Thursday Theology #611
February 25, 2010
Topic: Werner Elert and Moral Decay in the ELCA!
Colleagues,
The last thing I could ever have expected--the one thing I could NEVER EVER
have imagined--is that Werner Elert, a German theologian who died in 1954
and who never set foot in the USA, let alone taught anywhere in Lutheran
schools here, could be exposed "in these last days" as a major source for the
current moral decay of the ELCA. Can you name any other theologian who ever
spoke so effectively--and allegedly so destructively--all the way across the
Atlantic Ocean, from his grave in Bavaria, Germany, over half a century
after he was interred there?
In America it can indeed happen and in the ELCA it IS happening. Who is
claiming that? Several major-league theology profs at ELCA schools are now
fingering Elert as villain for mentoring the ELCA to thumb its nose at God's
law.
I'm a Johnny-come-lately to all the kerfuffle. Several of you colleagues
have recently drawn my attention to the brouhaha and alerted me to several
documents now in the public domain. Two that I have read link ELCA's
disregard for genuine Christian ethics (=ethics true to the Bible, in their
definition) to Elert's influence, because he was "soft" on God's law. The critics
claim this even though the last thing Elert published before his death was a
595-page textbook on Lutheran Ethics with the first 200 pages labeled
"Ethics according to God's Law."
One of these critiques can be found on Michael Root's blog and the other in
Robert Benne's article in the current issue of the journal Lutheran Forum
(Winter 2009).
For today's ThTh, let's look at the first of those two.
A mistake being made by some opposed to recent developments in the ELCA, I
think, is to blame everything simply on 'liberalism.' Omitted is a
reflection on how modern developments within Lutheranism, even and especially among
some counted as confessionalists, are a large part of the problem.
Take this quotation from Werner Elert I ran across today (The Structure of
Lutheranism, p. 412 = p. 361 of Vol 1 in the German): "Christ's
righteousness is my righteousness because the Word pertains to me. But it pertains to me
only if this righteousness remains unentangled with my empirical existence.
Faith, which hears this Word, has no other function than this hearing and
exists only by hearing. If in spite of this it is my I that hears and
believes, it can be only the 'pure' I, that is, the I cannot be further qualified
in an empirico-psychological manner, therefore the transcendental I."
Once this move is made (and it is made in a similar manner by Gerhard
Forde, without the Kantian trappings), the 'empirico-psychological' self, the
self that actually lives in the world, is cut off from the self that truly
lives in Christ. Ethics, especially as it relates to physical actions, then
exists in a different dimension than faith. From here, it is downhill to where
we are today in the ELCA. The church cannot be divided over an ethical
question. Granted, it may be a ways down this hill to get to where we are now and
admirers of Elert (and Forde) may believe they have ways of stopping the
slide down the hill, but this sheltering of the new self in Christ from life in
the world (the 'gnostic' move in Forde that David Yeago has identified) is
one element in the mix that has produced our present mess.
So far Root's text.
[ES comment. This book of Elert suffers throughout by very poor
translation. Often it is clear that the translator did not understand what Elert was
talking about.: Here's what Elert really says in his original German text:]
(The Structure of Lutheranism, p. 412. That is p. 361 of Vol. 1 in the
German edition):
Christ's righteousness is my righteousness because Christ's word (of
forgiveness) is spoken to me. But it is true about me only if this ("alien")
righteousness is not confused with the empirical righteousness I have produced
for myself. Faith, which receives this word (of gifted "alien" righteousness),
has no other function than to receive it. Faith exists only by receiving
this gift. Nevertheless the "I" which receives and believes is still the
"I," the human self, that I am. But it is not the self of my accumulated
psychological-empirical biography. [For a "sinner-self" by definition does not,
cannot, believe the Gospel.] Instead it is the "pure" new self, a self that
transcends the sinner-self, which receives and believes the gifted
righteousness."
[ES comment: Elert is reiterating St. Paul's discussion of his own "I" in
Gal. 2:19f. Check it out. That's a key NT text for the reality of this
"transcendent" self. This new "transcendent" self is a "Christ-living-in-me"
self. What that new self transcends is not daily life down here on the
ground. Until the resurrection of the body ("soma" [=body] is also the Greek
word for "self," replicated even in English: some-body, any-body, no-body,
every-body), new selves have only one place to exist, namely, in creation, in
the nitty-gritty of daily life, at the same address where the old self lives.
What the Christic-self transcends is the sinner-self. New Adam is
qualitatively more, goes beyond--yes, transcends--Old Adam. When my self is "in
Christ," I am a new creation, the "old" Ed is trumped, aka transcended. But
both selves live IN the the world, have the same street address. In my case
Russell Blvd., St. Louis, Missouri.]
Elert's German text continues: "I showed in the earlier section on
'Luther's view of Justification' that for Luther the logical presupposition for
speaking of this 'transcendent self' DOES NOT follow Kant's formula (reduction
to the categorical). Instead, for Luther the logical presupposition for
speaking of a self that transcends the sinner-self is the judgment (the
death-verdict) on that sinner-self [Selbstgericht], which when joined with faith,
constitutes repentance."
[N.B. Elert is not adopting Kant in place of Luther, but opting FOR Luther
CONTRA Kant--as he does in all the books he ever wrote where Kant and
Luther get into the text, I can only conclude that Root does not comprehend what
Elert is talking about here. Which makes me wonder how he comprehends
Luther--and possibly St. Paul too.]
Picking up again with the last line cited above, and continuing with
Elert's text (my translation):.
". . . for Luther the logical presupposition for speaking of a self that
transcends the sinner-self is the judgment (the death-verdict) on that
sinner-self [das Selbstgericht], which when joined with faith, constitutes
repentance.
However, when faith in Christ's word brings forgiveness of sins, the deus
absconditus in this same crucified Christ becomes deus revelatus. At that
point Luther stands before "das Jenseits." [German has this pair of contrasts:
'Diesseits'--this side--and 'Jenseits'--the other side, the Eternal, the
side of the Eternal One.] This 'Jenseits' is totally different from the world
of agnostic determinism, which is the end of the line when one combines
[Kant's] theoretical and practical reason. Faith perceives God's call, and
that is the end of agnosticism. Faith receives God's forgiveness, and that is
the end of determinism.
For determinism means that we will never be able to fulfill ethical demands
and therefore also never be able to escape guilt. In the forgiveness of
sins, the gift of alien righteousness, the ethical IS fulfilled and guilt IS
overcome. Later on the Enlightenment viewed hearing God's word to be a
corrective for errors in human knowledge. But Luther's concept of revelation is
fundamentally different. Agnostic determinism for him is no error of
judgment. Instead [for unredeemed humanity] it is the only possible and only corre
ct way to interpret the world we live in along with its ethical demands.
When one hears the Gospel, it does not abrogate this reality as though
showing it to have been an erroneous view of the world. Instead the "Jenseits"
[of God] reveals itself only there where this rational analysis of the world
is carried through to this endpoint [punctum mathematicum] and has come to
its final outcome in the knowledge of death.
In just this way the forgiveness of sins does not at all annul the validity
of the ethical demand. If this demand had no validity, there would be so
sin, and consequently no forgiveness either.
From this follow three consequences.
"Diesseits" and "Jenseits" are not related to each other as beginning
and end of the same reality. The "Jenseits" of God rather shapes the
"Diesseits" of our world-reality into a self-contained whole, i.e., it confirms not
only the accuracy, but also the completeness of our knowledge of the world.
By completeness we do not mean exhaustive knowledge of everything that may
be known, but that the limits come into clear focus, the limits within
which all knowledge of the world must be confined, regardless of whether or not
we have already exhausted all that can be known about the world.
[Then follows another page and a half of brilliant (and complex) German
text, p.362-3--which I summarize as follows:]
The relationship between Diesseits and Jenseits is the relationship
between the old and the new creations as spelled out in the scriptures.
Despite their totally different character and content, Diesseits &
Jenseits have this common denominator: both of them are valid and operate
effectively. But not deterministically. Yet it is only when one comes to faith
in the Gospel that one comprehends that behind the validity of each stands
the authority of God in his word/action of law and Gospel. It is such
faith-in-the-Gospel that holds the two together. Conclusion: "This is the
connection between justification and viewing the world (Weltanschauung). [The title
for this Section 29 in Elert's Morphologie is "Rechtfertigung und
Weltanschauung" (Justification and world view).] Lutheranism's Weltanschauung is
incomprehensible apart from faith in God. But such faith does not call for
any diminution of the great facts of the natural world and knowledge of its
details. Faith receives this knowledge too in its totality and affirms its
validity. But it relativizes that world-knowledge at the same time by
subsuming it into the majesty of God, where it is both affirmed and transcended."
So far Elert's text.
To identify this sort of Lutheran theology (Elert's brand) with the "ELCA's
[alleged] downhill slide into Gnosticism" is impossible Imagine what the
ELCA would be if this brand of gold-medal Lutheran theology actually DID have
influence on its slippery slopes. Also on slippery slopes of these
Elert-critics. Some things would have to be different.
Next week, we intend to look at Benne's article in the Lutheran
Forum--where yours truly gets linked to Gerhard Forde as another subversive infecting
the ELCA with what Benne calls "Elert's gravely flawed construal of Luther
and Lutheranism." And what was Elert's "gravely flawed construal"? "The
essence of that construal was an almost monomaniacal focus on justification, to
the exclusion of other crucial Christian doctrines."
Gravely flawed. Monomaniacal. Those are hefty charges. But are they true?
For next week's ThTh, more on Benne's article, wherein I intend (in a
sidebar) to identify the primal "villain" who brought Elert into 20th century
American Lutheranism. Was not Forde, nor me, but ironically a bloke who once
taught at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina,
the very same ELCA seminary were two of the most vociferous Elert-critics
are now tenured profs. Stay tuned.
