ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUE NET CONFESSIONS CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK CONFESSION 1 QUESTION 50 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 3238 Rose Street Franklin Park, IL 60131 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >>Why does Melanchthon see the inability to fear and love God as the key to understanding original sin? >>DR. CHARLES P. ARAND: There are a number of reasons why Melanchthon spends so much time on the first commandment particularly the early upon the requirement that we fear, love, and trust the God of all things. The language that he probably borrowed from Luther's own catechism that was published only years prior to the Augustine apology. But the fundamental reason once again can be traced to the question of anthropology or the doctrine of what it means to be a human being and what the fall -- what kind of an impact the fall into sin had upon the human being. Once again we are going to have to revisit the anthropology of the late middle ages. As we had talked about earlier, it was in anthropology that assumed the human being is divided into reason, will, and the affections and that these are organized in a hierarchal fashion with reason on the top and passions on the bottom. The reason for this is because in large part when one asked what is it that distinguishes human beings from the animals, where in does the image of God exist. The most frequent answer given was that of reason. The intellect. The rational capacities of the human being. So that puts us more into the image of God. Makes us more like God, if you will, bi separating us from the animal creation. On the other hand, if you were to ask what is it that we have in common with all of the other non-human creatures, with all of the animals, one would probably respond by saying it has to do with our instincts, our emotions or passions, our sensual desires and the like. Now, when you take this anthropology and then place it into a framework that advocates only one kind of righteousness and considers life to be based on a vertical continuum rising from the secular world, the profane world all the way up to the sacred world, well, then you have the human being is seen as one who is traveling through this earth on his or her way toward achieving union with God or righteousness in God's eyes. Well, this anthropology then implies as a certain tension within the human person themselves. In other words, reason draws us towards God you might say out of this world or away from this world while our passions our emotions our I think stinks tend to attach us to this world. They provide pleasure and enjoyment in the things of this world. So sometimes the distinction would be made between using the things of this world as tools in our pilgrimage with heaven being my home versus enjoying the things of this world. For example, it's one thing to eat a banana for the sake of nourishment to replenish the potassium within our bodies. It's another thing, however, to have a banana split. See, that kind of thing we tend to enjoy, relic and that sort of attaches us to this world rather. than attach us to God there by creating divided loyalty. Now, within this scheme one might sense a little bit of a neoplatonic framework at work. But we also have to admit when it comes to the affections or passions, they are not regarded as evil, per se. They are seen instead of being a little more chaotic or unruly as I indicated sort of attaching us to this world rather than attaching us with an undivided art to God. Well in the Garden of Eden, it was conceived that Adam and Eve worked in such a way that the reason provided the will with information upon which it was to act. And the will in turn kept our passions, our emotions, under control. You might say kept them in check, if you will, so that they did not gain control over us a in attaching us to this world. Well, to help Adam and Eve did that medieval theology argued that God gave Adam and Eve a special gift of stabilizing grace already in the Garden of Eden following their actual creation. And this stabilizing grace helped them maintain the proper balance. Now, also I should perhaps point out if reason draws us towards God as we are -- we are made in the image of God, passions draw us toward the world. The will or choice is the key to virtue or advice, right rightness or unrighteousness because the will has to make the decision as to what it will pursue and how it will then act. For that reason in late middle theology, nothing is a sin until the will acts upon it. So if certain desires are not necessary sinful in and of themselves until you act upon them. Now, what happened then in the fall is Adam and Eve lost this gift of stabilizing grace. As a result they lost the proper balance between reason, will, and their affections. And you might say the hierarchy become upside down so that more often than not, the will obeyed the passions, the emotions, the desires of our body rather than obeying the dictates of right and reason. And one can see then in the analysis of sin all through middle ages that this applied to all sorts of activities, whether it was sexual, sex in itself wasn't bad, rather what was to be shunned was the emotions, the passions and the enjoyment of pleasure attached to it. The same thing applied to fine clothing, good food, good wine, anything pertaining to the enjoyment of this world. As we indicated earlier then, within the late medieval scheme, Christ reacquired that gift of restabilizing grace so we can regain balance and put things in proper order once again. Now, Melanchthon's fundamental problem with this is that sin is defined only as an act of the will, something you choose to do or not to do. So it is seen in Article 2 of the apology, he'll complain about how his opponents are confusing Christian righteousness with philosophical righteousness. In particular he's saying that doll upon air is to the he will's own principle that nothing is a sin unless you act upon it. So what does that mean for such things as doubt about God and being indignant when God doesn't answer prayer as quickly as we want, perhaps even getting angry with God, not loving God and the like? Well, those things are lodged in the affections, if they are, then they are not considered sin in and of themselves until you act upon them. Instead, he saw late medieval theology focusing on the real defining love of God primarily in terms of external actions that the will decides to undertake. In other words, external worship, going to church, doing pilgrimages, these external acts of devotion or devotional actions. And as a result for Melanchthon he sees late mid evil theology as ignoring a far deeper ailment within the human person because for late medieval theology, when man or human beings lost the stabilizing grace, reason became darkened but not blinded and will was weakened but not rendered helpless or incapacitated or impotent. Instead original sin left man in its weakened condition you might say much in the same way polio will leave a person its affected in a weakened condition. Someone may be entirely healed from polio but their body is still somewhat weakened as a result of it. So that's how the human being was pictured or conceived. I should also point out then within this scheme faith was often placed into the intellect. It was the knowledge. There was a historical knowledge about what Christ has done in the past. See, for that reason, it could not save in and by itself. Why? Because righteousness is located in the will, not the intellect. So faith could provide the will with the proper knowledge it needs on which to act. And on which to act means to carry out acts of love. Well, Melanchthon records the human being not in terms of compartments or divisions. I honestly think the Reformers thought the human being more holistically and relationally than substantively. In other words we're dealing with the human being as a whole, not with different parts of the human being and how sin affected those various components. In some ways I suspect Melanchthon would actually prefer to use the biblical language for the human being when the Bible talks about the human heart. I think for him, the human heart might be a way of capturing all together the intellect, the will, and the passions and sort of bundling them into one package. But very often he's willing to work with the anthropology with his opponents in terms of saying okay if you're going to consider faith it has to be both in the intellect and the will. Or more to our point, that such things as love for God, fear of God, doubt about God, that these things are not inconsequential. In fact, they go to the very heart of sin or righteousness. They go to the very heart of the fall and what God redeemed us to be. The point being about these particular emotions or affections as they were often called is that they lie outside of our control. In other words, one can't make a decision simply to trust or one can't make a decision "I'm going to wake up this morning and love this particular person, this particular woman with all my heart." We talk about falling in love. It implies that there's something about it that's outside of our control. It happens. And when it happens, it captures us totally in such a way that it consumes our thoughts and our actions. I mean, think about how someone acts who has recently fallen in love. All they can do is talk about their beloved. For example, how her eyes sparkle like the stars. Hour her hair shimmers in the sunlight. And on and onto the point where friends might get tired of hearing about it. Well, for Melanchthon these affections that go to the heart of the first commandment lies outside of our control. But they are the very things that define our relationship with God. They lie outside of our control in that we don't -- we are unable incapable of choosing to trust, choosing to fear or choosing to love God. We are helpless. We are incapable of doing it. So really the heart for -- the key to the doctrine of original sin for the confessions and the apology in particular is what Luther called the bondage of the will. The will turned in on itself in such a way that this is incapable of turning towards God. Well, when one starts looking at sin primarily in terms of the first commandment rather in terms of the second table of law, one realizes the depth to which human beings fell in the fall into sin and how totally devastating the impact of the fall was upon the human beings so that there is no way out apart from the Holy Spirit turning us around, killing us, and making us alive through the promise of the Gospel. So when you go through the apology, be sure, especially in Article 2, note how frequently Melanchthon argued that his opponents minimize sin. They trivialize sin. They regard it as an inconsequential matter by limiting sin only to the acts of the will. To the decisions that we make. There by, ignoring sin as a disease that infects and abuses our very nature as human beings. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***