I thought this piece by Pastor Adam Cooper was very well done indeed. Much food for thought and reflection. I have been, as every reader of this blog knows, been growing increasingly concerned that in well-intentioned efforts to distance "us" from God’s justification of us, some Lutherans have wandered into antinominianism. Cooper’s comments about Gnosticism are another way of talking about this concern.

Another Big Fish

By Adam G. Cooper

Monday, June 4, 2007,  8:37 AM

The bulk of the study is taken up with the question of
justification. Koons deftly unravels some of the terminological
confusion behind the impasse between the two communions, a fact not
sufficiently appraised in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification of 1999. Citing the ambiguities of the said declaration, Koons carefully examines what the terms faith and love mean to Lutherans and Roman Catholics respectively. Luther and the confessions often speak of faith very much in terms of what Roman teaching would indicate by love or hope.
For example, love, according to the Roman Catholic view, is essentially
a unifying power. It is that by which one adheres, clings, and joins
oneself to another. Isn’t this what Lutherans mean by faith? But then
this question arises: When Lutheran theology excludes “love” from
justifying faith, what in fact is being excluded?

Yet Koons is not so naïve as to think that no more is at stake than
mere style. Substantial differences are imbedded within the two
accounts. His question is, Are they church divisive? Koons’ analysis of
the Lutheran teaching on forensic justification raises a host of
pressing questions about the claims of Lutheranism to be more than just
corrective but truly catholic. How is it that a teaching so strongly
incarnational in principle is so pervasively idealist and nominalist in
practice? Just how does Lutheran theology go about describing
justification from the point of view of what happens bodily, in this or
that person?

Of course, conceptually, it is right, even necessary, to insist on a
strict distinction between justification and sanctification. Even Cyril
of Alexandria could have said the same about the two natures of
Christ—in the abstract! But concretely, is it possible to draw such a
hard and fast line? True enough, Lutheran theologians have always
admitted that the distinction between faith and works is more logical
than temporal. Perhaps Koons overstates the narrowness of the Lutheran
position when he represents the confessions as teaching that “no active
cooperation by us is involved” in our eventual transformation. Whatever
might be said in actual Lutheran preaching, however, the Formula of Concord
explicitly asserts a necessary synergy between the regenerate will and
the operations of the Holy Spirit. To refuse to cooperate is
effectively mortal.

Be that as it may, one cannot help but think Koons is on the mark
when he alerts us to the virtual gnosticism in the Lutheran position,
at least as it is commonly stated and practiced. Recall Augustine’s
famous line: While God created us without us, he doesn’t justify us
without us. But it is precisely creatio ex nihilo and Christ’s
resurrection from the dead that Lutheranism fastens onto as parallels
to God’s act of justifying sinners. I am not denying the fitness of the
analogies. After all, they are Pauline (Rom. 4: 17). But once again,
what would happen if we tried to read them “bodily” or, as it were,
“from below”: Who or what is justified, and to what end?

Similar concerns arise when one considers the insistence in forensic justification on all the real changes taking place coram Deo (before the face of God). Here again, Lutheran teaching is liable to tend toward abstraction. But where else is coram Deo
except in the concrete means of grace: baptism, absolution, the
sacrament of the altar? Locating our righteousness outside ourselves—in
the Christ personally present and active in those means—is fine. Koons
observes that epistemologically and phenomenologically speaking, this
emphasis is entirely accurate: imputed righteousness “is not
introspectible or internally ‘feelable.’” But in order to save, the
means of grace must still intersect with real people with real bodies
and intellects and wills. Surely it must be admitted that somehow we are involved, unless one approves of a gnostic disdain for the natural, creaturely order.

Koons has some salient points to make on sola scriptura as
well. In Lutheran teaching, each individual believer is obliged to
attach him- or herself to an orthodox congregation, using Scripture
alone as an evaluative norm. But this, says Koons, is “an impossible
burden.” In contrast, “on the Roman Catholic view, the individual
believer can recognize the true church, not only by examining its
doctrines one by one, but also by investigating its historical
connection (via a physical and social chain of transmission) to the
apostles.” Koons does not want to his readers to escape their
individual responsibility. His point is simply that doctrinal fidelity
cannot be separated from institutional unity as a mark of catholicity.

For all its charity, Koons’ study is not wholly uncritical of Roman
doctrine and practice. But his conclusions clearly have him coming down
on the far bank of the river. His difficulties, in the end, seem to
have less to do with what Lutheranism affirms and more to do with what
it denies. Significantly for Koons, the doubts first began when he
started reading the Church Fathers. In them he found that faith is
never alone, nor is Scripture rightly interpreted apart from the rule
of faith and its authorized teachers. And in one respect, Lutheranism
denies neither of these points. Which is why, I guess, Koons saw no
obstacle to renewing fellowship with Rome.

But speaking of the Fathers, I am still reminded of a hypothetical
situation proposed in the fourth century by John Chrysostom, precisely
to address the problem of ecclesial division. Suppose a new convert
were to approach you, wanting to become a true Christian, but is
confused and scandalized by the multitude of Christian denominations.
“Which teaching shall I choose?” he asks. “There is so much fighting
and faction among you!” To this, the Golden Mouthed Orator would have
us respond with what to me seems like a singularly Lutheran-sounding
answer: “Those that agree with the Scriptures are the true church.
Those that fight against the Scriptures are not.”

Adam G. Cooper is a pastor in the Lutheran Church of Australia and the author of The Body in St. Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified. His article “Redeeming Flesh” appeared in the May issue of First Things.