2. Core Theological
Commitments
A. What key theological
insights have been influential in your development as a missional leader in the
Church as it participates in God’s mission in the world? Include distinctive
biblical and Lutheran theological building blocks which you have used to
construct a theology of mission that informs your current understanding.
Anselm’s motto remains basic for my
development as a missional leader in the church as it participates in God’s missio: fides quaerens intellectum.[1] As one who has been
baptized into the name of the triune God, I seek to love and understand God and
everything else in relation to God. Because I am baptized, I think and teach theologically.
The ultimate aim of my thinking and teaching is to articulate the good message
about God’s love and mercy in Jesus Christ for a world that desperately needs that
kind of loving.
From my grandfather, who served as a
Lutheran chaplain in a state mental hospital, I learned a lot about Christian confidence
in God in the face of human suffering and about compassionate ministry that is
carried out in the name of Christ. When my grandfather would take me with him
on his pastoral calls, I learned first-hand the importance of agape love and
unconditional acceptance of “the other” in pastoral care. While he probably
never read Meister Eckhart, he nonetheless exemplified for me the wisdom of being
prepared at all times for the gifts of God and always for new ones.[2]
I do consider the apostolic gospel
to be the heart of catholic doctrine since it announces the unconditional
forgiveness of God in Christ for all sinners. That gospel reveals the righteousness
of Christ which is external to human beings and is given by God as a gift (sola gratia) to the one who trusts in
Christ (sola fide). Thereby a “happy
exchange” occurs: the sinner receives whatever Christ has, as though it were
his or her own, and whatever the sinner has (sin, death, hell) “Christ claims
as his own.”[3]
Freed from the need to justify themselves before God, Christians are called to
serve others in love. “Good
works” are thus the fruit of faith but not its condition. “Together in Jesus
Christ we are freed by grace to live faithfully, witness boldly and serve
joyfully” (ELCA Mission Statement).
Apart from Luther and Augustine, the
one other theologian with whom I have had the longest running conversation is
probably Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose Ethik
and prison reflections continue to challenge and inspire me. From him I have
learned that Christian theology is called to see the world “from below, from
the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless,
the oppressed, the reviled—in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.”[4] While we are not Christ,
“if we want to be Christians, we must have some participation in Christ’s
large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of
danger comes, and by showing real compassion that springs, not from fear, but
from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer….”[5] Every human being is a
child of God.
From Bonhoeffer I also gained entry
into a wider discussion about Luther’s theology of the cross, which is foundational
for all of my teaching. I agree with Luther: “the cross of Jesus Christ alone
is our theology.”[6]
Luther, of course, made his case by appealing to Paul’s teaching in First
Corinthians 1.18ff. “Theologians of the cross see things differently.”[7] A theology of the cross is
a theology of humility. It stresses how all human knowledge, including the
theologian’s own, is limited, fragmented, easily distorted by the power of sin
and evil, but also forgiven and renewed by the crucified and risen Christ. It
is a theology that fits with Lonergan’s counsel, which I quoted above, which
also coincides with the truth of Luther’s pithy comment: Sola experientia facit theologum (“experience alone makes the
theologian”).[8]
I come to the Scriptures on the
basis of these commitments and presuppositions. While the Scriptures are indeed
a set of historical documents, which can be studied like any other ancient
texts, lying within them is the living Word of God, which can be found nowhere
else. I seek to understand these Scriptures, to highlight the evangelical sense
of their words, and to find within them the witness to the living Christ.
Over the past thirty years of
ordained ministry, I have also gained greater clarity about a crucial
prerequisite for serious ecumenical dialogue, namely, the willingness from the
very start to be open to God’s activity in the other churches, indeed, even the
other religions in the world. I have learned to see the center of God’s mission
in the risen Christ, around whom all of the churches revolve. I have received this
insight especially from Edmund Schlink, who stressed that “the life of our
church, its doctrines and its institutions only partially correspond to the
fullness of the kingdom of God in Christ.”[9] In this regard, I have
also gained a deeper understanding of the breadth and complexity of God’s
mission from friends who are mission partners from other parts of the world.
Aside from key members of Valpo’s theology department who are from the global
south, I will mention just two others. I recently hosted Bishop Emeritus Munib
Younan, president emeritus of the Lutheran World Federation and the retired bishop
of the Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land, who spoke to my students
about the challenges that Palestinian Lutherans face in his native Jerusalem
and the West Bank. Later this month, I will be hosting Dr. Mitri Raheb, who
serves as pastor of the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem.[10] Strengthening and
supporting these ecumenical partnerships are crucial for the ongoing mission of
the church, both locally and globally. At the very least, we avoid focusing
entirely on the needs in our parochial setting and are able to see more clearly
needs that are elsewhere, along with the expanse of God’s mission in the world.
B. Describe how these key
theological insights informed the missional leadership experience you described
above in #1.
In my vocation as a Christian
theologian at Valpo, I have struggled to couple academic freedom with a
Lutheran understanding of the freedom of a Christian, a freedom which is
anchored in the Christian gospel and oriented toward specific notions of
“vocation” and “paradox.” I share the view of Anthony Diekema who believes that
this relationship between academic freedom and evangelical freedom leads to “an
environment that demands both responsible freedom and responsible tolerance,”
exemplifying the essence of “the truly Christian academic enterprise.”[11]
I have also learned that these
freedoms are not easily maintained, even in a Lutheran university (cf. my
experience of teaching theology at Concordia, Portland). I am sensitive about
the need to create and defend what the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer has
called “free space” in a university.[12] Such “free space” is
necessary, not only for the integrity of a university but also for the sake of
those communities that a university serves, which in my case includes the
larger Ecumene.
Academic theologians can help the
church to think, to assist the church in its mission to educated people, and to
deepen the understanding of the faith among the faithful. A major task of
theology, then, is to find that point within the substantive content of
Scripture at which it “confronts contemporary human beings most immediately
with the reality of its subject matter,” and to ward off misunderstandings.[13] I have learned a lot
about this specific task from my teacher, David Tracy, who rightly notes that
Christian theology has three audiences or publics that it engages: the church,
the academy, and society.[14] Theology engages these
publics, it seems to me, on the basis of the global vision of 2 Corinthians
5.17-19, which continues to be for me the most liberating passage in the
biblical canon. (I would add a fourth public to Tracy’s three, namely, the
planet as a whole, its ecosystems, its climate. Theology is also “for the
birds.”)
Grounded in the message about the cross,
Christian theology involves scholarly, faithful, free inquiry that is dialogical,
paradoxical, provisional, charitable. It explores the integral connection among
the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual dimensions of human life and
experience for the sake of serving and edifying others. As a theologian of the
cross, I acknowledge that theology does not have all the answers for all the
disciplines and that each scholarly discipline has its own integrity. In this
context, I have learned, theology gives as much as it receives. It listens more
than it speaks. It celebrates the liberating arts, defends academic excellence
and free inquiry, and pays close attention to the results of the disciplines,
especially as those results shed light on the human condition. As you can
imagine, such theologizing is also a messy, even risky business. No issues are
totally and completely settled. If we are convinced that they are settled, then
something is not right with our mission, since we would not be encountering and
engaging people who think we are wrong (e.g., “the nones,” “the dones,”
philosophical atheists, adherents of non-Christian religions, et al.).
C. What are the
distinctive contributions of the Lutheran theological tradition for both (1)
the Church’s discernment of and participation in God’s mission in the world and
(2) the formation of disciples for mission in a pluralistic society?
I have already suggested several
distinctive contributions that the Lutheran theological tradition offers to the
larger Ecumene (e.g., the emphasis on God’s unconditional grace and love in
Jesus Christ; the theology of the cross; a strong baptismal theology of
vocation; the variety of spiritual charismata that are given to the church for
the sake of ministry to the world; a deep concern for the right understanding
of Holy Scripture), so I will only mention two additional ones. (1) Lutheran
Christians confess that agreement in the gospel and the administration of the
sacraments in accord with the gospel is the sufficient basis for the church’s
unity (AC VII). As far as I can tell, no other church tradition articulates the
promise of this minimalist ecumenical principle as clearly as the one that
stems from the Augsburg Confession, even if those within this tradition have
not always implemented this principle very well. (2) Lutheran Christians also
make several important distinctions in service to the gospel and the execution
of Christian love in the world that other church traditions often minimize or
even neglect (e.g., between law and gospel, between social justice and the
justification of sinners, between human rights and Christian freedom). While
making these distinctions can itself lead to real problems (e.g., separating
that which ought to remain closely related, if also distinguished, can lead to
false teaching about the gospel or to social quietism or to the support of
injustices in the world), Lutheran Christians insist that such distinctions are
crucial for the sake of creating faith in the gospel promise alone.
[1] See Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, esp. II-IV, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, ed. and trans.
by Sidney D. Deane (Chicago: Open Court, 1962).
[2] See Meister Eckhart, “Counsels on
Discernment,” in Meister Eckhart, The
Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. Edmund
Colledge and Bernard McGinn, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York:
Paulist Press, 1981), 276.
[3] LW 31.351 [“The Freedom of the
Christian,” 1520].
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “After Ten
Years: A Reckoning Made at New Year 1943,” in Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 17.
[5] Bonhoeffer, “After Ten Years,” 14.
[6]“CRUX sola est nostra Theologia” (WA 5.176.32 [1519 Lectures on the
Psalms]).
[7] Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 77.
[8] WA TR 1,16,13 [Table Talk].
[9] Edmund Schlink, “Pneumatische
Ershütterung?,” an address delivered to the Ecumenical Institute of the WCC in
Bossey, Switzerland in April 1962. For more on this address, see footnote 66 on
page 35 of my introduction to the first volume of Edmund Schlink Works.
[10] I was greatly honored to have been
invited by Dr. Raheb to write the introduction for the new edition of The Augsburg Confession and Luther's Small
Catechism in Arabic (Bethlehem, Palestinian Territory: Diyar Consortium,
2017), 1-21. This new edition is a revision of Dr. Younan’s earlier Arabic translation
of the AC and SC. The new edition was presented to Dr. Younan on the occasion
of his retirement in 2017, which coincided with the observance of the 500th
anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation. When he and I had
dinner during holy week last month, I was able to thank him for his work on the
important LWF document, From Conflict to
Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017
(Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt; Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2013), which I
used when I led 108 pilgrims to Germany for the observance of the 500th
anniversary. I also learned a great deal about the “back story” to this
document, including Bishop Younan’s important conversations with Pope Benedict
XVI and Pope Francis.
[11] Anthony Diekema, Academic Freedom and Christian Scholarship
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 75.
[12] See Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Idea
of the University—Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow,” in Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied
Hermeneutics, ed. Dieter Misgeld and Graeme Nicholson, trans. Lawrence Schmidt
and Monica Reuss (Albany: State University Press of New York Press, 1992),
47-59. I wrote my master’s thesis at Chicago on the relationship between “myth”
and critical rationality in the thinking of Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. In my
doctoral dissertation, I note the influence of the biblical hermeneutics of an
important nineteenth-century Lutheran theologian on the philosophical hermeneutics
on Gadamer. See my book, The Self-Giving
God and Salvation History: The Trinitarian Theology of Johannes von Hofmann
(New York: T&T Clark, 2004). I try to summarize Hofmann’s distinctive
approach to biblical hermeneutics in a shorter piece, “Johannes von Hofmann
(1810-77),” in Nineteenth-Century
Lutheran Theologians, ed. Matthew L. Becker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2016), 189-211.
[13] Werner Elert, Der Christliche Glaube: Grundlinien der Lutherischen Dogmatik, 6th
ed. (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag, 1988), 30. I explore Elert’s formulation
of the task of theology in my essay, “Werner Elert (1885-1954),” in Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians,
ed. Mark Mattes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 93-135.
[14] See David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian
Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 3-46.
No comments:
Post a Comment