The package actually had many treasures, chief amongst them a booklet on "Manna's" family history and one of the cookies she baked for her daughter's wedding. I like that, the way she is including me in her life. She also gave me a copy of The Knight of Rhodes by Bo Giertz, translated by Bror Erickson and two Philip Yancy books.
But to the Luther: The first is Through Faith Alone, 365 devotionals readings from Martin Luther. Who wouldn't want a bit of Luther each and every day? The second is Luther's Large Catechism with study questions (no, sadly there are no answers). I shall enjoy being able to carry the LC around more frequently, since my beloved Book of Concord is rather cumbersome. The third...well...here is the feast! "Manna" sent me Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings!
Now, you know that I bought Luther's Works on CD and regularly peruse that. Mostly, I find a reference somewhere online and then go look up the context. Unfortunately, the CD is part of Libronix Digital Library, an interface that is worse than Greek to me. So, I have not really been able to understand all that I have in there. For example, is there some master table of contents?
Well, after reading 27 days of the devotional book, I picked up the theological writings and skimmed the table of contents. Immense hope flared in my heart when I saw the 12th writing: "A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels." Could this help me with the whole Lutheran filter thing? I immediately flipped to page 104 and read it through. Then I did again. Four times! This, in my humble opinion, is simply the perfect beginning if you have a Protestant curious about confessional Lutheranism. I mean, there still remains the whole language barrier, but this...well...this actually explains the meaning of Gospel! The Gospel!
BRIEF INSTRUCTION ON WHAT TO LOOK FOR AND EXPECT IN THE GOSPELS
It is a common practice to number the gospels and to name them by books and say that there are four gospels. From this practice stems the fact that no one knows what St. Paul and St. Peter are saying in their epistles, and their teaching is regarded as an addition to the teaching of the gospels, in a vein similar to that of Jerome’s1 introduction.2 There is, besides, the still worse practice of regarding the gospels and epistles as law books in which is supposed to be taught what we are to do and in which the works of Christ are pictured to us as nothing but examples. Now where these two erroneous notions remain in the heart, there neither the gospels nor the epistles may be read in a profitable or Christian manner, and [people] remain as pagan as ever.
I had heard that...that the bible is not an instruction book. I didn't really understand what that means, though. Luther goes on to explain!
One should thus realize that there is only one gospel, but that it is described by many apostles. Every single epistle of Paul and of Peter, as well as the Acts of the Apostles by Luke, is a gospel, even though they do not record all the works and words of Christ, but one is shorter and includes less than another. There is not one of the four major gospels anyway that includes all the words and works of Christ; nor is this necessary. Gospel is and should be nothing else than a discourse or story about Christ, just as happens among men when one writes a book about a king or a prince, telling what he did, said, and suffered in his day. Such a story can be told in various ways; one spins it out, and the other is brief. Thus the gospel is and should be nothing else than a chronicle, a story, a narrative about Christ, telling who he is, what he did, said, and suffered—a subject which one describes briefly, another more fully, one this way, another that way.
For at its briefest, the gospel is a discourse about Christ, that he is the Son of God and became man for us, that he died and was raised, that he has been established as a Lord over all things. This much St. Paul takes in hand and spins out in his epistles. He bypasses all the miracles and incidents3 [in Christ’s ministry] which are set forth in the four gospels, yet he includes the whole gospel adequately and abundantly. This may be seen clearly and well in his greeting to the Romans [1:1–4], where he says what the gospel is, and declares, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” etc.
There you have it. The gospel is a story about Christ, God’s and David’s Son, who died and was raised and is established as Lord. This is the gospel in a nutshell. Just as there is no more than one Christ, so there is and may be no more than one gospel. Since Paul and Peter too teach nothing but Christ, in the way we have just described, so their epistles can be nothing but the gospel.
That, in itself, is really remarkable to me. The Gospel being more than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I guess, though, in a way I already instinctively understand this because the sweetness of the Gospel is oft found outside those four books. Consider just the two bits about prayer: Christ being our yes and amen (I Corinthians) and Christ never ceasing in His prayers for us (Hebrews). When people read aloud to me from the epistles, the call is as strong, the comfort as profound.
Yes even the teaching of the prophets, in those places where they speak of Christ, is nothing but the true, pure, and proper gospel—just as if Luke or Matthew had described it. For the prophets have proclaimed the gospel and spoken of Christ, as St. Paul here [Rom. 1:2] reports and as everyone indeed knows. Thus when Isaiah in chapter fifty-three says how Christ should die for us and bear our sins, he has written the pure gospel. And I assure you, if a person fails to grasp this understanding4 of the gospel, he will never be able to be illuminated in the Scripture nor will he receive the right foundation.
So, Gospel equals a proclamation of Christ.
Be sure, moreover, that you do not make Christ into a Moses, as if Christ did nothing more than teach and provide examples as the other saints do, as if the gospel were simply a textbook of teachings or laws. Therefore you should grasp Christ, his words, works, and sufferings, in a twofold manner. First as an example that is presented to you, which you should follow and imitate. As St. Peter says in I Peter 4, 5 “Christ suffered for us, thereby leaving us an example.” Thus when you see how he prays, fasts, helps people, and shows them love, so also you should do, both for yourself and for your neighbor. However this is the smallest part of the gospel, on the basis of which it cannot yet even be called gospel. For on this level Christ is of no more help to you than some other saint. His life remains his own and does not as yet contribute anything to you. In short this mode [of understanding Christ as simply an example] does not make Christians but only hypocrites. You must grasp Christ at a much higher level. Even though this higher level has for a long time been the very best, the preaching of it has been something rare. The chief article and foundation of the gospel is that before you take Christ as an example, you accept and recognize him as a gift, as a present that God has given you and that is your own. This means that when you see or hear of Christ doing or suffering something, you do not doubt that Christ himself, with his deeds and suffering, belongs to you. On this you may depend as surely as if you had done it yourself; indeed as if you were Christ himself. See, this is what it means to have a proper grasp of the gospel, that is, of the overwhelming goodness of God, which neither prophet, nor apostle, nor angel was ever able fully to express, and which no heart could adequately fathom or marvel at. This is the great fire of the love of God for us, whereby the heart and conscience become happy, secure, and content. This is what preaching the Christian faith means. This is why such preaching is called gospel, which in German means a joyful, good, and comforting “message”; and this is why the apostles are called the “twelve messengers.”6
Alas! This is why reading the Living Word to me works even against my own emotions, my own feelings! My heart is hearing, receiving that which my mind cannot fully grasp. Does that make sense? I am not even sure that is the best way to say what I see in this part, but when I read it, all I could think is about Luther's comment in the Large Catechism about the Living Word being all that God is and does. In a way, the power of the Living Word is precisely because of the Gospel, what is being proclaimed. The message. Oh, the message!
Concerning this Isaiah 9[:6] says, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given.” If he is given to us, then he must be ours; and so we must also receive him as belonging to us. And Romans 8[:32], “How should [God] not give us all things with his Son?” See, when you lay hold of Christ as a gift which is given you for your very own and have no doubt about it, you are a Christian. Faith redeems you from sin, death, and hell and enables you to overcome all things. O no one can speak enough about this. It is a pity that this kind of preaching has been silenced in the world, and yet boast is made daily of the gospel.
Now when you have Christ as the foundation and chief blessing of your salvation, then the other part follows: that you take him as your example, giving yourself in service to your neighbor just as you see that Christ has given himself for you. See, there faith and love move forward, God’s commandment is fulfilled, and a person is happy and fearless to do and to suffer all things. Therefore make note of this, that Christ as a gift nourishes your faith and makes you a Christian. But Christ as an example exercises your works. These do not make you a Christian. Actually they come forth from you because you have already been made a Christian. As widely as a gift differs from an example, so widely does faith differ from works, for faith possesses nothing of its own, only the deeds and life of Christ. Works have something of your own in them, yet they should not belong to you but to your neighbor.
This is the heart of what has been bothering me deeply: my foundation. The more I have learned, the more I can see that all the wonderful truth, all the pure teaching I have been receiving is still being overlaid on a foundation that is really Moses, not Christ crucified. How do I start with the proper foundation? I know that so much of what I have been taught is in error, but I cannot always discern that error, for it is more familiar, more right than anything else. But just because something is familiar, does not make it good, meet, and salutary. This I am learning in other parts of my life, yet I believe it is most important here, in my understanding of doctrine. Oh, how I could wish there were pages and pages more of this, that Luther would have spent more time on this!
So you see that the gospel is really not a book of laws and commandments which requires deeds of us, but a book of divine promises in which God promises, offers, and gives us all his possessions and benefits in Christ. The fact that Christ and the apostles provide much good teaching and explain the law is to be counted a benefit just like any other work of Christ. For to teach aright is not the least sort of benefit. We see, too, that unlike Moses in his book, and contrary to the nature of a commandment, Christ does not horribly force and drive us. Rather he teaches us in a loving and friendly way. He simply tells us what we are to do and what to avoid, what will happen to those who do evil and to those who do well. Christ drives and compels no one. Indeed he teaches so gently that he entices rather than commands. He begins by saying, “Blessed are the poor,7 Blessed are the meek,” and so on [Matt. 5:3, 5]. And the apostles commonly use the expression, “I admonish, I request, I beseech,” and so on. But Moses says, “I command, I forbid,” threatening and frightening everyone with horrible punishments and penalties. With this sort of instruction you can now read and hear the gospels profitably.
Funny, so much of the ways to enlarge, increase, and deepen one's relationship with God, getting right with Him, growing one's faith that I have been taught, though not with threatening words are actually those threats..for they place success on our shoulders, not God's. They depend on sinful, flawed, weak humans. What hope is there in that?
When you open the book containing the gospels and read or hear how Christ comes here or there, or how someone is brought to him, you should therein perceive the sermon or the gospel through which he is coming to you, or you are being brought to him. For the preaching of the gospel is nothing else than Christ coming to us, or we being brought to him. When you see how he works, however, and how he helps everyone to whom he comes or who is brought to him, then rest assured that faith is accomplishing this in you and that he is offering your soul exactly the same sort of help and favor through the gospel. If you pause here and let him do you good, that is, if you believe that he benefits and helps you, then you really have it. Then Christ is yours, presented to you as a gift.
After that it is necessary that you turn this into an example and deal with your neighbor in the very same way, be given also to him as a gift and an example. Isaiah 40[:1, 2] speaks of that, “Be comforted, be comforted my dear people, says your Lord God. Say to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry to her, that her sin is forgiven, that her iniquity is ended, that she has received from the hand of God a double kindness for all her sin,” and so forth. This double kindness is the twofold aspect of Christ: gift and example. These two are also signified by the double portion of the inheritance which the law of Moses [Deut. 21:17] assigns to the eldest son and by many other figures.
[I do not understand this double portion reference.]
What a sin and shame it is that we Christians have come to be so neglectful of the gospel that we not only fail to understand it, but even have to be shown by other books and commentaries what to look for and what to expect in it. Now the gospels and epistles of the apostles were written for this very purpose. They want themselves to be our guides, to direct us to the writings of the prophets and of Moses in the Old Testament so that we might there read and see for ourselves how Christ is wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in the manger [Luke 2:7], that is, how he is comprehended [Vorfassett] in the writings of the prophets. It is there that people like us should read and study, drill ourselves, and see what Christ is, for what purpose he has been given, how he was promised, and how all Scripture tends toward him. For he himself says in John 5[:46], “If you believed Moses, you would also believe me, for he wrote of me.” Again [John 5:39], “Search and look up the Scriptures, for it is they that bear witness to me.”
This is what St. Paul means in Romans 1[:1, 2], where in the beginning he says in his greeting, “The gospel was promised by God through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures.” This is why the evangelists and apostles always direct us to the Scriptures and say, “Thus it is written,” and again, “This has taken place in order that the writing of the prophets might be fulfilled,” and so forth. In Acts 17[:11], when the Thessalonians heard the gospel with all eagerness, Luke says that they studied and examined the Scriptures day and night in order to see if these things were so. Thus when St. Peter wrote his epistle, right at the beginning [I Pet. 1:10–12] he says, “The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired about this salvation; they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them; and he bore witness through them to the sufferings that were to come upon Christ and the ensuing glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but us, in the things which have now been preached among you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things which also the angels long to behold.” What else does St. Peter here desire than to lead us into the Scriptures? It is as if he should be saying, “We preach and open the Scriptures to you through the Holy Spirit, so that you yourselves may read and see what is in them and know of the time about which the prophets were writing.” For he says as much in Acts 4[3:24], “All the prophets who ever prophesied, from Samuel on, have spoken concerning these days.”
Therefore also Luke, in his last chapter [24:45], says that Christ opened the minds of the apostles to understand the Scriptures. And Christ, in John 10[:9, 3], declares that he is the door by which one must enter, and whoever enters by him, to him the gatekeeper (the Holy Spirit) opens in order that he might find pasture and blessedness. Thus it is ultimately true that the gospel itself is our guide and instructor in the Scriptures, just as with this foreword I would gladly give instruction and point you to the gospel.
But what a fine lot of tender and pious children we are! In order that we might not have to study in the Scriptures and learn Christ there, we simply regard the entire Old Testament as of no account, as done for and no longer valid. Yet it alone bears the name of Holy Scripture. And the gospel should really not be something written, but a spoken word which brought forth the Scriptures, as Christ and the apostles have done. This is why Christ himself did not write anything but only spoke. He called his teaching not Scripture but gospel, meaning good news or a proclamation that is spread not by pen but by word of mouth. So we go on and make the gospel into a law book, a teaching of commandments, changing Christ into a Moses, the One who would help us into simply an instructor.
Both things in here I am intimately acquainted with, much to my sorrow. I have been systematically taught the Old Testament is not for me, but for Israel. It is there for me to learn the nature of God and the whole of His plan, but to cling to promises written for Israel is wrong.
You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth,
And called from its remotest parts,
I have said to you, "You are My servant,
I have chosen you and not rejected you.
Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.
~Isaiah 41:9-10
This is an example of a passage I clung to as a promise for me despite that teaching, a passage I stubbornly hoped was for me. That God was with me, upholding me, even when I could not discern such by the circumstances in my life. I clung to it because, as a good Lutheran would say: God spoke it; it is so. I never could understand that if the Bible was God's Word, why all of it was not true, why all of it was not for me. I actually wanted to be Jewish at times because there are so many comforting, hopeful, loving bits in the Old Testament. Unfortunately, I did not hear/receive much love in the New Testament other than the love that held Christ on the cross. The cross that was then, not now. But the Old Testament was over and done with. In a sense, so was the cross. But Lutherans teach neither is over and done with. The cross is now. Forgiveness is now. Salvation is now. Now and on-going.
What punishment ought God to inflict upon such stupid and perverse people! Since we abandoned his Scriptures, it is not surprising that he has abandoned us to the teaching of the pope and to the lies of men. Instead of Holy Scripture we have had to learn the Decretales8 of a deceitful fool and an evil rogue. O would to God that among Christians the pure gospel were known and that most speedily there would be neither use nor need for this work of mine. Then there would surely be hope that the Holy Scriptures too would come forth again in their worthiness. Let this suffice as a very brief foreword and instruction. In the exposition9 we will say more about this matter. Amen.
1 Jerome (ca. 342–420), Eusebius Hieronymus, was the foremost biblical scholar of the ancient church and a friend of St. Augustine. He translated the entire Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into popular Latin (Vulgate).
2 In the prologue to his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Jerome writes, “It has been clearly demonstrated [on the basis of Ezek. 1:5, 10, and Rev. 4:7–8] that only four gospels ought to be acknowledged.” Migne 7, 20.
3 Wunder und wandel may be the equivalent of die Wunder und das Leben Jesu according to WA 10I, 1, 729, nn. 9, 22.
4 Wahn is the equivalent of Meinung and the Latin opinio. WA 10I, 1, 10, n. 1.
5 I Pet. 2:21; cf. 4:1.
6 Tzwellff botten. In Middle High German the singular form of the composite word was used to designate a single apostle. Luther derives the term for “messenger” (Bote) from the term for “message” (Botschaft). Cf. Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, XVI, 1437.
7 Martin Bucer’s Latin translation of 1525 adds, “in spirit.” WA 10I, 1, 13, n. 2.
8 Papal and conciliar decisions, decrees, and pronouncements had been assembled and supplemented through the centuries until they constituted a very sizeable “body of canon law.” Luther had consigned the entire collection to the flames on December 10, 1520, along with the papal bull which called for the burning of his books. Cf. LW 31, 381–395; and E.G. Schwiebert, Luther and His Times (St. Louis: Concordia, 1950), pp. 19–20.
9 The reference is to Luther’s commentary on the various texts of the Wartburg Postil to which this Brief Instruction was intended as a foreword. See the Introduction, pp. 115–116.
Luther, Martin: Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan (Hrsg.) ; Oswald, Hilton C. (Hrsg.) ; Lehmann, Helmut T. (Hrsg.): Luther's Works, Vol. 35 : Word and Sacrament I. Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 1999, c1960 (Luther's Works 35), S. 35:III-124
Thank you, dear "Manna," for such a precious gift! I am overwhelmed by your generosity. I am overwhelmed by the gift God gave His children through the pen of Martin Luther. I am humbled by this glimpse of the true Gospel, its breadth and depth.
Selah.
One final thought: I heard today that Jesus bears His wounds still now. What does that mean???
Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!
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