Prenter turns to Luther’s work on the Magnificat to challenge orthodoxy’s restriction of God’s historical activity and lordship. In this commentary Luther holds history and creation together with the cross of Christ. When Luther addresses issues of poverty, he is speaking not of some spiritual poverty recognized in a sacred sphere, he speaks of actual, physical hunger and thirst as the medium of God’s creative activity. He asks the reader:
How do we come to identify the cross in the creation as the cross of Jesus Christ? Can we go along with this at all? And if not, must we then not admit that Luther’s theology of the cross is not relevant for us?122
Again, Prenter returns to the theme of vicarious suffering. Christ suffers on our behalf the cross that is laid upon sinners.
As we in the course of our own lives experience the punishment for our fall into sin, through suffering, through temptation, through death, it will become clear to us that, because he bore exactly the same on our behalf, because he, who possessed the power of divine love as no other human person lived and suffered for us—this all is no longer guilt and punishment for us, but the role of the children of God, which is permitted us through the gracious command of God in the gospel.123
He finally sums up the opportunity that Luther’s theology of the cross offers to contemporary theology:
we must concern ourselves for both life and the word of God with like honesty and determination, so that we neither play life against the word, as in the case in a theology of the cross without the word; nor play the word against life as is the case in all sorts of thinking in terms of two realms such as occurs in the orthodoxy entrenched in the church. For God is the trinitarian God. He is the God of life, the Creator; he is the God of the word, the Savior; he is the God of faith, the Holy Ghost, and this trinity as Father, in our common experience of life; as Son in the preached word; and as Holy Ghost, in our personal convictions, teaches us in the last analysis what it means: Omnia bona in cruce et sub cruce abscondita sunt. (All good things are hidden in and under the cross.) Therefore they cannot be understood anywhere else except under the cross; under the cross—that means, under the cross on which Jesus, our Redeemer, bore our punishment, and under the cross which my Creator has laid upon me in my suffering and in my death. For in both places we are talking about the same cross.124
In this short article, Prenter has brought us further along in our task than the last three authors combined. His constructive critique of the wedge driven between the cross of the incarnate word Jesus and the other crosses in creation holds in appropriate tension our concern to not take the incarnate and crucified word out of our world. He offers us clarity in our critique of Forde and Ebeling who have taken Jesus’ cross out of the realm of history. He reminds us that it is not an accident that people who suffer brutal abuses of power are turning to look again, not only with Luther but also with the original apostolic witnesses to Jesus, to the crucified Christ.
Critical Summary
We have explored three models of interpreting Luther’s theology of the cross. In relationship to the concern that the theology of the cross be situated within the political and social history of its day, we appraise the three models differently. The third model offers some clues for bringing together theology and social reality. It does this by providing a way to talk about the theology of the cross in terms of the total context in which we live. Especially Prenter recognizes the God-given possibility and necessity of understanding Christ’s cross always in conjunction with contemporary crosses. In the crosses of creation points of historical concreteness are provided in which Christ and context are related. One also could argue that Peura’s emphasis on the real, ontological presence of God in the believer also provides a foothold for God’s active presence in history.
The emphasis on the proclamation of the word in Ebeling and Forde, an element that the other two models also have noted to some extent, correctly identifies the nature of the Reformation as an oral event. Yet, the lack of interest in pursuing how that oral event functioned within the larger sixteenth-century context, including daily life lived outside of the church, robs what could have been a provocative historical observation of its force. The tendency, of collapsing historic distinctions through generic observations about humanity also speaks of the historical disinterest of this model. In Forde’s writing, Luther speaks directly to “us” across five centuries. The shape of sin in the sixteenth century remains with us today without any interesting variation. Even within the sixteenth century itself, peasant and priest, pauper and king stand before God in basically the same way. It is amazing that such a strong critique of power like that which Luther offers can be examined to the total neglect of actual power relations between distinct members of society. Finally, even the neighbor and his or her cross only enters the picture at the very end of the process. Ebeling illustrates this when only in the final pages of the book does he raise as his last question the reality of those in need of compassion.125 All of this indicates, as stated above, that Ebeling and Forde stand dangerously close to what Prenter characterized as a theology of the word without the cross. In their writings the poor are rendered invisible, and this is a sign of the theology of glory.
In my appraisal, the first model is best at helping us in our task of joining theology with history in the life and work of Luther. The recognition by Althaus and especially by Loewenich of the place of the institutional church and its abuses in the formation of Luther’s thought addresses my concerns for contextual interpretation. Yet, even here the church is primarily thought of as a religious institution. The perception by the people of Luther’s day that the church was a political, economic, and social agent of power is acknowledged, but this plays no significant role in the understanding of the shape of his theology. The next chapters will seek to redress this neglect.
One other comment needs to be made regarding all of these interpreters. They all reflect on Luther’s development in such a way that historic distinctions inevitably dissolve in the rush to declare Luther an unwavering theologian of the cross. All of them claim that Luther is consistently a theologian of the cross throughout his career. A clearer exploration of the ways that Luther’s theology of the cross took shape at different times in his life and ministry, as well as the ways that his practice diverted in significant ways from this fundamental commitment, might present us with a more accurate picture of the reformer and his theology. For example, one might ask how Luther diverted from the theology of the cross and its basic commitments in his response to the Peasants’ Revolt. Similarly one might ask about how his theology of the cross functioned or malfunctioned in relation to the Jews of his day or in relation to divergent Protestant groups. Did Luther betray the theology of the cross in his own quest for power in relation to these and other groups? It is clear to me that the critique that Luther himself offered at specific times might be turned against him. There is a deep irony in the claim by Luther interpreters and followers that Luther was a consistent theologian of the cross throughout his whole life. The irony is that the claim that one is consistently a faithful theologian of the cross sounds like the pious claim of a theologian of glory. For the theologian of the cross knows that she or he cannot maintain such unbroken faithfulness. Luther knew this profoundly and painfully in relation to himself. Yet he was able to rejoice that his own lapsing would direct attention to the one who alone is faithful, the God we know in Jesus Christ. In conformity to Luther’s self-critique, we shall begin to critique him in his own historically embedded theological confession; we do this so that our own theological reflection might learn from his lapses as we speak to a new day. We also do this aware that, God willing, others shall so reexamine our lapses in the future.
Finally, the relative lack of interest in the questions posed here