SOURCE: "The Way Luther Speaks of God," in Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, translated by R. A. Wilson, Fortress Press, 1970, pp. 242–67.

There is something challenging about the way Luther speaks of God. We cannot turn to his works without our own way of speaking about God faltering or falling silent or being brought into question, or without doubt being cast upon it. This implies that Luther's way of speaking of God expresses more than an ordinary degree of personal involvement, and therefore also involves us. All consideration of historical data in some respects involves the participation of the observer, so that the false ideal of a 'purely historical' consideration is neither possible nor desirable. In the same way, what has been said about God and handed down in tradition is even less capable of being dealt with by a 'purely historical consideration'. For to speak of God implies his essential presence, and this is true even of the statement 'God is dead', as can be seen from the way Nietzschc asserts the presence of the slain God: 'Do we still smell nothing of the divine putrefaction?'¹

At a time when it has become exceedingly difficult to defend any attempt to speak about God, the decisiveness with which Luther spoke of God acts as a challenge—though he did not speak of him with an illconsidered facility, but with the utmost readiness to defend what he was doing, and with a certainty which seems completely alien to our problem of the vindication of any attempt to speak about God.

One might attempt to explain this on the basis of the change in basic assumptions which has taken place since then. Luther lived at a time—it might be argued—in which the word 'God' was still understandable without further discussion, and the claim it implied, together with the right to speak of God, was taken for granted. In spite of this, of course, or strictly speaking because of this, what was said of God was so much the subject of dispute that virtually all other disputed matters at that period were attracted by and drawn into the dispute about God, which took place in the denominational schisms and conflicts. All shared the assumption that the existence of God could be taken for granted, and besides this, there was a virtually undisputed recognition of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the Incarnation of the Son of God according to the testimony of the holy scripture and the Church. On this basis, in fact, a conflict arose which to this day cannot be regarded by Western Christianity as having been solved. Nevertheless, the situation has fundamentally changed, in that it is evident that the automatic assumption of the validity not only of the Christian idea of God, but of the idea of God as a whole, has finally and irrevocably ceased to be accepted.

It is true that proper distinctions must be made, in order to avoid a rough-and-ready argument on the basis of the automatic assumption of the existence of God at that period and the disappearance of such an assumption at the present day. But this does not alter the basic fact that not merely popular opinion but theology itself proceeded at that period from this automatic assumption, and as it were 'counted on it'. Scholasticism included the acceptance of the existence of God amongst the so-called praeambula fidei, that is, as something which was not in the strict sense the object of faith, because it was already evident to the apprehension of natural reason. Luther too was able to ascribe to all men either by nature, or by virtue of a universal tradition difficult to distinguish from nature, a knowledge of God, which was a knowledge of his existence, although not a knowledge of his will (he did not classify this knowledge of God in the dogmatic category of a praeambulum fidei). On the other hand, simultaneously with the virtual disappearance of the automatic assumption of the existence of God, modern Protestant theology from Schleiermacher to Karl Barth has made an increasingly radical attempt to eliminate any idea of a natural theology, although it has not adequately taken into account the consequences of so doing.

All the same, it is not possible to equate or even to confuse the automatic assumption of the existence of God, in however restricted a form, with the firm decisiveness of Luther's way of speaking about God. This forms a challenge to modern man, but did so to Erasmus as well, and is remarkable also by contrast with the scholastic tradition. This decisiveness is manifested in discussing matters which are not automatically self-evident, in so far as 'self-evident' is understood in the trivial sense of the knowledge of immediately obvious facts, which it would be superfluous and a mere waste of words to discuss. 'What is not self-evident', of which Luther speaks so decisively in his language about God, does not mean any arbitrary matter, but what can only be said of God, and therefore what can only be said because it comes from God, can only be understandable through him, and is, therefore, in a profound sense 'self'-evident because it provides in itself the only assurance of its truth. But this must be stated, confessed and asserted in words. It therefore requires to be spoken, and so appears in two aspects: it must be spoken with decisiveness, because it can only be spoken; and it needs to be spoken with decisiveness.

That Luther lays such an emphasis on the mode of speech and therefore on the situation that comes about in speech, follows from the substance of what is spoken. This cannot be derived from Luther's temperament or special charisma. We can ignore his person except in so far as it was given to him to realize with great force that one can only speak of God in form of a decisive assertion. Erasmus found Luther's categorical style a source of offence. Luther reproached him: 'It is not the way of a Christian heart to fail to delight in decisive assertions; rather, one must delight in them, or one is not a Christian … Sceptics and academics are far from us Christians, but those are welcome to us, who, twice as obstinately as the Stoics themselves, present what they have to say with decisiveness. Tell me, how often did the apostle Paul insist on plerophoria, full assurance, that is, assertion with the utmost certainty, as firm as a rock to the conscience? … Nothing is better known and more familiar to a Christian than decisive assertion. Do away with decisive assertions, and you have taken away Christianity … The Holy Spirit is not a sceptic and has not written doubtful matters and mere opinions in our hearts, but decisive assertions which are more certain and sure than life itself and all experience.'²

These utterances concerning the appropriate way to speak of God naturally go much further than the mere assertion of God's existence. On the one hand they extend to the whole of Christian doctrine, and on the other hand they recognize that human existence is drawn into it and is involved in it. But it would not be accurate to say of Luther that he developed the basic assertion of the existence of God in these two directions. What seem to be two different issues which are drawn together are in fact a single point. Nothing would be said of God, if the whole of Christian doctrine and man also were not already involved. But the reason for this is that what is at issue in Christian doctrine and also in human existence is nothing other than the basic assertion of the existence of God.

The way Luther speaks of God—and this explains his decisiveness—has both an all-embracing and inclusive tendency, and also a radical and exclusive tendency. The latter, as is well known, finds its expression in the so-called particula exclusiva, the word 'alone', which is found in his formulation of the decisive points of his theology, and always has the same purpose of giving pointed utterance to a true theological understanding: 'God alone', 'Christ alone', 'the scripture alone', 'the word alone', 'faith alone'. Of course when the exclusive particle is used in this way its meaning must be precisely elucidated. An unthinking and emotional profession of faith, or an uncomprehending and reckless assertion would be quite out of place in this mode of theological thought. What must be realized is that in spite of the different ways in which it is applied, the recurrent word 'alone' expresses a fundamental theological understanding: that whenever anything is said about God, it must be made fully evident that it is God who is being discussed. But if God is to be spoken of at all, then it is necessary for God's sake to rely on God alone, on Christ alone, on the scripture alone, on the word alone, and on faith alone; that is, one must exclude everything which prevents God from being God, and which gives an opportunity of speaking of theological matters in an untheological or pseudo-theo-logical way.

But this exclusive tendency, which concentrates everything upon a single issue, is not modified and compensated by an opposed tendency to an all-inclusive comprehensiveness; this would be meaningless. For the point of the exclusive particle itself is to discuss everything in a single light, rather than isolating individual aspects. No less characteristic of Luther's theological thought than the term 'alone' is the apparently contradictory, but, if properly understood, closely associated term 'at the same time', which is likewise used in various ways, and is best known in the formula, 'righteous and a sinner at the same time'. One could term it the particula inclusiva, which does not weaken the sense of the particula exclusiva, but clarifies it and makes it more precise.

It will scarcely be disputed that the use of the particle 'alone' expresses the distinctive nature and also the decisiveness of Luther's way of speaking about God. Proceeding from this, however, his power of drawing everything together into a single theme is also a characteristic of his way of speaking of God. Luther does not allow the content of Christian doctrine to be fragmented into a profusion which is coherent only in a positivist and historical sense. It is foolish to deny, as is often done, that he possesses the power of systematic thought. But he displays it not in the summarizing and harmonizing architectural structure of a system of doctrine, nor in the speculative derivation of numerous lines of thought from a single principle, but rather by a critical and a liberating demonstration that God is God indeed, in the language of the biblical tradition. It is a complete misunderstanding of the concentration of Luther's theological thought on the doctrine of justification to regard it as the arbitrary choice of a partial aspect of doctrine, to which he wilfully adds a special emphasis of his own. According to Luther it points to the way in which God can be made God indeed in the whole of Christian doctrine. For the whole of Christian doctrine consists not of a profusion which forms a supplement to the doctrine of God itself, but of the doctrine of God and nothing more. Christian doctrine is a guide to the right way to speak of God.

But from this it is obvious that to the extent that it is God who is being spoken of, man is also involved whenever this takes place and does not have to be brought in later. Similarly, what is said of God does not have to be applied later to man. Thus what is said of God is addressed to man. For how could it be possible to speak of God if what was said were not the direct concern of man? But if what is said of God possesses certainty, then it brings certainty with it when it is addressed to someone. This is not a formal aspect which is additional to the concept of what is said of God, nor is it merely one partial aspect, which is present in so far as God has to do with man. For Luther certainty is the essence of God's being with man and therefore of man's being with God. In the presence of God, and there alone, there is no uncertainty. But uncertainty is man's sin, and certainty is salvation.

We began by observing the decisive way in which Luther spoke of God. From this we were able to see the vast extent of what he has to say of God; and at the same time we saw this whole vast extent gathered together into a single point. This justified the hope of seeing the essence of Luther's theology in what he says of God, and moreover, of being able to apprehend what he says of God from a single point of view. Finally, if in this way we have attained to the very heart of all Luther says about God, he can help us, in spite of our different situation, to answer the problem which faces us at present, of how to vindicate any attempt to speak of God. When he was a theological student, only twenty-five years old, Luther expressed the view in a letter that the only theology which was of any value was that which penetrated the kernel of the nut and the germ of the wheat and the marrow of the bones.³

By beginning with the decisive way in which Luther speaks of God, we have in fact already arrived at the kernel of the nut. All that is necessary is a more precise and penetrating statement, to give us as it were the basic formula from which it is possible to understand and expound how the attempt to speak of God can be vindicated. This basic formula is as follows: God and faith belong together. This follows from the whole structure of Luther's theology, and does not require a detailed demonstration. We shall nevertheless give an example of it from a particular text, which because of its original purpose is of particular importance, and must be regarded as having been formulated with great care. We can use it as the starting-point of our development of this basic formula. For our further inquiry into the way Luther speaks of God will consist of nothing other than the further consideration of this basic formula; and of how far the fact that God and faith belong together enables us to understand what God is.

The text is found in the 'Greater Catechism' at the beginning of the exposition of the first commandment: '"You shall have no other gods." That is, you shall regard me alone as your God. What does this mean, and how is one to understand it? What does it mean to have a god, or what is God? Answer: A god is that on which one should rely for everything good, and with which one can take refuge in every need. Thus to have a god is nothing other than to trust and to believe in him from the heart—or, as I have often said, that only trust and faith in the heart make both God and a false god. If your faith and trust is right, then your God is right as well, and again, where the belief is false and wrong, then the right God is absent too. For the two belong together, faith and God. So that to which you give up and hand over your heart is truly your God.⁴

We will admit at once how dangerous this text is. While our first approach, to the decisive way in which Luther speaks of God, gave us the impression that he is very remote from the spirit of the present day, in this passage he seems strangely close to us. One could almost imagine that one was listening to Ludwig Feuerbach, who taught that God was the projection and product, or even the essence of man; a theology transformed and swallowed up in anthropology! This apparent similarity is confirmed by a demonstrable connection between the two. Feuerbach, who was a theologian himself at first, was thoroughly well-acquainted with Luther's works, and, as a supplement to his work The Nature of Christianity (Wesen des Christentums), published in 1844 a study of 'The Nature of Faith According to Luther'. Not that he simply obliterated the difference: 'No religious doctrine is more consciously and deliberately contrary to human understanding, thought and feeling, than that of Luther. No other seems more firmly to reject the basic idea of The Nature of Christianity, and no other provides such evidence of the origin of what it contains outside and above man; for how could he arrive of himself at a doctrine which degrades and humbles man to the utmost degree, and which in the sight of God at least, that is before the highest and therefore the only decisive court of appeal, denies him all honour, all merit, all virtue, all will-power, all value and trustworthiness, all reason and understanding whatsoever? This is how it seems; but what seems to be is not necessarily the case.'⁵ Feuerbach implies that in his very opposition to Luther he can appeal to Luther himself, and to the real consequences of his basic ideas.

Theologians have been horrified at the thesis of Feuerbach, that the mystery of theology is anthropolgy. In the desire to defend theology against the destructive tendencies of modern psychology and historicism, they have turned to their task anew, and this has meant a change from an anthropocentric to a theocentric theology. Karl Barth in particular has led the struggle against even the most disguised tendency on the part of theology to turn to anthropology—quite rightly, in so far as it really represents the abandonment of the true theme of theology in the sense of the exclusive 'alone' of the Reformation. Certainly, under the influence of Feuerbach's interpretation of Luther, Barth became suspicious of Luther⁶ and came to believe it necessary to seek the methodological foundation of his dogmatic theology not in Luther but in Anselm of Canterbury, in order to restore an objective basis to theology.

It has been necessary at least to hint at the heated dispute in which we become involved if we attempt to go deeper into the meaning of what Luther says about God, under the guidance of his statement that 'faith and God belong together.' We cannot embark at length upon a dialogue with Feuerbach and Barth. We must restrict ourselves to a mere outline of what is contained in this conjunction of God and faith, and there are three guiding principles which will provide our starting-point. What God is can be made clear by interpreting this basic formula in the light of the phrases 'God alone', 'through faith alone', and 'through the word alone'.

1. The very passage in which Luther gives the most precise definition of what he means by 'God alone', in his exposition of the first commandment, is that which contains his suspicious association between God and faith. At a point where everything should be concentrated upon authority and unconditional obedience, Luther, regardless of the fact that the word 'God' is something which he is supposed to be able to take for granted, stresses the question of understanding: 'What does this mean, and how is one to understand it? What does it mean to have a god, or what is God?' It seems immediately suspicious that he should combine the question of the meaning of 'to have a god' and that of the being of God, and should attempt to answer both simultaneously. Surely it is necessary to affirm what God is before it is possible to say what it means to have him? Surely the being of God must be laid down and clarified before dealing with the question of 'letting God be God'? Surely it is the fundamental definition of the nature of God that nothing precedes him, that nothing imposes any conditions upon him, that he alone is the origin of all things, and that, as is expressed by the technical term 'aseity', he derives his being from himself?

It would be nonsense to try and impute to Luther the denial or watering-down of this idea, and to interpret the phrase 'that only trust and faith in the heart make both God and a false God' in such a sense that man becomes the creator and God the creature. But the idea of the aseity, the underived existence of God is not sufficient in itself to maintain with the utmost rigour that to be God and to be the creator are identical, and to be man and to be a creature are identical. The implications of the idea have not been fully considered as long as one fails to take into account the fact that man himself is involved in thinking and uttering this idea. This does not mean that it is justifiable to jump to the conclusion that this implies the dependence of God upon man, in such a way that the assertion of the aseity of God would be a logical contradiction. For the very aim and purpose of the idea of aseity is to define the position of the creature and of man. Without this specific application there would be nothing left of the idea of aseity. The emphasis on the independence of God from man is addressed to man.

The objection to such metaphysical statements about the nature of God is not so much to what they say, but rather to what they conceal as the result of a deficient doctrine of the understanding, an unsound hermeneutic theory. The objection lies in the significance for what is said of the fact that it is said. No account is taken of the fact that the metaphysical theorist is not suspended in a no-man's-land between God and the world. He is himself affected by what he thinks, and addresses what he says to his fellow-men, and therefore he ought to give consideration to the significance of the assertion of God's aseity on the concrete process of its utterance. The aseity of God thought out in abstract terms is in fact self-contradictory, because it is dependent on the abstract independence and individuality of man, who carries out the process of abstraction. Ignoring the question of whether metaphysics suffers in any essential respect from this short-sighted theory of the understanding, it ought at least to be clear that the question 'What is God?' is not being conducted along false lines, but in the only adequate way, when God is spoken of and understood as the absolute concern of man and is considered with regard to the way in which he is the absolute concern of man.

Thus we are concerned not with a proof of God's existence, something which at least in the conventional sense is directly contradictory to the divinity of God, but with a demonstration of the reason why man is addressed whenever anything is said about God. The purpose is not to derive the being of God from the being of man, but to direct man towards the situation in which he can understand what is said of God. This situation is not one which is essentially alien to his nature—in which case it would be a baseless fantasy to speak of God—but is a situation which decisively affects him, and in which he already finds himself.

The word 'faith' refers to this basic human situation. It would be an inadequate if not a misleading explanation of the statement that faith and God belong together, to say that because God is invisible and beyond experience we have to make do with faith, as a substitute as it were. For this would fail to explain what obligation or right there is to do this at all, and in what situation faith, understood as a substitute for knowledge, can be regarded as something necessary.

If one examines this problem, it becomes clear that it is possible to understand how far faith brings knowledge with it, not in the bad sense of uncertain conjecture or a mere probable opinion but as a rock-like certainty, only on the basis of the situation in which man is driven to seek certainty. Luther says simply: 'In every need'. Thus the nature of faith is that of a knowledge which brings help, salvation, courage, hope and relief in need. Accordingly, what is said of God tells man that he is obliged to wait and hope, that he is concerned with what still lies beyond him, outside his control, so that man is always reaching out beyond himself and is drawn outside himself and beyond his own control. He cannot avoid this sallying out beyond himself, this attempt to make uncertainty certain, which Luther calls hanging his heart on something; he must have something to rely on, to trust and to believe. This situation always exists. Consequently, it is the basic human situation, although the degree to which it is palpable and obvious varies greatly. We shall not analyse it in detail, but we must warn against one or two misunderstandings which readily arise.

It can appear as though God is now made a substitute for our power, just as it was suggested before that faith might be seen as a substitute for our knowledge. But it must be noted that the emphasis is not on flight from need, but on a refuge in need, not upon a change in circumstances, but on a changed attitude to the circumstances, not on the affirmation that the saving action has taken effect, but on certainty with regard to an effect which is still to come and is still awaited. Nevertheless, the suspicion still lingers that this is a theology which only brings in God to satisfy a human need. But one must be cautious in advancing this objection. It would be a dangerous theology which was not orientated towards human need and therefore towards the aspect of necessity.

Of course everything here depends upon the proper understanding of what is absolutely necessary and therefore on the apprehension of what true faith and trust is. Only a superficial view can suppose that it is possible to escape the question of truth by approaching the matter from the point of view of human need. Luther gives offence by seeming to stand the relationship between faith and God upon its head: 'If faith and trust are right, then your God is right as well, and again, where the belief is false and wrong, then the right God is absent too.' But it must be pointed out that it is in purity of faith, that is, in the radical degree to which the situation of faith is maintained, that it can be seen whether God is taken seriously as God, or whether he is furtively avoided and replaced by idols of man's own making. In his lectures on the Epistle to the Romans Luther says of the love of God that it is exclusively directed towards the one God alone, and not towards his gifts. Thus its place is where there is nothing visible or accessible to experience, either inwardly or outwardly, in which one can place one's trust, or which one can love or fear; but it is drawn beyond everything else to the invisible and incomprehensible God, beyond experience, and hidden in the innermost darkness.⁷ Here, though still with borrowings from the language of mysticism, the meaning of the way in which faith and God belong together is clearly set out. It is no accident that the context of what is said of God is one in which there is only a hair's breadth distinction between it and every from of idolatry. To let God be God, that is to believe rightly, means not to make gods for oneself in any way, but above all to allow oneself to be deprived of deity and brought to nothing, so that one is hurled outside oneself and the whole creation into nothingness, and one is certain of having fallen into the hands of God.⁸ That faith and God belong together is the theology of the cross, a theology not based on human wishes, but upon the will of God.

2. We have spent some time in discussing the text from the 'Greater Catechism' with reference to our first guiding principle, 'God alone'. That God and faith belong together is in no sense contrary to the principle of 'God alone', but is what actually makes it possible. For only to faith is God alone of value, and God is God in that he desires nothing but faith. Thus the second guiding principle, 'by faith alone', is already implied in the first. But it must be evaluated on its own if we are to make any progress with the question, 'What is God?' For until we come to this principle, the answer is largely a negative one: God takes away the power of false gods as faith takes away the power of superstition. And just as faith is a trust which reaches out into the darkness, so God is the presence, affirmed in spite of every experience of his absence, of the one being who is worthy of faith, never disappoints, never fails, and deserves total reliance. But what kind of knowledge of God is implied by faith in the strict sense?

In Luther's longer series of lectures on the Epistle to the Galatians we read: 'See what faith is—something incomparable and of immeasurable power, that is, to give honour to God. It does not do something for God; but because it believes, faith accords wisdom, goodness and omnipotence to God, and imputes everything divine to him. Faith is the creator of deity, not in person, but in us. Apart from faith, God loses his righteousness, glory, riches, etc., and there is no majesty or deity where there is no faith. You see what great righteousness faith is … God demands only that I make him God. If he possesses his deity pure and unspotted, then he has everything that I can accord him. This is the wisdom beyond all wisdom, religion beyond all religion. This is what makes the highest majesty, which faith bestows upon God. That is why faith justifies; for it pays what it owes, and whoever does this is righteous.'⁹ This again is put in a very bold and paradoxical way. Yet is it not in fact paradoxical that man should be called to honour God, and to give him what God alone has of himself, that is, to give God what is divine? But what is called faith creates the divine in man, which man accords to God. The creative power of faith—Luther terms it, with unsurpassed boldness, creatrix divinitatis—means nothing other than that faith is not the work of man, but the work of God, or as Luther says in a play on words, not a facere Deo (something done for God) but facere Deum (making God). But this means nothing less than to let God act, to let God be God, to do justice to God through faith alone. If one takes God seriously, one cannot attain to God by an action, but through faith alone, or shall we say, by delighting in God. The only adequate way to speak of God is in praising him, not in the sense of a particular literary form, but as the basic definition of all proper speech about God.

Then why does Luther adopt such paradoxical turns of phrase? Not because he confuses delight in God with delight in paradox; but because to speak of God is to speak of something that happens, of the way in which God establishes himself as God, and finds faith. One cannot as it were first speak of God in himself, disregarding the actual situation of the way God is dishonoured, even in religion itself, and excluding the question of how God obtains his rights. In this world, in fact, God is humiliated and insulted, seeks his honour only by calling for faith, and desires to be honoured through faith alone. What is at issue is not the description of passive attributes, such as what God is in himself, what man is in himself, and how they are related. What is said of God is concerned with something that happens, of which what is said itself forms part. This is the key to the understanding of Luther' s work De servo arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will), which could equally be called De Deo. Because God is being spoken of, so must man be spoken of. For self-knowledge and the knowledge of God form a unity, and the reason for this is that they are both concerned with an inseparable association which consists of something that happens. To know God means to know what God can and does do, not his power and his potentialities, but his power as it is actually at work in everything that exists, an omnipotence that is active.¹⁰" But if man has to know, for the sake of his salvation and his certainty, what he is capable of with regard to his salvation, then he evidently knows neither what he is capable of, nor what God is, until he knows for certain that he can do nothing towards his salvation. And that very inability permits him to be certain of salvation, which is based upon the act of God alone. One can have no inkling of God, if one has not a clear understanding of the problem of the bondage of the will in matters of salvation. To engage in a dialogue with God on the basis of the will is godless. Thus it is necessary for salvation to be able to distinguish between the action of God and the action of man, not in order to weigh one against the other as cooperating forces, but to make a fundamental distinction between them. By contrast with man, God is an unlimited force, whereas by contrast with God, man cannot be considered as one who acts, however much action may be demanded from him in the sight of God towards the world. Man's understanding of himself in relation to God only does justice to God if man regards himself as one who has been made what he is, as one who is subject to God's will, has received all he has as a gift, and is therefore a creature, righteous not by works, but through faith alone.¹¹ Only when man lays claim to freedom of action before God is man radically enslaved; by understanding himself as the work of God, that is through faith, he becomes free, participating, as one who belongs to God, in the freedom of God.

3. We turn now to the question of what takes place in the conjunction of God and faith, how God can be honoured, and how faith can come about. The answer we receive from Luther is, through the word alone. This answer provokes numerous questions. We shall reduce them to three fundamental objections to the way Luther speaks of God, which must now be raised and considered as the conclusion of our study. Is not the word too little? How far does the course of history matter? What is the place of our fellow-men?

The first objection is, is the word not too little? 'Through the word alone' forms a strict parallel to 'by faith alone'.¹² In both these principles Luther is radically opposed to scholastic theology and Roman Catholic doctrine, which in fact allege here that 'the word alone' is 'too little', that a mere 'verbal revelation' is replacing a 'revelation of reality', to quote the slogans of modern controversial theology,¹³ and that mere faith takes the place of perfection through a real change in man. Thomas Aquinas based the precedence of love amongst the so-called theological virtues, faith, love and hope, on the assertion that, like hope, faith also implied a separation from its object, that is, from God, whereas love united one with the beloved.¹⁴ This shows with great clarity the difference between the denominations. By contrast to an understanding of God, the aim of which is the perfection of nature until it is supernatural, Luther's view is that in fact the overriding action which derives from God can take place in a way appropriate to God and to faith through the word alone. In this way the basis of salvation remains strictly outside man as a promise which is believed. Indeed, man himself is drawn out of himself towards the word of Christ. The word must guarantee that faith is extra nos; this is essential if What is said of God is to be certain. Luther says: 'Our theology is certain, for it places us outside ourselves.'¹⁵ The word makes it possible to distinguish between God and man and to maintain this distinction. To desire more than the word alone would result in having less. For what God gives to man for his salvation can be imparted essentially and effectively only through the word. 'One thing and that alone is needful for life, for righteousness and for Christian freedom. That is the holy word of God, the gospel of Christ … We should regard it as certain and irreversible: the soul can do without everything except the word of God, without which nothing at all is of any use to us. But who ever possesses the word is rich and needs nothing, for it is the word of life, of truth, of light, of peace, of righteousness, of salvation, of joy, of freedom, of wisdom, of power, of grace, of glory and of everything good, in an inestimable way … But since these promises of God are holy, true, righteous, free and peaceable words, and are full of pure goodness, it comes about that the soul which clings to them with firm faith is so united, or even absorbed by them, that it does not merely partake in them, but becomes sated and drunk with all their power … As the word is, so it makes the soul."¹⁶

The second question is, how far does the course of history matter? Luther's way of speaking of God can be suspected of implying a radical retreat into the inner life and spiritualization, which, if it does not abandon the relationship between God and the world, God and history and God and living reality, does not seem to take adequate account of them. One ought not to be too hasty in qualifying this impression, which is caused by the fact that what Luther says of God is concentrated to an extraordinary degree upon the conscience. 'Conscience', of course, does not mean what it means in the usual but questionable interpretation of the conscience as the essence of the normative contents of the consciousness and of the autonomous faculties of judgement, that is, the presence of the decisive norm and appeal within man himself. Rather, what Luther understands by 'conscience' is the reliance of man upon the word, in the sense that he is always, and not merely in some particular respect but in his very person, claimed, commanded, questioned, and subjected to judgement, so that in one way or another he is always a determined, listening and receiving conscience; either confused or arrogant in an imaginary freedom, which means his bondage to the powers of this world; or assured and comforted in obedient attention to God, which is true freedom with regard to the world. This understanding of the conscience is decisive for the understanding of what Luther says of God. For it makes clear that the sole aim of the apparent retreat into the inner life and spiritualization, is to locate what is said of God at the point where a universal event in the strictest sense takes place, and God and the world, and God and Satan, struggle with one another like two riders struggling to possess their mount.¹⁷ Thus the concentration on the conscience is a concentration upon the process in which the most powerful and most strictly opposed powers that exist are at work, a process which, precisely because it is centred upon the hidden heart of man, gives rise to the most powerful consequences in his outward and visible life.

It is therefore essential to Luther's way of speaking of God, concentrating as it does upon faith alone and the word alone, not to understand God as something which exists in a remote place, outside and beyond the world, and which has nothing to do with the everyday experience of the world. On the contrary: if the word is to be believed, and faith is to be brought about by the word, then God and the world must be thought of simultaneously and together in such a way that there can sometimes be a suspicion of pantheist or even atheist language. With an amazing freedom Luther subjected theological argument in naïve theistic terms to a ruthless criticism, condemning it as rationalism disguised as devotion. Thus he says of the conception of heaven: 'The deity does not come down from heaven, like someone from a mountain, but is in heaven and remains in heaven, but at the same time is upon earth and remains upon earth … Is there any need to discuss this at length? Surely the kingdom of heaven is upon earth. The angels are both in heaven and upon earth at once. Christians are both in the kingdom of God and upon earth, in the sense in which "on earth" is understood, as they say, mathematice or localiter … Ah, they speak childishly and foolishly about heaven, making a place for Christ up above in heaven, like the stork makes a nest upon a tree, and they do not know themselves what they are saying.'¹⁸ Or again, with regard to the concept of God's omnipresence: ' … as though God were a great and vast being who filled the world and extended beyond it, as when a sack is full of straw, and the straw sticks out at the top and the bottom.'¹⁹ Luther portrayed the omnipresence and omnipotence of God with such perception, that in the way he speaks of God it is impossible to ignore the reality of the world. 'Thus he [God] must himself be in every creature at its very heart and in every way, all about, through and through, above and below, before and behind, so that there can be nothing more present or more deep-rooted in all creatures than God himself with his power … Indeed, who knows what it is that is called God? He is above the body, above the mind, above everything that one can say, or hear or think: How can such a being at the same time be wholly and entirely present in every body, creature and being everywhere, and again be bound to be and able to be nowhere, outside and above every creature and being; for our faith and the scripture testify both things of God. Here reason must give up at once and say, "Alas, there is certainly no such thing, and there must be no such thing!'"²⁰ 'God is not an extended, long, broad, thick, high, or deep being … but a supernatural and inscrutable being, who at the same time is wholly and entirely in every grain of corn, and yet is in and above and outside every creature. Thus there is no need for any fence to be built round him … for a body is far too great for the deity, and many thousands of deities could be contained in it, and yet it is far too small, for not a single deity could find room in it. Nothing is so small that God is not smaller, and nothing is so large that God is not larger, nothing is so short that God is not shorter, nothing is so long that God is not longer, nothing is so wide that God is not wider, nothing is so narrow that God is not narrower, and so on; he is an ineffable being above and beyond everything that one can name or think.'²¹

This presence of God in the world, which goes far beyond the conventional alternative between transcendence and immanence, and which it shows to be a completely mistaken approach to the question, is also true of history. God's omnipotence is the power at work in everything, and without it nothing would exist and nothing would happen. The rigour with which Luther maintains this idea sometimes suggests the horrible conception that God is the motor in a gigantic machine which it would be impossible to stop, even if the men were cleared away from it and carried out to die, unless one blasphemously desired God to cease to be God.²² It is not Luther's intention to lose sight of the difficult problems that arise here. For the sake of God and of faith he does not with to conceal them nor to leave it to the blasphemers to stir them up.

For in truth, if God is seen in his naked majesty and encountered in his concealment, which is the same thing, and the attempt is made to understand him as God, God presents the same fearful countenance which reality ultimately displays if one encounters it without God's word and without faith, and tries to think about it. The result is unrelieved despair, idolatry or atheism. But these are not fundamentally different alternatives. Luther can do not more than warn against undertaking speculation about God in his majesty, in his concealment. It is necessary to speak of God from below, beginning in the depths with the fact that the word of God became flesh, became history, and gave the power to carry out the act of preaching; that is, the starting-point must be Jesus, the crucified.²⁴ Of course to turn away from the hidden God and to turn towards the revealed God does not mean that the concealment of God is no longer the concern of faith. For revelation itself is concealed beneath its contrary, beneath the cross.²⁵ Faith is only faith because it is exposed to the forces of temptation. Consequently, it is necessary to speak of the Deus absconditus, in order that the revealed God may be taken seriously as God in his revelation.²⁶

The last question, that of the place of our fellow-men in what is said of God, arises from the idea that the thought of Luther is preoccupied with a religious individualism which is concerned only with the blessedness of the individual. It is suggested that it is to this that the doctrine of justification owes its central place in Luther's theology. To answer this objection, it would be necessary to go on to consider Luther's ethics and his doctrine of the Church. We shall limit ourselves, however, to one fundamental point. Luther's ethics and his doctrine of the Church—in so far as one can use these academic classifications at all, since Luther always sees all aspects as they are involved with each other—are not as it were complementary to what he says about God, but can only be understood in their proper sense as ways of speaking about God. But it then becomes obvious, with regard to both points, how a concentration upon the word and faith which is apparently orientated entirely towards the individual also includes our fellow-men in its scope. The word which creates faith, the word of the gospel, deals with the law which accuses and slays, and therefore it deals with man under the pressure of his existence in the world, the decisive and determining aspect of which is his involvement with his fellow-men. The basic experience of man is that a demand is always being made upon him, and that he is constantly aware of having failed, and the claim which the gospel makes upon man is a response to this, a response to the voice of the law. Consequently, the expression 'in every need' in the 'Greater Catechism' is primarily exemplified in man's unfulfilled common humanity, the disappointments he has suffered and caused, and his inability to overcome hatred, to arouse trust, or to love creatively. It is the need brought about by his failure to be what he really ought to be as God's creature: the image of God who has shared our humanity. If the essence of the gospel is that God shares our humanity, then faith can do nothing other than be effective in love. Faith is really no less than the courage to love on the basis of love received in faith, the freedom to love on the basis of the liberating promise of love.

But on no account must the distinction between faith and love laid down here be obscured. Because, as Luther says, faith is the doer and love the deed,²⁷ everything depends upon the source of the doer's life. Consequently the relationship between faith and love corresponds to the relationship between doctrine and life. Life is usually given precedence over doctrine, but instead Luther gives the pre-eminence to doctrine, precisely for the sake of the life created and desired by God. Doctrine is heaven, life is the earth.²⁸ For doctrine, the word of God, is, to put it briefly, the bread of life.

Thus with regard to the Church, our humanity is not displayed in the first instance in the manifestations of the common life of the Church, but in the fundamental event which makes the Church into the Church, the word of faith, which takes place between one person and another, and reveals its divinity by making men human. The community of the Church, which is based upon what takes place in the word, is an indication that true community ultimately lives entirely by the word and by faith. For what takes place in the true word is love. Thus the word of God, by making faith possible, also makes love possible; for—this is the source and the conclusion of all that is said about God—God is love, or as Luther, who was horrified at Erasmus's frigid, ice-cold way of speaking about God,²⁹ said with the full assurance of ultimate certainty: 'A glowing furnace full of love'.³⁰

Works Cited

References to the Weimar Edition of Luther's works (Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke D. Martin Luthers, Weimar, 1883 ff.) are given only by volume, page and line number. References to the selected edition published in Bonn, to the Weimar editions of the German Bible, Luther's Table Talk and his correspondence, and to the English translation of a selection of Luther's works by Bertram Lee Woolf are given as below. The year of each quotation is given in parentheses, and in the case of the letters, the exact date.

Bonn Ed. Lathers Werke in Auswahl, ed. by O. Clemen.

WA, Br Kritische Gesamtausgabe, etc. (Briefwechsel), Weimar Ed. (Correspondence).

Notes

¹Fröhliche Wissenschaft, p. 125.

² 18; 603, 10–12. 22–24. 28 f. 605, 32–34 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 97, 31–33. 98, 6–9. 13–15. 100, 31–33.

³ WA, Br 1; 17, No. 5, 43 f. (17.3.1509). Cf. above, pp. 76 f.

⁴ 30, 1; 132, 32–133, 8 (1529); Bonn Ed. 4; 4, 21–32.

⁵Feuerbachs Sämtliche Werke, ed. by W. Bolin, and Fr. Jodl, VII (1903), 311.

⁶ K. Barth, 'Ludwig Feuerbach' (1926). In: K. Barth, Die Theologie und die Kirche, 1928, 212–239, esp. 230 f.

⁷ 56; 306, 26–307, 15 (1515/16); Bonn Ed. (2nd Ed.) 5; 250, 10–30.

⁸ 5; 167, 38–168, 7 (1519/21).

⁹ 40, 1; 360, 2–361, 1 (1531).

¹⁰ 18; 718, 28–31 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 214, 11–14.

¹¹ 18; 614, 1–26 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 106, 25–107, 15.

¹² E.g. 6; 516, 30–32 (1520); Bonn Ed. 1; 448, 8–11.

¹³ W. H. van de Pol, Das reformatorische Christentum im phänomenologischer Betrachtung, 1956, 259 ff. Cf. my article 'Worthafte und sakramentale Existenz. Ein Beitrag zum Unterschied zwischen den Konfessionen', in Im Lichte der Reformation. Jahrbuch des Evangelischen Bundes VI, 1963, 5–29, esp. 13 ff. Reprinted in my book Wort Gottes und Tradition. Studien zu einer Hermeneutik der Konfessionen, 1964, 197–216; an English translation appears under the title 'Word and Sacrament' in The Word of God and Tradition, Collins, London, and Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1968, 206–224.

¹⁴ S. th. 1, II q. 66 a. 6.

¹⁵ 40, 1; 589, 8 (1531). Cf. above, p. 174.

¹⁶ 7; 50, 33–51, 3. 53, 15–18. 26 f. (1520).

¹⁷ 18; 635, 17–22 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 126, 23–28. Cf. above pp. 222 f.

¹⁸ 26; 421, 16–422, 10 (1528); Bonn Ed. 3; 445, 32–446, 5.

¹⁹ 26; 339, 27–29 (1528); Bonn Ed. 3; 404, 20–22.

²⁰ 23; 135, 3–6, 137, 25–31 (1527).

²¹ 26; 339, 33–340, 2 (1528); Bonn Ed. 3; 404, 26–38.

²² 18; 712, 19–24 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 207, 26–32.…

²⁴ 18; 689, 18–25 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 182, 8–17.

²⁵ E.g. 18; 633, 7–23 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 124, 16–37.

²⁶ 18; 685, 3–686, 13 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 177, 12–178, 25.

²⁷ 17, 2; 98, 25 (1525). Cf. above p. 159.

²⁸ 40, 2; 51, 8 f. (1531). Cf. above pp. 172.

²⁹ 18; 611, 5 (1525); Bonn Ed. 3; 104, 27 f.

³⁰ 36; 425, 13 (1532).