Cross in Tensions. Philip Ruge-Jones
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the hidden God. Consequently the revealed God would be none other than the hidden God.”32 A shift has taken place in the meaning of the hidden God. “In the former the idea of the hidden God means that revelation in principle is possible only in concealment; in the latter it means that also in the revealed God secrets remain. Both lines intersect in the concept of faith.”33
We shall return to the importance of faith shortly. First we need to note the function of the hiddenness of God in The Bondage of the Will. The hidden God is a “warning against all too confident arguing with God’s thoughts. . . .”34 It checks human assertions about their knowledge of God as well as their assertions about the faithfulness of the visible church. The hidden God introduces the element of tentativeness and risk into all human claims about God.
Loewenich finishes his survey of this concept with Luther’s lectures on Isaiah (1527–1530). Many of the themes already discussed endure in these lectures: God is incomprehensible until “covered”; faith sees God where God is so deeply hidden as to appear nothing; the papacy trusts in its own great visible power. Yet the simultaneity of hidden and revealed give way to a dynamic of succession. The God who first seems hidden becomes visible for us through our perseverance in prayer and faith. Once again, Loewenich insists that the heart of Luther’s theology of the cross is revelation. The question remained for Luther: how will we properly know God? The error of many interpreters is to lose this epistemological thrust and to drag Luther’s understanding into the realm of metaphysics. In that case the continual tension and movement required by the faith that knows of God’s broken presence is supplanted by “a rigid side-by-side relationship of two hypostases.”35 This error only occurs when the later emphasis on hiddenness as absence is not understood in relation to the more fundamental understanding of hiddenness in suffering as seen by the eyes of faith.
Faith is related to hiddenness, yet Luther has an even broader understanding of it. The eyes of faith look upon the cross and “a radical reversal of all existing orders of precedence and relationships take place.”36 The “crucified God . . . signifies the great No to reality.”37 As such, the crucifixion stands over and against human reason, understanding, and experience. Yet when faith clings to the cross, a whole new reason, understanding, and experience are the result for the believer. Faith equals understanding in the life of the Christian. Thus “[faith] is not only the negation of human possibility, but its realization as well.”38 We recall Luther’s earlier contextual observation that philosophically driven scholastic theology was the epitome of human reason in his day. Yet it avoided human groanings and the cross in favor of glorious speculation. “One who has caught something of the wisdom of the cross knows that reason is a ‘dangerous thing’ (WA IX, 187, 5ff).”39 But when faith clings to the cross it receives a whole new, wholly reversed reality.
Thus we come to Loewenich’s final point. Knowledge of God hidden in suffering corresponds to the new life that is given for the faithful to live. The epistemology is to be embodied in “practical suffering.” This suffering is summarized in four points:
1. Our life will be one of lowliness and disgrace.
2. Christ calls the Christian to a discipleship of suffering, trusting that it is in suffering that God meets us.
3. The “true meaning of Christ’s suffering can be discovered only in the act of experiencing, acting, and suffering.”
4. We are conformed to Christ as we experience the fact of the cross in our own lives.40
This brings Loewenich back full circle to Luther’s critique of the church of his day and its way of knowing. The suffering of the Christian life exposes the falsity of the church of his day41 that rejected the “treasure” of suffering that God offered to it. The church ignored the suffering of the neighbor, suffering that, more often than not, the church itself had inflicted upon him or her.
Loewenich has understood the theology of the cross in terms of its relationship to the conflict Luther had with the institutional church. Though Loewenich is helpful in this sense, does he goes far enough in mapping out the total conflictive context in which this thought takes place? Furthermore, is Loewenich right in his claim that Luther continues throughout his career to ask the same question in relation to the hidden God? Do not his shifts in the concept of the hidden God indicate shifts in broader commitments within Luther and his movement? Is it not the case that similar concepts came to function in very different ways as both the context and Luther’s own commitments within it underwent a change?
Althaus
In 1926, three years before Loewenich’s book was first published, Paul Althaus wrote an article titled “Die Bedeutung des Kreuzes im Denken Luthers.”42 The themes expressed in that paper have continued to be present in Althaus’ whole lifetime of work. Resonances with Loewenich and his interpretation are quite clear in Althaus’ career and at times Althaus’ own relationship to Loewenich is explicitly mentioned. His best work on the theology of the cross that has been translated into English translation is found in The Theology of Martin Luther.43
Resonating with Loewenich’s epistemological concern, Althaus locates the theology of the cross under the rubric of “The Knowledge of God: the Word of God and Faith.” Althaus begins the section with a footnote marking his conversation with Loewenich for his particular understanding of the Luther’s theology of the cross; this is rare in a book whose footnotes almost exclusively reference the reformer’s own writing. Althaus also follows Loewenich in holding up theses 19 and 20 as the heart of the Heidelberg Disputation. These, again, define the theologian of the cross and the theologian of glory in contradistinction. The two kinds of theologians are marked by different epistemological priorities. The first is attentive to God’s always paradoxical revelation in sufferings; the second is fixed on the “invisible things of God” or on “works”. Althaus echoes what Loewenich made clear in his third aspect of the theology of the cross when he asserts:
Luther uses “works” not only in the sense of God’s works but also in the sense of man’s works; and “sufferings” refers not only to Christ’s suffering but also to man’s suffering. Luther makes the transition from the one to the other as though it were self-evident.44
This self-evident transition brings Althaus to a recognition of the link between epistemology and ethics. “For Luther, concern for the true knowledge of God and concern for the right ethical attitude are not separate and distinct but ultimately one and the same. The theology of glory and the theology of the cross each have implications for both [epistemology and ethics].”45 Thus, Althaus introduces the effects of Luther’s critique on the combined forces of the scholastic theologians’ metaphysical speculation and the system of work righteousness orchestrated by their church:
Natural theology and speculative metaphysics which seek to learn to know God from the works of creation are in the same category of the work righteousness of the moralist. Both are ways in which man exalts himself to the level of God. Thus both either lead men to pride or are already expressions of such pride. Both serve to “inflate” man’s ego. Both use the same standard for God and for man’s relationship to God: glory and