WRESTLING
ON THE CROSSROAD Edited by Jonathan Sorum
August 2020
www.ilt.edu 1
Wrestling on the Crossroad is the academic journal for ILT’s Doctor of Ministry program. This publication features D.Min. student research papers specifically selected for this journal. Copyright Š 2020 All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Institute of Lutheran Theology, Brookings, SD
Contents “Christ’s Communication of Attributes: A Remedy for the Two-Bodies of the King.”, Rodney Ford....................................................................................4
“CHRIST’S COMMUNICATION OF ATTRIBUTES: A REMEDY FOR THE TWO-BODIES OF THE KING.” By Rodney Ford
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Introduction In the secular age in which we live, our Western, post-Enlightenment culture seems consumed with its own consumption of things, resources, and one another. If we are not consuming things, we are holding them in reserve for some future use or exploring how to leverage them against a challenge we face. Heidegger suggests this is not the mere stock-piling of resources but is related to how we know and perceive the world in which we live.1 For example, a river may be seen as a source of power for cities but throughout human history, this way of comprehending rivers is relatively recent; there are many other ways in which rivers have presented themselves. In this context, where everything seems to present itself as an answer to one’s personal needs, there is still the need to pursue something more, something transcendent, some experience that reaches beyond normal human flourishing.2 Taylor raises important questions about where we seek out this transcendence. He points to three ways in which we seek out this flourishing: 1) through creating and building; 2) through moral and ethical motives; and 3) through the aesthetic, where experiences of art and nature have a deeper meaning and significance.3 Taylor refers to these three observations as “fields of polarization or cross pressure” and connects their appearance in our culture to the decline of religion and the subtraction of the supernatural.4 Because these fields of cross pressure are ways in which we seek transcendence from within ourselves, Taylor goes on to describe the secularity of our context in terms of immanentization. While Taylor doesn’t call it out, one of my own observations of this immanentization occurs within suffering. In an immanentized experience of suffering, it seems common among us to seek out the meaning and purpose of our own suffering. It is as if we cannot bear the suffering or accept it unless it holds a transcendent experience for us. Sometimes the goal seems to be to find relief from the suffering through figuring out what God is doing or what he wants the sufferer to do. We pursue this immanentization through questions like, “Does God want me to change jobs or retire?” or “What is God’s will in this situation?” This type of immanentization is related to how we know and perceive the world. It is representative of the way we understand how we fit into the world as well as who and where God is. Immanentization brings a perception that we are the creators who create meaning, living in a world governed by natural laws, while God is a distant resource, standing in reserve to meet our needs. But the God of the Bible is not standing in reserve nor does he shy away from the fact of suffering. In the Scriptures, we read narratives and poems of individuals who sometimes suffer,
1 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, in Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell ed., New York: HarperCollins, 1993, p. 322. Emphasis added. 2 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2007, p. 44. 3 Taylor, p. 596. I see an important connection between Heidegger’s observation about things or phenomena standing in reserve for us and Taylor’s observation of creating and building as sources of transcendence for us. 4 Taylor, p. 597, 542.
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even though God is interacting in their lives. God never presents himself as a distant resource, waiting to meet our needs. Rather, God reveals himself to be near the sufferer, giving himself for the sufferer. He comes to us and calls us to come to him (Matthew 11:28-30), not to unlock the secret mystery of his will but to give us himself. In the modern experience of secularity, 1) the cross pressures, 2) the subtraction of the supernatural, 3) our search for the secret will of God, and 4) our sense that God is a distant resource standing in reserve to make us happy, leads us into moralistic therapeutic deism. Here we try to understand where the Biblical principles for life have failed and our fragmented faith seeks to understand “what God is saying” when we do not get our way.5 It seems that we know that things are not the way they are supposed to be, we deserve better, God wants me to feel good, so I must figure out the reason for this trial. Caught in a world where the supernatural is subtracted, sufferers are left to look for a new principle in Scripture so they may regain their comfort. In this way, the experience of suffering seems to be a context that amplifies the way in which we try to look into the spiritual realm, “look around Christ” to see more of God, so that one may better understand “his plan for my life.” I believe that Luther’s understanding of the communicatio idiomatum (communication of attributes) and how it shaped his Christology opens a pathway to a remedy for this particular immanentization. It was Luther’s understanding of the communicatio idiomatum shaped Melanchthon’s explanation of the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper (Article VII) in the Formula of Concord (SD). And because Luther’s understanding of the communicatio idiomatum was central to his understanding of the Incarnation of Christ, the impact of this doctrine reverberates throughout the Lutheran confessions. In this paper, I will explore this immanentization and its remedy in the context of ministry among professional athletes, particularly minor league hockey players. While that will be the particular context, I believe this immanentization is evident in the church regardless of career field and that the remedy discussed is applicable across contexts. Professional Athletes The journey toward becoming a professional athlete begins at a very young age. Ericsson has shown that athletes that reach professional levels typically invest nearly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, which he defines as trying activities beyond one’s current abilities.6 But an athlete does not simply practice and automatically become elite among their peers. Athletics also requires cognitive abilities and physical attributes that contribute to athletic performance.
5 Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 162-163. In this book one of the ways the authors describe moralistic therapeutic deism is that the main goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. 6 K. Anders Ericsson, “Training history, deliberate practice and elite sports performance: An analysis in response to Tucker and Collins Review – ‘What makes champions?,’” British Journal of Sports Medicine, 47, 533-535, 2013.
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As young athletes begin to stand out from the crowd, they get opportunities to participate in their sport with other elite performers in front of larger and larger crowds. In these crowds, individuals, for whatever reason, become fans or antagonists of specific players. Sometimes one may be a fan/antagonist because of the logo on a jersey or an important win or loss or even a mistake made in the course of a game. At some point in their careers, professional/elite athletes learn to protect themselves from teammates, opponents, spectators, and even parents. Retired professional hockey player Patrick O’Sullivan writes that his father beat him regularly in order to try to make him stronger and tougher on the ice. He writes, “From the moment I got my first pair of hockey skates at five years old, I got the living **** kicked out of me every single day. Every day after hockey, no matter how many goals I scored, he would hit me. The man was 6- foot-2, 250 lbs. It would start as soon as we got in the car, and sometimes right out in the parking lot.”7 Elite athletes quickly learn that some people don’t have their best interest in mind. On most elite teams, everyone around them has something to gain (e.g. money, prestige, better job) because of the players’ performance. Not only do those near the athlete value them for their performance, players themselves learn to get their own significance and value from playing their sport. Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder refer the degree to which someone looks to others for acknowledgement of their athletic achievement as “athletic identity.”8 Perhaps unique among the various self-identities that may be connected to performance, this athletic identity is not limited only to athletes or even those inside the sport such as coaches, trainers, and general managers. Fans, some of whom have never played sports, adopt an athletic identity based on the performance of the teams they love. This athletic identity extends even to the cities which are affiliated with a team. For example, consider the Cleveland Browns. In 1995, owner Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore and renamed it the Baltimore Ravens. After a legal battle with the city of Cleveland, the NFL agreed to a compromise in which Modell was able to retain the Browns personnel, but Cleveland retained the Browns name, intellectual property, and the history of the team (e.g. championships, records). Three years later, the Cleveland Browns franchise relaunched with an expansion team. As the Cleveland Browns example shows, professional, and in some cases college, athletic teams have an identity associated with the current players and staff, but there is also an identity that is associated with the body politic.
The athlete or team, in this way, can represent the ideologies and values of a nation or locality and cometo stand as a symbol of the power, intelligence, and will of the people through their triumphs on the field of play. In the way that armies, firefighters, and police forces represent nations and localities through their discipline and triumphs on battlefields and success in defeating crime, fires, and
7 Patrick O’Sullivan, “Black and Blue,” The Players Tribune, January 25, 2016. 8 B.W. Brewer, J.L. Van Raalte, & D.E. Linder. “Athletic Identity: Hercules’ Muscles or Achilles Heel?” International Journal of Sport Psychology, 24, 237-254, 1993.
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enemies, the physical achievements of individual athletes and teams represent the power, will, cunning, intelligence, and perseverance of the nation or locality.9
In this way athletic teams have taken on some of the characteristics of the “Two Bodies of the King.” Two Bodies of the King Kantorowicz shows that the “Two Bodies of the King” is a concept articulated in 19th century law to define the authority and perfection of the king in the body politic while unifying that with the natural body of the king. The body politic “is utterly void of Infancy, and old Age, and other natural Defects and Imbecilities, which the natural body is subject to, and for this Cause, what the King does in his Body politic, cannot be invalidated or frustrated by any Disability in his natural Body.”10 Kantorowicz further clarifies that the Two Bodies of the King form “one indivisible unit, each fully contained in the other” and that the body politic is superior to the natural body.11 The point of this “abstract, physiological fiction” is to establish the authority of the king, protect the king from error by creating a perfect entity, and to address the problem of the mortality of the king by creating a continuity between kings in the body politic.12 It is here that this Two Bodies of the King motif also connects to Taylor’s immanentization; it’s an immanentization of power, immortality, divine authority and rights, meaningfulness through aesthetic experience, and morality/perfection in lived experience. Professional team sports have many of the same characteristics for a community. The team has an athletic identity that continues beyond the individual players on the field. As players get injured, retire, or replaced the immortality, power, and perfection of the team continues to live on. Even though the core eight players of Cincinnati Reds’ Big Red Machine are now retired, the legacy of back-to-back World Series titles lives on through fans, records, logos, halls of fame, statues, and uniforms. For the community, the professional “body of the king” lives on each time the Reds take the field. While Kantorowicz summarizes the concept of the Two Bodies of the King using 19th Century English law, he doesn’t suggest this was the beginning of the concept. Describing the full scope of this concept will only distract from the task of this paper without adding additional valuable information. However, some additional summary information is important: • The Two Bodies concept arises from a misapplication of the theology of the Athanasian Creed and the Lord’s Supper13
9 Mark Sawyer and Cory Gooding, “Racism, Body Politics, and Football,” in A Companion to Sport, eds. David Andrews and Ben Carrington, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, p. 166. 10 Ernst Kantorowicz, The Kings Two Bodies: a Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Princeton, N.J. ; Oxford: Princeton University Pres, 1957, p. 7. Kantorowicz is quoting Edmund Plowden’s Commentaries or Reports published in London in 1816. Punctuation and capitalization are from Kantorowicz’s quotation. 11 Kantorowicz, p. 9. 12 Kantorowicz, p. 5, 11. 13 Kantorowicz, p. 16-17.
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• In this model, the consecration rite of the king mimicked the sacrament, making the monarch into God-man14 • Just as the humanity of Christ was eventually removed from some theologies, the humanity of the king was also removed15 • Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a first century philosopher and playwright, applies the Two Bodies concept to other vocations, for example, suggesting the pilot of a passenger ship both passenger at risk and pilot with authority and responsibility16 Reed shows that while modern governments no longer consecrate a king as divine, there remains a body politic and a culture with representation that includes delegation, legitimizing violence, hierarchy, uncertain sacredness, and a culture where each person is his or her own king.17 Once again we can see these characteristics in professional sports where violence is legitimized as “the game policing itself;” a hierarchy of athletes based on performance, and a strange sacredness to the game and the field of play (sometimes referred to as “hallowed ground”). Reviewing this summary of the King’s Two Bodies concept, particularly the way it seeks to address imperfection, power, mortality, values, and bodily disabilities, it’s easy to see why Sawyer and Gooding suggest that athletic teams, along with firefighters, armies, and police forces are important components of the modern body politic. But these concepts apply to the groups named here, while our concern is with the individuals (e.g. athletes) who experience the Two Body concept from a different perspective. Frye argues that players have also taken on some of the characteristics of the “Two Bodies of the King” through their use of their rights to privacy and publicity. Through an analysis of the right to privacy given to baseball players who wanted to protect their likeness from baseball card publishers, Frye suggests the contrast between the right to privacy and the right to publicity are a type of Two Bodies for the athlete.18 In the former, the athlete seeks to protect his identity and likeness, while in the latter the athlete seeks to control public opinion so that he/she can maximize the profit from the sale of their likeness. Frye points out that in the laws that shape these rights, the right to publicity is transferable (like that of the role of the king) while the right to privacy is not (like the mortal body of the king). Through serving five seasons as a chaplain for Hockey Ministries International, I’ve observed that minor league professional hockey players do not have the opportunities to profit from their likeness on trading cards but they have other contexts in which to consider the use of their likeness, status, and fame (even if limited to a relatively small population). When minor league hockey players are under contract with NHL teams or their affiliates, some of them may have opportunities to endorse products on social media.
14 Kantorowicz, p. 46 15 Kantorowicz, p. 93. 16 Kantorowicz, p. 498. 17 Isaac A. Reed, “The King’s Two Bodies and the Crisis of Liberal Modernity,” The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Fall 2019, p. 6-8. 18 Brian L. Frye, “The Athlete’s Two Bodies: Reflections on the Ontology of Celebrity.” INCITE Journal of Experimental Media, Issue 7/8: Sports, 2016-2017.
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Some minor league hockey players also have their name and likeness used in video games such as NHL 2019 created by EA Sports. These contracts are negotiated through the players unions and agents. Further considering the right to publicity, minor league hockey players also leverage their status as professional athletes to gain access to events (e.g. concerts), membership clubs (e.g. workout locations), free products (e.g. nutritional supplements, equipment), and other professional athletes or celebrities (e.g. authors). Turning toward the right to privacy, professional athletes, including minor league hockey players, don’t wear team gear in public. They are also very selective about who they tell what they do for a living. Interestingly, players often turn away from those who only talk to them about their sport rather than about who they are off the ice as well. This is a sharp contrast when compared to other professions such as the business professional who do not shy away from talking about their jobs and broad-room deals. If the rights to publicity and privacy are related to the King’s Two Bodies framework, social media has given all of us an opportunity to have these two bodies. One example is Facebook’s feature that allows a user to designate a person to convert their page to a perpetual memorial site upon death. This feature essentially provides the immortality of the body politic to an individual in the social media space. While Frye makes a thorough analysis of the impacts of rights to privacy and publicity in light of the celebrity of athletes, his analysis is limited to the history of legal battles related to the use of a player’s likeness in order to make a profit (e.g. baseball cards). More information is needed to more fully understand the dualism that the Two Bodies of the King concept creates for us in post-Enlightenment cultures. In a phenomenological analysis of celebrity, Rockwell and Giles examined celebrity in relationship with one’s self, with others, and the psychological concerns related to celebrity. Through their study they found that “being famous leads to loss of privacy, entitization, demanding expectations, gratification of ego needs, and symbolic immortality.”19 The study also found that celebrity leads to concerns about family impact, “mistrust, isolation, and an unwillingness to give up fame.”20 Rockwell and Giles findings included not only wealth and access but also demanding expectations, gratification of ego needs, and symbolic immortality. These characteristics parallel important characteristics or goals of the Two Bodies of the King, including: protecting from error and the problem of mortality. Rockwell and Giles identification of demanding expectations
19 Donna Rockwell and David Giles, “Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 40 (2009) 178–210, p. 1. Rockwell and Giles introduce the term entitization, but it is a concept we encountered at the outset of this discussion when I described Heidegger’s understanding of how we experience the presentation of things as standing in reserve to meet out needs. Heidegger calls it “standing in reserve” but it’s the same concept articulated as entitization in Rockwell and Giles. 20 Rockwell and Giles, p. 1.
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seem to specifically parallel Reed’s legitimization of violence and Hamann’s identification of monarchic reason in his critique of the Enlightenment.21 In these studies, phenomena like loss of privacy, entitization, demanding expectations, gratification of ego needs, and symbolic immortality seem abstract but in the narrative of a life lived in professional sports they indicate suffering. Fans, collectors, and merchandisers entitize players, demanding player success for their own benefit (e.g. pride, financial gain). But there are also more personal struggles. For example, when players don’t get playing time, the gratification of ego needs applies pressure in ways that they express as a loss of significance; it feels like mortality. Through loss of playing time or loss of status in the game, players experience their greatest fear of imperfection and the effects of age on their physical abilities. A player can be replaced by the next guy in line, while the sport and the game continue without them. From this vantage point players are reduced to resources standing in reserve for use until they lose their usefulness for someone else’s benefit. During five seasons as a chaplain serving a minor league hockey team, every player that I’ve discussed this loss of significance with has mentioned asking for a trade or retiring from the game. In this tentatio, they ask questions of God that seek to understand his hidden purposes and what they have to do to fix the problem, to get relief from the suffering. For players, inside the game is the place where they seek a feeling of transcendence (something beyond normal human flourishing), but this is actually an immanentization where they seek transcendence in an aesthetic experience. When looked at as a whole, the characteristics of the Two Bodies of the King concept is not limited to professional athletes but is part of our secularity in a post-Enlightenment culture. All of these characteristics seem to be in response to Enlightenment project’s goal of mastery over the human condition.22 Reed also points to the differentiation of our lives, “The modern human moves through myriad spheres, orientations, or value sets—law, art, science, eros, economy, politics—which are on different and often conflicting trajectories because they are not contained beneath or held together by a sacred canopy.”23 This differentiation is contained within the Two Bodies dualism and our attempts to gain mastery over our own condition through anything that seems to provide a sense of immortality, gratification of ego, and a façade of perfection that meets the demands of our expectations (a form of monarchic reason). Here, within the attraction of the Two Bodies of the King we seek to give up our own personal stories and replace it with the body politic, a metanarrative that conforms to the cultural story (e.g. hockey culture, social media culture, business culture, religion culture). In seeking to respond to our own fear, we cover ourselves and disappear into the metanarrative. This metanarrative of our cultures focuses our attention on questions like:
21 Oswald Bayer, A Contemporary in Dissent: Johann Georg Hamann as a Radical Enlightener, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012, Kindle location 650. 22 Michael Atkinson, “Heidegger, Parkour, Post-sport, and the Essence of Being,” in A Companion to Sport. Edited by David Andrews, and Ben Carrington, 359-374. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, p. 359. 23 Reed, p. 3.
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• Why am I different? • Why am I suffering? • How can I gain significance and acceptance? • What do I need to fix? • Who is in my way? • Who can I use to get what I want or believe I need? (or stated differently, Who has the power I can leverage?) Initially, these questions seem self-referential but looking more closely at them we see they arise out of the comparison with others. Kierkegaard warns us, “where a decisive importance is attached to the fact that there is a crowd, there no one is working, living, and striving for the highest end, but only for this or that earthly end;….”24 The philosopher goes on to remind us that this comparing of ourselves to others leads us to untruth. Why untruth? I’ve already described how the crowd around us—our cultural context—has subtracted the supernatural and how we’ve come to rely on seeking transcendence in the cross pressures we have created. These comparative questions based on the opinions of others, allow the crowd to set the standard and shape our self-understanding and our theology. In the crowd, God becomes an impersonal source of cause and effect who hides “his will.” As the metanarrative of our cultures shapes our theology, we rely on our own reason and strength, identifying principles for living in our metanarrative successfully, and to attempt to look into another realm for the “real God” who seems to be a distant enigma. Creating our own perfection and immortality through the Two Bodies characteristics, we look to God to confirm our own metanarrative. This type of suffering is a cyclical trap that feeds on itself with seemingly no escape. There is no escape unless God has become human. Communicatio Idiomatum Certainly, God has become human (John 1:1-14; Matthew 1:18-23; Luke 2:1-20) and this would not be disputed or doubted by those who attempt to find God in another realm as an entry way into the post-modern metanarrative where every day is filled with a wealth of possibilities and opportunities to thrive.25 Those that seek to find God in another realm are making faulty assumptions about who Christ is and where he is. I believe they have forfeited the human nature of Christ while seeking to know only his divine nature in omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, separated from his humanity.
24 Soren Kierkegaard, “The Crowd is Untruth.” Translated by C.K. Bellinger. https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Kierkegaard/kierkegaard_the_crowd_is_untruth.html, accessed on May 31, 2020. 25 O. Bayer, “Creation as History,” in Gift of Grace, edited by Niels Henrik Gregersen, et. al., Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005, p. 261.
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The Council of Chalcedon in 451 “declared that Christ must be confessed ‘in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.’”26 This confession of Christ shapes our Christology in a way that challenges us to never forfeit the humanity of Christ. The Lutheran Confessions, particularly the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord (SD), offer guidance that helps us proclaim Christ so that congregants may ponder and include themselves personally in the “you” of Word and Sacrament.27 “The task of the hearers in this process of formation is to join in carrying out the homiletical-visual communication and to imagine not only its words but also the divine saving kindness and promises tucked into them.”28 The hearer of the proclamation must encounter Christ as pure promise for him or her. Even before Chalcedon, these two natures of Christ had been formulated in a way that further described the interaction between the natures. “And this is the manner of the mutual communication: each nature gives in exchange to the other its own properties through the identity of the subsistence and the interpenetration of the parts with one another.”29 This communicatio idiomatum (or the communication of attributes) is a critical component within SD Articles VII and VIII as well as Luther’s “doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, anthropology, the doctrine of justification, scriptural hermeneutics, rhetoric, the theology of pastoral care, and the theology of creation.”30 While the Two-Bodies-of-the-King perspective creates a version of God that is separate from humanity and cut off from the world, the communicatio idiomatum reveals that God is this- worldly. The supernatural may be subtracted from our Western context but that does not negate the coming of God into this world for us.31 “Because of this union and communion God is a human being and a human being is God.”32 While the Two-Bodies-of-the-King perspective creates a version of humanity that is striving to ascend to God, the communicatio idiomatum reminds us that God descends to us.33 “He is - I am with you always, till the close of the age - he was - the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth - he will be - Behold, I come, is written of me in the book. Come, Lord Jesus!”34 The confession of the Council of Chalcedon prevents us from seeing the two natures of Christ separately—we see and know only the divine Word who is a human being.
26 Charles P. Arand, The Lutheran Confessions, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012, p. 48. 27 Timothy Wengert and Robert Kolb. “The Large Catechism: Sacrament of the Altar,” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000, p. 473. Hereafter referred to as LC. LC V, 65. 28 Johann Anselm Steiger, “The Communicatio Idiomatum as the Axle and Motor of Luther’s Theology.” Lutheran Quarterly 19 (2000): 125–58, p. 132. 29 Steiger, p. 126. Steiger credits John Damascene with this quotation from “the three Cappadocians in the fourth century.” According to Steiger the English quotation is from John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, trans S D F Salmond, vol 9 of NPNF, page 49 (Book III, chapter 4). 30 Steiger, p. 125. 31 Giorgio Agamben. The Time that Remains. Translated by Patricia Dailey. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005, p. 42. 32 SD VIII, 19. 33 H. Gaylon Barker, The Cross of Reality: Luther’s Theologia Crucis and Bonhoeffer’s Christology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2015, p. 390. Barker does not have the Two Bodies of the King in view, he references Bonhoeffer’s call for us to live without our caricatures of God, so that we can know God for us. 34 Bayer, A Contemporary in Dissent, p. 203.
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Article VII of the SD describes three modes of Christ’s presence: 1) the corporeal mode of presence which refers to when Christ walked on earth and occupied a particular space. “He can still employ this mode of presence when he wills to do so, as he did after his resurrection and as he will do so on the Last Day….”35 2) The spiritual mode of presence in which he does not occupy space but passes through everything created as he wills.36 3) The divine, heavenly mode in which “all created things are indeed much more permeable and present to him than they are according to the second mode. … where they are present to him so that he measures and circumscribes them.”37 It is this third mode of presence, where creation is permeable and present to Christ, that will be the focus of the presence of God for us throughout this paper. Considering this third mode, Luther offers a caution, “Although he is present in all creatures, and I might find him in stone, in fire, in water, or even in a rope, for he is certainly there, yet he does not wish that I seek him there apart from the Word, …. Grope rather where the Word is, and there you will lay hold of him in the right way.”38 Anthony adds, “In other words, the third mode of Christ’s presence is not a speculative, a priori category of the theologian of the glory, but an a posteriori confession of the theologian of the cross—justified by faith—who has discerned God’s modus operandi through the cross where God has definitively chosen to reveal himself.”39 The communicatio idiomatum is not something we can know by our own reason and strength but is a confession of faith based on the Word of God given to us. We cannot figure this out on our own, but the Gospel given us must transform how we know and perceive the world in which we live as permeable and present to God-become-human. When we try to understand the Chalcedonian Formula or the communicatio idiomatum out of our reason and strength we tend avoid its implication that in Christ, God is a human being. We separate the natures so far apart that we function as if 1) God’s humanity is meaningless for me, turning it into an abstract principle; 2) the human nature died on the cross but only the divine nature resurrected; 3) the human nature got lost or shed in the ascension of Christ; or 4) the seating of Christ at the right hand of the Father necessarily means that he can no longer be near us. Luther specifically addressed this fourth idea in writing against the Sacramentarians, when he states the right hand of God is not a place but is the power of God that fills heaven and earth.40 From here the communicatio idiomatum unfolds, showing three important points about the two natures of Christ:
35 Timothy Wengert and Robert Kolb. “Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord,” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000, p. 610. Hereafter referred to as SD. SD VII, 99. The three modes of presence are also described in Luther’s Confession Concerning Christ’s Super (LW 37:151-372). 36 SD VII, 100. 37 SD VII, 101. 38 LW 36:342 39 Neal J. Anthony, Cross Narratives: Martin Luther’s Christology and the Location of Redemption, Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010, Kindle location 3966. 40 SD VIII, 28.
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1. Because the two natures remain unmixed and unchanged yet united in a single person, the characteristics of each nature are ascribed to the whole person who is God and human. The characteristics are not separated from the person.41 2. The person, Jesus Christ, accomplishes his work through both natures, “or as the Council of Chalcedon says, each nature does its work in communion with the other.”42 3. While the divine nature remained unchanged after Jesus was glorified, the human nature was changed. Because of the union of the human nature with the divine in the person of Christ, when he was glorified the human nature received “special, high, great, supernatural, incomprehensible, indescribable heavenly prerogatives and privileges in majesty, glory, power, and might over all things that can be named not only in this world but also in the world to come [Eph 1:20-21].”43 The SD also includes three more important points that guide our understanding of the communicatio idiomatum and ensure us that this is not simply a semantic exercise or a metaphysical principle but reveals the truth about Christ: 1. According to the Bible, that which Christ received in time (that is while on earth) he received according to his assumed human nature.44 2. The Gospel of John chapters five and six teach us that the power to make alive and exercise judgement was given to Christ because he is the Son of Man, “and, as such, has flesh and blood.”45 3. John’s first epistle teaches us that both Christ’s divine nature and his human nature are efficacious in the work of justification (1 John 1:7). The SD goes on to point out that based on the Gospel of John (6:48-58), the Council of Ephesus concluded that the flesh of Christ has the power to give life.46 The doctrine of communicatio idiomatum never allows us to separate the two natures of Christ, whether we are teaching of earthly life or his post-resurrection presence with us. So that when Christ teaches that he is present where two or three are gathered (Matthew 18:20) or that he is always with us (Matthew 28:20), the entire person of Christ is present in the Christian church and community.47 In this way the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum prevents us from seeking God’s majesty by cutting away the human.48 But we must also not cut away the divine; for we must never forget that Christ is the Son of God.
41 SD VIII, 36. 42 SD VIII, 46. 43 SD VIII, 51. 44 SD VIII, 57. 45 SD VIII, 58. 46 SD VIII, 59, 76. 47 SD VIII, 77-78. 48 Anthony, Kindle location 3482.
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Because the Two-Bodies-of-the-King philosophy pushes us to look into another realm for Christ, I’ve focused the discussion so far on what the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum teaches us about the humanity of Christ. But it should also be pointed out that this communicatio idiomatum also means that whatever we ascribe to the human nature can also be ascribed to God. So, “that whatever is said of Jesus as a man is simultaneously said of him as God” and vice-versa.49 Or as the SD states it, “… he had become a human being like us, so that it could be called: God’s dying, God’s martyrdom, God’s blood, and God’s death. For God in his own nature cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is called God’s death when the man dies who is one entity or one person with God.”50 The doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum shows that God is not hidden in some other realm or some unknowable enigma but that he is near us not only because of the third mode of Christ’s presence but because he is like us (Hebrews 2:10-18; 4:14-16; 5:7-10)—flesh and blood, bone and marrow. God humbled himself to become human, and to die for us and our salvation. But the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum is not limited only to the communication of attributes within the person of Christ but extends to a communication of attributes between God and the baptized. Steiger suggests, “Thus, just as the two-natures ‘metaphysic’ is ‘soteriologically historicized’ for the sake of the pro nobis, so also all things which are stated with reference to the human nature of Christ may also be simultaneously referred to the one who is baptized into Christ, creating a perichoresis between Christ and human which is analogous to the perichoresis of natures in the person of Christ.”51 In this way, our mortality, fear, imperfections, powerlessness, and even our striving to be God is communicated to Christ; while his righteousness, immortality and glory are communicated to us who are in Christ.52 All of the yearnings and demands and fears that we seek to remedy through the Two-Bodies-of-the-King is given us in Christ. While all of those yearnings, demands, and fears are given to him. The very things we seek through immanentization are given us through faith in Christ because God took on human nature for us. In this communication of attributes with the baptized, the imperfections, mortality, and even our immanentization is exchanged for the righteousness of Christ and his immortality. In a sermon on John 14:20, Luther calls this the “Joyful Exchange.” By faith you also come to be in Me with your death, sin, and every trouble. If you are sinful in yourselves, you are justified in Me; if you feel death in you, you have life in Me; if you have strife in you, you have peace in Me; if you stand condemned on your own account, you are blessed and saved in Me.” For, my dear man, where am I if I am a Christian? Nowhere else than where Christ is. But where else is He but in heaven, in eternal life, joy, and bliss? And He, of course, will not be condemned to death as a sinner any longer. Since no sin can accuse
49 Anthony, Kindle location 3689. 50 SD VIII, 44. 51 Anthony, Kindle location 3614. 52 Steiger, p. 128
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Him, no devil can damn Him, no death can consume Him, no hell can devour Him, I must remain undamned and undevoured; for I am in Him. “Consequently, sin, death, and every trouble in you are gone. For all this I destroy in Myself.” It cannot abide in Him, since He is and remains in the Father. And it can have no power in us either, because we are in Him.53 When the fear of what we see in this world tempts us to look for another realm, our gaze is actually being cast inward as we seek to be our own creators and redeemers. Rather than seek God we are actually seeking transcendence in the immanent for our own power, immortality, and legitimization while hiding our imperfections and weaknesses. But in faith we can turn to the promise of God in Christ, who is not sitting idle but is fighting our enemies and taking them captive so that they cannot harm us.54 In this exchange the “two bodies” are united in one person as we become the human Christ has made us to be. As one baptized in Christ, neither the hockey player nor the pastor nor the teacher can be shaken by the end of a career, loss of status, or critique by an antagonist. No death can consume who we are in Christ. Gift and Promise But the Two-Bodies-of-the-King problem is more than simply seeking immortality and perfection. As I alluded to above, it is also a seeking of a metanarrative that serves to make sense out of the chaos, responding to God as an enigma to be figured out. This side of the Two-Bodies-of-the-King problem is not a following-of-Christ in response to his Word, rather it is a way to make sense of the world and establish our own order.55 In this way, the world assumed and shaped by the Two-Bodies-of-the-King problem is something other than promise and pledge from God. Through the Son of Man given for us we can know and perceive the world in which we live as a gift from God. Bayer’s exposition of Luther’s Small Catechism (SC) and the Reformer’s interpretation of Psalm 33:4b provides an important guide that helps us know and perceive the world as pledge and promise from God rather than a chaos to be calmed or controlled. Bayer points out that the Creed article in the SC’s discussion of creation, methodically describes the world as gift given us, before speaking of God’s goodness and mercy.56 The gift for us is emphasized through the detail and placement of the description before the description of God’s attributes. This portion of the SC states: I believe that God has made me together with all that exists. God has given me and still preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason, and mental faculties. In addition, God daily and abundantly provides shoes and clothing, food and drink, house and farm, spouse and children, fields, livestock, and all property—along with all the necessities and nourishment for this body and
53 LW 24:141–142.” 54 Steiger, p. 136. Steiger references AA 3.752b.753a. 55 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 258. 56 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 253-254.
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life. God protects me against all danger and shields and preserves me from all evil. And this is all done out of pure, fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine at all! For all of this I owe it to God to thank and praise, serve and obey him. This is most certainly true.57 Notice how slowly the passage moves through God’s gifts, and the depth of detail provided in described how God makes, sustains, and protects “me.” All of this is described before God’s attributes are mentioned. Through the lens of the SC we see that even the gifts of God are his promises to us rather than a problem to solved or chaos to be controlled. Bayer also points out that Luther’s translation of Psalm 33:4b interprets God’s work as pledge and promise.58 Compare Luther’s translation with the NRSV: Psalm 33:4 in the NRSV: “For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.” Psalm 33:4 from Luther’s translation: “For the word of the Lord is truthful, and what he promises he certainly keeps.”59 For Luther and Bayer, creation is a linguistic event in which God gives himself and his promise. “For Luther, God’s trustworthy, faith-creating address, his promissio, is not only the fundamental category when speaking of the sacraments and the sermon, but also in view in the realm of creation…. It is an effective word of address—a work through which God’s truthfulness can be heard; it is a pledge and a promise.”60 For Bayer and Luther, creation is an address from the Creator to the creature, in which God gives himself. The attributes of God are not only on display; they are given in the linguistic event of creation so that the creature can pass them on to other creatures.61 But the presupposition of the body politic is one that rejects this word of address and its promise. The body politic experiences the world as chaos that must be calmed and controlled; a world in which the body politic has the right and responsibility to demand its control through monarchic reason. From this presupposition, creation is experienced as a forcing law that demands the establishment of order.62 So the body politic searches for clarity beyond the word of address from God. “Lutheran theology, on the other hand, without confining God’s freedom, interprets the reality of creation mainly as a communicative connection. It is not only in the redemption of the world, but
57 Timothy Wengert and Robert Kolb. “The Small Catechism: Creed,” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000, p. 354-355. Hereafter referred to as SC. SC Creed, 2. 58 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 258. 59 Taken from Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 258. 60 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 257-258. 61 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 258. 62 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 258.
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already in its creation that God humbles himself, pours himself out, fully and wholly gives himself away.”63 It seems that, in time, God has always been giving himself fully and wholly for us. The creation that we live and move within daily is a presentation of God’s giving of himself for us. God is pure gift for us. Two-Bodies of the King Remedy Given this perspective that God is pure gift for us as evidenced in creation and the communicatio idiomatum, Bayer recalls again the Enlightenment’s project of mastery over the human condition and poses his own question. A question that is critical for our project. He writes, “Who or what keeps me from getting lost in their ambivalence and uncertainty in the face of my own failure or of the death of whole peoples?”64 This question is important because it captures so much of the human condition that the Two-Bodies-of-the-King motif seeks to fix. Without this question, even with knowing about God as pure gift we will still depend on the metanarrative in which we live to guide us. We will still be left with the self-reliant questions posed above. When the culture of immanentization thrives around us and its desires thrive within us, we will always seek a metanarrative that tries to resolve the chaos it creates. But the Small Catechism reminds us that God’s gift of creation and his sustainment is for me (pro me). This pure gift is for me within my own narrative, where God calls me and comes to me. It is into our personal narrative that God says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). This is a very personal call to come to Christ, to come out of the metanarrative and into a personal narrative that is centered in the One who calls. The histories proclaimed in Scripture through genres such as poetry, sermons, and narrative do not pull me to: • an abstract principle designed to meet my every felt need; • a leader who has the answers; • a caricature of God based on the cultural metanarrative; • or a moralistic reasoning that finds freedom in comparing degrees of imperfection. “In no way do we talk of placing ourselves at the center of (hi)stories that would thus become history (in the singular!), such as to self-referentially produce the origin and the goal and to become creators ourselves.”65 Rather the call to the weary and burdened is a call to “a wholly specific key event: it is the word that became flesh, imparting itself to (me).”66
63 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 259. 64 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 261. 65 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 262. 66 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 263.
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Within the Two-Bodies-of-the-King motif, I am drawn to the metanarrative of the body politic where I am deceived into seeking power through monarchic reason, hiding my imperfections as I stand in judgment, and claiming immortality through the publicity I shape for myself. But when we hear the Word of God as pledge and promise in Christ we no longer have to seek, hide, or claim in these ways. When the Son of Man calls us, no death can consume who we are in Christ. Hamann experienced this hearing of the Word as pledge and promise within his own personal narrative through Deuteronomy chapter 5 and Genesis chapter 4. “All at once, I felt my heart swell, and engulfed in tears, I could no longer - I could no longer hide from my God that I was the fratricide, the murderer of his only begotten Son. The Spirit of God proceeded, notwithstanding my great weakness, notwithstanding the long resistance, which I had earlier made against his witness and his moving, to reveal to me more and more the mystery of divine love and the benefit of faith in our gracious and only Savior.”67 As Hamann encountered the Word of God he realized he was being interpreted by the Word and he no longer needed to hide. God came to Hamann not in some cultural metanarrative seeking conformity but in his own history. And within that personal history revealed the truth of his weariness and burdens and then transformed his narrative into a Christ-centered one. “God is met in histories and through them interprets the one who hears them in such a way that the hearer is changed, becomes a new being.”68 Christ has come into my narrative for me and gives himself to me in the midst of my weariness and burdens. “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I am now living in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 EHV) Conclusion So, it is our task to proclaim God as pure gift for on congregants in a way that they may encounter Christ as the Interpreter of their narrative. In this encounter with Christ through Word and Sacrament, the presence of Christ will make them present. This encounter makes us present as the Word imparts himself to each of us individually.69 In this encounter we will know that: • The call to Come to Christ is a specific call pro me • Our own histories are permeable and present to Christ • God is not an enigma nor a principle • The Joyful Exchange gives us all of Christ within our own history pro me • God is pure gift for us and our neighbor The communicatio idiomatum means that as Christ makes us new, we can give his goodness and mercy to our neighbors. As Christ lives in us through the communicatio idiomatum, our
67 Bayer, A Contemporary in Dissent, Kindle Locations 743-745. Bayer cites Hamann’s “Thoughts about My Life” in Smith, 54 (N II, 40, 25-41, 30). 68 Bayer, A Contemporary in Dissent, Kindle Locations 751-752. 69 Bayer, “Creation as History,” p. 263.
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neighbors are no longer in our way or nothing more than resources for gaining power, immortality, nor a reason to present a faรงade of perfection. My neighbor is now one for whom God is pure gift announced for them in creation, Word, and Sacrament. Through our vocations the communicatio idiomatum communicates the attributes of Christ (his goodness, mercy, and grace) to our neighbors.
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Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vols.1-55. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999. Nadler, Steven. “Baruch Spinoza.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2019 Edition, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/spinoza. O’Sullivan, Patrick. “Black and Blue.” The Players Tribune, January 25, 2016. Reed, Isaac A. “The King’s Two Bodies and the Crisis of Liberal Modernity.” The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Fall 2019. Rockwell, Donna and Giles, David. “Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 40 (2009) 178–210. Smith, Christian and Denton, Melinda Lundquist. Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Steiger, Johann Anselm. “The Communicatio Idiomatum as the Axle and Motor of Luther’s Theology.” Lutheran Quarterly 19 (2000): 125–58. Sawyer, Mark and Gooding, Cory. “Racism, Body Politics, and Football.” In A Companion to Sport. Edited by David Andrews, and Ben Carrington, 164-178. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2013. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2007. Wengert, Timothy and Kolb, Robert. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000.
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