Bonhoeffer on Luther and the justification of sinners

I'm rereading The Cost of Discipleship -- for my money one of the best books ever written on the Christian life, especially section one with its discussion of cheap grace vs. costly grace. Cheap grace is "the grace we bestow on ourselves." It's "grace without discipleship, grace without the cross." Costly grace is "costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life." Even if you've never read the book you've probably heard the famous line -- "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Nachfolge (Discipleship), as it was originally called, may be the high point in Bonhoeffer's struggle to work out what it means for the Christian to be fully in the world, but not of the world. What makes the book so powerful is that it was for the author more than a theoretical struggle. In his case Christ's call led to a martyr's death at age 39. Bonhoeffer's struggle was a central preoccupation for Luther also. In chapter one Bonhoeffer gives an insightful analysis of Luther's breakthroughs on justification and calling, and identifies a misapprehension of those breakthroughs that had led to an epidemic of cheap grace within the Lutheran churches of Germany. Here is some of that.

When the Reformation came, the providence of God raised Martin Luther to restore the gospel of pure, costly grace. Luther passed through the cloister; he was a monk, and all this was part of the divine plan. Luther had left all to follow Christ on the path of absolute obedience. He had renounced the world in order to live the Christian life. He had learnt obedience to Christ and to his Church, because only he who is obedient can believe. The call to the cloister demanded of Luther the complete surrender of his life. But God shattered all his hopes. He showed him through the Scriptures that the following of Christ is not the achievement or merit of a select few, but the divine command to all Christians without distinction. Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the "religious." The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk's attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world. The bottom having thus been knocked out of the religious life. Luther laid hold upon grace. Just as the whole world of monasticism was crashing about him in ruins, he saw God in Christ stretching forth his hand to save. He grasped that hand in faith, believing that "after all, nothing we can do is of any avail, however good a life we live." The grace which gave itself to him was a costly grace, and it shattered his whole existence. Once more he must leave his nets and follow. The first time was when he entered the monastery, when he had left everything behind except his pious self. This time even that was taken from him. He obeyed the call, not through any merit of his own, but simply through the grace of God. Luther did not hear the word: "Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness." No, Luther had to leave the cloister and go back to the world, not because the world in itself was good and holy, but because even the cloister was only a part of the world. (pp. 47-48)

It is a fatal misunderstanding of Luther's action to suppose that his rediscovery of the gospel of pure grace offered a general dispensation from obedience to the command of Jesus, or that it was the great discovery of the Reformation that God's forgiving grace automatically conferred upon the world both righteousness and holiness. On the contrary, for Luther the Christian's worldly calling is sanctified only in so far as that calling registers the final, radical protest against the world. Only in so far as the Christian's secular calling is exercised in the following of Jesus does it receive from the gospel new sanction and justification. It was not the justification of sin, but the justification of the sinner that drove Luther from the cloister back into the world. . . . That was the secret of the gospel of the Reformation—the justification of the sinner. (pp. 48-49, emphasis mine)

Quotes from Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995)

From the printing press to Google

Carl Trueman on Luther and mass media:

@ Christ the Center

Remembering Howards End

I came across the following wonderful tribute by LA Times critic Kenneth Turan on my favorite costume drama ever, and one of the films that converted me from a casual moviegoer circa 1992 to passionate film buff.

Who speaks of Howards End these days? Who expounds on the virtues of this magnificent drama, whose traditional style seems almost as distant as its Edwardian setting? Seen today, years past its 1992 release, it strikes one as not only the ultimate accomplishment of the Merchant Ivory team but also the high-water mark of a certain kind of filmmaking, a landmark example of movies of passion, taste, and sensitivity that honestly touch every emotion. Below its exquisitely modulated surface, this film may set off lasting and heartfelt reverberations in the viewer; every time you see it, it moves you in different ways.

Continue reading

By the way I did see a new movie this week -- A Serious Man -- the latest from the brothers Coen. It's definitely worth a post or two when time permits.

The view from Middle World

One last excerpt from The God Delusion. Finishing this book turned out to be a chore, but the last chapter has some good stuff. One doesn't have to accept Richard Dawkins' agenda to be delighted by paragraphs like these.

We live near the centre of a cavernous museum of magnitudes, viewing the world with sense organs and nervous systems that are equipped to perceive and understand only a small middle range of sizes, moving at a middle range of speeds. We are at home with objects ranging in size from a few kilometres (the view from a mountaintop) to about a tenth of a millimetre (the point of a pin). Outside this range even our imagination is handicapped, and we need the help of instruments and of mathematics — which, fortunately, we can learn to deploy. The range of sizes, distances or speeds with which our imaginations are comfortable is a tiny band, set in the midst of a gigantic range of the possible, from the scale of quantum strangeness at the smaller end to the scale of Einsteinian cosmology at the larger.

Our imaginations are forlornly under-equipped to cope with distances outside the narrow middle range of the ancestrally familiar. We try to visualize an electron as a tiny ball, in orbit around a larger cluster of balls representing protons and neutrons. That isn't what it is like at all. Electrons are not like little balls. They are not like anything we recognize. It isn't clear that 'like' even means anything when we try to fly too close to reality's further horizons. Our imaginations are not yet tooled-up to penetrate the neighborhood of the quantum. (p. 363)

Dawkins means to demonstrate in passages like this that we don't need God to inspire a sense of wonder. He wants his readers to be content with the power of science to "open the mind and satisfy the psyche." (p. 362) He quotes the biologist J.B.S. Haldane: "Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose . . . I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy." (p. 364) I agree! Dawkins looks at this queerness and sees only impersonal processes with science as the ground and end of all things, I look at that same universe and see God. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." 1 Corinthians 2:9 (KJV)

All quotes from Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006)

Exposing the Baby Einstein racket

@ Movie Mom

Berkhof on dogma (part 2)

After defining dogma and defending its necessity for the Christian faith and the church ("a Church without dogmas would be a silent Church") Louis Berkhof goes on to describe in the prolegomenon to his Systematic Theology three elements that go into the making of dogma -- the social element, the traditional element, and the element of authority. Protestants and Catholics are united when it comes to the first two, but part ways on the third.

The social element reminds us that the truths we confess as Christians are not solely the product of private reflection (the Bible and me) but of the church as a whole (the Bible and we). Berkhof writes, "Though the appropriation of the truth revealed in the Bible is first of all personal, it gradually assumes a communal and corporate aspect. . . . Personal opinions, however true and valuable they may be, do not constitute Christian dogmas." (p. 31)

The social element leads into the traditional element. It's worth quoting at length from this section because the tendencies Berkhof takes aim at are still alive and well.

Christianity rests on historical facts which come to our knowledge through a revelation given and completed more than nineteen centuries ago. And the correct understanding and interpretation of these facts can only result from the continual prayers and meditation, from the study and struggles, of the Church of all ages. No one Christian can ever hope to succeed in assimilating and reproducing properly the whole content of the divine revelation. Neither is one generation ever able to accomplish the task. The formation of dogmas is the task of the Church of all ages, a task which requires great spiritual energy on the part of successive generations. And history teaches us that, in spite of differences of opinion and protracted struggles, and even in spite of temporary retrogressions, the Church's insight into the truth gradually gained in clarity and profundity. One truth after another became, the center of attention, and was brought to ever greater development. And the historical Creeds of the Churches now embody in concentrated form the best results of the reflection and study of past centuries. It is at once the duty and the privilege of the Church of our day to enter into that heritage of bygone years, and to continue to build on the foundation that was laid.

There is a manifest tendency, however, on the part of modern liberal theology to break with the past. Many of its representatives are often rather loud in their praises of the Creeds of the Church as historical documents, but refuse to acknowledge their doctrinal value for the present. And, sad to say, the so-called Fundamentalists of our day join hands with the liberals on this point with their well-known slogan, "No Creed but the Bible." They do not seem to realize that this really involves a break with the historical past of the Church, a refusal to profit by the lessons which the Churches of the Reformation passed on as a precious heritage to following generations in their great Creeds and Confessions, and a virtual denial of the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the past history of the Church. (pp. 32-33, bold emphasis mine)

Historically Protestants have also accepted the element of ecclesiastical authority in defining right doctrine. "When the Churches of the Reformation officially define their doctrines and thereby turn them into dogmas, they also implicitly declare them to rest on divine authority and to be expressions of the truth." (p. 33) The difference with Rome, and where the Reformation cry sola Scriptura comes in, is in the Protestant denial of an infallible Church. "The Roman Catholic Church claims absolute infallibility for its dogmas, partly because they are revealed truths, but especially because they are proposed for the faith of the faithful by an infallible Church. . . . This absolutism is not shared by the Protestant Churches. While they expect acceptance of their dogmas, because they regard them as correct formulations of Scripture truth, they admit the possibility that the Church may have been in error in defining the truth. And if dogmas are found to be contrary to the Word of God, they cease to be authoritative." (p. 33)

Between the claim of Rome to infallibly interpret the Bible for me, and the opposite extreme that invites me to read the Bible as if it dropped out of the sky into my lap, I find the historic Protestantism articulated by Berkhof to be a good place to stand.

All quotes from Berkhof, Introductory Volume to Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932 & 1996)

Looking for something to do on Oct. 31?

As far as I know this isn't a joke.

Berkhof on dogma (part 1)

I've been reading the prolegomenon to Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology, which I obtained at this bargain price from Christianbook.com. Though it's almost 80 years old I'd say this hefty volume is still the English-language Reformed dogmatics to have on your bookshelf. It's worth having just for the section on dogma—a bracing tonic against the negative connotation we moderns associate with that word. Here are some snippets.

Systematic Theology or Dogmatics deals with the dogmata, the accepted doctrines of the Church. . . . The word 'dogma' is derived from the Greek verb dokein. In classical Greek the expression dokein moi meant not only, it seems to me, or, I am of the opinion, but also, I have come to the conclusion, I am certain, it is my conviction. And it is especially this idea of certainty that finds expression in the word 'dogma'. (p. 18)

It may be said that religious dogmas have three characteristics, namely: their subject-matter is derived from Scripture; they are the fruit of the reflection of the Church on the truth, as it is revealed in the Bible; and they are officially adopted by some competent ecclesiastical body. (p. 21)

The present age is an undogmatic age. There is a manifest aversion, not only to dogmas, but even to doctrines, and to a systematic presentation of doctrinal truth. During the last half a century very few dogmatical works made their appearance, while the market was flooded with works on the History of Religions, the Philosophy of Religion, and the Psychology of Religion. The assertion is often heard that Christianity is not a doctrine but a life, and that it makes very little difference what we believe, if we but share the life of Christ. There is an insistent cry, especially in our own country, for a Christianity without dogmas. Dogmatical preaching is not in favor and is therefore avoided in many circles. Many conservative Christians clamour for purely experiential preaching, while others of a more liberal type greatly prefer ethical or social preaching. (p. 26)

Sound familiar? Change a few descriptors and Berkhof could have been writing in 2009 instead of 1932. He goes on to lay much of the blame for the opposition to dogmas at the feet of Kantian philosophical tendencies and Ritschlian theology (one need not be familiar with Kant or Ritschl to be influenced by their ideas). Further, any effort to dispense with dogma is itself a kind of dogma.

Every Church has its dogmas. Even the Churches that are constantly decrying dogmas have them in effect. When they say that they want a Christianity without dogma, they are by that very statement declaring a dogma. They all have certain definite convictions in religious matters, and also ascribe to them a certain authority, though they do not always formulate them officially and acknowledge them candidly. . . . A Church without dogmas would be a silent Church, and this is a contradiction in terms. A silent witness would be no witness at all, and would never convince anyone. (p. 31)

All quotes from Berkhof, Introductory Volume to Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932 & 1996)

To be continued . . .

Leaving Canterbury for Rome

I'm not an expert in Anglo-Catholic affairs, but this news seems quite amazing. The wreckage of the Anglican Communion brought about by theological liberalism is sad to see. Cranmer must be rolling in his grave.


UPDATE: More reaction here from my friend Jason Miller.

Swine flu vs. the Eucharist

Russell Moore wonders if concerns about hygiene are leading us toward cleanliness -- but away from Christ.

@ The Gospel Coalition blog

It's cool to see a Southern Baptist saying these things!