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Reformation Truth in the Global Church: Latin America
How are we to understand the salvation that the justifying God wants to bring to the human being?
The Lutheran Reformation was established permanently in Latin America three centuries after Martin Luther’s times. ecclesiastical, educational, cultural, social and assistential institutions were established and focused on immigrant minority groups of the population, especially Germanic descendants. The Lutheran churches tried to present themselves as missionary institutions population groups, especially after the second half of the twentieth century. Some changes related to their characteristics of ethnic minority churches happened thereafter. However, Lutherans never had an insertion in the context of Latin American populations like other non-Catholic Christian groups, such as Baptists, for example, or especially Pentecostals in the last 50 years.
If we ask about the Lutherans’ own charisma in Latin America, certainly it was and is not related to promoting the conversion of multitudes to the Gospel, at least if we consider the number of Lutherans and their congregations today. After several decades the number of Lutherans remains the same or decreases. If we were to ask to representatives of other Reformation-related church bodies their opinion about the Lutheran historical contribution in Latin America, they generally highlight the very qualified theological training offered by them. That is not perceived as an exclusive benefit for Lutherans, but means also theological education offered to theological and ecclesiastical leaders from other Christian groups.
Another consideration is that, until today, the preaching of the Reformation heirs in Latin America — I mean the Protestants — is only partially identified with the message of justification by grace and faith. From the outside, the faith of the evangélicos is often realized as a form of religion concerned especially with “what is allowed and what is not allowed.” That means that the center of Lutheran evangelical faith is apprehended by outside observers as a kind of moralism which is almost exclusively focused on prescribing rules and codes to determine the believers’ behavior. Actually, the intention of preaching the Gospel of God’s grace and liberation from the oppression for other of the work righteousness very often is not being witnessed through words and deeds, so that this testimony many times is not realized by outside observers in the perspective of justification by grace and faith, as we know it from Scripture and from the Lutheran Confessions.
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This perception about the historical presence of the Reformation’s heirs in Latin America, especially Lutherans, cannot simply close itself to a critical review. It should be seen as a challenge, an opportunity, a commitment delivered by God to His Latin American Lutheran people in order to carry on His mission. The outside acknowledgement that Lutherans contribute to a qualified and necessary theological education for all who are involved in the mission of God is very important. In the center of this theological education must be the Reformation truth for the people in Latin America and worldwide. All over the world, in different times and contexts, this challenge moved Lutheran leaders in order to identify ways of confessing, interpreting, preaching, teaching and living in accordance to the Reformation truth. Helmar Junghans, my memorable professor in Leipzig, has shown me how significant the question on the Reformation truth was in the context of a European, unrighteous, socialist country, where the cross manifested itself to Christians in other ways, if compared with my unrighteous, capitalist country, Brazil. The way he wrote about the Reformation truth, describing the theme of 79 Luther’s theology, will help me to speak about our commitment to the Reformation truth in Latin America in the twenty-first century.
Interpreting Ps. 51:2 (1532), Luther says that the knowledge of God and the human being is the true and divine theological wisdom. That means the knowledge about God and the human being as it is related to the God who justifies and to the sinful human being. Therefore, the object of theology is the guilty and condemned person and God the Redeemer, who justifies (WA 40 II, 328, 1s). Thus, Luther places the guilty person in front of the justifying God. That means that for him the real issue, the key concern, the main interest of theology, is God, who acts, works and does His work. It is God who turns His attention to people and searches for them in their terrible condition. All this has to do with the Word of God. God works speaking His Word. God’s Word creates everything from nothing and originates life where no life exists. Through His power, God does all things based on His Word in a dialogical process for the sinner’s salvation.
Regarding Luke 1:49: “For he who is mighty has done great things for me,” Luther said in his Magnificat interpretation (1521) that this statement means that nobody does anything, but only God operates everything. He works all things. All the works of creatures are works of God. The word “almighty” from the Apostolic Creed should be understood in this context. God is “almighty” because in all, through all and above all, everything is worked exclusively by His power. This is also the reason why God is worshiped.
Very soon in his career Luther came to that understanding. It is also present in the so-called “Reformation discovery.” Luther tortured himself in order to discover the meaning of the expression, “God’s righteousness,” in the Scripture. According to his prior learning, God’s righteousness was the righteousness that has to be fulfilled by the person through his own will and strength. Although he spent all his effort and ability to fulfill God’s righteousness, Luther fell into despair. This led him to hate God. He hated God, because God required of him something he never would fulfill through his will and strengh. Luther, however, did not remain in despair. He struggled to understand what St. Paul calls “God’s righteousness.” Interpreting Rom. 1:16ff, Luther concluded that for Paul, “God’s righteousness” is that righteousness which God gives, which God works in the believer by His mercy, calling him and making him righteous by faith. Simultaneously he understood other expressions of the Scripture: “God’s power,” the power by which God makes his people powerful, “God’s wisdom,” by which He makes His people wise, and the same in relation to other expressions. In all these cases it is God who gives these qualities to people. And what can human beings do? They can only let the work of God happen to them, enduring it, suffering it. That is why Luther later called this righteousness “passive righteousness,” since we do not call it forth, but experience it upon ourselves.
Therefore, what we call “justification by grace and faith” is primarily related to Luther’s understanding according to which God makes all things. The reformer always attached great importance to the work of Jesus Christ. However, we cannot conclude that for him God’s action happens exclusively through Jesus Christ. For Luther describes God’s action broadly. God continually creates (creatio continua). He operates in the saving work of Jesus Christ and sanctifies permanently through the Holy Spirit. We cannot ever forget this comprehensiveness of God’s action.
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Here arises another question: if God does all things, then is He ultimately responsible for all the evil that is done? According to Luther, that question would never help, because it is speculative, a metaphysical question. This question belongs to an inappropriate way of thinking theologically about God’s action. What matters is to understand and emphasize the relationship between God and human beings, in which God acts only for the salvation of mankind and in which the human beings have no ability to produce their salvation by themselves. This theological reflection is enough to support the preaching of the liberating Gospel. It may seem very simple and nothing new to say that a theology has to put God and His action in the middle. However, at that time this message was not so common. I ask the same question facing 500 years of Christian presence in Latin America in regard to the preaching of the Gospel promoted by various Christian churches, including Lutherans. To what extent do the churches and Christian theology in Latin America have a 80 clear understanding that God is the one who acts in the first place?
In his time, Luther asked: How can I have a gracious God? In the practical spirituality of his time, the main emphasis corresponded to the search for God through the most different works. That spirituality had its main reference in human action (anthropocentric) and not in what God himself operates (theocentric). In the “Reformation discovery,” the realization that God makes all things is fundamental. Luther’s First Commandment explanation in the Small Catechism puts it with clarity: “We should fear, love and trust in God above all things.”
Besides positioning God and His work in the center of preaching, it is also important to say something about how God operates. For Luther, God alone is the origin and the one who speaks His Word. God is still speaking. He speaks to all people. It means that no one deserves the Word of God. God is the one who speaks to people. Luther identifies in the Scripture two models related to God’s speaking, when he makes a distinction between the Latin verbs loqui (talk) and dicere (say). There is a way when God speaks His Word (loqui) that does not use any pressure, which does not force the person to anything. Moreover, there is the model of the creative Word of God (dicere), when what God says happens the same way He says it. Luther understood the Word broadly. The Word has to do with Creation, with Redemption through Jesus Christ and with their continuous updating and contextualization by the Holy Spirit. And it has to do with God’s action through His creatures. The external Word of God (loqui) is a divine interpellation, which does not always cause an effect. To the external Word belongs God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ and the preaching of the witnesses of God’s will — Moses, the prophets and the apostles. The Scripture is the witness of the external Word and is the decisive source by which to experience God’s speaking. God acts primarily through preaching. For Luther, the Word of God spoken, preached and practiced has a prominent position. When the Word is preached and materially practiced, it is then updated, contextualized and embodied in people’s reality. God employs as His instrument the exterior Word, expressed by people, to bring the Holy Spirit to hearts and put them in movement. The God who speaks corresponds the human being who hears. To the human being, God is the one who should be heard. The sequence of the God-human relationship is determined. First, God speaks His Word to the human being, who can only hear and respond to the interpellation of God. God attaches His action with His Word. Outside the Word there is no possibility to know God. There is no room to speculate about God. The source of knowledge about God and His work is only God’s action through His Word, Jesus Christ (John 1). All theological statements, everything that is proposed for the life and mission of the Church has to be tested in correspondence with Scripture. The Church is a creature of God’s Word (creature verbi).
For Luther it is also important to recognize that God works through His Word in a process. His theology is characterized by pairs of opposing concepts: spirit/letter, Law/Gospel, hidden God/revealed God, freedom/ oppression. These are pairs of concepts to describe the action of God. The theme of Luther’s theology is God’s relationship with the human being. That relationship is a process, that is, it is historic, dynamic and directed toward an end.
God’s action is dialectical. Through the Law, God shows to the human being that he or she is a sinner. Through the Gospel, He promises forgiveness, faith and justice to him or her. But it is not a single deed. The human being such as Luther needs to be healed and God wants to heal. God’s action is often incomprehensible, hidden and contradictory regarding what believers expect from God. So the reformer writes that God often acts unexpectedly, contrary to everything believers used to await from Him. God allows the evil, the temptation, and breaks the pride of the superbs. Those who suffer that fail in the understanding of God’s action. There are times when God works things outside, contrary to the way He usually acts. He does it to operate what is truly and properly His work. More than dialectic, God’s mode of action is dialogical. Through its stance, human beings respond to the interpellation of God, the Word of God. After the reaction of the human being in his life, God speaks again. God’s action is a process, a dialogic process.
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The end intended by God through this process, in 81 which the human being is challenged by God’s Word, is salvation. The definition of theology presented earlier said that its object is the human being, guilty and condemned, and the God who justifies and is the Redeemer. Luther does not mean that all theology ends in the doctrine of justification by grace and faith. The same reformer, inspired by various biblical texts has dealt with issues such as creation, education, politics and economics. However, this is what he wants to emphasize as the center of his theology: the living God who acts for the salvation of the human being who is away from God through the sin.
How are we to understand the salvation that the justifying God wants to bring to the human being? In 1536, Luther defined the human being as “matter of God for life in its future form.” “Future form” means the eternal glory. For Luther, life in its future form is not only a consequence of the final judgement. From now on, every day, through the work of the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, believers are made holy. God’s salvation happens now. The Holy Spirit creates the faith, makes it bear fruit and strengthens it to live in circumstances of suffering and death. Sanctification has a fundamental significance for the believer, the Church and the human community. The Holy Spirit kills selfishness, greed, the desire for revenge and the lust for power in the believer. Therefore, according to Luther, the believers could and should act, inspired by God the Holy Spirit, in the secular government without being moved by self-interest or for the purpose of obtaining benefits privately. The salvation of the human being that God operates by the Holy Spirit is, indeed, directed toward its fulfillment in eternal life. Simultaneously, it is also salvation now, for believers and unbelievers, in the two dimensions of divine action, the spiritual and the secular.
The Rev. Ricardo Rieth is professor of
Historical Theology at Universidade
Luterana do Brasil.
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