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135 pages

English

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This reader-friendly primer offers a concise yet thorough overview of the Christian faith. Hans Schwarz, one of the major Lutheran theologians of the last half-century, covers the Christian faith from creation to the final fulfillment of life. He gives his account of the major points of Christian doctrine, always moving from the biblical text to the unfolding of the faith through the centuries to contemporary significance. This brief systematic theology will appeal to professors, students, pastors, and educated lay readers who want a quick but profound and biblically grounded overview of the Christian faith.

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Philosophie et théologie

Christian theology

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	09 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441245878
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0634€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2014 by Hans Schwarz
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www . bakeracademic . com
Ebook edition created 2014
Originally published in 2010 in Erlangen, Germany, by Martin-Luther Verlag as Der christliche Glaube aus lutherischer Perspektive .
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4587-8
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Contents
Cover i
Title Page ii
Copyright Page iii
Abbreviations iv
Preface v
Introduction: Luther’s Central Insights 1
Part 1: Presuppositions for the Faith 11
1. Theology 13
2. Revelation 25
3. Scripture 33
Part 2: God the Creator 43
4. God 45
5. Creation 53
6. Humanity 65
7. Sin 73
Part 3: Christ the Redeemer 89
8. Jesus of Nazareth 91
9. Jesus as the Christ 109
Part 4: The Holy Spirit as God’s Efficacious Power 135
10. The Holy Spirit 137
11. The Church 149
12. The Means of Grace 177
13. The Christian Hope 199
Notes 215
Index 217
Back Cover 221
Abbreviations ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers LW Luther’s Works . 75 vols. St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–. NPNF 1 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 1 NPNF 2 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2 WA Weimarer Ausgabe . D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesammtausgabe. 72 vols. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883–2009. WA BR Weimarer Ausgabe, Briefwechsel (correspondence) WA DB Weimarer Ausgabe, Deutsche Bibel (the German Bible) WA TR Weimarer Ausgabe, Tischreden (table talk)
Preface
Christianity is an amazingly divided religion. In North America alone there are approximately four hundred different Christian denominations. In South Korea, to cite another example, the Presbyterians are split into at least one hundred different groups, some even consisting of just one congregation. None of the other major religions has had such a proliferation into so many different denominations. Is this a Christian disease that will split the body of Christ into more and more fragments? On first glance this seems to be true. But when we look more closely, this is not the case.
Yes, there are many different Christian church bodies. But they share one thing in common: the Bible. This book unites them in their witness to the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Every Christian community that was founded with the premise just to be the church of Christ sooner or later issued a creedal account of its faith. Most enlightening is here the example of the Church of God of Anderson, Indiana. It had been founded in the nineteenth century with the explicit assertion that its only foundation was the Bible. But when it celebrated its centennial anniversary in 1979, the same church body issued a little booklet with its own confession so that people knew what this church stood for. 1 Every church body needs a certain creedal account of the faith it proclaims. But this account dare not exclude other Christians unless it disregards Paul’s admonition about the oneness of the body of Christ, and unless it understands the great commission in an exclusive way as a commission to evangelize other Christians instead of the secular world.
Yet as our different denominations and church bodies show, the common creedal basis does not preclude that we accentuate this foundation differently depending on the traditions that have shaped us. Everybody sees the world from a different perspective depending on where one lives and under what conditions. This is already true for the New Testament. We have four Gospels. Each is different, but all four of them were received into the New Testament canon because the Christians at that time felt that they did not justify different books—a New Testament according to Matthew, another one according to Mark, and so on. They heeded Paul’s admonition that there is just one body of Christ to which we all belong. His body is not to be divided.
This creedal account is written from a certain perspective that is influenced by the reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546) and his understanding of the Bible. Many of his insights are still valid today and have been picked up in different quarters of Christendom. This will become even more pronounced as we move closer to 2017, the five-hundredth anniversary of Luther’s posting of his “Ninety-Five Theses.”
One of Martin Luther’s most important insights was that the Bible should not be read in a uniform manner, according the same weight to every page of the Bible. For instance, the instructions concerning sacrifices in Leviticus 1–8 are interesting to read, but they are without actual significance for us Christians. As Luther said, “They were only given to the Jews.” He therefore distinguished between center and periphery in the biblical text. Some items are central and important while others are actually at the periphery for our Christian faith.
Jesus Christ is central. It was through Christ that God made God’s own self known. We learn about Jesus only through the Bible, the Holy Scriptures. We learn in the Bible that we cannot come to God by our own merits but only through God’s undeserved grace. Therefore we can only have hope in life beyond this life by trusting in God, that is, by faith. The foundation of the Christian faith is built on these four fundamental principles: by Scripture alone, by Christ alone, by grace alone, and by faith alone. We gain access to these principles in the Bible.
In the following chapters, I want to show what this faith is all about and how it can help us ascertain a solid foundation for our life in confronting the problems of our times. The references are kept to a minimum. But all quotations are referenced. It is my desire that this book will contribute to a deeper understanding of the Christian faith.
This book could not have been finished without the help of Dr. Terry Dohm, a former doctoral student of mine who improved the style and the content of these pages, and Hildegard Ferme, my long-time secretary who typed this manuscript as a farewell gift before entering well-deserved retirement. To her and her long-standing loyalty, which went far beyond the call of duty, I dedicate this book.
Introduction
Luther’s Central Insights
Not long ago, a young man from South Korea who had just finished his doctorate with me sat in my study at the university to say good-bye. In the course of the conversation he asked me, “Is it all right to pray to become rich?” and noticing my bewildered look, he explained that many Christians in South Korea pray to get rich. “No,” I replied, “because this would be a very selfish prayer, and besides, becoming rich is not that important. If you look at the really great people such as Moses, Buddha, Einstein, or Plato, none of them was rich.” He told me that many people in Korea still consider God in a shamanistic way. If you perform the right actions, then you can, so to speak, use God for this or that purpose to obtain your goal. What lies behind this attitude is not just shamanism. It is the sinful human attitude that Augustine (354–430) described when he said that as a sinner a human being shows “apostatizing pride” and “covetousness.” 1 In our self-assured pride, we seem to think only of ourselves, our well-being, and our own advantage, so that everything else, whether living or nonliving, will be at our service. This is also true of our approach to God. In our thinking, if God makes sense, God must serve our own purpose. If God does not do what we want, then we ask, “How can God act this way?” Yet a God who does what we want and who is at our disposal can easily become a construct of the human mind. Ludwig Feuerbach, the nineteenth-century critic of religion, therefore claimed that God is a projection of our human imagination. In contrast to that claim, Luther had discovered three hundred years earlier that God is not a human construct, but God is God. This, I contend, is the first part of Luther’s central Reformation insight.
God Is God
The British Methodist theologian Philip S. Watson wrote a book on Luther in 1947 titled Let God Be God . This sums up Luther’s important discovery. If God is indeed God and not just some figment of the human mind, then God cannot be domesticated. It was the problem during Luther’s time—and it still is in our own—that we attempt to domesticate God. Luther’s question, and that of many sincere Christians today, “How do I obtain a gracious God?” expresses this attitude very well. At Luther’s time human life expectancy was short, and when Luther died before reaching his sixty-third birthday, he was considered to be a very old man, and he certainly felt like one. Life on earth for people of that time was filled with toil and sorrow. One was virtually helpless against the plague, kidney stones, or high blood pressure, just to name a few afflictions. Human amenities were virtually nonexistent, and when Luther traveled from Wittenberg to Rome, he did so on foot, which took several weeks.
Since one could expect little from this life, one wanted to make sure that there was a gracious God who would at least provide one with a pleasant hereafter. To that effect, one did all one could, so to speak, to twist God’s arm by going on pilgrimages, giving huge donations to the church, acquiring relics of famous saints, or, like Luther, joining a monastery and becoming a monk. It was not by accident that Luther joined the Augustinian Eremites, who we