.
Introduction: The Importance of the Topic
I have chosen to speak on the above topic for a
variety of reasons which I hope to explicate in the course of this lecture.
My lecture is, however, ultimately to have a very narrow focus, as I shall
make clear, a fact due in no small part to the narrowness of my own sphere
of competence, which is historical theology and emphatically not New Testament
studies. Nevertheless, lest what I have to say be regarded by some outside
of the immediate circle of evangelical theology as of little more than
antiquarian interest, I wish to start with a brief comment on the broader
implications of the debate upon which I shall be making the "casual observations"
of the title.
To put it bluntly, it seems to me that the current
revision of the doctrine of justification as formulated by the advocates
of the so-called New Perspective on Paul is nothing less than a fundamental
repudiation not just of that Protestantism which seeks to stand within
the creedal and doctrinal trajectories of the Reformation but also of virtually
the entire Western tradition on justification from at least as far back
as Augustine. I do not say this in order to shock or to create bad feeling
against its exponents but simply to clarify how serious the issue is. Indeed,
the advocates of the New Perspective would, I am sure, find my statement
of the significance of their position to be in accordance with how they
understand their position. We are not talking here of the old debate between
imputation and impartation which has historically separated Protestants
and Catholics; we are talking rather of a debate which pits the New Perspective
against both Protestants and Catholics on the grounds that the traditional
Reformation discussion actually takes place within a tradition which has
a fundamentally defective view of what God's righteousness, and thus the
believer's justification, are all about.
For Protestants, the issue is particularly acute.
Given the role of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith
both in the theology of the Reformation, and as perhaps the defining feature
of Protestantism over against post-Tridentine Catholicism, the kind of
revision being proposed by the New Perspective involves a fundamental redefinition
of what Protestantism, at least in its conservative, confessional form,
is.
That the New Perspective is being advocated not
simply by mainstream liberal scholars such as E P Sanders and James D G
Dunn but also by evangelicals such as N T Wright is particularly significant.
Wright's magisterial work in debunking the Jesus Seminar has made him a
significant evangelical presence; that he combines this historical scholarship
with a basic revision of the doctrine of justification more or less guarantees
that the New Perspective will not just be something which impacts upon
the liberal theological world but also upon the evangelical world as well.
All this is not to say that the Protestant notion of justification is an
evangelical centraldogma form which all other doctrines can be deduced;
but it is to point to the singular theological importance of the doctrine
in church history and in historic evangelical identity.
That the New Perspective has such radical implications
for the history of the doctrine in general and the theology of Protestantism
in particular does not, of course, mean that it is wrong. After all, in
terms of church tradition, John Eck had many of the trump cards at Leipzig;
yet many of us still consider Martin Luther to have had the more scriptural
arguments. The Protestant commitment to the scripture principle means that
tradition, while very important, never has decisive and unlimited authority.
It does, however, mean that we should be aware of the seriousness of the
issues at stake. We should, after all, not lightly throw out at least 500,
if not 1500, years of church teaching. We need to be acutely sensitive
to the magnitude of the moves we make in this area and thus proceed with
modesty, caution, and careful scholarship.
The Scope of My Argument
Having outlined the importance of the debate as
a whole, I now wish to clarify how I wish to contribute in this paper.
As the title states, my observations will be `casual'. I am a relative
newcomer to the issues involved and thus do not feel able to make more
than a number of fleeting observations on what is being said. Second, as
a 'mere historian', and one acutely sensitive to the problems of commenting
outside of my sphere of specialisation, I do not wish what I have to say
to be mistaken for comment on the New Testament scholarship underlying
the New Perspective: I do not belong to the guild and would not dare venture
such criticism. Rather, as a historian, I wish to comment only on those
areas where the scholars of the New Perspective have audaciously wandered
from their own spheres of competence and dared to comment on the field
of Reformation history. Only as they cross from their own sector into my
own do I feel confident to aim a few critical volleys at their work. I
do confess to being puzzled at the amount of work that is done by these
scholars in extra-canonical literature, since I wonder what the theological
implications of the kind of moves that are made between canonical and non-canonical
literature are, but I leave this particular question mark over current
procedures for the biblical theologians.
Luther in the New Perspective: A Brief Historical
Overview
It was Krister Stendahl who first drew attention
to the way in which Luther's conversion experience, shaped by his own position
within a theological tradition stemming from Augustine, allegedly shaped
his reading of the writings of Paul, turning Paul's letter to the Romans
into personal, introspective and to an extent gloom-laden autobiography.
Stendahl's argument, developed in a justly famous article, was not in itself
part of the shift in perspective on Pauline studies. This was to be pioneered
some years later by the work of E P Sanders, but it did lay the groundwork
for focussing attention on Luther as central to the misreading of Paul
which later scholars were to argue ran throughout Western, and particularly
Protestant understanding of Pauline theology.
The work of Sanders was not particularly concerned
with critiquing Luther and concentrated rather on setting the Pauline corpus
specifically within the context of the Jewish thought which provided
the background to the cultural, social, and intellectual worlds out of
which Christianity was to emerge. Nevertheless, in the years after Sanders
started to rewrite the intellectual history of Christianity and redefine
its relationship to Judaism, others were to make central the connection
between the new trajectory of Pauline studies and the theology of the West,
particularly that on justification. Thus, in the mid-eighties, the first
real brickbats were hurled Luther's way, this time from the pen of Francis
Watson whose first book, ****, dealt with the problem of Luther in some
detail.
After Watson's work, Luther became fixed in the
imagination of the New Perspective as the bad guy of the history of justification.
James D G Dunn, in an important article in 1992 for the Journal of Theological
Studies, turned his guns firmly against the great German Reformers. His
article is, in many ways, a manifesto of the anti-Lutheran direction of
the New Perspective and remains perhaps the single most important scholarly
salvo in the battle. In addition, Dunn followed this article in 1993 with
a popular book, The Justice of God, which he co-authored with Dr Alan Suggate,
which sought to place the New Perspective, along with its concomitant critique
of Luther, into the popular arena. With this work, it is arguable that
the New Perspective ceased to be an ivory-tower debate and became something
of concern to all intelligent and thoughtful Christians everywhere.
James Dunn is not the only articulate contemporary
advocate of the New Perpective who has given a significant amount of time
to critiquing Luther. As mentioned above, N T Wright has also done so and
is, arguably, more influential in evangelical circles than Dunn himself.
Nevertheless, Dunn remains the one who has hit Luther the hardest and thus
it is primarily with his work that I shall be concerned in this paper.
Given the comprehensive implications of the New
Perspective for the historical tradition, it should be clear that I do
not have the space to deal with all of the avenues of criticism which have
been opened up against Luther and the Reformation. To do this would require
a piece of much greater length than I have the authority to produce here.
What I want to highlight, though, is the weakness of much of the historical
analysis in terms of the traditional teaching. Now, as I have already said,
I in no way wish to imply that the soundness or otherwise of the New Perspective
depends upon its treatment of Luther or the tradition; but it is important
to note that the criticism of the tradition fulfils an important, though
not decisive, function in the argument. As I noted in my earlier lecture,
we live at a time when innovation is of the order of the day and tradition
is at a discount. Whereas in the sixteenth century the very novelty of
Luther's ideas was what made them so suspect and, one might add, so likely
to be wrong, nowadays, it is the traditional which is likely to be considered
wrong and the novel which likely to be regarded as more likely true. We
should not therefore underestimate the importance of the New Perspective
being precisely that -- a new perspective -- within the social and intellectual
context modern academic discourse. Given this, the break with tradition
which the New Perspective advocates trumpet from the rooftops is a not
insignificant part of the overall polemic.
Luther: The Case for the Prosecution
The problem, or rather problems, with Luther's
theology with which I wish to deal in this paper can be summarised as follows:
he is introspective in his reading of Paul and thus in his understanding
of salvation; and he is individualistic in his formulation of justification.
The New Perspective also makes other criticisms of Luther, with which I
hope to deal elsewhere. Time and space, however, require me to concentrate
my attention on these two related points, points which, I should add, are
basic to the central anti-Luther case these scholars wish to make.
Introspection and Luther's Reading of Romans
7
Dunn, building on the work of Stendahl, points
out that Luther took Romans 7 as being the description of Paul's own struggle
with his sin prior to his conversion to Christianity. Dunn, however,
counters by saying that none of Paul's unequivocal statements about his
pre-Christian state give any indication of such agonies of conscience as
a prerequisite to his conversion. In other words, what Luther has done
is to project his own spiritual struggles back into the writings of St
Paul -- a classic and radical example of eisegesis with disastrous consequences
for the future of the church.
A number of comments are in order at this point.
First, Dunn's basic contention -- that Luther projected his own conversion
agonies back into Romans 7 -- is simply not supported by the evidence.
Dunn cites the famous autobiographical fragment from the 1545 Latin edition
of Luther as outlining Luther's conversion, but there are a number of problems
with using this as the hook upon which to hang one's case about Romans
7 and introspection. First, on a general level, the difficulties in using
this as evidence for Luther's conversion is far from unproblematic as the
chronology of the events recounted is far from clear, with the result that
decent arguments can be made for placing the events as early as 1515, or
even 1514, and as late as 1518. Given the discovery this century of Luther's
1515-1516 lectures on Romans, we now know that Luther's own passage to
his understanding of justification by grace through faith alone is not
as easy or as straightforward as the dramatic account of the autobiographical
fragment might suggest.
Second, and far more important, is the complete
lack of Romans 7 in the passage. Romans does occur, but it is Chapter
1 verse 17 which is the focus, not Chapter 7; and there is little if any
introspection in Luther's 'new' understanding of this verse which he outlines
in the fragment; and it is certain that Augustine, the origin of this introspective
conscience, is conspicuous only by his absence. There is nothing here,
then, to justify claims of the eisegetical reading of Romans 7 which Dunn
alleges.
Now, while it is never cited as evidence by Dunn
(direct primary source citations being conspicous only by their general
absence from the New Perspective criticisms of Luther), we might now spend
just a few moments in the one place where such eisegesis might well be
found: Luther's commentary on Romans 7. There is some debate, of course,
about whether Luther has already made his Reformation breakthrough before
(or perhaps during) his delivery of these lectures. For myself, I find
the basic elements of Luther's mature theology of justification to be more-or-less
in place in these lectures, if not expressed with the same consistency,
clarity, and precision we find later, though I combine this with a tendency
to lean towards a 1518 date for the events described in the fragment. Whatever
the dating of the Tower Experience, the Romans lectures represent a significant
move away from the theology of the via moderna in which Luther was schooled.
Thus, if Dunn is correct about Luther on Romans 7, I would argue that we
should find significant evidence of this in these lectures.
Now, there are two things which are most striking
about Luther's treatment of Romans 7: his understanding of the status of
the persona of Paul in the chapter; and his use of Augustine. Both, as
we shall see, flatly contradict Dunn's thesis. As to the persona of Paul,
whether Luther regards him as describing his experience as unbeliever or
believer, Luther is emphatic: Paul is describing his experience as a spiritual
person, i.e., a believer. Unlike Dunn, I quote the man himself in this
context:
"For I should not have known what it is to covet".
From this passage to the end of the chapter the apostle is speaking in
his own person and as a spiritual man and by no means in the person of
a carnal man.
Indeed, this is not simply a bald assertion: Luther
proceeds to cite evidence for this reading: the passage indicates a hatred
of the flesh and a love for the Law, something which is impossible for
the carnal; Paul speaks of being unable to understand his sinful actions,
again a sign of a true believer; he does not wish to sin but still does,
and a carnal person cannot wish not to sin; he knows that nothing good
dwells in his flesh, again a sign of true spirituality; he wills to do
what is right, which can only come from possession of the Spirit; he feels
a battle between contrary laws in his own members; he delights in the law
of God; he sees himself as fighting between two contrary laws; he cries
out to God for help; and, finally, he declares that in his mind he serves
the law of God. In other words, far from reading back pre-conversion struggles
into Paul's statements in Romans 7, Luther gives no less than ten reasons
why Romans 7 cannot be dealing with the pre-conversion agonies of the apostle
but must be dealing with his experience as a Christian. Little did he know
it at the time, but in doing this Luther was also providing us with ten
compelling reasons for rejecting Dunn's portrait of the Reformer. Given
this fact, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that Dunn chooses not
to cite any relevant primary evidence for his arguments at this point;
indeed, we can, I think, legitimately ask whether Professor Dunn has ever
read Luther on Romans 7.
The case against Dunn, however, does not end here.
We still have the Augustine connection with which to deal. Now Dunn is
correct on one point: Luther is indeed influenced by Augustine in his reading
of Romans 7. In fact, he quotes him at length, and with approval, on the
issue of whether Paul is describing himself as believer or unbeliever here.
The problem for Dunn, however, is that Luther had an extensive knowledge
of Augustine's writings, and chose to use a passage from the Retractations,
not the earlier anti-Pelagian material, to support his reading. This passage
is quoted by Luther as follows in his comments on Romans 7:7 and following:
When the apostle says: `We know that the Law is
spiritual; but I am carnal' (v.14), I was absolutely unwilling to understand
this passage as referring to the person of the apostle who was already
spiritual, but I wanted to refer it to him as a man placed under the Law
and not yet under grace. This is the way I first understood these words,
but later, after I had read certain interpretations of the divine words
by men whose authority impressed me, I considered the matter more carefully
and saw that the passage could also be understood of the apostle himself.
In other words, Luther is influenced by Augustine
at this point, but by the later Augustine, and that into reading Romans
7 as the struggle of a believer not the preconversion agonies of an unbeliever
under conviction of sin. The reading of Luther on Romans 7 offered by Dunn
is therefore simply risible in its theological claims and its statements
about its relationship to Augustine because in every significant way it
is demonstrably incorrect. Given this, it is perhaps no surprise that even
Dunn's citation of the autobiographical fragment is not taken from an original
Luther source (Latin or translation), but is adapted from R H Bainton's
popular biography, Here I Stand. The question of Dunn's first-hand acquaintance
with the Lutheran sources looms large.
In mitigation we should perhaps note that in his
magnum opus on Pauline theology -- a book which, on the whole gives a somewhat
more sympathetic view of Luther but still without recourse to any primary
sources -- Dunn does include a footnote which implicitly conceded that
his earlier statements concerning Luther on Romans 7 were incorrect when
he acknowledges that Luther is one of those who 'find it impossible to
exclude the believer from the "I"' of Romans 7:7-25. This is hardly, however,
a full and accurate statement of the issue: Luther not only finds it impossible
to exclude the believer from the `I', but, in his Lectures on Romans, he
appears to find it impossible to include anyone else. It is perhaps not
surprising that this surreptitious and somewhat inaccurate retractation
is not accompanied with any reference at all to Luther's Lectures on Romans.
Now, having said all this, it is no doubt true
that many in the Protestant tradition have chosen to interpret Romans 7
in terms of the struggles of the unbeliever prior to, or in the throws
of, conversion. Were this all Dunn claimed, we would have no quarrel with
him; but his determination to vitiate the whole Protestant tradition by
locating this error in the psychological eisegesis of its original source,
that of Luther's theology, is historically inaccurate and theologically
unfair. If later generations used Luther in such a way, that is hardly
Luther's fault -- the original author was well and truly dead by such points!
And even among his contemporaries, there is evidence that Dunn's sweeping
connection between a certain reading of Romans 7 and introspection is untenable.
Calvin, for example, reads Romans 7 in precisely the kind of way in which
Dunn wrongly accuses Luther of doing, but, if we use Dunn's own approach
to Paul and apply it to Calvin, we come up with some interesting results:
Dunn refers to passages in Galatians and Philippians which speak unequivocally
of Paul's pre-Christian days and argues that they exhibit no evidence of
any morbid introspection; and, in the same way if we look at the story
of Calvin's life prior to his conversion to the Reformation cause, and
at the occasional allusions to his personal experiences, we find no evidence
for the kind of introspection which Dunn appears to regard his reading
of Romans 7 as requiring. All we really know of his conversion is that
it was subito, sudden or unexpected; whether it involved long or deep periods
of introspection and despair is extremely doubtful. It is thus misleading
to imply that the Lutheran notion of justification was necessarily borne
out of extended introspection prior to conversion. There is plenty
of evidence in the Reformation that such introspection was not a prerequisite
to faith, and thus the absolutely necessary connection between the two
is impossible to maintain.
The Problem of Individualism
The second major charge against Luther is that
he set Protestant theology on a track which was radically individualistic
in its understanding of what Christianity was all about. It is in some
ways more difficult to respond to this charge than to the first, not because
it is any more just but because it is inevitably more abstract in its claims.
There is, of course, a serious problem with the
word `individualism' and its cognates. Like other contemporary theological
buzz-words, such as `rationalism', `dualism', and `scholasticism', it is
a term which has become part of the rhetorical arsenal with which traditional
theology is today frequently assaulted. The problem is that such terms
are used as if their meaning and moral connotations were givens, self-evident
to any intelligent human being, whereas, in fact, neither of these things
are obvious. Given the current emphasis in intellectual culture on
the social construction of reality, on communitarianism, on the importance
of the public nature of language and discourse, we all know that individualism
is, to quote 1066 and All That, `a very bad thing', but we are perhaps
not always quite so certain of precisely what the term means. Thus, to
tar a particular position with the brush of 'individualism', as with that
of `rationalism', is to score an immediate rhetorical point against it;
whether the scoring of such a point is at all meaningful in terms of real
substance must surely depend not on the lobbing of pejorative cliches but
upon demonstrable errors or weaknesses.
So what does `individualism' mean? When, for example,
does it begin? With the arrival of knives and forks rather than a communal
eating pot? Perhaps the man who invented knives and forks was the first
individualist. Or was it with the advent of the Cartesian principle of
doubt? With the development of the genre of autobiography? Or with the
development of copyright legislation or the notion of personal property,
intellectual or otherwise? I have not time to discuss these in more detail;
but I do want to make the point that the complexity of issues which even
this brief litany of questions brings to the surface underlines the fact
that we must think beyond cliches if we are to do justice to the nuances
of intellectual history in general and the church's theological tradition
in particular.
Given that the term has no obviously given meaning,
what exactly does Dunn mean by Luther thinking of justification in distinctly
individualistic terms? It would appear that what he sees Luther as doing
is emphasising the vertical dimension of salvation between God and believer
as taking such prominence within his soteriological scheme that the corporate
aspects of salvation and Christianity are weakened and eventually eliminated
(this process reaching its terminus in the existentialist reading of Luther
found in the work of Rudolf Bultmann). This development is seen as
the logical outworking of Luther's theology and not necessarily something
which was explicit in Luther's own work or even of which he was consciously
aware.
The implications of Dunn's reading of Luther as
individualist are worked out by Alan Suggate in his essay `Germany: A Tale
of Two Kingdoms' in the book he co-authored with Dunn, The Justice of God.
In general, the portrait of Luther in this essay is bizarre. On the first
page we are told that Luther wanted to purify Catholicism (true) and retained
`many of its beliefs and practices, much like the English King Henry VIII'.
Given the fact that Luther fundamentally restructured the sacramental theology
of the church and that Henry VIII personally took him to task on precisely
this issue, burning a good few Lutherans into the bargain, Suggate's description
here is unlikely to be one that either of them would approve, recognise
or find particularly flattering. In addition, we are told, portentously,
that `the temptation to launch attacks against Catholicism was very strong,
and Luther cannot escape some of the blame for what happened after him'.
Then, just in case any of us have missed the point of Luther's pornographic
anti-papal woodcuts or his obscene language in his anti-Roman polemic,
we are reminded that `Luther was not above intemperate attacks himself.'
We may well laugh at the oddity of these comments
but it is important to realise the game that is being played by Suggate
here: Luther is being portrayed as the man who let the genie out of the
bottle; he was not necessarily a revolutionary or an extremist himself,
but his thinking was fundamentally inconsistent in attempting to balance
his new understanding of justification with a strong ecclesiology; and,
in the generations after his death, the doctrine of justification won out,
undermining and ultimately destroying the doctrine of the church. For Suggate,
the road from Luther runs fairly directly to the totalitarianism of Nazi
Germany where the individualist piety of Lutheranism was incapable of providing
a rationale for any kind of concerted social resistance to tyranny.
The political question is, of course, a highly
complex one and, given the horrors of the Holocaust, any connection made
between Luther and the Third Reich raises the whole debate to a highly
emotive level. Nevertheless, even if we allow the ideas of particular individuals
a significant role in the formation of a nation's social, political, and
cultural values (and that in itself is a philosophically contentious position
with which I am profoundly unhappy in such a bald form), Luther's Christianity
is by no means the sole candidate for criticism as far as Germany's recent
history goes: the philosophy of Hegel and Bismarck's policy of Realpolitik
are also significant intellectual sources of modern Teutonic totalitarianism.
If we move away from confusing the issue of Luther's
theology with events in the mid- twentieth century, there are two basic
points which can be made to counter accusations of individualism (in the
anti-social, anti-ecclesiological sense of the word that Dunn appears to
be using): Luther's high view of baptism and its relation to the Christian
life; and the connection between justification and social ethics.
Accusations of individualism as lodged by Dunn
and Suggate fail to come to grips with the fact that Luther combined his
understanding of justification by faith with a high view of baptism as
means of union with Christ and thus entry into the church. Indeed, all
of the magisterial Reformers argued for the fundamental importance of infant
baptism as a counter to the radical ecclesiology of the Anabaptists and
a self-conscious attempt to stand within the Catholic tradition of the
church by avoiding Donatism. There were, of course, important differences
between the way baptism was construed by the Lutherans and by the Reformed,
but both sides ascribed the doctrine basic importance in their understanding
of the Christian life. Now, we all know that Luther's analysis of the Christian
life, as found, for example, in his Commentary on Galatians, came to exert
a profound influence on the popular piety of later conversionist evangelicalicalism,
partly through its impact and appropriation by John Bunyan and John Wesley,
whose writings and life stories were to have such an effect upon shaping
eighteenth and nineteenth century popular piety; but we must beware of
blaming the earlier Reformers for problems that develop in later tradition.
The Reformers felt no tension between their emphasis on infant baptism
and that upon justification by faith; and it is illegitimate for us to
import such tension back into their writings or to impute the problems
of later Protestant theology to questions which they allegedly left unanswered.
One can hardly leave a question unanswered which was never asked in the
first place.
When we look at Luther's doctrine of baptism, the
following points are of note. First, the development of Luther's theology
of baptism goes hand-in-hand, and is indeed an integral part, of his theological
development which culminates in his understanding of justification by faith.
This is in large measure because of his increasingly radical and anti-Pelagian
understanding of sin. Unlike the medieval tradition in which he had been
schooled and against which he was to react, Luther came to regard innate
human sin after baptism as far more than a mere fomes or piece of kindling-wood
which could be defeated by the efforts of the baptised. No: sin was something
which dominated and controlled the whole human being and therefore baptism
needed to be something total and comprehensive in order to match up to
the seriousness of sin. In his Lectures on Romans, he makes the following
comment, after noting the need for the believer to die in a manner analogous
to Christ:
But we must note that it is not necessary for all
men to be found immediately in this state of perfection [of being dead
to sin], as soon as they have been baptized into a death of this kind.
For they are baptized `into death,' that is, toward death, which is to
say, they have begun to live in such a way that they are pursuing this
kind of death and reach out toward this their goal. For although they are
baptizd unto eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, yet they do not all
at once possess this goal fully, but they have begun to act in such a way
that they may attain to it -- for Baptism was established to direct us
toward death and through this death to life -- therefore it is necessary
that we come to it in the order which has been prescribed.
To anyone familiar first-hand with the theology
of Luther, this passage will appear striking for its use of the Pauline
language of life and death which is so characteristic of Luther's theology
of justification. What is of central importance to note is that this
was written during the very period when Luther's theology was moving towards
its mature Reformation position on justification and that the two issues
are thus inextricably linked. Later historiography and mythology
may have isolated the doctrine of justification from Luther's broader theological
biography but, again, that is an error of later tradition not something
for which we can blame Luther. To excise Luther's doctrine of justification
from its wider situation in the doctrinal matrix that is his anti-Pelagian
soteriology is not a legitimate historical or, one might add, theological
move. If further evidence of this is needed, I refer interested parties
to Part Four of Luther's Small Catechism of 1529 and his classic
1520 manifesto of sacramental theology, The Babylonian Captivity of the
Church, where the language of promise and faith, so central to justification,
is also central to his understanding of the sacrament.
The second point concerning baptism is that for
Luther it was to be applied to infants. There are, broadly speaking,
two dimensions to Luther's understanding of paedobaptism, one of which
remains constant throughout his mature career, and one of which shifts
in a subtle fashion. As to the first, the necessity of baptising infants,
Luther never wavers, rooting the immediate reason for so doing in the command
of God:
We bring the child with the purpose and hope that
he may believe, and we pray God to grant him faith. But we do not baptize
him on that account, but solely on the command of God. [Lohse, p. 304]
As to the second reason, what we might call the
secondary rationale for paedobaptism, this does change somewhat, mainly
as a result of the explosive controversies between magisterial Reformers
and Anabaptists in the early 1520s. Early in his reforming career, Luther
had tended towards the view that children were baptised on the basis of
the vicarious faith of their parents. Then, round about 1522-23, he shifted
to arguing on occasion that infants themselves possessed faith. Later still,
he became more cautious, no doubt concerned about making the sacrament
dependent upon the precondition of the presence of faith, and saw the sacrament
as anticipating future faith. What is certain is that baptism's validity
was rooted in the word and not in the individual faith of the baptised.
Given all this -- that Luther's doctrine of justification
cannot be isolated from the theological development which also gives us
his theology of baptism -- where does that leave Dunn's accusation that
the former is ineradicably and unacceptably individualistic?
Well, first, as I commented above, the way in which
the term `individualism' and its cognates are applied to Luther does not
immediately disclose their meaning. If Dunn means simply that each individual
must in some sense take personal responsibility for their standing before
God, believe if God for themselves, if you like, then that is a fair presentation
of Luther's position. But given the fact that this seems to be little different
to what is stated in the UCCF Doctrinal Basis, to which Dunn himself subscribes
on an annual basis, I am inclined to believe that this is not the way in
which he intends to apply the terminology to Luther. This would seem (and
I stress `seem' because, as I mentioned earlier, neither Dunn nor any of
the other New Paul critics of Luther give a precise definition of what
they mean by `individualism') to be something along the lines of `an approach
to salvation which so stresses the vertical relationship between the individual
and his or her God that this salvific bond is isolated from all horizontal
social relations, whether church or secular, relations which are consequently
completely and utterly irrelevant to, and unaffected by, the status of
being a justified believer.' I hope this does not misrepresent the position
of Dunn and the other advocates of the New Perspective; it is, as I say,
a definition which I have had to infer from their writings for lack of
explicit positive guidance.
If this definition is correct, then clearly all
that I have said about baptism and Luther's ethics serves to undercut it.
His understanding of baptism places great emphasis upon the ecclesiological
dimensions of the sacrament and diverts attention away from introspective,
individual considerations to the larger realities of union with Christ
and God's own fidelity to his word. His understanding of justification
as a vertical God- humanity relationship which profoundly affects horizontal
relations between individuals and their neighbours, his theology of suffering
on behalf of others, and his view of calling, all militate against the
notion that Luther's theology of justification is inherently individualistic
in the sense I have outlined above. Thus, on the second major charge against
Luther, I confess that I find the evidence of his innocence compelling.
Luther and the New Perspetive: A Preliminary
Assessment
In this final section, I wish to draw my reflections
to a conclusion by giving a preliminary assessment of the implications
what I have said so far. The field of Pauline studies is vast, and I have
not had time to spend examining the views of all those involved, or even
of all those who have made Luther a specific target of their attacks. Thus,
I stress the adjective `preliminary' in the section title.
First, it is worth noting briefly that the charge
of projectionism which lies at the heart of New Perspective critiques of
Luther is a dangerous one to make. To allege that Luther reads his own
conversion back into Romans 7 is demonstrably false. To argue that Luther
reads his experience back into Christian theology as a whole is somewhat
more difficult to refute. But is there any point in refuting such a charge?
On the grounds that what is good for the Reformation goose should also
be considered good for the New Perspective gander, we might respond by
arguing that the advocates of the New Perspective themselves read their
own preoccupations back into the New Testament texts.
One could argue that the renewed interest in Christ's
Jewishness is in no small part a function of corporate Christian guilt
both for centuries of anti-Semitism which culminated in the Holocaust,
and for the crass -- and now thankfully forgotten -- school of scholarship
which sought for ideological racial reasons to deny Christ's Jewishness.
One could argue that the desire to read the doctrine of justification in
a corporate rather than an individual way is the result of the impact of
the change in philosophical paradigms in the wider culture, from the existentialist
individualism of the mid-twentieth century, to the communitarian patterns
of the post-Wittgensteinian world. One could -- but it would not get one
very far. Thus, unless one wishes to go down the road which leads either
to Feuerbach or to radical reader response theory, it will probably prove
useful to move on from speculation about how much of Luther's theology
was mere personal eisegesis. At least Luther's modern day supporters can
claim some kind of historical perspective from which to judge what Luther
was doing with the tradition; it will be some time before we can set the
New Perspective in such historical context. For their own sakes, then,
the leaders of the New Perspective would do well to show wise caution and
steer clear of arguments based upon eisegetical projectionism.
Second, proponents of the New Perspective will
probably respond to my paper by saying that their case depends upon exegesis
not upon a particular reading of Luther. I could not agree more, and stated
as much at the start. In reply, however, I would like it noted that I did
not choose to bring Luther into the equation. It was leading figures of
the New Perspective who chose to introduce Luther's theology to the argument,
who proceeded to make him the historical figure over against whom they
were to define themselves, and who gleefully delivered such sweeping and
damaging judgments against his theology. I am merely responding to one
aspect of an argument whose territory and rules of engagement were determined
by New Testament scholars long before I entered the lists. I do not presume
to comment on their exegesis; but they have presumed to comment on church
history, not just at a popular level but also within the pages of scholarly
journals and tomes. They can hardly now complain if their statements in
this area are subjected to relevant scholarly scrutiny by those whose territory
they felt confident enough to invade.
Having said this, it is of course inevitable that
anyone proposing a major revision of the doctrine of justification must
deal seriously at some point with Luther. He is, after all, second only
to Augustine in his importance for understanding the soteriological traditions
of the West, and of singular importance in the development of both Protestantism
and Tridentine Catholicism. Love him or hate him, one has to deal with
him. Thus, I do not criticise the New Perspective for placing Luther at
the centre of the narrative whose final chapter makes them the most important
figures since Paul in understanding the Christian gospel; but I said that
the revisionists `must deal seriously with Luther' and what I question
is whether they have dealt seriously with him at all.
Certainly, Dunn's major Luther source is the autobiographical
fragment, and that cited from a popular 1950s biography. The rest of his
argument proceeds on the strength of cliches such as `individualism' and
sweeping generalisations, pronounced with the confidence of one who believes
their truth value to be self-evident. Again, I have not had time to deal
with the treatment Luther receives at the hands of N T Wright, but his
sarcastic attacks on Luther and Lutheranism in Jesus and the Victory of
God proceed with no reference to primary material at all and contain at
least one demonstrable falsehood. What we have in Dunn and Wright is a
critique of Luther which proceeds without reference to primary sources
or even to the best secondary material. At the hands of the New Perspective,
Luther appears to be the victim not of devastating scholarly critique but
of negative sound-bites and of tabloid headlines. He is a man who has lost
the PR war through misleading publicity -- indeed, perhaps not so much
sinned against as spinned against.
Some may be tempted to reply at this point that
I protest too much. After all, am I myself not someone with a limited range
of competence? Do I not use secondary sources and even unsubstantiated
opinion when my work requires me to cross a disciplinary boundary. Again,
this is true; but, then, the aim of my own scholarly work is somewhat more
modest than that of the New Perspective, and the stakes for which I play
are somewhat less high. Let us be quite clear about what is going on. These
people define themselves not just by their careful exegesis of Pauline
texts but also by their rejection of the Augustinian and Lutheran trajectories
on justification. That is what they consider to be an essential part of
what makes them so special, and what makes their contribution so important.
What they are proposing in consequence is that the whole Western tradition
has for most of the last two millennia been fundamentally wrong- headed
about justification.
That is a claim which is staggering in its theological
implications and awesome in its ecclesiological consequences. It requires
that we be very cautious and careful before we embrace it with open arms.
They could, of course, be correct; but surely these earth-shattering implications
place them under obligation to deal seriously with the relevant primary
texts of the tradition and to demonstrate in their analysis of them the
same exegetical and historical sensitivity which they boast of as distinguishing
their approach to the New Testament? To reject the entire tradition on
the basis of am apparent bibliography that would look less than thin at
the end of an undergraduate assignment is a move that can only be described
as one of breath taking arrogance and awesome irresponsibility. Reject
Luther and the tradition if you wish; but first make sure you know what
it is that you are rejecting. And that requires studying primary texts
in historical context.
This leads me to my final comment. The story is
told of Bernard Shaw being taken to see the lights of Las Vegas late one
night. `It must be beautiful' he commented, `if you can't read.' I confess
that the New Perspective approach to Luther strikes me a little that way.
It too must be beautiful, but only if you don't know the primary texts.
Its portrait of the Reformer certainly appears persuasive and impressive
but that is because of the confidence with which it is presented to an
audience whose culture generally considers novelty a good thing and tradition
to be bad. A close examination of his theology in context reveals this
portraits manifest deficiencies and palpable errors.
This leaves me with a big question: to coin a phrase
drawing on my earlier lecture at the conference, Are the advocates of the
New Perspective doing a Toynbee on me? Is there work only impressive at
precisely those points where I am not competent to judge its validity?
Certainly the vast knowledge of Judaism which underpins the argument is
impressive, as is the tremendously subtle exegesis which provides the backbone
of the revisionist case. But these are scholars who pride themselves on
being historians, on reading primary sources in context, and on respecting
the horizons of expectation of the various first century authors with which
they deal. These are all basic aspects of sound historical method
which apply equally to texts from the sixteenth century; they are also
conspicuous only by their absence from the treatment of said texts in the
works of the New Perspective.
It is on the basis of their consistent and careful
application of these procedures that these scholars ask me to trust them
when they tell me that the whole of Christian tradition is basically wrongheaded
over salvation, that the Reformers were more guilty than most in the perversion
of the gospel, and that I should trust them as the only people since Paul
to have understood what the gospel is all about. Well, in those areas of
their writings where I am competent to judge their application of historical
procedure, I find them sadly deficient. They could still be right, but
the sheer enormity of their claims requires me to be certain before I change
my mind. Given the inaccuracy of their portrayal of Luther, they will,
I hope, understand if I continue for the time being to back church tradition
on this one.
Carl
Trueman
(This essay was originally delivered in the
year 2000 to the Tyndale Fellowship at Cambridge)