Promising Nothing: Christology Suspended from the Cross

By Neal J. Anthony

Can the categories of classical Lutheran Christology be unleashed to express the vitality of christological existence, an existence situated between Promise and experience?

If, as Martin Luther famously asserted in his Heidelberg Disputation (1518), "true theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ," then such a theological point of departure not only bore radical implications for his Christology, but indeed also bears profound significance for theological discussions around the Word of Promise, its structure, its experience, its plurality.

With regard to the elaboration of the two natures of Jesus Christ, such a point of departure permits a delineation of Promise--"the body of Promise"--who is bound to, who suffers, the nihil of human existence. Which means: such a point of departure affords us equally the opportunity to consider and probe the implications of the nihil as the medium of both threat and Promise. Is this a promising threat? Or a threatening Promise?

Ultimately, Promise is delineated from within hermeneutical origins--the christological function of Scripture, the text--and, developed through to its diverse expression as the body of Promise, translated into christological existence. Within this context, categories of classical Lutheran Christology begin to express new vitality.

Along the way, the Word of Promise--as developed within the trajectory of Luther's theology of the cross and his radical delineation of the two natures of Jesus Christ--receives further sharpening within the context of discussion with such theological voices as John Caputo and Jacques Derrida, Hans Holbein the Younger, Albert Schweitzer, Matthias Grunewald, Carl Braaten, Karl Barth, Michael Welker, and Samuel Terrien.

Ultimately, we are permitted to confess: There is one Crucified. And he is plural.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781725282193

Neal J. Anthony

Neal J. Anthony, an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, currently serves in Nebraska. He received his PhD in theology at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in 2008 and has taught at Midland Lutheran College.

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Introduction

In the pages that follow is a Christology developed entirely within the trajectory of Martin Luther’s theology of the cross. Perhaps already a restatement is warranted: recognizing that there are only theologians of the cross,¹ that God can only be apprehended where there are no signs of transcendence, no religious clues,² and that, ultimately, a "theologian of the cross . . . can only speak from the cross in sheer faith without evidence,"³ what is developed in the following pages is a Christology from the cross, a Christology suspended from the cross; a christologia crucis.

If, for Luther, true theology and recognition of God, as he asserted in his Heidelberg Disputation (1518), are in the crucified Christ,⁴ then for the theologian of the cross, such an epistemic point of departure—God’s sub contrario revelation in the crucified Christ—bears profound implications for Christology. Such a point of departure, for Luther, comes to expression in a dual concealment with regard to both Christology and theological existence itself. Ultimately, as it will be demonstrated through a development and application of Luther’s communicatio idiomatum (the communication of natures within the person of Christ), such a point of departure also necessitates the articulation of Christology as christological existence, an existence suspended between Promise and experience; the experience of both its structure and its absence.

At the same time, it should be noted, if Heinrich Schmid’s seminal presentation of classical Lutheran theology, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, served as a textbook—covering the gamut of traditional theological loci—for generations of Lutheran theologians and pastors, it is also a testament to just how far classical Lutheran theology deviated from the theologian whose name became identified with the tradition within which it was formulated, or Martin Luther. Nowhere, it can be argued, does this deviation from Luther’s theology become more salient than with reference to its excision of Luther’s epistemic point of departure, the crucified Christ, especially as that excision manifests itself with regard to Schmid’s treatment of both Christology—the communication idiomatum—and the subject of Who is a theologian? Let us pause in order to develop this discrepancy.

Traditionally coined the communicatio idiomatum, or the mutual exchange of essential properties of the divine and human natures in the person of Jesus Christ, Schmid—drawing from the dogmatic statements of fourteen prominent Lutheran theologians spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and certainly working within the framework of the Formula of Concord (1577)—presents the doctrine of the two natures of Jesus Christ in an outline consisting of three genera.⁵ The first genus, according to Schmid’s presentation, is the idiomatic genus in which the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the person of Jesus Christ. Next is the majestic genus—the genus majestaticum—in which the divine attributes (such as creating/sustaining, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinitude) are attributed to the human nature. The third and final genus, according to Schmid’s outline, is the apotelesmatic genus in which the operations/influences of the person may be ascribed to either of the two natures in a manner peculiar to the respective nature. And here let us note: it is the second genus, or the genus majestaticum, which came to be known as both the distinctive feature of classical Lutheran Christology and the foundation—contra the Reformed position—of the sacramental slogan "finitum est capax infiniti (the finite is capable of the infinite). But it is also precisely here, on the matter of the majestic" genus, the genus majestaticum, that Schmid’s delineation of the two natures of Jesus Christ reveals classical Lutheran theology’s deviation from its original wellspring.

Further elaborating upon the dynamics of the genus majestaticum, Schmid asserts that

by the personal union, not only the person, but, since person and nature cannot be separated, the divine also has entered into communion with the human nature; and the participation in the divine attributes by the human nature occurs at the very moment in which the [Word] unites itself with the human nature.⁶

Up to this point, we might say, so far so good. But it is Schmid’s very next sentence that explicitly reveals the deviation of classical Lutheran theology—as presented by Schmid—from its founding source. He adds,

But there is no reciprocal effect produced; for, while the human nature can become partaker of the idiomata of the divine, and thus acquire an addition to the idiomata essential to itself, the contrary cannot be maintained, because the divine nature in its essence is unchangeable and can suffer no increase.⁷

To be sure, though Schmid, according to the dictates of classical Lutheran Christology, will allow for the human nature to partake of the divine attributes in the person of Jesus Christ, he will not permit, due to its unchangeability, the divine nature to partake of the human attributes in the person of Jesus Christ. From Luther’s perspective though, this can be considered only a partial communicatio idiomatum, an incomplete communication of attributes.

That is, when we follow Luther on the formulation of the communicatio idiomatum—an expression of his theology of the cross, its epistemic point of departure, or the crucified Christ—we discover that he insists on a full, direct communication of natures within the personal unity of Jesus Christ, and not merely an ascription of operations or attributes of the natures to the person.⁸ According to Luther’s radical interpretation of the communicatio idiomatum, if there is a genus majestaticum (a direct communication of the divine nature to the human nature within the person of Jesus Christ), then by necessity of the personal unity of Jesus Christ there must be, for Luther, a genus tapeinoticum (a communication of the human nature to the divine nature within the person of Jesus Christ; from tapeinos, meaning humble, lowly, that which is associated with the finite nature of humanity).⁹ To be sure, as Vítor Westhelle has observed, these are not two separate genera, but merely mutual sides of the same communication between natures.¹⁰ Recognizing, as well, that the genus majestaticum is not the quintessential expression of Luther’s Christology, Paul Althaus observed that

[Luther] transcends [the genus majestaticum] when he makes statements which point in the direction of a genus tapeinoti[cum] [the doctrine that God in Christ shared the weakness, suffering, and humiliation of Jesus]. Luther holds that the deity of Christ, because of the incarnation and of its personal unity with the humanity, enters into the uttermost depths of its suffering. God suffers in Christ.¹¹

Developing the implications of this reality, Althaus states that

[I]t means nothing else than that God is at once completely above and completely below. He is the creator and the Lord and yet at the same time the lowest creature and a servant subject to all men, yes, even to the devil. This man Jesus who bears the wrath of God, the sin of the world, all earthly trouble, yes, hell itself, is at the same time the highest God.¹²

The mystery of Christ, Althaus adds, cannot be expressed without these paradoxes.¹³

If, on the one hand, the Lutheran slogan finitum est capax infiniti underscores the crucial role of the genus majestaticum with reference to the Eucharistic debates of the sixteenth century between the Lutheran and Reformed theological traditions, then, on the other hand, in light of Luther’s theology of the cross, its epistemic point of departure, the Lutherans may also, equally so, assert infinitum est capax finiti or even infinitus ferat finem. If classical Lutheran theology has taught us that the genus majestaticum and its corollary expression finitum est capax infiniti are fundamental expressions of the Lutheran theological tradition, this project argues that the genus tapeinoticum and its corollary expression infinitum est capax finiti are equally fundamental to that same theological tradition. The genus majestaticum and the genus tapeinoticum are flip sides of the same christological coin, so to speak, of a Christology whose epistemic point of departure is the crucified Christ. Both the genus majestaticum and the genus tapeinoticum express the nature of God’s relation and radical commitment to creation through the Word of God.

Therefore, with some theological context in hand, the argument of this book is relatively straightforward. If, again, as Luther asserted in his Heidelberg Disputation, the locus classicus of his theology of the cross, that true theology and knowledge of God are in the crucified Christ,¹⁴ then not only does such an epistemic point of departure—the crucified Christ—transform the taxonomy of the two natures of Jesus Christ as it has been traditionally presented within confessional Lutheranism, as has already been developed, but such a point of departure necessitates the fundamental position of the genus tapeinoticum—a category of Christology excised by later confessional Lutheran Christology—for Luther’s Christology. Specifically, within the trajectory of the Luther’s theology of the cross, as Luther’s theology of the cross comes to expression in his radical interpretation of the communicatio idiomatum, the genus tapeinoticum is the christological genus sine qua non, so to speak. Expressing the epistemic point of departure of Luther’s theology of the cross, or the crucified humanity of Christ, the genus tapeinoticum becomes the fundamental text of the incarnate, divine-human One for a theologian of the cross. To be sure, not only does an elaboration of Luther’s Christology reveal this to be the case, but, as this project aims to make evident, any foray into constructive Christology from the epistemic point of departure of Luther’s theology of the cross will necessarily underscore the priority of the genus tapeinoticum.

The genus majestaticum (again, including such attributes as creating/sustaining, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinitude), that christological genus traditionally employed by classical Lutheran dogmatics as expressing what is peculiar with regard to Lutheran Christology will, subsequently, be situated—commensurate with God’s sub contrario revelation in the crucified Christ—within the category of Promise, hidden sub contraria specie within the body of Promise. The genus majestaticum is the Promise of God’s presence and life-giving activity communicated to, stirring within, and concealed by, the genus tapeinoticum in the Word of God, the incarnate, divine-human One, true God and true man. Indeed, faith confesses that the genus tapeinoticum and the genus majestaticum are an inseparable unity as the Word of God, the incarnate, crucified Word who expresses the Triune God’s loving, self-giving commitment to creation. Again, the argument is relatively straightforward. The implications, as they will be developed in the course of this project, are quite the opposite, perhaps even subversive for traditional delineations of Christology. In essence, this project is a thoroughgoing reinterpretation and appropriation of Christology from the perspective of Luther’s epistemic point of departure, or the genus tapeinoticum.

If, as Robert Kolb observed, Luther locates the divine-human One precisely where theologians of glory are horrified to find him . . . [ultimately,] as a corpse in a crypt,¹⁵ then, as this project asks: What does it mean for a Christology constructed from the epistemic point of departure of Luther’s theology of the cross to employ as its fundamental text, and thus starting point, a corpse in a crypt, or the mangled, isolated corpse of Jesus Christ, exsanguinated of all references to, evidences of, divine presence? What does it mean to permit co-priority (with the genus majestaticum) to the genus tapeinoticum—in extremis—for Christology?

Ultimately, working from the epistemic point of departure of the genus tapeinoticum, what will be developed in the following pages is a christologia crucis, a Christology for which the dynamics of Luther’s theology of the cross—involving such dynamics as the hiddenness of God (both within and beyond revelation), the hiddenness of faith itself, and a theological methodology shaped by oratio (prayer), meditatio (meditation), and, perhaps most importantly, tentatio/Anfechtung (spiritual attack)—are inscribed from start to finish. It is a Christology suspended between Promise and experience, one clinging to the yes of God revealed in Jesus Christ against the experience of its opposite. It is a Christology of faith’s extra nos certainty concealed within the struggle, the suspendedness, of reason and experience’s judgments and calculations.¹⁶

If such a theological point of departure, a God hidden in suffering in death, manifests itself in the reality, for Luther, that Experience alone makes a theologian . . . It is by living—no, rather it is by dying and being damned that a theologian is made, not by understanding, reading, or speculating,¹⁷ then the excision of such a point of departure, according to Schmid’s presentation, also manifests itself in a corresponding theological existence. For David Hollaz, one of the Lutheran dogmaticians whose theological formulations is adduced by Schmid, the removal of the crucified Christ as epistemic point of departure, and thus the omission of the genus tapeinoticum for Christology, resulted in an articulation of theological existence quite opposite of Luther’s. In this case, under the rubric Who is a theologian? Hollaz was able to describe The theologian properly and strictly so-called; a regenerated man, firmly believing in the divine Word, that reveals the mysteries of faith, adhering to it with unshaken confidence, apt in teaching others and confuting opponents.¹⁸ In short, reflecting the epistemic point of departure of Luther’s theology of the cross, far from one inflected with unshaken [confessional] confidence, or even the prerequisite detached objectivity of the academy, a christologia crucis is the expression of a concealed christological existence, or one which, suspended between Promise and experience, is inscribed with Anfechtung.

Thus, risking redundancy: in this project, the reader will encounter a Christology from the cross, a christologia crucis, or a Christology which is inscribed from beginning to end with the theology of the cross, both its epistemic point of departure—the genus tapeinoticum—and its corresponding theological—christological!—existence. It is a Christology expressive of Promise-grounded certainty and faith’s suspended concealment to experience and reason. It is a Christology which begins and ends with the confession and prayer that the experience of divine absence is really the concealment of divine presence; that the corpse in the crypt, a corpse exsanguinated of all divine reference, self-designation, and clues, is the body of Promise, the sub contraria specie revelation of the Word’s life-giving activity. It is a Christology which expresses the confession that the creating Word’s activity is not divorced from, but inextricably bound to, body; that that which is ephemeral and attracts flies is fundamental to the structure of Promise. It is, ultimately, as will be developed, a Christology which recognizes the genus tapeinoticum and the genus majestaticum to be co-fundamental categories of christological existence, a christological existence in which one confesses against the experience of cruciformity that the life-giving agency of the latter stirs, is present, within the