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It is No Longer I Who Live: Justification by Faith and Participation in Christ in Martin Luther's Exegesis of Galatians*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2009

Stephen Chester
Stephen Chester
Affiliation:
North Park Theological Seminary, 3225 West Foster Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60625, USA email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Traditional Protestant accounts of Paul's theology are often criticized for their inability to relate justification by faith and the participatory categories of Paul's thought. The two are driven apart by sharp distinctions between declaring and making righteous, between justification as a once for all external act and regeneration as an internal lifelong process. The way is left open for justification to be treated as a legal fiction. Contrary to popular misconceptions, these difficulties do not stem from Martin Luther. In his exegesis of Paul, Luther intimately connects justification by faith and participation in Christ, integrating the two effectively. This article explores the manner in which Luther does so, evaluating his exegetical conclusions and assessing their relevance for contemporary attempts to interpret Paul's theology.

Keywords

GalatiansLutherjustificationparticipationimputationobjective/subjective genitive
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 315 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 I use the phrase ‘participation in Christ’ throughout this paper since it is the one most familiar from Pauline scholarship. However, it seems more usual in Luther scholarship to refer to ‘union with Christ’.

2 Hays, R. B., The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11 (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, rev. ed. 2002)Google Scholar xxix (his emphasis). Hays is referring to Ebeling, G., Word and Faith (London: SCM, 1963) 203Google Scholar.

3 Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, 277.

4 Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, 293.

5 Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, lii.

6 Campbell, D. A., The Quest for Paul's Gospel (London/New York: T&T Clark International, 2005)Google Scholar. See in particular Chapter 8, which is entitled ‘The Contractual (JF) Construal of Paul's Gospel and its Problems’, and Chapter 9, where two sub-headings speak of ‘The Anthropocentric Construal of “Faith” in Paul’. Campbell does not engage extensively with actual interpreters of Paul for whom justification by faith is central to Paul's soteriology. Instead, he constructs a model of such a construal of Paul's gospel in the abstract so that it can exemplify multiple failings in interpretation and act as a foil in relation to which Campbell's own view of Paul's soteriology can be presented positively. Campbell's recent The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) appeared too late to be taken into account in the writing of this article.

7 The term exegesis is here and subsequently used in a very general fashion. For, of course, Luther was not a critical exegete in our contemporary sense of the term, nor did he produce historical-critical commentaries. His procedures for, and presentation of, biblical interpretation were shaped by the expectations of his own era. For a discussion of the differences, see Hagen, K., Luther's Approach to Scripture as seen in his ‘Commentaries’ on Galatians (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1993) 1–18Google Scholar.

8 To be fair, Hays says very little that could be construed as blaming Luther for the frequent difficulty in Protestant accounts of relating justification and Christology. Campbell has a rather more contradictory attitude. On the one hand, he is clear that Luther cannot simply be identified with what he terms the Justification by Faith (JF) model of Paul's soteriology, which he constructs on the basis of descriptions of Federal Calvinism. See The Quest for Paul's Gospel, 24, 146, 162. On the other hand, Campbell's description of the JF model is sprinkled with apparently negative references to Luther. See 148, 152, 153, 157–8.

9 Campbell, The Quest for Paul's Gospel, 232.

10 Theissen, G., A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion (London: SCM, 1999) 17–18, 306–7Google Scholar applies the metaphor of a semiotic cathedral to early Christianity.

11 See Braaten, C. E. and Jenson, R. W., eds., Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998)Google Scholar and Mannermaa, T., Christ Present in Faith: Luther's View of Justification (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005)Google Scholar. I am not equipped properly to assess the claims made by the Finns about Luther and theosis. They seem at first blush counter-intuitive, but Luther's Christology is deeply indebted to the Alexandrian Church Fathers for whom theosis certainly was a central concern. Writing before the Finns, Lienhard, M., Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ—Stages and Themes of the Reformer's Christology (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982) 54, 386–7Google Scholar twice mentions the possible significance of the theme of divinization for Luther on the basis of his familiarity with patristic writings. However, even if the Finns are wrong to interpret Luther's emphasis on union with Christ in justification in terms of theosis, this does not in itself invalidate the claim that such an emphasis is of great significance for Luther.

12 See Trueman, C. R., ‘Is the Finnish Line a New Beginning? A Critical Assessment of the Reading of Luther Offered by the Helsinki Circle’, WJT 65 (2003) 213–44Google Scholar (236–7).

13 Luther lectured on Galatians several times and produced two major commentaries. The first of these was published in 1519 (based on lectures delivered in 1516/17), the second in 1535 (based on lectures given in 1531). It is the 1535 commentary that has claimed a hugely significant place in the history of interpretation.

14 LW 26:231 = WA 40:366, 29–30. References to Luther's texts are to the English translation Philadelphia Edition, Luther's Works (ed. J. Pelikan and H. T. Lehmann; Philadelphia/St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–86) and to the Latin and German Weimar Edition, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–). References to WA DB are to the sub-section within the Weimar Edition dealing with the German Bible (Deutsche Bibel).

15 LW 26:231–2 = WA 40:367, 13–21.

16 LW 26:228 = WA 40:362, 15–16.

17 LW 26:227 = WA 40:360, 22–3.

18 LW 26:227 = WA 40:361, 12–13.

19 LW 26:227 = WA 40:360, 24–5.

20 LW 26:266 = WA 40:417, 15–21.

21 LW 26:229 = WA 40:364, 11–12.

22 LW 26:130 = WA 40:229, 22–9.

23 LW 26:132 = WA 40:233, 16–19. Siggins, I. D. K., Martin Luther's Doctrine of Christ (New Haven/London: Yale University, 1970) 147Google Scholar comments, ‘Luther loves to illustrate the character of faith by the figure of an empty container. Faith is merely a husk, but Christ is the kernel. It is a purse or coffer for the eternal treasure, an empty vessel, a poor little monstrance or pyx for gems of infinite worth’.

24 LW 26:234 = WA 40:371, 18–21.

25 Indeed, Luther is explicit that Christ is more than the object of faith. See LW 26:129 = WA 40:228, 31–229, 15: ‘It takes hold of Christ in such a way that Christ is the object of faith, or rather not the object but, so to speak, the One who is present in faith itself’.

26 Trueman, ‘The Finnish Line’, 239 distinguishes between properly understanding the presence of Christ in faith in relation to its effects in imputation and declaration and mistakenly understanding it in the terms urged by the Finns. Jenson, R. W., in his ‘Response to Mark Seifrid, Paul Metzger and Carl Trueman on Finnish Luther Research’, WTJ 65 (2003) 245–50Google Scholar implies that Trueman has allowed a prior understanding of imputation exclusively in terms of acquittal to determine what he finds in the commentary in the face of the evidence: ‘it will make a great difference whether we interpret the passages about Christ's indwelling by what we antecedently think we know imputation is, or let what Luther says about Christ's relation to the believer in the particular passage tell us what he there means by imputation’ (248).

27 The understanding that justification is effected through joyous exchange is vital to a proper appreciation of the exegetical basis of imputation. The idea that it is Christ's righteousness that is gifted to the believer in justification is sometimes disputed on the grounds that support for the notion comes only from 1 Cor 1.30, where Christ is termed ‘our righteousness’, and 2 Cor 5.21, where, in Christ, Christians become ‘the righteousness of God’. See Wright, N. T., What St. Paul Really Said (Oxford: Lion, 1997) 122–3Google Scholar. Yet Luther reads all texts that contain the idea of exchange (e.g. Rom 8.3; Gal 3.13; Phil 2. 5–11) as supporting the view that Christ's righteousness is given to believers. Taking the idea from the Fathers, especially Athanasius and Augustine, Luther concentrates on righteousness as it provides the answer to sin and is prominent in Paul's vocabulary. However, he does also include other properties of Christ in the exchange.

28 LW 26:277 = WA 40:433, 27–8. Unsurprisingly, Luther uses Gal 3.13 and 2 Cor 5.21 to expound the idea of joyous exchange in his lectures on Deuteronomy (1523–5) when commenting on 27.26. See LW 9:215–16 = WA 14:699, 18–700, 18.

29 LW 26:284 = WA 40:443, 23–4.

30 LW 31:297 = WA 2:145, 16–18.

31 For a helpful general discussion of this relationship, see Yule, G., ‘Luther's understanding of Justification by Grace Alone in Terms of Catholic Christology’, Luther: Theologian for Catholics and Protestants (ed. Yule, G.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1985) 87–112Google Scholar.

32 LW 26:281 = WA 40:439, 13–18.

33 LW 26:282 = WA 40:440, 29–30.

34 A renewed emphasis on the apocalyptic dimension of Luther's own theology has been a strong feature of recent Luther scholarship. See especially Oberman, H. A., Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New Haven/London: Yale University, 1989)Google Scholar.

35 Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ, 273 referring to Bornkamm, K., Luthers Auslegungen des Galaterbriefs von 1519 bis 1531—Ein Vergleich (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963) 166–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Trueman, ‘The Finnish Line’, 235: ‘the meaning of “union with Christ” is not a universal given. Marriage union, legal union, ontological union – these all offer models of understanding the idea that may well differ in significant ways’.

37 See T. Mannermaa, ‘Why is Luther so Fascinating? Modern Finnish Luther Research’ (1–20), R. W. Jenson, ‘Response to T. Mannermaa’ (21–4), S. Juntunen, ‘Luther and Metaphysics: What is the Structure of Being according to Luther?’ (129–60) and D. Bielfeldt, ‘Response to S. Juntunen’ (161–6), all in Union with Christ (ed. Braaten and Jenson). The Finns are here reacting against a strong Kantian tradition in German Luther scholarship that reduces union with Christ to a non-ontological existential union of the will of God with the human will. Jenson, ‘Response to T. Mannermaa’, 23 comments that ‘according to the Kantians, we cannot deal with being but only with relations. According to Luther according to Mannermaa, a certain mode of relation is being’.

38 Juntunen, ‘Luther and Metaphysics’, 129.

39 Oberman, H. A., ‘Iustitia Christi and Iustitia Dei: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrines of Justification’, HTR 59.1 (1966) 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar (19). Trueman, ‘The Finnish Line’, 234 criticizes the Finns for failing to take sufficient account of careful work by Oberman and others on the theological context in which Luther worked. This criticism is correct, but Trueman's assumption that careful attention to historical context will weaken, rather than simply clarify, the Finns' overall case does not follow.

40 See Hampson, D., Christian Contradictions: The Structures of Lutheran and Catholic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001) 56–96 (83–4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should be noted that, contrary to popular Protestant prejudices, this theological framework is not Pelagian. Although the human will co-operates with divine grace, the process always and necessarily begins with the latter.

41 LW 27:29 = WA 40.2:36, 8–14.

42 LW 27:30 = WA 40.2:37, 24–5.

43 LW 26:4 = WA 40:40, 25–6.

44 LW 26:8 = WA 40:46, 28–30. This distinction between active and passive righteousness that provides a framework for the commentary as a whole is used by Trueman, ‘The Finnish Line’, 238–9 to question the validity of the Finns' views. However, the active nature of the concept of faith that appears throughout the commentary, and especially in the discussion of Gal 5.6, shows that in using the term ‘passive righteousness’ Luther is pointing to the nature of grace as favor and to the nature of true righteousness as sheer gift, not to the gift of faith as itself essentially passive. Luther's opposition to righteousness by works does not lead him to assign participation in Christ exclusively to sanctification. He is apparently not concerned, as later Protestantism was to become, that a participatory concept of justifying faith might leave the door open to righteousness by works.

45 LW 32:227 = WA 8:106, 22. This rejection of the Augustinian view of grace seems to have been the result of Melanchthon's influence upon Luther. For prior to Against Latomus, including in the Galatians commentary of 1519, Luther still gives to grace the function of purifying from sin. It is Melanchthon, drawing on the philological work of Erasmus, who defines grace as favor. See Schäfer, R., ‘Melanchthon's Interpretation of Romans 5.15: His Departure from the Augustinian Concept of Grace Compared to Luther's’, Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary (ed. Wengert, T. J. and Graham, M. P.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997) 79–105Google Scholar.

46 LW 32:227 = WA 8:106, 20–1.

47 For a cogent analysis of the passage in Against Latomus, see S. Peura, ‘Christ as Favor and Gift (donum): The Challenge of Luther's Understanding of Justification’, Union with Christ (ed. Braaten and Jenson) 42–69.

48 McGrath, A., Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1986) 201Google Scholar. This is a helpful summary that becomes less so when McGrath goes on to suggest that these definitions of grace and faith permit Luther ‘to maintain what is otherwise clearly a contradiction within his theology of justification – his simultaneous insistence on the external nature of the righteousness of Christ, and the real presence of Christ in the believer’. Analyzing Luther's exegesis of Paul from within our own historical context, where justification by faith and participation in Christ have often been considered separate categories in Paul's thought, there is a danger that we think of Luther as overcoming a problem by bonding together two opposites. In fact they are not to him opposite categories.

49 LW 26:166 = WA 40:282, 16.

50 LW 26:168 = WA 40:285, 22–3.

51 LW 26:166 = WA 40:282, 17–28.

52 LW 26:168 = WA 40:285, 15–17.

53 LW 26:170 = WA 40:287, 30–288, 2.

54 Jüngel, E., Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001) 243Google Scholar.

55 See LW 26:387 = WA 40:589, 25–8: ‘This is the reason why our theology is so certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive’. Luther is here commenting on the cry ‘Abba, Father’ in Gal 4.6.

56 LW 31:371 = WA 7:69, 12–13.

57 Hampson, Christian Contradictions, 101. Hampson thus emphasizes that justification does not exist in any kind of continuity with the believer's previous life. It does not grow out of life as a creature as we know it. However, salvation reinstates what creation was intended to be so that we relate to God in the manner first intended (hence my use of the term re-creation above). The discontinuity stems from the fact that through sin what was intended for creation was so grievously and entirely lost (35).

58 LW 26:170 = WA 40:288, 25.

59 LW 26:171 = WA 40:289, 25–7.

60 LW 26:172 = WA 40:290, 30–1. Oberman, ‘Iustitia Christi and Iustitia Dei’, 21–2, 25–6 finds significant the vocabulary used here by Luther. Justifying righteousness is different understood as possessio than as proprietas. The former term denotes legal occupancy and enjoyment of something, the latter ownership proper. As it is possessio, ‘the righteousness granted is not one's property but one's possession’. Hampson, Christian Contradictions, 24 draws an analogy with a library book. Once it is borrowed from the library I have it legitimately in my possession, but I am not its owner.

61 LW 38:158 = WA 38:205, 28–9.

62 See, for example, LW 35:370 = WA DB 7:11, 6–15; LW 31:299 = WA 2:146, 29–35; LW 31:358 = WA 7:59, 24–60, 9.

63 Trigg, J. D., Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther (Leiden: Brill, 2001) 171Google Scholar comments that ‘the image that most fully represents Luther's understanding of the Christian life is that of a spiral, … A continual return to the start is not the opposite of progress for Luther; it is the very essence of it’.

64 WA 39.1:508, 5–7. This translation, from The Third Disputation against the Antinomians (1538), is given in Jüngel, Justification, 216.

65 LW 27:76 = WA 40.2:96, 14–16.

66 LW 27:74 = WA 40.2:94, 13–15.

67 There is thus a temporal aspect to simul iustus et peccator. On the one hand sin will cling to the flesh of the Christian throughout earthly life, the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit ceasing only with death. On the other, God's act of justification determines the whole of existence such that the Christian lives now from the future on the basis of promise and hope. See Hampson, Christian Contradictions, 27 and Jüngel, Justification, 218–19.

68 LW 27:74 = WA 40.2:93, 21.

69 LW 27:74 = WA 40.2:93, 24–94, 11.

70 Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, xxxviii–xl moves in the second edition to align himself with J. L. Martyn's insistence on the apocalyptic nature of Galatians. Campbell too is convinced of the apocalyptic nature of Paul's thought.

71 For an interpretation that emphasizes continuity, see Volf, M., Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996) 69–70Google Scholar. Discontinuity is essential for Luther at least in part because of his struggles with spiritual despair (Anfechtungen), which lead him to regard the self as the last place in which to find assurance or security.

72 Watson, F., Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, rev. ed. 2007) 36Google Scholar criticizes Bultmann's interpretation of Paul, suggesting that ‘if “works” is abstracted from its concrete relation to Judaism, then “faith” will be abstracted from its concrete reference to the Christ’. The abstraction of faith from concrete reference to Christ is a failing of Bultmann's existential approach, but Watson's diagnosis of the cause is not wholly convincing since Luther abstracts works from concrete relation to Judaism without abstracting faith from concrete reference to Christ.

73 Hampson, Christian Contradictions, 122: ‘It is of course a complete farce to say that according to Luther God leaves man corrupt!’

74 This allegation is particularly ironic given that Luther is reacting against a rather contractual understanding of justification. Following William of Ockham, the theological movement known as the via moderna linked promise and covenant. God has entered into a covenant (pactum), whereby if a person does quod in se est (what lies within one), which is to humble oneself before God and to repent of one's sins, God has pledged to give the gift of grace and to justify. It is the bilateral nature of this covenant that Luther rejects in favor of divine unilateralism in justification. See McGrath, A., Luther's Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther's Theological Breakthrough (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985)Google Scholar Chapter 4.

75 Hampson, Christian Contradictions, 22 quotes Loewenich, W. von, Wahrheit und Bekenntnis im Glauben Luthers: Dargestellt im Anschluss an Luthers grossen Katechismus (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1974)Google Scholar 16: ‘Luther's theology does not begin with a general doctrine of God, with God's aseity, or the immanent trinity, only then afterwards to turn to what God in his abstract nature means for me. To Luther that would represent the speculation of the theology of glory, … When Luther speaks of God, he speaks of that God who has turned towards humankind’.

76 Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ, 392.

77 Hampson, Christian Contradictions, 48.

78 Having decided (502) that the heart of Paul's theology lies in participatory rather than juristic categories, Sanders, E. P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM, 1977) 508Google Scholar expresses puzzlement at Käsemann's insistence on the apparently confusing procedure of defining righteousness by faith in participatory categories. What Käsemann is actually seeking is a dialectic between the different elements in Paul's theology in which they interpret each other. See Way, D., The Lordship of Christ: Ernst Käsemann's Interpretation of Paul's Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991) 210Google Scholar. The extent of Käsemann's debt to Luther is both unsurprising and clear.

79 Much as we may legitimately be interested in the theology of Paul the person as an important figure in the history of human thought, from the perspective of Christian theology it is Paul's texts that are canonical and must be interpreted. Answering some questions about Paul's communicative intentions on the basis of the evidence provided by the texts themselves is a precondition of their interpretation, but that does not mean that we have sufficient evidence to answer in anything other than provisional manner many of our questions about the theology of Paul the person. To make such provisional answers normative in our theological interpretation of Paul's texts is to hide theological preferences behind historical argument.

80 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 522.

81 Campbell, The Quest for Paul's Gospel, 54 makes it plain that in stressing the participation of the Christian in the faithfulness of Christ he is not calling for mere imitation of Christ. Paul ‘is finding in his own life the experience and life of Christ figuring forth. He is participating in Christ…in particular, he is participating in Christ's weakness’ (his emphasis). This is helpful, as is Campbell's emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in participation in Christ. However, there is lacking an explanation of how this participation takes place in a way that it is not primarily imitative. In his emphasis on the presence of Christ in faith, Luther potentially allows us to say more about this missing step of analysis.

82 It is true, of course, that Luther takes a very different view of what Paul means by ‘the works of the Law’ from that dominant within contemporary scholarship. However, the charge that he projected back onto Paul his own struggles with a guilty conscience, or that he took such struggles to be typical of Jewish experience with the Law, is simply false. See Chester, S. J., ‘Paul and the Introspective Conscience of Martin Luther’, Biblical Interpretation 14.5 (2006) 508–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Sanders, E. P., Paul (Oxford: Oxford University, 1991) 49Google Scholar.

84 Hooker, M., Paul: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003) 79Google Scholar. Despite this, there are some striking similarities between Luther's emphasis on ‘joyous exchange’ and Hooker's own important suggestion that ‘interchange’ is central to Paul's explanations of the salvific significance of Christ's death.

85 Esler, P., Galatians (London: Routledge, 1998) 175Google Scholar.

86 Hampson, Christian Contradictions, 18–19 and Schweitzer, A., The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (London: A. & C. Black, 1931) 125Google Scholar, 206–7. As Hampson notes, Schweitzer himself failed to see this sense in Luther. However, Schweitzer was not helped by the Luther scholarship of his day, an excuse no longer available to contemporary Pauline scholarship.