Luther on the Theology of the Cross

By Robert Kolb
In John 14 [:8], where Philip spoke according to the theology of
glory, “Show us the Father,” Christ straightaway set aside his
flighty thought about seeing God elsewhere and led him to himself,
saying, “Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father”
[John 14:9]. For this reason true theology and recognition of God
are in the crucified Christ.1
Of all the places to search for God, the last place most people
would think to look is the gallows. Martin Luther confessed
that there, in the shadows cast by death, God does indeed meet his
straying, rebellious human creatures. There God reveals who he is;
there he reveals who they are. Not in flight beyond the clouds, but
in the dust of the grave God has come to tell it like it is about himself
and about humanity.
In late April 1518 Luther’s monastic superiors summoned him to
Heidelberg to explain himself, at an assembly of the German Augustinians.
He did not comment on the issues that had gotten him
into trouble with the church, his critique of indulgences or his defi-
ance of ecclesiastical authorities.He cut to the quick and talked about
the nature of God and the nature of the human creature trapped in
sin. His assertions on these topics constituted a paradigm shift within
Western Christian thought in the understanding of God’s revelation
of himself, God’s way of dealing with evil, and what it means to be
human. His Heidelberg theses floated before his monastic brothers a
new constellation of perspectives on the biblical description of God
and of human reality. Luther called this series of biblically-based observations
a “theology of the cross,” and he later called this theology
of the cross “our theology.”2 “The cross of Christ is the only instruction
in the Word of God there is, the purest theology.”3
What he offered his fellow monks in Heidelberg was not a treatment
of a specific biblical teaching or two. He presented a new conceptual
framework for thinking about God and the human creature.
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He provided a new basis or set of presuppositions for proclaiming the
biblical message. Luther stepped to the podium in Heidelberg with
an approach to Christian teaching that came at the task from an angle
significantly different from the theological method of his scholastic
predecessors. They may have disagreed among themselves on a range
of issues, but they all practiced a theology of glory, according to the
Wittenberg professor. Luther called for a different way of thinking
about—and practicing—the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. Indeed, more than a proposal for a codification of biblical
teaching, a theology of the cross, Luther called for the practice of this
theology in the proclamation and life of theologians of the cross.
However, Luther’s followers in the sixteenth century very seldom
talked about their theology as a theology of the cross, and they preserved
this new orientation for addressing theological topics only
partially. They had no intellectual equipment for the analysis of presuppositions
and conceptual frameworks. Melanchthon had taught
them to think in terms of organizing ideas by topic (loci communes),
and they presumed that all rational people would share their orientation
to the material. They took for granted that the inner logical
and theological structure of their thinking would be obvious to all.
Luther’s “theology of the cross,” however, is precisely a framework
that is designed to embrace all of biblical teaching and guide the use
of all its parts. It employs the cross of Christ as the focal point and
fulcrum for understanding and presenting a wide range of specific
topics within the biblical message. In Melanchthon’s Loci communes
theologici and similar works written by his and Luther’s students the
dogmatic topic “cross” treated human suffering,4 not God’s suffering
on the cross. Thus, the cross served a very different, and less allencompassing,
purpose than providing the point of view from which
to assess God’s revelation of himself, humanity-defining trust in that
revelation, the atonement accomplished through Christ’s death and
resurrection, or the Christian life. In subsequent Lutheran dogmatic
textbooks, this topic consistently treated only one aspect of the Christian
life, persecution and afflictions of other kinds.
If already in the sixteenth century Lutherans did not find Luther’s
theology of the cross particularly helpful, is it possible that Luther’s
use of Christ’s cross as the focal point for determining the dimensions
of biblical proclamation is even more out of date and distant
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today than it was four hundred years ago? For North Americans or
Western Europeans today the problem is not that we do not have
what God wants or expects of human beings (Luther’s problem). We
define the fundamental human problem differently than Luther did:
I do not have and receive what I want and expect—and I want to
know the reason why! Luther viewed God as the divine power that
was altogether too present in his life, as an angry demanding parent.
We view God as a modern parent, neglectful, absent, too little concerned
about us to be of much use. Luther’s theology of the cross
evolved from a concern that human creatures do not have—they
cannot produce!—what God in his justice demands from them.
Modern people complain because God does not produce what they
demand as their rights from him.
Some might therefore argue that the gap is so great that Luther’s
paradigm for the practice of theology as theologians, thinkers, under
the cross has itself become outmoded. In fact, Luther’s theology of
the cross reproduces for every age the biblical message regarding who
God is and what he does—and regarding the characteristics his
human creatures have—beneath the superficial fluctuations of history
and culture. The theology of the cross does more than address
the fleeting problems and miseries of one age. It refines the Christian’s
focus on God and on what it means to be human.
Theology of Glory,Theology of the Cross
Luther’s theology of the cross developed in his Heidelberg Theses
and in his great work of 1525, On the Bondage of Human Choice.
Summarizing this framework for the practice of all theology must
begin by distinguishing it from a theology of suffering and from a
theology of glory.5
First, the theology of the cross is not a theology that simply supplies
good tips on how to cope with tribulations and tragedies.Luther knew
alot about human suffering,but he never became fixated on suffering,
nor on blessing.His faith fixed his attention on God.Luther knew how
to give thanks to the Lord, not only for his grace and goodness but for
the all the necessities and nourishment of the body, for family and good
government, for good weather, good friends, peace, health, for music
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and a finely crafted poem. He knew how to enjoy God’s creation, also
with a song on his lyre. But Luther also knew that there are times in
the course of human events when guitar music is not appropriate.Physical,
emotional, spiritual suffering all fell to him as lot in life with some
frequency, and so he was very realistic about the evil of suffering—as
the deaths of two of his children overwhelmed him, as he felt betrayed
by a beloved student, Johann Agricola, as he coped with the pains of
his own body, as his anger and discouragement over the failure of Wittenberg
citizens to live under the power of his proclamation drove him
out of the town. But human suffering in itself was not the focus or
function of the theology of the cross.
What then is this theology of the cross? Luther says that it is the opposite
of a theology of glory. Theologies of glory presume something
about God’s glory, and something about the glory of being human.
First, medieval systems of theology all sought to present a God whose
glory consisted in fulfilling what in fact are fallen human standards for
divine success: a God who could make his might known,could knock
heads and straighten people out when they got out of line, even, perhaps
especially, at human expense. These scholastic theologians sought
to fashion—with biblical citations, to be sure—a God worthy of the
name, according to the standards of the emperors and kings, whose
glory and power defined how glory and power were supposed to look.
Medieval theologians and preachers wanted a tough,no-nonsense kind
of God to demand that they come up to their own standards for themselves
and to judge their enemies. They did not grasp that “lording it
over” others was the Gentile way of exercising power, not God’s.6
Second, out of his experience as a student of theology at the University
of Erfurt Luther suggested that these medieval systems of biblical
exposition taught a human glory, the glory of human success:
first, the success of human reason that can capture who and what
God is, for human purposes. Gerhard Forde observes that this glory
claims the mastery of the human mind in its investigations regarding
both earthly matters and God’s revelation of himself. “Theologians
of glory operate on the assumption that creation and history are
transparent to the human intellect, that one can see through what is
made and what happens so as to peer into the ‘invisible things of
God.’ ” For they attempt to construct their picture of God on the
basis of human judgments, abstractions that make universal some
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selected bits and pieces of the human experience and put human
epistemologies in charge of divine revelation.7
Alongside this glory of human reason, Luther found in medieval
theological systems an emphasis on the glory of human performance,
of works that can capture God’s favor by sheer human effort, plus
some help from divine grace. Religions of glory have as their first
and foremost goal the encouragement of good human performance.
The theology of the cross aims at bestowing a new identity upon
sinners, setting aside the old identity,by killing it, so that good human
performance can flow out of this new identity that is comprehended
in trust toward God. Therefore “the theology of the cross is an offensive
theology . . . [because] it attacks what we usually consider the
best in our religion,”8 human performance of pious deeds. A theology
of glory lets human words set the tone for God’s Word, forces
his Word into human logic. A theology of glory lets human deeds
determine God’s deeds, for his demonstration of mercy is determined
by the actions of human beings.
Although another element of Luther’s presuppositional framework,
his distinction between two kinds of righteousness,was not an integral
part of his Heidelberg presentation, it was developing about this
time, and apart from this presupposition Luther’s theology of the cross
will not come clearly into focus. Luther revised the theological paradigm
of discussing humanity when he posited two ways of being
righteous—two ways of being human—that must be distinguished to
understand the biblical definition of humanity. Human creatures are
righteous in God’s sight with a “passive”righteousness;we are human
in the vertical sphere of our lives only because of his mercy, favor, and
love, because he created us and re-creates us in Christ. At Heidelberg
Luther stated simply, “The love of God does not first discover what
is pleasing to it but rather creates what is pleasing to it.”9
Human creatures are righteous in relationship to each other and to
the rest of creation, however, with an “active” righteousness; it consists
in carrying out God’s commands to care for the world around us.
That means that human decision and human performance of all kinds
are designed for the horizontal sphere of life, where God has given us
stewardship for his creatures. When we attempt to use our decisions
and performance to please God—or some created substitute we have
made into an idol—we are taking them out of their proper sphere and
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laying upon them responsibility for making us God-pleasing. They
break under the weight of this falsely placed responsibility.
A religion dependent on human willing and human works is on
the prowl for the hidden God and will inevitably reshape God in our
own image. This kind of religion has nothing to do with the true
God. For it misunderstands the purpose and function of God’s law.
It attributes to the law the power to bestow life. In fact, the law only
evaluates life, Luther claimed. God gives and restores life. Thus, in
the midst of human life gone astray, the law—as God’s plan for what
human life really is to be and accomplish—“brings the wrath of God,
kills, reviles, accuses, judges, and condemns everything that is not in
Christ,”10 including the noblest of human sinners, according to Thesis
23 of the Heidelberg Disputation. Forde comments, “Thesis 23
announces flatly that in spite of all the glorious hot air, God is not
ultimately interested in the law. The real consequence of such wisdom
is laid bare: The law does not work the love of God, it works
wrath; it does not give life (recall Thesis 1!),11 it kills; it does not bless,
it curses; it does not comfort, it accuses; it does not grant mercy, it
judges.” “In sum, it condemns everything not in Christ. It seems an
outrageous and highly offensive list. As Luther’s proof quickly
demonstrates, however, it comes right out of Paul in Galatians and
Romans.”12 Luther insists in the next thesis that the wisdom of the
law in itself is good. It is simply not to be used as a means of winning
God’s favor. Theologians of glory misuse the law in that way.13
Luther found these theologies of glory inadequate and insufficient,
ineffective and impotent.For such a theology of glory reaches out for
a manipulable God, a God who provides support for a human creature
who seeks to master life on his or her own, with just a touch of
divine help. That matched neither Luther’s understanding of God nor
his perception of his own humanity. Theologians of glory create a
god in their own image and a picture of the human creature after their
own longings. Neither corresponds to reality, Luther claimed.
Calling the Thing What It Is
“A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is,” he asserted.
14 The cross is the place where God talks our language: it is
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quite clear what is happening as Christ cries out, “My God,my God,
why have you forsaken me,” and dies. At the cross God meets his
human creatures where they are, in the shadow of death.For the cross
is not an instrument of torture but of death. On it people die. From
it Christ made his way back to life. That is where human beings can
see what God’s experience,God’s disposition—even God’s essence—
really are and what humanity really is, claimed Luther.
The theology of the cross involves not only the cross itself, as the
locus of the event that has determined human history. It involves also
the Word that conveys that event and its benefits to God’s people. The
word of the cross is folly to the perishing; this word is God’s power for
those whom he saves through it.15 Luther believed that when God
speaks, reality results. The cross and the Word that delivers it have created
a new reality within God’s fallen creation: a new reality for Satan
(since God nailed the law’s accusations to the cross and rendered them
illegible by soaking them in Christ’s blood); a new reality for death
(since it was laid to eternal rest in Christ’s grave); a new reality for sinners
(since they were buried, too, in Christ’s tomb and raised to new
life through the death and resurrection of the Crucified One).
To force Luther’s observations from the foot of the cross into four
convenient categories for easier consideration, it can be said that he
saw from the vantage point of the cross 1) who God really is, 2) what
the human reaction to God must be, 3) what the human condition
apart from God is and how God has acted to alter that condition,
and 4) what kind of life trust in Christ brings to his disciples.
1. God Hidden, God Revealed. Luther distinguished the “revealed
God” (Deus revelatus) from the “hidden God” (Deus absconditus), by
which he meant, in different contexts, either God as he actually exists
beyond the grasp of human conceptualization—particularly when
the human mind is darkened by sin—or God as sinners fashion him
in their own image, to their own likings. In addition, it must be noted
that the revealed God hides himself in order to show himself to his
human creatures. Luther observed that God is to be found precisely
where theologians of glory are horrified to find him: as a kid in a
crib, as a criminal on a cross, as a corpse in a crypt. God reveals himself
by hiding himself right in the middle of human existence as it
has been bent out of shape by the human fall. Thus, Luther’s theol-
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ogy of the cross is a departure from the fuzziness of human attempts
to focus on God apart from God’s pointing out where he is to be
found and who he really is.
In the Heidelberg Disputation, and in his expansion of its insights,
for instance in his Bondage of the Will, Luther focused first on the blank
wall created by the impossibility of human and sinful conceptualizing
of God; with fallen eyes no one can see God. With fallen human ears
no one can return to the Edenic hearing of his Word. Then Luther
focused very sharply on God in his revelation of himself:16 no one has
seen God, but Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh, has made him
known:a God with holes in his hands, feet, and side; the God,who has
come near to us, into the midst of our twisted and ruined existence.
This God on the cross reveals the fullness of God’s love as well as the
inadequacy of all human efforts to patch up life to please him.
2. Humanity Defined by Faith. Human attempts to claim God’s attention
and approval always draft a plan that tries to place God under the
control of human logic, or testing through signs of some sort or another.
17 People draw up job descriptions for God and become angry or
disappointed with him when he does not prove himself equal to their
tasks. Neither rational nor empirical proofs that would place God under
human domination can lead to God. God reveals himself through his
still, small voice,18 through the seemingly foolish and impotent Word
from the cross,19 in the Word made flesh,come to dwell among his people.
20 Luther’s theology of the cross is a theology of the Word of the
cross, a Word that conveys life itself on the power of its promise. Luther
insisted that trust alone—total dependence and reliance on God and
what he promises in his incarnation and in Scripture—is the center of
life, the living source of genuine human living. To recognize trust as the
core of our humanity is to perceive the true form of being human as
God created his human creature. That means that at the core of human
life our own performance, accomplishment, behavior, has no place. For
“a human work, no matter how good, is deadly sin because it in actual
fact entices us away from ‘naked trust in the mercy of God’ to a trust in
self.”21 Not trust in self,nor trust in one’s own logical or empirical judgment,
can constitute human life. God has designed life to center upon
trust in him. Heidelberg Thesis 25: “He is not righteous who does
much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ.”22
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3. Handed Over for our Sins, Raised for our Justification. By showing
how God solves “the human problem,” the cross gives humankind its
best view of the nature of God,for it reveals his modus operandi, his way
of dealing with evil and reclaiming humanity for himself.Luther taught
that God’s true righteousness—his true nature, his essence—is revealed
in the cross, and it turns out that he is love and mercy.23 For God sent
his Son into this world to take sin and death into himself and to bury
sinners in his tomb.24 Apart from his sacrifice of his own life as the
substitute for his people under the law’s condemnation, there is no
life.25 Exactly how and why it is so is never explained in Scripture.
Forde warns against attempts to draft atonement theories that try to
elucidate the eternal truth behind the cross. “If we can see through the
cross to what is supposed to be behind it,we don’t have to look at it!”26
God’s Word simply presents us the cross. The fury of God’s wrath appears
there in all its horror. God’s anger reveals the horror of sin and
how it has ruined the human creature whom he loves. But that very
presentation of God’s wrath appears at that place,Golgotha,where God
has poured himself out in order to bury our sinful identity and give us
new life.Greater love has no one.27 Because of our sin God’s mercyseat
has taken the shape of the cross.
Sin is the problem. It is the original problem, the root of the problem,
the motor that drives the enmity between Creator and rebellious
human creature. Sin means the rejection of God and his standards
for being human. Rejection of God is the core kind of
sinfulness. Rejection of all the expectations that flow from his gift of
identity as his creature and child is the second kind of sinfulness. It
can be analyzed, or at least experienced, apart from acknowledgement
of the Creator. Death is a symptom of the problem. Disgust at
one’s own failures, discouragement because of the antipathy or apathy
of others, deterioration of health or memory or reputation are
all symptoms of the problem.Yet each of these symptoms can be the
point at which the cross begins to emerge out of the darkness and
come into focus. Any dissatisfaction with life and identity can form
the basis of conversation that leads to Calvary and to the heart of the
human dilemma. Even in a “guiltless” society the theology of the
cross provides the firm undergirding for discussion of topics that seem
distant at first, the topics of redemption or atonement.
For even sinners conscious of guilt cannot comprehend the overwhelming
extent to which sin has determined human existence after
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the fall. No one can grasp the enormity of the love of God that overcomes
the problem of sin and guilt. Luther rejected any cheap atonement
in which Christ bought off the enemies of his people with a
pittance of suffering, like a bit of gold or silver.28 He suffered unto
the death of the cross29 and thus met the law’s demand that sinners
die.30 But Luther not only depicted Christ’s saving act as a “joyous
exchange” of the sinner’s sin and death for his own innocence and
life.31 Luther also confessed that Christ had won the battle against
Satan in a “magnificent duel,” in which he inflicted fatal wounds on
Satan, sin, and death.32 God at his most glorious, in his display of the
extent of his mercy and love for his human creatures, appears, Luther
believed, in the depth of the shame of the cross. There he is to be
seen as he really is, in his true righteousness, which is mercy and love.
There human beings are to be seen as those who deserve to die eternally
but who now through baptismal death have the life Christ gives
through his resurrection, forever. For it is not true that Luther’s theology
of the cross excludes the resurrection. “A theology of the cross
is impossible without resurrection. It is impossible to plumb the
depths of the crucifixion without the resurrection.”33 He died for
only one reason: that his people might have human life in its fullest.34
Only at the foot of the cross can true human identity be discovered.
There, realizing whose I am, I realize who I am.
4. Take Up Your Cross and Follow. Finally,Luther understood that the
Christian life is not necessarily marked by earthly definitions of success
or suffering, by neither bane nor blessing, but instead is shaped by
Christ and his cross.35 Christ’s cross demonstrates that his people have
nothing to fear from any of their enemies,not even death itself. Therefore,
they are freed to risk all to love those whom God has placed
within the reach of their love.Having come to understand at the foot
of the cross what is really wrong with human life—not just its crimes
of magnificent proportions but the banality of our evils and the
wretchedness of doubt and denial of God—believers also recognize
from the vantage point of the cross what joy and peace come from living
the genuine human way in self-sacrificial love and giving.
Indeed, the theology of the cross is a paradigm for every human
season, also and perhaps especially, the beginning of the twenty-first
century, because it presumes and reasserts the biblical assessment of
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human life.Christian Neddens calls it “relevant and explosive” in its
application in twentieth century theology because it is, according to
the appraisal of Udo Kern, a fundamental norm for theological
knowledge and practice and therefore a “fundamentally critical theory.”
Neddens describes the critical function of the theology of the
cross in engaging objections to the Christian faith on the basis of
modern science and learning, and in regard to human autonomy and
human suffering. This theology serves as critical analysis for the misuse
of theology and a natural tendency toward theologies of glory.36
The theology of the cross functions as both a hermeneutical
framework and an orientation for theological criticism. It can aid in
sharpening the formulation of a host of questions, but this essay focuses
on its usefulness in discussions of “theodicy” and in defining
what it means to be human.
The theology of the cross clears the focus on human life, both as
it is misapprehended by those who try to think about humanity apart
from God,and as God reveals it through his own incarnation and his
death for fallen human creatures on the cross. In Luther’s theology
of the cross we encounter not only Deus absconditus—God beyond
our grasp, God as he can only be re-imaged by fallen human imagination—
and Deus revelatus—the only true God revealed in Jesus
Christ, who speaks to his human creatures from the pages of Scripture.
We also meet—though Luther never said it this way—ourselves,
first as homo absconditus—the human creature hidden from our own
eyes and assessment, in both our sinfulness and in the unexperienced
potential of humanity that sinners cannot grasp—and homo revelatus—
God’s perception, the only accurate perception and definition,
of what it means to be human.
What it means to be human is a question that interests Western
people of this age. Why life does not turn out better than it does, or
why God has disappeared, is another such question. If Luther’s theology
of the cross can aid contemporary searchers for haven and help
to understand the gap between their sense of what they could be and
their experience of what they are, it might be a message for moderns.
And if it could help explain why God, if he really does exist, falls so
far short of our expectations—if it can help us justify his treatment or
his neglect of us—then it might indeed be a theology for the twenty-
first century. These two aspects of the theology of the cross do not
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exhaust its sigificance and usefulness for guiding biblical proclamation
in this time, as Neddens shows, but this essay focuses on them as
examples of its contemporary significance and usefulness.
Deus Absconditus and the Cry of “Why?”
Deus Revelatus and the Response “Christ”
Luther’s theology of the cross developed out of his struggle with
the anger of God. But now the tables are turned: God is in the hands
of apathetic sinners. At the beginning of the twenty-first century people
struggle with the indifference of God but in this case turn-about
seems like fair play, for sometimes those who struggle most with the
apparent absence or indifference of God in their lives are those who
have not given thanks for a good bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape or a
sterling performance on the playing field, to say nothing of their very
existence. The burning question which Luther posed in the sixteenth
century regarding his standing before his Creator has turned into a
resentful complaint about God’s distance from anything important—
that is, anything that escapes our control—in our lives. People who
have believed in a Creator have thrown Job’s complaints back at the
Lord from time immemorial, but only since the Enlightenment have
self-confident human beings tried to engage in the attempt to justify
God’s indifference,impotence, inactivity in behalf of human creatures.
Three hundred years ago the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibnitz devised the term “theodicy” to describe the human
attempt to justify God by explaining evil. Theodicy is the attempt to
deal with a God from whom we expect all good things when he does
not deliver the good we expect. Although Luther was not addressing
the question of “how God could do such awful things to us” as he
formulated his theology of the cross in 1518,it speaks to the felt needs
of the twenty-first century people around us, at least in the West, to
explain evil—in hopes of mastering it.
1. God Has Come Near in the Blood of Christ. The theology of the
cross focuses our attention on the God who has come near to us in
the midst of our afflictions, not just with sympathy but with the solution
for the evils that afflict us. In the cross God has rendered his
verdict upon sin: it is evil, and it must be destroyed. And on the cross
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Christ destroyed our sin as the factor that determines our identity.
Luther did not fashion a justification for God’s permitting evil or his
failure to cope with it adequately. Bound to Scripture, he found no
more of an answer to the “why” of evil than that given to Job. He
simply let God be God. He trusted that the God who had come to
engage evil at its ugliest on the cross would triumph finally over every
evil. Therefore, he did not feel himself compelled to veil any part of
the truth about God or about evil. Theologians of the cross “are not
driven to simplistic theodicies because with Saint Paul they believe
that God justifies himself precisely in the cross and resurrection of
Jesus. They know that, dying to the old, the believer lives in Christ
and looks forward to being raised with him.”37 For God has “justified”
himself by delivering and restoring us to the fullness of humanity
through Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross.
Luther’s On the Bondage of Human Choice sought above all to confess
that God is Lord of all. In that work he did not shy away from
those passages in Scripture in which God seems to be responsible for
evil. The reformer can be accused of trying to explain too much in
this work, and when that is true, he explains God in the way of the
Old Testament prophets who saw God at work in good and evil.38
But Luther did insist that human creatures dare not pry into the secret
will of God as he treated Matthew 23:37, Christ’s lamentation
over Jerusalem,39 and as he lectured on Genesis a decade after the
appearance of The Bondage of Human Choice, he did provide a corrective
to misimpressions he might have caused in his response to
Erasmus. In addressing the question of why some are saved and not
others, Luther there interpreted his earlier writing:
a distinction must be made when one deals with the knowledge, or rather with the
subject of the divinity. For one must debate either about the hidden God or about
the revealed God. With regard to God insofar as he has not been revealed, there is
no faith,no knowledge,and no understanding. And here one must hold to the statement
that what is above us is none of our concern. . . . Such inquisitiveness is original
sin itself, by which we are impelled to strive for a way to God through natural
speculation. . . . God has most sternly forbidden this investigation of the divinity.40
Luther then places in God’s mouth the following words:
From an unrevealed God I will become a revealed God. Nevertheless, I will remain
the same God. I will be made flesh, or send My Son. He shall die for your
sins and shall rise again from the dead. And in this way I will fulfill your desire, in
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order that you may be able to know whether you are predestined or not. Behold,
this is my Son; listen to him (cf. Matt. 17:5). Look at him as he lies in the manger
and on the lap of his mother, as he hangs on the cross. Observe what he does and
what he says. There you will surely take hold of me. For “he who sees me,” says
Christ, “also sees the Father himself ” (cf. John 14:9). If you listen to him, are baptized
in his name, and love his Word, then you are certainly predestined and are
certain of your salvation.41
Luther here goes further.He rejects any discordance between hidden
God and revealed God even though the hidden God goes far
beyond human grasp.
If you believe in the revealed God and accept his Word, he will gradually also reveal
the hidden God, for “he who sees me also sees the Father,” as John 14:9 says.
He who rejects the Son also loses the unrevealed God along with the revealed
God. But if you cling to the revealed God with a firm faith, so that your heart is
so minded that you will not lose Christ even if you are deprived of everything,
then you are most assuredly predestined, and you will understand the hidden God.
Indeed, you understand him even now if you acknowledge the Son and his will,
namely, that he wants to reveal himself to you, that he wants to be your Lord and
your Savior. Therefore you are sure that God is also your Lord and Father.42
The search for answers ends where the search for God ends: at the
cross, where God reveals his power and his wisdom in his own broken
body and spilled blood.43
2. Faith Clings to the Crucified One. Thus, Luther’s theology of
the cross focuses our attention on trust in the God who loves us
and promises his presence in the midst of afflictions. A doctoral
student of mine and his wife lost a baby shortly before birth a few
years ago.He related that a member of his congregation, trying to
offer comfort, had said, “Well,Pastor, at a time like this, all that theology
you’re learning does not do much good.” “In fact,” Mark observed,
“true comfort comes precisely from knowing the theology
of Martin Luther; it gives assurance that God is only that God who
shows love and mercy toward us. If we had to wonder what the
God behind the clouds really intends and why he is delivering this
evil upon us, doubt and distress rather than comfort would be our
lot. We cannot know why God took our child, but we do not have
to question how God regards us. He has shown us that decisively
in the cross.” The theology of the cross redirects our gaze from
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probing the darkness further and directs those who hurt and ache
to cling to Christ, whose love is certain and whose faithfulness is
beyond all doubt.
3. Evil Identified, Nailed to the Cross, Drowned in Christ’s Blood. The
theology of the cross reminds those caught in evil that evil is truly
evil, the opposite of what God wants for his human creature. It reminds
fallen human creatures that God has come to lift them once
again to true human life through his own death and resurrection. Instead
of justifying God’s failure to end evil today, or justifying human
actions that are truly evil, it justifies sinners so that they may enjoy
true life, life with God, forever. The problem with “theodicies” is
that they have to tell less than the truth, they have to avoid some part
of the problem, at one point or another. Whether they are working
at justifying God or justifying themselves, they always end up calling
what is truly evil good and what is good evil. In the final analysis,
sinners in the hands of an almighty God always find it difficult to
cope with what is not true, good, and beautiful. Instead of relying
on the person of the rescuer, the restorer of human life, they rely on
the explanations they have fashioned for mastering their problems.
The realism of Luther’s theology of the cross is able to confront
the horrors and the banalities of evil in all their perversity because it
enables us to avoid feeling obligated either to seek the good in evil
or to justify God.
Whereas the theologian of glory tries to see through the needy, the poor, the lowly,
and the “non-existent,” the theologian of the cross knows that the love of God
creates precisely out of nothing. Therefore the sinner must be reduced to nothing
in order to be saved. The presupposition of the Disputation . . . is the hope of
the resurrection. God brings life out of death. He calls into being that which is
from that which is not. In order that there be a resurrection, the sinner must die.
All presumption must be ended. The truth must be seen. Only the “friends of the
cross”who have been reduced to nothing are properly prepared to receive the justifying
grace poured out by the creative love of God. All other roads are closed.44
Waiting on God in the midst of the shadows creates the patience
that endures and fosters hope when believers can listen to his voice
through the darkness. For they know their Master’s voice and they
have confidence in both his love and his power.
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For God does not reveal the past of evil by explaining where and
why it arose, but he does tell us something of its present and everything
about its future.He comes to us as a God who has experienced
loss, suffering, and death, but he does not give answers as to the origins
of evil. The alternatives for solving that riddle seem to be two:
we are at fault, or he is at fault. The former justifies God, and we are
dead. The latter is an even more horrible solution: God gets pleasure
from our suffering. Instead of answers about evil’s origin, God
gives us his presence through the presence of his people and the
proclamation of his Word. He gives us the promise of the certain,
final, everlasting liberation from evil that he effected through Christ’s
resurrection.
4. Cruciform Humanity. The theology of the cross enables God’s
children to understand the shape of life as God has planned it for
them, following Christ under the cross. It provides the hope and
confidence that enables them to conquer evil in the lives of others,
as they follow the model Christ gives them. His atoning suffering,
death, and resurrection has conquered evil in their lives, and they recognize
their call to carry love into the lives of others—in some instances
through their own suffering and the bearing of burdens. True
“theodicy” is lived out in the lives, in the love, of his people as they
deliver it to neighbors caught in the grip of evil. That theodicic action
demands that children of the cross recognize the familial dimension
of their new life in Christ. Some evils may be combatted
by individuals, but most of the perversions of God’s plan for human
living have roots deep enough and facets numerous enough to demand
more than any one Christian can do to bring God’s presence
to the suffering. Not only the suffering but also the believers need
the support that comes from the larger company of Christ’s people.
In regard to their own struggles with evil, believers find in the cross
the reminder that they pose a false question when they demand to
know why the Creator does not treat them better. Finally, the expectations
of the human creature cannot demand more of the Creator
than he has promised. Indeed, his ultimate promise will bring
the end of all evil, but in the interim he has promised his presence
in the midst of evil, not its exclusion from our lives. Nor dare our
expectations of ourselves be less than God’s expectations of us.God’s
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promise of life and of his steadfast love suffice. The promise in fact
gives hope and joy and peace. It fosters a defiance of evil and the assurance
that the people of God can move through life on the solid
ground of the love Christ revealed on the cross.
Homo Absconditus and Homo Revelatus:
What It Means to Be Fallen and What It Means to Be Human
Luther’s Deus absconditus and Deus revelatus also reveals a great deal
about his understanding of what it means to be human. It might be
said that his anthropology taught both a homo absconditus and homo
revelatus.
1. “Human”Means Trusting God Above all Else. Being fully human
is first of all to recognize that God is the fundamental point of orientation
for humanity. Not to know him as Creator and Father imposes
bondage upon those who are created to trust in him. It enchains
them to their false gods, tyrants all. Sin springs from doubt
that denies God’s place in our lives and defies his lordship. Luther believed
that our sinful turning the center of our attention to ourselves
hides from our own view the depth of our own sinfulness, indeed
the nature of our own sinfulness. In the Smalcald Articles he wrote,
“This inherited sin has caused such a deep, evil corruption of nature
that reason does not comprehend it; rather it must be believed on
the basis of the revelation in the Scriptures.”45 The heart of the
human failure to be all that we can be, according to Luther, consists
of our failure to fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Both
sinners whose behavior openly defies God and the “wise, holy,
learned, and religious”who want to secure their lives with their own
works refuse “to let God rule and to be God.”46 This failure to trust
in God led to the defiance of God’s other commands, according to
Luther’s interpretation of the Decalogue in the Small Catechism.47
Therefore, until sinners recognize their failure to trust in the true
God,revealed in Jesus Christ, they are blind to the depth and the root
cause of their troubles in this world. The law crushes sinful pretensions
to lordship over life in many ways, but only by driving people to
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the cross can it focus their understanding clearly enough to see that
the original, root, fundamental sin that perverts and corrupts life lies
in this lack of trust. When his human creatures do apprehend who
God is, in the fullness of his love, they then see themselves as his beloved
children. This perception of ourselves as the heirs of Christ and members
of the Father’s family liberates us from the bondage of caring for
ourselves and presiding over our own destinies.We are freed by Christ’s
cross to be fully human again because our Lord has made us children
of God through death to sin and resurrection to new life in him. The
success of this identity cannot be measured; the certainty of this identity
cannot be shaken. From the foot of the cross we see a grandeur in
our humanity so delightful that reason cannot comprehend it.
2. Bound Not to Trust, Liberated to Trust. But the fallen human nature
cannot fear, love, and trust in God above all things. A vital part
of Luther’s theology of the cross is his recognition of the impossibility
of turning ourselves back to God, of the boundness of human
choice. He did not deny that sinners have an active will, as is sometimes
suggested by scholars who have not read his De servo arbitrio
carefully. He did deny that the sinful will is free to choose God as
long as it remains caught and trapped by its need to supply an identity
for its person since it does not recognize God as creator and giver
of our identity. “Free will, after the fall, has the power to do good
only in a passive capacity, but it can always do evil in an active capacity,”
48 Luther explained to the Augustinians in Heidelberg. Like
water, which can be heated but cannot heat itself, the will is driven
by Satan or by God, as it acts in the vertical sphere of life. Instead of
trusting the Word of the Lord,we turn to the lie of the Deceptor,49
and doubt binds our wills as it deafens our ears. Freedom comes only
through the new identity given through Christ’s death, that becomes
our death to captivity and deception.
Under the illusion that God will provide grace enough to supplement
the efforts of our own strivings—up to 99.9 percent if necessary—
those who claim that they can freely exercise enough of their
damaged will, at least to accept what God offers, are never able to
understand what Jesus meant when he said that we must be born
anew to enter the kingdom of God.50 Indeed, striving for the standards
people set for themselves can convince them that they are not
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able to reach their goals, but apart from the perspective at the foot
of the cross they will not understand that the solution lies not in trying
harder but in dying to their sinful identity. At the foot of the
cross sinners finally lose the presumption that they simply must
stretch a bit higher. They fall to the earth to die to their sinful identity.
Forde labels the claim that some human contribution,how minimal
a mite it might be, can secure human life “effrontery.” He compares
the vanity of such impertinence to what has to happen to the
addict: “a ‘bottoming out’ or an ‘intervention.’ . . . there is no cure for
the addict on his own. In theological terms,we must come to confess
that we are addicted to sin, addicted to self, whatever form that
may take, pious or impious.”51
Thus, the theology of the cross reveals that it is hopeless to hope
that human performance of any kind can contribute to improving
our status in God’s sight. Recognizing that we are no more and no
less than creatures frees us from the need to assume the impossible
burden of being the God who orders and frees our lives. Luther’s “let
God be God” lets us be us, creatures who can be all that he made us
to be.
3. Born Anew. For God has made us anew. He is the Re-Creator
as well as the Creator, and his work of re-creation has taken place on
the cross and in Christ’s resurrection. From this throne of the cross
God does our sinful identity to death and gives us new birth as his
children.God is in charge.He is Lord.He determines who his human
creatures are.
From the foot of the cross, Luther confessed, the bent and broken
shape of humanity in flight from, in revolt against, God can be seen
for what it is. The fundamental fact of human existence after the fall
is that sin pays its wage,52 and sinners receive what they have earned
through their doubt of God’s Word and defiance of his lordship—
death. Reflecting on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus,53 Forde
writes, “No repairs, no improvements, no optimistic encouragements
are possible. Just straight talk:‘You must be born anew.’ ”54 Sinners
must die, eternally or baptismally. The children of God become his
children not by recovering from serious illness but by being born
anew, and that new birth presumes death to the old, sinful, identity.
For God confronted both kinds of human sinfulness on the cross—
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the symptoms and the root sin of doubt, denial, and defiance of himself.
His declaration of war against them seized the victory in the battle
at Calvary, and he delivers the fruits of the victory in baptism55
and in the return to baptism in daily repentance.
“When Christ calls a person, he bids him come and die,” Dietrich
Bonhoeffer observed. “Every command of Jesus is a call to die, with
all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore
Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life. The
call to discipleship,the Baptism in the name of Jesus Christ,means both
death and life.”56 By incorporating fallen human creatures into the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ through baptism, the Creator has repeated
his modus operandi of the first week,at the beginning.He brings
forth a new creature through the creative power of his Word.
Adam and Eve were not given a probationary period in which to
demonstrate that they were worthy of their humanity. It could not be
earned. It was a gift. Human performance—proper human behavior—
flows from the gift of identity, the gift of life.Human identity as
child of God cannot be earned. It must be passively received.For those
addicted to sin, as for the alcoholic, “Thou shalt quit!” is a salutary
command, “but it does not realize its aims but only makes matters
worse. It deceives the alcoholic by arousing pride and so becomes a
defense mechanism against the truth, the actuality of addiction.”57
Law-ism, behavior-ism, tells the sinner the same kind of lie. The theology
of the cross labels as a lie the idea that human performance can
establish human identity as a child of God and a true human being.
Beyond this denial of the nature of the evil that captivates us, in
our rejection of the love of our Creator, sin also prevents us from
perceiving clearly the height of our own possibilities as people freed
from sin, law, death, and the devil. We have been liberated from slavery
to all that focuses life on our works and ourselves. We have been
freed to love our neighbor in a way that brings the good to them
and pleasure to us which is the fulfillment of our humanity. The light
of the cross does liberate sinners from the darkness of the fears that
have driven them in upon themselves so that they can appreciate the
wonder of the creature God has made them to be. The light of the
cross generates the power to fulfill God’s plan for human living—in
a sinful world, even under the cross—and to acknowledge and appreciate
the joys of life as God’s child.
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4. Living as a New Creature. That means that the cross reveals our
true humanity to us. The cross reminds us that “ ‘we live on borrowed
time’—time lent us by the Creator.Yet we also see in the death
of Jesus on the cross our rebellion against that life, and we note that
there is absolutely no way out now except one. God vindicated the
crucified Jesus by raising him from the dead. So the question and
the hope come to us.‘If we die with him, shall we not also live with
him?’ ”58 In the cross we recognize not only the awful truth but also
the wonderful truth about ourselves.
In Christ we recognize ourselves through the Word of the Holy
Spirit. We are the forgiven children of God,with identities no longer
determined by sin but rather by the forgiving, life-giving Word of
the Lord. We are children of God, with great potential, even in the
midst of a world plagued by evil, for bringing love, peace, and joy to
those God has placed around us. The cross also makes it clear that it
is not good for human beings to be alone, according to God’s plan for
humanity.59 Gathered into God’s family by the cross, those who have
been given new life there are inevitably drawn as members of the family,
with other members of the family, into that world to demonstrate
God’s love and to call others to the cross and thus into the family.
Thus, we demonstrate this truth that we are children of God in
our actions, and we use God’s truth that we are his own as a weapon
against temptation. When Satan suggests that, while we indeed have
a ticket to heaven, our sinful identity determines who we are on
earth, until death, so that we can only live life on his terms, we can
tell him to go home. We can assert the promise of God in the cross
and smother the smoldering sparks of our inclinations to live life on
our own terms rather than God’s. For the word from the cross is a
weapon in the battle within us as well as outside us.
The theology of the cross cannot be taught and confessed without
its implications for the whole human community becoming
clear. The cruciform nature of the individual believer’s life also
stretches out the arms of the body of Christ, the church, in the direction
of those around it, within its reach.For the cross was designed
to restore the whole family of God as a family.
The cross also invades our lives in the midst of the struggles against
those desires that would lead us back to idolatrous living. The Holy
Spirit leads us constantly back to the cross to crucify our flesh, our
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desires to live apart from his love and his plan for daily life.Every believer
knows well the struggle that Paul confesses in Romans 7 and
8. All believers recognize that there can be no compromise with the
law of sin. We sinners must be put to death. We have been put to
death once and for all in our baptisms,but in the mystery of the continuing
force of evil in our lives, the rhythm of daily repentance leads
us again and again to the cross, to die and to be raised up.
Conclusion
Luther believed that the best view of all reality was to be had from
the foot of the cross on Calvary. The death and resurrection of Christ
parted the clouds, and he could see God and himself clearly. His theology,
the theology of the cross, performs the same function at the beginning
of the twenty-first century. In Christ it reveals God’s Godness
and our humanity. In an age of profound doubt about God’s
existence and his love the cross of Jesus Christ focuses human attention
on how God reveals himself to us as a person who loves and shows
mercy, in the midst of the evils that beset us. In Christ it shows fallen
human creatures who God really is. In an age of profound doubt about
what human life is and is worth, the theology of the cross defines
human life from the basis of God’s presence in human life and his love
for human creatures. It shows human beings who they are. Luther’s
theology of the cross is indeed a theology for such a time as this.
This essay has appeared in substantially the same form under the title
“Deus revelatus—Homo revelatus, Luthers theologia crucis für das 21.
Jahrhundert,” in Robert Kolb and Christian Neddens, Gottes Wort vom
Kreuz, Luthers Theologie als Kritische Theologie, Oberurseler Hefte
40 (Oberursel: Lutherische Theologische Hochschule, 2001), 13–34.
NOTES
1. “Heidelberg Disputation, 1518,” Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 57 vols.
Eds. J.F.K. Knaake, et al. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883ff.), 1:362,15–19 [hereafter cited as WA].
Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols. eds., J. Pelikan and H. Lehmann (Saint Louis
and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1955), 31:53 [hereafter cited as LW].
2. “In XV Psalmos graduum, 1532/33” (1540) WA 40,III:193,6–7 and 19–20.
3. “Operationes in Psalms, 1519–1521,” here on Psalm 6:11: WA 5:217,2–3.
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4. Corpus Reformatorum. Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. C. G. Bretschneider and H. E.
Bindweil (Halle and Braunschweig: Schwetschke, 1834–1860), 21:528–536 (2nd ed.) and
934–955 (3rd ed.).
5. Luther’s theology of the cross has been analyzed in different ways, with different accents,
by scholars. The new discussion of this topic began with Walther von Loewenich’s
Luther’s Theology of the Cross, trans. Herbert J. A. Bouman (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976),
first published in German in 1929; it focuses particularly upon its implications for Luther’s
concept of faith and the Christian life. Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God! An Interpretation
of the Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia:Muhlenberg,1947), combines an analysis of the
theology of the cross in relation to Luther’s understanding of revelation and of the atonement
with his doctrine of God’s Word.Further important contributions to the topic include
Hans Joachim Iwand’s essay, “Theologia crucis,” in his Nachgelassene Werke II (Munich:
Kaiser, 1966), 381–398; Jürgen Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott, das Kreuz Christi als Grund
und Kritik christlicher Theologie (Munich: Kaiser, 1972); Dennis Ngien, The Suffering of God
According to Martin Luther’s ‘Theologia Crucis’ (New York:Peter Lang, 1995);Gerhard O.Forde,
On Being a Theologian of the Cross, Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), and Klaus Schwarzwäller, Kreuz und Auferstehung. Ein theologisches
Traktat (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000). The topic is also treated in other standard
assessments of Luther’s theology.
6. Mark 10:42–45.
7. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 72–73.
8. Ibid., 2.
9. WA 1:254,35.36; LW 31:41, Thesis 28, following the translation of Forde, On Being
a Theologian of the Cross, 112.
10. WA 1:354,26–26; LW 31:41.
11. Thesis 1 stated, “The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance
a person on the way to righteousness but is rather a hindrance.” WA 1:353,15–16;LW 31:39.
12. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 95–96. See also Gal. 3:13,10; Rom. 4:15,
7:10, 2:12.
13. Ibid., 97–98.
14. WA 1:354,21–22; LW 31:45, Thesis 21.
15. 1 Cor. 1:18.
16. John 1:18.
17. 1 Cor. 1:22–25.
18. 1 Kings 19:12.
19. 1 Cor. 1:18–25.
20. John 1:14.
21. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 35.
22. WA 1:354,29–30; LW 31:41.
23. 1 John 4:8.
24. Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12.
25. Rom. 6:23b, 4–18; Col 2:12–15, 3:1.
26. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 76.
27. Rom. 5:6–8.
28. See the explanation of the second article of the Creed in the Small Catecheism. Die
Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche. 11th ed. (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1992), 511 [hereafter cited as BSLK]; The Book of Concord The Confessions of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2000), 355 [hereafter cited as BC]; The Book of Concord The Confessions of the Evan-
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gelical Lutheran Church, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1959) 345 [hereafter cited ad BC-T].
29. Phil. 2:8.
30. Rom. 6:23a.
31. E.g., in his Galatians commentary of 1535, WA 40,I:432–438; LW 26:276–280.
32. E.g. in his Galatians commentary, WA 40,I:228–229; LW 26:163–164.
33. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 1.
34. John 10:10.
35. Matt. 16:24–26.
36. Neddens, “Kreuzestheologie als kritische Theologie, Aspekte und Positionen der
Kreuzestheologie im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Kolb/Neddens, Gottes Wort vom Kreuz, 35–66,
here 35–41. Neddens analyzes the work of von Loewenich, Iwand, Moltmann, Forde, and
Schwarzwäller mentioned in note 5.
37. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 13.
38. Ex. 4:11; Isa. 45:7; Amos 3:6.
39. WA 18:686–690; LW 33:144–147.
40. WA 43:458,35–459,15; LW 5:43–44.
41. WA 43:459,24–32; LW 5:45.
42. WA 43:460,26–35; LW 5:46.
43. 1 Cor. 1:18–2:16.
44. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 114–115.
45. BSLK, 434; BC, 311; BC-T, 303.
46. Philip S. Watson made this expression the central point of his summary of Luther’s
theology in Let God Be God!, esp. p. 64. The unclear reference in Watson’s footnote at this
point is to Luther’s Kirchenpostille, WA 10,8,1:24, 4–11; Luther’s Epistle Sermons, Advent
and Christmas Season, trans. John Nicolaus Lenker, I (Luther’s Complete Works VII) (Minneapolis:
Luther Press, 1908), 117.
47.BSLK,507–510;BC, 351–354;BC-T 342–344. The words “We are to fear and love
God” that introduce explanations to commandments two through ten echo and stand on
the basis of the first commandment,which Luther interprets, “We are to fear, love, and trust
God above all things.”
48. WA 1:354,7–8; LW 31:40, Thesis 14.
49. Gen. 3:1–5.
50. John 3:3.
51. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 17, cf. 64, 94–95.
52. Rom. 6:23a.
53. John 3:7.
54. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 97.
55. Rom. 6:3–11; Col. 2:11–15.
56. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 79.
57. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 25.
58. Ibid., 9. Cf. Rom. 6.
59. Gen. 2:18.
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