Just by Faith Alone and by Grace Alone
By Ingo Baldermann[This article published in Junge Kirche (2017) is translated abridged from the German on the Internet.]
A fatal pressure can emanate from heirlooms to honor them although they have long been unusable. A person becomes just without the works of the law by faith alone. This sentence will encounter us a thousand times in this Luther year but, I fear, always in the mouths of the wrong people. I recall this very crassly from the time of the great protest movements, the peace movement and the anti-nuclear movement. The storage of pinpoint precision nuclear weapons in Central Europe – with medium range, intended for inner-European or even inner-German use – demanded a “No without any Yes,” an unequivocal decision of our faith. But we only heard: a person becomes just by faith alone, not by his works… That we could die in this faith was crucial, not our conduct. In those days, my mother died. It was clear to me that such a peaceful death would not happen any more after the nuclear emergency. Yes, there was opposition. Our protest was disobedience against God. If the Lord wanted this world to perish in a nuclear inferno, we should not hold him back.
What was wrong in this? Everything! For Luther, nothing violated faith as much as selfrighteousness. Here faith (the true faith!) was the instrument of self-righteousness. What Luther discovered as a living source became the standard of supposed orthodoxy.
The Language of the Hebrew Bible
How could this happen? The reason lies in the nasty wide gulf opening up between the language of the Hebrew Bible and the language of western theology. Luther was very familiar with the language of the Hebrew Bible. Otherwise, he could not have done his immense work of translation… Being just and exercising justice is the office of the judge. That is true in both languages. But the judge in the Hebrew Bible is defined very differently than during the western Justitia with blindfolded eyes “without respect of person.” His office is that he sees more sharply than others with open eyes where people are cheated about their right to life. His office is helping the oppressed receive justice. He exercises justice. The great judges in the times of oppression acted for all Israel and for threatened persons in the gate of the cities.
In his writings, Luther emphasized again and again how much he learned from the Hebrew texts. The Psalm verse that led to the breakthrough “Rescue me speedily” (Psalm 31, 2) could only be understood by someone like Luther as a cry from the deepest despair. For him, only rejection could come out of God’s righteousness! But he sought the other meaning time and again “that the words had with the Hebrews.” He understood God’s righteousness very differently: as a love and affection that freed him from all estrangement in deadly pressures.
Luther tried to explain this in the categories of western grammar as the antithesis of active and passive. The active righteousness that I practice only imperfectly is overtaken by the passive given to me. But this distinction remains abstract and can hardly be realized existentially. It leads to the misunderstanding that the presented righteousness makes all my actions irrelevant. Luther vehemently opposed this comfortable misunderstanding again and again. Still it remains a suggestive consequence in this abstract thinking.
How was righteousness understood “among the Hebrews”? The encounter with the God at the burning bush who sees his tears and despair makes the just sensitive for the tears and despair of others. The righteousness of the just is not like a general forensic amnesty. These are the just in the Jewish tradition: the meek who see and react sensitively to the sufferings of others including the animals. God in his righteousness liberates me to a life in this sensitive righteousness. God makes persons just on this side for a different life here and not only in the world to come for the Last Judgment.
The same transformation occurs when we hear the Hebrew language with the word “grace.” In the hands of the blind Justitia, it can only be understood as a total amnesty, a pardon that humbles me and is only valid under the presupposition of complete submission. But in Hebrew, the word chesed (grace) is like an embrace, a look of love that sees me in my imperfection, with my weaknesses but still loves me in the certainty of my capability of change, that I understand the wonder or miracle of this love and can be changed by God’s devotion. In the burning bush, I am present with God’s comfort: “I have seen your tears” and God’s promise “I will deliver you.”
The Reformation Declaration of Love
How possessive western thinking blocks access to the biblical sources can be understood in the main words of the Reformation: faith alone, grace alone, scripture alone and Christ alone. In our language, “alone” signals the exclusive claim of a principle and all of a sudden turns everything into its opposite. From faith comes the true faith as inexorably demanded work performance. Cheap grace that confirms me in my laziness emerges out of grace.
In the Hebrew, “alone” sounds completely different. It is the dominant word in the fundamental Jewish confession: Adonai eloheim, Adonai echod – The Lord our God, the Lord is one. In our ears, that sounds like the know-it-all tone of all theologians. There is only one God, our God. But in the Hebrew, this axiom is like a flaming declaration of love. The word echod means one or alone and is the elemental word of all love. “I will not stop loving you!” This declaration of love went along with Judaism through all their suffering. With his last breath, Rabbi Akiba cried out with those words in the hell of the Schoa and in the last words of Rabbi Josel Rakower in the burning Warsaw ghetto: “I will not stop loving you!”
With Luther, this passionate declaration of love was formulated out of an inspiriting discovery: grace alone, faith alone. This experience breaks all imprisonment. The
burning love surrounding me creates a new life in the warmth of this love and in trusting its invincible strength. Who can be surprised that the scripture is also included in this declaration of love that it owes this liberating knowledge changing everything to Christ himself? A scriptural principle that uses the Bible as a quarry for the theological knowit-all ambience takes the Hebrew Bible for its own voice with a Christological interpretation? Rather, the fire of the burning bush burns inextinguishably and yet does not consume anyone… In his translation of 1 Cor 13, Luther formulated: “If I don’t have love, I have nothing!”
This is the core: love is the ground of this new experience supporting all things that opens up the gates of Paradise. The Hebrew language knows how to deal with the vital force of such liberating experiences better than the western theology that forces us again and again in a seemingly superior distance from which he have a hard time finding our way back.
Self-critical reflection on limits is part of all theology. We cannot and should not abandon critical theology. Luther expected this at least from scholars when he wrote in his great interpretation of the Magnificat: “The learned are the most poisonous and most noxious persons on earth… The rich only poison the truth with themselves; the violent chase it away from others while scholars extinguish it in themselves!” (WA VII).
The right words can change suddenly into the opposite in the wrong hands. Perhaps one of the most important tasks in this strenuous Reformation Jubilee year is to uncover the Reformation discovery bursting all know-it-all hubris in its liberating power. In fact, this discovery supports the whole biblical history, the discovery of the transformative power of love. Love is never satisfied with love to a beloved who is transformed by a look of love. Called out, inflamed and transformed, you surround me on every side. Darkness is not dark with you and the night is bright like the day. These are Luther’s words. So he understands grace. Let us take this seriously in the political darkness of our days.