Review of Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther

I wrote these reflections on Luther's famous work about year ago, and since then have found myself constantly going back it, in particular the section I highlight below on union with Christ. The edition I read is from CCEL and can be found here.

Summary

Concerning Christian Liberty is a great statement of the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone. In two main sections, Luther expounds his paradoxical opening statement that “a Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.” The two sections correspond to faith and works respectively.

Luther first asks what can make a man a “justified, free, and a true Christian; that is, a spiritual, new, and inward man.” Only the Word of God, the Gospel of Christ can do that, the gospel “concerning His Son, incarnate, suffering, risen, and glorified through the Spirit, the sanctifier.” In the gospel we are offered salvation, and only faith – not works – can grasp hold of this word. To be sure we are commanded to do works in the Scriptures, but the purpose of the commands is to show us what we cannot do, thus preparing us to receive the promise of God in the gospel.

Luther discusses three great “virtues” of faith.  Firstly, faith gives us true Christian liberty: we are free from the law and works as regards our justification and salvation. Secondly, faith honours God because in believing His promise it ascribes truth and righteousness to Him. Thus to not believe the word of the gospel would be to make God a liar. Thirdly, faith unites the soul to Christ. Believing in Christ is compared simply and stunningly to the marriage of a king and a prostitute, where both share equally what each brings to the union, for example: “Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation; the soul is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith step in, and then sin, death and hell will belong to Christ, and grace, life, and salvation to the soul.”

In the second section, Luther argues for the place of works in the life of the Christian. Never a means to justification before God, works are, firstly, for the purpose of subduing “the lusts of the body” and secondly, the outworking of love to others. It is necessary that the person be made good before they are able to do good works, and not the other way round.

Evaluation and Questions

The great strength of Concerning Christian Liberty is of course its brilliant articulation of justification by faith alone. It is important that Luther begins with the Word: strictly speaking, we are justified not through faith alone, but through the word of the gospel, received by faith alone. This avoids the danger of treating faith as a “work” that we need to do, and hence we look inside us to see how much faith we have rather than look outside ourselves to Christ and His work. The central section about union with Christ is deeply moving in the assurance it gives to the person who trusts in Christ. I found the following paragraph particularly striking in the way it makes me look out of myself to what Christ has done on my behalf:

…Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that rich and pious husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils, and supplying her with all His good things. It is impossible now that her sins should destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him, and since she has in her husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying: “If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine.”

This section on union with Christ does raise one question, though, which is the relationship between the union of the individual believer with Christ and the marriage of Christ and the church. Does Scripture actually use the marriage analogy for the individual believer’s relationship to Christ?

I am not certain that Luther has done the best job he could have done on the place of works in the Christian life. At one point, he suggests that God commands Adam (and by analogy the Christian) works to give him something to do, otherwise he’d be idle! The emphases on battling against the lusts of the flesh and working out of love for neighbour are really good, and he clearly shows that Christian liberty does not lead to licence, but he does not really articulate God’s purpose in saving us for good works; works being God’s purpose in creation and re-creation.

Connections

I have recently found the Gospel Coalition’s discussion of two ways of summarising the gospel very helpful (see their 'Theological Vision for Ministry' statement, section II 'How should we read the Bible?): on the one hand, creation - fall - redemption - restoration (in biblical theological categories) gives the big picture and emphasises the purpose of creating a new humanity and renewing creation for God’s glory. On the other hand, God-sin-Christ-faith (in systematic theological categories) focuses on the detailed means of individual salvation, namely substitutionary atonement and justification by faith alone. Both ‘axes’ work together to articulate the gospel comprehensively, but the tendency is to emphasise one at the expense of the other.

What strikes as me as particularly important about Concerning Christian Liberty is that it is a deep and brilliant exposition of one of those central aspects of the gospel, namely, justification by faith. It can only help to go deeper; not that justification is all the gospel, as I have just said, but it is at the heart of the gospel. My suspicion, from experience, is that the gospel is often reduced to something very minimal, or assumed as merely the entry point to the Christian faith, before passing on to other things. We need to be able to articulate more clearly and more deeply this central doctrine, and Luther can only help in this regard. Studying Luther on this has brought me greater clarity on what Scripture teaches about the gospel.

Concerning Christian Liberty also shows that it is not sufficient to emphasise grace as being central to the gospel if you are not simultaneously showing how that grace is worked out in justification by the gospel word received by faith alone. The Roman Catholic gospel, for example, also includes grace.

On a personal note, Concerning Christian Liberty has helped me to understand more clearly what it means to trust in Christ, that is, to look outside of myself to the finished work of Christ in the Gospel Word, and not at how much faith or how little faith I have. As justification by faith alone is a doctrine with great practical application in many areas of the Christian life, I trust that the Lord will help me to continue to grow in applying this truth to my life.

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Review of Peter Jensen (2002) The Revelation of God

The Revelation of God by Peter Jensen was published in 2002 in IVP's Contours of Christian Theology series. It has recently been translated into Spanish by CEEB/Andamio in the new Biblioteca José M. Martínez.

In this work, Jensen seeks to formulate a fresh approach to the question of revelation. The Enlightenment critique of the Christian claim to a unique revelation of God remains strong today, and many Christian attempts to answer it have failed. In this review, I will outline the main line of argument Jensen pursues (taking up chapters 1-4 of the book), before briefly mentioning the other areas covered in chapters 5-11 and finishing with some personal response.

Review
The place we must start, Jensen argues, is with the central claim of the Bible that it is through responding to the message of the gospel that people attain to a true knowledge of God. Rather than discussing revelation as a general concept, and then asking if the Christian scriptures fit that concept, a surer approach is to begin with the gospel as that supreme locus of the knowledge of God and take it as the paradigm for revelation.

“The achievement of the gospel is that people come to know God through informative and hortatory words about him.” (35) We come to be friends with God through hearing and responding to the message of the gospel. In this sense, it is not helpful to talk about Christ himself as the supreme paradigm of revelation (e.g. Barth) for, while the centrality of Christ to the gospel is obvious, Christ comes to us through the words of the gospel, proclaimed by human messengers.

The gospel word – fundamentally, the declaration that Jesus is Lord – commends itself to us as the Word of God through three arguments, 1) the claim that Jesus is the Christ, fulfilling the Old Testament Scriptures, 2) the historical testimony of the first witnesses and evangelists and 3) its power to interpret human experience.

The gospel comes to us as a Word from God, with promises and demands. The specific nature of this gospel word gives a definite shape to the type of relationship we can have with God through responding to this gospel. In the gospel, God speaks. That speaking shows us a God who creates, judges and saves. He stands over and against a rebellious humanity with a word of warning about coming judgment. But this word specifically centres on Jesus Christ as Lord through his death, resurrection and exaltation. It is therefore simultaneously a warning of judgment and a word of promise about God’s love and mercy. Finally, this gospel word comes to us with a demand for repentance and faith that we may receive that promise of mercy.

How does the nature of the gospel shape the knowledge of God that can be attained through it? By default, we do not know God, we are in rebellious ignorance of Him. The good news of the gospel is that we can be reconciled to God and know him as his friends. In that friendship, as in any friendship, words play a central role: “language creates that personal union that incorporates without assimiliting.” (67) We talk to God through prayer, but how does God speak to us? In the Old Testament we see God identifying Himself through His deeds and through words about His deeds. In particular, “it his ability to do what he says he will do that identifies the Lord and shows that he is God indeed” (69), in other words, God makes himself known through words of promise and fulfilment.

Next, we see that God often formalises His promises in covenants, defined by Jensen as “a promise given under oath, accompanied by stipulations and sealed with a sign.” (75) We can then trace these ideas of promise/fulfilment and covenant through to Christ Himself and, significantly, the Bible. Scripture is nothing less than ‘the book of the covenant’ “for in it the covenant of God is recorded, expounded and applied.” (81) By this argument, Jensen arrives at the conclusion that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God for us today. It is that which structures and regulates our covenant relationship with God, it is the means through which God speaks to us, and all this flows out of the first point about the gospel message itself being the paradigm of revelation.
Many questions remain to be treated, and Jensen concludes the first part of the book by outlining four fundamental axioms, derived from this key insight that the gospel is the paradigm for revelation, for addressing the issue of revelation more generally. These are:

1) “The gospel is the key element in coming to a saving knowledge of God” (85)
2) “Christian revelation is basically verbal” (87)
3) “Revelation conveys both information and relationship” (90)
4) “Scripture is revelation” (92)

Thus Jensen’s central argument is that “God’s central revelation of himself… is evangelical at heart, covenantal by nature and scriptural in form.” Following from this, Jensen goes on to ask how the gospel helps us to interpret human experience and specifically religious experience, especially whether there are ways to attain true knowledge of God that do not pass through the gospel. (chapters 5-6) He then discusses at length some thorny questions about the authority, nature and reading of Scripture (chapters 7-9). He concludes by examining the work of the Spirit in revelation and whether we can speak of contemporary special revelation today (e.g. prophecy) (chapters 10 and 11).

Response
This is a book to be read and digested slowly. The argument is sometimes dense, but it is worth taking the trouble, because Jensen has fresh things to say on many topics. Often his choice of words is striking and very helpful, and helps us to see things in a new way. Using the categories of knowledge of God, gospel and covenant in relation to revelation do exactly that, and seeing the Bible as the Book of the Covenant is especially helpful, because it reminds us of the centrality of (and nature of) our relationship with God as well as giving fresh meaning to its authority.
Remembering that the Bible is a covenental book should also remind us that God speaks to us as his covenant people. Our tendency to read the bible individualistically ought to be challenged by understanding that Christ rules his church through the Word. (cf.p.223)

Seeing the Gospel as that which enables us to rightly interpret our experience is also important. In Jensen’s words:
“Human thought characteristically moves from what is known to what is unknown. When the gospel is preached, it invariably uses the language and concepts that refer to human experience in order to explicate itself. The gospel speaks of love, wrath, forgiveness, faith, repentance, sin and death. These are all common human experiences: in each case the gospel takes our inadequate understanding of the experience and gives us new and powerful wisdom about it. The reinterpretation is often so intense that it constitutes a revolution, a conversion of thought and practice…” (110)

Using the gospel as that which explains our experience has a lot to say to our evangelism and apologetics. Evangelism is helping others see who they really are! Jensen’s thoughts here coincide nicely with what Andrew Walls writes about conversion not being about substituting something totally new but transforming, turning what is already there. (see my previous post) Brilliant!

Brilliant stuff by Andrew Walls on culture and contextualisation

The gospel is not fixed to one cultural form, but is to be translated into every culture, re-orientating each one Godwards… the Christian faith is ‘infinitely translatable’ and its history is a history of diffusion across cultural boundaries and its appropriation by new cultures… Cultural diversity is an implication of the Lordship of Christ… Christ’s Great Commission is to disciple the nations, not to make some disciples in each nation.

These are some of the main ideas from the work of Andrew Walls, honorary professor at Edinburgh University, on contextualisation and the relationship between the gospel and culture, on which I wrote an essay for the Northern Training Institute.

Andrew Walls has, as far as I know, written no books per se, but there are two collections of his essays, The Missionary Movement in Christian History and The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History. Each book is divided into three sections: the first is on the transmission of the christian faith, the second is on Africa and the third on the Western Missionary Movement.

They are really well-worth reading, I recommend them!

I read most of the essays in the first section of each book for my essay:

Diversity and Translation in Christian Mission: Andrew Walls on Contextualisation

(If the link doesn´t work, try here)

Christianity as Historical and Experimental

How do the 2000-year old events surrounding the life & death of Jesus connect to our lives today? How is the chronological gap bridged? I have found John Stott's comments on Galatians 1.1-5 very helpful on this. To them should be added some discussion about the role of the Holy Spirit (He is not mentioned in the Galatians text):

What the apostle has in fact done in these introductory verses of the Epistle is to trace three stages of divine action for man's salvation. Stage 1 is the death of Christ for our sins to rescue us out of this present evil age. Stage 2 is the appointment of Paul as an apostle to bear witness to the Christ who thus died and rose again. Stage 3 is the gift to us who believe of the grace and peace which Christ won and Paul witnessed to.

At each of these three stages the Father and the Son have acted or continue to act together. The sin-bearing death of Jesus was both an act of self-sacrifice and according to the will of God the Father. The apostolic authority of Paul was 'through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead'. And the grace and peace which we enjoy as a result are also 'from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ'. How beautiful this is! Here is our God, the living God, the Father and the Son, at work in grace for our salvation. First, He achieved it in history at the cross. Next, He has announced it in Scripture through His chosen apostles. Thirdly, He bestows it in experience upon believers today. Each stage is indispensable. There could be no Christian experience today without the unique work of Christ on the cross, uniquely witnessed to by the apostles. Christianity is both a historical and an experimental religion. Indeed, one of its chief glories is this marriage between history and experience, between the past and the present. We must never attempt to divorce them. We cannot do without the work of Christ, nor can we do without the witness of Christ's apostles, if we want to enjoy Christ's grace and peace today.

Source: Stott, John (1968) The Message of Galatians (Leicester: IVP), p.19, here

Review of Newbigin - The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Newbigin, Lesslie (1989) The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (London: SPCK)

Summary

In The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin addresses the question of how Christianity can survive in a culture that is radically pluralistic, (contemporary Britain is particularly in view) a society in which religion is relegated to the sphere of opinion or value (as opposed to ‘facts’), claims to ultimate truth or that one religion is true where others are false are treated with suspicion and hostility and doubt is lauded as far superior to belief.


The first move is to undermine several ‘myths’ of contemporary secular society which are deeply ingrained but decidedly shaky. For example, the fact-value dichotomy is false, since ‘facts’ are always interpreted. What is treated as fact is only known because of its embeddedness in a way of seeing – a plausibility structure. The modern mindset asserts the superiority of its scientific methods because it appeals to reason over and against revelation or tradition. But this, too, is a wrong move. The Christian and the modern pluralist both use reason in interpreting the data of experience, but the former’s framework of thought includes certain things (such as that God has made himself known in Christ) that the latter denies. Moreover, reason always operates out of a tradition – the modern scientific method being no exception – such that we should talk about competing traditions of rationality rather than reason vs tradition.

Newbigin argues that Christianity provides an alternative plausibility structure to pluralism (or indeed to any other dominant worldview), it does not sit comfortably with the way modern society thinks, but that is not something to be ashamed or nervous about since the modern way of thinking has cracks in its roots. The Christian worldview is rooted in the conviction that God has acted decisively in human history (“it is the story of actions by which the human situation is irreversibly changed”) and chosen a community to bear witness to those decisive events. History has a meaning, and the clue is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Christian congregation is the means by which the gospel impacts society; the living out of the Christian faith – as a ‘hermeneutic of the gospel’ – will demonstrate the truth of the Christian message.

Evaluation and Questions

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is a powerful apologetic for the Christian gospel. Its dissection of the pluralist worldview is brilliant, and its presentation of the Christian alternative of gospel-lived-out communities attractive. I like the emphasis on the events of the gospel giving us the meaning of history and therefore that our own lives in our day fit into an overarching story. There is a strong emphasis on community and on Christians living out the gospel in their secular places of work. Particularly helpful is the confidence that Newbigin gives the Church to be what we are meant to be and to not be intimidated by a hostile pluralistic culture.

However, there are also questions that arise. For example, it is not clear to me precisely how Newbigin is defining either ‘Church’ or ‘gospel’. There are many versions of Christianity: can they all be described as true manifestations of the Church, or are there limits? Given that a true church must embody and teach the gospel, the question then becomes whether there are ‘false gospels’ which in essence disqualify a group from being a true Church. Newbigin’s definition of ‘Church’ would seem to be pretty broad and ecumenical, which perhaps raises the question of how the gospel is being defined. It is something to do with the incarnation, cross, resurrection and return of Christ, but these can be understood in different ways.

A second question is whether Newbigin’s argument actually succeeds in answering the problem of choosing between alternative worldviews (plausibility structures). If the Christian and the modern pluralist worldviews provide competing visions, how is one to adjudicate between them? There is no neutral point of view from which they can be compared. Commitment to one plausibility structure, which, in turn, provides the framework for interpreting the world (and, therefore, evaluating other plausibility structures), is inevitable. How can one know which plausibility structure is true? Newbigin’s answer takes a number of angles. Firstly, we will only know the answer at the end of history. Secondly, it is possible (and, indeed vital for the Christian) to live in two worldviews. That is, it is possible to some extent to enter into the thought patterns of another worldview and hence to be able to critique it from within. Thirdly, Newbigin appeals several times to an argument from Polanyi, namely that subjectivism is avoided when we hold our beliefs (as personally committed subjects) with “universal intent” and “we express that intent by publishing them and inviting all people to consider and accept them” (126) Fourthly, the radical gospel life of the Christian congregation authenticates the message proclaimed. There are knotty epistemological and apologetical issues here, and I don’t know the answers! I wonder whether this view would be sufficient, say, to argue against the Mormon view of the world on this basis.

Thirdly, Newbigin’s views on certain issues are very different to views I have long-thought to be biblical. In particular, I have in mind election (the emphasis on the purpose of election being for mission is superb, but the polemic against the view that God chooses some and not others, I’m not sure that (a) he deals with the biblical evidence sufficiently or (b) that this point is strictly necessary for his main argument anyway) and the status of people of other faiths (basically, the Christian gospel is unique but we cannot say who will be saved in the end). It is beyond the scope of this review to explore these areas any further.

Connections

The importance of analysing and deconstructing our society’s plausibility structures. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society provides a useful starting point. As does Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands in its getting its hands dirty in the dredging up the idolatries and evil desires of the human heart. Perhaps the former helps on the corporate, social level, and the latter on the individual, heart level. The two books therefore complement each other brilliantly.

The importance of understanding the overarching story of the Bible, and one’s place in it. In other words, having a Christian interpretation of history and the world. This understanding is rooted in the gospel. This story (in the words of Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands) gives us our identity, purpose and sense of direction.

The importance of living out the gospel in the world. The following quotes are brilliant, in relation to the Christian in his day-to-day and the role of the Christian minister: “the major impact of such congregations on the life of society as a whole is through the daily work of the members in their secular vocations…” (234-5) “The priestly people [in secular vocations] needs a ministering priesthood to sustain and nourish it… we set apart a man or woman to a ministerial priesthood not in order to take away the priesthood of the whole body but to enable it.” (235)

The need for courage in the Christian minister. There is a particularly powerful picture painted at the end of chapter 19 (in relation to Christian teaching) of Jesus “going ahead of his disciples, like a commander leading troops into battle. The words he speaks are thrown back over his shoulder at fearful and faltering followers. He is not like a general who sits at headquarters and sends his troops into battle. He goes at their head and takes the brunt of the enemy attack. He enables and encourages them by leading them, not just by telling them. In this picture, the words of Jesus have a quite different force. They all find their meaning in their central keyword, ‘Follow me’.” (240)

Newbigin on the gospel

The gospel: decisive events not abstract ideas

The gospel is not the assertion that in Jesus certain qualities such as love and justice were present in an exemplary manner. If this were so, we could of course dispense with the example once we had learned the lesson which the example teaches. The gospel is not just the illustration (even the best illustration) of an idea. It is the story of actions by which the human situation is irreversibly changed.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society p.166

The Gospel is better than unconditional love

In an article I found very instructive and stimulating, David Powlinson argues that the biblical category of idolatry is vital for counselling and pastoral care. The category of idolatry gives a powerful perspective on the complexity of human behaviour, motives, desires etc. One section that particularly struck me is on the danger of the tendency of Christian counselling to psychologise, that is, focus on the category of 'need', especially the need for love/self-esteem. The danger is that God can be presented as a way of meeting an idolatrous desire, rather than that idol being challenged.

This quote develops this thought and asks "what happens to the Gospel?"

What happens to the Gospel when idolatry themes are not grasped? "God loves you" typically becomes a tool to meet a need for self-esteem in people who feel like failures. The particular content of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - "grace for sinners and deliverance for the sinned-against" - is down-played or even twisted into "unconditional acceptance for the victims of others' lack of acceptance." When "the Gospel" is shared, it comes across something like this: "God accepts you just as you are. God has unconditional love for you." That is not the biblical Gospel, however. God's love is not Rogerian unconditional positive regard writ large. A need theory of motivation - rather than an idolatry theory - bends the Gospel solution into "another gospel" which is essentially false.

The Gospel is better than unconditional love. The Gospel says, "God accepts you just s Christ is. God has 'contraconditional' love for you." Christ bears the curse you deserve. Christ is fully pleasing to the Father and gives you his own perfect goodness. Christ reigns in power, making you the Father's child and coming close to you to begin to change what is unacceptable to God about you. God never accepts me "as I am." He accepts me "as I am in Jesus Christ." The center of gravity is different. The true Gospel does not allow God's love to be sucked into the vortex of the soul's lust for acceptability and worth in and of itself. Rather, it radically decenters people
- what the Bible calls "fear of the Lord" and "faith" - to look outside themselves.

Powlinson, David "Idols of the Heart and "Vanity Fair"', Journal of Biblical Counselling, Volume 13, Number 2 (Winter 1995) pp.35-50. Quote from p.49