"Man was created in order that God might assume man's nature, cover all the faults and defects of that nature, pay the penalty for all the sins and bear all the sorrows of that nature, that man's nature, thus redeemed, might rise from its humiliation and mortality, to share eternally the blessedness and glory of God's own nature."
Now, can you tell me who said it?
Luther.
ReplyDeleteNein.
ReplyDeleteChemnitz or Gerhard. Those are my guesses. I know I probably don't get two, but oh well.
ReplyDeleteAgain, nein!
ReplyDeleteAthanasius
ReplyDeleteWieder, nein. But certainly it has some affinity to his thought, no?
ReplyDeleteA hint: from a book originally published in 1894!
ReplyDeleteIf you hadn't mentioned the book of 1894 I would've guessed St Maximos the Confessor!
ReplyDeleteUnser geliebte Doctor Carl Walther, nicht wahr?
ReplyDeleteNein, es ist nicht Carl Wilhelm.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it also sounds like St. Maximos to my ears!
The answer? Henry Eyster Jacobs. In his *Elements of Religion* p. 65. So much for the idea that Lutherans simply lost sight of this patristic insight with the death of Gerhard!
Covering the faults, redeeming, and paying the penalty are the smidge too much that move this out of Maximos and into the West. The assumption of human nature, bearing the sorrows, rising, and sharing in the glory of God's nature are what take one out of a specifically scholastic, Anselmian West. You can find both streams in all parts of the Church - Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Syria, the Balkans, and in the West. It is whether one is holding to a local emphasis, and whether that is then put forward as co-equal or preeminent with the Tradition of the Church as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it is this Traditional stream in Lutheranism running parallel or counter with scholasticism that ended up the seedbed of its 'dreaded' Pietism? St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, after all. was quite taken with at least a couple of Lutheran Pietist works, while setting aside Lutheran Confessional doctrine in the main.
The fact that this stream exists, however, is not the same as saying that it was a central part of Lutheranism. It is as much legalism to point to uncharacteristic phrases in either the Book of Concord or in various Lutheran divines to buttress a more "Traditional" Lutheranism as it is to demand that we assist in 'earning' our salvation through the Law. The proof is in the pudding; the proof is in whether these examples were used and followed to any great extent.
And of course the hymnody and devotional life of the Lutherans shows that, surprise!, they WERE followed! Nor does it follow that they were opposed to confessional orthodoxy at all - not an accident that the Sacred Meditations (a whole BOOK of exceptions???) reaches us from the pen of Johann Gerhard - scholastic orthodox par excellence! I don't know of a single Lutheran who would denigrate the treasures of Sacred Meditations - where the same thing that Jacobs said is said numerous times.
ReplyDelete