When I picked the text, I had forgotten (maybe I should have payed more attention in Christian Ethics) that "Freedom of a Christian" is the major focus for the "Finnish school" of Luther interpretation. This "school," which now has adherents from theologians like Robert Jenson, finds a more "Catholic" (specifically more "Orthodox") Luther through similarities between his discussion of union with Christ and the idea of "theosis" or divinization in Eastern Orthodox theology.
From my reading, Luther's work here describes a "union" or "mystical marriage" between the believer and Jesus Christ that makes the believer a sharer in Christ's nature and benefits. Faith in the preached word of the Gospel makes this union possible, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This union not only confers justification before God, but it also - importantly for the "Finnish School" and other recent Lutherans - begins a process of sanctification and "divinization" through which the believer is conformed to Jesus Christ.
What follows is a modification of some introductory words I provided to my students on this text and on this topic:
Luther’s message in this reading is that this freedom in Jesus Christ is freedom for Christians to more deeply love their neighbors in more radical ways. “A Christian person is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian person is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.” This phrase is the outline of the entire work. Luther’s Freedom of a Christian is a meditation on “freedom” in the Bible, along with some rigorous theological thinking on faith and love and the behavior of Christians in the World.
Freedom of a Christian is roughly in two parts. The first part talks about faith and law and Gospel in a way that those who know about Luther will not find surprising. But the second half of "Freedom of a Christian" has to do with what Luther calls the “outward man,” and here we have some of the thoughts that set Luther in this text apart from some caricatures. This second half relates to where Luther says that a Christian is “the most dutiful subject of all, and servant to every one.” How could this not contradict the first part, about the Christian’s freedom from works in faith? Luther’s explanation, as you will see, is that good works naturally follow from faith. Although Luther stresses in the first part that good works cannot justify human beings before God, he says in the second part that a faith that does not overflow into good works is not a real faith. The freedom the Christian has is freedom thereby to spend their lives in service to God and to their neighbors.
This freedom in service, though, is not merely about being a good person, but for Luther it comes about through a mystical union with Jesus Christ that happens when the believer has faith. The love or service we give our neighbors is only possible through our souls being united to Jesus Christ through faith. Luther says that Christians become a “sort of Christ” through faith, and that in imitating Jesus through their care for one another, Christians become a community where Christ is in all. Luther is able to put this point very elegantly in saying, “[we ought] freely to help our neighbor by our body and works, and each should become to other a sort of Christ, so that we may be mutually Christs, and that the same Christ may be in all of us; that is, that we may be truly Christians.”
So, not having read the text in question, and from only reading your explanation very quickly, I do not think the reconciliation attempted by Luther works. Furthermore, as a Catholic, the explanation looks very much to me like the Protestant distinction between "true" and "false" faith that I have heard for many years and which I strongly reject. So, although I am somewhat impressed by what you call the Catholic and Orthodox aspects of this work, particularly the idea that the believer is a sharer in the benefits of the mystical marriage between Christ and the Church (not something that I would have expected from Luther, as I understand him), the idea that the "true" believer will always have works inevitablly leads to the asking the existential question "Do I have true faith or not?" And, while this can be a worthwhile question if it is thought of in terms of degree ("Do I have the level of faith that I should?"), I object to this "all or nothing" kind of thinking on this point precisely because I think it both overburdens faith and de-centers the importance of charity in salvation (as does the doctrine of sola fide as a whole) and instead places many believers in a strange psychological state where, instead of seeking to deepen their faith relationship with Christ through acts of self-giving love, they ultimately view all works as irrelevant because what they need is "true faith," because that is all that really matters... but how can they ever really know if they have "true" faith (which would lead to this mystical marriage and the unnecessary works) or only false faith (which apparently feels very much the same but does not save and yet which could apparently still look the same as true faith if they wanted to appear saved by doing irrelevant works).
ReplyDeleteMaybe I am misreading it, or bringing to much prejudice to my cursory examination of it, but I think sola fide remains the problem here and, while the Catholic-Orthodox stuff genuinely seems like good stuff, I do not think it ultimately can fit with that view.
Peace in Christ,
Matt Minix
I wish I had more time to respond other than saying I think a fair reading of "On the Freedom of a Christian" shows that Luther addresses some of the concerns you have.
ReplyDeleteLuther's understanding of how "faith" connects the believer and God, in terms of "three graces" Luther outlines, seems like it has a lot of similarities to Aquinas on "Charity."
Also the language of "true and false faith" is more from me/my summary for class than Luther.
Thank you so much for this discussion. I am a Lutheran by heritage and found that often the "works" were de-emphasized to avoid confusion. But I totally see how the Catholic approach is the other side of the circle. The faith generates the works which in turn re-generates the faith. We do all indeed need each other to form the completeness of truth. Please keep the dialogue going. There seem to be so few exercises in ecumenism in my view.
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