Engaging Luther

A (New) Theological Assessment

Olli-Pekka Vainio, Vainio

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781606088180
  9781498212021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621893240
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The Reformer Martin Luther is the source of endless fascination and dispute. Not only his antagonists but also his supporters have created a host of representations of his thought. On the one hand, Catholic and other similar voices have accused Luther of being the major agent in the birth of modern secularism. On the other hand, Lutherans themselves are divided on the meaning of Reformation. In view of all these interpretations and dismissals of Luther and the Lutheran Reformation, it requires a certain boldness to claim that Luther's theology is intellectually fascinating and contains exceptional resources. This is precisely what the present volume claims. The studies collected in this volume aim at showing in which sense Luther remains a fully Catholic and genuinely Augustinian theologian who is not so much a forerunner of problematic modernity as a representative of classical Christianity. At the same time, Luther's theology contains ideas that can be made fruitful in dialogue with currents like communitarianism or Radical Orthodoxy. The volume consists of articles written by scholars affiliated with the project known as "the New Finnish Interpretation of Luther." The topics include Luther's theological anthropology, Trinity, christology, sacraments, faith, theology of the cross, the Virgin Mary, sexuality, music, and the spiritual reading of the Holy Scriptures.

1

Finnish Luther Studies

A Story and a Program

Risto Saarinen

Martin Luther is a figure of world historical proportions, but today Luther and Lutheranism are often considered as parochial phenomena in world Christianity. Generally Luther’s thought and impact are closely connected with the emergence of German language and cultural practices; this connection has not enhanced the global popularity of Lutheranism. Theological studies of Luther have remained predominantly German ventures, although prominent exceptions, like Roland Bainton and Heiko Oberman, can be named.

If we look at today’s theological schools and fashionable discussion topics in the English-speaking world, Luther is either absent or his views are regarded as problematic. Communitarians, following Alasdair MacIntyre, tend to regard the Reformation as the beginning of problematic modernity.1 The negative attitude towards Luther and the Reformation is even stronger in Radical Orthodoxy since, for John Milbank, Luther exemplifies the kind of nominalism which follows Duns Scotus and William Ockham and thus deviates from true Augustinianism.2 Benedict XVI has recently stated that Luther preferred a subjective understanding of faith which differs from the Catholic concept thereof.3

Luther is rejected by the adherents of patristic nostalgia, but he fares no better among liberal postmoderns. Luther was a white male university professor who had anti-Semitic leanings, rejected Copernicus’s astronomy, and showed complicity with the worldly rulers. Some Luther scholars have argued that the Wittenberg reformer at least had Kierkegaardian or existential-philosophical ideas, but Kierkegaard himself denied this and stated that Luther was not capable of existential dialectics.4

Although Luther’s thought still can play a positive role in some prominent social philosophies, these have not inspired much theological reflection. Charles Taylor’s political philosophy is a good example of the common dismissal of Luther in this regard. In his Sources of the Self Taylor argues that the Reformers initiated “the entire modern development of the affirmation of ordinary life.”5 This is in many ways true and valuable, but at the same time the statement seems to confirm a certain dullness of the Reformation: it legitimized the middle-class lifestyle with its orientation towards family and consumerism. In A Secular Age Taylor links the Reformation with the “disenchantment” that took place in early modernity; the Reformation led to the “new ‘police state’ which undertakes to organize the lives of its citizens in rational ways.”6 In this manner the Reformation was not so much an exciting theological project as a forerunner of modern secularization.

In view of all these dismissals of Luther and the Lutheran Reform-ation one needs certain boldness in claiming that Luther’s theology is intellectually fascinating and contains exceptional resources. This is precisely what the present volume claims. The studies collected in this volume aim at showing in which sense Luther remains a fully Catholic and genuinely Augustinian theologian who is not so much a forerunner of problematic modernity as a representative of classical Christianity. At the same time, Luther’s theology contains ideas that can be made fruitful in dialogue with currents like communitarianism or Radical Orthodoxy. Luther certainly has his faults and dark sides, but many of the accusations connected with his name are more due to the distorted picture given by biased research.

In order to understand the claims that unite the contributors of this volume, one first needs to outline the “story” behind the new wave of Finnish Luther research. Obviously, the following narrative cannot legitimize the claims made in individual contributions, but it can make visible why and in what sense we want to liberate ourselves from much of the earlier research and why we want to connect Luther and the Reformation so closely with the patristic and medieval periods. The story also serves as a background to the theological “program” outlined in the second part of my essay. Although we have not developed our theological program in detail, our critics have repeatedly pointed out that a certain program is implied behind our historical studies. I believe that the critics are right on this point: we do have a program but we also have to work it out in more detail. The second part is my own attempt to outline such a theological program.

The Story

The study of the Reformation has seldom been a theologically neutral venture for the Protestant churches. Confessionally committed scholars of Luther have traditionally regarded that a merely historical understanding of the Reformation is not sufficient. In addition to this, one should provide a theological legitimation of the constitutive ideas of the period. In European theology, this has traditionally meant that the Lutheran or the broader Protestant identity needs to be normatively defined so that it remains sufficiently distinctive from the Roman Catholic Church. If Catholicism is perceived as “medieval,” Protestantism is seen as “modern”; if Catholicism is defined by its “hierarchy,” Protestantism defends “democracy.”

The confessional writings of the Reformation period, as well as the decisions of the Council of Trent, paved this way of doing theology already in the sixteenth century. The Lutheran Confessions outline not only the valid doctrine, but also the wrong opinions and practices of the opponents. The doctrinal condemnations of the Council of Trent proceed in a similar manner. Over the centuries, these texts became the normative source of information regarding the other part of conflict. For this reason, it does not always help if group B states: “this is not how we teach,” when the normative text of group A states that this is indeed the way B teaches. One hermeneutical problem of both the Protestant confessions and the decisions of the Council of Trent is, therefore, that they define the doctrines of both insiders and outsiders, irrespective of whether the outsiders approve of this definition.7

Some cracks in the confessional walls of the Reformation can be found in Anglicanism, which appreciates its Catholic heritage in ways that deviate from Continental European Protestantism. The Nordic Lutheranism of Sweden and Finland also exemplifies an ecclesiastical tradition which understands itself in terms of “Evangelical Catholicity.”8 In the Reformation, Sweden and Finland took over the Lutheran Confessions but preserved historical episcopacy and medieval dioceses. For centuries, they nurtured a Lutheran monoculture in the traditional dioceses.

While the Church of Sweden has, during the twentieth century, moved towards an ecumenical understanding of the ecclesial communion, the Finns have tended to focus on the theological resources of Lutheranism. A new and important period in this regard was initiated when ecumenically-minded Roman Catholic scholars started to study Luther in the 1960s. In the writings of Erwin Iserloh, Peter Manns, and Otto Hermann Pesch, Luther appears for the first time as a figure who in many respects continued the Catholic teachings of the Church and opposed a late medieval Catholicism which was no longer itself fully Catholic because it was tainted by questionable practices and such new currents as Ockhamism.9

When Tuomo Mannermaa, Professor at the Faculty of Theology in Helsinki, initiated his study project on Luther in the early 1980s, he created close contacts with the Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany, of which Peter Manns was director. A generation of young Finnish theologians, many of whom are contributors in the present book, were supervised in Luther’s Augustinian and Catholic background by Manns, while Mannermaa worked with them on Luther as an ecumenical theologian. Mannermaa also participated in the ecumenical dialogue between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Russian Orthodox Church. In this dialogue already in 1977 he presented his thesis that the Lutheran view of “Christ present in faith” offers a theological counterpoint and parallel to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis or deification.10

This thesis has become the most often discussed and contested point of Finnish Luther research. We shall return to it below, but need to state already here that the thesis belongs to a broader framework of which the dialogue with Eastern Orthodoxy is only an aspect. Mannermaa’s program, as it can be read from his other studies of contemporary theology11 is critical of several features of modern Protestantism. In his view, the modern period has ofte...

Table of contents

• Engaging Luther
• Preface
• 1 Finnish Luther Studies
• 2 The Human Being
• 3 Christ
• 4 Trinity
• 5 Baptism
• 6 Eucharist
• 7 Faith
• 8 Theology of the Cross
• 9 The Virgin Mary
• 10 Sex
• 11 Music
• 12 Luther as a Reader of the Holy Scripture
• Bibliography
• Subject Index