Deification is not apparent to sight, though it has actually occurred. It is hidden under the opposite, that is, under the reality of the believer who is also a sinner. Only faith living under the sign of the cross is able to make the profession that God is certainly within the Christian bringing about deification.
Finally, the theology of the cross is manifest in that deification is a lifelong process of divine activity that is not ended until death and even beyond. People of faith recognize that sin remains within them even though they truly are united with God, and this recognition of their own sinfulness turns them outward toward God and the neighbor in need. This recognition of sin is so strong in Luther that he takes the descent into hell with the utmost seriousness, believing that one really does descend to hell, but that one is utterly and really transformed when in that very place God is present with and in one in hell; and this presence of God is a gracious presence wherein God is there in order to love transformatively.109
Luther held in short an “ontology of the cross” that recognized that God makes the Christian “mehr als ein Mensch,” thus the title of Peura’s book. The divinely transformed person is more than human on the basis of God’s indwelling. Peura is quick to add that Luther was not interested in specifying more than this about the meaning of the “more.”110
The threat to Forde and Ebeling’s approach that this interpretation poses is clear. Peura makes this explicit in his summary of his research. He writes:
interpretations which leave the real, ontological character of Luther’s thinking more or less out of consideration, cannot explain important intentions of the reformer satisfactorily. The deification of the person is not adequately understood as a phenomenon, when the being of God and the being of the person are grasped in exclusively relational terms (the relating of conscious “being”, cognitive or otherwise) nor when they are grasped in a way wherein the one being is and remains definitively outside of the other. . . . Luther’s thought form contains a certain ontology that can be identified neither with the modern personalistic, relational thinking nor with the middle age’s substance metaphysics. This study confirms the interpretation according to which Luther’s ontology is understood as an expression of a “real, ontological” thought form (Mannermaa 1989, 189–192) or, as it has been described, as an “ontology under the cross” (Forsberg 1984, 179). From the point of view of deification, this ontology implies a way of being that presents itself as standing in strong tension with human understanding: deification as being in God through participation in him is being in nothing of one’s own.111
Peura’s work is dramatically different from, and even contradictory to, that of Forde and Ebeling. Although he helps us to see things that had not been seen by the others, he does not help us in seeing Luther’s theology of the cross in its broader, historically-embedded context. The challenge that Luther brings is formulated in light of conflicts in ideas alone; the Reformation seems to be a clash of ideas or even, more specifically, ontologies. The public nature of the Reformation itself is lost in the process.
Though the interpretation of Luther lacks the interest in social context and reception that drives this study, it could provide some resources for the constructive challenge stated at the outset of ending the divorce between history and spirituality. This contribution could come by way of Peura’s confession that there is a real, actual presence of God in the person and thus in history. Though it is not the direction that I will take, the confession that God’s relationship to the world is not simply external, but is an actual ontological presence, might provide others constructive resources for addressing this same challenge in a different manner.
On a personal note, what first drew my attention to Peura was the way he offers an alternative to the near total dominance of Ebeling’s interpretation in Luther studies. The content of Peura’s interpretation does not lend dramatic assistance to my own program, nor do I at the end of the day find it compelling. Yet the dynamic challenge that Peura throws at contemporary ways of reading Luther opens a space of legitimacy for other alternative approaches. Peura’s attention to neglected or denied elements of Luther (indwelling, participation, deification) and the resultant re-reading offer hope to others like myself who have seen something different in Luther than generally has been observed. Peura and others amenable to his position have prepared the field of Luther scholarship for power shifts in the realm of interpretation. This resembles part of the dynamic that Luther unleashed in his own day’s field of discourse.
Prenter
Although Regin Prenter’s writing ante-dates the work of Peura, and though he is not as immersed in Luther research as a vehicle of ecumenical association with the Eastern Church, he does share some of Peura’s attentiveness to the sacramental presence of God in the lives of the faithful. In his brief article entitled “Luther’s Theology of the Cross,”112 Prenter articulates the need for connection between the historical cross of Jesus Christ and those crosses that we bear in our own historical lives. He writes, “This mysterious identity of the cross of Jesus Christ on Golgotha with our own is the essential element in Luther’s theology.”113 In light of this assertion, Prenter asks about the ways that Luther’s theology of the cross has been carried over—or, rather, not carried over—in contemporary theologies. He sees two ways that this “inseparable union” is denied in contemporary theology.
In Bultmann, Prenter sees a “theology of the cross without the word,” meaning a theology of the cross that may speak often of the word, but that allows the present now of existential decision to swallow up the importance of Jesus, the incarnate and crucified word. The rootedness in Jesus’ cross on Golgotha is forfeited and thus “[t]hrough this existentialist understanding of faith, the whole historical content or the historical basis for faith is made irrelevant.”114 Prenter offers a scathing criticism of this collapse into the present moment.
The existentialist theological interpretation is the modern version of a theology of the cross without the word. The fact that existentialist theology and preaching often refer to the “word of God” and to “proclamation” does not alter the situation at all. In the existentialist interpretation, the “word of God” is no longer the apostolic gospel, which in the name of God bestows salvation to the believer through these historical acts, but is merely the presentation of a particular possibility of existence, an understanding of existence which functions only as a challenge to the individual to choose this form of existence as his own.115
Luther’s focus on the forgiveness made possible through the vicarious suffering of Jesus tragically is lost in this theological trend. Bultmann and others have forgotten the scandalousness of God’s identification with human crosses through the cross of Jesus; the connection, when not altogether ignored, is made too lightly.
We must never forget what an unheard of boldness it is, to identify our own cross with that of Christ. When we consider the events of the passion, for example, it is almost blasphemy to mention our crosses in the same breath with that of Christ. It is certainly no foregone conclusion that such a thing should even be allowed, and it is only allowed because of the freedom which the child of God enjoys, given to us as a gift through our acceptance in faith of that redemptive act of Jesus Christ in which he suffered vicariously the punishment for our sins.116
As a comment on the then current interest in the theology of the cross, Prenter makes an important observation about context. He observes, “There has been a rediscovery of Luther’s theology of the cross in our century precisely in those countries where the church must fight
