Jonathan Edwards' Vision of Reality, by J. J. Bombaro: A Review

Quite straightforwardly, John J. Bombaro's Jonathan Edwards's Vision of Reality: The Relationship of God to the World, Redemption History, and the Reprobate (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012) is a great good, and with no further ado I will tell you why I think that. 

A Brief Synopsis

After a helpful Introduction, Chapters 1-3 do something that is not always done in expositions of Edwards' thought: they extensively examine the nature of Edwards' "new sense" conversion, and the importance that that experience had for the birth and development of his God-centered view of reality. These chapters are very important to realize that the motivation of Edwards' view was not only speculative but also, if not primarily, spiritual and theological. Then the author proceeds by further discussing the structure and ramifications of Edwards' God-centered metaphysics: Edwards' doctrine of being and divine omnipresence (Chapter 4); Edwards' Christian panentheism and his view of God as the end of all things and redemption as the main means to that end (Chapter 5); the necessity to see Edwards' divine dispositionalism within the context of both Edwards' classical view of God's nature and his philosophical idealism, plus helpful corrections of Sang Hyun Lee's errors in interpreting Edwards (Chapter 6); important discussion on Edwards' ontology and idealist epistemology, with concluding remarks on Edwards' doctrine of the Trinity since Edwards shapes his view of man and reality according to the Divine pattern (Chapter 7, which was also helpful to me to understand how Edwards to some degree transcends the idealist-realist distinction since he can be called both, once we posit the necessary qualifications).

Chapters 8 and 9 expound on Edwards theological anthropology and how humans are created to be an image of the Trinity. The chapters also correct Stephen H. Holmes' and Michael McClymond's unnecessary conclusion according to which the reprobate, since they have totally lost God's principles of holiness and righteousness, are therefore dehumanized. They do not consider that there is a distinction between natural and supernatural principles or dispositions (which can be equated to Edwards' distinction between God's natural and spiritual image in man). Edwards maintains that man's natural principles (understanding, will, consciousness, etc.) are what defines humanity, and they have not been lost with the fall (although they have been affected). Man's supernatural principles, however, are not essential but accidental in man (here Edwards' doctrine of self-love comes in), and that is what fallen man has lost entirely. What more interests Edwards, however, is true beauty, and that can be possible only in participation with the Triune God.

Chapters 10 and 11 are, in my opinion, masterful. They further show how Holmes and McClymond err regarding Edwards' anthropology, against the background of a correct view of Edwards' doctrine of man. Moreover,  these chapters try to offer a coherent exposition of Edwards' view of the fall of Adam into sin. Such an account has been often criticized in the literature, but John shows its reasonableness, at least within the context of Edwards' God-centered metaphysics. Chapter 11 also offers some important epistemological considerations regarding what unregenerate and regenerate may perceive about spiritual and natural matters, both in this life and in the afterlife. 

Chapters 12 and 13 present Edwards' view of salvation (both individual salvation and corporative, from individual regeneration to final glorification), together with Edwards' God-centered view of history against the man-centredness of the Enlightenment. These Chapters also refutes Gerald McDermott's and Anri Morimoto's revisionist and universalist readings of Edwards, readings which John rightly says: "Justified talk of Edwards's potential soteriological inclusivism is simply fiction" (p. 24).

The Conclusion lists and discusses the attractiveness and unattractiveness of Edwards' philosophical theology for modern readers. Interestingly enough, for someone like me who is sympathetic to Edwards' view of reality, I find his "unattractiveness" quite attractive. Finally, Appendix A shows the radical differences between Edwards and process theology. Desperate attempts to place Edwards near to process theology are still ongoing (see here, for example), and, by their very nature, they cannot but be characterized by a deep lack of textual evidence coupled with a selectively truncated presentation of Edwards' thought. Appendix B discusses Edwards' view of sufficient and efficacious grace in relation to the pre- and post-lapsarian man.

Christ: The Beginning and the End

The book is heartwarmingly Christological. As a Lutheran scholar and minister, John undoubtedly knows the centrality of the Logos incarnate for Christian wisdom and worldview. Edwards-the-Calvinist' overall theocentric emphases can sometimes lead to believe that he did not give a prominent place to Christ, a conclusion which would be mistaken. For example, see the commentary to Edwards' account of his "new sense" conversion.

"From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him ... Not long after I first began to experience these things ... I was walking there, and looked up on the sky and clouds; there came into my mind, a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness. After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered: there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything." ~ WJEO 16:793-794.

John comments as follows. I like how he succinctly touches theology, soteriology, epistemology, and ontology in a few lines.

By Full of Eyes (Chris Powers).

"Christ and redemption are mentioned first because of their relation to special revelation and God's 'end of creation' summarily being accomplished in and through the Son of God. In the Bible God said He would ultimately glorify Himself in the person and work of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Thus, God's 'end of creation' is the glorification of Himself through the perfect idea or image of Himself, viz. the Son crucified and resurrected. A 'new kind of apprehension of Christ,' therefore, is not categorically different than apprehending God as God. The connection between content, mode, and sensibility of perception first converge on the spiritual sense as the facilitator of right thoughts and affections about God through Christ, or, similarly, God as Savior. Here Edwards' philosophical epistemology and soteriology merge together. Thus, when he writes, 'The first that I remember that ever I found anything of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words [from 1 Tim. 1: 17],' we find that these words are the climactic conclusion to a sixteen-verse celebratory discourse on the gospel of Christ. The 'vision' of God as God is mediated by the Spirit as a 'vision' of God through the Christ presented in the pages of the New Testament as the eternal Logos (Divine Word) incarnated. Edwards' theocentrism, we learn, is never without an element of logocentricity: the Word inscripturated serves as the means by which God converts the soul." ~ P. 54.

For other places where John highlights the centrality of Christ in Edwards' system, see also pp. 39, 130-131, 119-120, 252, 274-275.

A disagreement

John claims that according to Edwards, there are irregularities in God's being which are expressed through the reprobate; for example: "God's being possessing a disconcertingly high degree of 'irregularities'" (p. 232). Considering the existence and destiny of the reprobate, according to John there "needs to be an account of the reprobate themselves in relation to God’s prior and necessary dispositions" (quoted from an email exchange). This is because "given Edwards’ view of the end for which God created the world, there are dispositions within God that externalize or make manifest His excellencies. But for this to be consistent with Edwards’ ontology for maximal excellency, an account of the reprobate factor into the dispositional impulses of God" (Ibid.).

I am not convinced that what John claims follows from his own account of Edwards' view of God's dispositional nature. These are some considerations.

Firstly, on p. 174, note 124, John mentions Misc. 950 and 1032 in support of that claim. However, I do not see anywhere Edwards saying what John claims in his book. Moreover, it is one thing to say that there are deformities and irregularities "within God's beautiful matrix" (p. 174, emphasis added), while it is a radically different thing to say that "God's being possessing a disconcertingly high degree of 'irregularities'" (p. 232). John admits that Edwards does not use the terms "irregularities" and "deformities" and that they are never applied to God in Edwards' works. The claim, however, logically follows from Edwards' account of God's communicative nature, according to John. To which I answer with my second point.

Secondly, John himself grants that, for Edwards, human nature is defined according to its natural faculties, and the supernatural faculties are accidental. Therefore, reprobate, both in this life and in hell in the life to come, are and will always be humans. Their existence, therefore, still reflects God's natural attributes (understanding and will). This is their dispositional ontological ground and origin. But what about their eternal condemnation? If the saints' participation in divine glory reflect the perfect communion of the man Jesus Christ with the Logos who indwells him by the Holy Spirit, and, in turn, the perfect blessedness of the Trinity, how do we account for the eternal damnation of the reprobate in the light of divine dispositionalism? 

I do not believe that positing "irregularities" and "deformities" in God's being is necessary to answer that question. As a start, they are not a necessary condition in Edwards' ontological principle according to which the greater the excellency, the greater the complexity ("complexity" is not necessarily a pejorative or negative terms, while "irregularities" and "deformities" are). Furthermore, the reprobate's eternal experience of God's wrath can be accounted for with God's absolute opposition to what is not Himself and to what does not participate in Him through Christ in the Love that is the Holy Spirit. The "irregularities and "deformities" are the reprobates (and the fallen angels, of course, who also are moral, rational beings), so such irregularities and deformities can be placed in God's created matrix, but there is no need to track them back as belonging to God's being. The reprobate existence is the created manifestation of God's disposition of hatred of sin and evil, which is no irregularity of deformity but simply a negative consequence of God's holiness. The irregularity in the disposition's manifestation does not entail irregularity in the disposition itself or in the Disposer. For instance, an unprotected skin burned by the sun argues for no irregularity in the sun but rather in the skin which had no sunscreen (as God's righteousness and the Holy Spirit are not essential to human nature, so the sunscreen is not essential to the human skin). The dispositional account of human nature of the reprobate is maintained, and their hatred for God does not need to be accounted for through "irregularities" in God, because that hatred is "simply" the non-essential expression of a created understanding and will which, although imaging God in the possession of these (essential) faculties, still is deprived of the (accidental) Holy Spirit and, therefore, goes in the opposite direction of true love.

The necessity of an alternative to John's conclusion appears even further if we consider that "irregularities" and "deformities" are relative terms, that is, they need a third term. Irregular and deform with respect to what? To other things, attributes, dispositions in God which are "regular" and "formed"? That would exponentially (and unnecessarily) complicate the picture of Edwards' dispositional view of God, and I doubt that that is what Edwards' system entails with "complexity."

I am sure my alternative needs to be refined significantly. However, John seems to make a jump from God's dispositionality to God's being and nature which, in my view, is not required by Edwards' own account. 

I hope I have not misrepresented John's position (if so, that was certainly not intentional). Anyway, do not take my word for it, since John has my email and I look forward for his rejoinder.

Conclusions

Besides the disagreement I just discussed, Jonathan Edwards' Vision of Reality is a great achievement. John has offered a comprehensive exposition of Edwards' titanic view of all things, a harmonious and coherent symphony where theology and philosophy, natural and special revelation, speculation and spirituality work together to shows Edwards' captivating view of the comprehensiveness of the Triune God.

John lets Edwards speaks of himself. He carefully considers Edwards' historical and intellectual context and reads any Edwardsean argument and proposition in light of Edwards' general system. By doing so, and through careful and comprehensive use of the texts, John has been able to shed light also on issues of Edwards' thought that, although certainly problematic, are too often exaggeratedly considered as unacceptable. Jonathan Edwards' Vision of Reality is a demanding and challenging read, and perhaps it is not suited for the beginners. However, for intermediates and higher, it is required reading.

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My gratitude to Pickwick Publications for providing me with a review copy.

Jonathan Edwards on Sin and Holiness

The nature of sin necessarily implies misery. That soul that remains sinful must of a necessity of nature remain miserable, for it is impossible there should be any happiness where such a hateful thing as sin reigns and bears rule. Sin is the most cruel tyrant that ever ruled, seeks nothing but the misery of his subjects; as in the very keeping of God’s commands there is great reward, so in the very breaking of them there is great punishment. Sin is a woeful confusion and dreadful disorder in the soul, whereby everything is put out of place, reason trampled under foot and passion advanced in the room of it, conscience dethroned and abominable lusts reigning. As long as it is so, there will unavoidably be a dreadful confusion and perturbation in the mind; the soul will be full of worry, perplexities, uneasinesses, storms and frights, and thus it must necessarily be to all eternity, except the Spirit of God puts all to rights. So that if it were possible that God should desire to make a wicked man happy while he is wicked, the nature of the thing would not allow of it, but it would be simply and absolutely impossible.

Holiness is a most beautiful, lovely thing. Men are apt to drink in strange notions of holiness from their childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely. ‘Tis the highest beauty and amiableness, vastly above all other beauties; ‘tis a divine beauty, makes the soul heavenly and far purer than anything here on earth—this world is like mire and filth and defilement compared to that soul which is sanctified—‘tis of a sweet, lovely, delightful, serene, calm, and still nature. ‘Tis almost too high a beauty for any creature to be adorned with; it makes the soul a little, amiable, and delightful image of the blessed Jehovah. How may angels stand with pleased, delighted, and charmed eyes, and look and look with smiles of pleasure upon that soul that is holy! Christian holiness is above all the heathen virtue, of a more bright and pure nature, more serene, calm, peaceful, and delightsome. What a sweet calmness, what a calm ecstacy, doth it bring to the soul! Of what a meek and humble nature is true holiness; how peace
ful and quiet. How doth it change the soul, and make it more pure, more bright, and more excellent than other beings.

 ~ Jonathan Edwards, "The Way of Holiness" (1722). A sermon from Sermons and Discourses: 1720-1723 (WJE Online Vol. 10), 476-480.

Silence

By Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840).
From Wikimedia Commons.

If, in observing the present state of the world and life in general, from a Christian point of view one had to say (and from a Christian point of view with complete justification): It is a disease. And if I were a physician and someone asked me "What do you think should be done?" I would answer, "The first thing, the unconditional condition for anything to be done, consequently the very first thing that must be done is: create silence, bring about silence; God’s Word cannot be heard, and if in order to be heard in the hullabaloo it must be shouted deafeningly with noisy instruments, then it is not God’s Word; create silence! Ah, everything is noisy; and just as a strong drink is said to stir the blood, so everything in our day, even the most insignificant project, even the most empty communication, is designed merely to jolt the senses or to stir up the masses, the crowd, the public, noise! And man, this clever fellow, seems to have become sleepless in order to invent ever new instruments to increase noise, to spread noise and insignificance with the greatest possible haste and on the greatest possible scale. Yes, everything is soon turned upside down: communication is indeed soon brought to its lowest point with regard to meaning, and simultaneously the means of communication are indeed brought to their highest with regard to speedy and overall circulation; for what is publicized with such hot haste and, on the other hand, what has greater circulation than-rubbish! Oh, create silence!" 

 ~ Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, I, 47-48.

A Dostoevskyan Maelstrom

The Double (1846), White Nights (1848), Notes from Underground (1864), The Meek One (1876), and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877). These are the five stories contained in this nice collection. They are some of the shorter works the brilliant Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881). They are phenomenally written stories of alienation from self, others, and God through pride, oversize shame, narcissism, disordered self-consciousness, and utopian ideas. This edition also contains a helpful introduction and handy endnotes aimed at guiding the reader through Dostoevsky's many literary, philosophical, social, and political references.

The Double is the story of a man crippled with shame, and his unrealistic attempts to idealize his own self only make things worse, to the point of driving him to complete alienation and, ultimately, to madness.

In White Nights, an isolated man begins to fall in love with an equally emotionally fragile young woman. A love story with an announced tragic end, since the young woman is already unofficially promised to someone else. Differently from the antiheroes of The Double, Notes from Underground, and The Meek One, White Nights' antiheroes, the White Nights' protagonist does not willfully inflict pain and shame over his loved one. His detachment from reality and mankind, however, ends up hurting both of them.

Notes from Underground is the imaginary diary of a man so clueless of and adverse of the true nature of love and companionship that he cannot even simply conceive them as being nothing but domination and humiliation of the other. In fact, every attempt that he makes to establish a relationship ends either in his own or others' humiliation, or both.

The Meek One is the story of a pawnbroker who believes that, in order to love someone, the other must be forcibly shaped according to his own preconceived and ill-conceived image. He is the kind of person that "is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it" (C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 115; see, as a contrast, The Four Loves, 62). As he marries a woman much younger than him, he realizes his foolishness only when it is too late.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man tells the story of an atheist and relativist who (coherently to his worldview) believes that nothing at all matters. Thus, he decides to take his own life. However, a fantastic dream leads him to a radical conversion and change of perspective.

Together, these stories are a slow and inexorable psychological and spiritual maelstrom into some of the most intricate labyrinths of the misery of mankind. These works tell us of some of the direst consequences of mankind's fallen state. Although the narrations are focused on specific individuals, references to mankind in general are also present. Perhaps the following passage from the last chapter of The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (pp. 380-381) offers the overarching metaphysical setting and general interpretative key of all the stories by Dostoevsky mentioned here. Perhaps, without its context, this passage is not fully comprehensible. Perhaps I have not said enough to favor a full comprehension. Well, these are two more reasons for reading them by yourself.

Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed at the possibility o this happiness in the past, and called it a dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and shape, but, strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent once more that they succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire; though at the same time they fully believed that it was unattainable and could not be realised, yet they bowed down to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless, if it could have happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy condition which they had lost, and if someone had shown it to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered me: "We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and weep over it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish ourselves more perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have science, and by the means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness." That is what they said, and after saying such things everyone began to love himself better than anyone else, and indeed they could not do otherwise. All became so jealous of the rights of their own personality that they did their very utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and made that the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even voluntary slavery; the weak eagerly submitted to the strong, on condition that the latter aided them to subdue the still weaker. Then there were saints who came to these people, weeping, and talked to them of their pride, of their loss of harmony and due proportion, of their loss of shame. They were laughed at or pelted with stones. Holy blood was shed on the threshold of the temples. Then there arose men who began to think how to bring all people together again, so that everybody, while still loving himself best of all, might not interfere with others, and all might live together in something like a harmonious society. Regular wars sprang up over this idea. All the combatants at the same time firmly believed that science, wisdom and the instinct of self-preservation would force men at last to unite into a harmonious and rational society; and so, meanwhile, to hasten matters, "the wise" endeavoured to exterminate as rapidly as possible all who were "not wise" and did not understand their idea, that the latter might not hinder its triumph. But the instinct of self-preservation grew rapidly weaker; there arose men, haughty and sensual, who demanded all or nothing. In order to obtain everything they resorted to crime, and if they did not succeed--to suicide. There arose religions with a cult of non-existence and self-destruction for the sake of the everlasting peace of annihilation. At last these people grew weary of their meaningless toil, and signs of suffering came into their faces, and then they proclaimed that suffering was a beauty, for in suffering alone was there meaning.

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Luther: From Speculation to Expectation

Martin Luther and Aristotle,
by Simone Passaro.

“As he [Martin Luther, 1483–1546] wrote to his old professor Joducus Trutfetter, ‘I believe simply that it is impossible to reform the church if the canons, the decretals, the scholastic theology, the philosophy, and the logic as they are now are not uprooted and another study installed’ (WABr1, § 74). Luther at Wittenberg did just that.” ~ Robert Rosin, from The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther's Theology, 102.

Luther's Lectures on Romans (1515-1516) is a great example in support of the quotation above. There is a lot that can be said about Luther's attitude towards philosophy, that is, to the philosophy of his time (see the entry "Philosophy" in What Luther Say; Part 2 of The Oxford Handbook to Martin Luther's Theology; Christine Helmer, The Trinity and Martin Luther; and my Luther's Augustinian Theology of the Cross, for what it is worth). I will mention only a few things about that here, and I refer the reader to the sources just mentioned for more detailed discussions.

The passage I am interested in is Luther's commentary on Romans 8:19: "For the expectation of the creature waits for the revelation of the sons of God." (Rom. 8:19). The Reformer begins commenting on this verse as follows. I am quoting from Luther's Scholia in Luther's Works: Vol. 25, pages 25:361-362 (W, LVI, 370-373), with the help of Giancarlo Pani's and Franco Buzzi's respective Italian editions.

The apostle philosophizes and thinks about things in a different way than the philosophers and metaphysicians do. For the philosophers so direct their gaze at the present state of things that they speculate only about what things are and what quality they have, but the apostle calls our attention away from a consideration of the present and from the essence and accidents of things and directs us to their future state. For he does not use the term “essence” or “activity” of the creature, or its “action,” “inaction,” and “motion,” but in an entirely new and marvelous theological word he speaks of the “expectation of the creation,” so that because his soul can hear the creation waiting, he no longer directs his attention to or inquires about the creation itself, but rather to what it is awaiting (LW 25:360-361).

With "essence or activity of the creature, or its action, inaction, and motion," Luther is referring to Aristotelian metaphysics in general, or at least the way it was thought and interpreted at his time (for more on this, see James Atkinson, "Introduction" to Disputation against Scholastic Theology, in Luther: Early Theological Works, 251-265). He studied Aristotle's logic, ethics, and metaphysics while he was a student at Erfurt before entering the monastery, and he lectured at Wittenberg on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation: 1483-1521, 92-93). Luther came to the conclusion that focusing too much on this and similar studies had to be avoided inasmuch as they indulged the mind in speculating about the structure and essence of created things, rather than looking at them teleologically and eschatologically as the apostle Paul does. In fact, says Luther, Paul produces "an entirely new and marvelous theological word" (nouo et miro vocabulo et theologico), that is, the expectation of creation. 

But alas, how deeply and painfully we are ensnared in categories and questions of what a thing is; in how many foolish metaphysical questions we involve ourselves! When will we become wise and see how much precious time we waste on vain questions, while we neglect the greater ones? We are always acting this way, so that what Seneca has said is very true of us: “We do not know what we should do because we have learned unimportant things. Indeed we do not know what is salutary because we have learned only the things that destroy us” [Epistuale, 45.4] (LW 25:361).

Then, Luther adds a warning. C. S. Lewis’ words resemble Luther’s words: “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy must be answered” ("Learning in Wartime," from The Weight of Glory, 58). Luther’s words, however, are more negative. Luther calls for a significant decrease in time spent studied metaphysics and for an increase in the study of Christ and Him crucified.

Indeed I for my part believe that I owe to the Lord this duty of speaking out against philosophy and of persuading men to heed Holy Scripture. For perhaps if another man who has not seen these things, did this, he might be afraid or he might not be believed. But I have been worn out by these studies for many years now, and having experienced and heard many things over and over again, I have come to see that it is the study of vanity and perdition. Therefore I warn you all as earnestly as I can that you finish these studies quickly and let it be your only concern not to establish and defend them but treat them as we do when we learn worthless skills to destroy them and study errors to refute them. Thus we study also these things to get rid of them, or at least, just to learn the method of speaking of those people with whom we must carry on some discourse. For it is high time that we undertake new studies and learn Jesus Christ, “and Him crucified” [1 Cor. 2:2] (LW 25:361).

Then, the Reformer reiterates the importance of looking at creation in the right way, that is, teleologically and eschatologically.

Therefore you will be the best philosophers and the best explorers of the nature of things if you will learn from the apostle to consider the creation as it waits, groans, and travails, that is, as it turns away in disgust from what now is and desires that which is still in the future. For then the study of the nature of things, their accidents and their differences, will quickly grow worthless (LW 25:361). 

Luther then makes a pointing comparison between those who focus on essences and accidents and an imaginary man who marvels at the elements and materials that a builder intends to use and ignores the end of the building.

As a result the foolishness of the philosophers is like a man who, joining himself to a builder and marveling at the cutting and hewing and measuring of the wood and the beams, is foolishly content and quiet among these things, without concern as to what the builder finally intends to make by all of these exertions. This man is empty-headed, and the work of such an assistant is meaningless. So also the creation of God, which is skillfully prepared for the future glory, is gazed upon by stupid people who look only at its mechanics but never see its final goal (LW 25:361-362). 

Luther goes on to reveal the tragicomic nature of such fixation with this king of metaphysics. He says that "the things themselves reject and groan over their own essences and actions and inactions," however "we praise and glorify the knowledge of that very thing which is sad about itself and is displeased with itself." In other words, creation itself is unhappy with and groaning for the way it is now, having been subjected to the curse and vanity of sin. Some, however, glorify in and are satisfied with discovering the nature of something which considers itself (so to speak) corrupt and that longs for being different and renewed by God's deliverance. It is a "happy science" that focuses on "a sad creation."

Thus are we not completely off the track when we turn our thoughts to the praises and glories of philosophy? Look how we esteem the study of the essences and actions and inactions of things, and the things themselves reject and groan over their own essences and actions and inactions! We praise and glorify the knowledge of that very thing which is sad about itself and is displeased with itself! And, I ask you, is he not a mad man who laughs at someone who is crying and lamenting and then boasts that he sees him as happy and laughing? Certainly such a person is rightly called a madman and a maniac. Indeed, if only the rude common people foolishly thought philosophy was of some importance and did not know how to interpret the sighing of the natural order, it would be tolerable. But now it is wise men and theologians, infected by this same “prudence of the flesh,” who derive a happy science out of a sad creation, and from the sighings they laughingly gather their knowledge with marvelous display of power (LW 25:362).

Luther continues (perhaps a bit too harshly now).

Thus the apostle is right in Col. 2:8 when he speaks against philosophy, saying: “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition.” Clearly if the apostle had wanted any philosophy to be understood as useful and good, he would not have condemned it so absolutely (LW 25:362).

So, what to make of Luther's words? Luther was the right man to give a necessary blow to an ecclesiastical and academic situation that needed reformation. However, as Helmer has said about Luther's doctrine of the Trinity (The Trinity and Martin Luther, xi-xiii) Luther was not afraid to "speculate" and use philosophical terms and concepts in order to convey his message. Otherwise, it would have been rather inconsistent from Luther to comment Romans 12:1 the way he has done after his "anti-speculation" comment on Romans 8:29. In the following passage, not only Luther use Scholastic categories, but he also claims to understand those terms better than they usually were at his time. Granted, "all these terms are derived from Aristotle, though they cannot all be found in one specific passage of his writings. Luther depended upon the medieval handbooks of physics" (W. Pauck, Luther: Lectures on Romans, 322). But the point here is Luther's eclectic appropriations of Aristotelian(ish) and Scholastic categories that he uses, not in a metaphysical framework, but according to his theological, ethical, and existential purposes, first of which is to express the soteriological and anthropological doctrine of man as simul justus et peccator. This is a passage that I particularly like, and that has had a great impact on me (actually, the entirety of Lectures on Romans is very close to my heart).

Martin Luther as a monk,
by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553).

Just as there are five stages in the case of the things of nature: nonbeing, becoming, being, action, being acted upon, that is, privation, matter, form, operation, passion, according to Aristotle, so also with the Spirit: nonbeing is a thing without a name and a man in his sins; becoming is justification; being is righteousness; action is doing and living righteously; being acted upon is to be made perfect and complete. And these five stages in some way are always in motion in man. And whatever is found in the nature of man—except for the first stage of nonbeing and the last form of existence, for between these two, nonbeing and being acted upon, there are the three stages which are always in movement, namely, becoming, being, and acting—through his new birth he moves from sin to righteousness, and thus from nonbeing through becoming to being. And when this has happened, he lives righteously. But from this new being, which is really a nonbeing, man proceeds and passes to another new being by being acted upon, that is, through becoming new, he proceeds to become better, and from this again into something new. Thus it is most correct to say that man is always in privation, always in becoming or in potentiality, in matter, and always in action. Aristotle philosophizes about such matters, and he does it well, but people do not understand him well. Man is always in nonbeing, in becoming, in being, always in privation, in potentiality, in action, always in sin, in justification, in righteousness, that is, he is always a sinner, always a penitent, always righteous. For the fact that he repents makes a righteous man out of an unrighteous one. Thus repentance is the medium between unrighteousness and righteousness. And thus a man is in sin as the terminus a quo and righteousness as the terminus ad quem. Therefore if we always are repentant, we are always sinners, and yet thereby we are righteous and we are justified; we are in part sinners and in part righteous, that is, we are nothing but penitents (LW 25:433-434).

This points both to traces of continuity but also (and perhaps, especially) to a radical difference. To give a better picture, it is perhaps helpful to refer to some of the theses from Luther's Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, specifically theses 35-53. It has to be kept in mind that these theses focus not so much on metaphysics (as the passages from Lectures on Romans examined here) but on soteriology and ethics.

So, did Luther hated philosophy and speculation? On the one hand, no. When they served the Scriptures and the gospel (rather than vice-versa) they were permissible and even useful. This seems to be true especially for theological subjects such as the Trinity (see Helmer) and the doctrine of the two natures in one person of Christ (see Luther's Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, and Dennis Ngien's helpful exposition of those sermons). 

On the other hand, it is also true that Luther, from his early career, came to view the nature and purpose of philosophy in a new way, a new way that was not necessarily limited by the Scholastic method and that was both motivated and characterized by genuinely spiritual and ethical purposes and concerns, with the radical fallenness of creation and mankind, the cross of Christ, and the eschatological promise of future renovation as pillars of his philosophy.

To give a full picture, it would be necessary to touch many complicated issues (e.g., realism and nominalism), but that will make this blog post excessively long (and, perhaps, too boring). Much more can also be said on the relationship between the passage in question and Luther's most important theologia crucis. For more information, see the references I made in the second section above. I simply conclude quoting Luther's last words from his commentary on Romans 8:29, for completeness' sake.

Therefore we conclude that whoever searches into the essences and actions of creation rather than its groanings and expectations is without doubt a fool and a blind man, for he does not know that creatures are also a creation of God (LW 25:362).

Guilt – A Parable

Detail of Mountain Landscape with Rainbow,
by Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840).
From Wikimedia Commons.

I woke up, not knowing where I was. I was lying down on damp soil, but dampened by something that did not look like rain. I got up with an unbearably heavy heart, which became even heavier when I discovered with horror the origin of that liquid. The ground was wet with my own sweat and tears. Overwhelmed by a sense of being lost and by the unknown nature of my situation, terror gave me the final blow when I looked ahead of me. Before me, there was the unmovable mountain of my past, the fixed peak of my life, inhabited by the shapeless monsters of my misdeeds. A sense of guilt joined the horror, trying to destroy me, infusing into me a feeling of shame and hopelessness which were as vague as intense.

“I will climb the mountain to the top. I will own it! I will win it! I will triumph over it!” I decided. “I can find my way out of this misery by my own strength, I can fix myself with my own hands. This will bring me glory, and it will deliver me from this suffering. Not a cross, but glory!”

I started climbing that heinous height. Initially, it appeared to be easy and satisfactory, and my early progress replaced guilt and shame with self-satisfaction and enthusiasm that contributed to nothing but to increase my suffering when the creatures of the mountain appeared. Each of them was the herald of my past sins. Their shape was as indescribable as my guilt and amorphous as my shame. They battled for the closest place to my inward being, clinging to me, and making themselves as present as possible, because my memory gave them existence and my imagination gave them strength. Their very life depended on talking to me, they gorged on me by describing themselves to me as representatives of the dark actions of my past, gaining their essence from my memory and their existence from my imagination which magnified and distorted their appearance to unreal and otherworldly proportions.

I pressed on as long as I could, but no amount of rationalization and realistic self-talk could defeat any of them. I collapsed on the ground, far from the top of that mountain of aberrations. I must have fainted for a few minutes, and I was awakened by my own blood, copiously flowing from my forehead into my eyes. I was at the bottom of the mountain. The creatures had pushed me there. They were gone, but I could see them laughing at me from above, satisfied after their cruel meal, knowing that the poison of the mountain in me, that already was in me, that has always been in me, would draw me there again. But I was tired, exhausted, wanting to die. I did not make any effort to stand up. I closed my eyes. “All I see around me is nothing but death,” I thought. “I shall leave this land of Thanatos for the realm of Hypnos. If I sleep, everything I will see will be sleep.” With my very last energies, I whispered, “Lord, help me.” I fell asleep, hoping to enter into a never-ending sleep.

I do not know how long I slept. It might have been a long time, but it felt like a few seconds. Something was poking my chest, exactly at the point where my heart is. I opened my eyes, and I saw a man. A shepherd. He was poking me with the bent end of one of those old shepherd staffs. There was nothing beautiful or great about his appearance, and he did not attract me. He kept poking me, but when I looked at him, and when he saw from my eyes that I had no intention to stand up, he struck me in the hand where my wound was. Taken by surprise, I quickly sat up. Contrary to my expectations, my wound stopped bleeding. He was smiling. 

“Why?” I asked.

He bent on his knee, placed his right hand on my shoulder, and said, “Follow me.”

He immediately started climbing the mountain. His command was irresistible, but the paroxysm of indecision assailed me. I knew what I wanted to do, but in another sense, I did not want to do it.

“You want me to follow you there? You want me to follow you to my demise!”

“This is not your demise. Your real demise has been taken care of.” And he kept going.

I did not know what he meant. Everything around me communicated powerful monstrosity and mighty deadness. Contrarily, the Shepherd looked quite common, a man like any other. I started following him, split between debilitating terror and the awareness I was doing the right thing.

He went on, and because he went on, I went on. No creature approached me, but all shrank away in fear, crying out the name of the I AM. As we climbed, the mountain changed its constitution, and olive trees, almond trees, and lilies blossomed across.

We reached the top. As I looked over the horizon, I saw an unimaginable number of mountains among all nations, tribes, and tongues, of all different sizes and shapes, but all covered with the same vegetation of peace. 

“You conquered my mountain,” I said.

He said nothing, but pointed at the sky toward something that in the past I always took for granted, but something that I had forgotten and that filled me with hope. The sun was brightly shining.

“You see how all the mountains are pointing heavenward. The true Sun, the Sun of Righteousness, conquered your mountain. It is his mountain now. He owns you, your past, your present, and your future. He declared them, and you, for what they are, redeemed by His blood. You are a new creature, redeemed by his blood.”

The shepherd pulled some of the lilies, grabbed some soil, and showed it to me. The ground was saturated with blood. I stepped back, scandalized.

“Do not let the foolishness of the cross be a stumbling block for you. It’s the blood of the Lamb that made your mountain to be reborn.”

I looked at the sun, and then at him.

“Are you Him?”

“I am a messenger. I did not conquer anything. The Sun conquered for me as well as for you. That is my mountain.” He said pointing to one direction.

Hope and strength slowly came back to me, and also something that I recognized only after a few minutes, and that I thought I lost forever. Happiness. The happiness of belonging to the End of all things. As I meditated these things, the shepherd pointed at the sun again. Like a stellar explosion, it became bigger and bigger, only to suddenly shrink. It assumed the shape of a son of man, looking like a man in all things, but nonetheless so different. He approached, and everything was burning in flames of judgment. The mysterium tremendum encompassed my whole being, but the shepherd placed his comforting hand on my shoulder. Everything was being set aflame, but all that belonged to Him was being purified. Including myself. The fire of His purging rays enveloped me and the shepherd. Divine security filled us.

Then, an omni-pervading light, followed by the sound of a trumpet that reached the very end of the cosmos. I woke up, in my bed, soaked in sweat, with my mind filled with awe, and my heart filled with unnatural light.

by Marco Barone

Copyright © Marco Barone. All Rights Reserved.

Inattentive Existence

“Due to our anxiety over the future and our guilt over the past, we ignore and flee the present. Our lives are so bound up in living falsely toward the past and falsely toward the future that the momentous gift of the present is unreceived. We experience an inattentive, absentee existence, which disregards the promise of the now ... Receive each moment afresh as a new arena for value actualization. This is what our time should be filled with: receiving and creating contextual values. But instead we are ‘bored’ with this now. Because of our preoccupation with the dead past and the possible future, our ears are dulled to the address of reality in the moment. Instead of experiencing the fullness of time in the present, as if now were eternity entering time, we feel on our hands the slow emptiness of time. Instead of understanding this moment as the only moment we actually ever live, we feel that this moment is perhaps the dullest, least interesting of all. It is only some past moment that we cherish, or only some future moment which we idealize as fulfilling for us. So we play a game with time, pretending a glorious past and a promising future, but no present. Although it is a fantasy, we take the game with a certain absurd seriousness. In our romanticism we dream of those good old days, and in our messianism we dream of the great deliverances to come; but in the meantime we live as if the present had no being, or as if its being had no value. Real values and meanings lie behind us and before us in time, but certainly not now. Like the characters in Waiting for Godot, we wait for something that is constantly meeting us. The one we wait for visits us every day, but we do not recognize him, since we cannot believe he could be so near.” ~ Thomas C. Oden, The Structure of Awareness, 188.

Kierkegaard on Christ and the Ethics of Helping

Søren Kierkegaard,
by Luplau Janssen  (1869–1927).

"With Him [Christ] is rest, and He makes no difficulties, He does but one thing, He opens his arms. He will not first (as righteous people do, alas, even when they are willing to help)–He will not first ask thee, ‘Art thou not after all to blame for thy misfortune? Hast thou in fact no cause for self-reproach?’ It is so easy, so human, to judge after the outward appearance, after the result–when a person is a cripple, or deformed, or has an unprepossessing appearance, to judge that ergo he is a bad man; when a person fares badly in the world so that he is brought to ruin or goes downhill, then to judge that ergo he is a vicious man. Oh, it is such an exquisite invention of cruel pleasure, to enhance the consciousness of one's own righteousness in contrast with a sufferer, by explaining that his suffering is God's condign punishment [John 9:2], so that one hardly even dares to help him; or by challenging him with that condemning question which flatters one's own righteousness in the very act of helping him. But He will put no such questions to thee. He will not be thy benefactor in so cruel a fashion. If thou thyself art conscious of being a sinner, he will not inquire of thee about it, the bruised reed He will not further break [Matt. 12:20], but he will raise thee up if thou wilt attach thyself to Him. He will not single thee out by contrast, holding thee apart from Him, so that thy sin will seem still more dreadful; He will grant thee a hiding-place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners: When it is question of a sinner He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, ‘Come hither;’ no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes–yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman. He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners." 

~ Søren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, 1.1.2, pp. 19-20.

Abraham Kuyper on the Necessity of Philosophy

Abraham Kuyper
(1837-1920).

"The need of philosophy is a necessity which arises out of the impulse of the human consciousness for unity, and is therefore of equal importance to those who stand outside, as to those who are in the regeneration. To say that a Christian is less in need of philosophy is only the exhibition of spiritual sloth and lack of understanding. The more the enlightening restores harmony in our consciousness, the stronger must be the awakening of the impulse after an unitous (einheitlich) organic knowledge. While, on the other hand, the richer the data at our service, the better the hope of success in this. Philosophy which reckons only with natural data will always vibrate between a pantheistic, deistic and materialistic interpretation, and will never do more than form schools, while Christian philosophy, whose theistic point of departure is fixed, is able to lead to unity of interpretation within the circle of regeneration. But for this very reason theology will be able to go hand in hand with a Christian philosophy. It is the task of philosophy to arrange concentrically the results of all the other sciences, and if non-Christian philosophy ignores the results of theology, as though it were no science, theology is in duty bound to enter her protest against this. If, on the other hand, the philosopher himself is regenerate, and is historically and ecclesiastically in union with the life of palingenesis, then of course in his studies he includes the results of theology, together with the results of all the other sciences; and it is his care, architectonically to raise such a cosmological building that of themselves the results of theology also find their place in it."

 ~ Abraham Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 614-615.