Stanley Goodspeed: You’ve been around a lot of corpses. Is that normal?
John Mason: What, the feet thing?
Stanley Goodspeed: Yeah, the feet thing.
John Mason: Yeah, it happens.
Stanley Goodspeed: Well I’m having a hard time concentrating. Can you do something about it?
John Mason: Like what, kill him again?
–from The Rock, 1996

Simple question: after the second use of the law kills the sinner, what’s the law going to do now? As Mason said, “Kill him again?”

It used to be said of Hinduism that there were as many gods as there are people^*. I sometimes wonder if that’s how people actually view the “Uses of the Law” in practice.

So the question I have is: how many uses do you need the law to have? People really get exercised about the debate regarding the Third Use. I tend to fall (fairly hard) into the Two Uses Only camp, and from that point of view, I just don’t understand the Third Use of the Law. I mean I grasp the plain meanings of the words, and pretty much understand the Solid Declaration, Article VI. I just don’t “get it.”

The Formula of Concord—in a classic rendering that sets the tone for all future Lutheran policy debates—doing nothing to “definitively settle” anything writes: “In order to explain and definitively settle this controversy, we unanimously believe, teach, and confess that, although truly believing Christians, having been genuinely converted to God and justified, have been freed and liberated from the curse of the law, they should daily exercise themselves in the law of the Lord.”

Yeah. There’s just enough qualifiers in there to render it a little less “definitively settled” than it seems.

What is a “truly believing Christian” as opposed to just a “believing” one?

What does it mean to be “genuinely converted to God & justified” as opposed to “converted and justified”?

And do these post-Luther interpreters turn their back on the original explosive energy of the reformation challenge? (So soon after the old man’s death, natch). If we take seriously Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, I argue we have to reopen this debate. And I mean like, woah. (and fair warning: I aim t’ win)

Thesis 23: The law works the wrath of God, kills, curses, accuses, judges, and damns everything that is not in Christ.

Forde (oh yeah, this blog is in his honor) wrote on that subject in On Being a Theologian of the Cross:

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!), it kills; it does not bless, it curses; it does not give comfort, it accuses; it does not grant mercy, it judges. In sum, it condemns everything not in Christ. (pg. 95)

So yeah. AWESOME.

What, exactly is this so called “Third Use” worth, now? I’m pretty sick and tired of the endless roundelay trying to puff up this 3rd Use garbage. Far as I’m concerned, it’s the theologians of the third use who should be defending themselves. Not the other way around. You guys need to get your poop in a group and explain to the rest of us where you get off saying there’s more than two uses of the law. Because plain reason can see that once the law does its work putting the sinner to death, it can’t touch the person resurrected in Christ.

^* This business about 330 million gods is kind of a wild exaggeration.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Grace to you and peace in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! This was going to be my “you foolish Galatians” letter, but honestly, I just feel profound and helpless disappointment, and a lack of surprise, and fatalism.

Your members said you were going to take a year of discernment. You did not. If three months is a satisfying substitute for a year, what reason should I have to believe you ever meant to take that time? This departure from our denomination feels like a fait accompli, not a measured decision. It is the landing of a fist, one you held cocked at the church over these last years, ever more determined that if the ELCA might be fer it, you were gonna be agin’ it, no matter what “it” was.

I fear also it is too short sighted by far. Your congregations, adherents and members—right now, as you read this helpless missive—your people are out there, making new lives. There are mothers birthing babies, parents raising children, families makin little Lutheran CORE youth. Kids who in just one short generation will grow up to discover they are gay as geese and that nothing, Nothing will change that fact. They will curse themselves and they will curse God for handing them both this terrifying truth about themselves with one hand; and with the other a passion for the Gospel of Jesus and Him crucified. They will be called, as so many have been, and you will not have the faintest idea what to do with them, except stroke your beards, muttering into your hands that you “did the hard, right thing in 2009.”

God can make congregations of stones, a people from dry bones, masses numberless as the stars from aged barren soil. You cannot see his handiwork in the littlest lost last and least of this generation?

Mercy on us all. Mercy.

In Christ,

Jon Olsen

I am a former student of Gerhard Forde. I ascribe to many—even most—of his theological views. I am passionate about the legacy of his ministry and work. I feel a responsibility to carry forward lessons he taught me, though my updates to this blog have been fitful. I know that this isn’t a very thoroughly maintained and sustained homage to my late friend, teacher and inspiration. So mine is not a very loud or consistent voice. That’s one struggle.

Related to that struggle is that I am participating in a twelve step recovery program. My entry into addiction recovery began in late winter of 2009—coincidentally a little bit after the most recent entry in this blog! (so you can guess part of reasons for the slowdown) One of the things I have learned in that process is that many of us in recovery have “resigned from the debating society.” It’s a little risky to participate in polemical writing of the kind I knew would happen on this blog, because I’m focused on putting my recovery—and the humility required to stay in it—in front of the many reactions I used to have.

The next struggle is that I greatly differ with my friend and mentor on several key subjects. The most high-profile divergences (and those of immediate concern) are on the subjects of church organization/governance and human sexuality, my views of which have branched and sprouted and changed considerably over the last two decades.

I own this domain name, and I made some cool Forde Lives bumper stickers (still available). Plus, I have no doubt that I want to keep the flame of Forde’s legacy alive. I still yearn to interpret not just the church and the corpus of Christian theology, but society and culture, perhaps life itself through the lenses we received from him!

But I also have little doubt that many of the people who are sympathetic to this desire would…to use the kind of salty language my other friend and mentor Jim Nestingen might employ…flip their shit, knowing that I’m a “queer-lovin’ commie.” So, I’m sensitive to this matter: you should know that on the issues of human sexuality most notably addressed in 2009, my stance is more in line with that of the mainline ELCA, than with many of the publicly visible people who likewise carry the Forde legacy. In fact, my personal stances are probably—I’ll be charitable— much less timid and soothing than those voted on in Minneapolis!

Can we continue this? Can you keep (or start) reading? We will see. God’s will shall sort these things out in time. I will stand by my love of Gerhard and his work. I’m committed to a path of service. What will become of this blog? Stick around, decide once things get going. But you should know right now that into which you are getting!

For consideration: a Jewish friend of mine (a convert whose mother is an ELCA pastor) repeatedly refers to Jesus as a “bad Jew.” He did this a lot on New Year’s Eve (there may have been intemperate spirits involved). I’m probing him about it for his motives making such a statement, but I think it presents an interesting question.

Jesus: Bad Jew. Does it matter?

If Jesus were a good Jew, would it make a difference a) cosmically? b) soteriologically?
Can a “good Jew” be a “good Savior”?

Incidentally, when asked directly, “does it matter to you ‘as a Jew’ if Jesus was a bad Jew?” my aforementioned friend replies, “not at all.”

You foolish WorldNetDaily columnists! Who has bewitched you? Woe to you Janet Porter, for you are fundamentally and horrifically in error from the start of your column to the end. This is error and lies and madness. With your hands at the levers of power, you and your ilk are the new Medici, the American popes, the savage new Babylonian captors. We will take our faith and our nations back from you!

We know that God is no respecter of persons, and that the details of our governments are but chaff and trim in the day that is coming, burning bright like a furnace. We know that the word of Jesus and Him crucified is stronger than death, stronger and more vast in love than we can even bear to hold in our hearts, stronger than my anger at you, and stronger than your lies.

We hold fast that when we gather in Jesus’ name he is there, and we pray that he anoints our leaders with wisdom and fire. Your hate and falsehood cannot wipe away this anointing.

Good Christians everywhere will prove you wrong starting November 4 and into the future. Your way of lies and terror is at an end.

Yours In Christ,

Jon S. Olsen
Minneapolis, MN
Luther Seminary Class of 2008

Yeah, don’t hold your breath.

I encourage you to read On Being a Theologian of the Cross now, instead of waiting.

Presumably it also means we have almost twenty years before the big “Schmalkald Articles” celebration? The 2038 Schmalkald Daze fete is going to be tremendous!

So what I’m going to do is pull out something from the lectionary, and find what I think is the hardest part of the text. We’ll try to look at it the way Gerhard taught us to, and if you like, you can use this in your prayerful preparations for next Sunday. We’ll try to get something posted every Tuesday, starting now.

Here’s the ELCA lectionary. In each of these posts we’ll run through some or all of the verses with a “Fordean eye” open for the hard parts. Normally we’ll put the whole thing behind a “read more” cut link, because it’s going to be long some weeks. This week, as the first one, we’ll include it here.

Series A: Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 21, 2008 (Lectionary 25)
“Complementary Series” Jonah 3:10-4:11, Psalm 145:1-8 (8), Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16

Jonah 3:10 “God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.”
This starts things off right away doesn’t it? God changed his mind? What kind of God changes God’s mind? Aggh! The kind who can do whatever God wants to, that’s who! The God who works all in all! It’s rough enough God toys with Jonah with the whole bush and worm scenario. But that’s par for the course, that’s miracles and wonders. God does wonders like that all the time, and especially in Jonah—ol’ Jonah’s being thrown all over the countryside and God’s whipping up storms and casting him in the sea, tossing him into the maw of a fish. (Dr. Throntveit liked to joke that this was the text to use whenever former students asked teachers to come to their ordinations because it used to read “God ordained a worm“) But God doing miracles is one thing, out in the open. God changing God’s mind, even if it’s to the benefit of the people, should set your teeth chattering and your spine tingling. There is one of those lacunae in the text (lacunae is my favorite word this week) wherein you see through the gap a vast and terrible gulf, you see the footprints, the long-cast shadow of the unseen God, all in the implications. A God who can change God’s mind is a word that kills.

Psalm 145:1-8 “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.” and “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”
There’s some law and gospel, quite present. The unsearchable greatness and slow anger hints at a much wilder world of God’s power. The abundant steadfast love is how we might come to praise God, to look on that face and not despair.

Philippians 1:21-30 “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.”
But but but…? What? Wait, what are we supposed to do Paul? And then you start talking about “living in a manner worthy”? We’re just trying to figure out so dang hard what that means, Paul! You just throw out these phrases and it drives us crazy! Would you turn dying into a task? You don’t mean we have to die do you? This Jesus program you’re going on about? Die?

Matthew 20:1-16 “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”
Well, this is right in Dr. Forde’s wheelhouse—my memory is that a sermon on this topic appears in Captivation of the Will (we’ll check that and get back to you). But it’s hard to get more obvious than that. Am I not allowed to do what I choose? Oh. Oh my. This is hard. This is a granite spike jutting out of the earth. Here Jesus points a finger directly at the unimpeachable majesty of a God who elects. Argh! Madness! Death and madness! There’s your opening, preachers. May you have the temerity to mine the grace in it and do it to your congregants.

(Hint: you get to say “And this God who does what God chooses with that which is God’s own chooses to raise Jesus from the dead for you. God who does what God chooses with that which is God’s own chooses right now to grab you and hold you in the very heart of love from now on. Really! You, you hearing me speak you are now claimed by this audacious Jesus who is the very lifeblood of the living God. You are God’s own and no power in the kosmos will take that away from you now.”)

Now you try it: Here’s the “Semicontinuous Series” Exodus 16:2-15, Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45 (1, 45), Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16

95 Ways John McCain is not like Martin Luther

1. When he reached age 63, Luther died. When John McCain turned 63 he was serving another term in the senate and getting ready to be rolled in South Carolina by Rove and GW Bush the following spring.

2. Luther called himself an old stool in the arse of the world. John McCain might have called Jim Inhofe something like that in the Senate cloakroom.

3. Luther married just once. To a nun.

4. On the subject of marriage and beer, Martin and Katie got 20 guilders and a barrel of beer from a city magistrate. John McCain married into a $400 million dollar beer-funded inheritance. 20 guilders adjusted for five hundred years of inflation is still less than $400 million.

5. Luther translated the whole Bible into German. McCain tells a story that bears eerie similarities to a memoir translated from Russian.

6. When confronted with a position that he really believed in, Luther said, “Here I stand.” McCain opposed torture…you know…before he supported it.

7. Luther really said some awful things about the peasants. Dang, that’s one way they’re alike.

8. Luther said even worse things about the Jews. McCain is on record as a supporter of Israel and has at least one really good Jewish friend. Hey it’s not 95 ways Luther is better than John McCain. Credit where credit is due: John McCain’s position on Jews is better than Martin Luther’s.

9. The Pope got really really mad at Martin Luther. The current pope has been kinda meh about John McCain. Writing to the Pope, Luther said he was “sitting like a lamb in the midst of wolves, like Daniel in the midst of lions, and, with Ezekiel, you dwell among scorpions.” McCain doesn’t mention anything about Benedict’s advisors.

10. John McCain flew a jet in the war! Whaddya got, Luther?

11. Martin Luther’s dad wanted him to be a lawyer. Nobody wants that for their kid now.

12. McCain opposed Martin Luther King Day. Luther didn’t like things named after him either, but come on, he was talking about “Lutheranism.” To be fair, McCain changed his mind. Hey there’s a difference: Luther never liked people naming things after him.

13. Luther’s two sermons on John 3:16 total 75 paragraphs. When asked about John 3:16 McCain said, “Is that the one about the end of the world?”

14. John McCain killed a man in Reno just to watch him die. I guess that was John Cash. But Reno didn’t exist when Luther was alive!

15. Luther: kidney stones kept him from going to the bathroom for days at a time and nearly killed him until jarred loose by a bumpy wagon ride and then urinated pus and blood. John McCain—wait, Luther didn’t go to the bathroom for days? no pee for days? And what came out? Gross! That’s just gross!

16. John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be Vice President. Martin Luther once wrote “The word and works of God are quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.” Ouch, score that one for McCain? I guess?

17. Luther: “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” McCain: Big and Rich played his convention. Big. and. Rich.

18. McCain looks like a pocket gopher. Actually, Luther was pretty lumpy too.

19. Luther’s portrait features that academic beret. John McCain wouldn’t be caught dead in a beret. Too French, frenchie!

20. The Diet of Worms is a name for a theological conference which Luther attended. McCain might have had to eat a diet that included worms when he was being held in a POW camp. Also pumpkin soup, apparently.

21. After a lifetime of Episcopalianism, McCain announced he was a Southern Baptist. Luther proposed the killing of Anabaptists.

22. McCain was shot down in his jet and lived. All that ever happened to Luther was almost getting struck by lightning. Besides, Saint Anne helped out of that jam.

23. Luther wrote a treatise on the bondage of the will. . . . Yeaah, the McCain camp’s not touching that one.

24. McCain said “Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? — Because Janet Reno is her father.” Now that I look closely at those portraits, Luther is the one who kind of looks like Janet Reno. Kind of disturbing, to tell the truth.

25. Dude, ninety-five is a lot. You know why Luther wrote 95 theses? Because there were actually ninety-five distinct and noteworthy problems with the abuses of papal power. So now any time a Lutheran starts to make a list there’s all this pressure to hit ninety-five, for symbolic reasons. Why do we do that to ourselves? Well forget it. I’m not going to do that. This list might hit thirty. Might.

26. Freedom of the Christian? Or freedom only for the Christian Right? I’m just sayin!

27. Martin Luther would never have accepted schwarmerei pastor Rev. John Hagee’s endorsement. He might have agreed with Hagee about the pope. But that’s it.

28. Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant! Can you believe that?! Abstinence-only educatin’ Sarah Palin raised a kid who didn’t— dang, these media distractions sure do make it hard to build a list.

29. John McCain is eighteen years older than his wife. Martin Luther was sixteen years older than his. What? They both had six kids? No wait, seven? Dang, McCain! A couple of his are adopted, but dang. Kids are expensive! No wonder he needs that disability pension and the senate salary and his wife’s hundreds of millions of dollars in beer distributor money.

30. One of Luther’s descendants was President Paul von Hindenburg of Germany. Yes, that Hindenburg. There’s a a boat named the USS John S. McCain. It got decommissioned and sold for scrap. Still, that’s probably better than exploding over New Jersey.

31. McCain scandal: Keating 5. Martin Luther scandal: Bigamy of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse.
Frankly, Keating 5 sounds cooler. Oh, also, Luther opposed the bigamy thing. McCain and Keating? Not so much.

32. Luther was interdistrict junior welterweight champion of Thuringia from 1501-1506. McCain is actually a two time olympic fencer in épée. No wait. That’s not right. The sentence should have ended sooner. John McCain is a two timer.

33. McCain says “my friends” a LOT. Luther preferred to address people, “Listen up, yo!”

34. McCain works to be thought of as a maverick, using the press. Luther totally invented that move.

35. One time? One summer? Luther and his dad built a veranda without any tools! 

36. In the unaltered Augsburg Confession Luther wrote: There has been great controversy concerning the Power of Bishops, in which some have awkwardly confounded the power of the Church and the power of the sword. And from this confusion very great wars and tumults have resulted, while the Pontiffs, emboldened by the power of the Keys, not only have instituted new services and burdened consciences with reservation of cases and ruthless excommunications, but have also undertaken to transfer the kingdoms of this world, and to take the Empire from the Emperor. These wrongs have long since been rebuked in the Church by learned and godly men. Therefore our teachers, for the comforting of men’s consciences, were constrained to show the difference between the power of the Church and the power of the sword, and taught that both of them, because of God’s commandment, are to be held in reverence and honor, as the chief blessings of God on earth.

But this is their opinion, that the power of the Keys, or the power of the bishops, according to the Gospel, is a power or commandment of God, to preach the Gospel, to remit and retain sins, and to administer Sacraments. For with this commandment Christ sends forth His Apostles, John 20, 21 sqq.: As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained. Mark 16, 15: Go preach the Gospel to every creature.

Peter, 1 Pet. 5, 3, forbids bishops to be lords, and to rule over the churches. It is not our design now to wrest the government from the bishops, but this one thing is asked, namely, that they allow the Gospel to be purely taught, and that they relax some few observances which cannot be kept without sin. But if they make no concession, it is for them to see how they shall give account to God for furnishing, by their obstinacy, a cause for schism.
On the other hand McCain—

uh. wait what?

Okay so we got to 36. Whatever.

The preacher must claim the audacious and unheard-of authority to say who is intended to actually speak for God. The answer to anticipate, is always you: ‘You, now that you are in earshot.’

Supposedly this answers the ‘problem of God.’

Well, I suppose. If you search a bit on “problem of God” you get some interesting results. My favorites are links to Richard Dawkins and a link to a student paper on The Brothers K. In this they quote Ivan: “It’s not God I don’t accept, understand this, I do not accept the world, that He created, this world of God’s, and cannot agree with it.” The problem of God in a world like Dawkins’ or in the world of people who think the way the Brothers K do, is that God doesn’t seem to be around to defend God’s self in the matter of these problems. It’s a heck of a deal.

What Forde suggests we do is a little bit crazy, a shift of the ground everyone is standing on. Addressing our discourse in the second person is a calculated risk that upsets things. It certainly turns the table on a would be interlocutor. The questions are about God; what kind of world God has created or for what purpose it’s made𓴼or permitted to persist so.

The Forde answer is this big non sequiter, in the form of direct address of the questioner: you! You’re the purpose! Doing this recalls the scene in Mark 2 of course, with Jesus perceiving what is in the hearts of the scribes. Are we expected to do the same thing? Perceive the interior of hearts? And then make statements like Jesus did? Indeed. I think Gerhard would say yes! There’s a real sense of seizing the moment in this, of daring to hear the questioner out and then giving an answer which leaps directly to the bottommost, most vital concerns: That’s right, you don’t agree with this world of God’s, you can’t see right now what the point of it is, but I have been instructed to tell you that it’s for you. Quite a turnaround we’re expected to make. Best get crackin.

The news cycle is such that it was Sarah Palin’s name who had the most relevant hits related to Justification. The second search result for Sarah Palin justification by faith, at the time of this writing, turned up with links to Time magazine articles, actually about justification! At first you get excited that the doctrine of justification has some bearing on current political events. But you realize quickly that they’re items linking to articles from 1963 and the other plops you into the midst of one from 1967!

One presumes it was a trick of the Google spiders (an interesting case study in ambient findability, perhaps?) that Palin’s name shows up in the margins of these articles because by the time of this writing, she was the name most prominent in the news cycle out of the whole quadrangle of November4 aspirants. Her nomination to the vice presidency was the most current item, and therefore dominated the dynamically generated links to current events in the navigation around these old articles.

I suppose that means Obama, Biden, McCain, and the doctrine of justification, are ALL old news. Old enough to hardly merit a mention, even on the window dressing of Time’s pages. The doctrine of justification apparently had its heyday for Time almost fifty years ago.

I note that Martin Marty got a mention in the ‘67 article:

American Christianity, charges Lutheran Theologian Martin Marty, has fallen back on precisely the kind of spiritual error that the Reformation was designed to combat. The typical parishioner, adds Marty’s colleague at the University of Chicago, Theologian Brian Gerrish, feels that he has “done something that puts God in his debt if he puts down a nice thick carpet in the chancel hall—a sort of afterlife insurance policy.” Some laymen feel that all too many clerics are trying to earn what Marty calls “Brownie Points” by engaging in secular crusades—picketing against Viet Nam or for civil rights.

The scanner that transcribed the 1963 article was pretty funny because Karl Barth became Karl Earth, which is not quite how I see the old fella. It was all very exciting at the time because it seems there was a Luther revival that had gained steam over the previous decades. I suppose this is some of the earlier stuff leading toward the Joint Declaration.

In any case, justification is hard to find in the news, and one wonders how much it’s on the candidates’ minds. Ever.