrelationship of our own choices and our dependence on the Spirit has never been easy for Christians to articulate. What he needs to do, I think, is not to ethicize salvation but to recover the category of witness in ethical terms: the Spirit’s fruit in our lives is itself a testimony to the God of Jesus Christ.
Hey—a conversation I can sort of follow…
Just for that, I’ll add my cent.
In History of Christianity class, it seemed that Luther was, in historical context, actually connecting ethical commitment to the Christian life in a way the Catholic church had not. Not making works salvific, but insinuating that they are the result of joy that transpires from salvation.
Not saying anything new, I know. But I think it’s cool that Luther disassociates “works” with works in the church (confessing, penance…) andd associates them with care for your neighbor. Because works are not for God’s benefit but for human benefit.
Hey, you commented! And quite helpfully too: I hadn’t noted this myself, but you’re right that the righteousness given us in faith is peculiarly social in character. Confession and penance still have a prominent place, it seems to me, but they are spoken of in different terms—not as righteousness but as part of the act of faith.