Luther's Outlaw God

Sacraments and God's Attack on the Promise

Steven D. Paulson, Steven D. Paulson

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781506469249
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506469256
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Denominaciones cristianas

In this third of three volumes addressing Luther's outlaw God, Steven D. Paulson says that readers will embark on the deepest, hardest, and most glorious of all God's ways of hiding: God hiding a third time in the preached word or sacraments. The third time is the charm, not because humans finally awaken and "get" the essence of God. God's preached word is not an act of human understanding. It is a purely passive experience of receiving God wholly and completely in the absolving word that comes through the lowliest means of a sinful preacher. Not only does this word come through a creature to a creature, but through a sinner to a sinner.

The difficulty with grasping all of this is that God works entirely outside his divine law--an outlaw God. Luther is the one who saw this more clearly than any other, because it happened to him just this way. The preacher got a preacher, and the sacraments that had once been organized by a legal scheme were set free to reveal and bestow God in the most hidden place of all. How much more hidden could God be than in water, bread, wine, and the mouth of a preacher?

Paulson's grasp of historical, theological, and hermeneutical scholarship is on full display in this volume, but always in service of proclamation of the gospel. Readers and proclaimers: prepare to be provoked, enlightened, and inspired.

1

Author and Subject Index

95 Theses, 184, 185

a posteriori, 240

a priori, 120, 132, 227, 240

Abel, 311

Abimelech, 27, 207, 228–34, 236, 238, 240–42, 311

Abraham, 6, 25, 28–29, 32, 52, 118, 137, 204, 232, 247, 249–68, 272–73, 281–84, 303, 307, 323, 332, 339, 341, 344, 353–59, 369, 394–95

absolute, 15, 19, 22–24, 31, 37, 50, 57, 138, 216, 251, 380–82; absolution, 13, 52, 67, 197, 247, 268n38, 328, 347, 370–75, 385–87; certainty, 29, 38, 51, 91, 94–97, 102, 121, 136, 281n11; dependence, 308; God, 78, 80, 98–99, 103–9, 124, 134, 200, 208, 236, 243, 278, 298, 300, 316, 352, 357–63, 366, 389; hiddenness, 23; law, 22, 24, 33, 156, 191n21, 204, 397; majesty, 6, 38, 188, 212, 228; necessity, 234n25; nothing, 171; and ordained, 56, 301, 312; order, 42; power, 5, 38; promise, 215; and relative, 32; silence, 89, 239, 268, 354, 370; sublime, 311; uncertainty, 238, 252, 260; will, 64, 117, 138, 226, 299, 319n1, 381; word, 101, 215; worship, 353–56

absolution, 9–19, 24, 30, 42n8, 43, 46–47, 50–52, 76–80, 85–86, 97, 103–9, 164–65, 172–73, 180, 182, 184–87, 190n20, 197, 204, 240, 243, 247, 268, 283, 291–92, 299, 303–4, 312, 316, 328, 336, 340; absolute absolution, 52; anfechtung of, 62–67, 272; a most beautiful, 31–39, 347–97

abstraction, 113, 115, 124, 127, 133, 155, 217, 227, 247, 267, 329

acceptance, 224, 264, 302, 352

accident, accidental, 12, 100, 115–16, 174, 240, 242, 380–81

accidents of history, 272, 380

Achilles of the flies, 22, 152

active life, 249–50

actuality, 25, 82, 135, 137, 139–45, 208, 210–11, 215, 366

Adam, 3, 6–8, 12, 32, 44, 154, 166, 203, 208, 290, 332–34, 338, 342, 349–53, 360

adoration, 354

Aeneid, 52

alienation, 215, 224, 280

allegorical, allegory, 165n12, 166–67, 171

amazing transference of primogeniture, 21, 127, 137, 142, 148, 310–11

Anabaptists, 343

analogia entis, analogia relationis, 123–24

analogical, analogy, 46, 123–24, 135, 169–71, 309, 377–79, 380

Anfechtung, 19, 30, 57–59, 88, 124, 204, 249, 252, 282, 316, 344, 369; of absolution, 62–69, 72; of love, 62–69, 272

angel(s), 57, 144, 147, 159, 162, 261–64, 278, 284–93, 297, 303, 304–10, 216, 342–43, 352, 392

animism, 7, 166

annhilatio dei, 352

Anselm of Canterbury, 23, 59, 77, 131, 163, 199n34, 278, 312

anthropocentric, anthropological, anthropology, 39, 64, 169, 251, 256n22, 260

anthropomorphism, Anthropomorphite(s), 7, 22–23, 45, 151, 163–75, 190n20, 195, 332, 361, 363

Antwerp Christians, 247–48

Apollinarius, 280n11

apophasis, apophatic(s), 17, 48, 109, 170–71, 187, 209, 271, 353, 363

Aquinas, Thomas, 12, 28, 56, 59, 66, 123, 164, 198, 203, 245, 256n22, 257, 260, 312

Areopagus, 303

Arians, 327

Aristotelians, Aristotle, 7, 28, 59, 72, 83, 137, 140, 167, 171, 212, 245–46, 259, 278n5, 281n11, 282, 299, 365

ark, 161–62, 169–72

assensus, assent, 20–21, 53n24, 113, 121–22, 124, 226

assurance, 27–28, 75–76, 93, 112–13, 118–21, 125–26, 129, 131–32, 149, 160–61, 169, 174–75, 186, 192, 203, 224–29, 238, 243, 259, 269–70, 284, 287, 324, 330, 339, 355–56, 385–86, 393

Assyrians, 287

astonishing duel, 19–20, 103

atheism, 115, 119–21, 128, 132, 287

attacked, 19, 28, 87, 97, 103–4, 108, 148, 241, 250–53, 269, 283–84, 286, 295, 396

attrition, 184–85, 198, 302, 375, 388

Augustine, Augustinian, 1, 8, 23, 64, 83, 116, 121, 159, 161, 180, 209, 234, 297, 306, 311, 313, 325, 328n13, 342

Auschwitz, 17, 43, 48, 54, 85

authority, 5–8, 53, 56, 72, 89, 170, 180, 187, 232, 234, 277n5, 354, 359, 392

autonomy, 61, 211, 213, 216

Azusa, 165

Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 186, 193n22, 193n23, 198n32, 256n20

Babylonians, 287

baptism, baptize, baptized, 11–12, 24–27, 107, 115, 143, 145, 148, 155, 160, 165, 168, 173, 187–88, 190n20, 192–205, 219, 240–43, 251, 300–306, 317, 330, 335–36, 340–43, 349, 351–52

Barth, Karl, 20, 24–27, 111–15, 118–24, 129, 130, 135–36, 178–83, 203, 210, 218, 220n14, 222, 301, 322, 327, 342, 365–66

Bayer, Oswald, 50n24, 185n12, 371n23

beatific vision, 49, 62, 271–72, 278n5, 290, 308, 315–17, 336

beautiful absolution. See absolution

beauty, 38, 48n21, 87, 131, 183, 224, 271, 290, 296n35, 347, 388

Beckett, Samuel, 31, 320

Beneplaciti, 22, 151–52, 154, 159–60, 173

Benjamin, 384–88, 392

Bernard of Clairvaux, 80, 361

below, 11, 18–19, 26, 46, 79, 89–91, 159, 196, 200, 225, 260, 274, 335, 337, 349, 374

bestowed, 24, 30, 143, 170, 173, 188, 261, 292, 297, 310, 333–35, 337, 339, 341, 343, 345, 364

Bethel, 297–98

Biel, Gabriel, 53, 56, 59, 84, 237, 247

blame, 53–59, 64–68, 80, 158, 205, 226, 270, 276, 278

blessing, 104, 138–46,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• LQB
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Introduction
• God, Silent and in Words
• Graspable God
• Dangerous Luther: God Opposes God
• Masks and Christ
• God Hiding in a Sermon
• The Only Cure
• Abraham’s Truly Patriarchal Trial: God’s Own Contradiction
• The Three Lights: Nature, Grace, and Glory
• Trinity and Suffering
• A Most Beautiful Absolution
• Author and Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Lutheran Quarterly Books