Situating Martin Luther within World Christianity:
Post-Eurocentric Perspective
Paul S. Chung
Introduction
It is my pleasure to present my understanding of Lutheran theology and its global contribution in the postcolonial context of world Christianity. I articulate a pedagogical concern with the gospel of reconciliation by bringing faith and action in dealing with the problem of a pluralistic and global world, which is characterized by emancipation, inculturation, recognition of the Other, and ecological integrity. These issues remain crucial in defining my pedagogy at Seminary teaching, as well as contributing to the formation process of candidates for ministry. Thus, I seek to critically renew a discourse of ‘Luther and Reformation theology’ in its Eurocentric model, expanding the significance of Lutheran theology for the contemporary challenge.
A discourse of ‘Luther and Reformation theology’ has been disseminated and institutionalized in the Eurocentric model, and it represents a hegemonic model for the church in the global south to emulate or mimic. In this mode of representation symbolic power and violence would perpetrate itself in dominating the interpretive scheme in terms of perception, appreciation, and misrecognition.[1]
To what extent do I reemploy central theological categories of Martin Luther by problematizing such hegemonic discourse and elaborating Luther’s insight for global contribution? For this task I begin with Luther’s Trinitarian thinking, scrutinizing some significant aspects of Lutheran theology in a linguistic, emancipatory frame of reference. I hermeneutically retrieve Luther’s insight into responsibility in the public sphere, recognition of the Other, inculturation, and ecological integrity.
The Triune God: the Source of Life and Emancipation
Luther defines God as a glowing oven full of love eternally, who is fully revealed in Jesus Christ, “a mirror of the Father’s heart.” Jesus opens to us “the most profound depths of his fatherly heart and his pure, unutterable love.”[2] The triune God, revealed as the fountain of love, speaks in terms of God’s strange work, law, and the gospel.
In his exposition of John’s Prologue, Luther argues that God is the Word speaking in, with, and to God’s self. God speaks because God is the Word—a force of communication—by enabling the communication within God’s self and for the world. Luther conceived of God as the subject of divine speaking in person, promise, dialogue, and fellowship.[3]
I find it significant to develop a linguistic feature of Luther’s idea of God, because he comprehends that the word in Christian tradition is the pure event of God. It is embodied in the basic biblical witness: the Word became flesh. Luther’s embodied mode of thinking sees that creation once took place in and through the word of God; the miracle of language is explained in the Hebrew notion of the creating Word: Dabar—God’s Word in deed and effect creating life. The Word explicates itself in the multiplicity of words, laying out the character of language as event, whose character belongs to the meaning itself.[4]
The triune God means a living, relational, and emancipatory God as the source of communication and redemption. God as the speaking subject upholds Luther’s notion of gospel in the sense of the living voice of God (viva vox evangelii). The triune God is conceptualized in the internal structure of divine speech-event in loving communion, that is, promise, dialogue, and participation. God’s being in communal relationship and fellowship (perichoresis; God in self) can be articulated in divine self-communication in the historical, economic context (God for us and the world). “The Father gives us all creation, Christ all his work, the Holy Spirit all his gifts.”[5]
I characterize God’s relationality with the world in terms of verbum relationis in the sense of speech event. God’s speech event to the church and the world is inseparably connected with the power of the Holy Spirit, who was actually poured out upon all flesh at Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit “affects faith where and when it pleases God in those who hear the gospel…not on account of our own merits but on account of Christ.”[6] Luther characterizes a motherly character of the church, because it is “the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God” through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit illuminates and inflames our hearts.[7] The church is sent into the world and exists for the sake of the world, because the church as the assembly of saints is created through the Word and the sacraments in the presence of the Holy Spirit in order to become blessing to all nations.
Speech Event and Interpretation
For Luther, the Holy Spirit plays a normative role in interpretation of the Scripture. There exists a dialectical and dialogical relationship between the character of the verbum Dei (as spoken word) and the character of writtenness in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Insofar as gospel as the living voice of God is sung and proclaimed as an oral cry, it is a voice resounding in all of the world, shouted and heard in all places through the proclamation of the Word of God.
Luther’s cardinal metaphor “what promotes Christ” plays a hermeneutical principle in establishing dialogue with the world of the entire Scripture as well as the realm of creation. This is also the criterion in judging all scriptures regarding whether they are in agreement with what drives Christ.[8] Thus a concept of viva vox evangelii implies the priority of the spoken word (God’s Saying; Dabar in Hebrew) guiding the written word (the Scripture) through which God continues to address in the presence of the Holy Spirit.
A scientific-critical investigation of Scripture retains its validity in qualifying Lutheran theology as a hermeneutical theology for effectively communicating the meaning of the biblical narrative to people in public spheres. In his Introduction to the Psalter, 1531, Luther states that “there [in the whole Bible] you see into the heart of all the saints.”[9] The humanity of the biblical authors and their limitations are not concealed, but actually uncovered and exposed to our exegetical investigation and construction. The biblical narrative and people of God entail their historical character and are located in their political, social, and cultural condition in Scripture. The Scripture was shaped and influenced by their lives and voices, which were embedded within the socioeconomic and historical circumstances. This perspective helps us to comprehend that the historically conditioned documentations and social connections remain influential factors in exploring and interpreting Scripture in a decisively political, prophetic, and socio-critical manner.
In light of God’s communicative action, it is worth noting that Luther presents the “mutual colloquium and consolation of brothers and sisters”[10] in the Smalcald Articles. It refers to the fifth form of the gospel in reference to preaching, the sacrament, and the ecclesial office. Luther’s understanding of the Word of God is more rich and profound than Karl Barth in his threefold sense of the Word of God (written, proclaimed, and revealed).
God’s Word, understood interpersonally, retains an authority which is located in mutual colloquium. Luther adds the consolation of brothers and sisters, explaining its spiritual, pastoral dimension as a supplementary characteristic of God’s Word. Thus Luther grounds his concept of the fifth form of the gospel in Matt 18: 20. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” God is understood as the one who is involved in the life of the public sphere and communicative life. Thus, I characterize a communicative form of the gospel in connection with the forgiveness of sin, which remains crucial in Luther’s notion of the gospel in the interrelationship between the law and the gospel.
Thus, Luther’s theology of speech event is featured in a critical and prophetic relief, which is in accordance with Hebrews 1:1: “God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets.” The word of God in Jesus Christ is indispensably connected with God’s speech event, which was undertaken throughout all the ages in its plural horizons of effect. A Hebrew way of expression remains in force, because God’s word is related to a real thing or action creating something effective and gracious.[11]
Luther finds it necessary to translate and interpret the Word of God, because Scripture is not merely the written word belonging to the past. Rather it is the living voice of God, which encounters us in our midst, here and now (Heb 4:12-13, 1 Cor 1:18, Isa 55:10, 11).
Luther’s creative engagement with the living and prophetic word of God becomes crucial in characterizing him as a constructive theologian, because the living word of God is not mechanically conveying or repeating certain words or statements in the Scripture to people in different times and places. In the translation of biblical narrative to people of other cultures or religions, I observe that even the same word can be said in a different manner to another context. It refers to the polysemy of word-event which is grounded in God’s self-communication through speech event to the reader.
Luther remains an inspiration for advancing the relationship between God’s word and interpretation through a constructive translation (or inculturation) of the biblical narrative and confessional symbols in a hermeneutical frame of reference; this task remains central to the theological project of World Christianity and postcolonial epistemology in the sense of vernacular cosmopolitanism.[12] Vernacular translation finds its validity in advancing its cosmopolitan, global character in deep engagement with the living and emancipating Word of God.
The linguistic featuring of Luther’s theology plays a significant role in appraising him as a public theologian to promote dialogue, colloquium, and communicative rationality in public fields. I look to further discuss his insight in relation to public problems such as political responsibility, economic justice, and integrity of life in creation, and recognition of the people of other cultures and faiths.
Gospel of Justification in the Midst of Political Witness
Luther’s view of the gospel in the midst of political witness entails critical and prophetic potentials in critiquing and renewing the problems of social structure. Luther argues against corruption of the powerful and the dominant; “the princes” and “big shots” find themselves tolerable, when the world should be criticized only if only they are exempted from this criticism. But Luther insists that they must certainly be criticized too. Anyone entrusted with the office of preaching is accountable for this critique, revealing where and how they act unjustly and do wrong. Such prophetic critique carries out, even if the ruler regards it to be uncomfortable and even dangerous leading to rebellion.[13] This preaching activity is a form of speaking the truth audaciously (parrhesia) in faithfulness to God’s Word and theology of the cross.
For the sake of the freedom of the gospel, Luther spoke out against those who sought to ideologically misuse his theology of justification for a theology of revolution.[14] However, Luther maintains that the justified becomes a collaborator with God, because faith alone justifies and is active in love. Once justified, we enter the active life of love toward our neighbors.[15] Faith is active in love seeking justice and prophetic diakonia in the public realm, because the grace of justification becomes the driving force for undergirding the Church’s engagement with public sphere. The law in its political function has its own value, but the gospel may have a critical function when the former in violation of its own function runs to misuse, corruption, and dictatorship.
The grace of justification, which entails the living Christ in union with us in Word and sacrament, makes the grace of justification and faith dynamically related to the service of the needy in society. Christian freedom in the context of happy exchange encourages Christian life in devoting all works to the welfare of others. The participation model shapes the spiritual formation and discipleship in terms of theologia crucis and in conformity to Jesus Christ for the sake of emancipation and diakonia of those in need.[16]
Luther prophetically expresses a social dimension of Eucharistic theology in connection with anamnestic reason standing in solidarity with people who suffer. “Here your heart must go out in love and learn that this is a sacrament of love. As love and support are given you, you in turn must render love and support to Christ in his needy ones. You must feel with sorrow all the dishonor done to Christ in his holy Word, all the misery of Christendom, all the unjust suffering of the innocent, with which the world is everywhere filled to overflowing. You must fight [resist], work, pray, and—if you cannot do more—have heartfelt sympathy.”[17]
The grace of justification, which is connected with the sacramental dimension of God’s promise and grace, underpins the church’s responsibility in coping with the unjust suffering of the innocent in terms of resistance, labor, prayer, and heartfelt sympathy.
In fact, the Lutheran teaching of the grace of justification has multifaceted dimensions, rather than merely reduced to a forensic, individualistic sense. It focuses on God’s initiative love in Christ extra nos (outside of us) which takes place for us, then Luther relates it to the indwelling aspect of Christ in us. This tripartite sense of the grace of justification can be deepened in its entirety by looking at theology of the cross and Eucharistic theology. An anamnestic interpretation of Lutheran theology finds its significance in the postcolonial context of World Christianity, which struggles with retrieving and recovering the forgotten side of narrative of the people in the buried history by the previous colonialism and its Eurocentric discourse of representation.
What remains central in Latin America is that faith has a concrete historical dimension and its liberation theology rediscovers the social dimension of the historical Jesus in his proclamation and ministry in solidarity with the poor. It takes issue with the colonial image of dead Jesus (perpetrated from Iberian Peninsula) and celestial monarch (perpetrated from Spain and Portugal). Luther’s theology of the cross is taken up to develop Jesus in active identification with the poor, the weak, the marginalized, and the suffering. Its notion of conformation with Christ implies becoming con-formed with Christ, such that resurrection is given in the midst of experience of the kenosis of Jesus. Lutheran theology in an anamnestic profile finds validity in witness to the God of justice in connection with the dangerous and subversive memory of Jesus who is in deep solidarity with ochlos-minjung (Luke 4:18-19).[18]
I notice this emancipatory dimension in Luther’s Commentary on the Magnificat (1520-1), in which he describes Mary as the one who was impoverished and completely wrapped up in poverty. Without any human help, God alone may do the work.[19] Mary as an example of the grace of justification shapes and underscores the church in terms of preferential service of the poverty-stricken. She addresses a challenge of God’s initiative against the patriarchal culture of the powerful, their hierarchical system, and institutionalized domination. Luther, in a letter to Friedrich (March 7, 1522), expressed his new discovery of political theology with a new recognition. “The spiritual tyranny has become weak. That is only what I regard with my writings. Now, I see that God drives further, insofar as God works in Jerusalem and two regiments. I have learned newly that not merely spiritual, but also worldly power must obey the Gospel…It shows itself clearly in the story of the Bible.”[20]
God and Economic Justice
Luther’s new configuration of political theology can be furthered and elucidated in taking on his position concerning God and economic justice. Luther’s theology of the economic realm marks one of the most distinguished fields, as we see his critique of the system and practice of early capitalism. Luther regards mammon as the chief example in opposition to God, fighting for the sake of the poor and needy against the system of “devouring capital.” The system of capital was devouring people, land, and resources for greed and accumulation, because it characterizes the social reality of early capitalism at his time.[21]
In Luther’s account, those who have God and everything needed (money and property) have no care for anyone else; thus they have a mammon-god. “They set their whole hearts on money and property: “This is the most common idol on earth.”[22]
According to Hans J. Iwand, Luther comprehends faith in accordance with the First Commandment, which implies Deum justificare (giving God justice; the gospel side). When we act on faith in God’s promise and accept God’s forgiveness, we give God justice, the justification of God.[23] Luther’s discovery of the Decalogue can facilitate synthesizing a dialogical relation between the law-gospel hermeneutic in a more dynamic, living, and prophetic manner, especially in matters of church’s responsibility for the economic justice.
In fact, Luther takes into account the most internal core of the Torah, in which the Decalogue is elaborated as a summary of natural law for Christian life. His understanding has little to with accepting it as the Jewish Mosaic law, because Moses is the Sachsenspiegel for the Jews, functioning like a Saxon mirror of customary law of Holy Roman Empire.
For Luther the Decalogue as divine instruction contains law/gospel, command/promise, judgment/grace, identifying the unity of the Word of God in such correlation.[24] The theological or spiritual use of the law refers to its authentic task in convicting the sinful condition before God. The law accuses, while the gospel forgives. Alongside the spiritual use, there is the educative function of the law effective in commandment, as admonition of the divine will in the sense of paraenesis following from the gospel.
As Luther states, the Hebrew Bible entails “certain promises and words of grace, by which the holy fathers and prophets under the law were kept, like us, in the faith of Christ.”[25] He further notices “the promises and pledges of God about Christ”[26] as the best thing in Moses, in whom there is a fine order, a joy about the gospel of Christ. Moses is a well of all wisdom and understanding.[27]
At this juncture, I notice that there is evangelical freedom or delight in appreciating and undertaking the pedagogical, liberating dimension of the law. This implies an evangelically conceptualized notion of the law in terms of its gospel side, [28] which is in contrast to antinomians as well as the doctrine of the third use of the law. Although the law (theological and educative) is not necessary for justification, anyone who abolishes the law annuls the gospel, too.[29]
What remains decisive in Luther’s critical understanding of the Decalogue lies in his theological axiom of God versus mammon; this heuristic side is elaborated in his critical analysis of economic issues in the context of the seventh Commandment (“You are not to steal”) in the Large Catechism (1529).
Luther argues that the economic reality is stamped by misusing the market in an arbitrary, defiant, and arrogant way; it causes the poor to be defrauded every day, and new burdens and higher prices are imposed upon their life.[30]
The economic arena is no longer simply an ethical problem for Luther; rather it becomes definitely a confessional problem to the church. Confession to God comes to terms with the Church’s resistance against the dominating, devouring system of mammon; it belongs to the confessional core of status confessionis.
Luther’s sharp critique of the devouring system of capital accumulation and greedy money entails a prophetic voice against the Christian character of early capitalism in reference to colonialism in America. Surprising enough, it is Karl Marx who acknowledges Luther’s critical voice in Marx’s analysis of capital accumulation and commodity fetishism.[31]
In fact, Luther stands in parallel with Bartolomé de Las Casas’ (1484-1566) prophetic stance against Spanish mission and colonialism. In the practice of usury, speculation, and hoarding, Luther was keenly aware of the irrational and dangerous aspects of early capitalism in observing clearly the political-economic alliance between the Catholic Church, Charles V, and the Fuggers. This perspective becomes an inspiration for the church in the global south to challenge powers and principalities in the midst of world economy under Empire.[32]
In this light, it is important to critically review Max Weber’s evaluation of Luther’s theology of economic justice. In Weber’s account, Luther’s concept of vocation has been interpreted as indifference to the spirit of capitalism, because the society is regarded as already produced and sanctioned as the autonomous law by the divine order of creation. Luther’s attack upon the great merchants of his time was not biblically nor prophetically grounded. Rather Weber contends that Luther’s critique of economic injustice is ironically claimed as a part of backwardness in the spirit of capitalism, implying economic traditionalism.[33]
Against Weber’s misrecognition, however, Marx implies that Luther’s critique of economic justice would belong to a prophetic type of religion as a protest against social misery, which is in contrast to a perverted type of religion as opium or fetishism.
In fact, Luther himself considers the significance of economic life and justice in his theological deliberation of God and Decalogue, clarifying the connection between the first commandment and the seventh commandment. Luther’s stance for God versus mammon is biblically inspired, prophetically driven, and deeply embedded within an endeavor of creating fair and just life arrangements. Thus, he evaluates the economic field in terms of the liberating World of God for fairness and solidarity, which has still validity in the context of late capitalism in the aftermath of colonialism.
I see Luther’s theory of the two kingdoms, or better the two governments, embedded within the dialectical relationship between God’s right hand strategy (church) and God’s left hand strategy (politics, economics, and culture). God is Lord of the church and the world, in which Luther does not acknowledge the autonomous law in the political field nor as an underpinning dichotomy between the two governments. This position emphasizes God’s universal reign in the theory of the two governments, since God of all people works in the cultural sphere and creation, making all realms of life subject to God.
Grace of Justification and God’s Universal Reign
Luther’s teaching of justification can be seen in connection with God’s speech event in its universal effectiveness. Luther paves a hermeneutical way of speaking of God with an all-embracing and inclusive force, while retaining a radical and particular direction. Luther’s language Christological sola (alone) is closely associated with God’s universal effect. Paul, in front of the Areopagus, bears witness to solus Christus, expressing his conviction that everyone lives, moves, and has his/her being in the universal reign of God (Acts 17:22, 27-28).
God is wholly incomprehensible and inaccessible, as Paul exclaims (Rom 11:33).[34] Divine majesty is reserved for God’s self alone, since “God must therefore be left to himself in his own majesty.”[35] This means that God works life, death, and all in all, keeping God’s freedom over all things. God the Creator works all in all, and God’s ongoing act (creatio continua) implies divine power itself, preserving the creation and being present in its innermost and outermost aspects. This characterizes Luther’s theology of creation underlying God’s universal reign.
God’s universal reign leads Luther to acknowledge that God becomes an advocate for Hagar and Ishmael in Abraham’s faith journey. Luther’s remark about Ishmael is striking at this point: “For the expulsion does not mean that Ishmael should be utterly excluded from the kingdom of God…The descendants of Ishmael also joined the church of Abraham and became heirs of the promise, not by reason of a right, but because of irregular grace.”[36]
Luther’s Christological idea of grace does not stand in competition with God’s embrace of the Other through the irregular grace. It is Dietrich Bonhoeffer who revives Luther’s radical understanding of the gospel in light of God’s reconciliation built on the hermeneutical stance from below as well as the Other. He quotes Luther himself: “the curses of the godless sometimes sound better in God’s ear than the alleluias of the pious.”[37]
Furthermore, I draw attention to Luther’s marvelous sense of the aesthetic dimension of creation. It becomes striking and provocative, because “the wonderful and most lovely music [comes] from the harmony of the motions that are in the celestial spheres.”[38] A lively faith goes hand in hand with praise of God’s beauty and glory in creation. All creatures are tools in the service of God’s working or masks (larva Dei) under which God hides divine activity, working in mysterious way. God remains free in the ceaseless activity with which God works all in all.
Luther reinforces the identity of the justified as the created collaborators with God, as Paul teaches to the Corinthians (1 Cor 3:9), in dealing with the relationship between the justified and God’s work in the public sphere as well as creation.
The article of creation is that of faith. Faith in God’s creation is faith in the triune God as the source of life and emancipation. Faith and justification correlate with ecological sustainability or environmental stewardship, which is indispensable for constructing Luther’s theology in a linguistic, creational, and emancipatory manner for global Lutheranism.
Luther’s discourse of grace of justification is not encapsulated in the individualist egotism of salvation, but acknowledges the dignity of people outside the walls of Christianity. We are encouraged to listen attentively to the beautiful music of God coming from creation, because creation is conceived of as a semantic realm through which God continues to speak to the church for its responsibility and stewardship.
I see Luther’s theology of creation and recognition of the Other, especially in reference to Bonhoeffer’s theology of reconciliation, in which the whole humanity is accepted by God’s reconciliation with the world.[39]
This reconciling theology is rooted in his hermeneutical stance from below: That is, “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.”[40]
Theologia Crucis in Contextualization
Jürgen Moltmann has revived Lutheran theology and its Trinitarian discourse in his book The Crucified God,[41] bringing forth impulses, debates, and arguments to theology and church of global south. He converses with Japanese theology of pain of God,[42] which has come forth in the wake of World War II. Kazoh Kitamori (1916-98) explored the suffering of God in terms of a traditional Japanese Kabuki drama. He utilizes Japanese cultural terms such as tsurasa (vicariously bitter suffering) in order to propose an intercultural theology of the cross. Given Luther’s metaphor of “death against death” on the cross, Kitamori unfolds his theology in terms of “pain against pain.” A notion of “God in pain” comes to the foreground in the sense that God embraces those who do not deserve to be embraced.[43]
Kitamori takes Deus absconditus in Luther’s thought as the theological epistemology in understanding God’s pain, because the hidden God is the fundamental principle of Luther’s theology, from where all the rest of Luther’s thought emerges.[44] Kitamori maintains that God’s eternal decision to deliver the Son to the world becomes a hermeneutical bedrock for proposing the analogy of pain.
Moltmann compares Kitamori’s theology of pain of God with Bonhoeffer, while taking issue with Kitamori’s understanding of Christ disregarding its social critical dimension.[45]
A Japanese colonial reading of God’s pain has faced a radical challenge from minjung theology in South Korea, which refines a theology of the cross in terms of Jesus’s socio-biography in active identification with those who are marginalized, suppressed, and outcast. A minjung theological reading of God’s pain critically investigates the Gospel of Mark through redaction-critical and sociological exegesis, emphasizing Jesus’s social life and movement together with ochlos-minjung.
I take a step further in developing minjung theology by laying out an interreligious reading of Lutheran theology in the Buddhist-Christian context. I have sought to systematize Luther’s complex thought, qualifying his theology of the cross and grace of justification in connection with other theological foci, I articulate Luther’s contribution to intersectional fields (politics, economics, culture, and creation), while reinterpreting Luther’s theory of the two governments in terms of solidarity with the poor as well as recognition of the other in the Buddhist-Christian context.
Mission: Invitation, Dialogue, and Recognition
Luther’s recognition of others invites them to the gospel, while acknowledging that the non-Christian leads a morally mature life on the basis of the commands written upon all human hearts. Luther’s teaching of justification can be seen in his commentary on 1 Timothy 2:4. Here the exclusive proposition is expressed in universal terms because God causes all people to be saved.[46] Accordingly, Luther boldly appreciates pagan authority as a model to show the task of secular authority. Luther was not reluctant to praise the Turkish state and exercise a critique of Christian authorities with unprecedented frankness.[47] A gentle and rich Lord, God grants a great deal of gold, silver, riches, dominions, reason, wisdom, languages, and kingdoms to those outside Christian religion.
Luther warns against misleading people of other religions through a forced conversion to Christianity by means of colonialism and dominion.[48] Instead, mission can only be effective when it is performed by a continual renewal of the church and the Christian, excluding the human purposes of dominion, cultural imperialism, and confessional rivalry. As Luther says, “it is not said, therefore, that God desires to convert everyone. St. Paul only declares of the Gospel that it is a cry, which he causes to go out over everyone. It is supposed to be pure blessing.”[49] Accordingly, Lutheran confessional theology states that “Conversion to God is the work of God the Holy Spirit alone.”[50]
Lutheran mission is to invite people to the mystery, love, and promise of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ for all. It is featured by proclamation (Good News), prophetic diakonia in solidarity with those on the margins in the fields of politics, economy, culture, and creation.
Lutheran mission is constructive theology with an attractive character in terms of invitation, dialogue, and recognition, in other words, blessing to all nations in promoting an ethical attitude of parrhesia (speaking the truth of the Gospel audaciously).[51]
Parrhesia is speech activity unveiling domination of flattery in legitimating the status quo, in other words, ideologically distorted forms of communication. Such discourse activity is undertaken in analyzing the extent to which religious discourse is embedded with power relations in and through symbolic power and violence, abusing the imagery of the cross.[52]
In this regard, Bonhoeffer’s insight into parrhesia deserves special attention. Parrhesia is “a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflections upon them.”[53] Serious reflexivity about parrhesia is performed in our engagement with the living word of God in connection with social problem. God would rather hear the curses and outcries of the ungoldly, thus parrhessia is a discourse of solidarity and reconciliation with the deviant, the different, and the displaced in society and culture.
Conclusion
Given the study of Martin Luther and the global contribution, I conclude by way of several theses in which I bring a discourse of ‘Martin Luther and Reformation theology’ to be more amenable to seminary education in dealing with the postcolonial challenge and World Christianity.
First, the Christian confession of Jesus Christ in the tradition of Lutheran theology emphasizes the Son of God as the eternal and incarnate Word as standing at the borderline between Israel and all nations, identifying himself with the lowest of the low among his brothers and sisters (Matt 25:31). This is characteristic of our understanding of the triune God as the Source of life and emancipation in solidarity with and recognition of the subalterized—massa perditionis— under the mystery of God.
Second, Luther’s theology of justification needs to be extended and constructed in different times and places, especially in light of Luther’s congenial notion of the gospel as the living voice of God. God as the Subject of speaking encourages us to acknowledge and respect the world of creation in which God continues to work and address (creatio continua). The Lutheran teaching of justification should break through its encapsulation within Western possessive individualism and its Eurocentric paradigm; rather it should be reclaimed as a way of expressing God’s deep compassion in the death of Jesus Christ for all including the integrity of creation.
Third, law-gospel hermeneutics can be better articulated in terms of Decalogue-Gospel correlation in which there is an evangelical delight in doing divine commandment in connection with prophetic words, economic justice, and integrity of creation. In this scheme of correlative hermeneutics, faith becomes publicly embodied, being active in love and seeking a renewed understanding of the faith in the public sphere. The discourse ‘Lutheran theology and Reformation theology’ is featured in a linguistic emancipatory framework, and it advances a project of inculturation as the semantic realm by constructive engagement with the living voice of God as well as creatio continua.
Fourth, theology of the cross, seen in light of theology of creation, can overcome previous tainting imagery between the cross and crusade in the colonial time. This refers to a refurbishing of the theology of the cross for theology of life (resurrection and reconciliation). This claims a postcolonial formation of theologia crucis as a radical critique of any cultural blending with colonial or imperial direction. Through Luther’s congenial notion of irregular grace, the goodness of creation is fulfilled and restored in God’s grace of justification through divine reconciliation, which recognizes differences in gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity.
Fifth, the Lutheran insight into the living and emancipatory Word entails self-criticism and self-renewal for the project of missional theology in terms of invitation, dialogue, and solidarity. A biblical discourse of parrhesia remains an inspiration for the theology and church to engage in evangelization and prophetic diakonia. This discursive practice furthers to analyze the masculine, symbolic system of domination and violence through the lens of a bio-political theory and the linguistic emancipatory scheme of interpretation. This interdisciplinary method reinforces Lutheran discourse of God’s mission and public church in the commitment to the gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation by engaging with social cultural issues in the fields of race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity.
The discourse ‘Luther and Reformation theology’ helps seminary education and mission to encourage students to deepen their vocation in commitment to the faith community in terms of public faith, gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation, ecological integrity, and recognition of the Other.
[1] Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 20.
[2] Luther, “Large Catechism,” in Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds. Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (=BC) (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 439. 440.
[3] LW 52:45-46.
[4] H.G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed (New York: Continuum, 2004), 427
[5] “The Large Catechism,” BC 440.
[6] “Augsburg Confession,” art. V. BC 41.
[7] “Large Catechism,” BC 436.
[8] “Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude,” in John Dillenberger, ed. Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1961), 36.
[9] Helmut Gollwitzer, An Introduction to Protestant Theology, trans. David Cairns (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 58.
[10] “Smalcald Articles,” BC 319.
[11] F. W. Marquardt, Das christliche Bekenntnis zu Jesus dem Juden. Eine Christologie 1 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1990), 141-145.
[12] Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity?: The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003). Agnes M. Brazal, A Theology of Southeast Asia: Liberation-Postcolonial Ethics in the Philippines (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2019), 28.
[13] Cited in Ulrich Duchrow, Global Economy: A Confessional Issue for the Churches? Trans. David Lewis (Geneva: WCC, 1987), 7.
[14] Although his discourse—“suffering, suffering, cross, cross is the Christian right, no other”—was attacked during the Peasants’ War (1524), Luther’s radical critique of the state’s violence must not be forgotten.
[15] Gollwitzer, Krummes Holz-aufrechter Gang: Zur Frage nach dem Sinn des Lebens (Munich: Kaiser, 1985), 313.
[16] Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien 1 (Tubingen: Mohr, 1971), 321-24, 329.
[17] “The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body and Blood of Christ, and the Brotherhoods (1519),” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 247.
[18] Walter Altmann, Luther and Liberation: A Latin American Perspective, trans. Mary M. Solberg (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 21-25. Craig L. Nessan, The Vitality of Liberation Theology (Eugene: Pickwick, 2013), 65. 76.
[19] LW 21:328-29.
[20] W Br 2,461.61.
[21] Gűnter Fabiunke, Martin Luther als Nationalȍkonomen (Berlin: Akademie-Velag, 1963).
[22] “Large Catechism,” BC 387.
[23] H. J. Iwand, The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther, ed. Virgil F. Thompson. Trans. Randi H. Lundell (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2008), 21.
[24] In his Table Talk, Luther said: “The Hebrew drinks from the spring source, but the Greek from water that flows from the source. The Latin drinks from the puddles.” WATr 525.
[25] “Preface to the Old Testament (1523, revised 1545),” in Lull and Russel, eds. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 2nd ed (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 114.
[26] Luther, “How Christians Should Regard Moses,” in ibid., 129.
[27] Ibid., 121. During his stay in Coburg, Luther wrote his letter to Justus Jonas (June 30, 1530), stating that the Decalogue is the dialectic of the Gospel and the Gospel is the rhetoric of the Decalogue. Therefore we have, in Christ, all of Moses, but in Moses, not all of Christ. Luther became a new student of the Decalogue. WA Br 5,409, 26-29.
[28] H. J. Iwand, Luthers Theologie, Nachgelassene Werke., eds. H. Gollwitzer, et al. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1983), 203-204. For Luther, the first root of all good lies in taking delight in the Law of the Lord (Psalm 1).
[29] Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 181.
[30] “Large Catechism,” BC 417-418.
[31] Karl Marx, Capital, 1: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1990), 649-650.
[32] Chung, Church and Ethical Responsibility in the Midst of World Economy: Greed, Dominion, and Justice (Eugene: Cascade, 2013), 38-40.
[33] Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 85.
[34] Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, eds. E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969), 330.
[35] Ibid., 201.
[36] LW 4:42-44.
[37] Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, ed. Wayne W. Floyd, Jr. trans. H. Martin Rumscheidt (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 160.
[38] LW 1:126.
[39] Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 202.
[40] Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, ed. E. Bethge (New York: The Macmillan, 1971), 17.
[41] Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).
[42] Kazoh Kitamori, The Theology of the Pain of God (Eugene: Wipf & Stock. Rep. 2005).
[43] Ibid., 27.
[44] Ibid., 107.
[45] Moltmann, The Crucified God, 47, 153.
[46] LW 28:260. His reflection on Jesus’ descent into hell runs also in this direction.
[47] Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 189.
[48] Volker Stolle, Luther Texts on Mission. The Church Comes from All Nations, trans. Klaus D. Schultz and Daniel Thies (Saint Louis: Concordia, 2003), 104-105.
[49] Ibid., 29.
[50] Formula of Concord,” BC 561.
[51] Chung, Reclaiming Mission as Constructive Theology: Missional Church and World Christianity (Eugene, OR: Cascade. 2012).
[52] Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech (LA: Semiotexte, 2001); Vitor Westhelle, The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006).
[53] Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 359.