The wise foolishness (or foolish wisdom) of faith
God reveals what He gives
1/ My Hope from BEFORE MY BIRTH! (Psalm 71:4-6)
Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man. For You, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of You.
More on the wonderful Biblical teaching of infant faith here.
WARNING: You’ve got a lot of reading assignments coming…
2/ Luther on Speculative Theology, TLDR
Thanks to Chris B. for pointing out this portion of Luther’s Genesis commentary to me. I have excerpted portions here, but I’d encourage you to read the entire section (about six pages printed).
A few things to notice:
Luther’s insistence that theology must not search into the hidden things of God, but only deal with the things revealed.
Revealed theology is the Gospel, which comforts.
Comfort and assurance belong together.
In the longer text, you’ll see Luther interacting with his own work, The Bondage of the Will, and giving some instructions to understand it properly. (Luther wrote Bondage of the Will in 1525. This portion of his Genesis lecture was probably about 1542ish.)
It’s always fun to hear Luther tells stories about Staupiz (his superior in the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt), who had quite an ear for the Gospel.
Furthermore, God has most sternly forbidden this investigation of the divinity. Thus when the apostles ask in Acts 1:6, “Has it not been predestined that at this time the kingdom should be restored?” Christ says to them: “It is not for you to know the times” (Acts 1:7). “Let Me be hidden where I have not revealed Myself to you,” says God, “or you will be the cause of your own destruction, just as Adam fell in a horrible manner; for he who investigates My majesty will be overwhelmed by My glory.” …
You must kill the other thoughts and the ways of reason or of the flesh, for God detests them. The only thing you have to do is to receive the Son, so that Christ is welcome in your heart in His birth, miracles, and cross. For here is the book of life in which you have been written. And this is the only and the most efficacious remedy for that horrible disease because of which human beings in their investigation of God want to proceed in a speculative manner and eventually rush into despair or contempt. If you want to escape despair, hatred, and blasphemy of God, give up your speculation about the hidden God, and cease to strive in vain to see the face of God. Otherwise you will have to remain perpetually in unbelief and damnation, and you will have to perish; for he who doubts does not believe, and he who does not believe is condemned (Mark 16:16). …
Staupitz used to comfort me with these words: “Why do you torture yourself with these speculations? Look at the wounds of Christ and at the blood that was shed for you. From these predestination will shine. Consequently, one must listen to the Son of God, who was sent into the flesh and appeared to destroy the work of the devil (1 John 3:8) and to make you sure about predestination. And for this reason He says to you: ‘You are My sheep because you hear My voice’ (cf. John 10:27). ‘No one shall snatch you out of My hands’ ” (cf. John 10:28).
Read the entire section here: https://wolfmueller.co/luther-on-the-assurance-of-salvation/ (This is well worth the time to print out and study.)
3/ Luthardt on the Ancient Memory of the Fall
I’m finally reading Luthardt. [Alex, sorry it’s taken me eight years.] This reminds me of the C. S. Lewis refelction from a few weeks ago.
The remembrance, more or less obscure, of a fall at the beginning of history, survives among all nations. We everywhere meet with legends of a better state in the early days of our race, with echoes of the Scripture narrative of a temptation from without, and of a yielding thereto on the part of man, entailing fatal consequences on the race of man and his earthly abode. They are but obscure and confused reminiscences, that have been preserved in the memories of the various nations; yet they are reminiscences, and when compared with the account given in Scripture, we easily perceive how they serve to confirm it.
The unadorned simplicity of the Biblical account plainly testifies that the tradition here deposited, is the source of all the traditions which have, in their course through the various countries and tribes, sometimes taken so fantastic a form. Even ancient philosophy bears similar testimony, after its fashion. Plato speaks of remembrances which the soul bears within her,—remembrances of original higher intuitions of celestial beauty, the echoes of which, during this dark earthly existence, accompany her in the mysterious depths of her inner life, and are raised to consciousness as soon as the certain word is uttered by which those slumbering ideas are awakened. He has but transferred to the individual man that which applies to the whole race; for we certainly all bear within us, so to speak, the memory of a lost home.
We feel like exiles, longing for the native land from which they have been driven; a craving for a better future, a home-sickness for a lost home, everywhere accompanies us. In old age it often takes the form of a melancholy regret for the days of childhood. Yet this is, in truth, not a regret for the days of our individual childhood, but for the childhood of the race. Whatever of good or noble human nature may bear within it, its ideas of the good, its moral efforts, its higher, nobler feelings, are the ruins of a past greatness. We are all walking among such ruins. They are bearing testimony to what has been; and we involuntarily receive their testimony.
Man is neither an angel nor an animal, but a fallen child of God; and he feels his fall. He has at least preserved remembrances of his dignity. It is true that he now goes about, as it were, in rags; but, beggar as he is, he once wore a crown. It is evident that he was born a king. Is it to be wondered at that he should long to recover his crown?
Luthardt, C. E. (1872). Apologetic Lectures on the Saving Truths of Christianity (S. Taylor, Trans.; Second Edition). T. & T. Clark.
Jordan Cooper has published the edition I’m read at Just and Sinner. You can also access the PDF for free here.
4/ Luthardt on the Three Stages of Sin
Just a few inches down the page Luthardt talks about the three stages of sin:
Unbelief
Pride
Sensual Pleasure
and how these correspond to broken relationships with:
God
Self
Creation.
There are a lot of echos of the three ladders here.
The sinful act of the first-created human beings went through three stages. The first was disbelief of God’s love. The prohibition enjoined them seemed to them an arbitrary denial of a desirable good, and an obstacle to their freedom instead of an assistance on the road thereto. With faith in God, moreover, love to Him also disappeared, and the tendency of their heart towards God was first checked, and then turned in a contrary direction. This was the first stage.
Man then put himself in the place of God. He took his lot into his own hand, and purposed, in his arrogant self-exaltation, to look for the future to his own powers for happiness. He desired, as if he had been his own creator, to be what he wished to be through himself alone. He forgot that God was his origin, and therefore his end, and made himself, in his proud self-seeking, the end and aim of his life.
And to this the second was also added the third stage, that of sensuous gratification in the world, of which he thus became the slave instead of the king. Unbelief, pride, and sensuous pleasure,—such is the threefold perversion of man’s threefold relation to God, to himself, and to the world,—the threefold dissolution of his original harmony, upon which depended his holiness, his life, and his happiness.
It is in these three fundamental forms that sin first appeared, and that we still meet with it in the history of the human mind. These are the three great historical forms of Rationalism, Pantheism, and Materialism. For the soul of Rationalism is unbelief, that of Pantheism pride, and that of Materialism sensuousness. These have their roots in the occurrence which is related in Scripture, and the dominion which they exercise confirms what our own experience daily tells us, that we all became sinful through that decisive act which took place at the beginning.
Luthardt, Chr. Ernst. 1872. “Lecture II: Sin.” In Apologetic Lectures on the Saving Truths of Christianity. p. 57.
5/ three things that Lutherans can add to the pro-life discussion
Remember to go to your pastor's Bible Class this week and, read old theology books. (If you don't have a pastor or congregation, click here. If you don't have old theology books, click here.)
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Thank you, again, for your time and attention, and for your prayers. Please keep in touch.
Lord's Blessings, Pastor Wolfmueller
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
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