Luther Study Days (Denmark 2024)

I had the privilege of teaching at the Luther Study Days in Herning, Denmark in March 2024.

The topics are Original Righteousness, , and The Christ is Our Righteousness according to Both Natures.

Here are the lectures.

1. Original Righteousness

2. The Conscience and the Heavenly Council

3. That Christ is Our Righteousness according to Both Natures

Lecture Notes:

1. How We Were: Adam’s Original Righteousness
   1. Life is a story with four chapters
      • Begin
      • Broke
      • Fix
      • Finish
   2. The Unique Christian Story (which becomes an argument when it faces contrary stories)
      • Creation
      • Fall
      • Redemption
      • Resurrection
   3. Our Law/Gospel danger is forgetting chapter 1 and 4. 
   4. Lost Chapter One
      • Luther’s Disputation Concerning Man (1536)

11. Therefore, if philosophy or reason itself is compared with theology, it will appear that we know almost nothing about man,

12. Inasmuch as we seem scarcely to perceive his material cause sufficiently.

13. For philosophy does not know the efficient cause for certain, nor likewise the final cause,

14. Because it posits no other final cause than the peace of this life, and does not know that the efficient cause is God the creator.

(https://wolfmueller.co/martin-luthers-dispensation-concerning-man/)

• “Homo Sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas, and chimpanzees have no natural rights.” (Yuval Noah Havari, Sapiens. A Brief History, 109, quoted in McLaughlin, The Secular Creed, 7)

5. The Image of God is Original Righteousness
   • The Divine Council
     • Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 

So God created man in his own image, 

in the image of God he created him; 

male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

• Luther on the Image of God
  • I am afraid that since the loss of this image through sin we cannot understand it to any extent. (LW 1:61)
  • Therefore the image of God, according to which Adam was created, was something far more distinguished and excellent, since obviously no leprosy of sin adhered either to his reason or to his will. Both his inner and his outer sensations were all of the purest kind. His intellect was the clearest, his memory was the best, and his will was the most straightforward—all in the most beautiful tranquillity of mind, without any fear of death and without any anxiety. To these inner qualities came also those most beautiful and superb qualities of body and of all the limbs, qualities in which he surpassed all the remaining living creatures. I am fully convinced that before Adam’s sin his eyes were so sharp and clear that they surpassed those of the lynx and eagle.99 He was stronger than the lions and the bears, whose strength is very great; and he handled them the way we handle puppies. Both the loveliness and the quality of the fruits he used as food were also far superior to what they are now. (LW 1:62)
  • Therefore my understanding of the image of God is this: that Adam had it in his being and that he not only knew God and believed that He was good, but that he also lived in a life that was wholly godly; that is, he was without the fear of death or of any other danger, and was content with God’s favor. In this form it reveals itself in the instance of Eve, who speaks with the serpent without any fear, as we do with a lamb or a dog. For this reason, too, if they should transgress His command, God announces the punishment: “On whatever day you eat from this tree, you will die by death,” as though He said: “Adam and Eve, now you are living without fear; death you have not experienced, nor have you seen it. This is My image, by which you are living, just as God lives. But if you sin, you will lose this image, and you will die.” (LW 1:62-62)
  • Therefore when we speak about that image, we are speaking about something unknown. Not only have we had no experience of it, but we continually experience the opposite; and so we hear nothing except bare words. In Adam there was an enlightened reason, a true knowledge of God, and a most sincere desire to love God and his neighbor, so that Adam embraced Eve and at once acknowledged her to be his own flesh. (LW 1:63)
  • Therefore that image of God was something most excellent, in which were included eternal life, everlasting freedom from fear, and everything that is good. However, through sin this image was so obscured and corrupted that we cannot grasp it even with our intellect. Although we utter the words, who is there who could understand what it means to be in a life free from fear, without terrors and dangers, and to be wise, upright, good, and free from all disasters, spiritual as well as physical? (LW 1:65)
• Lutheran Confessions on the Image of God
  • This the Scripture shows when it says that man was created in the image of God and after his likeness (Gen. 1:27). What else is this than that a wisdom and righteousness was implanted in man that would grasp God and reflect him, that is, that man received gifts like the knowledge of God, fear of God, and trust in God? (Ap III.18)
  • In Eph. 5:9 and Col. 3:10 Paul shows that the image of God is the knowledge of God, righteousness, and truth. (Ap III.20)
  • Furthermore, that original sin is the complete lack or absence of the original concreated righteousness of paradise or of the image of God according to which man was originally created in truth, holiness, and righteousness, together with a disability and ineptitude as far as the things of God are concerned. (FC.SD I:10)
  • That original sin in human nature is not only a total lack of good in spiritual, divine things, but that at the same time it replaces the lost image of God in man with a deep, wicked, abominable, bottomless, inscrutable, and inexpressible corruption of his entire nature in all its powers, especially of the highest and foremost powers of the soul in mind, heart, and will. (FC.SD I:11)
• Quenstadt:
  • The IMAGE OF GOD is a natural perfection, consisting in an entire conformity with the wisdom, justice, immortality, and majesty of God, which was divinely created in the first man, in order that he might perfectly know, love, and glorify God, his Creator. (11.9, quoted by Schmid, Doctrine Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 239)
• Practical Application: We are made of “moldable” stuff
  •       Their idols are silver and gold,
    the work of human hands. 
    They have mouths, but do not speak; 
    eyes, but do not see. 
    They have ears, but do not hear; 
    noses, but do not smell. 
    They have hands, but do not feel; 
    feet, but do not walk; 
    and they do not make a sound in their throat. 
    Those who make them become like them; 
    so do all who trust in them. (Psalm 115:4-8, see Psalm 135)
• Luther Comments: “He speaks prophetically, in the first place, because they themselves will also become images and idols, not by nature, but by similarity, as Zech. 11:17 says: “O shepherd and idol,” because they are vain. A remarkable love of one’s own powers does all these things, a love which changes the lover into the beloved, as blessed Augustine says: “Love the earth, and you are earth; love gold, and you are gold; love God and you are God.”” (LW 11:399)

• God’s Image Lost, but…
  • This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. (Genesis 5:1-3)
  • “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” (Genesis 9:6) 
  • With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. (James 3:9)
  • …the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4, see Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3)
  • And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18, see Ephesians 4:24)
  • Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:49)
• Behold the man
  • Pascal: For in fact, if man had never been corrupt, he would enjoy in his innocence both truth and happiness with assurance; and if man had always been corrupt, he would have no idea of truth or bliss. But, wretched as we are, and more so than if there were no greatness in our condition, we have an idea of happiness and can not reach it. We perceive an image of truth and possess only a lie. Incapable of absolute ignorance and of certain knowledge, we have thus been manifestly in a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen. (Penses, 434)
  • Psalm 8, What is man, that You are mindful of him? 
  • Plato: “Man is a featherless biped.” Diogenes (and Pontius Pilate), “Behold the man.”

2. Judgment of God & Man: The Heavenly Court, The Divine Service, and the Heart/Conscience of Man
   1. The Lutheran Confessors as Pastors (against the “cold” forensic doctrine of justification)
      • “The conscience cannot come to rest and peace through works, but only through faith, that is, when it is assured and knows that for Christ’s sake it has a gracious God…” (AC XX:15)
      • “But in the agony of conscience and in conflict, the conscience experiences how vain these philosophical speculations are.” (Ap IV:37)
      • “This doctrine gives sorrowing and tempted people the permanently abiding comfort of knowing that their salvation does not rest in their own hands.” … “But it is certain that any interpretation of the Scriptures which weakens or even removes this comfort and hope is contrary to the Holy Spirit’s will and intent.” (FC.SD XI:90, 92)
   2. On Earth as it is in heaven
      • Activities of the Heavenly Court/ God’s Throneroom
        • The Word of God (conversation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with angels and saints)
        • Heavenly Court (Accuser and Advocate)
        • Petitions
        • Praises
        • Sending
      • The Court stamped on the Earth in the Divine Service
        • Mt Sinai, Exodus 25:4
        • Hebrews 8:5, 9:23-24
        • Transfiguration (Jesus is the Temple, John 2:19ff)
   3. The Conscience as a Courtroom
      • Job 1 & 2
      • My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)
      • I will send the Paraklete. (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7)
   4. The Liturgy
      • Stamping Stamp, mediating stamp, of the Divine Service
      • Revelation 12: They overcame the devil with the Word and the Blood, and they did not love their lives unto death.
        • The Picture: Pregnant Woman, Devouring Dragon
        • Caught up to heaven, war in the heavenly court
        • The dragon cast out, now what? 
        • The dragon defeated on earth as well

3. The Whole Christ is Our Righteousness
   1. On the Formula of Concord
      • Frederik II, July 1580, Concordia banned and copies burned. 
      • An “Augsburg” and “Concordia” Lutheranism emerge.
      • Results
        • Biblical Authority: The Scriptures are the “pure, clear fount of Israel” 
        • There is a “Concord” way of doing theology. Bible. Augustana. Official Documents. Luther. Church Fathers. 
        • Theology Post-Luther. (Non-repristinarian repristination. Luther in boundaries.) 
        • Inoculation against the Reformed Theology. (Non-scholastic scholasticism. Keeps forgiveness outside.)
        • And? 
   2. The Osiandian Controversy
      • Osiander: “The one and only righteousness availing before God is God Himself. But Christ is the Word which we apprehend by faith, and thus Christ in us, God Himself, is our Righteousness which avails before God.” (Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord, F. Bente (CPH, 1921) ch. 176.)
      • Again: “But if the question be asked what is righteousness, one must answer: Christ dwelling in us by faith is our Righteousness according to His divinity; and the forgiveness of sins, which is not Christ Himself, but merited by Christ, is a preparation and cause that God offers us His righteousness, which He is Himself.” (Bente, ch. 178)
      • “Christ in us” rather than “Christ for us.” 
      • To this peculiarity of Osiander, according to which he seems to have had in mind a justification by a sort of mystico-physical dilution rather than by imputation, the Formula of Concord refers as follows: “For one side has contended that the righteousness of faith, which the apostle calls the righteousness of God, is God’s essential righteousness, which is Christ Himself as the true, natural, and essential Son of God, who dwells in the elect by faith and impels them to do right, and thus is their righteousness, compared with which righteousness the sins of all men are as a drop of water compared with the great ocean.” (Bente, ch. 178)
   3. On Mysticism
      • “I’m spiritual, but not religious.”
        • Presence instead of promise
        • Impressions instead of assertions
        • Internal instead of external 
      • “But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, “ ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach).” (Romans 10:6-8)
      • “In short, enthusiasm clings to Adam and his descendants from the beginning to the end of the world. It is a poison implanted and inoculated in man by the old dragon, and it is the source, strength, and power of all heresy, including that of the papacy and Mohammedanism. Accordingly, we should and must constantly maintain that God will not deal with us except through his external Word and sacrament. Whatever is attributed to the Spirit apart from such Word and sacrament is of the devil.” (Martin Luther, Smalcald, VIII.9-10)
   4. External Word, Alien Righteousness
      • Condemned are the Anabaptists and others who teach that the Holy Spirit comes to us through our own preparations, thoughts, and works without the external word (Verbo externo) of the Gospel. (AC IV:4)
      • There are two kinds of Christian righteousness, just as man’s sin is of two kinds. The first is alien righteousness, that is the righteousness of another, instilled from without. This is the righteousness of Christ by which he justifies through faith, as it is written in 1 Cor. 1[:30]: “Whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” (Martin Luther, Two Kinds of Righteousness, LW 31:297)
   5. The Response of the Formula
      • Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration III:3-5

1. In opposition to these two errors just recounted, we believe, teach, and confess unanimously that Christ is our righteousness neither according to the divine nature alone nor according to the human nature alone. On the contrary, the entire Christ according to both natures is our righteousness solely in his obedience which as God and man he rendered to his heavenly Father into death itself. Thereby he won for us in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, as it is written, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19).

2. Accordingly we believe, teach, and confess that our righteousness before God consists in this, that God forgives us our sins purely by his grace, without any preceding, present, or subsequent work, merit, or worthiness, and reckons to us the righteousness of Christ’s obedience, on account of which righteousness we are accepted by God into grace and are regarded as righteous.

3. We believe, teach, and confess that faith is the only means and instrument whereby we accept Christ and in Christ obtain the “righteousness which avails before God,” and that for Christ’s sake such faith is reckoned for righteousness (Rom. 4:5).

6. Martin Luther, Disputation Concerning Man
   • 32. Paul in Romans 3 [:28], “We hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works,” briefly sums up the definition of man, saying, “Man is justified by faith.”

4. Notes
   1. Pascal, Pences, 434

What, then, shall man do in this state? Shall he doubt everything? Shall he doubt whether he is awake, whether he is being pinched, or whether he is being burned? Shall he doubt whether he doubts? Shall he doubt whether he exists? We cannot go so far as that; and I lay it down as a fact that there never has been a real complete sceptic. Nature sustains our feeble reason and prevents it raving to this extent.

Shall he, then, say, on the contrary, that he certainly possesses truth—he who, when pressed ever so little, can show no title to it and is forced to let go his hold?

What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!

Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the sceptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists. What, then, will you become, O men! who try to find out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot avoid one of these sects, nor adhere to one of them.

Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely transcends man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear God.

For in fact, if man had never been corrupt, he would enjoy in his innocence both truth and happiness with assurance; and if man had always been corrupt, he would have no idea of truth or bliss. But, wretched as we are, and more so than if there were no greatness in our condition, we have an idea of happiness and can not reach it. We perceive an image of truth and possess only a lie. Incapable of absolute ignorance and of certain knowledge, we have thus been manifestly in a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.

It is, however, an astonishing thing that the mystery furthest removed from our knowledge, namely, that of the transmission of sin, should be a fact without which we can have no knowledge of ourselves. For it is beyond doubt that there is nothing which more shocks our reason than to say that the sin of the first man has rendered guilty those who, being so removed from this source, seem incapable of participation in it. This transmission does not only seem to us impossible, it seems also very unjust. For what is more contrary to the rules of our miserable justice than to damn eternally an infant incapable of will, for a sin wherein he seems to have so little a share that it was committed six thousand years before he was in existence? Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine; and yet without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. The knot of our condition takes its twists and turns in this abyss, so that man is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is inconceivable to man.

Whence it seems that God, willing to render the difficulty of our existence unintelligible to ourselves, has concealed the knot so high, or, better speaking, so low, that we are quite incapable of reaching it; so that it is not by the proud exertions of our reason, but by the simple submissions of reason, that we can truly know ourselves.

These foundations, solidly established on the inviolable authority of religion, make us know that there are two truths of faith equally certain: the one, that man, in the state of creation, or in that of grace, is raised above all nature, made like unto God and sharing in His divinity; the other, that in the state of corruption and sin, he is fallen from this state and made like unto the beasts.

These two propositions are equally sound and certain. Scripture manifestly declares this to us, when it says in some places: Deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum. (Prov. 8:31. “And my delights were with the sons of men.”) Effundam spiritum meum super omnem carnem. (Joel 2:28. “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.”) Dii estis, (Ps. 82:6. “Ye are gods.”) etc.; and in other places, Omnis caro faenum. (Is. 40:6. “All flesh is grass.”) Homo assimilatus est jumentis insipientibus, et similis factus est illis. (Ps. 49:12, 13. “He is like the beasts that perish; this their way is their folly.”) Dixi in corde meo de filiis hominum (Eccles. 3:18. “I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men.”). 

Whence it clearly seems that man by grace is made like unto God, and a partaker in His divinity, and that without grace he is like unto the brute beasts.

(https://ccel.org/ccel/pascal/pensees/pensees.viii.html?highlight=chimera&queryID=33305963&resultID=150282#highlight)