The Forgotten Luther III

Reclaiming a Vision of Global Community

Paul A. Wee

• Publisher: Broadleaf Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781506466910
• eBook ISBN: 9781506466927
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This study book, the third in the?Forgotten Luther?series, invites congregations, with the help of five prominent church leaders and Luther scholars, to consider the new shape of global mission in today's world.

Against the growing disparity in wealth and the rising tide of economic refugees throughout the world, this book reflects on Luther's?largely forgotten?social and economic reforms (to overcome poverty, lack of health care, illiteracy, ?and old-age insecurity) that flowed from the central doctrine of justification by grace through faith. The book is also a call for informed engagement with partner churches in a critical area of ministry that is frequently neglected.?

?This study book draws? global ?implications from Luther's reforms and from the theology that shaped them. It is informed by ways in which churches in the Global South?have?moved beyond world-denying forms of pietism to address the? systemic ?causes of hunger, poverty, and injustice. It is addressed to the whole church at a critical time in history as vast threats to the natural world converge with acute economic hardship for hundreds of millions of people.?

Accompanied by videos of lectures and interviews, this study is designed to provide guidance for congregations who want to be actively engaged in the global mission of the church, including ways in which they can both accompany others and be accompanied? by? others on a common journey.?

1.

The Immigrant Luther

Domestic Servant or Prophet of Social Justice?

Carter Lindberg

The recently concluded European “decade of the Reformation” put Martin Luther on the global stage. Yet Luther remains an immigrant in the United States. We’ll return to this in a moment, but first, a few notes on the global Luther.

The globalization of Luther was a marketing success of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation that ranged from tourism and exhibitions to Playmobil Luthers and other kitsch. Such commercial “Luther lite,” however, conveniently ignores his excoriation of unjust economic realities, prophetic critiques of political overreach, and creative moves for social justice.1

Of course, almost from the outset of Luther’s career, he became a mass media sensation thanks to his linguistic skills, the printing press, and the illustrative genius of his artist friend Lucas Cranach.2 Luther’s Latin writings gained a broad learned audience, but Luther chose also to write in German “for the laity,” and that popular move was imitated in vernacular translations throughout and beyond Europe. Luther’s emphasis on the vernacular is an important step toward global Christianity, a point highlighted by the late scholar of African Christianity Lamin Sanneh: “Christianity is a translated religion without a revealed language. . . . Without translation there would be no Christianity or Christians. Translation is the church’s birthmark as well as its missionary benchmark: the church would be unrecognizable or unsustainable without it.”3 So, for example, Luther’s colleague Philip Melanchthon translated the Augsburg Confession into Greek and sent it to Patriarch Jeremias of the Greek Orthodox Church, and Luther was visited by an Ethiopian Christian, Michael the Deacon.4 In our time, the “globalization” of Luther is manifest in translations of his writings into every major world language. Scholarly societies for Luther studies exist throughout the world, and scholars from every continent participate in the International Congress for Luther Research events.

Does any of this extensive global study of Luther and the Reformation filter down to Lutheran theological education, let alone parishes? I suspect very little. Many Lutherans, like most Americans, are amnesiacs with regard to origins and how we got this way. A terrible thing about amnesia is loss of identity. Without knowing who we are, we are prone to accept popular reconstructions of our identity, such as Michael Massing erroneously proposes in his recent book Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, which presents Luther as a zealot pioneering the American Evangelical Right.5

If we forget how radical Luther’s proclamation of the gospel really is, we are susceptible to such value judgments. I want to emphasize this because our culture’s ideology of self-justification is even more “medieval” than Luther’s context. Our lives are imbued with the dogma of competition and a piety of achievement. Wolfgang Greive writes, “It is significant that the modern experience of works righteousness is uninterrupted. Nurture and forgiveness are foreign words; constant [self-]justification finds no grace. This is the origin of the ‘sacrament of work,’ the ‘performance cult,’ the ‘scandal of unemployment’ and the spreading feeling ‘Am I still needed.’”6 We measure our worth by our success in self-actualization. Sure, we Lutherans still talk a lot about “grace alone,” but we tend to live by the axiom “There’s no free lunch.” Well, of course, there is; it’s called the Lord’s Supper. There are no ifs, ands, or buts here in the gospel. As Luther affirmed, you are named in God’s last will and testament; God has died, so God’s will is in effect. You receive the inheritance!7 Luther emphasizes the good news of the “happy exchange” of Christ’s righteousness with your sin: “Lord, Jesus, you are my righteousness, just as I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given to me what is yours.” The corollary is this: “Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one. For Christ dwells only in sinners.”8

In short, the only prerequisite to God’s grace is sin, and we all qualify! As Luther wrote to Melanchthon, “If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world.”9 A problem for our culture, of course, is that sin has become a fiction, but “without Luther’s understanding of sin, theology deteriorates into moralism.”10 That’s why Luther’s definition of theology is so important: “The proper subject of theology is man guilty of sin and condemned, and God the Justifier and Savior of man the sinner. Whatever is asked or discussed in theology outside this subject, is error and poison.”11

As real sinners, we can rejoice that salvation is received, not achieved! There are no closed gates to the city of God! That “Mighty Fortress” is wide open—the good news for all of us pilgrims and strangers in a foreign land is that there are no rivers to swim, no walls to climb, no documents to show in order to enter the kingdom. No matter what your color, origin, or language, you are accepted. In the words of Eric Gritsch and Robert Jenson, “The gospel tolerates no conditions. It is itself unconditional promise. . . . This is the first and fundamental Lutheran proposal of dogma. When it is practiced consistently, the Lutheran Reformation has succeeded, whatever else may happen.”12 The gospel’s unconditional promise delivers us from what Luther calls the “monster of uncertainty,” that introspection of both medieval and modern piety that is constantly feeling our spiritual pulses to see if we are acceptable to God—or, more likely, to our culture and its idols. So Luther asserts, “This is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive.”13

The ramifications of this gospel were almost immediately spelled out in new social-economic programs that moved beyond the self-aggrandizement of medieval charity and the higher hedonism of modern philanthropy to communal tax-supported institutions foreshadowing the modern socialism of Germany and the Nordic countries. The gospel turns the world upside down: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. It reflects Mary’s song that the rich and powerful shall be overturned, the song that became the basis for Luther’s advice to his prince.14 Luther placed the common good over personal gain and advocated for and helped create legislation for government programs for universal education, support of the unemployed and underemployed, and universal affordable health care.15 The gospel, in short, is provocative—it calls forth, it incites, it challenges; it also provokes, irritates, and angers. It inspires service to the local and global neighbor and challenges those who would withhold or privatize such service. Indeed, the gospel is so provocative that our usual gambit is to domesticate the messenger.

The history of the interpretation of Luther reveals the same move to domesticate the messenger and thus the message as that which replaces the crucified Christ with a sweet, otherworldly Jesus and discipleship with a prosperity gospel. Luther is domesticated into the pantheon of great men of history. Luther is the German Hercules; the hero of the German people; and insofar as he comes to America, the ideal German American and, according to Massing, the stimulus for the Second Great Awakening and American individualism.16 In 1884, a year after the four hundredth anniversary of Luther’s birth, a replica of the Worms, Germany, statue of Luther erected before Memorial Lutheran Church in Washington, DC, “was supposed to represent the best qualities of the Teutonic character [faith in progress and liberty], shared by Americans and Germans.” And in 1936, a similar Luther statue erected in Baltimore “was meant as a demonstration of German national pride, of pride renewed after the disaster of 1917/18. During the ceremony, the persecution of those disciples of Luther in Germany who were not ready to follow Hitler’s commands, was deliberately ignored.”17

We like to make important figures in our image. So Luther becomes t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: “A New Heaven and a New Earth”
• 1. The Immigrant Luther: Domestic Servant or Prophet of Social Justice?
• 2. Reclaiming a Vision of Global Community
• 3. Reclaiming the Gospel Legacy: Voices from the Global South
• 4. “And Though This World with Devils Filled”: Reshaping the World in Hope
• 5. Polarization in Our Parishes, Societies, and World Today: Can Luther Help?
• 6. When Politics Fails and Disappoints: Citizenship Formation and the Role of the Church
• 7. Martin Luther for the Life of the Church
• Contributors