Cross in Tensions. Philip Ruge-Jones
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Название: Cross in Tensions

Автор: Philip Ruge-Jones

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Религия: прочее

Серия: Princeton Theological Monograph Series

isbn: 9781630878108

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ the believing Christian his divinity understood as his “truth, wisdom and goodness.”97 Alternatively, God’s divinity can also be understood as “his name” which is Christ himself.

      This leads to Peura’s work on Luther’s understanding of justification. Simply stated, Luther comes to understand justification as the basis for the internal structure of deification. The emphasis on justification protects the sovereignty of God. The gift always remains a divine gift, but this gift is really and truly received by the Christian due to the grace of God. The gift is not due to extortion on the part of the believer; the motive for the giving is located in the same God who gives through the word. The reason for the giving is not, therefore, to be found within the Christian. In fact any preparation within the believer that makes possible the act of reception is also the act of God through the word. Peura writes:

      The transformation of the Christian leads to a new way of relating to God from the human side of the relationship:

      So a new being that is ontologically transformed has been bestowed upon the believer, and this gift yields a new activity. The being of God within the Christian translates into a new doing wherein the deified Christian loves with the actual love of God; put another way, the God who is ontologically present in the believer becomes the subject of his or her actions.

      Peura’s interpretation of Luther differs dramatically from those we have already examined, yet he does claim as emphatically as they did that Luther’s theology is a theology of the cross. Deification does not nullify the theology of the cross, but rather is the firm foundation upon which Luther built his theology of the cross. In what sense does Peura see the confession of Luther’s theology of the cross within this framework?

      First of all, the theology of the cross is a critique of certain aspects of scholastic theology since that theology of glory seeks to ground itself in a capacity that humans by nature possess. Peura writes:

      According to Luther, the theologia gloriae leads inevitably to the false striving of the person to deify himself. This way of thinking rests upon assumptions of natural human capacity and finally on the idea of liberum arbitrium. Thus Luther sees in the theologia gloriae an intensification of human sin, because, at base, it would like to realize its own egoistic, self-willed aspiration to divinity.

      This first characteristic, that is, that God alone justifies and deifies, has implied the second characteristic that qualifies Luther’s theology as a theology of the cross. If God alone deifies, then the human being is not the subject or agent who brings about that deification. Thus, the word’s act of reducing us to nothing destroys all attempts at self-justification. God again creates out of nothing, and, in this case, through the word, God is also the creator of nothingness. The human being has no grounds for boasting in the gift that dwells in him or her, because that gift, even when received and rooted, never loses its givenness.

      Next, this focus on deification does not lead to a theology of glory, because the theologian СКАЧАТЬ