More conversation with the East...and this time Luther is playing too

With the advent of postmodern modes of thought, the theological vogue has shifted from the maddening articulation of academic minutia (see exhibit A: Society of Biblical Literature ­– that may be below the belt) to a renewed interest in inter-tradition dialogue and re-appropriations of classical theological texts. Tuomo Mannermaa’s Christ Present in Faith serves as a prominent example of this significant change in paradigms. In this thought-provoking text, Mannermaa captures the essence of this new movement in scholarship as he seeks to stir up conversation between the Finnish Lutheran school and Russian Orthodoxy on the basis of perceived similarities in Luther’s doctrine of justification and the Eastern divinization. In this fresh re-reading of Luther, Mannermaa attempts a daring enterprise that been undertaken in the past, but has failed miserably. Historically, the divide between models of justification in more Western-scholastic and Eastern-mystical traditions has been considered to be just too wide to be bridged. It has been suggested that forensic justification (as has been associated with Luther and the reformers) has nothing in common with the Eastern model of theosis. Can forensic justification be reconciled with deification? Unfortunately, though Mannermaa gives some common ground, I believe the answer is in the negative.
In fairness to Mannermaa, it was never his intention, even from the very onset, to suggest that Lutheran justification is the same as Orthodox divinization. Rather, Mannermaa wishes to contend that the two concepts are, at the very least, analogous and that the doctrine of justification can indeed serves as a “point of contact with Orthodox theology.”[1] Mannermaa’s operating assumption that allows such a connection is that the idea of a real, ontological union with Christ undergirds Luther’s soteriology. In this way, Mannermaa suggests, Luther’s concept of the inhabitatio Dei (the indwelling of God in the believer) is analogous to theosis, a sort of absorbtion into the Divine life emphasized in the East. Within Luther’s context, Christ himself is the substance and accidents of faith, as it were. Luther speaks of the believer taking hold of Christ himself in faith (In ipsa fide Christus adest). It is in this indwelling (though sometimes Luther speaks of Christ “covering” the believer) that Christ himself serves as both favor (the forgiveness of sins resulting in justification) and donum (the gift of indwelling affecting sanctification) simultaneously, ensuring a “cementing” of the two entities, by which the believer, it seems, is brought into a real, ontological union with Christ whereby the believer and Christ become unio personalis.[2] In this “happy exchange,” says Luther, God communicates his attributes to the believer by virtue of his real presence in Christ thus allowing the believer to partake in the Divine nature in an experience not altogether foreign to Eastern notions of deification. In this process, though, it is Christ himself who achieves the Christian’s justification and sanctification objectively from the outside. As Luther emphasizes, indwelling is passive, and comes from nothing inside the believer’s self: Christ himself becomes the Christian’s righteousness and guiltlessness before God.[3] In classical Luther fashion, the Reformer insists that salvation is wholly the work of God, that is, purely monergistic. It is for this reason that Luther vehemently condemns scholastic as well as Eastern (perhaps unknowingly, here) versions of theosis that rely on human love as a means for uniting with God, suggesting that incorporating human love into the salvific economy is a work of the law and an affront to the work of the cross.[4] Humanity can add nothing, says Luther, to the work of God.
With this in mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to equate Luther’s doctrine of justification with Eastern divinization with a high degree of accuracy. The reason is this: Luther’s perspective on union with God is accomplished solely by Christ himself as he descends into the believer in an act of unadulterated monergism whereas in the East, human striving in love is an essential component in a synergy that results in absorbtion into the Divine nature. Mannermaa, perhaps in detriment to his own thesis, articulates the irreconcilable disconnect between Lutheran monergism and Eastern synergism well:

By contrast, the fides charitate formata position (which Luther and Mannermaa
equate with scholasticism, but can also accurately describe the Orthodox
position on divinization), which rests on Greek ontology and its notion of
striving love, only signifies a partial, incomplete and insufficient
divinization…According to Luther, however, the true faith unites the Christian
with God who in God’s agape-love has “descended” to us and who is present in the
sinner by being present in faith in all God’s fullness.[5]

Put another way, the result of salvation for both Luther and the East may indeed be union with Christ. However, the means by which this union is accomplished in each tradition is drastically different. Yet, as was his intention, Mannermaa has indeed created some common ground for future discussions between Finnish Lutheranism and Russian Orthodoxy. In this sense, Mannermaa’s endeavor was very successful though it failed to completely reconcile Luther’s inhabitatio Dei with the Greek theosis. Even though the concept of union with the Divine is prevalent in Luther, it seems that he means something different by this union than do his scholastic and Eastern colleagues. Perhaps Mannermaa’s most important contribution through this work is to uncover elements of Luther’s theology that have been forgotten in the wake of post-enlightenment interpretations of the reformer. What Mannermaa has done, if nothing else, is shown that Luther’s soteriology is much bigger than merely forensic models of the atonement.
[1] Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 3.
[2] Ibid, 41.
[3] Ibid, 57.
[4] Ibid, 25-27.
[5] Ibid, 45.

Dubs Gregory...this one is from Nazianzus

In the 4th century, there was a fine line between orthodoxy and heresy. Consequently, what seem like trivial quarrels over semantics like “begetting” or “proceeding” were of the utmost importance. Choosing the wrong vocabulary or making a variant distinction between the substance of Father and Son could easily land a theologian among the heretics. Because of this, those struggling for the side of orthodoxy took great pains to define who the true theologian was, as well as what salvation meant in light of the nature of the Trinity. This meticulous defining of the faith is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Gregory of Nazianzus’ Theological Orations. Among the central subjects of the treatise are an introduction to the theological task (oration I), questions on the nature of God the Father (II), the Son (III, IV), and the Spirit (V). For the purposes of this blog I will deal primarily with the question of what it means to be a true theologian for Gregory as well as Gregory’s understanding of salvation.
In our individualistic, North American context, we often conceive of the theologian as being anyone who is able to think or muse about God. Amateur philosophers and pop-theologians abound in today’s culture. Yet for Gregory, the business of God was not a profession so easily entered in to. Says Gregory, “Not to everyone, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God; not to everyone—the subject is not so cheap and low—and, I will add, not before every audience; nor at all times; nor on all points; but on certain occasions; and before certain persons; and within certain limits.[1] It is clear that the theological task is not something to be taken lightly; a theologian was to meet certain criteria to be considered legitimate. In an age when the still nascent Christian church was struggling to define its doctrinal identity in times of philosophical turbulence, it seems that, for Gregory, an attitude of worship was the defining characteristic of a true theologian. Gregory contends that the theologian must be holy and pious, as opposed to heretics who “worship the passions.” Every theological endeavor must be tempered with an attitude of humility and constant reliance on God: “For we ought to think of God as often as we draw our breath; and if the expression is permissible, we ought to do nothing else.”[2] Here is an important point for theology that we must take from Gregory: a heretic is not only defined by variant doctrinal assumptions or skewed theological perspectives; a heretic also runs astray by ignoring the obvious moral, ethical, and most importantly ecclesial implications that theology must have on its practitioner. In many senses, a worshipful disposition is equally important as an accurate theology. Worship and theology simply cannot be divorced, neither in the Church nor in the personal life of the aspiring theologian.
Thus the theologian must take a devotional approach to theology. So, when Gregory tackles the question of salvation, he is not only thinking of the atoning life and death of Christ as some sterile, abstract sense. The Son whom is worshiped is the same Son who is begotten of the father, puts on flesh, and redeems a fallen humanity. But how does this occur for Gregory? As was true of Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus speaks of the atonement often, but rarely refers to the cross or the Resurrection. This tendency is a bit puzzling to the minds of the Western tradition. However, we must understand that the East more generally and the Cappadocian fathers more specifically take a more holistic perspective on salvation. For Gregory, the Incarnation is in itself salvific. Traces of theosis and the influence of fathers such as Athanasius are obvious in statements like, “…I might be made God so far as he was made man.”[3] Gregory seems to imply that, in his union with flesh, Christ redeems the physical world through his life, though there is no doubt that a spiritual reconciliation is achieved through his death and Resurrection. Gregory draws an example from Christ’s baptism: “He was baptized as man—but he remitted sins as God—not because he needs purificatory rites himself, but that he might sanctify the element of water.”[4] The same is true of Jesus’ assumption of flesh. By uniting himself to the flesh, Christ recapitulates it and in doing so, dissolves the sinful nature, thereby allowing humanity the ability to be reunited to God through the process of deification. For this reason, it is necessary that Gregory maintain that Christ did indeed inherit the sinful nature, so as to be like humanity in every way.[5] Thus, for redemption to occur, Christ must unite himself to us, hence the need for Incarnation. In this sense, Gregory seems to maintain a salvation by contact; that which is not touched, it appears, cannot be redeemed.

[1] Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations I in Christology of the Later Fathers edited by Edward R. Hardy (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954), 129.
[2] Ibid 130.
[3] Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations III, 173.
[4] Ibid, 174.
[5] Gregory of Nazianzus, “Letters on the Apollinarian Controversy,” in Christology of the Later Fathers, edited by Edward R. Hardy (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954), 217.