Gerhard Forde 1972 Where God Meets Man: Notes on Chapter 2

Where God Meets Man: Luther’s Down-to-Earth Approach to the Gospel, Published by Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis.
https://archive.org/details/wheregodmeetsman00ford
 
Forde’s second chapter is titled “The ‘Down to Earth’ God.”

Forde continues with his theme of the Ladder. Mankind wrongly tries to climb the ladder to God. Here, Forde insists that we should learn from Luther:

“[T]he way he attempted to solve those problems gives us some guidance in our discussions today.”(18)

In his summary of Luther Forde leaves out the basic formal principle of Luther’s presentation: the discussion of Scriptural authority and clarity, along with careful contextual reading of the passages of Scripture. Forde also obscures and contradicts key points of Luther’s material principle: the doctrine of Justification, Scripture’s teaching on sin and evil, and the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ. 

Forde produced a fourteen page summary of Luther’s De servo arbitrio (“The Bondage of the Will”), a document that in the American Edition of Luther’s Works runs to 295 pages. Of course, the reader should expect that Forde was capturing only what he thought was significant of Luther’s argumentation. Indeed, Forde does capture the sentiment of some of Luther’s arguments. But by omitting any real discussion or presentation of Luther’s treatment of Scripture the reader is not directed to the clear words of Scripture as the foundation and only source for knowledge of God’s will. 

At the beginning of the next chapter Forde said of this chapter (2):

“We dealt with the question of where to look to find the will of God revealed.” (p. 32)

When Forde wrote of where this will of God is found he avoids going to the written Word of God. At times Forde resorts to using the term actual where this term can imply looking at the Scriptures, but that is not Forde’s meaning with the term. 

“Our opinions about what God is like ‘up in heaven’ do not matter. It is rather a question of the way things actually are; it is a question of what God himself has actually said and done down here on earth.” (21, emphasis original)

Those who are unaware of Forde’s use of this language are often left with the impression that he is referring to the Bible. And when Forde’s meaning is explained his admirers often become defensive. But an honest evaluation of Forde will let Forde say what Forde means by his words. He has dealt with his meaning of this terminology most thoroughly in his formal presentation of the Doctrine of Christ in 1984, where he wrote:

The earliest layers of the New Testament Gospel sources, the sayings sources such as Q, indicate no particular reflection on or view of Jesus’ work or his fate. Jesus’ death was no doubt a mighty schock, but it seems mostly to have been understood in terms of the usual fate of God’s prophets: they were rejected and came to a bad end. Such rejection, of course, unmasks the unrepentant, unbelieving, and guilty stance of God’s people. This early view of the life and death of Jesus is reflected also in some of the speeches in Acts, such as Peter’s speech in Acts 2, and even in some of Paul’s earlier writings (see, e.g., 1 Thess. 2:14ff.). Jesus himself, though he might have and quite possibly did reckon with a violent death at the hands of his adversaries, seems not to have understood or interpreted his own death as a sacrifice for others or ransom for sin. Such interpretation apparently came as the result of later reflection. (Forde’s 1984 “The Work of Christ” pp. 12-13, in Braaten and Jenson Christian Dogmatics volume 2, emphasis added)

What Forde means is that his historical-critical reconstruction of the words and work of Christ have to be extracted from the layers of interpretation by His first hearers, the hypothetical writer of the Q source, the Gospel writers, the hypothetical editors of the Gospels, the hypothetical apocalyptic theologians. Forde thought all these different sources had modified the actual words and works of Christ. He also maintained that there were layers of reinterpretations of Paul and the hypothetical editors of the Pauline epistles shaping the Pauline epistles as we have received them. Forde continued:

Even in their final redaction the synoptic Gospels contain little direct or explicit interpretation of Jesus’ work. Mark 10:45 has Jesus say that the Son of Man came to give his life ‘as a ransom for many,’ and the accounts of the Last Supper speak of Jesus’ blood as his ‘blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’ (Mark 14:24) and ‘my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’ (Matt. 26:28). Such passages, in their present form at least, are usually regarded as having come not from Jesus himself but from later interpretive traditions. The same is true of the instances where Jesus predicts his own death and resurrection, such as Mark 8:31ff. And 9:31, and parallels in the other Synoptics. They are interpretations attributed to Jesus after the fact. But aside from such scanty references, the Synoptics even in their final form afford little explicit interpretation of Jesus’ work. (Forde’s 1984 “The Work of Christ” p. 13, Braaten and Jenson Christian Dogmatics volume 2, emphasis added)

Forde’s higher-critical stance on the Scriptures is especially important to keep in mind when Forde does use the term Scripture in his argument. 

In the chapter of Where God Meets Man that we are examining, under his sub-heading “The attempt to escape from God” Forde contrasts the liberation expressed in the “question of what God himself has actually said and done down here on earth” with the bondage the reader receives from reading Scripture. The term Scripture is used only with reference to the threat of bondage.

It [the threat] hounds us through the inescapable logic of the arguments; it hounds us through the clear and unmistakable passages of scripture.
One cannot escape it even by arguing that there are certain other passages of scripture which seem to support the idea of freedom. For it is not a question of argument, not even a question of marshalling one set of scripture passages against another. All one would accomplish by that would be to try to establish that scripture is unclear— precisely what Luther attacked Erasmus for and what he would not in any circumstance allow. Scripture is not a book that can be dealt with by tallying up numbers of passages. Even if there were only one passage of scripture which refuted man’s freedom, Luther says, in effect, that would be enough. Why? Because that would be all it takes to destroy our confidence in the opposite arguments; that would be all it takes for the ‘voice’ of doubt to insinuate itself into ‘the heart.’ For it is not a question of such arguments. It is a question of the way things actually are, the way what God says in his Word actually strikes us. (22-23 emphasis original)

It should be pointed out that the aim of Luther’s writing the Bondage of the Will is to demonstrate that Erasmus was in error by asserting that Scripture and reason allow for some kind of freedom with regard to man’s status before God. Most of Luther’s book is addressing the proper use of Scripture shows that man’s will is in its natural sinful state captive entirely to Satan, sin, and death— that the only thing sinful man wills is to sin, rebel against God, and serve his own sinful flesh. 

But it is interesting that in contrast, when Forde speaks of what changes us from this bondage to the liberty of the Gospel Forde does not refer to Scripture with the word Scripture. Forde again uses his special terminology:

For the problem is not the abstract one of what God might or might not be like up there ‘in heaven,’ not what he might or might not have willed in the secret of his own counsel, but what he has actually willed and done for you here on earth. He has sent his Son to die and conquer the grave; he has baptized you and given you the sacrament of his body and blood and that is the revelation of his almighty will! (25, emphasis original)

Beside avoiding referring directly to Scripture as the source for this teaching Forde does a couple other things in this paragraph. First, he states what God has done in a way that avoids reference to the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. Second, he presents a historical-critical position wanting to embrace something it calls Christianity and adopting historically Christian terminology and forms. As we noted previously, Forde used historical Lutheran terminology, but he used this terminology with meanings already re-framed in writings from the Neo-Orthodoxy of Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr as well as the Lundensian theology of Anders Nygren, Gustaf Aulén and Ragnar Bring. In the above quotation from chapter 2, Forde, the historical-critic, took a position that is structurally and functionally equivalent to the old Grundtvigian error. 

In mid-19th century Denmark a theologian and political activist named Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig promoted a teaching that the 

“Word heard in the church through the ages, especially the Apostles' Creed, rather than written Scripture, was the ‘Living Word’ given to the church by Christ Himself. By this Word and in the sacraments God meets the individual in the church.”
 [summary in the Lutheran Cyclopedia,
http://cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=G&word=GRUNDTVIG.NIKOLAIFREDERIKSEVERIN ]

Grundtvig sought in the spoken Word and in the sacraments the clear and unchanging expression of true and pure Christianity as it had come down from Christ Himself through the centuries. In reaction against small Bible reading groups he held that the Bible was a “dead word” over against the “living word” of the Apostles' Creed. He influenced the Danish Church especially by his view of life, hymns, emphasis on congregational life and singing, and the effect of his message especially in rural areas. His great love for Denmark and his vision of its historical destiny gave his movement a national spirit. Christian, national, political, and cultural subjects were discussed in great folk mass meetings. As a result, Grundtvigianism became the most liberal of the 3 main groups in the Danish Church.
[the Lutheran Cyclopedia
http://cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=d&word=DENMARK.LUTHERANISMIN number 8]

Grundtvig sought “the clear and unchanging expression of true and pure Christianity as it had come down from Christ Himself through the centuries.” Forde sought “what God himself has actually said and done down here on earth.”(21) Grundtvig’s lens was oral tradition, the Apostles’ Creed, and the liturgical heritage of the Church. Forde’s lens was the historical-critical scholarship which would extract what Jesus actually said and did from the “interpretations attributed to Jesus after the fact.” (1984, p. 13) Both sought to be unbound from the Bible as it is written. Both sought a higher authority than Scripture in a carefully selected subset of what they each held as authentic Christian teaching. Both directed their readers to the historic outward participation in the liturgical rituals of the Church. And in both cases the congregations were led to trust authorities with special insight or training over and above what was plainly written in their Bibles.

Luther spent the majority of the pages in his Bondage of the Will showing how Scripture is clear and sufficient in teaching the will of God, the captivity of the human will to sin. Most of the pages are dedicated to clear exposition of the passages which Erasmus incorrectly used to assert that there is some aspect of the human will, perhaps pre-conditioned by grace, that is able to choose God. Those passages, Luther demonstrated, most certainly and clearly show that mankind is captive either to sin, death, and the will of Satan; or he is captive to the will of God. If man is captive to the will of God it is only through faith in the penal substitutionary life, sufferings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. An essential aspect of Luther’s presentation is that any claim to free will in spiritual matters denigrates the value of Christ’s suffering and death for our sins in His penal substitutionary atonement. Just a few examples from Luther:

“For in the New Testament the gospel is preached, which is nothing else but a message in which the Spirit and grace are offered with a view to the remission of sins, which has been obtained for us by Christ crucified; and all this freely, and by the sole mercy of God the Father, whereby faver is shown to us, unworthy as we are and deserving of damnation rather than anything else.” (BOW AE 33:150, emphasis added)

“For if what is most excellent in man is not ungodly and lost or damned, but only the flesh, or the lower and grosser desires, what sort of redeemer do you think we shall make Christ out to be? Are we to rate the price of his blood so low as to say that it has redeemed only what is lowest in man, and that what is most excellent in man can take care of itself and has no need of Christ?” (BOW 227, emphasis added)

“If Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world [John 1:29], then it follows that the whole world is subject to sin, damnation, and the devil, and the distinction between principal and nonprincipal parts is of no use at all. For ‘world’ means men, who savor of worldly things in all their parts.” (BOW 228, emphasis added)

“For show me any one of the whole race of mortals, even if he is the holiest and most righteous of them all, to whom it has ever occurred that the way to righteousness and salvation is the way of faith in one who is both God and man, who for the sins of men both died and rose again and is seated at the right hand of the Father; or show me any who has even dreamed of this wrath of God which Paul here says is revealed from heaven.” (concerning Romans 1: 18, BOW 250, emphasis added)

“Where is now the endeavor of free choice by which grace is obtained? John says here [1:16], not only that grace is not received by any effort of ours, but that it is received through another’s grace or another’s merit, namely, that of the one man Jesus Christ. It is therefore either false that we receive our grace in return for another’s grace, or else it is evident that free choice counts for nothing. For we cannot have it both ways; the grace of God cannot be both so cheap as to be obtainable anywhere and everywhere by man’s puny endeavor, and at the same time so dear as to be given us only in and through the grace of one Man and so great a Man.” (BOW 279, emphasis added)

They do not believe that Christ is their advocate with God, and obtains grace for them by his own blood as it says here, “grace for grace” [John 1:16]. And as they believe, so it is with the. Christ is truly and deservedly an inexorable Judge to them, inasmuch as they abandon him as a Mediator and most merciful Savior, and count his blood and his grace of less value than the efforts and endeavors of free choice. (BOW 280, emphasis added)

If we believe that Christ has redeemed men by his blood, we are bound to confess that the whole man was lost; otherwise, we should make Christ either superfluous or the redeemer of only the lowest part of man, which would be blasphemy and sacrilege. (BOW 293, emphasis added)

In contrast with what Luther actually wrote, Forde discusses how people try to shape God into their own image to make it easier to approach, to climb the ladder. He wrote:

Today the God-remodelers are a dime a dozen. Everyone, it seems, wants to do God the favor of making him less objectionable. … Some even say he has obliged us all by dying!”(31)

This is consistent with his denial of the penal substitutionary atonement evident in the first chapter, the introduction and many other of Forde’s writings. Recall his mischaracterization of Luther in chapter 1:

“Luther understood the gospel as something more than a theory about how God might or might not have been ‘bought off’ up there in heaven.” (17 see the previous discussion on chapter 1)

Very clearly Forde’s presentation of Luther’s position differs foundationally from what Luther himself wrote, both with respect to the formal principle of Scripture as the source and norm of true doctrine and with regard to Christ’s penal substitutionary atonement. 

What really is the nature of our captivity or bondage?

Throughout this chapter when Forde discusses the bondage of the will he never mentions sin in any way. Forde mentions “the problem of evil” as something left unexplained with reference to:

“where it came from or how it started or how exactly it is related to God’s omnipotence. Luther has no better answers to those question than anyone else: the problem of evil remains for him a deep mystery.”(30)

Such a statement from Forde, claiming to teach what Luther taught in Bondage of the Will, is dumbfounding. Especially when Forde fails to mention sin at all in this chapter.

Compare Luther:

“If we are unaware of the sin in which we were born, in which we live, move, and have our being, or rather, which lives, moves, and reigns in us, how should we be aware of the righteousness that reigns outside of us in heaven?” (BOW 263)

In fact, the nature of sin and evil, its source, cause, effects, and humankind’s captivity to Satan, sin, and death are found throughout Luther’s Bondage of the Will. What is very clear is that Luther is very different from Forde’s version of Luther in all essential respects. Luther wrote in his summary:

“[I]f we believe that Satan is the ruler of this world, who is forever plotting and fighting against the Kingdom of Christ with all his powers, and that he will not let men go who are his captives unless he is forst to do so by the divine power of the Spirit, then again it is evident that there can be no such thing as free choice.
“Similarly, if we believe that original sin has so ruined us that even in those who are led by the Spirit it causes a great deal of trouble by struggling against the good, it is clear that in a man devoid of the Spirit there is nothing left that can turn toward the good, but only toward evil.” (BOW 293)

There is a particular statement Luther made in Bondage of the Will that aptly describes Forde’s re-interpretation of Luther:

“[It is] as if you think that Christian godliness can exist without Christ so long as God is worshiped with all one’s powers as being by nature most merciful.” (Luther to Erasmus in Bondage of the Will LW 33:29)

Forde has presented Luther’s Bondage of the Will excluding any reference to: sin, captivity to Satan, sin and death. He neglected to touch upon Luther’s focus on Scripture as the sole source and norm for doctrine. With this Forde failed to cover the need for clear understanding of Scripture and the passages of Scripture that speak to the issue of whether humans have a bound or free will with respect to the things of God, the origin of evil, ignoring that Luther teaches human will is bound either to Satan by normal human birth or else to Christ through faith in His vicarious atonement. What is left in Forde is a term “Bondage of the Will” that signifies an intellectual philosophical moral state without reference to sin or salvation from sin through Christ. This is a position far from “the way that he [Luther] attempted to solve those problems.”(p 18)

Gerhard Forde 1972 Where God Meets Man: Notes on Chapter 1

Where God Meets Man: Luther’s Down-to-Earth Approach to the Gospel, Published by Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis.
https://archive.org/details/wheregodmeetsman00ford

In his Preface Forde states that he wrote this particular book for people struggling with “thinking about the faith.” It is written for those who “see that it is difficult to affirm many things that have come to us from the past but … find modern substitutes equally uncomfortable.” (5) Forde states that his work is meant to represent Luther’s theology based on a “two-fold conviction: first that many of our problems have arisen because we have not really understood our own traditions, especially in the case of Luther; and second that there is still a lot of help for us in someone like Luther if we take the trouble to probe beneath the surface.”(5f)

Forde argues that “we have failed to understand the basic thrust or direction of Luther’s theology.” (6) His contention is that “modern scholarship has demonstrated that Luther simply did not share the views on the nature of faith and salvation that subsequent generations foisted upon him and used to interpret his thinking.”(6) The key to really understanding Luther, according to Forde, is modern scholarship:

“This book attempts to bring the results of some of that scholarship to light and make it more accessible for those who are searching for answers today.”(6)

Chapter 1 “Up the Down Staircase”

Forde uses the illustration of the Ladder or Staircase as his point of comparison in explaining two main different types of faith. The illustration is from Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28. At the base, Forde asserts, is that too many think Christianity “has to do primarily with ‘going up’ somewhere — either to heaven or to some kind of ‘religious perfection.’”(7) Forde states that this notion is wrong, “it involves us in the task of ascending to heaven when we should be seeking like our Lord to come down to earth, to learn what it means to be a Christian here on earth.” (8) Forde calls this a “down to earth movement” and maintains that this movement “is an important key to understanding the theology of Martin Luther.”(8)

Here Forde makes a puzzling assertion about Luther’s history. His claim is that there is theological significance in the way that Luther rejected the use of the ladder, as in Forde’s illustration.

“Surely this is the significance of his leaving the monastery. He was turning his back on the piety of the ladder, the belief that the Christian life must be understood as the task of ascending to heaven by special spiritual exercises.”(8)

Forde might be conflating Luther’s writings against monasticism with other events. Luther did not leave the monastery. Luther became an Augustinian Monk in 1505. In 1511 Staupitz transferred him from the monastery in Erfurt to teach at the University of Wittenberg. In 1520 Luther wrote in favor of the marriage of priests and monks in “To the German Nobility” and in “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” In 1521 Luther was excommunicated by Leo X. The same year but after his excommunication Luther published a harsh critique of monasticism titled “On Monastic Vows.” This particular writing is an explicit rejection of system of monasticism as it was practiced in the Church at that time. This particular pamphlet was written to reform monasticism, to do away with the abuses, but not to destroy monasticism. Luther certainly wrote in this document against the idea that monastic life is somehow superior to other vocations. Luther did not take off his monastic habit make a full break with monasticism until 1524 — after he had been sent from the monastery and after he had been excommunicated. I realize this might appear as nit-picking, but I think it is important to demonstrate the difference between Forde’s generalization of Luther and how Luther’s development took place through the events and writings over the years. Forde uses this generalization to fortify his own view of Luther’s theology in this chapter.

Luther understood the ladder differently than the way Forde represents Luther. Forde is accurate that for Luther the Ladder is not meant to be climbed by our righteousness. But in Luther the Ladder is also not for us to climb down for our neighbor. Luther confessed that the Ladder is Christ himself. In commenting on John 1:51 Luther wrote:

“This is also an extraordinary word. But Christ applies the history of the dear patriarch Jacob, (Gen. xxviii.,) to himself, that the angels should ascend and descend upon him as on a ladder. … Before the advent of Christ, heaven was firmly closed, and the devil ruled powerfully; but through Christ ("hereafter") and in Christ heaven has been thrown open again, and now Christians see heaven open, and continually hear God, the heavenly Father, converse with him.”
[Luther’s Explanatory Notes on the Gospels, compiled from his works by Rev E. Mueller, Translated by Rev. P. Anstadt, D.D., 1899, Page 281 https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=iVpIAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PA281 ]

Actual

This is a term that Forde used frequently throughout his writings with reference to Christ and the Scriptures.

“We must learn to think and speak about the gospel, as far as that is possible, within the limits of what we actually know, within the limits of what actually happens to Jesus here on earth and to us when we are confronted by the story of Jesus.”(13, italics mine)

Within the context of this chapter and book, and within the greater context of Forde’s writings he uses the term actual to refer to vaguely defined subset of gospel verses in contrast with what he maintains are the Evangelists’ later interpretations of the meaning of Christ’s words, death, and resurrection. Forde held to an historical critical view of the interpretation of the New Testament. The casual reader may make the mistake of thinking that Forde was making an appeal to the actual words of the New Testament as it is written. He was not. His meaning is that to truly understand Jesus one needs to get rid of what he considers to be the interpretations of the Apostles, the Evangelists, the apocalyptic passages, and to strip the text down to what his historical criticism claims can be found in the hypothetical Q source. This is how he uses the term actual. He does not explain this meaning to the reader in this chapter. But he practices this with how he selects texts and refuses to discuss texts in his interpretations of Law, Gospel, and the Atonement in this chapter. He does explain his historical critical approach to the text in his 1984 “The Shape of the Tradition” in the Braaten and Jenson Christian Dogmatics.

Law

Forde’s discussion of the Law consists of many statements that direct his readers away from the words of the Law of God in Scripture. For example, he states:

“For Luther the crucial question was not so much what the law says, i.e. the information it contains, but what it actually does to you when you hear it.” (13, italics original)

At this point he summarizes what Luther stated on the uses of the Law in the Smalcald Articles (Part III, Art. II). Here Forde emphasizes that in Luther’s formulation:

“It is not said that the law was intended as a way of salvation. The law is not in that sense a ladder to heaven.”(13-14)

But immediately after this he also inserts his claim against the vicarious atonement:

“That would make the law into mere theory … into a theory about how it is satisfied.”(14)

In the place of the written word and law of God Forde maintains that for Luther:

“In its theological ‘use’ law should be understood as a concrete and actual ‘voice’ which ‘sounds in the heart’ and the ‘conscience,’ a real voice which afflicts a man in his isolation from God and demands that he fulfill his humanity.”(14)

Two points, at least, are important to note here. First, Forde is limiting the law to that which is not written in Scripture but which is felt in man. Forde does not explicitly tie his expression to natural law, but perhaps this is close. But making this connection does not appear to be Forde’s interest. He appears more interested in showing that the idea of law must be distanced from the written word of God.

Second, Forde asserts that the law functions not to show sin, but to “demand that he fulfills his humanity.” But what does it mean for one to “fulfill his humanity”?

One must at least grant that Forde’s language is very different from both Scripture and from Luther. Luther was pretty clear in his meaning in the Smalcald Articles:

But the chief office or force of the Law is that it reveal original sin with all its fruits, and show man how very low his nature has fallen, and has become [fundamentally and] utterly corrupted; as the Law must tell man that he has no God nor regards [cares for] God, and worships other gods, a matter which before and without the Law he would not have believed. In this way he becomes terrified, is humbled, desponds, despairs, and anxiously desires aid, but sees no escape; he begins to be an enemy of [enraged at] God, and to murmur, etc. 5] This is what Paul says, Rom. 4:15: The Law worketh wrath. And Rom. 5:20: Sin is increased by the Law. (SA II:II.4-5)

Forde’s states that for Luther:

“the voice of the law reaches its climactic crescendo in the preaching of the cross.”(15)

This is true.  But the solution Forde poses is puzzling:

“For the point is that ‘the law’ is not merely a set of commandments, not a list of requirements that could be disposed of merely by doing a few things and choking them off. The law is that immediate and actual voice arising from the sum total of human experience ‘in this age,’ up to and including the cross, a voice which will not stop until our humanity is fulfilled.” (15, italics mine)

The archetypal language “actual voice arising from the sum total of human experience…” is an unusual and rather Jungian mode of expression that casts an awkward and foreign paradigm on the notion of original sin.

“The law is that which accuses and terrifies and in a real sense, anything that does this functions as law. … It is a voice, which for the sinner, never ends.”(15-16, italics original)

Sin

As we saw above in Luther’s Smalcald Articles, he stated that

“the chief office or force of the Law is that it reveal original sin with all its fruits, and show man how very low his nature has fallen.” 

Yet, so far in this chapter, Forde has referred to sin only with reference to the guilt the person feels when accused by law. And the law, in Forde, is not the Ten Commandments, or the Two Great Commandments, but “anything” that accuses and terrifies.

For Luther, the aim of the law is to drive us to repentance for our sins. For Forde the aim is different and has to do with pointing out, in Forde’s terms,  how we have not “fulfilled our humanity.”

Gospel

Forde’s definition of Gospel is different from what is found in Scripture and Confessional Lutheranism, and for that matter from most of organized Christianity. For Forde:

“[T]he gospel too must be seen in terms of what it does. For what is the Gospel? It is the end of the law! That is to say that what the gospel does is to put an end to the ‘voice’ of the law.” (16)

Now, this is how Forde is representing his interpretation of Luther:

“The voice stops, really, only when what the law demands is really there. That is, the voice stops only when we become fully what we were intended to be. The command to love, for instance, stops when we actually do love.” (16)

Forde does not understand this as a work of Christ credited to us. He teaches that

“In Christ this new creation has already and actually broken in on us, and the promise that it will be carried to its completion.”(16)

There is nothing in Forde’s interpretation of Luther or the Gospel that actually deals with or preaches the forgiveness of sins. Christ’s death

“Is the story of something that happened here on earth strong enough to break the actual hold of the law on us….”(17)

Forde explains Luther as teaching that the proper distinction between law and gospel is:

“[a] battle … between these contending voices or powers. That is why the basic question for Luther was the proper distinction between law and gospel. It is a question of how you hear the words, what they actually do to you. Some think they are hearing gospel when it is actually only another form of law.” (17)

Here it should be pointed out that Forde has repeatedly highlighted the vicarious atonement of Christ as one of these false gospels. Forde continued:

“Rightly to distinguish law from gospel is to hear that other voice, the voice that tells of him who came down to earth to give us also the gift of being able to live down to earth. It is a voice strong enough to make and keep us human, to enable us to live as we were intended to live — as creatures of God.”(17, italics original)

The Gospel does not have to do with the announcement of sins forgiven for Christ’s sake. Instead, for Forde the gospel consists of having the ability to hear “love” and to do “love,” the ability to be and do without self-doubt and guilt, particularly without fear of judgment from God.

Atonement

Throughout this chapter Forde describes the doctrine of the Penal Substitutionary Atonement as legalism and antithetical to the Gospel.

Forde asserted that Luther was attacking and disagreeing with the doctrine of the Vicarious Atonement:

“But it was precisely this ‘natural’ way of thinking that Luther attacked. … But we misunderstand if we think that it was only this system or its abuse that he was attacking. He was attacking a way of thinking which is a kind of universal disease of mankind: the very idea that the law is a ladder and that God is one who can be bargained with or obligated to ‘pay off’ according to such schemes.” (9-10)

Forde is not arguing that we are unable to pay our debt because of our sin. He is arguing that the very idea that because of sin there is a debt we owe before God that must be satisfied.

  “Let me explain. We begin by assuming the law is a ladder to heaven. Then we go on to say, ‘Of course, no one can climb the ladder, because we are all weakened by sin. We are all therefore guilty and lost.’ And this is where ‘the gospel’ is to enter the picture. What we need is someone to pay our debt to God and to climb the ladder for us. This, supposedly, is what Jesus has done. As our ‘substitute’ he has paid off God and climbed the ladder for us. All we have to do now is ‘believe it.’ 

  “But what have we done when we understand the gospel in this way? We have, in fact, interpreted the gospel merely as something that makes the ladder scheme work. The gospel comes to make up for the deficiencies of the law. The gospel does not come as anything really new. … It is trapped in the understanding of law which we have ourselves concocted.

   “The net result is that the gospel itself simply becomes another kind of law. …. If you want to be saved you must now ‘believe’ all that. That is the new law. (10-11)

Forde says the notion of Christ paying our debt of sin is part of ‘climbing the ladder’ to make ourselves better before God. And that this notion of the vicarious atonement faces several difficulties.

“In the first place, can we so lightly assume that God is one who can be ‘bought off’ — even by Jesus?” (11)

Forde asserts that the way one knows this is true or not about God is how this question affects our sensibilities:

“If the question shocks us, we ought to take it as an indication that we cannot really think that way about God at all.”(11)

Luther called this way of thinking about God enthusiasm. (SA II:VIII Of Confession, 3-13 http://bookofconcord.org/smalcald.php#part3.8.3 )

Forde continued:

“In the second place, to introduce the question of payment in this way inevitably raises the old question of how can we be sure that Christ has paid enough. … The usual answer is to say that because he is divine, his sufferings have infinite worth. But that is only a further theory which complicates rather than solves matters. For instance, can the divine suffer? … After all, if all his sufferings have infinite worth, one would think that the beating and the crown of thorns would have satisfied God!” (12)

With those words we can see that Forde does not accept what Luther plainly and repeatedly preached. For example, Luther taught:

57. But now, if God’s wrath is to be taken away from me and I am to obtain grace and forgiveness, some one must merit this; for God cannot be a friend of sin nor gracious to it, nor can he remit the punishment and wrath, unless payment and satisfaction be made. Now, no one, not even an angel of heaven, could make restitution for the infinite and irreparable injury and appease the eternal wrath of God which we had merited by our sins; except that eternal person, the Son of God himself, and he could do it only by taking our place, assuming our sins, and answering for them as though he himself were guilty of them. This our dear Lord and only Savior and Mediator before God, Jesus Christ, did for us by his blood and death, in which he became a sacrifice for us; and with his purity, innocence, and righteousness, which was divine and eternal, he outweighed all sin and wrath he was compelled to bear on our account; yea, he entirely engulfed and swallowed it up, and his merit is so great that God is now satisfied and says, If he wills thereby to save, then there shall be a salvation. As Christ also says of his Father’s will, John 6:40: “This is the will of my Father, that every one that beholdeth the Son, and believeth on him, should have eternal life.” Also Matthew 28:18: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.” And in his prayer in John 17:1-2 he says: “Father, glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee; even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that to all whom thou hast given him he should give eternal life.”
[Lenker vol 2 p. 293-4, italics mine http://www.martinluthersermons.com/Luther_Lenker_Vol_2.pdf ]

Forde’s third issue is

“the troublesome question of forgiveness. If God has been paid, how can one say that he really forgives? If a debt is paid, one can hardly say it is forgiven. Nor could one call God’s action mercy.(12)

Indeed, it would not be mercy if the debtor had to pay his own debt. But in the Scripture it is not the debtor who has to pay his own way. It is the creator who pays the debt on behalf of the debtor. The master in in Jesus’ parable forgives the debt of his servant, the debt does not just disappear, the master is covering his servant’s debt.(Matthew 18:21-35)

For each of these issues Forde declares that Luther opposed such theology:

“We shall not approach an understanding of the theology of Luther unless we begin to see that he was against such thinking, against this ‘natural reason,’ ‘the devil’s whore.’ … For who knows, really, whether God is ‘satisfied’ in the kind of way the theory suggests? Who knows whether we are right in saying that the sufferings of the divine-human Jesus have the ‘infinite worth’ demanded by the scheme.”(12-13, italics original)

A student of Scripture in Confessional Lutheranism should have no problem dealing with these misinterpretations of Luther. Forde’s problems exist, at least in large part, because he has already rejected the Bible as the source and norm for what God teaches. Forde wants to find ‘what we actually know’ but chooses to discount anything in the New Testament and Old Testament which does not fit within his philosophical construct of what God must be like. He is not measuring his theology against Scripture. He is refusing any passage or context which does not fit with what he wishes Christ to be.

Forde’s claim to teach Luther more clearly and more accurately is open to exactly the same criticism. Forde selects only those phrases from Luther that fit the kind of theology Forde imagined Luther to have. But it does not take a great deal of searching in Luther to show how much Forde has to ignore or throw out.

Every child who has learned Luther’s Small Catechism should be familiar with Luther’s confession about the payment Christ made on our behalf for our sins.

“I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won [delivered] me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, in order that I may be [wholly] His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.” [ Small Catechism Second Article: Meaning, italics mine ]

Luther was also very clear in the Large Catechism that Christ paid the debt of sin, and my sin. Luther stats that the debt is a debt I owe as a sinner. Christ paid my debt with His own blood. That is, His being put to death.

“ how and whereby it was accomplished, that is, how much it cost Him, and what He spent and risked that He might win us and bring us under His dominion, namely, that He became man, conceived and born without [any stain of] sin, of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, that He might overcome sin; moreover, that He suffered, died and was buried, that He might make satisfaction for me and pay what I owe, not with silver nor gold, but with His own precious blood.” [ Large Catechism Second Article §31 ]

In 1519, Ten years prior, on Good Friday just the year after the Heidelberg Disputation Luther preached:

“[Y]ou see the severe wrath and the unchangeable earnestness of God in regard to sin and sinners, in that he was unwilling that His only and dearly beloved Son should set sinners free unless he paid the costly ransom for them as is mentioned in Is 53, 8: ‘For the transgression of my people was he stricken.’" [ Martin Luther, Good Friday Sermon, 1519, §4, italics mine ]

And a few paragraphs later:

“cast your sins from yourself upon Christ, believe with a festive spirit that your sins are his wounds and sufferings, that he carries them and makes satisfaction for them, as Is 53,6 says: ‘Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all;’ and St. Peter in his first Epistle 2, 24: ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree’ of the cross; and St. Paul in 2 Cor 5,21: ‘Him who knew no sin was made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.’" [ §13  http://www.martinluthersermons.com/sermons45.html ]

It should be clear from these quotations that Luther did very much believe, teach, and confess that Christ paid the debt for our sin, and that this payment was made to make restitution to the Father.

Claims about Luther

 “I hope to show, by developing some of the important facets of Luther’s thought, that he was quite opposed to a theology based on the idea of the ladder, that one can look upon his work as a great attempt to reverse directions, to base faith entirely on a God who came ‘down to earth’ and to foster a Christian life which is likewise ‘down to earth.’” (8)

What Luther opposed was the notion that sinful humans paid or could make satisfaction for sin. Forde claimed:

“Luther understood the gospel as something more than a theory about how God might or might not have been ‘bought off’ up there in heaven. If it were only that it would be just another law; it would be merely a set of doctrines to which the command would be added: ‘Thou shalt believe this or perish.” (17)

But here Forde is appropriating parts of what Luther wrote to support the very different image of Christ, Atonement, and Gospel that he (Forde) has constructed. Forde is also reconstructing Luther to fit his (Forde’s) own image of what he wished Luther to have been. Forde is using terms and phrases in a way to imply that Luther rejected, or at least, would never support the notion that Christ paid the debt of sinners.

Summary

These notes are only on the Preface and Chapter 1 of this short book. My notes are probably longer than the chapter. I realize this is only the first part of this book and that Forde probably went on to explain some aspects of what he covered in this chapter. This chapter, however, does show that in 1972 Forde already clearly distanced himself from the historical Scriptural terminology and the theology of the Lutheran Confessions. His distancing is deliberate and clear. His discounting or ignoring of Scriptures to fit his theology is paralleled by his discounting or ignoring of Luther’s writings to fit what he wished Luther to have been.

What is amazing to me is that a work like this could be taken seriously as an explanation of Luther's theology! In his introductory Forde brought up Law, Gospel, and the proper distinction, the Atonement, all without ever dealing with Scriptural definitions or those topics or of original sin, actual sin. He claimed to present Luther's views, but Luther's frequent and clearly stated teaching on these were cleanly excised from the picture of Luther presented by Forde. Again, I have yet to do a full analysis on the rest of the book, but this introductory chapter presents Forde, not Luther. Forde presents his caricature of Luther and his doctrine, and his (Forde's) caricature of Scriptural doctrine to the reader as genuine, authentic, as actual. But all he has taught so far appears, to me, to be that Christ came to tell us, "Hey, God's ok with you. Just be you! Look! I did it! That's what you do." He rejects the notion that God is a Just God visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children. He rejects Christ's payment for sin.

As I have written previously, Forde's arguments and teaching grow in sophistication and in popular appeal, but I do not see him changing significantly in substance. He is capable of and adept at using historic Christian and Lutheran terminology with very different meanings.

Note 3 on Gerhard Forde's 1984 “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ”

In Forde, Christ came and simply forgave. God is unconditional love and as far as God is concerned, He did not require the death of Christ in order to be able to forgive. He simply forgave and showed mercy. But this should make us happy! So how does Forde deal with reason for Christ’s death?

“But why did we kill him? It was, I expect we must say, a matter of ‘self-defense.’ Jesus came not just to teach about the mercy and forgiveness of God but actually to do it, to have mercy and to forgive unconditionally. … How can this world survive, how can we survive if mercy and forgiveness are just given unconditionally? … Actually doing it, giving it unconditionally just seems to us terribly reckless and dangerous. It shatters the ‘order’ by which we must run things here.” (92, italics original) 

“One who comes actually to have mercy and to forgive in God’s name is just an absolute and total threat to the way we have decided we must run thing here. So either Jesus must go or we must.” (92-93) 

“Those who advocated the ‘subjective’ view of the atonement were at least right in that, I expect. God is, indeed, sheer unconditional love.” (93)

In a human relationship Forde’s argument might be illustrated in this way:

A woman unconditionally loves her adulterous, drunken, abusive husband who refuses to work for a living. She provides for him: he spends the money in alcohol and prostitutes. She forgives him and shows mercy to him, going out to bring him home. She tells him she loves him and forgives him. But her declarations of love just do not break through. The man just does not even sense that he needs forgiveness. So the wife decides to be where her husband is in his sin. She is at the bar while he drinks to oblivion. She tells him she forgives him and loves him. She is there when he finds a prostitute, and while he violates their marriage she tells him she forgives him and loves him. She is there in his face with forgiveness and unconditional love and mercy wherever and whenever he rejects her and rebels against her. And he beats her. She realizes the only way she can get through to him —  to demonstrate how truly unconditional her love is for him — is that she must let him beat her to death. This, at last should shock him into realizing that she really does forgive him and loves him unconditionally.

The above illustration is my attempt to capture the main argument in Forde’s interpretation of the purpose for Christ’s death. In Forde’s description of Christ’s work Christ does not condemn sin or sinners or call them to repentance for their sin. He only shows mercy. The purpose of the Cross is simply a version of Scared Straight therapy.

For Forde, the divine purpose of the Cross, the purpose of the suffering and death of Christ was to provide a vivid and brutal demonstration of God’s unconditional love in order to shock us out of our self-justifying denials that God is unconditional love.

“The persistent question through theological history has been whether God could not have done it [convinced the world that He had already forgiven them unconditionally and without sacrifice or rendering of payment or satisfaction] in some other way. … Neither the persuasiveness of the example [of Christ’s love and service] nor the defeat of demons — nothing exterior to God himself — provides sufficient reasoning for abandoning Jesus to his cruel fate. Yet to say that the cross was necessary to satisfy the divine honor or wrath or justice is also clearly suspect. The event of Jesus tells us that God’s intent is simply to have mercy, that God is love.” (94)

“God’s problem is how actually to have mercy on a world that will not have it.” (94)

“He knows that to have mercy on whom he will have mercy can only appear as frightening, as wrath, to such a world. … So he refuses to be wrath for us. He refuses to be the wrath that is resident in all our conditionalism. … Thus, precisely so as not to be the wrathful God we seem bent on having he dies for us, ‘gets out of the way’ for us.”(95)

For Forde, Christ did not need to make satisfaction for sins in the sense of suffering the punishment we deserve in our place. Vicarious satisfaction, to Forde, is a self-justifying scheme to avoid having to admit that God is simply unconditional love and mercy.

“We are under his wrath not because of something so abstract as his ‘honor’ or his ‘justice’ to which ‘payment’ must be made, but because we will not let him be who he will be for us: unconditional love and mercy.” (94)

So our main offense to God, the thing that separates us from Him is that we refuse to accept his love for us. Which seems a bit shallow if, as Forde states, the whole purpose of this brutal death is to demonstrate how unconditional God’s love is for us. Why then would anyone have to bother with Christianity over any other religion? (This is a question Forde addressed in the same year as this article with in his locus on Christ in Braaten and Jenson’s Dogmatics) While Forde does not quite go into a universalism in this article, his basic position on the unconditional love of God certainly points in a universalist direction.

For Forde the idea of Christ bearing our sins on his body refers only to our abuse of Christ’s body. Forde rejects Christ as substitute.

“Thus he must ‘bear our sins in his body’ — not theoretically in some fashion, but actually. He is beaten, spit upon, mocked, wasted. That is, perhaps we can say, the only way for him to ‘catch us in the act.’ (96)

“Christ’s work is to realize [make real in this world] the will of God to have mercy unconditionally, and thus to make new beings and bring in the new age.” (96)

“[W]e can also suggest a somewhat different and, it is to be hoped, more acceptable sense in which Christ’s work, as tradition has insisted, ‘satisfies’ the wrath (justice, honor) of God. When faith is created, when we actually believe God’s unconditional forgiveness; then God can say, ‘Now I am satisfied!” God’s wrath ends actually when we believe him, not abstractly because of a payment to God ‘once upon a time.’ “(97, italics original)

Thus, when we can see how badly we have treated Christ and that he has maintained his unconditional love for us through it all, then we can finally be confronted with our own brutality — be scared straight. And when we arrive at this appreciation of how much God loved us in this way we can finally believe God is satisfied.

There can be no “Justification through Christ by faith” in Forde’s theology. Each term has been re-defined differently than Scripture and deliberately distanced from the definitions of the Lutheran Confessions.

Augsburg Confession,  Article IV: Of Justification.

1] Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for 2] Christ's sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. 3] This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. Rom. 3 and 4. 

At the center of Forde’s theology is a denial that Christ is God taking on Human flesh for the purpose of giving His life to make satisfaction for our sins. In place of this Forde presents a Jesus who allows himself to be brutalized so that he can finally convince us that God is love even without Christ’s death.

Where Forde writes of the Cross, it is not of the Cross upon which the Divine-Human Christ paid the debt for the sins of the children of Adam. The cross is, instead, only an example of our brutality against God’s love. An example which is supposed to wake us up to realize how loving God is.

Where Forde writes of Mercy, it is not of the mercy shown by Christ’s willingness and choice to come into this world to be under the law to redeem those who were under the law by paying their debt in their place. For Forde, God is merciful without Christ. Christ is merely the example of mercy.

Where Forde writes of Faith, it is not of the faith given by God through Word and Sacrament that clings to the person and work of Christ alone as our salvation. For Forde faith is a rejection of the substitutionary atonement in favor of the simple acknowledgement that God is Love.

Where Forde writes of Justification, it is not of the Verdict of God rendered upon sinners as innocent through faith in the substitutionary work of Christ. He has deliberately distanced himself from the Scriptural understanding expressed in the Lutheran Confessions.

Note 2 on Gerhard Forde's 1984 “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ”

Forde rejects the vicarious atonement. He does not describe the doctrine of vicarious atonement accurately, rather, he frames it as a human notion trying to appease an angry God. But, for Forde, God is not angry with sin. Nor, for Forde, is God concerned with justice nor with being just.

“In the so-called ‘objective’ theory it is maintained that God needed the death of Jesus in order to be merciful to us. God is the object of the atoning act. The demands of his law, or wrath, or justice had to be ‘satisfied.’ So we are exonerated because the cross was necessary to God. But the inevitable consequence of such thinking is that it doesn’t finally reconcile us to God. If the cross is necessary to pay God, God will be pictured as at worst a rather vindictive tyrant demanding his pound of flesh or at best an inept subordinate caught in the same inexorable net of law and justice as we are.”(86-7)

This is followed by an appeal to “the biblical witness” but not to a passage or context of Scripture. Forde wants to have the appearance of abiding by the word of God without actually having to do so:

“The persistent criticism of doctrines of vicarious satisfaction and substitutionary atonement since the Enlightenment has the same root. The picture painted of God is too black, too contrary to the biblical witness.”(87)

Then Forde presents his mischaracterization of mercy in the vicarious atonement:

"If the death [of Christ] was payment, how could reconciliation be an act of mercy? Mercy is mercy, not the result of payment." (87, italics original)

Forde misrepresents the vicarious substitution without any reference to what God says about His motivation for sending His Son to the Cross or of the Son’s motivation for going to the cross. For Forde the vicarious atonement is merely a matter of an angry god being offered a payment to keep him happy. This is a pagan misreading of the Biblical teaching. The mercy of God in the vicarious atonement  is Christ’s willingness to pay on behalf of his enemies. This merciful willingness and love is what makes the crucifixion an act of mercy done by Christ. Christ’s submission to death on the cross. Paul wrote in Romans 5:7-9

7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

But for Forde this quote from Paul is not really relevant because in Forde’s historical critical view Romans 5 is a later re-interpretation of the crucifixion and does not refer to the actual story of the crucifixion (see Note 1 on this article).

Likewise, the simple and direct statement of John 3:16 explains the nature of the mercy of God. His love for the sinners of the world is what motivated Him to send His onlybegotten Son into this world to pay the debt the sinners owed.  It is the same gospel that records John the Baptizer’s explanation that Jesus is “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”(1:29) And the same gospel writer states that the whole of the suffering servant passages in Isaiah 32-53 directly speak of Jesus. This would include in context: “And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”(53:6) “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin,”(53:10).

It is also helpful to remember the Apostle Peter’s words about Christ as our substitution according to Isaiah 52-53:

 21 For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: 22 “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth”; 23 who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; 24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed. (1 Peter 1)

For Forde Christ’s predictive statements about His death and the purpose of his death (as in John 12) do not belong to the actual story of Christ.  Nor do Christ’s explanatory statements after His resurrection (as in Luke 24:44-46). (see especially his 1984 “The Shape of the Tradition” p. 12-19 )  In Forde’s writings these predictive statements and explanatory statements were the theologizing rationalizations of the Evangelists and later editors of the Gospels trying to wrestle with the meaning of the brutal and otherwise inexplicable killing of Christ.

Thus Forde writes:

“If we are to get anywhere with these questions [about the necessity of Christ’s death] today, we shall have to begin by paying closer attention to the ‘brute facts’ of the case, looking at the actual events as they have been mediated to us in the narrative itself to see what we can make of them.” (p. 90, italics mine)

Forde’s ‘brute facts’ rest in his anthropology. He considers the why of Christ’s death not from ‘above,’ as he says with respect to a divine plan, but from ‘below’ with the human condition.  From this framework he states:

“Why could not God just up and forgive? Let us start there If we look at the narrative about Jesus, the actual events themselves, the ‘brute facts’ as they have come down to us, the answer is quite simple. He did! Jesus came preaching repentance and forgiveness, declaring the bounty and mercy of his ‘Father.’”(p. 90f)

The quotation marks Forde places around Father are meant to to be significant. But in this context it is hard to understand why Forde would use them this way unless he is implying that this relationship of God to Jesus is metaphorical or irreal or metaphysically existential in some way.  But, that aside, Forde’s claim is that Christ’s death was not necessary for us to be forgiven, we already were. Forde continues immediately after the above quote:

“The problem, however, is that we could not buy that. And we killed him. And just so we are caught in the act. … He came to forgive and we killed him for it; we would not have it. It is as simple as that.”

Forde’s interpretation differs from the explanatory words of Christ in the Gospels:

44 Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” 45 And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. 

46 Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 And you are witnesses of these things. (Luke 24)

And from Paul:

5 For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time,  (I Timothy 2)

For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. (I Corinthians 5:7)

And Peter:

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, (I Peter 3:18)

And the writer to the Hebrews

 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 15 And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. (Hebrew 9)

These are but a few of the many contexts in Scripture which speak directly to the substitutionary nature of Christ’s death. It can be helpful to preach about the brutality of His death and our shame for it. But Forde does this to the exclusion of God’s explicitly stated purpose by a selective rejection of Scripture. And in doing so denies Christ’s mercy in His willingness to pay the debt of sin we owed, as God’s written word clearly teaches.

Forde’s anthropology views humanity as sinful, and the measure of that sinfulness is in the killing of Christ. But the nature of that sinfulness, in Forde’s view, is not a debt of justice that needed payment.

So, Forde denies not only that sin needs atonement, but also he denies the explicitly declared nature of God being not only mercy, but also justice:

No one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified (I Thessalonians 4:6)

Indeed, if Forde’s argument is, as it seems, that we are enemies of God to the point that we kill him, then one cannot escape the judgment of God in Deuteronomy 32:

39 ‘Now see that I, even I, am He, And there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand. 40 For I raise My hand to heaven, And say, “As I live forever, 41 If I whet My glittering sword, And My hand takes hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to My enemies, And repay those who hate Me. 42 I will make My arrows drunk with blood, And My sword shall devour flesh, With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the heads of the leaders of the enemy.” ’

It is difficult on the basis of this particular Forde article to see if he is either 1) re-defining God by rejecting these passages as well as the stated purpose of the Old Covenant sacrificial system, or 2) if he is somehow distinguishing between a New Testament version of God (as in all mercy and no justice) v. and Old Testament version of God (who emphasizes justice). I am not sure yet which of these he is doing, or something else. But he is certainly defining God and His attributes differently than the Scripure does.

Note 1 on Gerhard Forde's 1984 “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ”

Published in Word and World 3:22-31. Reprinted in 2004 A More Radical Gospel. (85-97, quotations from this printing)

This article overlaps in theme and content with Forde’s “The Work of Christ” in Braaten and Jenson, Seventh Locus; particularly chapter 1, but also chapters 2 through 4.

Forde lays out his view on the work of Christ under four categories.

• Theories Aside
• The Brute Facts
• Starting “From Below”
• Why the Death of Christ.

Forde’s purpose in this article is to distance himself and his re-interpretation of the Atonement from the Biblical and historical confession of Scripture’s depiction of Christ’s death as substitutionary punishment for sin. He offers what he labels a new and better interpretation that is at once more brutal and more authentic.

Forde embraces, in part, Abelard’s criticism of Anselm. Though it seems neither Abelard nor Forde actually express an accurate understanding of Anselm’s point:

“Anselm, like subsequent thinkers, concentrated on the sin of Adam, arguing that it was so great an affront to the divine honor that only the voluntary sacrifice of the God-man could make satisfaction for it. But such thinking diverts attention from the brute reality at hand: Jesus, the innocent one, was murdered by us. The sin of adam, Abelard avers, was indeed bad enough, but surely it was small potatoes compared to the sin of murdering the Son of God. … Far from ‘satisfying’ God’s honor or wrath or justice or whatever, the murder of Jesus, Abelard thinks, would only make matters worse — much worse."(p. 86f)

In the first part Forde enlists Neo-orthodox theological categories and a version of the often repeated but always tailored evolutionary narrative from the history of religions school about the development of so-called atonement theories.

Readers should be aware that this is a re-framing of discussion of the doctrine of God’s word into pseudo-scientific and philosophical terms of a discussion about the theories men have about God. This terminology is deceptive and inappropriate. What is under discussion is the differences in confessions about what God actually teaches, His doctrine. What actually matters is how well the confessions of these teachers conforms to the whole written Word of God. The term theory rejects the very notion of a definitive doctrine given by God in His written word. One cannot have a theory of the resurrection, a theory of sin, a theory of the virgin birth, a theory of the hypostatic union, or a theory of six-day creation without undermining the very idea that these things are God’s doctrine in Scripture, unchangeable. But I think that this very point of definite doctrine from Scripture is something Forde would describe as legalism. At least this is a strong implication on p 86 where he states:

 “Indeed, the fatal flaw in most thinking about the atoning work of Christ is the tendency to look away from the actual events, to translate them into ‘eternal truths’. 

He states this while at the same time maintaining that anything he argues against is inadequate and (as he does in 1997) a false theology of glory.

The use of the word actual in this context is based in historical critical theology. When Forde says “what actually happened” with reference to the cross of Christ, or “as it is disclosed in the actual events” (86) what Forde means is what he considers to be the actual historical part of the record of Christ stripped of the layers of interpretation placed on Christ by what historical critics consider to be the Gospel writers, the final editors of the Gospels, of Paul, or the editors of Paul's letters, or of the Eschatological interpretations found in the New Testament. All of these are (in Forde’s view) of secondary origin and not the actual work and words of Christ. (see also Forde 1984 "The Shape of the Tradition", 12-19 where he lays this out very clearly.)

Note 2 on Gerhard Forde's 1997 On Being a Theologian of the Cross

1997 On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Forde asserted that the vicarious atonement is a “theology of glory” in the first section of his introduction. In the second section he more boldly states that his intent is to discredit any theology of glory, including the vicarious atonement. For him the teaching of the vicarious atonement is legalistic.

“The theologian of glory sees through the cross so as to fit it into a scheme of works. The cross ‘makes up’ for failures along the glory road. The upshot of it all is a fundamental misreading of reality.” (p. 12)

Through the whole of the introduction Forde has managed to steer clear of speaking about what the atonement is, except to condemn the vicarious atonement as a theology of glory. He states that the term “theology of the cross” is a short-hand for the work of Christ for us “culminating in cross and resurrection” (p. 8f). But he does not speak of Christ’s payment of our debt of sin. Forde does speak of our sin as the work that crucified Christ.  But his expression of this is still in line with his 1984 writings about the nature of Christ’s atonement.

Forde quotes Luther up to a point. But he leaves out Luther’s preaching on the substitutionary atonement. For example, he enlists Luther up to self-examination:

You must get this thought through your head and not doubt that you are the one who is torturing Christ thus, for your sins have surely wrought this. ... Therefore, when you see the nails piercing Christ’s hands, you can be certain that it is your work. When you behold his crown of thorns, you may rest assured that these are your evil thoughts, etc. (on p. 8)

But Forde never gets to the actual Gospel in the Cross. In the same sermon Luther continues with the Gospel that is actually at the center of the Cross. That is, Christ’s substitutionary atonement. Luther wrote:

You ease your sins from yourself and onto Christ when you firmly believe that his wounds and sufferings are your sins, to be borne and paid for by him, as we read in Isaiah 53 [:6], “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” St. Peter says, “in his body has he borne our sins on the wood of the cross” [I Pet. 2:24]. St. Paul says, “God has made him a sinner for us, so that through him we would be made just” [II Cor. 5:21]. You must stake everything on these and similar verses. (paragraph 13 of Luther’s Sermon. Italics mine.)

An aspect of this work so far is that Forde does not really define law, or gospel, nor does he define sin. He depends upon the reader filling in the meaning of these words. The reader should not assume that Forde has changed from his previous published  definitions.

Notes on the Writings of Gerhard Forde

The Writings of Gerhard Olaf Forde
(September 10, 1927 – August 9, 2005)
A Chronological List,  Annotated and Evaluated

This is a page where I collect links to the notes I am putting together on the writings of Gerhard Forde.

Introduction

The late Gerhard Forde has gained a significant influence upon Confessional Lutherans, primarily through two of his writings. The first is his 1987 article “Radical Lutheranism: Lutheran Identity in America,” (Lutheran Quarterly 1:5-18). The second is his 1997 monograph titled On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518  (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan).

These two works did not come out of a vacuum. Forde was a prolific writer, pastor, professor. Forde documented his own understanding of theological concepts and his use of theological terms. His body of writing show a very consistent and somewhat self-reflective employment of theological concepts and terminology. Forde used historical Lutheran terminology, but he used this terminology with meanings already re-framed in writings from the Neo-Orthodoxy of Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr as well as the Lundensian theology of Anders Nygren, Gustaf Aulén and Ragnar Bring.

The theological terms which Forde used in those two works (Law, Gospel, Cross, Faith, Christ, Atonement, Justification, Theology of the Cross, Theology of Glory, etc.) have historical meanings in Confessional Lutheranism. Forde’s use of these terms is based in a very different framework of theology. Confessional Lutherans who do not know this other framework have read Lutheranism into Forde’s writings. Those who have, perhaps, naively adopted Forde’s words may also be ignorant of what he meant by other terms (Actual Story of Jesus, Objective, and Subjective Theories of Atonement).  In particular cases these later claims may be either the embarrassments of ignorance or they may reflect deeply held differences from Confessional Lutheran doctrine.

It should be emphasized that Forde uses theological terms which may not be readily apparent as theological terms to those unfamiliar with Neo-Orthodoxy and other Modernist and Postmodern theological writing. An example of such a term is the use of the term actual with reference to Christ or the story of Jesus. This term is used with reference to claims in historical critical scholarship to have separated the actual words and works of Jesus from the various traditions of interpretations this scholarship claims were placed on Christ within the New Testament writings as we have them today. (an example of which is found in Forde’s 1984 “The Shape of the Tradition,” 12-19)

Some advocates for Forde will state that a few of Forde’s writings are good, after all, does not the Lutheran Church continue to use the Augsburg Confession and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. Both of them were written by Philip Melanchthon, who later caved in to pressure changing his theology during the Leipzig Interim (1548).

But the situation is not the same. Melanchthon’s change of theology was public, specific, and documented both in his own writings and in contemporary writings. Melanchthon held a Biblical orthodox Lutheran position. He distanced himself from that position after Luther’s death leading up to and during the Leipzig Interim.

Forde’s writings 1969 through his death show increasing sophistication in expression and in popular appeal, but they do not show a public change in substance or framework. His writings prior to 1987 and after 1997 as well as during the years between show fairly consistent and non-Confessional Lutheran views of Scripture, Christ, the Atonement, of Law and Gospel, and of Justification.

One may also point out that Forde was capable of describing Luther’s view or Confessional Lutheran views on certain issues in clear and accurate historical terms. In those cases it is equally important to note that when Forde did this he was in many cases distancing himself from Luther and Confessional Lutheranism on these very issues.

One should assume that Forde intended to be consistent in his worldview and theology. From this one should assume consistency of theme, meaning, and intent through his writings.

Here is a list of theological positions and the documents in which they can be read.

Clear rejection of the Preaching of Law for Repentance:

• 1970 “Lex Semper Accusat” 
• 1972 Where God Meets Man

Clear rejection of the Substitutionary Atonement:

• 1972 Where God Meets Man  Chapter 2
• 1975 “Loser Takes All: The Victory of Christ”
• 1984 “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ”  Note 1 Note 2 Note 3
• 1997 On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518: Note 1, Note 2, 

Clear rejection of Scripture:

• 1972 Where God Meets Man  Chapter 2 
• 1984 Seventh Locus “The Work of Christ” (12-19)

Re-defining the Nature of God

• 1972 Where God Meets Man
• 1984 “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ”   Note 2 

Re-defining the Nature of Sin

• 1972 Where God Meets Man  Chapter 2 
• 1984 “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ”  Note 2 

Bondage of the Will

• 1972 Where God Meets Man  Chapter 2 

Works By Forde

✔️ = owned and read. When reviews are done the links will be placed in the bibliography. Theological topics are gathered in the list above.

✔️ 1969 The Law Gospel Debate

✔️ 1970 “Lex Semper Accusat?” Published in dialog 9/4 (Autumn 1970):265-274. Republished in 2004 A More Radical Gospel. (33-49,)

• Notes https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/06/gerhard-fordes-1970-article-lex-semper.html

✔️ 1972 Where God Meets Man

• Chapter 1: https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/07/gerhard-forde-1972-where-god-meets-man.html
• Chapter 2: https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/08/gerhard-forde-1972-where-god-meets-man.html

✔️1975 “Loser Takes All: The Victory of Christ” Published in Lutheran Standard September 2, 1975: 3-5. Reprinted in 2004 A More Radical Gospel. (98-101)

• Notes https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/06/gerhard-fordes-1975-loser-takes-all.html

1982 Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life Published by Fortress Press, Philadelphia

✔️ 1984 “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ” Published in Word and World 3:22-31. Reprinted in 2004 A More Radical Gospel. (85-97)

• Note 1 https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/07/note-1-on-gerhard-fordes-1984-caught-in.html
• Note 2 https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/07/note-2-on-gerhard-fordes-1984-caught-in.html
• Note 3 https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/07/note-3-on-gerhard-fordes-1984-caught-in.html

✔️ 1984 Seventh Locus “The Work of Christ” Published in Christian Dogmatics vol 2. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson Editors, Fortress Press, Philadelphia (1-99).

✔️ 1984 Eleventh Locus “Christian Life,"  in Christian Dogmatics vol 2. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson Editors, Fortress Press, Philadelphia (391-469)

1984 "When the old gods fail : Martin Luther's critique of mysticism" in When the Old Gods Fail, Piety, Politics and Ethics, Reformation Studies in Honor of George Wolfgang Forell 

1985 Forensic Justification and Law in Lutheran Theology, Justification by Faith, Lutherans and Catholics in dialogue VII

✔️ 1987 “Radical Lutheranism: Lutheran Identity in America,” Lutheran Quarterly 1:5-18
Reprinted in 2004 A More Radical Gospel. (3-16)

1988 Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification, Reformed, Lutheran, Wesleyan, Pentecostal, Contemplative, Edited by Donald L. Alexander, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois

• “The Lutheran View” by Gerhard O. Forde (13-32)
• “The Reformed View a Lutheran Response” (77-82)
• “The Wesleyan View a Lutheran Response’ (119-122)
• “The Pentecostal View a Lutheran Response” (155-157)
• “The Contemplative View a Lutheran Response” (190-192)

✔️ 1989 “The Catholic Impasse: Reflections on Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue Today,” in Promoting Unity: Themes in Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue Today 67-77. Reprinted in 2004 A More Radical Gospel. (189-199)

1990 Theology Is for Proclamation

✔️ 1992 “The Meaning of Satis Est” in Lutheran Forum 26:14-18 Reprinted in 2004 A More Radical Gospel. (159-170)

1994 "The Normative Character of Scripture for Matters of Faith and Life: Human Sexuality in Light of Romans 1:16-32*" Word & World, Volume XIV, Number 3, Summer 1994, pp. 305-314
[ https://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/content/pdfs/14-3_Sex/14-3_Forde.pdf ]

1995 "Law and Sexual Behavior" Lutheran Quarterly, Volume IX, Number 1, Spring 1995, pp. 3-22
[ https://www.scribd.com/document/95694986/Forde-Law-and-Sexual-Behavior ]
[http://lutherancore.website/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Law-and-Sexual-Behavior-By-Gerhard-O.-Forde.pdf ]

✔️ 1997 On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• Note 1: June 25, 2018 https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-note-on-gerhard-fordes-1997-on-being.html
• Note 2: June 25, 2018 https://diatheke.blogspot.com/2018/06/note-2-on-gerhard-fordes-1997-on-being.html

1997 "What Finally to Do about the (Counter-) Reformation Condemnations." Lutheran Quarterly 11.1: 3-16.

1997 "The Lord's Supper as the Testament of Jesus." Word & World 17.1: 5-9.

✔️ 2003 "Lutheran Ecumenism: With Whom and How Much?" Lutheran Quarterly 17.4: 436-455.
(same title as chapter in 2004 A More Radical Gospel)

✔️ 2004 A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism, Eerdmans; edited by Mark C. Mattes, and Steven D. Paulson.

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction by Mark C. Mattes and Steven D. Paulson
• Eschatology: The Last Word First (Section One)

1. Radical Lutheranism  (originally published 1987 “Radical Lutheranism: Lutheran Identity in America,” Lutheran Quarterly 1:5-18)
2. The Apocalyptic No and the Eschatological Yes: Reflections, Suspicions, Fears, and Hopes
3. Lex semper accusat? Nineteenth-Century Roots of Our Current Dilemma (originally published 1970 “Lex Semper Accusat,” dialog 9/4 (Autumn 1970):265-274. Notes

• Legal and Evangelical Authority (Section Two)

1. Authority in the Church: The Lutheran Reformation
2. Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres: Reflections on the Question of Scripture and Tradition
3. The Irrelevance of the Modern World for Luther

• Atonement and Justification: Christ Unbound (Section Three)

1. Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ (originally published 1984  in Word and World 3:22-31) Note 1 Note 2 Note 3
2. Loser Takes All: The Victory of Christ (originally published 1975 in Lutheran Standard September 2, 1975: 3-5) Notes
3. In Our Place
4. Forensic Justification and the Christian Life: Triumph or Tragedy?
5. Luther’s “Ethics”
6. Unecclesiological Ecumenism (Section Four)
7. The Meaning of Satis Est (originally published 1992   in Lutheran Forum 26:14-18)
8. Lutheran Ecumenism: With Whom and How Much? (same title as a 2003 article  in Lutheran Quarterly 17.4: 436-455)
9. The Catholic Impasse: Reflections on Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue Today (originally published 1989 in Promoting Unity: Themes in Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue Today 67-77.

• Sermons (Section Five)

1. God’s Rights: Matthew 20:1-16
2. Exsurge Domine!: Psalm 74:22-23
3. Hidden Treasure: Matthew 13:44
4. You Have Died: Colossians 2:20-3:4
5. The Day of the Lord: 2 Peter 3:8-14
6. Jesus Died for You
7. Not the Well, but the Sick: Matthew 9:10-13

2004 The Captivation of the Will: Luther vs. Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage Lutheran Quarterly Books Edited by Steven Paulson  with an introduction by James A. Nestingen. Contains four essays, a postscript, and ten sermons.

2007 The Preached God: Proclamation in Word and Sacrament Lutheran Quarterly Books

✔️ 2012 "Satis est?: What Do We Mean When Other Churches Don't Agree?" Lutheran Quarterly 26.3: 322-324.

✔️ 2011 "The Freedom to Reform." Lutheran Quarterly 25.2: 167-175.

2013 "Luther and the Jews." Lutheran Quarterly 27.2: 125-142.

2013 “Chapter 3. The One Acted Upon” in Moritz, J. M. & Nelson, D. R.(2013). Theologians in Their Own Words. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, pp. 41-52 Forde autobiography.