ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q045 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> NICK: You have used the phrases righteousness of faith and righteousness of works. What are the different characteristics of these two doctrines? >> DR. CHARLES P. ARAND: I use the language passive righteousness of faith and active righteousness of works primarily to capture the two kinds of righteousness. In point of fact, the Confessions will use a variety of other terms. For example, instead of the righteousness of faith, we may speak of Christian righteousness, or the righteousness of the Gospel. On the other hand, for the righteousness of works, you might find language like civil righteousness, philosophical righteousness, ethical righteousness, and the like. Allow me now to maybe unpack those individually. First, we'll consider the passive righteousness of faith. In Luther's introduction to his Latin works, he recounted his reformation discovery some 20 years earlier. In doing so, he indicated that he was wrestling with the phrase, righteousness of God in Romans 1:17. And that prior to his discovery, he understood that phrase, the righteousness of God, to refer to an active righteousness that God demanded from us. And this caused him no end of struggle because what that meant is, not only did the law require a righteousness of works from us, but now the gospel also demanded an even higher righteousness from us, thereby making its attainment all the more impossible. Luther's discovery occurred, he indicates, when he realized the just shall live by faith. In other words, the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is not a righteousness that God demands from us, but a righteousness that God bestows upon us. To use his language, a righteousness with which God clothes us, if you will. Therefore, it is a passive righteousness. Now the righteousness with which God clothes us is a righteousness acquired for us by Jesus Christ. Here you may pay attention to the many prepositional phrases throughout the Apology, particularly those that emphasize we are righteous because of Christ, on account of Christ, for the sake of Christ. All of those are to indicate that the righteousness that Christ acquired for us was accomplished, particularly through his passion, suffering, and death upon the cross. And this is a primary focus of Melanchthon in the Apology. Indeed, he will frequently speak of Christ as our propitiator or atoning sacrifice. In fact, those are among his favorite titles for Christ. For Christ to be a propitiator is basically to say that He is almost like a lightning rod that attracts the wrath of God and dissipates it until it is no more. Or, perhaps, to use the metaphor from Luther, the righteousness of Christ is like an umbrella that protects us from the heat of God's wrath. Now as we move on through the Lutheran Confessions and move on, particularly, to the Form of Concord, you find an increasing stress also upon the act of obedience of Christ, namely, Christ's fulfilling the law in our stead, thereby achieving righteousness for us also so that his total obedience, active and passive, his entire life, is the foundation of our righteousness. One might say with regard to his obedience to the law that the active righteousness of Christ in keeping the law becomes our passive righteousness through faith. With this new understanding of the righteousness bestowed upon us, Luther realized that in Christ, God has flung open the doors of his heart to us and revealed the depth of his love for us. You might say that Christ, to borrow the language of the Large Catechism, Christ is a mirror of the father's heart. Apart from Him, we see nothing but an angry and terrible judge. That Christ has revealed the depths of the father's love for us in such a way that by giving access to God for us, the Gospel shows -- Luther realized that the Gospel shows that the work of Christ and the work of salvation is not rooted in an arbitrary plan of God. Instead, when God acts to save, you might say, God is acting in character so that the righteousness of God means that God does what is right for Him to do, or God acts rightly, you might say. In this case, God acts rightly because what is right for God to do is to save. Or put it in other language, you might say God is acting in character. In more theological language this is often referred to as the proper work of God, whereas his wrath is described as his alien work. That is to say, the Bible will say that God is love. This goes to the heart of his character. It will never say that -- the Bible would never say that God is wrath. Yes, God will get angry. He�ll get ticked off. He will become -- he can be moved to wrath, it�s not intrinsic to his character, you might say. The Spirit of God then bestows the righteousness obtained by Christ in a promise. A promise is the most frequently used word for expressing the Gospel within the Apology. It seems to be preferred over the etymological meaning of *Orit that we often translate as good news. I think maybe this is partly because news implies information about something that happened yesterday. It doesn't necessarily affect me today, unless I choose to act upon it. Promise has a couple of benefits to it. One, it highlights the unity of the Gospel in the Old and New Testament. Then both testaments, the promise has to do with the forgiveness of sins. In the Old Testament, it�s the forgiveness of sins on account of the Christ who will come in the future. In the New Testament, it�s the same forgiveness of sins, but on account of the Christ who has come in the past. Promise also has the advantage of bringing out the personal dimension, one might say, of the relationship between God and human beings because it is God speaking to us, addressing us, if you will. Thirdly, promise has the advantage that it deals both with the present as well as the future. In other words, the promise looks ahead to the eschaton, to the final judgment so that with the righteous of Christ bestowed upon us, you might say that we have experienced or gone through the final judgment ahead of time, or put it another way, one might say that the future judgment on the last day will be identical to the judgment that God has rendered upon us by declaring us righteous on account of Christ. Finally, the promise has one additional benefit: God binds himself to the promise, you might say. When he promises, he commits himself. He will stick to it, and he will keep it, just as the United States government may issue bonds or promissory notes that say backed by the full faith and trust of the United States government. One might say, the promise of the Gospel is backed by the full weight and commitment of God himself. Now a promise seeks a response. A promise seeks to elicit trust in the one who promises, which is another, I think, advantage to the language of promise for the Gospel, because, you see, trust is the only proper response to a promise. Trust makes use of the promise. Thus, promise makes use of the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is the means by which humans grab a hold, apprehend, or embrace the benefits of Christ�s all-sufficient work. And you might pay attention to the many terms that Melanchthon will use to describe faith as ascent, to embrace, to grasp, to lay hold of and the like. Trusting the promise is not an accomplishment we perform, however. You see, even in the human world, the trustworthy elicits our trust. They do not command it or compel it. Similarly here, God�s trustworthiness elicits and creates our confidence and our trust. You might say God stands by his word. He keeps his promise, on account of His faithfulness, not on account of anything that we do. Now, faith as confidence, faith as trusting the promise is not only an intellectual activity. This is one of the things you'll find Melanchthon is having to grapple with because as long as his opponents think of faith as a mental activity, everyone will agree that it's not going to save because even devils might believe that Jesus lived, that he died, and even that he rose from the dead. Rather, Melanchthon is going to push a point that faith involves our entire being, if you will, the intellect, the will, the affections. It involves an orientation of our entire being toward God. But it's an orientation that is oriented toward God in such a way that it seeks to receive what God gives. In other words, one might describe the relationship with the passive righteousness of faith as God gives, we receive. Luther described this one time by using the analogy of the parched earth, or the parched ground receiving rain from the sky. The parched ground does nothing to acquire or to earn or merit this rain. It's simply that the rain falls out of the heavens and nourishes and satisfies the parched earth. In a similar way, faith is thrown totally upon God's resources. It simply receives what God gives and in doing so, one might say, it let�s God be God. You might notice, particularly I think around Paragraph 48 in Apology 4, Melanchthon will say that faith is that worship that receives God's gifts. Now this is not to say that faith is an easy thing. Faith trusts the promises in spite of all appearances. Here is where the example of Abraham and Sarah enter, and I think in many respects, one could argue that they are the favorite example of informers for the righteousness of faith because despite their advancing years, despite being past childbearing years, when God promised them a child, they clung to that promise. They believed that promise, in spite of all appearances to the contrary. In other words, they clung, you might say, to the revealed God, to God revealed in his promise, over and against the hidden God, the God hidden in the fact that they hadn't had a child for so many years. And they come to God why? Because they knew that God is faithful to his promises. Well, that's a brief, maybe not so brief, summary of the righteousness of faith, but it highlights the primary components or the essential ingredients, I think, that belong or characterize the passive righteousness of faith. Now when we turn to the active righteousness of works, we're entering into the realm of human relationships. And here, you might say, there are as many types of righteousness of works as there are relationships. For example, there is a civil righteousness. This is a righteousness that I attain in the eyes of society and the eyes of government. It involves obeying the laws of the land. There is an ethical righteousness; this might be the kind of righteousness that I attain, not only in the eyes society, but perhaps in the area of economy and the business world in dealing with employers and employees. It's acting according to a certain code of conduct. The Confessions will even speak of a ceremonial righteousness. This is the kind of righteousness that one might think about when we speak of people being good church members. What do we mean by that? Well, we mean that they got to church on a regular basis. They probably attend Bible studies on a fairly regular basis. They are actively involved within the church in attending different meetings and being part of different groups. In our own day and age, we might expand it to include even sort of a righteousness that credit agencies recognize. That is, maintaining a good financial record or credit record thereby being considered a good credit risk. So, like I say, there are as many kinds of righteousness as there are human relationships. In every one of these instances, however, that righteousness is achieved by something we do. It depends upon our performance. It depends upon us acting according to a standard, a code of ethics, a moral code, that has been established either by an employer, by the government, by a peer group and the like. As a result, we are dealing, then, in the area, you might say, of the first article of the creed. We're dealing within the realm of human reason, relying upon natural law, the 10 Commandments that are grounded in natural law, in terms of how we are to conduct our lives with one another in such a way that it furthers the well being of the human community. Being a good father to further the well being of my children. To be a good husband for the well being of my wife. Being a good citizen to further the well being of my community. Things along those lines. Because it�s rooted in first article theology, you might say, Melanchthon will argue that when it comes to a righteousness of works, you know, you might not do much better than to turn to someone like Aristotle for guidance on how to achieve a righteousness of works in this life because he provides a good observation, you might say, of how things work in this world. And so you�ll find in the Apology, Melanchthon times citing the *micomachean ethics of Aristotle saying, when it comes to ethical or philosophical righteousness, you can�t do much better. Well, when you turn to Aristotle's *micomachean ethics, he identifies three critical components, you might say, for how one acquires virtue or righteousness. The first is that one has to make a decision to act in a certain way, to act according to a certain norm. It's a way of recognizing that the choices we make do matter in our daily life. One has to choose to act in a certain way according to the standards of a craft or according to a particular code of ethics and the like. Secondly, one has to, then, develop the habit of acting in a certain way. In other words, you develop a habit through practice and through repetition. For example, if I choose to or desire to be considerate, a polite person, a gracious person, and then I need to develop the habit of saying please and thank you and those types of courtesies and practice them over and over again until they become second nature with me. In athletics, we call this developing muscle memory. But it�s developing that kind of habit that, in a sense, might even form one's character. In terms of a craft, Luther will use the example of a shoe cobbler that has to do with developing the practices of the trade over and over until one becomes proficient. Thirdly, to become righteous requires that one perform these tasks at the highest level not once, but for a lifetime. One act of bravery does not make a person a brave man or a brave woman. It's a lifetime of acting that way. To borrow an analogy from the realm of sports, you might say one good play at shortstop does not qualify a player for the Hall of Fame. It�s performing at that kind of a high level day in and day out for 10, 13 or 15 years of a career that one who qualifies for the Hall of fame or for, you might say, a career or lifetime achievement award. Now we can illustrate all three of these simply by using the example from tennis. Everybody is potentially a tennis player, but we're not tennis players yet. We have to make the decision that we want to be a tennis player. Then we acquire instruction on how to do that, how to set our feet, how to hold the racket, how to swing it. And we have to practice it over and over again. As we perform at a high level, eventually, we might be considered by others, hey, you're a pretty good tennis player pretty. Now these components of how one becomes righteous within our world do, by and large, apply and work for a whole variety of activities. Notice, however, they are rooted in a particular anthropology, a particular view of man. This is going to be really important because while it works very well for our human relationships, it will become dangerous if one uses this model in our relationship before God to seek righteousness from God. Well, the anthropology that works well and underlies the righteousness of works is an anthropology that divides the human being into reason, will, and the affections, the emotions, the bodily appetites such as hunger, thirst, as well as the other emotions. And the conception is that the reason provides the will with the information necessary to act. The will, then, has to act upon the information that it receives in order to pursue righteousness or not to pursue righteousness, but virtue or righteousness is always located in the will, whether we choose to do something or not. You might say it's a voluntary, and in the process, one tries to keep the emotions somewhat in check so that we don't act upon our emotions as much as we act upon reason. Again, this seems to play out pretty well. In the world of everyday activities, I have to admit when it comes to making purchases at the store, I do not like being an impulse buyer. I don't like buying something on an impulse at the checkout because I later regret it. I prefer, especially when it comes to large purchases, to sleep on it for a day or two, lest I suffer from that disease called buyer's remorse, you know, acting on impulse. But the anthropology is very important here, and we'll see it play out when we get to the theology of original sin. It's the anthropology of reason, will, and the passions. Well, again, in a brief summary form, those are the primary components of what we might call an act of righteousness of works. They are very helpful and very important for how we live our lives among one another day in and day out. But they are absolutely no help and no assistance when it comes to attaining righteousness in the eyes of God.