The Protestant tendency in America has been to preserve the importance of preaching, Bible-reading, the sacraments (or ordinances), and Christian fellowship, but to interpret these as occasions for human acts of appropriation. That God saves in baptism, that God gives himself in the Supper, that God announces his Word through the sermon, that God is the best interpreter of his written Word”these Lutheran convictions are all but lost in the face of American confidence in human capacity. Finally, what Lutherans can offer Americans is the voice of Luther, a voice of unusual importance in Christian history, not because of who Luther was and not because of the organizations that carry on his name. The voice of Luther is important because in it we hear uncommon resonances with the voice of God. Luther is no more a saint than the least of all believers, no more an oracle than the most ordinary person who tries faithfully to proclaim the word of God. But, for whatever reason, in the effable wisdom of God the speech of Martin Luther rang clear where others merely mumbled. That speech may have grown stale in Stockholm, Oslo, Hamburg, Munich, and Bonn. It evidently retains a little power in Leipzig and east of the Brandenburg Gate. Its power has yet to be tapped in America as a whole. And what does that voice say? It says what especially Americans need to hear: ”It says: “That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened . . . . He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross . . . . A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” ”It says: “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, delivered me and freed me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with silver and gold but with his holy and precious blood and with his innocent sufferings and death, in order that I may be his . . . .” ”It says that Christians are always both justified and sinners. ”It says, in Luther’s last written words, “We are beggars, and that’s the truth.” - Mark Noll - Lutheran Difference
Posted on: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 17:15:08 +0000
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