[1] Lutheran theological ethics has often seemed more
impoverished than full of promise. Core concepts of the Lutheran
tradition - justification by faith, the law-gospel distinction, the
so-called "two kingdoms" doctrine, and the concept of vocation -
have been read in ways that bifurcate Christian faith from social
and personal ethics. Justification is an act of divine grace, and
reintroducing any essential ethical component into the life of
faith raises the danger of "works-righteousness," of requirements
other than the believer's faith in divine grace. The gospel brings
freedom from sin, not bondage to the law or other ethical demands.
But this gospel pertains only to the inner life of Christians and
to their life in the world to come. In external matters of this
world, including family, work, and civil government, the gospel is
silent. Law governs the external world, which is filled with sin's
violence and chaos, and the Christian's sole duty in this realm is
to uphold the existing social and political order.
[2] The Promise of Lutheran Ethics gathers seven essays
that put to rest this caricatured, though once quite common,
reading of Lutheran theological ethics. The bifurcation of faith
and morals - and its resulting ethical quietism - give way in these
essays to "faith active in love," a conviction that justification
must lead to moral responsibility for the neighbor and the world.
The divine love received in faith bears fruit in the believer's
love for others. The authors differ markedly, however, in their
understandings of the method and substance of this link between
justification and ethics.
[3] The essay by Larry Rasmussen and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, "The
Reform Dynamic: Addressing New Issues in Uncertain Times," brings a
liberal theological method to the question of the link between
faith and morals. They extract from Luther a "Protestant principle"
of liberation from "systems of bondage that entrap and hold us"
(133). The gospel relativizes all claims upon believers (apart from
the reform imperative), and directs and energizes believers to
break free of existing structures that fail to respond adequately
to the needs of the moment, to "suffering and oppression that need
not be" (143). For Luther, the penitential practice and Scholastic
theology of the Catholic Church were the site of bondage. For our
world today, Rasmussen and Moe-Lobeda argue, that bondage takes
shape in practices that degrade the environment and have led to an
"unsustainable way of life" (133). Liberation requires rethinking
and reconfiguring our practices, including our theological
commitments, to help create a more sustainable world.
[4] Richard Perry's contribution, "African American Lutheran
Ethical Action: The Will to Build," also relies on the "Protestant
principle" of liberation from oppression, but locates the primary
moral source of this principle in the experience of African
Americans (92-96). The bondage of racism did not end with the
Thirteenth Amendment, but remains entrenched in the structures of
economics, law, and culture. Responsible ethical action entails
solidarity with the oppressed and active resistance against the
institutions that oppress. Taken together, the essays by
Rasmussen/Moe-Lobeda and Perry offer useful amendments to
traditional liberal Protestant ethics. Both essays attend to the
practices necessary to sustain the reform dynamic, and Perry
identifies moral exemplars in the African American Lutheran
experience who model the virtues required for those practices
(83-89). However, the essays fail to address the standard critique
of this liberal model: the bondage/freedom analysis is formal, with
the content of both bondage and freedom supplied primarily by the
believer's context, rather than by scripture or tradition.
[5] Though expressed in a provocative and sophisticated exegesis
of the Pauline epistles, David Fredrickson's "Pauline Ethics:
Congregations as Communities of Moral Deliberation," carries
parallel implications for ethics. In Fredrickson's reading, the
central moral thrust of Paul's letters is the creation of what
Jürgen Habermas would call an "ideal speech situation," one in
which each person is free to disclose herself to others, and the
disclosure provides an occasion for mutual and open "testing" of
what has been disclosed (117-120).1 Like the liberal method
employed by Rasmussen/Moe-Lobeda and Perry, Fredrickson's dialogic
model emphasizes the primacy of contextual engagement (though with
others in the community, rather than the experience of "oppression"
in the world at large) over any received form of the Christian
moral life. That said, Fredrickson's close reading of the Pauline
texts provides a richer vision of an ideal, liberated Christian
community (see especially 124-128).
[6] The contributions by James Childs, "Ethics and the Promise
of God: Moral Authority and the Church's Witness," and Robert
Benne, "Lutheran Ethics: Perennial Themes and Contemporary
Challenges," reflect a more traditional Lutheran approach to
Christian ethics. Both provide helpful accounts of the core
elements of the tradition, especially the Two Kingdoms teaching and
the concept of vocations, and also explain how those both inside
and outside the tradition came to misunderstand these elements as
warrants for Christian quietism and moral disengagement (see Benne
at 12-17, Childs at 98-104). As such, the two essays are ideal for
readers looking for a general introduction to Lutheran ethics. The
essays are also both useful and illuminating in their point of
major disagreement about the Lutheran tradition: Childs stresses
the centrality of the church's prophetic witness in society, while
Benne is critical of the church's public voice, out of a concern
that the church lacks the competence to speak about specific,
highly nuanced, policy judgments. This disagreement reveals not
only the authors' different political orientations, but fundamental
claims about the nature of lived reality. For Childs, that reality
is defined by eschatological hope: the experience of being
justified in Christ offers a vision of a healed and renewed
creation, and prompts Christians to hopeful action in light of that
promised future. Benne, on the other hand, draws on Luther's
simul justus et peccator - a sense that the hoped-for
future must contend with the dangerous and complex realities of
this world. Deeply indebted to Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian
realism, Benne is skeptical of claims to transform the world into
the image of the anticipated kingdom; not only are the
practicalities of such claims outside the church's technical
competence, but such claims frequently imperil the relative order
and justice necessary for human life.
[7] Although his essay offers a thicker and better grounded
reading of the Lutheran tradition, Childs shares some of the
liberal method, particularly in his understanding of the
relationship between love and law. Rather than invoking the empty
formula of the Protestant principle, however, Childs's liberal turn
comes in his reinterpretation of the decalogue:
[8] The Decalogue speaks to love's concerns for the neighbor. I
have attempted to translate the content of the commandments into
five general rules that embody love's concern for the neighbor and
the world: respect for autonomy, commitment to justice, respect for
the sanctity of life, truth-telling, and promise-keeping (including
fidelity in marriage) (110).
[9] Further specification of these rules comes through
dialogical encounter within the church and the broader human
community (112). Though Childs's eschatological perspective (like
Fredrickson's close reading of scripture) provides some normative
structure to the liberal approach, the content of the Christian
witness still rests heavily on contemporary cultural understandings
of human flourishing and freedom.
[10] The true gem of The Promise of Lutheran Ethics is
Reinhard Hütter's essay: "The Twofold Center of Christian
Ethics: Christian Freedom and God's Commandments." Hütter
contends that the Lutheran tradition is peculiarly susceptible to
misinterpretation by moderns because of its celebration of freedom.
The Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith and distinction
between law and gospel were stripped from the full context of the
Reformers' teachings, and inflated in ways that displace or
marginalize all other aspects of the confession. Justification, in
this inflated sense, means that the believer is free from all
external demands; the gospel demolishes the law's power to bind
(33-34). Thus understood, Christian freedom is a perfect correlate
of the modern's account of negative liberty - the autonomous self's
transcendence over rules and norms that are not self-chosen.
"Spontaneous love for the neighbor" constitutes the sole
"principle" of Christian ethics. The only content that this
principle can carry is that which reinforces the self's autonomy,
such as the liberal virtues of unconditional respect for and
acceptance of the other (36-37).
[11] The consequence of this misconstrual of Christian freedom
as the modern self's negative freedom from heteronomy is not simply
an error of intellectual history: it is a profound denial of the
Christian's call to discipleship, formed in the image of the one
who calls us to that life. For Hütter, the gospel's freedom
has a definite shape: "Christian freedom is the embodiment of
practicing God's commandments as a way of life" (33). Hütter
continues:
[12] God's commandment is nothing else than the concrete
guidance, the concrete social practice that allows us as believers
to embody our communion with God in concrete creaturely ways
(43).
[13] In a compelling exegesis of Luther's interpretation of the
Decalogue, Hütter shows how the Christian's freedom in Christ
takes shape in practices of worship, meditation on Scripture,
prayer, and chastity. This Christian ethics offers no "method" to
be applied by autonomous moral agents, but forms the believer in a
life of obedience - the antithesis of modernity's antinomianism
(51-52).
[14] Martha Stortz's "Practicing Christians: Prayer as
Formation" elucidates one aspect of Hütter's thesis, the moral
implications of Christian practices of prayer. In daily prayer,
Stortz contends, we embody virtues of discipleship: responsiveness
to God's address to us; gratitude at the "experience of the
boundless goodness of God" (68); modesty in repeated penance (one
might also say chastity or humility); and finally joy in the
richness of life in Christ (68-69). This daily prayer also shapes
perception, an essential component of discipleship. The practice of
lifting up the neighbor in prayer requires us to attend to the
neighbor and his needs, to see the neighbor as gift (rather than
intrusion or limit on my freedom) (71-72). Through these practices
and their attendant virtues, prayer furthers the formation of
Christians necessary in any era, but especially important in an age
that celebrates the negative freedom of the desiring self.
[15] The book as a whole presents a representative picture of
American Lutheranism today, with its diversity of approaches to
moral reflection and positions on basic issues facing the church
(such as the authors' discussion of the ordination of non-celibate
gays and lesbians, found in a "Table Talk" that follows the essays)
(168-173). The essays of Childs and Benne offer solid descriptions
of traditional Lutheran ethical teachings, but Hütter and
Stortz point Lutheran scholars toward the most promising avenue for
reclaiming the Reformation tradition from the weaknesses of modern
mainstream Protestantism.
Reprinted with permission from The Journal of Law and
Religion, 16:261 (2001).
See Karen
Bloomquist's response to reviews of The Promise of Lutheran
Ethics.
See John
Stumme's response to reviews of The Promise of Lutheran
Ethics.
© August
2002
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 2, Issue 8
1 See Stephen K. White, The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas:
Reason, Justice & Modernity 56-57 (1988) (describing "ideal
speech situation").