Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Faith and Works Inseparable
First Things carried a long discussion of a bunch of non-Lutherans discussing Luther:
But I digress. Here's what I really wanted to talk about:
What we can say without fear of contradiction is that the two are inextricably woven together. How and preeminence and what does what we will never know, but they walk hand in hand.
I wonder what the world would look like, and especially the Protestant world, if rather than focus so much on the nature of the relationship, we instead focus simply on the fact that there is a relationship and that the bond between the two is unbreakable - regardless of the nature of the bond?
discussion faith preaching works
The question is relevant, I think, as Luther is often more talked about by Christians than actually read. And when he is read, dabblers tend to stick to works like The Bondage of the Will, Luther’s reactionary tirade against Erasmus. While responses like The Bondage form an important part of Luther’s corpus, they’re hardly the only part. Readers who restrict themselves to such works are in danger of mistaking Luther’s negative hyperbole as if it were a fair representation of all his theology; one must also read the works in which he puts forth his ideas in a positive, rather than reactionary, way.That's true for any writer with a large body of work. What is, I think, more important is that we need to read original source materials. Everybody reads ABOUT Luther and Augustine and Calvin, but who actually reads Luther and Augustine and Calvin? I am honestly growing to think that the Reformation may be the least understood period in church history. It has been so warped and diverted and fetishized that I now often wonder if it really was a good thing.
But I digress. Here's what I really wanted to talk about:
The question is relevant, I think, as Luther is often more talked about by Christians than actually read. And when he is read, dabblers tend to stick to works like The Bondage of the Will, Luther’s reactionary tirade against Erasmus. While responses like The Bondage form an important part of Luther’s corpus, they’re hardly the only part. Readers who restrict themselves to such works are in danger of mistaking Luther’s negative hyperbole as if it were a fair representation of all his theology; one must also read the works in which he puts forth his ideas in a positive, rather than reactionary, way.This concluding paragraph comes after a long discussion of the relationship of faith and works. A topic that has been argued by and around the church for nearly ever. I have come to one inescapable conclusion on the subject and that is that we will never understand the precise nature of the relationship between the two.
What we can say without fear of contradiction is that the two are inextricably woven together. How and preeminence and what does what we will never know, but they walk hand in hand.
I wonder what the world would look like, and especially the Protestant world, if rather than focus so much on the nature of the relationship, we instead focus simply on the fact that there is a relationship and that the bond between the two is unbreakable - regardless of the nature of the bond?
discussion faith preaching works
