The End of Being

Some thoughts on the phenomenological breakthrough of the Reformation
by: Timothy J. Swenson

The explosion of thought that was the Reformation brought about THE END OF BEING. Ontology was replaced by phenomenology as a working paradigm for the Luther and his companions. You can see this in categories such as justification, church, and clergy.

Justification
Luther blew up the ontology of justification which he had learned. That is, how one must progress from being 100% sinner to being 100% saint. All the important categories of Justification, Sanctification, Grace, Faith, and Christ just wouldn’t fit together for Luther under that scheme. Did one become justified and then work toward sanctification? Or, did one engage in schemes of sanctification and then become justified? At what point did the inoculation of grace occur? And what did its injection accomplish? If one was to "do what was within one?" didn’t that diminish the necessity of Christ? Luther essentially said, "You want ontology? I’ll give you ontology. A Christian isn’t a hundred percent being at all. A Christian is a two hundred percent being: 100% sinner and 100% saint, at the same time!" Justification/sanctification is not about progress in the transformation of being at all. Instead, justification/sanctification is an event, a phenomenon, an occurrence. Being, the ontology of the person is not changed, but revealed. Since it’s humanly, physically, rationally impossible for a being to be more than a 100%, the two hundred per cent existence--simultaneously sinner and saint--of the Christian has to be a divine work.

In this phenomenological system, grace is no longer an infused quality which is injected into the sinner, enabling the sinner to make progress toward being a saint. Grace is the phenomenon, the event, in which the sinner is transported from bondage to sin, death and the power of the devil to life under Christ--a life of everlasting innocence, blessedness, and righteousness. Thus, grace doesn’t remove sin from the Christian, but removes the Christian from sin. Grace is God’s divine moving agency, giving the Christian full citizenship in both the left-hand and right-hand kingdoms of God. The mechanism grace utilizes is the death of the sinner and the raising up of the saint to walk in newness of life. This newness of life brings the eschatological existence of the Christian into the present. Since Christ is the only resurrected one, he is the Christian’s life as he is in the Christian and the Christian is in him. The creature (100% sinner) carries the reality of this eschatological life (100% saint) by faith.

Justification and sanctification are not separated. They are a single event of revelation. The Word as God’s revelation, Christ as God’s revelation, are left to be just what they are: revelation. They are not a set of doctrines to be believed, not a set of propositions which must be proved (or provable), not a history which must be accepted. The Word, the Christ, is the work of God to reveal to humankind its two hundred percent existence. The proclamation of this Word, the proclamation of Christ, is the event--the phenomenon--through which the Holy Spirit works faith. Now, "faith is the assurance of things hoped for" so in this revelation of our eschatological future, we are "assured" this hope is real. And so, we are "faithed." Eternal life, formerly "hidden" within the mists of the future has now been "revealed." The creature then carries the memory of this faith event into its living in creation.

The justification/sanctification event cannot be divided. Once justification has taken place there is no progress, no growth in sanctification, no becoming more and more holy. Sanctification is a total state given at justification. To progress is to begin anew. That is, to return to baptism, to experience once again the power of the Word as the God’s revelation of our reality; to repent and be absolved--which is nothing less than realizing we are dead in sin but declared alive in Christ.

In faith, then, the Christian carries the memory of this revelatory event into his/her life as a creature. I say memory because faith and Holy Spirit reside in the heart and only God knows the hearts of his creatures. In this creaturely existence the battle between the Old Adam and the new being is joined. The new being has been given creation back as gift, a place to be enjoyed, the arena where the Christian can live out the many vocations to which each is called. The new being now sees that it can learn how to show love by living under the law. The Old Adam, however, is not content to live as a creature. Instead of seeing the law as a means to enjoy creation, the Old Eve turns the law into a means to escape creation. The new being uses the Gospel to enter fully into creation under the law. The Old Adam uses the law in an attempt to enter heaven, avoiding the Gospel.

The only progress one can make is that of learning to live as wholly (a holy) creature, fulfilling the duties and obligations inherent in each vocation given. The fulfillment of these duties and obligations expresses our love for God, family, neighbor, and community. As others fulfill their vocations, we receive love from them. Only under this paradigm does Luther’s paradoxical description of a Christian make sense:

"A Christian is the perfectly free lord of all subject to none. And, the Christian is the perfectly bound servant of all, subject to all."

--a two hundred percent ontology which blows up any human ontological understanding, and which is possible only because justification/sanctification is not about ontology but phenomenology.

Church
Luther tore down the ontological structure of the church, as well--an ontology based on the philosophical categories of visible/invisible. In its stead Luther developed the phenomenological categories of hidden/revealed. There is no eternal ontology of an invisible church represented by a temporal ontology of the visible church. A look at the two definitions of "the church" given in the Confessions demonstrates this:

"It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one holy, Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel." (Kolb/Wengert, p. 43)

and

"However, the church is not only an association of external ties and rites like other civic organizations, but is principally an association of faith and the Holy Spirit in the hearts of persons." (Kolb/Wengert, p. 174)

The church is defined in two ways: 1) the assembly of believers where the gospel is preached rightly and the sacraments are administered in accordance with that gospel; & 2) all those who have faith and the Holy Spirit in their hearts. I say that the second definition (because only God sees into the heart) is the "hidden" church. The first definition is the "revealed" church (because we can hear and see the Word and Sacraments). This revealed church is whole and complete and lacks nothing for it has the presence of Christ. He has promised that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is there--totally and completely. When we have Christ, we lack nothing.

In-between those times when the church s revealed, it is hidden in the lives of those who have faith and the Holy Spirit in their hearts. They go about their various vocations in the world and fulfill their callings as creatures of God in the Kingdom of this World--carrying with them the memory of God’s Right-Hand Kingdom as they go to work in God’s Left-Hand Kingdom.

The institution we call a congregation (a church) is no more spiritual or divine than any other institution organized in this world. Its membership is a mixed lot since we do not know who has faith and the Holy Spirit in their hearts. The institution and its leadership, including the pastor, are wholly within the Kingdom of this World, not a "spiritual" one. We can know only an occasional church for it is only revealed upon the occasion of proclamation in Word and Sacrament. The church we experience is phenomenological. In-between those events, we have a social club--which, like the Old Adam and Eve, has divine pretensions.

Since Word and Sacraments are given that we might have faith, the church under both definitions is constituted by faith. Thus, the church cannot be eternal. When Luther discussed 1 Corinthians 13:13--"Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love." he held that love is the greatest because it is the only one of the three that does not end but carries over into the new creation. In fact, it characterizes the new creation. Faith comes to end as it turns to sight at the coming of the new creation. Hope ends when the thing hoped for is realized at the coming of the new creation. But love endures. The church ends when its defining characteristic--faith--ends. In its place are the realities which we know now only as metaphors (true only in faith): the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ

The church is as mortal as mortals and suffers the same fate: it dies. Without an eternal ontology, the church’s existence is revealed as characterized by the same dying and rising which characterizes its members. The social club’s divine pretensions are put to death. In the end, when mortality puts on immortality, when faith is transformed to sight, Christ and his people will be one as surely as Christ and his Body are one, as certainly as Bridegroom and Bride are one.

Clergy
Luther and the Reformers so re-visioned the clergy that you could say the clergy--as an ontological category distinct from the laity--ceased to exist. They denied the clergy as a person ontologically changed into a repository of grace. Which grace could then be dispensed in varying amounts by priest, bishop, or pope. They announced all the baptized are priests. All the baptized have been graced by the revelation of their life in two kingdoms. All have the calling to announce and bear witness to this revelatory existence so that all people would have faith and be made disciples. This calling is the office or ministry of Word and Sacrament, which is given that all may have faith.

The pastoral office of public ministry is different from the office or ministry of Word and Sacrament. The latter is given to all the baptized, the priesthood of all believers. This is convincingly attested to in the Augustana which describes the common life of all Christians for thirteen articles before it deals with the "public" ministry. The process of "rightly" calling (ordering) someone to bear the responsibility of publicly preaching and teaching is a legal matter within the institution--no more or less spiritual than any other selection process. Certainly, there is recognition of certain gifts within the one being called, but those gifts are vocational gifts. Every other vocation which is given for the building up of the body receives vocational gifts from the Holy Spirit as well.

Clergy, then, are a phenomenological category, not an ontological one. Only under the experience of being called by a congregation (or some other external means) and engaged in public preaching through verbal or visible proclamation or in the act of teaching is one a "clergy." Clergy or pastor becomes a vocational title in the same way that you would label someone a plumber or a doctor. There can be no ontological claim to the title. When one is not under call and no longer publicly preaching and teaching, that one is not clergy or pastor. Most of the duties that have gathered by accretion to the pastoral office, such as prayer, visiting the sick, etc., are those which are common to all Christians. Making those duties part of the pastoral office has become detrimental to the common Christian life as Christians have assumed the pastor does it in their stead.

With clergy being phenomenologically defined there is nothing except the Word and its use to identify the church. One cannot point to a person and say, "There is the church." Neither can one say that a certain kind of person, i.e. an ontologically changed clergy, is necessary for the church. All that is needed is a voice and any of the baptized (who in that baptism have been ordained to preach the gospel) can provide that voice for in them has been revealed the only ontology necessary--the 200% life in two kingdoms.

Do not think that this diminishes the necessity or the respect and honor due the pastoral office. Someone must preach to the assembly--the Word must be an external word. In order that the assembly doesn’t become a cacophony of voices, one is called to speak, given the responsibility and duty to speak. This one, then who is called as pastor must speak, saying not just any old word but God’s divine and electing word. Now, whenever God’s people or church is revealed publicly like this, it comes under attack. The attack especially centers around and upon the one called, that is, the pastor. So the pastor should and must be respected and honored, not just for their duty to preach and teach publicly, but also for the suffering the attack afflicted on them publicly. The rest of baptized are not publicly accountable for their use of the Word, neither need they be publicly afflicted by the attack.

This pastor’s duty (law) and the pastor’s suffering (consequence) expose the pastor’s existence under the cross. As in the life of the baptized and in the life of the church, the cross puts to death the divine pretensions inherent in the Old Adam and Eve. Through the death of these divine pretensions, both people and pastor are able to live in the newness of life where there is no distinction of clergy and laity but only the baptized people of God.

Conclusion
"For we walk by faith and not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:7). Though this is an oft quoted and sung tenet of Scripture, it does not describe very well our human condition. For, more often than not, we prove to be "Missourians" in that we demand, "Show me!" Seeing really does equate with believing and we are quite willing, with Thomas, to declare, "Unless I see...!"
At one of the last Free Conferences some of us heard an account of two professors at Luther Seminary encountering each other in a hall. One inquired of the other how he thought it could be that some of their colleagues--intelligent, well-educated, and all around good people--could buy into the morass which was CCM (an ecumenical agreement imposing the historical episcopate upon the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). The respondent thought for a moment or two and then came with the proposal, "Perhaps it is that they just got tired of living by faith."

To live by faith is to live by promise alone; not just any old promise but God’s promise conveyed by the fleeting, ephemeral, and entirely common human voice. Living by faith has no external, provable props--no buttresses to shore up and give evidence to the hope we have within us.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb.11:1). To replace, equate, or supplement faith with sight surrenders our living by promise to the idolatry of things, persons, or institutions.The great Reformation paradigm shift from ontology to phenomenology took away all the excuses for living by any other than the faith created through the revelatory act of God in his Word. Luther’s phenomenology exposed the church for what it was: an idol factory. Through all the years since that sixteenth century explosion, the Old Adam and Eve within us has been busily denying THE END OF BEING.