I used to hate Walther and his overblown rhetoric. After reading Law & Gospel, I came to love him. I may have to read God Grant It at some point. Here's an interesting quote:
Faith and love are related and inseparably connected like a father and his child. Whoever says he is justified through faith before God must prove himself by love before man. Otherwise he is a liar, for faith works through love. -- C. F. W. Walther, *God Grant It!* p. 236The vertical/horizontal dimensions of faith and works are often lost on those who polemicize against us and, unfortunately too frequently, some of our own. Christian traditions that reject justification by faith alone (and Trent isn't the only occasion of this) tend to argue using the logic that if moral purity doesn't somehow achieve, increase, or preserve your standing before God, then they have no purpose at all and Christians may as well sin as much as their old man desires.
Lutheran idea that we love simply because we are Christians without needing the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell to alternately cajole and scare us into loving, is a rejection of this way of thinking. Christians love one another because that's who we are. That's who Jesus is, and so that's who we are in him. We already have the resurrection and the life in him. What we do is a part of who we are in Christ, not something we do because we need to in order to get or stay on God's good side--no more than a sparrow needs to be told he'll earn God's favor in order to motivate him to sing.
In this time of revisiting why I'm a Lutheran to begin with (I need to do that every so often to avoid becoming completely cynical, and Lent's a good time for that), I remember how simultaneously liberating and challenging the Lutheran doctrine of sanctification is. When you're really trying to be saved by works, or somehow focused on being holy enough to "qualify," you end up getting turned inward and focusing on which specific things you need to do to really be holy. And this inevitably leads to some man-made list of rules and traditions that ultimately become more important that what God has actually said. Different traditions come up with different rules--not eating certain foods on certain days, not drinking alcohol, weird dating rules--but it's all the same at heart.
But once you really "get" this "faith alone" thing that most Protestants confess in word and deny in deed, it opens you up. You can quit caring about all that goofy stuff that you're supposed to do to really be a really good Christian that God will really like, and you can ignore the scowls of the Sanctification Police. If God's not holding a sword over your head, who cares about those guys? You can actually love your neighbor whenever, wherever, and however you meet him. You're free, and at the same time challenged because knowing Christ and his suffering on your behalf opens your eyes to the world around you and just how much there is for you to do.
2 comments:
this inevitably leads to some man-made list of rules and traditions that ultimately become more important that what God has actually said.
This is baloney.
What God actually said is that we should fast, pray, and give alms. He didn't say we should do those things in order to be justified, but then nobody is claiming otherwise. And if the Church gives us some guidance in how to go about that ("man-made list of rules and traditions" as you put it), well, that is well within her purview.
One advantage to having some guidelines for spiritual discipline ("man-made list of rules and traditions") is that it makes our ascesis a bit less individualistic and a bit more objective. Otherwise our spiritual practice degenerates into everybody doing what is right in his own eyes. You know what happens when there is no concrete standard ("man-made list of rules and traditions") for fasting, prayer, and alms-giving? Very few people actually do it, that's what. Which goes against the fact that God said that we should do it.
Once you "get it" that there is no conflict between justification by faith alone and a reasonable Christian ascesis under the guidance of the Church, then you can see what the Confessors meant when they said that we "can and should cooperate, though still in great weakness" with the Holy Spirit's work of regeneration and renewal. And then you can ingnore the scowls of the Justification Police.
Chris, either that's a non sequitur, or your understanding of Roman canon law, late medieval monasticism, and Protestant discipline codes is simply not correct.
First of all, canonical Roman fasting laws weren't and aren't simply guidelines. They're necessary for salvation. It's not just guidance for a reasonable Christian ascesis; it's a legal demand that you must fulfill or roast in hell for eternity. Failing to keep a canonical fast is and always has been a mortal sin. You show me in the Bible where Jesus condemns someone to hell for not following a regulation.
Second of all, Nazarene and similar holiness codes operate(d) in a similar way. Abstaining from card-playing and the theater wasn't just a reasonable way of discipline. If you didn't do it, you weren't really a Christian.
Third, yes, Jesus commanded us to fast and pray. But he didn't command us to make pilgrimages to shrines. He didn't command us to wear WWJD bracelets. He didn't command us to go on evangelism trips every Spring Break. He didn't say you have to swear off marriage. He didn't say women can't wear pants. He didn't say you're not allowed to use electricity.
In Christian traditions with a strong belief saving yourself by doing good works, they inevitably do two things:
1. Turn guidelines and traditions into laws necessary for salvation.
2. Ultimately place more emphasis on the things God did not command than the things he did.
As far as I know, there aren't a lot of denominations where "reasonable guidelines" exist in the sense that you won't be condemned to hell or kicked out of the community or judged in some way for not following them to the tee.
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