Goodbye utopia, hello Luther
By Uwe Siemon-Netto, The Layman Online, December 6, 2006
As the postmodern world seems to be “slouching toward Gomorrah,” in the estimation of the redoubtable Judge Robert H. Bork, some of America’s top Christian thinkers are seeking guidance from Germany’s distant past. They are prone to reach much further back than to Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), whose philosophy so deeply penetrated U.S. academia that it seems to have contributed significantly to the Closing of the American Mind which Allan Bloom lamented 20 years ago in his magisterial book bearing that title.
In order to engage this postmodern world, the “tepid moralism and utilitarian psychologism of mainline Protestantism” will be of little help, says sociologist of religion Peter L. Berger of Boston University. The same applies to the traditional American preference for “revivalistic quick-fixes over patient political discernment” that has long been the mark of political activity of Christians, warns historian Mark A. Noll, an evangelical historian teaching at Notre Dame University in Indiana, a large Catholic institution.
What is needed instead is the sober witness of Martin Luther (1483-1546), Berger, Noll and other scholars argued during two forums at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis this year. Luther’s theology offers a welcome alternative to the predilection of American Christians involved in politics to “confuse the history of the U.S. with the history of salvation,” as Noll put it, “and to confuse the ultimate spirituality with secondary political ends.”
“Where is Luther now that we need him,” asked Harold O.J. Brown in much the same vein. Brown is a professor at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., and a Calvinist like Noll. He is also co-founder of the successful moral initiative Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Brown had in mind the Here I Stand Luther who embraced the risk of being burned at the stake for the sake of truth and bemoaned the dearth of such valor these days.
However, the one feature of Luther’s theology that evidently makes him so attractive for this spiritually confused era is, ironically, his much-maligned doctrine of the two kingdoms. In the past, it was often blamed – falsely – for the Germans’ subservience to evil rulers. This view was popularized worldwide by William L. Shirer in his classic tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but also by German novelist Thomas Mann.
What they presented was a caricature that “relegates the world of social and political realities to some sort of amoral cynicism.” This supposition, of course, “completely distorts the Lutheran doctrine both as promulgated by Luther and as developed in later Lutheran thought,” wrote Berger over a decade ago. In St. Louis, he went a step further: “The theology of the two kingdoms is radically anti-utopian” for it opposes the enthusiastic schemes of both liberal mainline Protestantism and fundamentalism. Both seek to build their little paradises in the here-and-now, albeit in different ways. Berger therefore sees the two kingdoms doctrine as a shield against attempts by both the Christian right and the Christian left to “absolutize their respective political agendas.”
Luther was particularly proud of this doctrine, which endeavored to resolve the apparent discrepancy between the radical demands of the Sermon on the Mount and the structure of this world’s orders. According to Luther, every Christian holds dual citizenship in two kingdoms with entirely different attributes: There is, on the one hand, the infinite spiritual “right-hand” kingdom where God has revealed himself in Christ. This is the realm of the Gospel, of grace, faith and love, a realm where God and Christ rule directly and all humans are equal. This realm is a reality in this sinful world. It becomes a reality wherever the Word is proclaimed, the sacraments are administered, and Christ forgives his followers’ sins.
Then there is the secular, finite “left-hand” realm, which is also God’s, however. Here, where man lives his biological life, God never reveals himself but rules in a hidden way through his “masks” – fallible humans whose errors he will eventually straighten out. In this realm of the Mosaic and natural law, there are superiors and subordinates, and crimes are punished. It functions by reason, a gift from God to man in order to find his way around this world. The relationship between the two kingdoms is not antagonistic but mutually supportive. The spiritual realm – the Church – preaches to the secular kingdom, whose rulers maintain the created order in which alone the Church can function.
“The political implications falling from the two kingdoms theory and on the attendant concept of vocation seem to be quite far-reaching,” Noll said, stressing as the most important implication that “God is the ruler over all, including the political sphere.” Political tasks, he added, “are God-ordained, and God himself provides norms for what is most important in the political sphere… The three most important norms… of politics under God are the preservation of justice for all people, the special protection for the weak and the marginal, and the imperative to treat all humans as image bearers of God.”
“But then,” Noll went on, “since God-ordained political tasks exist in a different sphere from God-ordained means of salvation, these political tasks may be carried out honorably by non-Christians as well as Christians, and sometimes better by non-Christians.” As Luther himself quipped, he preferred “a wise Turk” to a “foolish Christian” on the throne. Said Noll, “One of the special strengths of two-kingdom theology… is to detach the personal standing before God of political leaders from their actions as political leaders” – an idea certainly not shared in all quarters of American Protestantism.
It was Mark Noll who coined the by-now-classic term of the “Lutheran gift of ambiguity.” This gift implies, explained Berger, that “the Christian remains in the world, caught in all its ambiguities yet saved by God’s grace, simultaneously a saint and a sinner (simul iustus et peccator). The Christian is called to act responsibly in the world, knowing full well that this will mean getting one’s hands dirty.”
Yet despite the invitation by their liberating theology to dirty their hands, American Lutherans “have historically not had a very high profile in… engaging the public world,” lamented Robert Benne, directed of the Roanoke College Center for Religion and Society in Salem, Va.
“In political life, we have 19 Lutherans in Congress, compared with… 154 Catholics… Lutherans account for 3.9 percent in Congress but 4.6 percent of the total population,” Benne said. “This compares with the Presbyterian ratio of 9.7 percent in Congress to 2.7 percent of the population, and the Episcopalians’ 7.9 percent for only 1.7 percent of the population. Lutherans have had the honor of having the (former) Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, among their ranks. We’ve had no presidents.”
Noll, too, is baffled by this discrepancy. Already more than a decade ago he wrote, “The surprising thing for those who are acquainted with the penetrating vision of Luther, the scholarly aplomb of Melanchthon, the irenic efficiency of the Concord formulators, the surging brilliance of Bach, the passionate wisdom of Kierkegaard, or the heroic integrity of Bonhoeffer, is how inconspicuous Lutherans have been in America.”
In St. Louis, Noll says that “with Martin Luther we have a theology that offers healthy priorities in thinking about politics… with Luther we have a theology that could equip believers with healthy attitudes when acting politically… and we have a theology that, in its biblical wisdom, can ascertain healthy political goals – that is guidance for determining what should be sought through political means.
“So why in American history have Lutherans appeared to exert such scant positive influence in the course of political life when they have such a wonderful theology?” asked Noll. One answer, he said, was the fact that “Luther’s political practice was nowhere near as good as his political theology.” (Here Noll referred to Luther’s reliance on the Reformation-era German princes as “Notbischöfe,” or emergency bishops in the absence of ecclesial overseers and his attacks on Jews). “So why should anyone expect later Lutherans to live up to the standard of Luther’s theology if Luther didn’t?”
Another reason was the fact that “Lutheran communities in the New World were always too small and too dispersed to gain the critical mass required for effective political influence,” he said.
Yet despite these and other shortcomings, Noll has relentlessly called for an “authentic Lutheran voice with an American accent” in U.S. public life, for in Luther’s voice, he keeps saying, “we hear uncommon resonances of the voice of God.” Hence he ended his presentation at Concordia Seminary on a prayerful note: “The promise of a modest, discerning, careful, but also effective Christian politics seems to lie within the reach of those who have built their religious communities around the key theological insights of Martin Luther… Because the rest of American Christianity so badly needs what Lutheran theology seems to offer, may God hasten the day when the Lutheran potential is actualized as a positive Christian force.”
Uwe Siemon-Netto, a veteran foreign correspondent and lay theologian, is a scholar in residence at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.