I'm not entirely comfortable with the following quotes, but I include it here because it so wonderfully roots sanctification in the death of the old. I think Lutheran theologians are in danger of collapsing sanctification back into justification - but I think most of the rest of us are in danger of the opposite mistake: separating them too widely.
“The justification given is a total state, a complete, unconditional gift. . . . [T]here can be no more sanctification than where every knee bends and every mouth is silent before God, the only Holy One. . . . Whoever knows this knows that there is an end to the old, there is a death involved, and that being a Christian means ever and anew to be blasted by that divine lightning (for we always forget it) and to begin again. As Luther says, ‘proficere, hoc est semper a novo incipere.” (To achieve means always to begin anew.)
“The ‘progress’ of the Christian therefore, is the progress of one who has constantly to get used to the fact that we are justified totally by faith, constantly has somehow to ‘recover,’ so to speak, from that death blow to pride and presumption—or better, is constantly being raised from the tomb of all pious ambition to something quite new. The believer has to be renewed daily in that. . . . The sin to be attacked and abolished is not merely immorality and godlessness, but also pious presumption, the refusal to believe in God . . . . Sanctification cannot, therefore, mean that the ideas of moral progress blasted by the divine imputation of righteousness are now subtly smuggled back in under the table. The sin to be removed is precisely such understandings of progress. The justification is not a mere beginning point which can somehow be allowed to recede into the background while the supposed ‘real’ business of sanctification takes front and center. The unconditional justification is the perpetual fountain, the constant source of whatever ‘righteousness’ we may acquire. ‘Complete’ sanctification is not the goal but the source of all good works. . . .
“[T]he abolition of sin, for Luther, was quite the opposite of a morally conceivable ‘process’ of sanctification. In that sort of ‘process’ the person remains more or less alive as a ‘substance’ and only the ‘properties’ are changed. A continuously existing subject always survives. There is no death and resurrection. . . . For Luther, sanctification involves a death and new life, not progress according to some moral scheme.
“The justification given is a total state, a complete, unconditional gift. . . . [T]here can be no more sanctification than where every knee bends and every mouth is silent before God, the only Holy One. . . . Whoever knows this knows that there is an end to the old, there is a death involved, and that being a Christian means ever and anew to be blasted by that divine lightning (for we always forget it) and to begin again. As Luther says, ‘proficere, hoc est semper a novo incipere.” (To achieve means always to begin anew.)
“The ‘progress’ of the Christian therefore, is the progress of one who has constantly to get used to the fact that we are justified totally by faith, constantly has somehow to ‘recover,’ so to speak, from that death blow to pride and presumption—or better, is constantly being raised from the tomb of all pious ambition to something quite new. The believer has to be renewed daily in that. . . . The sin to be attacked and abolished is not merely immorality and godlessness, but also pious presumption, the refusal to believe in God . . . . Sanctification cannot, therefore, mean that the ideas of moral progress blasted by the divine imputation of righteousness are now subtly smuggled back in under the table. The sin to be removed is precisely such understandings of progress. The justification is not a mere beginning point which can somehow be allowed to recede into the background while the supposed ‘real’ business of sanctification takes front and center. The unconditional justification is the perpetual fountain, the constant source of whatever ‘righteousness’ we may acquire. ‘Complete’ sanctification is not the goal but the source of all good works. . . .
“[T]he abolition of sin, for Luther, was quite the opposite of a morally conceivable ‘process’ of sanctification. In that sort of ‘process’ the person remains more or less alive as a ‘substance’ and only the ‘properties’ are changed. A continuously existing subject always survives. There is no death and resurrection. . . . For Luther, sanctification involves a death and new life, not progress according to some moral scheme.
“There is a kind of progress, a kind of growth spoken of;
one cannot mistake that. But it is a process in dying to the old and being
raised in the new.” (Gerhard Forde, Justification: A Matter of Life and
Death, 50-53)
1 comment:
This may be my favorite Luther quotation:
“This life is not godliness, but growth in godliness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way; the process is not yet finished, but it has begun; this is not the goal, but it is the road; at present all does not gleam and glitter, but everything is being purified.”
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