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 to make proper distinctions between them so that we can understand the proper functioning of law and gospel in theology and the world. Making this proper distinction “is the touchstone of theology, the point which decides whether one has really grasped its true substance. . . .”55 Ebeling states that the law always makes demands upon us, while the gospel always is promise or gift. In the tension between the human experience of having demands made upon one’s conscience and the total graciousness of God’s gift in Christ, the Christian is justified by God. Justification is the centerpiece of Luther’s theology. It not only is the prince among other doctrines; it gives “a true significance to all other doctrines.”56 Justification occurs, when theology is properly understood, in a word-event.

      Notice that making this distinction brings salvation while failure to do so flirts with damnation. The proclaimed word is existentially vital. It is neither abstract nor disinterested reflection.

      This effective word

      Those who have not been freed by the gospel are in bondage as they listen to the demands of the law made upon their inmost being. But the gospel comes through the word of grace, causing one to trust solely in a righteousness that is given from above and is not one’s own. This righteousness is

      The gospel trilogy is this for Ebeling. First, we have God hidden in Christ salvifically. Second, the word alone declares and effects our wholly external righteousness. And, finally, faith clings to the promise alone, renouncing all claims to intrinsic righteousness.

      Ebeling has a different appraisal of the chief concept described in The Bondage of the Will than that of our two earlier theologians. If Loewenich and Althaus approached The Bondage of the Will from the perspective of Luther’s earlier writing, Ebeling moves in the reverse order. For Ebeling The Bondage of the Will interprets and correctly unfolds the underdeveloped structure suggested or hidden in the earlier writings. Thus, in The Bondage of the Will the hiddenness of God as omnipotence is not vanquished by the hiddenness of God as concealment in suffering, but rather the two definitions are maintained in mutual tension and even hostility. The latter depends for its vitality and effectiveness upon the reality of the other.

      Forde