The Lutheran confessional heritage and contemporary hermeneutics.

There are at least two compelling reasons why any attempt to bring the theological resources of the Lutheran Confessions into dialogue with the contemporary theological milieu should address the area of biblical hermeneutics. The first depends upon the well-established fact that the Lutheran Confessions understand themselves as deriving their identity from biblical exegesis: "We are certain of our Christian confession and faith on the basis of the divine, prophetic, and apostolic Scripture and have been adequately assured of this in our hearts and Christian consciences through the grace of the Holy Spirit." (1) Like Luther, the confessional authors were less concerned with constructing systematic delineations of theological topics and more interested in explicating the mystery-laden yet comprehensive "logic" of the biblical texts. Any contemporary evaluation of the theological vitality of the Lutheran Confessions falls squarely within the realm of hermeneutical assessment. Put directly, one can even say that the authentic Lutheran way to judge whether the theology of the Confessions remains valuable for the contemporary age is to determine the tenability of the exegetical framework that the Book of Concord (BC) brings to bear upon the Bible.

Second, and perhaps even more important, the mid-twentieth century and onward has witnessed an exponential growth in studies seeking to develop overtly theological methods for biblical interpretation. The most remarkable feature of this interest in the relationship between biblical exegesis and constructive theology has been the confluence of input from both professional Bible scholars and theologians. One schema for charting the latter group begins in the early twentieth century with Karl Barth's revised commentary on The Epistle to the Romans (2) and traces its influence through the "postliberal" appropriation of Barthian hermeneutics as well as those theologians operating in conscious opposition to postliberal methods. Barth's influence has been apparent also among Bible scholars interested in the renewal of explicitly biblical theologies, most notably in the development of "canonical" criticism by Brevard S. Childs (3) but also in the prolific output of Walter Brueggemann (4) and Rolf Rendtorff. (5) Meanwhile, other thinkers, most notably James Barr, have sought to counter the characteristically Barthian disregard for historical-critical inquiry into the Bible by producing texts on interpretive method in which the rich potential of such criticism for aiding constructive theology is defended. (6) Both exegesis and theology draw heavily upon a third source of insight into textual interpretation, namely, the reinvigorated philosophical inquiry into hermeneutical methods that originates in the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey and culminates in such thinkers as Jurgen Habermas, Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida.

The matrix of philosophical, historical, and theological concerns represented in these ongoing debates represents a prominent topos in the contemporary theological landscape. Thus, to the extent that the Lutheran confessional heritage can prove to be a hermeneutically interesting conversation partner in this area, the Confessions themselves represent a viable theological option for those seeking to navigate this landscape with integrity.

I engage in this project of evaluating the exegetical strategies foundational to the Lutheran Confessions in the light of contemporary hermeneutical methods, particularly those favored by theologians seeking to apply these methods to biblical exegesis. (7) I begin by suggesting that the primary exegetical key used by the authors of the Confessions is gospel formulated as promise and not as simply the antimony to "law." In this section I argue that the sacramental/communal dimensions of this hermeneutical category should not be overlooked by those seeking to evaluate its merit as a hermeneutical principle.

I then turn to the work of David Tracy and Brueggemann and suggest that one crucial aspect of the so-called postmodern turn in contemporary hermeneutics is a critique of hegemonic modes of interpretation, specifically those that render univocal texts and traditions that are fundamentally plurivocal and in so doing erect totalizing systems that efface the validity of fragments that cannot be included or even recognized by interpreters operating in and with such totalizing schemas. This particular formulation of the postmodern critique serves as the hinge by which we can then ask: To what extent does the Lutheran confessional tradition fall prey to the danger of totalization? and, conversely, What resources does the tradition possess to incorporate marginalized or disenfranchised fragments in radical and prophetic ways?

The remainder of the essay takes up this question by addressing both the exegetical and political valences implicit in Luther's notion of the "hidden God" (Deus absconditus), particularly as Luther applies the theme to his exegesis of select biblical narratives. I argue that, to the extent that the exegetical category of "promise" presupposes the hiddenness of the God to which the biblical texts witness in plurivocal fashion, it and the Lutheran tradition itself provide hermeneutically useful means for avoiding the injustices of hegemonic interpretation and for bearing witness to the God whose promises are simultaneously mysterious and sure.

Confessional hermeneutics

When thinking about particularly Lutheran modes of exegesis, it seems natural to move first to the distinction between law and gospel in the biblical witness. According to Gunther Gassmann and Scott Hendrix, "Law and gospel originated primarily as a way of interpreting Scripture that made the redeeming work of God in Jesus Christ the center of its story. To recover this center was the intent of the Reformation." (8) In Article V of the Epitome (Formula of Concord), the confessors state that they "believe, teach, and confess that the distinction between law and gospel is to be preserved with great diligence in the church as an especially glorious light, through which the Word of God, in accord with Paul's admonition, is properly divided." (9) Thus, while the distinction is internal to the Bible, at the same time its enactment is the hermeneutical responsibility of the Bible's readers--particularly those who seek to preach in accordance with Reformation tenets.

That differentiation between law and gospel as the fundamental exegetical principle of the Lutheran Confessions has left the tradition open to criticism. In his recent attempt to reformulate Protestant conceptions of law and gospel in the Bible, Michael Welker suggests that sharp distinctions between the two terms have hindered the Protestant tradition's ability to understand either.

From the Reformation onward, a whole series of simple dichotomies and
dualities developed to carry through the process of distinguishing and
relating law and gospel. The most popular of these dichotomies is that
between "demand" and "gift" ... Yet, influential as these dualities have
been, to the same extent the dichotomies of demand/gift and imperative/
indicative have destroyed the actual persuasive power of the doctrine of
law and gospel. (10)

Moreover, according to Welker, the conceptual confusion that has resulted from the sharp dichotomies implied in the reformers' understanding of law and gospel is not the most serious charge to be levied against the Reformation tradition: "The imprint of the Crucified and Risen One on our identity in faith is by no means merely internalized. In my opinion, it belongs among the greatest mistakes of the Reformation to have described faith, because of a polemic against law, as a primarily interior and passive comportment." (11) That is, the difficulty with the distinction is not simply that it lends itself to oversimplification but rather that it renders faith primarily an internal affair that serves only to answer the existential anguish brought on by conviction through law. Welker seems to be suggesting that such a conception of faith as the antimony to law renders the Reformation tradition almost solipsistic in its orientation as a "private relationship of the individual to God." (12)

To engage in a full critique of Welker's alternative to this dilemma would take us too far afield here. However, a brief summary of his goals in formulating an alternative will be helpful. While Welker does not wish to dispense with the interpretive framework of law and gospel for doing Protestant theology, his concerns lead him to suggest a thoroughgoing revision of "good news" that, in his view, leaves the faithful Christian more open to loving relations with God and creation.

Not simply a private relationship of the individual to God, but a
communication of persons "before God," as Paul says, characterizes
faith. That which is primarily communicated in this process is the
freedom that is experienced in self-knowledge in Christ.... This
bestowal of freedom for the purpose not of unsettling but of
strengthening the neighbor takes place in love. Love is this bestowal of
freedom in which the giver and the recipient of love are strengthened in
equal measure and, at the same time, open new, richer possibilities of
life to each other. It is in love that faith is effective. (13)

Although we may well ask whether the category of "love" can bear the weight that Welker's re interpretation of gospel places upon it, for our purposes two more pressing questions emerge. The first is whether the Lutheran Confessional heritage's understanding of gospel excludes the dimensions of permeability and relationality that Welker privileges. The second is whether the understanding of gospel put forth by the Lutheran Confessions falls prey to the simple dichotomies that Welker credits with fostering denigrating internalization of faith. Given that the distinction between law and gospel is central to Lutheran exegesis, is the Confessional tradition therefore the fundamental progenitor of the interpretive and spiritual difficulties that Welker decries? If the thrust of Welker's critique is to be believed, it seems that only a substantial conceptual overhaul could allow the Confessional witness to occupy a useful space in this debate.

I contend that the distinction between law and gospel that is operative in the Lutheran confessional tradition is in fact not recognizable in Welker's critique. He may or may not be correct in ascribing these difficulties to the sweep of generalized "Protestantisms" that have emerged in the wake of the Reformation, but to understand the Lutheran account of gospel as primarily the "solution" to the problem posed by law is to miss significant features of the confessional documents' remarks on the shape and character of Christian life. As we will see, a corollary of omission of these nuances is precisely the mistake of regarding the confessional account of faith as "a primarily interior and passive comportment" rather than as a fundamentally relational reality. (14) If this contention is correct, what is needed to make the Lutheran confessional hermeneutic a valuable participant in the contemporary theological horizon is not substantial revision but rather a keener understanding of the Confessions' exegetical principles on the Confessions' own terms.

Let us revisit the Epitome's assertion that the distinction between law and gospel is the sine qua non for interpreting the scriptural witness. When one compares the more succinct formulation of this principle in the Epitome with the extended version of Article V in the Solid Declaration, however, a new valence emerges. The latter renders the statement as follows:

The distinction between law and gospel is a particularly glorious light.
It serves to divide God's word properly and to explain correctly and
make understandable the writings of the holy prophets and apostles.
Therefore, we must diligently preserve this distinction, so as not to
mix these two teachings together and make the gospel into a law. For
this obscures the merit of Christ and robs troubled consciences of the
comfort that they otherwise have in the holy gospel when it is preached
clearly and purely. With the help of this distinction these consciences
can sustain themselves in their greatest spiritual struggles against the
terror of the law. (15)

At first glance, this article seems to reinforce the critique advanced by Welker, because philosophical strands standing between the worldview of the Confessions and our own intellectual milieu have tended to give "conscience" language somewhat individualistic connotations. However, within the ambit of the confessional writings, the enterprise of comforting troubled consciences is almost invariably imbued with sacramental implications. This is particularly true in Melanchton's theology. As Gassmann and Hendrix point out, the entire argument that Melanchton advances in Article 12 of the Apology "hinges on the principle of law and gospel as the biblically based Lutheran alternative to the medieval sacrament of penance." (16) In other words, Melanchton's texts draw a substantial link between exegesis and sacramental practice. Moreover, this is not an isolated moment in the Confessional corpus. For example, the Smalcald Articles demonstrate that Luther was inclined to highlight the Ten Commandments as a privileged occurrence of law in the Bible; however, in the Small and Large Catechisms his most detailed account of the conscience's terror before the demands of the Ten Commandments (law) and its consolation in the gospel occurs in his explication of the practice of confession, which for Luther was nothing other than the loving proclamation of God's mercy to those exhibiting contrition and repentance. (17) Law and gospel becomes the necessary precursor to proper exercise of the office of the keys.

Far from being a solitary encounter between the lone penitent and the biblical text, confession is here understood in fully relational terms. The office of the keys necessitates that one person (not necessarily an ordained pastor but any baptized Christian) become the mouthpiece for God's word of forgiveness. The confessional documents are not unified as to whether this occasion should be considered as a sacrament per se, (18) but there can be no question that the practice takes on a sacramental character in its mode of gospel proclamation. But how does "gospel" function in such a sacramental framework?

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The salient feature of the Confessions' view of sacraments is that the mode of gospel operative in them is consistently described in terms of God's promise. "Lutheran sacramentology moves within the dialectic of 'promise' and 'faith': God made his word of promise visible in specific rites, and [humanity] participates in these rites by faith alone, without the condition of human merit." (19) The dimensions of gospel-as-promise far exceed simple opposition to law; "gospel" here comprehends both individual consolation and communal relations. (20) For Welker, the simple dichotomies that tend to emerge when gospel is simply posited as the "solution" to the "problem" of law have the deleterious effect of rendering faith as a "primarily interior and passive comportment." However, to regard gospel as promise (in the latter term's sacramental valence) avoids both of these difficulties. First, in the Lutheran Confessions' view, participation in sacramental realities is not simply external ornamentation placed upon a fundamentally individualized faith; rather, the most robust definition of faith offered in the Confessions is one that seizes upon the sort of promises from God that always contain sacramental (and thus, communal) overtones. Second, following the Formula of Concord's corrective upon any and all forms of synergism as well as its statement on good works, (21) the "passivity" of such faith refers to its character as an unearned gift from God. It is not a warrant for quietism or privileging of inactivity vis-a-vis the neighbor. To put the point as strongly as possible, gospel as promise resonates with overtones of community, vulnerability, and commitment to the well-being of the neighbor that can be lost if the substantive content of the gospel is seen primarily as the opposite of law. When the gospel takes on the sacramental valence of promise as opposed to simple opposition to the law, it achieves a richer resonance as both an exegetical principle and as a key for Christian praxis. This does not dispense with the framework of law/gospel, but it does suggest that gospel has important nuances beyond what this duality often implies.

It seems a truism that Lutheran exegesis, including that of the Confessions, tends to operate with a canon-within-the-canon principle. According to Martin Luther,

All the genuine sacred books agree in this, that all of them preach and
inculcate [treiben] Christ. And that is the test by which to judge all
books, when we see whether or not they inculcate Christ. For all the
scriptures show us Christ, Romans 3[:21]; and St. Paul will know nothing
but Christ, 1 Corinthians 2[:2]. Whatever does not teach Christ is not
yet apostolic, even though St. Peter or St. Paul does the teaching.
Again, whatever preaches Christ would be apostolic even if Judas, Annas,
Pilate, and Herod were doing it. (22)

This is what allowed Luther to privilege some texts (the Gospels, Romans, Galatians) while unapologetically disparaging others (James, Revelation). Although the Confessions themselves do not claim this principle as forcefully as Luther, careful reading of the Book of Concord suggests that here, too, the "inner canon" that norms interpretation of all Scripture is that which witnesses explicitly to the gospel.

Subverting hegemony in interpretation and praxis

Of the various terms of critical theory currently in circulation, few have suffered from more ambiguity, overuse, and overall lack of conceptual clarity than "postmodernism." The work of Brueggemann is instructive in that his use of the term is consistently accompanied by specific definitions of what is at stake in the discussion. This clarity extends to his work on postmodern biblical interpretation. In a recent article, "Biblical Theology Appropriately Postmodern," Brueggemann seeks to outline a new agenda for biblical hermeneutics that takes seriously the common task shared by both exegesis and religious praxis: the subversion of hegemony. Brueggemann defines the hermeneutical manifestation of hegemony as the imposition of univocity upon a fundamentally plurivocal text:

The text of the Hebrew Scriptures is profoundly plurivocal and does not
admit of settled, enforceable larger categories. This reality in the
text of course has been long recognized in Jewish interpretation that
proceeded--since the ancient rabbis--by way of commentary, as distinct
from a Christian propensity to systematization. This plurivocal quality
intrinsic to the text is now deeply reflected in pluralism in
interpretation: a plurality of methods, a plurality of interpreting
communities, and a plurality of provisional grids of
interpretation. (23)

The "Christian propensity to systematization" of which Brueggemann speaks tends to foreclose the radical dialectics and deconstructive conversations (such as Job's profound questioning of the Wisdom tradition that is reflected in texts like Proverbs or the tension between the truth claims put forth by the psalms of lament and those of praise) that are intrinsic to the text itself in favor of a closed system that privileges some voices but not others. The first step toward countering this is "the recognition that the Christian tradition of interpretation has a deep propensity to give closure, to end the dialectic, to halt the deconstruction, and to arrive as quickly as possible at closure." (24) Brueggemann is here speaking with specific reference to the Hebrew Bible, but many New Testament scholars have argued that the canonical texts of the New Testament are engaged in a similar process of plurivocal, intertextual commentary, as even the most superficial nonsynthetic reading of the four Gospel witnesses shows. (25)

However, deconstruction is not the last word for Brueggemann's position. Instead, his conception of postmodern exegesis favors the continual development of localized readings that are aware of their own grounding assumptions. In his view, this self-awareness necessarily fosters a concomitant sense of finitude that heightens the interpreter's (or the interpreting community's) openness to alternative hermeneutical frameworks.

No apology for local, provisional reading. Apology is to be made for the
cultural seduction of forgetting that our reading is local and
provisional and imagining it is total and settled. That seduction, very
strong in hegemonic Christianity, leads me to read only in isolation or
in the company of other readers like myself. Precisely because the text
advocates, sponsors, and insists upon many other readings, my local,
provisional reading must perforce be done in the presence of other
serious readings ... that endlessly subvert my own preferred
reading. (26)

It should be noted that for Brueggemann such mindfulness of the provisional character of interpretation has political, religious, and ecclesial dimensions in addition to simply interpretive ones. Just as hegemonic interpretation has legitimated the exclusion and violence perpetrated by the powerful against the disenfranchised throughout history, an "appropriately postmodern" framework welcomes participation of the other in the play of deconstruction and reconstruction.

As a starting point for rendering Brueggemann's exegetical point in philosophical language, we may profitably consider an exchange between Tracy (a Roman Catholic theologian) and Derrida (the father of French deconstruction) that took place at a conference titled "Religion and Postmodernism" at Villanova University in 1997. (27) The title of Tracy's paper, "Fragments: The Spiritual Situation of Our Times," gives some indication of the two arcs that he pursues in his discussion: assessment of post-Enlightenment intellectual cartography and the necessary role of fragments within that map. First, he gives an account of the failure of various modernities (particularly the Enlightenment, culminating in the writings of Kant and Hegel) to fully repress aspects of history and reality that cannot be assimilated into an overarching and unified schema. The repression of these "other(s)" necessitated the emergence of alternate modes of thought, modes that are grouped (again, perhaps too easily) under the heading of postmodernism: "Most forms of postmodernity are explosions of once-forgotten, marginalized, and repressed realities in Enlightenment modernity: the other, the different, above all ... the fragments," which, by Tracy's definitions, "disallow any totality system by demanding attention to the other, especially the different and marginal other." One such "other" is "any saturated form of the religious phenomenon." (28) After tracing an interpretive line through such early critics as Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Gerschom Scholem, Tracy concludes that the legacy of these thinkers necessitates that fragments be considered "a dominant metaphor for twentieth-century Western thought both early and late"; moreover, this age that is defined by the inevitability of fragmentation "is not so bad a place to be." (29) He argues that the preservation of the fragment--be it a literary/philosophical form, a subject, a field of inquiry, or an individual--is a salutary principle for contemporary method.

Above all one must avoid modernity's (not only Hegel's) central
temptation: the drive to systematize, to render a totality system. To
render any totality system present is to efface the fragment, the
distinct and potentially explosive image in favor of some larger
conceptual architectonic of which the fragment is now made a part. (30)

By recovering saturated and irrepressible fragments of the past as well as consciously respecting the integrity (so to speak) of fragments within current theological/philosophical speculation, contemporary thinkers can mine the benefits of what previously has been considered a hindrance to these disciplines. In other words, fragments qua fragments become sites for potential insight and affirmation of plurality rather than problems to be solved within a larger schema.

Tracy goes on to link the notion of the fragment with the enterprise of naming God. Moreover, his suggestion seems to be that God cannot be named (by humans, at least) as any kind of totality system because our conceptions of God must retain the possibility of being challenged by (and reconfigured in light of) the alternate witness of the other, the fragments that cannot be fully thematized in them. For projects like my own that seek to insert characteristically Lutheran principles into this critique, it is striking that Tracy elsewhere chooses to explicate this principle of alterity using the Deus absconditus of Luther. In his essay "The Hidden God: The Divine Other of Liberation" Tracy makes explicit the political and practical ramifications of modern totalities and God's mysteries.

The Hidden-Revealed God at its most fearsome and radical has reentered
theological thought again. But that entry is not now principally through
the estranged and alienated self of the earlier existentialist
theologians, those admirable and deeply troubled moderns. The entry of
the Hidden-Revealed God now comes to us principally through the
interruptive experience and the memory of the suffering of whole
peoples, especially the suffering of all those ignored, marginalized,
and colonized by the grand narrative of modernity.... Into that
interruption the apocalyptic God of power, hope, and awe often becomes
at once the God of Lamentations and Job and the God of Exodus, struggle,
and joy. The Hidden God returns to undo the power of the modern logos
over God in many modern theologies. (31)

Careful attention to Tracy's point here shows that he is not simply referring to theodicy; rather, his description of the hidden God is a variation on the totality/fragment distinction outlined above. Here, however, that distinction takes on explicitly political as well as religious dimensions. The "fragments" here are not just intellectual schemas that cannot be thematized within larger interpretive edifices but rather whole human populations that find their needs, values, and world-views disenfranchised by the controlling narrative of modernity. The function of the Deus absconditus, then, is one of simultaneous rupture and liberation: rupture in that the totalizing narratives are exposed as (in Brueggemann's terms) "local, provisional" systems rather than universally comprehensive and valid interpretations of reality, and liberation in that this disruption allows previously silenced voices a new hearing in intellectual, religious, and political realms. When coercive univocity is theologically expanded into plurivocity (or, better, when God becomes the means by which existing plurivocity asserts itself against illusory univocity), our interpretation becomes both more humane and, perhaps even more important, more reflective of the complex world in which all human interpretation must happen.

This is the essential hinge upon which the intersection of biblical exegesis and hermeneutically libratory practice hangs: The exegetical principles by which one interprets the identity-giving texts of one's own tradition mirror one's willingness to have those principles be sufficiently open-ended to allow continual dialogue between familiarity and alterity. As I argue below, the Lutheran tradition has rarely succeeded at achieving such a hermeneutical stance. However, I also contend that the tradition contains resources that may permit contemporary Lutherans to reappropriate their key exegetical principle (gospel-as-promise) in ways that boldly affirm plurivocity and lovingly seek dialogue with the Other. One of these key resources is Luther's notion of the hidden God as that God is revealed through Scripture.

Luther, Deus absconditus, and biblical hermeneutics

Luther's Old Testament commentaries are perhaps where we see most clearly how he understands promise to be the central mode by which God relates to human beings. "Faith is assuredly nothing else--nor can it be anything else--than giving assent to a promise.... The only faith that justifies is the faith that deals with God in His promises and accepts them." (32) Because the enterprise of human faith remains the same across all of human history, Luther regarded certain Old Testament figures as models of that faith and thus used their stories as illustrations of the character of God's promises. Likewise, these narratives provided him with exemplars of proper human response to those promises. While Luther remained clear that trust in God is never a human possibility (and thus requires God's gratis donation of it in its entirety), he nonetheless valued the stories of Noah, Abraham, and Isaac for their vivid depictions of the trials of faith lived amid the uncertainty of the world, the devil, and (most important) God.

This last statement points to the backdrop against which Luther sees all of the Old Testament narratives taking place: the hidden God. As B.A. Gerrish points out in an influential essay, in Luther's theology God's hiddenness has two forms. (33) First, Luther distinguishes between God as he (34) reveals himself (in the biblical texts, the Incarnation, and the sacraments) to humans and the Divine Nature in and of itself. (35) This latter is the "majesty" or "uncovered God" to which Luther often refers. (36) This God is hidden outside of history and outside of revelation. Second, Luther describes God's hiddenness even within God's revelations to human beings. God's hiddenness within revelation names the condition whereby God relates to humanity in a manner that seems utterly contradictory and irrational. Whether one is discussing the cross, the Incarnation, or God's direct commands as witnessed to by Scripture, God continually alienates Godself from human reason. God's promises must be trusted in faith rather than apprehended in reason precisely because those promises come to humans in a form that seems contradictory. For that reason, faith in the true God is often a lonely undertaking that subjects one to the full brunt of reason's hostility.

One of the earliest examples of the trials of faith is Noah, with whom (for reasons that will become clear) Luther always identified: "Noah is an illustrious and grand example of faith. He withstood the opinions of the world with heroic steadfastness and was able to believe that he was righteous, but that all the rest of the world was unrighteous." (37) One of the narrative points upon which Luther focuses is the fact that Noah chooses to take a wife after he receives the message from God that the whole world will be destroyed. However, Noah's belief in and expounding of God's promise to destroy the entire earth with the exception of him and his family enacts an even more fundamental contradiction in the world's eyes, because it is at odds with two of God's own earlier promises: Genesis 3:15's prophecy concerning the Seed that will crush the head of Satan and God's statement to Adam that humanity was designed by God to have dominion over all of the earth.

Undoubtedly the descendants of the patriarchs who perished in the Flood
vastly overstated their argument about the prestige of the church. They
charged Noah with blasphemies and lies. "Stating that God is about to
destroy the whole world by the Flood," they maintained, "is the same as
saying that God is not compassionate and not a father, but a cruel
tyrant. Noah, you are preaching the wrath of God! Has not God promised
deliverance from sin and death through the Seed of the woman?... We are
God's people, and we have outstanding gifts of God."

There is no doubt that the children of the world cited all these
objections to Noah when he was preaching about the coming total
destruction, and that they openly charged him with lying; since the
household, the state, and the church were established by God, God would
not utterly destroy what He had established. They maintained that man
was created in order to procreate and to have dominion over the earth,
and therefore that water would not overwhelm and destroy him. (38)

Luther equates Noah's interlocutors with the false church which distorts God's promises to fit its own dictates of rationality; by implication, then, Noah is linked with the persecuted minority of true believers who trust in God's promises despite their seeming incoherence and the logical impossibility of apprehending them through reason. Characteristically, Luther does not charge Noah's opponents with a lack of religion; they are "godless" not because they lack a god but because they are unable to seize hold of the commands of the true God in faith. The result is that they fulfill their own desire for status before the true God by clinging to their imagined merits. In doing so, they respond to a god of their own fashioning.

The parallels between Luther's exegesis and his understanding of the ecclesiological differences between the medieval Church and the Reformation are obvious; however, more than polemics is occurring here. The deeper issue has to do with the precise character of the saving faith that both Noah and the true church display. The question of whether or not one possesses this faith is fraught with soteriological significance, so a central concern for Luther is to delineate its characteristics correctly.

Interestingly, for all his disparagement of Noah's antagonists and his own sixteenth-century opponents, Luther never denies the validity of the point that he ascribes to them concerning the irrationality of Noah and the Reformation's preaching. Again, not only does God's injunction to Noah to both get married and preach the world's destruction make no sense; even more distressingly, God's apparent decision to eliminate his creation appears to negate his earlier promises to humanity. Here God is hidden within his own revelation, covered over by the alienating character of his messages. The faith for which Luther praises Noah, however, is precisely that which holds fast to both sides of the contradiction without attempting to reconcile them. "After the verdict had been rendered about the destruction of the world, he obeys God, who calls upon him to marry, and believes God, that even if the entire world should perish, he himself will be saved together with his children. This is an outstanding faith, worthy of our reflection." (39) Noah is a model for the faith of the true church because, since there was no question of his being able to apprehend God's promises with his reason, it was necessary for him to relate to God in a relationship of pure trust unaided by his understanding.

The character of such trust is the subject matter of one of the most important texts in the entire Bible for Luther's project, namely Gen 15:6: "And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness." Abraham, the "he" in this verse, is the father of faith because he is the Bible's first explicit example of sola fide, sola gratia.

Luther reads Gen 15:6 in light of Rom 4:20-24 ("No distrust made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. Therefore his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. Now the words 'It was reckoned to him' were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also") and Rom 15:4 ("For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope").

As with Noah, the chronology of Abraham's story is particularly important to Luther's exegesis. Prior to the Lord's calling Abram in Gen 12:1, Luther ascribes to Abram a lifestyle that is perfectly ethical by any reasonable standard. The fact that Abram was a virtuous man, however, did not alter the fact that he was partaking of the idolatrous religion of his ancestors. Only God's summons empowered Abram to go forth out of that state of affairs. He could not have extracted himself by any other means: "This blessing of deliverance from idolatry has its source, not in his own merits or powers but solely in a God who pities and calls him." (40) Abraham had to undertake the lonely journey of faith in response to a summons that could not be squared with the worldview that had previously made sense to him. His initial gesture of faith is to place his will in subjection to God's word, and Luther has no illusions about the fact that this is never an easy task for anyone.

Moreover, once Abraham has gone forth according to God's command, he is greeted with the defining promise of his narrative, as God tells him that his advanced age and childless state will not prevent God from making his descendants as numerous as the stars (Gen 15:5). This is the promise to which Abraham's peerless faith reacts with trust, and his assent becomes the occasion of his full righteousness before God. "How, then, did Abraham attain righteousness? In this way: God speaks, and Abraham believes what God is saying." (41) On Luther's account, "faith is assuredly nothing else--nor can it be anything else--than giving assent to a promise ... the only faith that justifies is the faith that deals with God in his promises and accepts them." (42) Prior to Abraham's doing any works that might have justified him before God according to his own merits, righteousness is imputed to him solely because God has provided him with the capacity to believe that God can achieve what God promises. (43) God's gift of faith is the necessary and sufficient condition for righteousness.

Abraham is more than just an example of a life lived in a state of constant readiness to believe God's promises, for Genesis 22 raises the stakes dramatically when Abraham is forced to face a trial of faith greater than anything that previously has been revealed in the Old Testament. "For here Scripture states plainly that Abraham was actually tempted by God Himself, not concerning a woman, gold, silver, death, or life but concerning a contradiction of Holy Scripture." (44) This is an example of God's hiddenness within revelation par excellence: Like Noah, Abraham is faced with a command from God that seems to stand in direct opposition to the promise that defined Abraham's faith, namely that Isaac would be the heir by which Abraham's descendants would become as numerous as the stars. By ordering Abraham to kill Isaac, God tempts Abraham toward despair (the inevitable precursor to hatred of God) or toward mistrust of God's good will toward him. The child that was to be the pledge of God's fulfilling his promise to Abraham now becomes the wedge driving him away from trust in such a fickle and brutal deity.

Abraham's solution to this profound existential quandary resembles that of Noah. He obeys and holds fast to both sides of the contradiction in God's word without subordinating or mitigating either one. (45) In Abraham's case, Luther describes this as taking refuge in the fundamental promise amid the storms created by temptation, most especially the temptation that comes from God. "Our only consolation is that in affliction we take refuge in the promise." (46) Abraham's ability to do this stems from his trust not just in God's words to him but in God's very nature: Despite the fact that God continually comes to human beings sub contrariis, God does not lie. Thus, though God "seems to be dealing with us as though he had forgotten his promises, faith in the Word must nevertheless be retained, and the promise must be stressed--namely, that it is true and dependable--even if the manner, time, occasion, place, and other particulars are unknown. For the fact that God cannot lie is sure and dependable." (47) In the case of Abraham and Isaac, the particular object of trust is the fact that God is powerful enough to hold opposites together: Isaac will be sacrificed as a burnt offering and will be the means by which Abraham's descendants range over the earth. (48) The simultaneous retention of opposites is abhorrent to reason, but it is the primary mode of God's relation to humanity. Faith is what grasps this. Thus, the salvation of Isaac (which comes about when God once again issues a command that contradicts a previous one) is ultimately less central to Luther's exegesis than the anguished but steadfast faith that Abraham and Isaac display throughout the story.

The theme that unites all three instances of Luther's exegesis is that faith in the promise is primarily trust that God is powerful enough to bring about that which reason declares to be impossible. Translated into the language of justification, this is the essence of sola fide: a doctrine that is absurd according to all human categories but is a sure refuge for Christians whose lives of trust ensure that they will be assailed by doubt, despair, and the trials of faith. The narratives of the patriarchs are valuable to Luther because they depict not saints whose merits contribute to their own salvation but rather virtuosos of trust whose assent to God's promises becomes the foundation of their righteousness before a hidden but ultimately merciful God. The main point here is that, in Luther's exegesis, faith in the gospel as promise is inextricable from the hiddenness of the God who makes the promise. Faith in the gospel and God's hiddenness are equally biblical truths.

Given the critique of inwardness that we dealt with above, a serious question arises here: Does Luther's exegesis of these narratives return the notion of faith to a solely existential grasping of a privatized promise? Put differently, does Luther's account of God's promises fail to resonate with the same sacramental overtones that I ascribed to the Confessions?

There are two reasons to believe that it does not fail. The first thing to remember is that from the time of his earliest theological writings (especially the three 1520 treatises To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and The Freedom of a Christian) Luther consistently links faith in God's promises to both salutary sacramental practices and "freedom" to serve the neighbor without fear or calculation of merit. Second, as we saw in Tracy and Brueggemann, to the extent that the hidden God acts to destabilize totalizing systems, it necessarily forces dialogue with the other that has been unincorporated into the (previously) comprehensive interpretive framework. I certainly do not wish to claim that Luther himself (or the tradition that followed him) carried this theological principle through to a stance that was open to such correction and dialogue. (49) Rather, my point is that such a stance does not contradict the foundational exegetical principles that he employed and may in fact be a more consistent outworking of this theology than the polemics to which he (and the tradition that bears his name) was given. (50)

For now, it is important to recognize another link between Tracy's invocation of the hidden God as a libratory force and Luther's use of it as an exegetical principle. For Luther, both forms of God's hiddenness (hiddenness within and without revelation) place continual reservations upon the constructions that fallen human reason erects to reach, Babel-style, religious truths. This led Luther to a strong theology of the Cross by which human reason must finally take refuge in the primary site of God's irrational mercy. To take refuge in the Cross is to take refuge in the absurd promise of mercy from God, and when taken to its extreme this reality disrupts any totalizing schemas (including hermeneutical strategies of interpreting the witness to God's mercy, for example the Bible) that efface what cannot be incorporated. Although nearly half a millennium separates Luther's Bible reading from our own, in this regard he is our contemporary. His "premodern" and "precritical" exegesis may well be among our most vital resources when carrying out interpretation in the shadow of modernity's failures.

Witness to mercy in many voices

Based on the above sections, we can now identify three baseline assertions to guide our conclusions. First, the gospel that serves as the privileged exegetical key for the Lutheran Confessions can be conceived most appropriately as God's promise--with all of the sacramental overtones that the term takes on in the BC. Second, any biblical hermeneutics that seek to be, in Brueggemann's phrase, "appropriately postmodern," must avoid erecting frameworks of totalizing interpretation that marginalize and exclude the "fragments" of alterity that could potentially serve as a corrective upon hegemony, both intellectual and political. Third, gospel as promise is the key hinge from which Luther derives the essentials of the biblical witness; however, his notion of promise is inextricable from his contention that the Deus absconditus is an equally biblical reality. Thus, one of the most important points of contact between the Bible's witness and human reality is that both are sites for the in-breaking of a God whose promises shatter human reason--and, tellingly, all totalizing structures/strictures that would seek to domesticate God through nomination and systematization--even as they are fully validated in Christ. The task of drawing conclusions for contemporary interpretation and practice, then, will be to synthesize these claims into a reformulation of Confessional orthodoxy in light of their content.

A new confessional orthodoxy

Luther felt that to attempt to diminish the radical impact of the Deus absconditus was to fall into the dangerous and idolatrous trap laid by theologies of glory. From this perspective, the main question at stake in the Confessions' biblical exegesis is this: To what extent does the gospel-as-promise in the Confessions presuppose Luther's hidden God? To be sure, the Deus absconditus is never explicitly referenced in the BC. Perhaps that is the main reason why, historically, Lutheran Orthodoxy failed to allow this theological notion--or at the very least its radical implications for exegesis and theology--to penetrate the scholastic rigors of its confessionalism. Having outlined the links between God's promises and God's hiddenness in Luther's theology, however, we are in a position to imagine a new kind of Confessional orthodoxy that takes seriously the idea that to have the gospel-as-promise as one's primary exegetical principle is to practice the kind of interpretation that Brueggemann and Tracy both advocate: nonhegemonic, open to continual correction through a dialectic of deconstruction and reconstruction, respecting of biblical plurivocity, and self-aware in its finitude. This more radical notion of gospel-as-promise possesses the sort of permeability and communal relationality that Welker prizes and brings our methods of exegesis and our sacramental practices fully into alignment--something that should be the goal of every Lutheran seeking to honor the spirit of Reformation ecclesiology.

To the extent that the exegetical hinge of gospel-as-promise employed by the Confessions presupposes the libratory and totality-shattering Deus absconditus of Luther's own exegesis, such explicitly Confessional exegesis stands as a theologically interesting, textually plausible, and hermeneutically sophisticated contribution to contemporary thinking about the relationship between the Bible and constructive theology. It is trust in the mysterious grace of this God and taking refuge in the promises that render null and void all efforts to capture God in concepts that marks true allegiance to the Confessions. The Lutheran Confessions are ultimately nothing more than a witness to the Bible's witness, and both witness to a God whose Cross shatters self-contented isolation and frees us to engage in dialogue with the other without fear.

Robert Saler

Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

1. "Preface to the Book of Concord," in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (BC), ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 14. The "Epitome" of the Formula of Concord expresses this even more forcefully: "We believe, teach, and confess that the only rule and guiding principle according to which all teachings and teachers are to be evaluated and judged are the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments alone" (BC 486).

2. See Gary Dorrien, Theology Without Weapons: The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000).

3. Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1979), and Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).

4. See especially his Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).

5. Rolf Rendtorff, Canon and Theology: Overtures to an Old Testament Theology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).

6. James Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999).

7. At various points in this discussion, it may appear that I am using the terms "hermeneutical" and "exegetical" interchangeably. The only operative distinction that I would suggest is that, for the purposes of this essay, exegesis refers specifically to the enterprise of biblical interpretation, while the purview of hermeneutics includes any textual (or textually analogous) artifacts.

8. Gunther Gassmann and Scott Hendrix, Fortress Introduction to the Lutheran Confessions (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 63.

9. "Epitome," BC 500.

10. Michael Welker, "Security of Expectations: Reformulating the Theology of Law and Gospel," The Journal of Religion 66 (July 1986): 237-38.

11. Welker, "Security," 257.

12. Welker, "Security," 258.

13. Welker, "Security," 258-59.

14. To be fair to Welker, it should be emphasized that his critique is of the Reformation tradition as a whole and not specifically the Lutheran confessional documents. My point here is simply that, however valid his critique might be for other aspects of the Protestant tradition, it does not pertain in the case of the Lutheran Confessions. Thus, I am using his argument as a sort of benchmark to highlight the achievement of the confessors in avoiding these difficulties, even where the tradition has not always--a point that I reiterate later on.

15. "Solid Declaration," BC 581; emphasis added. To be sure, the sacramental orientation of the distinction is present in the Epitome as well: "When, however, law and gospel are placed in contrast to each other ... we believe, teach, and confess that the gospel is not a proclamation of repentance or retribution, but is, strictly speaking, nothing else than a proclamation of comfort and a joyous message which does not rebuke nor terrify but comforts consciences against the terror of the law, directs them solely to Christ's merit, and lifts them up again through the delightful proclamation of the grace and favor of God, won through Christ's merit" ("Epitome," BC 501).

16. Gassmann and Hendrix, Fortress Introduction, 59.

17. "Small Catechism," BC 360-61.

18. In particular, Melanchton seemed amenable to the idea of listing confession as its own sacrament. However, other confessional documents speak of the practice as comprehended in the first sacrament--that is, baptism. For a fuller discussion of this ambiguity, see Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), esp. chap. 6.

19. Gritsch and Jenson, Lutheranism, 73. This dialectic is present throughout the entire confessional corpus, beginning with Article XIII of the Augsburg Confession: "Accordingly, sacraments are to be used so that faith, which believes the promises offered and displayed through the sacraments, may increase." Augsburg Confession, BC 47.

20. From this perspective, it seems to me unfortunate that Carl E. Braaten, in his Principles of Lutheran Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), insists so strongly on this dichotomy as providing the substantive content of the term "gospel." According to him, the Confessions "reach back to the law as a fundamental presupposition of the gospel. The gospel is not the word of God apart from the law" (p. 111). As I indicate below, I am not arguing that the law/gospel dialectic is not essential to Lutheran theology, for it surely is; however, I am suggesting that any assertion of the gospel as the dialectical counterpoint to law should strive to retain the sacramental connotations that I have identified in gospel-as-promise. I am confident that the valence of promise retains both of these without substantial tension.

21. See Epitome, BC 492, 498.

22. Quoted in B. A. Gerrish, "The Word of God and the Words of Scripture: Luther and Calvin on Biblical Authority," in The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 55.

23. Brueggemann, "Biblical Theology Appropriately Postmodern," in Jews, Christians, and the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures, ed. Alice Ogden Bellis and Joel S. Kaminsky (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 98-99.

24. Brueggemann, "Biblical Theology Appropriately Postmodern," 103.

25. See Bart D. Ehrman's opening remarks in his introductory textbook on the subject: "In order to anticipate my approach, I might simply point out that historians who have carefully examined the New Testament have found that its authors do, in fact, embody remarkably different points of view. These scholars have concluded that the most fruitful way to interpret the New Testament authors is to read them individually rather than collectively. Each other should be allowed to have his own say, and should not be too quickly reconciled with the point of view of another.... Following this principle, scholars have been struck by the rich diversity represented within the pages of the New Testament." The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 13.

26. Brueggemann, "Biblical Theology Appropriately Postmodern," 106.

27. This has been published as God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

28. David Tracy, "Fragments: The Spiritual Situation of Our Times," in God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, 171.

29. Tracy, "Fragments," 173.

30. Tracy, "Fragments," 178.

31. David Tracy. "The Hidden God: The Divine Other of Liberation," Cross Currents 46 (Spring 1996): 8.

32. Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 15-20, vol. 3 of Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1961), 24.

33. Gerrish, "To the Unknown God: Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of God," in The Old Protestantism and the New, 131-49.

34. I follow Luther's use of masculine language for God in this section only with the understanding that it is appropriate to explications of Luther's theology and not my own proposal.

35. "God in his essence is altogether unknowable; nor is it possible to define or put into words what He is, though we burst in the effort. It is for this reason that God lowers Himself to the level of our weak comprehension and presents Himself to us in images, in coverings, as it were, in simplicity adapted to a child, that in some measure it may be possible for Him to be known by us." Luther. Lectures on Genesis 6-14, vol. 2 of Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1960), 45.

36. "And let us be satisfied with this picture, as it were; and let us shun that inquisitiveness of human nature which wants to investigate His majesty. For God's incarnation was foretold in order that we might have a definite pattern for recognizing and taking hold of God." Luther, Lectures on Genesis 21-25, vol. 4 of Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1964), 133.

37. Luther, Lectures on Genesis 6-14, 87; see also Lectures on Genesis 21-25, 26.

38. Lectures on Genesis 6-14, 53, 64.

39. Lectures on Genesis 6-14, 27.

40. Lectures on Genesis 6-14, 246.

41. Lectures on Genesis 15-20, 21.

42. Lectures on Genesis 15-20, 48.

43. "For righteousness is given to Abraham not because he performs works but because he believes. Nor is it given to faith as a work of ours; it is given because of God's thought, which faith lays hold of." Lectures on Genesis 15-20, 22.

44. Lectures on Genesis 21-25, 92.

45. Luther also attributes this faith (manifested as Christlike obedience) to Isaac. Lectures on Genesis 21-25, 114.

46. Lectures on Genesis 21-25, 93.

47. Lectures on Genesis 21-25, 97.

48. "These trials of the saintly patriarch have been set before us in order that we may be encouraged in our own trials and say with Abraham: 'Though my son Isaac dies, nevertheless, because he believes in God, the very grave in which his ashes will lie will not be a grave but will be a bedchamber and a sleeping room.' 'On the contrary,' says reason, "the opposite is manifest. The flesh turns to dust, and worms consume it.' But this neither hinders nor annuls the Word of God, for these two statements which God makes to Adam--"You are dust, and to dust you shall return" and "The Seed shall crush the head of the serpent"--belong together." Lectures on Genesis 21-25, 97.

49. To be sure, both here and in the section that follows it is necessary to retain this distinction between what Lutherans (including the confessors) have done historically and what Lutheran principles allow contemporary Lutheran theologians to do. My argument depends on there being a (potentially sizable) gap between historical practice and future possibilities; however, one could suggest that any tradition that wishes to remain vital from age to age must perpetually include possibilities for reinterpretation that have not necessarily been instantiated in its history. I contend that this is certainly true in the case of the theological legacy of the Lutheran Confessions.

50. Nowhere is this failure of dialogue and self-correction more sadly evident than in the reprehensible suggestions that Luther made concerning Europe's Jewish population in his later writings.