Errors and Love

The following reflection is an attempt to process recent readings and not a definitive position.

In Luther's "Disputation Against Scholastic Theology," he claims that the human will can only conform to erroneous ways and that because people are able to love people, they cannot love God.  He roughly repeats these statements in the "Heidelberg Disputation."  I'm going to attempt to wrestle with both of these seemingly odd statements at once.

As I do this, I recognize that part of the major emphasis in Lutheran theology is our complete and utter dependence upon God.  Free will can only do evil "in an active capacity" because otherwise there would be a possibility of someone achieving salvation by works (if one can do good, then one might not need Christ).  If we are able to love God, then we might be able not to sin against God.  If we are not utterly and completely sinners, then there is a possibility of salvation outside of Christ (Christ is the way, any who come to the Father only come through him).

Where I find I can start is naming what I do affirm, though this affirmation is not part something covered in the above mentioned documents.  I affirm Lutheran single predestination.  God chooses everyone for salvation and people choose damnation.  God only "predestines" people for salvation/healing; moreover, within radical Lutheran sinner/saint dialectic, everyone chooses damnation.  God invites everyone to the banquet and gives everyone the clothes necessary for the proper dress attire, and everyone is too busy to attend and refuses to wear the free outfit.  Within this framework, I see how Luther can talk about the inability to love God.  In John, Jesus describes it as those who love the darkness do not love the light because their deeds are evil.

However, Luther's radical description of the inability to love God I cannot affirm.  How I can affirm the radical single predestination theory without affirming the inability to love God?  I recognize, quite differently from Luther, the reality of sin in the Eden story.  Namely, there is a reality that one sin effects all of creation, that one sin disrupts our relationship with God, that one sin sends us into fear and hiding, and that we, as humans, seem not to have the desire to claim our sins as our own but rather add sin to sin by lying and/or blaming others.  Luther sees this as an exposition on original sin, but I recognize it, with my 21st century lens where the Bible is not trying to answer historical fact but tell us about who God is, what God does, and how our relationship with God is lived out, as an exposition on any sin.  Sin, even one, has consequences for all of creation (sin is relational; the relationship with other species was broken and the garden was sealed, among other explicit curses upon the three sinners).  Sin is a bitter trap wherein we would rather keep sinning than have our brokenness and shame exposes (Adam and Eve put on clothing and blamed others).  Sin causes us to fear God rather than love God.

Where this is not as radical as Luther is that experience reveals it false to imagine people cannot love God.  It also appears false that people cannot do good.  However, it is also false to imagine people can keep from sinning or can keep from fearing God or loving other things above God.  Luther needs no possibility of good and love because a small gap allows the scholastics to argue for possibility of otherwise.  All I need to is look around and see that even the people who do good more often than not still sin.  Sin has permeated all of creation, and its relational reality that covers all creation means that without God's help we cannot help but be effected by sin and become sinners ourselves.  We can only have the capacity to not sin when all sinning all together stops.

Of course, Luther gives a role for the Holy Spirit in providing us with the capacity to do good or to love God, but that does not take real account of those who are not Christian and still do good.  Luther talks about the appearance of good when there's actually evil at the core.  I would talk about the reality of doing good and still being permeated by the sin that effects all creation.  For me, this is how we are to understand that our best works are like "dirty rags;" we have not the capacity to fully clean them (by our ability they will always contain dirty even if we wash them 1000 times) or to keep them clean, but there is possibly clean spots on the rags.  Still, within that possibility there is the reality that God works with whole rags and doesn't chop of the clean parts as if that's all that matters or enough.  God redeems the whole body and doesn't just claim that one moment where you happened not to sin.

I should mention, prior to ending, is that this brings me to Luther's affirmation of the role of faith.  Because we all choose damnation, we all sin, we all walk away from God, we all are encompassed in this totality of sin that blankets creation (I know I hear American individualism yelling in my ears, but that may be a conversation for another day), Luther says all we can do is trust God.  God chooses all for salvation.  We all choose hell, but we trust God's choice is greater than ours.  We do not know whether we are going to salvation or damnation, but we trust the promises God has given us for life.  We in fact, as the ones who are not making the eternal judgment, trust that God's can fulfill God's desire to save the whole world and we live into that trust by considering the whole world saved.

More could always be said, but I feel I have not more at the moment even though this is not a great stopping point.  Just trust God to be God and let that trust rather than the fear evoked by sin rule your life.