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All day yesterday a line of poetry that occurred in a dream stayed with me. Ordinarily I don’t remember word for word what is said in a dream. I don’t remember the dream at all. I wonder if you would like to interpret it?

The fruit

on the court house tree

hangs there

symbolically.

What do you make of it?

Words at the Memorial Celebration for Karl Barth on December 14^th 1968 in the “Münster” in Basel

by Helmut Gollwitzer

“I’m for you, I am your friend” – that’s how he summed it all up one time, that’s how he heard the voice coming out of eternity, from out of a place in time, from the human being Jesus, from out of the “ineffable reality of Jesus Christ,” as he once wrote. That’s what he heard the living Jesus saying and in him the living God, and so he passed it on, saying it to others. It gave him material to think about, as soon as he understood the opposition that the friendship of God for human beings ran against the voices of the abyss, of death, loneliness; and against the voices of wrath, of conscience, of guilt. It threw a light of great compassion and mercy into the darkest places of the earth, gave the impulse for friendship and friendliness [needed] for living in unfriendly times; and gave material for thick books, countless essays, booklets, and sermons, inexhaustibly until the last evening of his life, for this bottomless, not to be thought out Immanuel: “I’m for you, I am your friend,” whom he has now finally reached.

“Where are we going?” is the way he persistently questioned visitors in his last years, in order to receive help from them for better understanding of the hope grounded for us in Immanuel and he himself answered from what he had heard out of the gospel: in the understanding of Immanuel, who in a moment quiets and fulfills everything, quiets the burning hunger for immortality and reconciles us fully with the limit, with the finitude of this, but once happening life, and fulfills the promises that have become ours, through the revelation of the one, who indeed had thought everything out well: the cross of his Son as well as the sufferings of Job, the loneliness experienced by an old Theology professor, like the dancing of each mosquito in the sunlight. There are no Auschwitz and no Vietnam, without what was suffered through and fought out on Golgotha in advance. What are we heading for? We are headed toward the revelation of the one, who in advance has made right what could never be undone and what could never be made right again: the children’s shoes of Auschwitz and the burned skin of the children of Vietnam and skeleton of the child from Biafra – which only through God and God’s own suffering could be made right again. From this already-in-advance, he was walking with Jesus Christ toward the day of revelation, and all his teaching in the Church was a teaching of the praxis of constantly beginning again on the way of this forward looking being on the way.

“The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11). That the Eternal Truth freely determines and openly declares itself to be the friend of human beings, that it does not want to be against human beings, but be unconditionally for them, – hardly one of the Christian theologians has dared to proclaim that in such an unqualified way, the Α and Ω, the atonement of all, so that all ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ of which the other theologians felt they had to remind before all, now only appeared in brackets before this unconditional: “Jesus lives – and with him also I”, [and] this world of humanity also with him.

Looking forward fifty years ago, who would have ever dared to say, that this one who from standing against any friendly attempt of making the cross of Christ inoffensive, proclaimed eternity to be the crisis of time, as the wrathful, vertical in-breaking of the cross from above, crossing up our possibilities; would become the great preacher of unconditional and insuppressible grace? Looking back, it now no longer appears like a break: in his early expressions, we already notice the Mozart-tones of thankfulness for the resurrection’s song of praise, and only where the contradiction of the ‘no’ was experienced, the deep ‘yes’ [planted] under the ‘no’ becomes the discovery that releases awe, which for him became the life-long ground, from which his theology emerged.

To hear the Gospel as the voice of the living God, as a friend’s voice, makes [a person] into a friend of people. The word “friend,” like hardly another, characterizes him, from whom we now take our leave “for a little while” (John 16:16). Standing under the friendship of God, he was allowed to experience a great deal of friendship in his life and turned to many with friendship. “Bergli” as a true place of friendship remains bound up with his name. We Germans were privileged to have experienced the friendship of his that had sprung out of the philanthropy of God; privileged, because he worked for 14 years with us as a professor in Göttingen, Münster, and Bonn, and that in his characteristic openness and resolve, immediately made our problems his own. He certainly could not count on being thanked from all sides in the face of the broad mentality in our country at that time, but now many in our country are with us in their thoughts with great thanks, for the one from whom we have gathered to take our leave. What he tried to introduce as Swiss experience, was often enough used as evidence to rid and reject his Swiss “inability to understand.” Finally through Schub he was ushered out, and even the Confessing Church, which was unthinkable without him, did not fight enough to keep him working with us. But where have we Germans, who like so much to circle around our own problems and illuminate the whole world with them, had a place in Switzerland or anywhere else in the world, like here in this book-filled room – first in Albanring, then in Pilgrim Street, and at last in Bruderholz – a place, in which we were so welcome, in which we were listened to so carefully, where our questions and concerns were so attentively [heard and] thought about with us?

He places the word with which I began, as a very peculiar and valid summation of the Gospel, beyond the scope of that time, into the mouth of Jesus Christ, as a gospel for the Germans. At that time, in that lecture, “The Germans and Us,” in January 1945, the first one that we Germans could read, there he was and he himself came again, ready to sacrifice and do without, bringing us material and spiritual gifts, giving the best proof of his friendship. The call of Jesus Christ: “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden!” he translated at the time for us: “Get over here you unsympathetic, you evil Hitler-rogues and Hitler-girls, you brutal SS-soldiers, you evil Gestapo scoundrels, you sad compromisers and collaborators, you people of the herd, you who so long and so patiently and stupidly ran behind your so-called ‘Führer.’ Get over here you guilty and you accomplices of the guilty, who now experience and have to experience what your deeds are worth! Get over here, I know you well, but I do not ask who you are and what you did. I only see that you are at your end and for good or evil, you have to start from the beginning all over again. I will revive you. Precisely with you, will I myself again, from your zero point, with you begin a-new. I am for you. I am your friend” (“For the Recovery of German Essence,” Stuttgart, 1945, p. 35 f.).

At the time he often spoke to us about the great opportunity the Germans now had because of the fact that they had failed so completely taking an evil way and now new possibilities stood open before us. What did we make of the offer given us? How seldom countries perceive God’s offer of grace in the hour of trial! That at least the Church would recognize, perceive, and accept the offer [of grace], for that he fought. But he himself was an offer [of grace] for the Church, this valiant man, and none of us know another to match him, this thorough going and complete Christian and theologian. They are not all theologians, to use a favorite expression of his, in a night in which all the cats are gray. There are chosen instruments among them, for whom the issue is not theological systems, directions, and differences of opinion, but who represent [another] chance for the Church, that can be grasped or failed, through whom a whole period of the way of the Church becomes decided. With the Barmen Declaration, written by him completely awake, while others slept, we have a formulation of such a decision, but it has to be carried out on a daily basis. We now cry after him like the forsaken Elisha: “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” “And he saw him no more”, it says there (2 Kings 2:12). We would have had more need of his counsel, his reproof, his criticism, his instruction, his encouragement, his heart-felt nature. He, however, our friend, thank God! with his Christomonist, Christological theology, in advance, had already pointed away from himself to the Resurrected One, who goes forward from victory to victory through the dark places of also this century and says to us: “I’m for you, I am your friend.”

(A Separate Printing from “Karl Barth, 1886-1968”, Zürich: EVZ-Verlag)

Pentecost XXIV – November 15^th 2009

Daniel 12: 1-3 Psalm 16 Hebrews 10: 11-25 Mark 13: 1-8

2012 and the Apocalypse

 

Sometimes the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark is known as the “Little Apocalypse.” “Apocalypse” as a word, derives from the Greek and means uncovering, revealing, or revelation. Thus the last book of the Bible, “Revelations” is sometimes called the “Apocalypse.” Luther complained, however, that Revelations concealed more than it revealed; but it is typical apocalyptic literature.

In a time of untold suffering and crisis, apocalyptic writers want to assure us that the Kingdom of Heaven will come and God’s will, will be done through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. All the signs in the heavens, the disturbances in our climate, our failing environment, not- with-standing; the collapse of our economy, earthquakes, wind, and fire; or the fact that someone can stand up in a heavily guarded military fort and shoot our soldiers down, or that suicide bombers kill below while drones fire missiles and kill from above, that wars go on like quagmires and threaten to sink us; yet and still, God is in heaven and the Kingdom of Heaven will come, in God’s dear Son, Jesus Christ, who on the cross died for us.

Even if we should see the same turmoil in heaven as we see on earth, it will not be the end of the world, but the birth-pangs, the contractions for the birth of salvation, as our prayer said. And the Prayer of the Day is oicking up the words of Jesus.[1]

I have a critical mind and I’m sure that you do too. Some arguments are convincing and some are not. A friend of mine is convinced that because of prophesies from the Mayan Calendar, the world will end in 2012. Now I really don’t place any stock in the Mayan Calendar; you can’t buy one in Office Depot – and I put less stock in astrology, your star signs and such. I do want to be a bright and shining star of heaven that Daniel writes about, but I don’t feel that the stars determine the course of my life. Even Shakespeare said, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves that we are underlings” (That’s from Julius Caesar).

Now a churchman told me that all the planets were going to form a straight line before the sun and all the gravity from the planets could affect the sun and pull the earth off course or tip our axis, meaning the end for us.

I confess: that worried me. I became frightened, because that was not astrology but astronomy and gravity is very real. So what do we do now-a-days? We go to the Google search engine. There they have an encyclopedia called Wikipedia and that sent me to a site where you can enter a date and it will position the planets around the sun. As one scientist said, this February past, the planets were more aligned with the sun than they will be on December 21^st 2012. And when they were aligned that way, nothing happened! I didn’t notice that the axis of the earth tipped or that our planet went flying off into space. Did you?

So it is good to have a critical mind and I don’t know how some people can think we will be invaded by aliens from space or that the sun, moon, and earth will drop into a black hole. I looked that up too and found that that’s also impossible. Our Milky Way, like all galaxies, does swirl around a black hole, but our solar system never gets near it. We are out on the edge of our galaxy, light years away from the black hole.

When people tell you about 2012 and how the world will end, especially after seeing the movie 2012 that will come out, then remember that Jesus did not even know when the world would end. He said that only his Father in heaven knew that time.

But like the times of the apocalyptic writers, our times could also become very hard. Those are still two very nasty wars we have on our hands and we are up against the violence of evil spirits, where suicidal believers, sacrificing their own lives, slip in and keep taking a toll. More and more serial killers do that too. They factor their own death into the equation of their crime. How is capital punishment a deterrent? They believe in it and inflict it on themselves by exploding with their bombs or they count on being killed while they are shooting others. The most recent fellow was wounded before he could do himself in and now he probably wishes he were dead. But now he has to face his life after the murderous crime he has committed. I like the way President Obama said, “He will face judgment in this world and the next.”

In our pastors’ bible study someone said that we could not understand apocalyptic times. But I think that our situation is beginning to resemble those kinds of times, just a little, because, believe me, times can be far worse. If you had been in Hamburg when it was bombed, then just imagine coming out of your door, seeing fires everywhere, and the city of Oakland nothing but a pile of rubble. Times can be worse.

We have 10.2% unemployment and far more when the long term unemployed are counted. That problem threatens another huge wave of foreclosures, so that millions of Americans again stand to lose their houses. The whole city of New Orleans went under with Katrina. We saw the Twin Towers, the highest buildings in America crumble, collapse, and fall, over three thousand people were killed and over 4,500 soldiers have been killed in the wars that have been the aftermath. We never talk about how many Iraqis were killed. We also do not fathom the tens of thousands of soldiers who are wounded and sometimes worse, the psychological casualties that sometimes take a life time to heal or never do.

When the former Soviet Union was mired in its war in Afghanistan, we helped train Osama Bin Laden and what Pres. Reagan at the time called the “Freedom Fighters” to fight the Russians, hoping that the war would become the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. And lo and behold, the Soviet Union did collapse. And here we are seven years later, mired and stuck in Afghanistan in a war where even Obama can’t find a hopeful way to proceed.

But enough about wars and rumors of wars; enough about our earthly powers and principalities: it’s the Kingdom of Heaven that we are all about and it will come. The Daniel text is usually used for St. Michael’s Day, September 29^th, where the archangel, the great prince of heaven guards and protects God’s people, even through times of anguish, the likes of which we have not seen before.

Ah, but Jesus says that these times are the beginning of our birth pangs. And the people of God will be delivered, like a baby delivered from the birth trauma, through the squeeze and the pushes and pulls, the life and death contractions, when a mother is giving birth to her child. Ah, but thereafter, as tired as if she had just climbed a mountain, she can hold the baby to her breast and feel the elation, that she has brought a new child into the world! So through untold anguish and suffering, the new kingdom will come, because the old creation, which God has made, is pregnant with the new one, but we have to continue to fix our faith on God, trusting that God will deliver us through these times.

A commentary said that Jesus was wrong about the destruction of the temple: that it was burned by the Roman armies and the stones were not thrown down. We can know a little. We have to know a lot. A geography professor in Jerusalem, that we visited on our Israel travels, explained how a whole series of Jesus’ prophesies came true. When the temple burned, all the gold melted and went in between the rocks, and the soldiers and the people quarried and mined for gold in between the rocks, not leaving one stone on top of the other.

Now we have a temple not made with human hands. The Babylonians destroyed the first temple and the Romans destroyed the second, Herod’s temple; but now the body of Christ is the third temple, and all who worship in Christ worship in spirit and in truth. One rabbi said that when the temple was destroyed, the glory of God moved from the Temple Mount to the Mount of Olives, and that glory is now resting in Jesus. (Here in our lesson, Jesus is teaching his disciples on the Mount of Olives.) As Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it back up in three days!” He was talking about his own body. He was talking about us, we who are in the body of Christ. And Jesus is raising us up!

Next Sunday is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Pentecost Season and then we’ll enter Advent and the new church year.

Ah, Christ our King – but what happens to our king? The head with the wisdom of God gets a crown of thorns. The Christ, the Anointed One, becomes anointed because of the love and devotion of one woman, the woman with that alabaster jar full of perfumed ointment, while the disciples try to prevent her from anointing him. That’s the Christ, the Messiah, whose titles mean the anointed one!

He had no great ceremony to anoint him like for a king or queen or the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example.

Christ our king is a friend of the common people. So even in the worst crises, we hear the Gospel; we hear the friendly voice of the living God, who was right there in the human being Jesus, suffering before us so that God continues to be with us. God is with us, no matter the severity of the crisis we go through. He went through it all before us. But Christ is King, no matter that he will be betrayed by one of his own, arrested by religious leaders, brought before alien governors, scourged and crucified for you and me. God vindicated him, you see, and raised him from the dead, and we can pray to God that we too might become bright and shining stars. Christ, however, shines brighter than the sun in the sky, because he is the real Son of Heaven.

So as we continue our life’s journey, let us have our eyes fixed on his coming kingdom, knowing that God is with us even now and continues to keep the promises he has made to our hearts, fulfilling them even in the here-and-now, despite appearances to the contrary.

Like the great theologian Karl Barth said, “Jesus lives and with him, so will I, and the whole world of humanity with him. And there are no ifs or buts about it.”[2]

I don’t know of another theologian who has had a transit system named after him: the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). Think of the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth, when you ride the BART. He said that eternity could be described as the crisis of time, breaking in when all our time is engulfed in crisis. The cross should not be seen as a decoration; it’s not a harmless cross. From heaven it descends like the wrath of God, crossing up all our human purposes.[3] But Christ remains our friend and Christ routes for you and me, to cross the finish line of the race that represents the righteous life lived by grace, the grace of God. It’s the race that makes us the shining stars of righteousness. Be assured though, Karl Barth says, that we live in God’s unconditional love and with access to God’s divine and boundless grace. Under the assault of all the “no’s” that life hands us, God plants a deep “yes,” affirming us[4] through it all with an acceptance that overcomes the world’s rejections. And all of that boundless love of God is ours, because we have come to believe in God’s Word and trust God to keep his promises.

So like Hebrews says, let’s provoke one another, not to anger, but to good works. Let’s provoke one another to random acts of kindness and senseless acts of love. “Senseless acts of beauty” is how the saying goes, and they are all right too, but I like to say, senseless acts of love.

Let us enter the sanctuary of Christ with confidence and make the true confession, encouraging one another again and again through these hard times. Amen.

Communion Blessing: “Through it all, through it all, I‘ve learned to depend upon God’s Word. Through it all, I’ve come to know that I’m God’s child” (From the song).

 

---

[1] Almighty God, your sovereign purpose brings salvation to birth. Give us faith to remain steadfast amid the tumults of this world trusting that your kingdom will come and your will be done through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, whom with you and the Holy Spirit we worship and praise, one God, now and forever. Amen.

[2] From Helmut Gollwitzer, “Words at the Memorial Ceebration for Karl Barth on December 14^th 1968 at Basel,” (A Separate Printing from “Karl Barth, 1886-1968,” EVZ-Verlag Zürich), page 2. I put “Wenn and aber,” that is, ifs and buts, after, while it comes before the passage. I’m working to translate this speech by Gollwitzer and to get it into this website.

[3] Ibid.  These passages in my sermon are inspired by Gollwitzer’s words.

[4] Ibid.

Suggestions that I hope are helpful:

For the wars:

1. Could dogs be trained for protecting soldiers and civilians from suicide bombers? I think they are already used; but could the usefulness of trained dogs become expanded?

For the economy:

2. Could Pres. Obama have economic revival conferences in strategic places throughout the country, the way Bill Clinton and Al Gore did beginning their administration? Or conferences with strategic CEO’s and business leaders? For an agenda look at the 6/25/09 Charlie Rose interview  of the CEO of GE, Jeffry Immelt. Just an elite, intellectual group of economic advisers, should not replace a grassroots and corporate economic revival for the sake of job creation.

3. I loved the idea that representatives from all the Indian nations in our country met with Pres. Obama and his cabinet. Can I get more information about the meeting? Reconciliation with Native Americans alone would make Pres. Obama deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, let alone many of his other “firsts.”

I’m a Dr., i.e., not an MD but a PhD, and also a pastor praying that Pres. Obama win out on his wholesome agenda. Lack of health insurance kills 45,000 a year. That’s an angel of death more fierce than the terrorists. See Nicholas Kristof’s Op Ed article in the NYTimes today 11/12/09.

lovejoypeace,

peter krey

China’s Premier Warns Obama to Get America’s Deficit to an “Appropriate Size”

Aren’t Walmart, Target, and all the other retailers, 99% of whose merchandise is made in China, Chinese Trojan horses?

When I equipped my apartment in Philadelphia a few years ago, virtually everything I purchased was made in China, except the china, which was made in USA.

Check out Deuteronomy 28: 12-13: You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. The Lord will make you the head and not the tail: you shall be only at the top and not the bottom. (This same idea comes up in 28: 44 again.) So the creditor nation (China) becomes the head of the dog and the debtor (The U.S.A.) becomes the tail, meaning that the dog is going to wag the tail and the the tail is not going to wag the dog.

This post is about becoming indebted to China, but the same holds true for the debtor class in America. Going into debt makes us the tail of our society, while the creditors become the head of the dog.  The tail can’t wag the dog.

Yesterday I wanted to celebrate 50,000 hits on my website. But today I already have 50,139! I have to figure out a way to celebrate. My hits this year have already doubled those of last year. Thanks for visiting. Hope my work is helpful.

 

peterkrey

This is a children’s song for the story of Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17: 8-16). Click on the title to hear how it goes.

God Will Provide

Elijah met the widow

of Zarephath

Picking up sticks

upon her path.

“Bring me some water,”

Elijah said,

“and don’t forget

to bake some bread.”

“The little I’ve left

will make one bread;

Then my son and I

will soon be dead.”

“Have some faith

and put God first

and God will fill

your hunger and thirst.”

“Your flour and oil

will never run out,

that’s what sharing

is all about.”

Selfish people

never have enough,

and those who share

have more to spare.

Those with a lot,

will always want more.

Those with a little

will help the poor.

Seek ye first

the Kingdom Above

and God will provide you

with food of love.

The food of love

Will never run out

Because that’s what

Sharing’s all about!

I heard someone phone in to an NPR program say,

“Jesus the Good Samaritan would have given his neighbor health care!”

The CEO of Aetna was being interviewed on the Lehrer Report and he said that he had to strike 8 million people from their rolls to make their health insurance profitable again. He knocked 8 million people out of their health coverage for the sake of profit! What is wrong with this picture?

Correlating Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game with Martin Luther’s Theology

October 31, 2009 by Dr. Peter D.S. Krey

Since writing the post, “Time Slows Down in the Zone” on July 26^th 2008, I have wanted to deal with W. Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game of Tennis[1] again, because many of his insights can be correlated with Luther’s theology. I will present those insights and Luther’s correlations, which are also basically features of the Christian faith, the way it is experienced and lived. Then it will be important to answer the question, why do all these correlations exist?

In my dissertation, Sword of the Spirit, Sword of Iron, I argue that Martin Luther (1486-1546) championed spontaneity. Medieval times were characterized by mediation, that priests mediated the faith to the other estates, the princes, peasants, and burghers, for example. Luther championed immediacy. All, everyone was part of the Christian estate and they were the priesthood of all believers, who had immediate access to God and a specialized priestly estate was not necessary to mediate their relationship with the sacred.

My emphasis on spontaneity in my dissertation is well placed. Timothy Gallwey speaks of a deeper sense of confidence, while Luther emphasizes a deeper intensity of faith, which he also refers to as trust and confidence. For Luther faith is an overarching confidence in God, while Gallwey places trust in a second self. From Luther’s point of view, which is basically the Christian one, Gallwey’s Self 1 and Self 2 can be considered the old and new self in Christ. In the fourth article on Baptism in Luther’s “Small Catechism,” he writes

that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil lusts should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance and be put to death, and that a new man should come forth daily and rise up, cleansed and righteous, to live forever in God’s presence.

Gallwey focuses on getting to Self 2 for the sake of peak performance at a game, but his disparagement of Self 1 is much like the Christian conception of an old self as opposed to the new self in Christ.

Gallwey’s ego-mind or Self 1 corresponds with Luther’s old self that lives out of a righteousness of works and the law. Gallwey writes of the judgmental Self 1 that interferes with Self 2, which from Luther’s theological point of view, is the self sustained by grace, already saved. Getting into this self is, however, very difficult to sustain. In Gallwey’s words, “Grab for it, and it will squirt away like a slippery bar of soap” (page 100).

In Luther’s words:

Justification is hard to hold (lubrica est, that is, it is slippery), not indeed in itself – for in itself it is sure and certain – but [in] so far as our relation to it is concerned. I often experience this myself, for I know the hours of darkness in which I sometimes wrestle. I know how often I lose the roots of the Gospel and grace, as if it were suddenly hidden from me by dense clouds. I know how slippery is the footing of even those who are experienced in this matter and can step out most firmly….[2]

Gallwey writes much the same way about getting into and slipping out of Self 2. Listen to Luther again:

Dear brother, do not be proud, or sure and certain that you know Christ well. You now hear me confessing and professing what the devil was able to do against this man Luther, who, after all, was a doctor in this art. He has preached, thought, written, spoken, sung, and read so much about this matter and yet must remain a pupil in it and at times is neither a pupil nor master. Therefore be advised, and do not shout hurrah. Now you are standing, but see to it that you do not fall[3]

For Gallwey’s suspension of judgment, we can correlate the Christian tenet that when the self has already died in baptism, judgment is irrelevant. There is no more earthly jurisdiction. Gallwey’s inner game makes the other-worldly produce the this-worldly or conversely, it makes the this-worldly reflect the other-worldly tenets of justification through faith by grace.

It is easy to change a few words of some of Gallwey statements and you have Luther’s sense of the spontaneous new life come to the fore. For example,

The first skill to learn is the art of letting go of the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad. Letting go of the judging process is a basic key to the Inner Game, when we unlearn how to be judgmental, it is possible to (and here I substitute my words) “live the spontaneous, focused, Christian life” (page 17).

Thus Luther threw the canon law into the fire on December 10^th 1520, shocking the Church. Justification by faith meant no judgment. It is law-free unless you slip back into the old self. In his work, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther claims that to call the Christ of the new life a law-giver like Moses, is blasphemy. The Reformation gave the jurisdiction of the law to civil courts and closed the Archdeaconal and Episcopal church courts. (This is roughly speaking, because Protestant churches still had to deal with marriage and divorce.)

The legal dimension stands at the edge of personal relationships and in the courts is where social forces intersect and impact personal relations. We have individual freedom, but when we transgress a law, then we are prosecuted by the society in court, where we have to accept penalties that range from small fines even to capital punishment. Our society erases our ideology of individualism in the court of law.

Gallwey says, “It is interesting how the judgmental mind extends itself” (19). It can contaminate the whole personal individual self and also extend into a social self, where laws can interfere with a spontaneous creative life that has internalized the law, even the inner purpose of the law, also even the love of the law to its positive reaches, where a point comes that the law fails, becomes it has come into a place where it does not belong. In Luther’s terms, the freedom of the Gospel leaves the law behind.

Gallwey uses words like “fluidity” (21), “flowing like a river,” that “our actions flow,” for spontaneity. Gallwey says that the art of letting go of Self 1 control, gives Self 2 the chance to play spontaneously (82). Spontaneity is obstructed by self-judging, thinking too much, trying too hard — all forms of overcontrol (82).

Gallwey argues that observations must be made clearly in terms of doing something correctly or in error, without making a judgment about it. Just make the observation. An error is a learning experience.

He calls Self 1 the ego-mind and Self 2 the body. Perhaps he should call it the body-mind. He discovers the fact that we can not take credit for the accomplishments of the second self. That correlates with our not being saved by works, but only by grace, that is, by the merit of Christ – in whom we are our second self, which is a pure and unearned gift, and not our merit or deserving. Here Gallwey’s insight and Luther’s, which is of course derived from the Pauline Letters, correlate rather well.

Gallwey says that Self 2 has an inner intelligence which is staggering. Here Luther’s respect for creation and the body correlate well. Luther does not relegate sin to the body and superiority and sinlessness to the intellect, the reasoning mind. Gallwey’s ego-mind is like Luther’s Dame Reason and for Luther reason in the pejorative sense interferes with our relationship to God as much as the ego-mind interferes with Self 2, when it should be trusted to play spontaneously, far exceeding the capacity of Self One’s ego-mind.

Luther’s awareness also observes the inner and outer person, in his “Freedom of the Christian.” He also concentrates on the Inner Game, because his first 19 points concern the inner person, the next 6, the outer person, and the last four, concern their social and economic relations.[4]

Trying too hard is like Luther’s works-righteousness. The old self steps in and interferes with the new self, instead of trusting the new self. That is the meaning of “Trust Thyself!” (36) It is like a parent doing something for a child instead of allowing the child to learn it.

Then Gallwey starts emphasizing that we have to let it happen, rather than Self 1 doing it. Let it happen correlates with Luther’s, “Let God be God!” The emphasis is on trust rather than control and the constant control that Self 1 wants. Allow the natural learning process to take place and forget about stroke by stroke instructions. A Luther correlate would be sin versus sins. Forget about each thing you do wrong and concentrate, focus on your trust in God. When your trusting relationship with God breaks, which is sin, then all your sins take place. Thus your sins are merely symptoms of your sin, which is a breakdown of your trust in God.

Gallwey says it is watching, getting the feel, and then letting the body do it…effortlessly. It has to happen without effort and control. Luther states in the Small Catechism’s explanation of the Third Article of the Creed: “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”

Thus the new life in Christ is also effortless. The spontaneity entails Christ working through you. Gallwey says that you have to become passive the way Luther emphasizes passive righteousness in justification. “Letting it happen,” according to Gallwey, “does not mean that you go limp, but it means letting Self 2 [takes over]” (79). It is interesting how Gallwey argues that for trusting and respecting the body, we need a change of attitude (41). Becoming a new self in Christ requires a metanoia, a change of mind, for the transformation to take place. A critical attitude and wanting control are symptoms of mistrust (41).

Gallwey touches the problem of dogmatism (53):

When the verbal instruction is passed on to another person who does not have in his bank of experience the action being described in memory, it lives in the mind totally disconnected from experience. The chances are now even greater that there will be a split between memory of theory and memory of action (53).

Putting this in my words: Verbal instruction or teaching passed on to someone who does not have a bank of experience of the life being described in memory, can live in a world totally disconnected from that experience. Another helpful Gallwey insight: They are relying on formula rather than the feel (56). Perhaps these instructions all come from the ego-mind of a dogmatic person. Thus a Christian life can not at all be there in experience, but merely in dogmatic instructions. A person can have the feel for a Christian life or have lost the feel for it, the way a person may not have the feel for a language. Gallwey cites a dictum: “No teacher is greater than one’s own experience” (54). Perhaps Schleiermacher had good reason for connecting our theology with experience. What do we make of a theology that is adverse to experience? A dogmatic theology that does not shape a life lived alien to Christian experience is worthless. But a theology can also be performative, bringing the experience it espouses into existence.

I wonder if the word “experience” was distilled from the word “suffering,” like the word “thanksgiving” was from the word “praise”? I am very interested in the historical career of words. Reading the Bible and other old texts, I often feel that the word suffering also includes the concept of experience, before that word became coined.

Gallwey continues that valid instruction from experience can help me if it guides me in my own experiential discovery. He also emphasizes remembering the inner feel. Gallwey is, of course, instructing tennis players. He says it is necessary to have a clear picture of a right stroke of the racket and the inner feel of it. With both, one can have natural learning. For Gallwey relying on formula rather than the feel is a mistake (56). Again that reminds me of a dogmatic person. We need theology from good experience to help others learn from experience and the inner feel [the Holy Spirit] in the experience. “Natural learning is from the inside out.” according to Gallwey (68).

In my seminary days, Granger Westberg made a point about learning from the outside in. He suggested that we should behave our way into a new state of mind, rather than going from a new state of mind into new ways of acting or a change of behavior.

There are probably many missing components involved in these complex relations of the inner states and outward actions. Gallwey also emphasizes how a clear visual picture of a result needs to be complemented by the inner feel of that action. The “doing” of Westberg might relate to the external observance of an action, while Gallwey relates to the inner feel and the internal authority of one’s own experience in learning a game. The idea is learning how to learn and then discovering what is worth learning (71). Gallwey notes that the child is the greatest learner. “Learning does not mean the collection of information, but the realization of something that actually changes one’s behavior, such as a tennis stroke, [or taking regular exercise or changing one’s diet] or internal behavior, such as a pattern of thought” (72). Trying to break a habit strengthens it. Use the strategy of starting a new habit. Starting a new pattern is easy when done with childlike disregard for the difficulties (76).

Gallwey’s emphasis on letting it happen by trusting Self 2 reminds so much of Luther’s conviction that it is not by our own effort but by the working of the Holy Spirit. Gallwey says that you have to trust Self 2, your body, with the effort and all the trying and making of

Self 1 is to no avail. It has to allow Self 2 to do it. “But letting it happen does not mean going limp, it means letting Self 2 use the muscles necessary for the job” (79). For my purposes, I would say, letting the new self take over. I would then add, we are thus not passive, but active out of an inner force.

This correlates with the passive righteousness that Luther speaks of in his experience of having been justified by faith. In relation to God, passive righteousness is not the active righteousness through which one is judged and found wanting, but a righteousness that imbues the believer with righteousness, making the sinner righteous. The believer also has to be passive before God in this exchange, that is, on the vertical axis. The believer has to let it happen to him or her. But before others on the horizontal axis, the initiative for being active is brought out of the person. We could say the person is passive before God, coram deo, and thus very active among others, coram hominibus.

Gallwey continues: When self 1 does it, a certain ego satisfaction is attained. But when Self 2 does it, it doesn’t feel as if it was you who did it (81). And you do not feel that you can take the credit for what transpired. That applies to doing things out of the Holy Spirit, out of the grace of God. Then as Isaiah says, all our works are thy doing, O Lord (26:12). So if they are done by our Christ-self, then we cannot take credit for what Christ has done. As St. Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). That saying can easily be extended to “It is no longer I who work, but Christ who works through me.”

Luther also knows that fighting the mind does not work, as Gallwey notes (82). Luther somehow identifies what Gallwey calls the ego-mind or Self 1 with the devil and advises wiles to use against the devil’s invoked temptation to surrender to depression, for example.

The devil is conquered by mocking and despising him, not by resisting and arguing with him. Therefore, my Jerome [the student Luther is counseling] join in jokes and games with my wife and the rest, and in this way you will cheat those diabolical thoughts and take good courage.[5]

Like Gallwey says old habits cannot be broken directly, they have to be replaced by new habits, Luther advises, play the piano or play a flute, avoid being alone. Luther is trying to get someone out of depression, however, which is somewhat different from unlearning a bad habit in the skill of playing a game. But the diabolical ideas that plague the depressed students that Luther is counseling resemble the self-judgment and heavy self-criticism that Gallwey is dealing with.

The best way to quiet this mind, is not by telling it to shut up, or by arguing with it, or criticizing it for criticizing you. Fighting the mind does not work. What works best is learning to focus it. (82)

That is not a Luther insight.

There is a better correlation of Luther pejorative sense of reason, which he calls Dame Reason, with Gallwey’s ego-mind and Self 1. Gallwey says, “the problem of letting go of Self 1 and its interfering activities is not found to come easy” (82). We already included citations where Luther says the same about living out of justification by faith or knowing Christ and living in the second self in the Gospel through grace. He could become impressed by himself and want credit or he could condemn himself and doubt everything he said and stood for, as if in the whole world only Luther was right. The first case he called falling off a log on the right and the second one was falling off on the left.[6]

Gallwey says that relaxed concentration with a quiet and focused mind is the supreme act (83), while Luther would say justification by faith was the supreme act, but ascribe the act to God and not to ourselves. Luther also relates to faith in a similar way. He first calls it the captain of all our works and then progresses to saying, faith is God’s work in us, with which we can have nothing to do. He moves this way from his “Sermon on Good Works” to his Babylonian Captivity of the Church, where faith has become the action of God completely beyond our competence.

Gallwey says, “Not assuming that you already know [something] is a powerful principle of focus” (85). Luther does not tire of emphasizing this same point. When he speaks about the Epistle to the Romans, for example, he writes:

It is worthy and valuable for a Christian not only to know it word for word by heart but also to indulge in it daily as the soul’s daily bread. It can never be read or pondered too often. The more one indulges in it, the more valuable it becomes….[7]

Again Luther speaks of working with a Psalm in Scripture:

You should meditate, not only in your heart but externally, aloud, so that, in constantly repeating the words, you can compare your oral words with the ones written literally, contrasting them, as it were, reading and rereading them, with diligent attention and reflection in order to understand what the Holy Spirit means by them. And be on guard that you do not become satisfied and start to think that, after reading it once or twice, you have read, heard, and spoken it enough and have gotten to the bottom of it and understood it.[8]

Another example: For Luther the Lord’s Prayer has to be thought, read, rethought, reread again and again, because its depth cannot be exhausted.

Gallwey is attempting to keep the mind focused.

The question arises how to keep the mind focused for an extended period of time. The best way is to allow yourself to get interested in the ball. How do you do this? By not thinking you already know all about it, no matter how many thousands of balls you have seen in your life. Not assuming you already know is a powerful principle of focus (85).

Gallwey writes about consciousness very beautifully.

Consciousness is that which makes all things and events knowable. Without consciousness eyes could not see, ears could not hear, and mind could not think. Consciousness is like a pure light energy, whose power is to make events knowable, just as electric light makes objects visible. Consciousness could be called the light of lights because it is by its light that all other lights become visible (91).

That passage reminds very much of the Psalms, especially “For with you is the fountain of life and in your light we see light” (Psalm 36:9). The Psalm speaks of divine consciousness that lights up our consciousness and our lives deriving from the divine fountain of life.

Gallwey continues: “Attention is focused consciousness and consciousness is the power of knowing” (92). “Our minds project what is about to happen or dwell on what has already happened” (93). This distracting mind is what Luther calls Dame Reason, which makes him furious because it interferes with his trust in God, like the ego-mind interferes with Self 2 in Gallwey. The ego-mind of Self 1 wants to do what Self 2 could do with spontaneous inspiration. Dame Reason is convinced that she created God and thus interferes with faith in God, and in the same way as Self 1 is a small light obliterating the great light, like a street light erases the stars in the sky.

At this point Gallwey gets into his discussion of getting into the zone. I have already dealt extensively with being in the zone.[9] Here I will first record more of how Gallwey describes this athletic experience and then compare it with a more universalizable religious experience like Luther’s justification by faith. A course in the Sociology of Religion, taught by Prof. Robert Bellah was helpful here.

When athletes have gotten into the zone, to start with Gallwey, they say: “I wasn’t there. Something else took over. I didn’t do it, it just happened” (98). St. Paul would say, “It was not me, but Christ in me.” The Holy Spirit took over. Gallwey continues by describing the zone further: “It comes as a gift. The secret is not thinking: the mind gets in the way” (99). That sounds very much like Dame Reason getting between Luther and God again.

Gallwey continues that as much as Self 1 would love to get into the zone, it can only be entered when Self 1 is left behind (99). “As trust increases Self 1 quiets, Self 2 becomes more conscious and more present, enjoyment increases and gifts are being given” (100). “If you are willing to give credit where credit is due, and not think you ‘know’ how to do it, the gifts are apt to be more frequent and sustainable” (100). In a passage like Luther’s Gallwey continues:

I’ve been courting Self 2 for a long time now, over 25 years consciously, and it comes at its own timing, when I am ready for it – humble, respectful, not expecting it, somehow placing myself lower than it, not above it. Then when the moment is right, it comes, and I enjoy the absence of Self 1 thought and the presence of joy. I like it a lot. Grab for it, and it will squirt away like a slippery bar of soap. Take it for granted, and you will be distracted and lose it. I used to think that whatever was present was ephemeral. Now I know that it is always there and it is only I who leave. When I look at a young child, I realize it is there all the time” (100).

In writing this book and wanting to transcend the game of tennis by seeing the Inner Game applying to all of life, Gallwey almost becomes theological about getting into the zone. Gallwey also tells a story about his car breaking down on a freezing night far away from any help. He experiences a kind of death of his frightened self that was so afraid of dying and starts running and runs for forty-five minutes until he reaches a house and finds help. Really he felt he was running toward life (132).

It is letting go of the concerns of Self 1 and letting in the natural concerns of a deeper and truer self. It is caring, yet not caring; it is effort, but effortless at the same time” (132).

Prof. Robert Bellah of the University of California at Berkeley compared being in the zone with Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences.[10] He said that when they occurred in athletic feats they could rival contemplative graces. Joe Montana reports entering a “zone” and no longer hearing the crowd – everything becoming one. The difference between player and game, dance and dancer disappears. The minute you worry what will happen next it is gone and you are out of the zone. Bellah confirms the discovery of Gallwey here, too. Bellah continues that it is an experience of the felt whole. The feeling proceeds through participation.

While an athlete remains an athlete, a religious experience contains life-entailments, according to Bellah. Gallwey becomes somewhat theological by also applying his insights to life beyond the game of tennis. A mystic or a saint, however, is not in a game, according to Bellah, but transcends all categories in a higher experience. One has to have had this experience it to understand it. Timothy Gallwey’s athletic experience of the zone is strong and his witness is therefore helpful as he transcends the game of tennis and begins to universalize his experience and insights in an almost religious way; he is not merely an athlete reporting about having been in a zone like Montana. According to Bellah, however, a religious experience is a felt whole, related to the ultimate, the transcendent, thus opening the possibility for a more radical set of implications. The experience of the saint is superior to that of an athlete. The religious experience is a challenge to the total self, (Bellah mentions Luther, as an example). The athlete’s experiences are partial.

Thus the religious experience is over-arching and the athletic experience is one individual this-worldly reflection of the other-worldly reality.

Thus I believe the many correlations between Luther’s life and theology and Gallwey’s Inner Game come about, because Gallwey is also dealing with a religious experience. He uses his game of tennis for a way to understand his life before the ultimate, although he is careful to remain secular. I also think that Luther sometimes experienced such a feeling and focused oneness when praying, studying, and writing. Being in a zone, might partially explain his phenomenal productivity. I know my late mentor, Prof. Robert Goeser, would just deny that explanation, the way he denied so many other explanations I attempted. Luther’s productivity according to Goeser could not be explained. But something like the zone is involved in being in the new self in Christ. Our body and mind, our whole self, caught up in the Holy Spirit, can be like a leaf blowing in the wind. But the wind is at the outer edges of physicality, while the Holy Spirit is the breath of pure life, thought, and love. There is also an emergence of the body, physicality, and creation in Luther’s theology, because he favors the Hebrew sense of religion over the Greek sense of philosophy, and marriage over virginity. Gallwey is also very much dealing with physical performance and the inner capacity involved in attaining peak bodily performance.

Let me conclude with Luther’s experience, which we call justification by grace. Luther was struggling mightily to interpret the scripture passage found in Romans 1:17:

Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that God was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punished sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with God’s righteousness and wrath!” Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless I beat importunately upon Paul at this place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.

At Last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘One who through faith is righteous shall live.’” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous live, by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, the passive righteousness by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “One who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the scripture from memory. I also found in other terms an analogy, as the work of God, that is, what God does in us, the power of God, with which he makes us strong, the wisdom of God, with which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.

And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word, “righteousness of God.” Thus that place in Paul was truly the gate to paradise.[11]

Here Luther’s struggle with the interpretation of a text (central to an angry issue he has with God) resolves and overflows into a complete renewal of his life and thought, which overflows again into a renewal of the church.

We could go on and tell of St. Augustine and his mother, Monica, being taken up as they talked at a window sill overlooking a garden[12] or even the transfiguration of Jesus, between Moses, and Elijah in the presence of Peter, James, and John.[13] Here the physical bodies on that high mountain and the whole creation become involved. But it was Reformation Day and for our purposes the correlation of Luther’s theology and Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game, was what I wanted to bring into better focus.

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[1] W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis: the Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance, (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1974-2008). Throughout this study, the numbers in parentheses are the pages of his book.

 

[2] (D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe Vol. 40.I, (Weimar: Hermann Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1883-), page 129.

[3] Ibid., Vol. 31.I, pages 255ff.

[4] See Philip and Peter Krey, Luther’s Spirituality, (New York: Paulist Press, 2007), pages 69-90.

[5] Ibid., page 8-9.

[6] Ibid., page 61 and 63. On page 61 Luther has the image of someone like a lumberjack perched on a log floating in water and trying to get a footing. I combine that with page 63 and falling off the log on either the right or the left side.

[7] Ibid., page 105.

[8] Ibid., page 122.

[9] See my post of July 26^th 2008, “Time Slows Down in the Zone” where I have already dealt with some of Gallwey’s important insights in this matter.

[10] Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1968).

The words of Robert Bellah, Professor of Sociology, are my notes from a lecture held on January 25^th 1996 in his course on the Sociology of Religion, the Spring Semester, at the University of California in Berkeley.

[11] Walter von Loewenich, Martin Luther: the Man and his Work, Translated by Lawrence W. Denef, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1982), Page 84.

[12] “The Vision at Ostia,” The Confessions of St. Augustine, book 9, Chapter 10. In John K. Ryan’s translation, (New York: an Image Book, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960), page 221.

[13] See Mark 9:2-8; Matthew 17:1-8; Luke 9:28-36; and also see 2 Peter 1: 17-18.

Rereading the now dated Thomas Nipperdey’s Reformation, Revolution, Utopia, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975), I came across a few notes I had written back on August 24^th 1985. The book is in German.

Thomas Nipperdey, Müntzer vs. Luther

The position of Luther is not only a religious debate, to which different religious stances become established.  It can also be seen in all orientations: what makes Marxists or Freudians dogmatic? What makes a scientist open or un-open to a new and necessary paradigm that replaces the one s/he has been working in?

Some Lutherans have, of course, gotten into dogmatism as well. But isn’t the key here to unlocking a psychological-sociological stance, which could really help above and beyond a religious debate? In other words, Marxists, Freudians, scientists, face the same kind of problems that Luther and the Reformation faced. I believe that dogmatism derives from teachings that are caught in a world of their own disconnected from their relevant experience, thus producing the anxiety that fixes on the teaching so stringently. If the experience, from which the teachings were derived, was there; then the teachings could be presented in many different words and ways.

According to Nipperdey, Müntzer sees the person as subjectively substantial, while Luther sees the person as relationally oriented in trust, relationality brought about by words of promise spoken to the person. Thus that God sees the person as righteous justifies the person in Luther’s eyes, while for Müntzer that does not change the person substantially. Luther’s emblem or seal is the heart under the cross; while Müntzer’s is the heart with a sword thrust through it.

Here a slightly different issue of mine comes to my mind: the distinction between words spoken by a person and an evasive self behind the words. I remember the time in counseling when I could feel myself behind my words, like a solid, substantial self. Müntzer seems to refer to this aspect of a person and declares the words and orientation just “nebulous,” just a smokescreen, just a cover for the real person, not yet come to themselves. But perhaps Müntzer does not understand or has a blind-spot for how orientation and relationality is a part of the reality of a person.

In our new curriculum at Hamma School of Theology at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, this same discussion came up: whether the person per se or the words were more the issue. The psychologists emphasized the person per se, the theologians, the words and issues. See “The Discussion with Ben Johnson.” [I’ll have to find this reference in my diaries.]

To translate a sentence from Nipperdey: “Müntzer does not look at the word that establishes the relationship with and for the believer, but at the substantial and relevantly pertaining, inner nature itself” (page 55).

At Hamma a whole debate ensued about supervisory training, those briefly trained by the psychologists like James St. Claire, i.e., trained to monitor process and ministry. One group at Hamma thought that there were no objective criteria for those who were trained. The other argued that there were valid inter-subjective criteria. Because these criteria were elusively subjective, opponents did not see those who were trained as having valid credentials. This was the position of Fred Wentz, who took a stand against St. Claire.

Nipperdey analyzes the theology of Müntzer versus that of Luther. Müntzer wants subjectivity to be substantial and quite tangible. [He can tell a believer from a non-believer and purge the latter if necessary.] He wants subjectivity to be graded and to correspond with an increasing intensity of a person’s faith. Paradoxically, this approach to subjectivity kicks over into an increasing objectivity. Much like in mysticism and Pietism, a believer was asked to give an account of the different and manifold internal conditions and thus the stage of their faith journey, to which they had arrived. That point of view made having faith something discernible and even outwardly observable. “The claim of having earnest belief objectifies itself into a law about the gradations or the steps of faith: from a description of the misery and despair that preceded the beginning of faith, a law develops that makes misery [and suffering] a precondition of faith” (page 55). “In the place of the Lutheran invisible hope and anticipation [of the promise], a reflection on the inner life and the consciousness of how much spirit and grace was substantially possessed, [became important]; and in place of a personal category, an objective, although subjectively intended, but actually, an objective category, comes into play” (page 55). Thus “the experience of faith does not place the person into a new relationship, but it takes the character of a substantial change of the person….” (page 55). This substantial change of having more or less spirit and grace corresponds to a graded increase in faith. Nipperdey concludes that Müntzer’s justification thereby “falls into a new and far more massive objectivity, which corresponds to his substantial concept of the person” (page 56).[1]

When I was writing a paper on Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, a view point like Müntzer’s made me believe that a theology corresponded to a particular spiritual place in the life journey of a person so that one could be determined by the other. Nipperday puts this belief into words: “Therefore a life allows one to make retroactive conclusions about someone’s faith” (page 56). I think that belief made me feel that a life could determine what theology someone could achieve. (See my Bonhoeffer paper!) [I also need to find that reference again, a long paper I wrote analyzing his unfinished book on ethics.]

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What makes this note important to me is the ascending stages of rapture that I find in Luther’s “Freedom of the Christian.” I’m wondering how I can keep the raptured ascent from becoming objectifications of steps from spiritual nobility to priesthood to Christ and up into God. Perhaps that the ascent in faith is at one and the same time a descent in love can be a safe-guard against such spiritual objectifications. I try to define persons relationally as well in terms of being before God, before others, before the self, and before the world, that is, in the four coram-relationships. I know that Luther levels hierarchies and thus I present the stages of ascent and descent always in tension with one another. What’s more faith and love are both pure gifts of grace, for which Jesus Christ alone receives the credit.

While I was typing these notes, Kierkegaard’s existential stages of the life of a person came to my mind, which he names the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages, which a person goes through on the way to an authentic self. He envisions these three modes of existence and theorizes leaping from one sphere of existence into the next. I have to give some thought to how his existentialism might relate to my theorization about the ascent through the stages of spiritual nobility. It is obvious right away that my stages, which take place in the opposition or in the dialectic of faith and love, all seem to be religious. I have to give Kierkegaard more thought, especially because his existentialism needs to be integrated with a more sociological philosophy as well.

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[1]Luther presents his position quite clearly: Justification lies Extra nos, without us, in Christ. “Therefore a Christian is not formally righteous; [s/he] is not righteous according to substance or quality — I use these words for instruction sake. [S/he] is righteous according to [his or her] relation to something.” (Luther’s Works, the Weimar Edition, Vol. 40.II, pages 352 f.)