Wrestling On The Crossroad by Institute of Lutheran Theology

WRESTLING

ON THE CROSSROAD Edited by Jonathan Sorum

May 2021

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 © 2021 All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Institute of Lutheran Theology, Brookings, SD.

Contents The Efficacy of Proclamation in the Contemporary Linguistic Condition: The Performative Word, Speech-Act Theory, and Gerhard Forde . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“THE EFFICACY OF PROCLAMATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY LINGUISTIC CONDITION: THE PERFORMATIVE WORD, SPEECH-ACT THEORY, AND GERHARD FORDE” Roland Weisbrot

Abstract: This paper argues that the concept of the performative word still holds true and that even in our contemporary linguistic framework, God’s Word is efficacious. By reviewing the ramifications of the Linguistic Turn and applying Speech-Act Theory, this paper shows that there is room for the concept that language goes beyond the meaning of its words in linguistics. This leads to the explanation and adoption of a Lutheran homiletic, as understood by Gerhard Forde, as well as a critique and partial incorporation of the New Homiletic. Finally, this paper answers questions of efficacy and authority in light of the concept of the performative word, Speech-Act Theory, and Lutheran homiletics.

Jesus, in accordance with John 1:1, is understood by those who believe in Him to be the Logos, the Word, incarnate. As such, when Gerhard Forde describes “Jesus [as] the One in whom God does God to us, the true human in whom God does God to us” in his book Theology is for Proclamation, he is pointing to a central concept in Christianity: the performative word.1 A performative word can be simply understood as a word which performs an action, like God saying “let there be light” in order to bring forth light in Genesis 1:3. Mere humans such as ourselves are incapable of this species of performative speech, as we would doubtless discover if we tried to utter the same phrase.2 Thus, the efficacy of the performative word is dependent upon the authority and power of the one who has spoken it.3 Theologian Robert Preus identifies five things that the performative word found in the Gospel does to those who hear it and receive it in faith: “it works salvation,” it brings us to faith, it “works regeneration and new life,” it “works hope, an eschatological viewpoint,” and it “is a source of strength for every issue of life.”4 In summary, the performative word is not just one aspect of the Christian life, it is the very thing which causes the Christian to come into being, the ontological end of the old and the beginning of the new. Put simply, no performative word, no Christian. As the great Reformed Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon said: “The revealed Word awakened me, it was the living Word saved me, and I must ever attach peculiar value to the hearing of the truth, for by it I received the joy and peace in which my soul delights.”5 So, what happens if the concept of the performative word is undermined? What happens if our understanding of language changes? What happens if people no longer believe that Scripture has both the authority and power to do what it does? The ramifications of no performative word for Christian theology and praxis would be as incalculable and devastating as the reduction of Jesus to a mere moral teacher or Holy Scripture to just another book among many. Therefore, in an attempt to reinforce the concept of the performative word in the twentyfirst century, this paper will survey the current linguistic condition, highlight the role of the performative word in homiletics, provide answers for questions about efficacy, and finally, address the problem of authority.

Gerhard O. Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990), 100. Robert Preus, “The Power of God’s Word,” Concordia Theological Monthly 34, no. 8 (1963): 458. “You and I speak and often nothing happens. But God speaks, and it is done (Ps. 33:9). For He does not speak nuda vocabula, as Luther says, but res. ‘God speaks, and those things which are not come into being.’ Therefore, God works with His Word. Luther says, ‘God's works are His words.’” 3 C. George Fry, “The Doctrine of the Word in Orthodox Lutheranism,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1979): 33. “The word ‘efficacy’ is from the Latin root, efficacia, and means ‘the power to produce effects; the production of the effects intended’ or simply ‘effectiveness.’” 4 Preus, “The Power of God’s Word,” 460–61. 5 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “Preaching! Our Privilege and God’s Power,” The Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society 13, no. 2 (2013): 61. Italics his. 1 2

Contemporary Linguistics and the Performative Word In order to understand our current linguistic predicament, we must have a grasp of the so-called Linguistic Turn. Put simply, the Linguistic Turn was a notable shift in twentieth-century philosophy toward language. According to one scholar, this event “captured two fundamental insights: the claim that all knowledge is dependent upon its expression in language (all thought is language-dependent)… and the goal of philosophy is to provide an understanding of our conceptual schema in order to resolve problems that arise from the misuse of words.” 6 A seminal figure in the philosophy of language born out of this period was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who formulated the notion of language games to more fully understand what the words we spoke meant. Wittgenstein’s language game, as defined by Aleksandar Santrac, “is ‘the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven.’ So ‘the language game’ is not merely a speech or a discourse. To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life. Our words are woven into our activity and the ‘forms of life’ that may evolve.”7 The problem with these games lies in the fact that since each word can theoretically have an infinite number of meanings, and that those meanings can change depending on either a person’s language or the rules of the language game they are playing, objective certainty with regard to meaning is impossible; consequently, any notion of ‘“absolute truth’ is bound within the limits/contexts of one’s language or ‘language game.’” 8 Post-modern thinkers have exploited these language games in order to dismantle nearly every form of authority, but especially as found in religion and law.9 In particular deconstructionists, whose progenitor was Jacques Derrida, can use such language games to make claims like this about Holy Scripture: ‘“everything inscribed in the divine milieu is thoroughly transitional and radically relative.’” 10 This is essentially to say that if one considers how much the English language and the words it uses has changed over the past century or two – the famous example being the word “gay,” which has shifted from denoting an emotive state to denoting a sexual orientation – how can we possibly be certain of the exact meaning of words written in a foreign language two-thousand or more years ago?11 Deconstructionists would have us believe that we cannot be certain about the meaning of terms central to our Christian faith, terms like sin, the devil, grace, forgiveness, and even the names of God Himself.12

Preus, “The Power of God’s Word,” 460–61. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “Preaching! Our Privilege and God’s Power,” The Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society 13, no. 2 (2013): 61. Italics his. 6 Michael A Peters, “The Last Post? Post-Postmodernism and the Linguistic U-Turn,” Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 12 (2013): 36. 7 Aleksandar S. Santrac, “Untying the Knots of Thinking: Wittgenstein and the Role of Philosophy in Christian Faith,” In Die Skriflig 49, no. 1 (2015): 3. 8 Santrac, 3. 9 David L. Allen, “A Tale of Two Roads: Homiletics and Biblical Authority,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43, no. 3 (2000): 489. 10 Allen, 489–90. 11 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, eds., “Gay,” in Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), https://www oed.com/oed2/00093147. 12 F. Gerrit Immink, “Homiletics: The Current Debate,” International Journal of Practical Theology 8, no. 1 (2004): 119. Immink offers an interesting take on this problem: “My concept of God is not identical with the referent of the term ‘God.’ The referent of the term ‘God’ is God, while my concept of God is a set of virtues I believe God possesses. Concepts do have a subjective connotation and include our cognitive, emotive, and volitional functioning. This, however, does not mean that concepts are merely human representations. With out concepts we grasp an external reality. If being merciful is an aspect of our concept of God, then we grasp God’s being merciful. Therefore, concepts are links, they relate to an outward reality. Yet our human consciousness is active in our conceptualization. This means that our historical and cultural context is involved in the process of conceptualization. This does not mean, however, that the referent of the term ‘God’ is a human product. Then we have confused concept and referent. In predicative sentences such as ‘God is merciful,’ God is the logical subject of the sentence. The term ‘God’ refers to the person God. And if we use ‘Yahweh’ as a proper name,then this name is uniquely identifying. Our concept of God and the referent of the term ‘God’ are not one and the same thing.” Italics his. 4 5

This creates a sort of “hermeneutical crisis,” for if we cannot be certain about what those terms mean, then language games can be used to create an infinite amount of other possible meanings, hence the use of Critical Theories such as Feminist, Queer, and Decolonial, to produce new (heterodox) readings of Holy Scripture.13 The problem with regard to the scope of this paper is summarized in the following question: How can the Word have a performative effect if it does not mean anything or if we are not certain about what it does mean? The answer comes in the form of Speech Act Theory. The developer of Speech Act Theory, J. L. Austin, “famously distinguished between the act performed in saying something (the ‘illocution’) and the act performed by saying something (the ‘perlocution’). There is also the thing that is said (the ‘locution’).”14 Consider the following application of the theory to the Words of Institution: the words themselves – “this is my body… this is my blood… etc.” – are the locutionary act; the illocutionary act is found in the promise accompanying the words; and the result is the perlocutionary act, the forgiveness of sins as proclaimed by the locutionary act and promised implicitly by the illocutionary act.15 As such, in light of Speech Act Theory, it can be said that ‘“the authority of the Bible… derives from the operative statutory or institutional validity of transforming speech-acts in Scripture,’ corrigible in the light of what has not yet happened, but inviting Christians forward as a believing community ‘towards those verdicts and corroboration of promises and pledges which will become public and revealed as definitive at the last judgement.’”16 In short, language as conceived by Speech Act Theory allows for words to be more than just their meaning; it opens the door for them to have a performative function. This concept is summarized well by David Allen: “Speech act theory has a built-in safeguard against reducing textual meaning to nothing more than propositional content. Language as speech acts has propositional content but also illocutionary and perlocutionary force. Scripture contains more than mere propositional revelation, but it certainly does not contain less.”17 What Allen is saying is that the Word has an effect that goes beyond the transfer of revelatory information – it actually acts upon those who read and hear it. Additionally, theologian Helmut Thielicke “makes the shrewd observation that ‘God’s word is not interpretative; it is creative. It brings forth being out of nothing. It thus transcends all analogies and... being an active rather than an interpretative... word, God’s Word changes the self rather than disclosing it.’” 18 Such a viewpoint brings us much closer to Forde’s understanding of the Word and its function, which will form the basis of the next section of this paper.

Allen, “A Tale of Two Roads,” 498; Mark Randall James, “The Beginning of Wisdom: On the Postliberal Interpretation of Scripture,” Modern Theology 33, no. 1 (2017): 16–17. As James astutely observes: “In what we might call ‘hermeneutic crisis time,’ a community in whole or in part comes to lack confidence in its ability to speak the language of scripture. Readers find that the scriptures all too frequently do not conform to the norms of correct usage embodied in their intuitive linguistic judgments, that the scriptures frequently say what they ought not to say. They find that not only this or that text of scripture, but rather scripture as a whole, seems to demand ‘interpretation.’ For such a community, theology must not only be descriptive but also critical, correcting the actual language of the community in light of its scriptural paradigms and its present challenges. Scripture is especially important in such a time as a norm for the correction of the community’s language, precisely because it contradicts the community’s linguistic intuitions and thus appears most troubling.” Italics his. 14 Richard S. Briggs, “The Uses of Speech-Act Theory in Biblical Interpretation,” Currents in Research 9 (2001): 235. Italics his. 15 Michael Hancher, “Performative Utterance, the Word of God, and the Death of the Author,” Semeia 41 (1988): 30. “In quoting Christ’s words the celebrant does cite or mention them; but in reciting them to consecrate the bread and wine he also uses them in performative utterance.” 16 Briggs, “The Uses of Speech-Act Theory,” 245. 17 Allen, “A Tale of Two Roads,” 494. 18 Allen, 503. 13

Homiletics and the Performative Word For theologians, there are many implications regarding the performative word. To adopt, along with Forde, the belief that “the Word is an eschatological Word, a Word that puts an end to the old and ushers in the new” will inevitably affect the role and purpose of homiletics.19 Accordingly, Forde argues that “proclamation should issue ultimately in what might be called a doing of the text to the hearers, a doing of what the text authorizes the preacher to do in the living present.” 20 In order to fully understand what Forde means by all this, it is necessary to look at his view on the role of the Law and the Gospel in hermeneutics and the intrinsically connected field of homiletics, thinking which was influenced heavily by Martin Luther. Firstly, it must be established that for Forde, the fundamental difference between Law and Gospel, the old and the new, was “a difference in speaking” not content.21 Forde firmly believed along with Luther and countless other great Christian thinkers that all of Scripture, which contains both the Law and the Gospel, speaks about Christ, so the difference related to speech: the Law “speaks about Christ and his spirit in the imperative mood,” whereas, “the gospel, speaks in what could only be called a declarative mood.” 22 Secondly, Forde argues that Luther adopted a very strict interpretation of 2 Corinthians 3:6, which contains the dictum: “for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (NIV).23 Luther’s insight here, according to Forde, was that “what the passage describes is not an attribute of the text but an activity. The ‘letter,’ the written code, the literal history attacks and kills but the spirit gives life. Indeed, only when the text does that ‘killing’ does it become life-giving. Only when the text works on us does the Spirit who inspired that text begin to change and transform us.” 24 At the center of this pronouncement is of course the concept of the performative word, the belief that the proclamation and recitation of the text of Holy Scripture actually does something to its hearer/reader. This is in contrast to those who would interpret this passage as Enthusiasts or neoGnostics, suggesting that Scripture, the “letter,” was somehow inferior to or superseded by the Spirit, who “gives life,” a view which birthed a hermeneutic obsessed with finding the “higher,” “spiritual meaning” of any given passage in Scripture. This position is refuted decisively by Forde on the grounds of Luther’s insight: The ‘letter’ is not, therefore, something obscure, weak, or insufficient. It is not ‘dead’ because it belongs only to the sensible world. If it ‘kills’ it can by no means be taken lightly or shortcircuited by interpretation. The ‘letter,’ the whole long history of God’s struggle with his people culminating in the cross, spells in the first instance but one thing for sinners: death. The hermeneutic takes the form of the cross: the literal history kills the old, lays it to rest; the Spirit can then raise up the new by faith alone. The text is not a jumping-off place for flights of spiritual fancy, rather it cuts off all such Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation, 157. Forde, 155; Briggs, “The Uses of Speech-Act Theory,” 258. In a similar strain of thought, Nicholas Wolterstorff “has suggested that the biblical text may be seen as locutionary acts which serve as vehicles for divinely performed illocutionary acts. In this sense it is literally true that God speaks through the Bible, if we define speech as the performance of illocutionary acts.” 21 Gerhard O. Forde, “Law and Gospel in Luther’s Hermeneutic,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 37, no. 3 (1983): 240. Italics his. 22 Forde, 240–41. Italics his. 23 Forde, 246. 24 Forde, 246; Michael B. Aune, “‘To Move the Heart’: Word and Rite In Contemporary American Lutheranism,” Currents in Theology and Mission 10, no. 4 (1983): 221. As Aune points out: “Such a ‘reading of Christianity’ was possible because of Luther’s understanding of Word as ‘person, event, or proclamation.’ Totally unlike the traditional Western way of interpreting reality as consisting of words and things — where ‘words by no means comprehend and bring with them the realities of which they speak’ but only signal or point to and then leave these realities ‘out there’ or somewhere else. Luther had come to the insight, as a result of his biblical studies, that language, and most especially the language of God’s self-communication, is ‘causative,’ or, as we would say today, ‘performative.’ That is, words are not empty ciphers or containers pointing to or waiting to be filled with the realities of which they speak.” 19 20

flight: it kills. Therefore, the Holy Scriptures are not reduced to bits of historical information or word studies. It is the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit, which does what it says. The Spirit is not some upper or inner level of meaning which one reaches by interpretation or perhaps by appropriate spiritual exercises. The Spirit is not a hidden agenda. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit of God who comes precisely in and through the letter, the history, the text, the proclamation of it, to kill and to make alive. With that the hermeneutical foundation for Luther’s understanding and use of law and gospel is laid. The literal and historical sense is the only legitimate meaning. Beyond that, however, it is a question of what the words do, how they function in actuality. The Word of God is active and living. It does just exactly what it says.25 As this quote reveals clearly, this hermeneutic lay the foundation for a particular theological viewpoint on how we as sinners are ourselves justified, how the act of justification is done to us, that is, through the performative Word of God.26 In light of all this, Forde argues both in his paper “Law and Gospel in Luther’s Homiletic” and his book Theology is for Proclamation that this theological insight cannot remain in the realm of thought; it must be acted upon and the way to do this is through homiletics – through proclamation of the Word.27 As Forde declares: “it is through the death and resurrection of Jesus done to us in the proclamation that we are reconciled with God.”28 And, since such benefits are only made available to those who have faith, in line with Romans 10:17, Forde asserts that “the goal of the proclamation, is the hearing of faith.”29 One subject in contemporary homiletics that is worthy of our consideration before moving on is Narrative Preaching, also known as the New Homiletic. The New Homiletic was, in many ways, born to address the problem of language as it arose in the twentieth century. Since philosophers and linguists had undermined confidence in the meaning of any word or text, including Scripture, some thought to salvage homiletics by shifting it away from the transfer of propositional content (solidified especially by the Enlightenment) and towards storytelling, narrative.30 This was in line with the beliefs of philosopher Paul Ricœur who concluded “that the way human beings conceive of their identity is primarily through narrative.”31 This homiletical approach is not inherently problematic, nor is it necessarily in conflict with the concept of the performative word; after all, Jesus told many stories in the form of parables and we continue to tell those stories today – arguably efficaciously – and narrative undoubtedly has the power to captivate and shape the human mind, a valuable tool of which preachers can and should take advantage. However, there are two distinct issues that can arise from Narrative Preaching: a reduction in concern about the content of the narrative (relativization) and narrative adoption being confused with genuine conversion (identification). Forde, “Law and Gospel,” 246–47. Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology, Lutheran Quarterly Books (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 152. As Mattes concludes: “The result of Luther’s Reformation discovery was that language is no longer to be viewed solely as a system of signs ‘that refer to objects or situations or of signs that express emotion. In either case the sign is – as a statement or as an expression – not the reality itself. In other words, the linguistic sign is itself the reality; that it represents not an absent but a present reality was Luther’s great hermeneutical discovery, his ‘Reformation Discovery’ in the strict sense.’ It can be classified as a speech act that is an ‘effective, active word that establishes community and therein frees and makes certain. It does what it says. It says what it does.’ For Luther, this effective word is also discovered in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the stories of Christmas and Easter – ‘indeed in the whole Bible, including the story of creation, which Luther understood as a promise, as his translation of Psalm 33:4b indicates, ‘what he promises, that he certainly does.”” 27 Forde, “Law and Gospel,” 248; Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation, 105. 28 Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation, 126. 29 Forde, 135. 30 Allen, “A Tale of Two Roads,” 511. 31 Allen, 501. 25 26

One of the greatest strengths of narrative is its ability to be adapted and adopted by a wide range of individuals and cultures as exemplified in the proliferation of fairy tales. This, however, is also its primary problem as narrative can become relativized beyond recognition and the content can turn into something it was never meant to be. An example of this can be found in the 2008 film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian. The film adds battles and romances that did not exist in the book and significantly changes the personalities of core characters like the High King Peter who is portrayed in the movie as a hot-tempered, rash, and selfish person rather than the wise, patient, and well-spoken Peter found in the book.32 The result is a movie with a very different message than the book. Now of course there are always creative liberties taken when converting a narrative to a new medium, but the question becomes at what point is the text changed so much that it can no longer be called Prince Caspian? What we are left with is a textual version of the Ship of Theseus: how much of the text’s content can change before it is no longer the same text? The implications for the doctrine of the performative word are clear and can be summarized in this question: how much of the Biblical content can be changed before it is no longer the Word of God? As one scholar observes, “the questions of truth and historicity in this schema [the New Homiletic] are secondary to the experience evoked by the sermon which is grounded in a narrative and symbolist approach to preaching.”33 In other words, the narrative itself is more important than the sum of its parts, the meaning of the words which convey the narrative. Consequently, “it is the audience and the preacher together who create the experience of meaning” and so there can be an endless plurality of variable “christianities” suited to the needs and wants of each and every hearer – talk about itching ears (cf. 2 Timothy 4:3)!34 This is not to say that there is some sort of Enlightenment-esque “commonly accepted and rationally founded first principles” undergirding Scripture, because there is not, but it does help us to understand why people with radically different and even contradictory understandings of the Biblical text can all claim to be Christians.35 It also proves the importance of the content of each narrative, as such we must avoid the proclivity in the New Homiletic to “disparage the historicity of the text and divorce narrative meaning from historical reference.”36 As theologian Mark Tranvik argues, only the performative Word of God “is the remedy for the rampant subjectivism that plagues our culture and our congregations. For the self does not merely need to change, adjust, or adopt a new method; it needs to die.”37 In summary, there is no need to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater; the New Homiletic need not be abandoned, only modified to include a proper understanding of the role of the performative word in homiletics. Regarding the problem of identification, when the adoption of the narrative itself becomes the goal of proclamation, such a view threatens to reduce the office of preacher to little more than another postmodern salesman trying to compete with other narratives for supremacy in those he pitches to. In other words, the preacher is proclaiming a narrative he hopes others will adopt to be their meta-narrative.

For a full synopsis, follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia:_Prince_Caspian Allen, “A Tale of Two Roads,” 511. 34 Allen, 511 35 Immink, “Homiletics,” 114. 36 Allen, “A Tale of Two Roads,” 508. 37 Mark D. Tranvik, “Luther, Gerhard Forde and the Gnostic Threat to the Gospel,” Lutheran Quarterly 22, no. 4 (2008): 415. 32 33

This has a transformative effect, but not necessarily a performative one. Consider the following example from popular culture: in the episode titled “Hero Worship” from season five of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lieutenant Commander Data, an android, and one of the officers serving aboard the USS Enterprise, plays a deciding role in the rescue of a human child, Timothy, from a heavily damaged starship.38 Having just experienced a traumatic event and now being orphaned, Timothy’s previous meta-narrative (human child of so and so, living aboard the starship Vico, etc.) is under extreme duress and thus becomes malleable and susceptible to change. Out of admiration for Data’s role in the rescue, Timothy decides to adopt the android’s meta-narrative, and so he begins to dress like him, actlike him, and talk like him. While it can be said that Timothy was transformed by the adoption of the android narrative (identity), it was not a performative (ontological) transformation and therefore he remained a human – this is a crucial distinction. In the same way, it is possible for people to adopt the Christian narrative and be transformed by it in a very authentic and real way, without actually becoming Christians ontologically and eschatologically. Ergo, “as Forde stresses in his work on the atonement, God is only ‘satisfied’ when his Word finally gets through to sinners, slays them, raises them up, and returns them to creation as creatures rather than as old beings bent on building their own kingdoms.” 39 In sum, no amount of identity change through the adoption of a narrative is going to help if it is not accompanied by the ontological and eschatological change wrought by the performative word. Fortunately, theologian Mark Mattes summarizes the proper relationship between narrative and the performative word well using Speech-Act Theory: The promise, the illocutionary gift-word, is tied to the story, the locutionary narrative of God’s redemption of sinners. Indeed, the illocutionary elements, such as the words of absolution, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the promise in the sermon, depend on the locutionary…. the locutionary is likewise inseparably tied to the illocutionary. Its whole point is to make us people of faith. The content of the faith, what faith is about, is for the sake of the reception of faith, the trust of the heart. The promise is tied to the story; however, the point of the story is to transmit the promise. Truth is not outside the promise because it is an abstraction to separate promise from narrative and vice versa. Proclamation and narration interpenetrate each other fully. It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is a communicatio idiomatum between proclamation and narration. That said, an exchange of attributes does not erase the real differences between narration, which describes reality, and proclamation, which delivers reality. The truth of justification is grounded in God’s evaluation; this evaluation is mediated through an external word (verbum externum), an expression of God’s fidelity to his love. Faith makes us true to God by allowing his righteousness to define our lives.40 Having seen what is at stake in the realm of homiletics, we are now prepared for our discussion on the efficacy of the performative word.

For a full synopsis, follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_Worship_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) Tranvik, “Luther, Gerhard Forde and the Gnostic Threat to the Gospel,” 420. 40 Mattes, The Role of Justification, 164. Italics his. 38 39

The Question of Efficacy and the Performative Word The best way to address the question of efficacy and the performative word will be through a series of hypothetical questions concerning the practice of absolution – a prime example of the performative word in action. The following questions are raised for our consideration: If I cannot understand, am I not forgiven? If I cannot hear, am I not forgiven? If I am operating under a different understanding of the words I am hearing, am I not forgiven? And finally, if the one proclaiming is using different words than those appointed in Scripture, am I forgiven? One important clarification must be made prior to addressing these questions. It is imperative that we do not adopt the Roman Catholic belief that the performative word is efficacious ex opere operato, “from the work performed,” in which the benefit is derived from its consideration alone (cf. Hebrews 4:2).41 Conversely, although our faith is indeed the proper receptacle of the performative word, it is not our faith which makes the Word efficacious – lest we turn faith into a work – rather, the Word is efficacious in and of itself but is not to our benefit except by faith (cf. Ephesians 2:8-9). In this sense, faith humbly receives that which is freely given by God through His performative words of promise and justification is done to us.42 For this reason, justification is to be properly understood as both forensic and effective.43 In sum, in line with Isaiah 55:10-11 and as Luther explains, it must be grasped that ‘“such is the efficacy of the Word, whenever it is seriously contemplated, heard, and used, that it is bound never to be without fruit, but always awakens new understanding, pleasure, and devoutness and produces a pure heart and pure thoughts. For these words are not inoperative or dead, but creative, living words.’”44 The first question, “If I cannot understand, am I not forgiven?” contains two avenues of exploration: foreign languages and the encountering of unknown words in one’s native tongue. Let us imagine a devout Christian from an English-speaking country travels to another country, Germany for example, and he decides to attend a worship service at a German-speaking church. At some point during the service, the pastor declares the words of absolution, but because he does not speak German, he is not entirely sure when it was or what was said in particular. In other words, he heard the locution, the words of absolution themselves, but he did not understand them. So, the question is are those words efficacious for him? Do they still have an illocutionary and perlocutionary effect on him as Speech-Act Theory suggests? I would argue that the answer is yes, the words are efficacious based on the fact thateven when such words are heard in one’s native tongue (in this case, English) a full understanding of them is not possible, yet they are received in faith nonetheless.45 Thus, the efficacy of performative words does not depend on a complete understanding of their content as much as it does on their reception in faith. Hancher, “Perfromative Utterance,” 30. Mattes, The Role of Justification, 146; Immink, “Homiletics,” 116. As Mattes highlights, “for [Oswald] Bayer, truth is to be found... in a performative word in which the promise (promissio) of the gospel is efficacious. The promise delivers the goods of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.” 43 Mattes, The Role of Justification, 148. “Justification is not the allegedly fictive verdict of the divine judge upon the penitent, but is simultaneously effective in that it grants pardon, remission, and new life in its very institution, the words of absolution. As effective, it liberates the penitent’s heart, which has been bound by incurvation.” 44 Fry, “The Doctrine of the Word,” 34–35. 45 James, “The Beginning of Wisdom,” 30. As James observes, “any true proposition must be known to its divine author, and so any proposition a reader comes to understand is one that God must have known was within her competence. For both these reasons, any true proposition q whose supposition is necessary to make the saying of p conform with rational norms is a possible scriptural implicature intended by God, a ‘meaning’ of scripture.” Italics his. 41 42

But what happens when a new believer comes to church and starts hearing terms he does not understand during the absolution? Terms like atonement, propitiation, and imputation – words from the “language” colloquially referred to as “Christianese”? I believe scholar Mark James offers a fine solution: Our ordinary linguistic competence involves a capacity to interpret the meaning of a wide range of utterances on the basis of linguistic intuitions, that is, by an intuitive grasp of norms implicit in our shared linguistic practice. Even in a language in which we are generally competent, however, our linguistic intuitions may fail us when we encounter something unfamiliar: an unknown word, say, or a puzzling response from a conversation partner. That we are often able nonetheless to work out what someone intended to communicate is a reminder that using and learning to use ordinary language are interrelated activities. When competent speakers draw inferences about the meaning of unfamiliar words or forms of speech, they in effect learn two things from the same utterance: what a speaker intended to communicate and the rules implicit in the way she communicated. Without the capacity to infer both, we could never learn a language in the first place.46 In other words, although the parishioner may not understand the particular locution of the pastor, context can help bring understanding, and so the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects of the performative word remain unimpeded to the one receiving them in faith. The second question, “If I cannot hear, am I not forgiven?” is a little bit more complicated. Thanks to Romans 10:17, we know that “faith comes from hearing the message” (NIV) and this seemingly places the deaf in an awkward position. Obviously, no one would seriously argue that because of this Scriptural truth, the deaf are thereby incapable of having faith unless the Gospel was signed to them. But our question here is not necessarily one of faith; rather, the question is if a person can not hear the locution, can they receive the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects of the performative word? The Gospel answers this quandary with a firm yes in the account of Jesus healing a deaf and mute man in Mark 7:31-37. Here Jesus touches the man’s ears and tongue and then speaks the performative word, ‘“Ephphatha!’ (which means ‘Be opened!’)” (NIV), in verse thirtyfour. It is relatively safe to assume that the man could not hear the locution of Jesus, but he was nevertheless the benefactor of this performative word, receiving both the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects. So, as we can see, deafness does not preclude a person from the impact of the performative word. Regarding the third question, “If I am operating under a different understanding of the words I am hearing, am I not forgiven?” the following query must be considered: does the parishioner’s understanding of the locution have to be identical to the pastor’s or Christian community’s understanding of it for it to have a illocutionary and perlocutionary effect? Take for example the word sin: if a pastor or Christian community understands sin to be a personal violation of the Law and an affront to God, but one of the parishioners understands sin as more of a “missing of the mark,” will the parishioner still receive the forgiveness of the performative word?

James, 15. James expands this idea on pages 15 and 16: “Competent speakers in such a community [(the church)] find that the words of scripture are intelligible according to their intuitive linguistic judgments; they experience the scriptures as immediately or transparently saying what they ought to say. If now and then they encounter difficult texts that demand ‘interpretation,’ they approach these texts confidently as an opportunity to deepen and expand their scriptural linguistic competence—i.e. to grow wiser. For such a community, theology can consist primarily of description of the grammar of the community’s actual linguistic usage.” Italics his.

Given that a full understanding of a term is impossible and so multiple interpretations can be proposed for the same word, as discussed above, it is unlikely that the efficacy of the performative word is contingent upon a rigid and uniform agreement of its meaning. This is not to say meaning is irrelevant and can be entirely relative, because as James argues, a fundamental part of Christian community is learning the language of Scripture.47 The result is a sort of paradox in that “the rules by which scripture must be understood are themselves one of the things scripture has to teach,” which is why I think theologian Robert Jenson is correct when he surmises that the regula fidei, the “rule of faith” which has guided the way the church interpreted Scripture for centuries, is best understood as “a ‘common linguistic awareness’” – a sort of boundary to determine when an interpretation has departed from orthodoxy as set out most explicitly in the creeds of the Church.48 Beyond this, according to theologian Michael Aune, “the Lutheran insight into Christian communication in general and liturgical communication in particular has to do with what is accomplished rather than with what is represented,” which is because “Luther’s unique notion of the nature of language as performing a certain kind of action moves us from an understanding of liturgical activity and expression as a representation of historical and doctrinal truths to its purpose as an accomplishment or performance of the promise of the Gospel.”49 As such, we can conclude on this basis that the effect of the performative word is not bound by concordance on its precise definition and is thereby effectual even when a parishioner and a pastor maintain different but acceptable, according to orthodoxy, understandings of the locution.50 The final question, “If the one proclaiming is using different words than those appointed in Scripture, am I forgiven?” must be answered with a firm no. Think back to our discussion about a textual version of the Ship of Theseus where we asked the question of how much the content of a text could change before it is no longer the same text. Or, put another way, how much can the locution of the performative word change before it impacts the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects? For example, if a pastor tries to absolve a congregation in the name of “the mother, the daughter, and the spirit of estrogen,” absolution has most likely not been achieved. This is because these are not the performative words found in Scripture. Not that Scripture is some sort of collection of “cultic formulae which bring about ontological change,” but because the One who has the power and authority to cause illocutionary and perlocutionary effects has not appointed such words as His locution – a fact which serves as a segue into our final consideration.51

James, 14 James, 15–16. 49 Aune, “To Move the Heart,” 215, 221. 50 Immink, “Homiletics,” 105–6. Immink highlights the role of the Holy Spirit in this as well: “The Spirit works in two ways, not only opening the Bible through the preacher, but also illuminating the hearts of the listeners. The preaching of the gospel and the hearing of the congregation come as a pair, and the link is the work of the Holy Spirit as the dynamic presence of God in Jesus Christ. This presence is not only a proclaimed presence, a presence of the proclaimed Christ, but also a presence on the part of the listener, an inward presence, a presence in faith and trust, a communio cum Christo.” 51 Gerhard O. Forde, “Sacraments as Eschatological Gift and Promise,” Lutheran Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2017): 317. 47 48

Authority and the Performative Word For us to better understand the performative word, it is imperative for us to know what, or more accurately Who, gives it authority and power. According to Preus, “the written and spoken Word draws its energy and authority from its author, who is God. Although men wrote the Scriptures, these writings are nevertheless God’s Word, God’s utterances (Rom. 2:2), the product of His breath (Matt. 4:4; 2 Tim. 3:16). Although men preach the Gospel, it is nevertheless God’s Gospel (Rom. 1:1; 15:16; 2 Cor.7:11; 1 Thess. 2:2,9). God’s Word and Gospel are never empty and sterile, but active and creative.”52 In summary, it is God who ennobles and empowers the Word (written and incarnate), making it performative and enabling divine illocutionary and perlocutionary effects to manifest themselves out of finite human locution. This is something the Centurion understood well as recorded in Matthew 8:5-13; he knew that Jesus had the authority and power to speak and it would be so – the performative word. In light of this, when it comes to the proclamation of the Word, we do not hold to a belief that the preacher is the authority behind the performative word (arguably a form of Donatism); rather, he or she is simply preaching the Word of God, thereby doing “what the text authorizes the preacher to do in the living present.”53 In following the example of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, the preacher does their job when they rely only on the power of God to accomplish the task of putting us to death and rising us up in faith with Christ. To do otherwise is to not truly proclaim, for the efficaciousness of the proclamation (locution) lies in the authority and power of God alone – the divine Logos. Some people may try to argue that the process of translation has diminished the performative word, and that only the original manuscripts are truly effective, but such an objection is moot as proven by the Day of Pentecost when the many people gathered at Jerusalem heard the Gospel in their own language and believed as recorded in Acts 2:4-12. Since that same Holy Spirit is active today, those who proclaim the Word can be certain that no matter what translation they are using, it is performative.54 For our God is eternally active. He is the living God, acting, speaking, working, striving to make His claim on man. He kills and He makes alive; He exalts and He casts down; He speaks, He gives knowledge, He shows His strength, He performs mercy, He delivers. He not only loves, but He makes His love manifest by sending His only-begotten Son into the world. He not only hates sin, but He executes judgment, and His wrath is actually revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. God's grace and His justice, His omnipresence and His holiness, His majesty and His glory are not quiescent attributes, but are active and dynamic. And as God is, so is His Word.55

Preus, “The Power of God’s Word,” 463. Preus provides a fuller, Trinitarian answer to this question as well on pages 464-65. See footnote 20. 54 Preus, “The Power of God’s Word,” 457. 55 Preus, 457. 52 53

Conclusion By this point, the claim made at the beginning of this paper, no performative word, no Christian, should be firmly substantiated. The centrality of the doctrine of the performative word cannot be overstated, and so it must be rightly defined and fiercely defended. After all, a word that means nothing and does nothing is just a word, and such words can accomplish very little – certainly not enough to save us from sin, death, and the devil. Only a terminal word from the Law and a life-giving word from the Gospel can do that In conclusion, the concept of the performative word still holds true and even in our contemporary linguistic framework, God’s Word is efficacious. By reviewing the ramifications of the Linguistic Turn and applying Speech-Act Theory, this paper has shown there was room for the concept that language goes beyond the meaning of its words in linguistics. This led to the explanation and adoption of a Lutheran homiletic, as understood by Forde, as well as a critique and partial incorporation of the New Homiletic. Finally, this paper answered questions of efficacy and authority in light of the concept of the performative word, Speech-Act Theory, and Lutheran homiletics. In closing, consider the apt words of Charles Spurgeon: Ah, my dear friends, we want nothing in these times for revival in the world but the simple preaching of the gospel. This is the great battering ram that shall dash down the bulwarks of iniquity. This is the great light that shall scatter the darkness. We need not that men should be adopting new schemes and new plans. We are glad of the agencies and assistances which are continually arising; but after all, the true Jerusalem blade, the sword that can cut to the piercing asunder of the joints and marrow, is preaching the Word of God. We must never neglect it, never despise it. The age in which the pulpit it despised, will be an age in which gospel truth will cease to be honored.56

Spurgeon, “Preaching!,” 57.

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