Forde divides the Heidelberg Disputation into four parts. The treatise begins with reflection on the law of God and the judgment it brings and ends with the love of God. The Disputation itself literally moves us from life under the law to new life in the love of God. Yet it does not do so lightly or superficially, but by moving us through a process of despair and subsequent hope, of death and then life. The Disputation operates on us in the following phases:
1. The Problem of Good Works (Theses 1–12)
2. The Problem of Will (Theses 13–18)
3. The Great Divide: The Way of Glory versus the Way of the Cross (Theses 19–24)
4. God’s Work in Us: The Righteousness of Faith (Theses 25–28)
The section on the problem of good works addresses “the basic question of the Disputation. . . . What advances sinners on the way to righteousness before God?”74 Through these theses, the theologian of glory’s attachment to good works as the means to righteousness is mercilessly attacked. The law of God brings demands against persons and judges them guilty of relying upon their own selves rather than upon God. Not a person’s evil, but their claims to any intrinsic or self-achieved righteousness are attacked. Not our evil works, but those which appear to be our brightest and best, are the grounds of our condemnation. God does God’s alien work upon us, so that later God’s proper work can be accomplished. God’s wrath comes out against the theologian of glory full force. This wrath of God is real and prevents us from sentimentalizing our understanding of God. Even as self-reliant sinners see their own works as beautiful, these attacks of God, God’s alien working on us, seem ugly and evil. We would deny them or at least claim that God is not “guilty” of this attack. Yet, we have it all wrong.
What we consider beautiful, our good works, are in actuality deadly. This sin is deadly because it “separates and seals us off from God. That occurs when the apparent goodness of our works seduces us into putting our trust in them. . . . We are in reality then, not just in theory, sealed off from grace.”75 Only fear of God in the recognition of the deadliness of our living offers us hope. “When then are the works of the righteous not mortal sins? When they fear that they are!”76 This first movement offers twelve punches that seek to destroy all creaturely confidence in good works.
In the next set of theses which Forde characterized as dealing with the bondage of the will, Forde shows how “Luther turns to the subjective side of the question.”77 Even after the old Adam or Eve, that is, the theologian of glory, recognizes the uselessness of good works, he or she will continue to hold to some bastion of human participation in the advancement toward righteousness. “. . . [W]e always come back to the question of the ‘little bit’ [we might contribute], one of the telltale signs of the theology of glory.”78 Only when this bastion is also destroyed, can we let God be God. We refuse to allow God to act unilaterally. We chip away at the totality of grace brought to us solely from God’s side. There must be some way that we advance our way toward God. Some merit, however small, must sway God in our direction. In the face of the God who saves by grace alone, the “fallen will cannot accept such a God. That is its bondage.”79 In the recognition of our bondage, we begin to hit bottom. We know that without intervention we are indeed lost.
Finally in thesis 16 another possibility presents itself. For the first time, Christ is mentioned. “When the theologian of glory has finally bottomed out, Christ enters the scene as the bringer of salvation, hope, and resurrection.”80 Hope is available, when we “utterly despair of our own ability” and allow God to do the deed to us and for us.
This brings us to the part of the Disputation that has commanded the most attention throughout history. Forde titled these theses the great divide. Forde points out, accurately I believe, that the leap directly into these theses has resulted in misunderstanding.81 When one moves into these theses without first being addressed by the critique of works and will, the result is the linguistic slip up that he warned of earlier. Suddenly, for example, thesis 21 wherein we are told that a theologian of the cross “calls a thing what it really is” becomes a call to critical realism, rather than a calling of sin and sinners what they really are in the presence of God. This leap to thesis 19 and following robs the Heidelberg Disputation of its attack on the theologian of glory. The first theses are necessary to bring the theologian “to a real existential crisis.”82 Forde emphasizes that the Disputation speaks here not of “theologies” but of “theologians.” The question in play is the existential state of the theologian in the presence of God.
These central theses pick up the mention of Christ from the earlier thesis and ask what Christ and him crucified reveal to us about God. Theologians of glory “see” the “invisible things” of God. Forde observes that “seeing” the “invisible” is an oxymoron.83 They claim to see “through” creation or divine action to a “sea of abstract universals.”84 But they will find only the threatening presence of God there and no consolations for their troubled consciences. This threat, as we have seen, is real and should be terrifying. The only way this voice of accusation can be silenced is by the cross. Looking through the cross into the beyond will not help; one must look at the cross itself where Christ hangs dying for us. True, salvific knowledge of God is there on the cross. Through this theo-logy, this word of cross, God saves us from the terror. “The cross therefore is actually intended to destroy the sight of the theologian of glory. In the cross God actively hides himself. God simply refuses to be known in any other way.”85 By suffering and the cross, the sinner comes to know God. And “the suffering Luther has in mind first and foremost is the result of God’s operation on the sinner.”86 In what Luther called Anfechtungen, the “terrors of temptation” and “the pangs of conscience” God is finally known.87