Moltmann regards Martin Luther as an essential contributor to our understanding of the cross, and as a turning point in theological epistemology (knowledge of God). Central to this development is a significant devaluing of the role of natural theology. I urge serious consideration of this turn, because of our tendency to use our constructed systems of "self evident" knowledge of God and the world as a weapon to use against that which is other, that which is different from us, that with which we disagree. Moltmann holds that Luther argues against natural knowledge of God, for by it, humans create their (our) own systems of self-serving religion and thereby go astray. (Note 1)
Continuing with verbatim selections from Jurgen Moltmann's 1974 work The Crucified God.
"Whereas in the late Middle Ages the theology of the cross was an expression of the mysticism of suffering, Luther uses it strictly as a new principle of theological epistemology... The theologia crucis stands at the climax of his 'decision for reformation' and represents its theoretical basis. For Luther understands the cross of Christ in a quite unmystical way as God's protest against the misuse of his name for the purpose of a religious consummation of human wisdom, human works and the Christian imperialism of medieval ecclesiastical society. It is a protest for the freedom of faith. With the theologia crucis there begins the Reformation struggle over the true or the false church, over the liberation of man enslaved under the compulsion of works and achievements. With it, indeed, begins a new relationship to reality itself." (207-208)
Thesis 19: 'He is not rightly called a theologian who perceives and understands God's invisible being through his works. That is clear from those who were such 'theologians' and yet were called fools by the apostle in Romans 1:22. The invisible being of God is his power, Godhead, wisdom, righteousness, goodness, and so on. Knowledge of all these things does not make a man wise and worthy.'
"Here Luther is not talking of theology as knowledge of God in itself, but of the theologian, i.e. the man who seeks to know God. For him, every Christian is a 'theologian', i.e. one who knows God. What does knowledge of God make him? Luther does not consider theological theory in itself, its subject-matter and its method, but theory in connection with its use by men." (208)
"The epistemological course which he criticizes is the course of natural theology following the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Note 2), not a theology in the realm of glory. According to Luther's Thesis 19, this method begins from the works of God - and draws conclusions from the effects to the cause, from the works to the one who performs them, and thus by means of a process of induction arrives back at the indirect knowledge of the invisible nature of God: his power, Godhead, wisdom and righteousness. This is what Paul said of the Gentiles in Romans 1:19-20: 'For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them, that God's invisible being, that is his power and his Godhead, can be seen, so that it is perceived in his works, namely in the creation of the world.'" (209)
"The cosmological arguments for the existence of God presuppose a God who is indirectly evident and manifest through his works... The reality of the world that can be experienced and known is like a mirror in which God's divinity, God's power, God's wisdom and God's righteousness can indirectly be known, for it is a created, accomplished world, set in motion, ordered and regulated. It is cosmos, or creation." (Luther rejects this knowledge as true theology, i.e. knowledge of God) ... (210)
Thesis 20: But he is rightly called a theologian who understands that part of God's being which is visible and directed towards the world to be presented in suffering and in the cross... For as men misused the knowledge of God on the basis of his works, God again willed that he should be known from suffering, and therefore willed to reject such wisdom of the invisible by a wisdom of the visible, so that those who did not worship God as he is manifested in his works might worship him as the one who is hidden in suffering. (1 Corinthians 1:21) (Note 3) So it is not enough and no use for anyone to know God in his glory and his majesty if at the same time he does not know him in the lowliness and shame of his cross ... Thus true theology and true knowledge of God lie in Christ the crucified one.'(211)
"Here Luther follows the train of thought in Romans 1:18ff, but he connects it with 1 Corinthians 1 and therefore opposes the knowledge of God in the cross to the natural knowledge of God from his works. He does not dispute the possibility of natural knowledge of God, but he does dispute its reality. He disputes it on the basis of 1 Corinthians 1:21: 'Because men did not know God from creation' - but perverted this truth into the lie of idolatry - 'it pleased God through the folly of what we preach (the crucified Christ) to save those who believe.' Natural knowledge of god is potentially open to men, but in fact they misuse it in the interest of their self-exaltation and their self-divinization. Just as man misuses his works to justify himself, to conceal his anxiety from God an from himself, so too he misuses the knowledge of God to serve his hybris (hubris). In this situation, this knowledge of God is useless; it merely does him damage, because it 'puffs him up' and gives him illusions about his true situation. On the other hand, the knowledge of God in the suffering and death of Christ takes this perverse situation of man seriously. It is not an ascending, exalting knowledge, but a descending, convincing knowledge... In revealing himself in the crucified Christ he contradicts the God-man who exalts himself, shatters his hybris, kills his gods and brings back to him his despised and abandoned humanness." (211-212)
"According to Luther, the theology of the cross does not begin from the visible works of God in order to disclose God's invisible being, but takes the opposite starting point, 'that part of God's being which is visible and directed towards the world'. For him this visible being of God is the passion and cross of Christ. It is set over against the 'invisible being' of God in the ascending knowledge of the theologus gloriae and contradicts it. Christ the crucified alone is'man's true theology and knowledge of God'. This presupposes that while indirect knowledge of God is possible through his works, God's being can be seen and known directly only in the cross of Christ and knowledge of God is therefore real and saving. This again is possible only if God has descended of his own accord as the crucified Christ and has become man and makes himself visible for man in Christ. In fact Luther's theologia crucis here is a radical development of the doctrine of the incarnation with a soteriological intent." (213)
"Thesis 21 reads: 'The theologian of glory calls the bad good and the good bad;(Note 4) the theologian of the cross calls things by their right names.' The theologian of glory, and that is the 'natural man', who is incurably religious, hates the cross and passion. He seeks works and success and therefore regards the knowledge of an almighty God who is always at work as being glorious and uplifting. But the theologian of the cross, and that is the believer, comes to knowledge of himself where he knows God in his despised humanity, and calls things by their real names and not by images of their attractive appearance... The 'theologian of glory' of the invisible being of God secretly creates for himself free room for activity in his own interest which will allow him 'to love what is like'. For this theology needs equations and confirmations. But the 'theologian of the cross' is led by the visible nature of God in the cross. He is freed to love that which is different and other. This has far reaching consequences: religious desire for praise and might and self-affirmation are blind to suffering - their own and that of others - because they are in love with success. Their love is eros for the beautiful, which is to make the one who loves beautiful himself. But in the cross and passion of Christ faith experiences a quite different love of God, which loves what is quite different. It loves 'what is sinful, bad, foolish, weak and hateful, in order to make it beautiful and good and wise and righteous. For sinners are beautiful because they are loved; they are not loved because they are beautiful.'" (Thesis 28) (213-214)
"For metaphysics, the nature of divine being is determined by its unity and indivisibility, its lack of beginning and end, its immovability and immutability. ... Death, suffering and mortality must therefore be excluded from the divine being. Christian theology has adopted this concept of God from philosophical theology down to the present day, because in practice Christian faith has taken into itself the religious need of finite, threatened and mortal man for security in a higher omnipotence and authority... If this concept of God is applied to Christ's death on the cross, the cross must be 'evacuated' of deity, for by definition God cannot suffer and die. He is pure causality. But Christian theology must think of God's being in suffering and dying and finally in the death of Jesus, if it is not to surrender itself and lose its identity." (214)
"At this point, the controversy between Christian theology and the philosophical concept of God must be taken further. After the very long period during which the theologian has been confronted in the picture of Christ with the 'unmoving, unemotional countenance of the God of Plato and (the Stoics) ...The time has finally come for differentiating the Father of Jesus Christ from the god of the pagans and the philosophers in the interest of Christian faith... This corresponds to the critical disestablishment of Christianity from the bourgeois religions of the particular societies in which that theism has predominated." (215)
"With the Christian message of the cross of Christ, something new and strange has entered the metaphysical world. For this faith must understand the deity of God from the event of the suffering and death of the Son of God and thus bring about a fundamental change in the orders of being of metaphysical thought and the value tables of religious feeling. It must think of the suffering of Christ as the power of God and the death of Christ as God's potentiality. Conversely, it must think of freedom from suffering and death as a possibility for man. So Christian theology cannot seek to understand the death of Jesus on the presupposition of that metaphysical or moral concept of God. If this presupposition holds, the death of Jesus cannot be understood at all in theological terms. Rather, faith must take an opposite course and 'understand God's Godness from the event of this death' (Schleiermacher) (215)
But what about those questions and those fears of finitude, chaos, nothingness?
"We have seen that Christian faith stands over against the theistic concept of God in its philosophical, political and moral variations. But does this already solve the problems which have led to the concept of God? For Christian faith, is the world no longer finite, transitory and threatened by chaos? Is man no longer a being who is aware of his finitude in death and of the absurdity of his existence in experiencing his nothingness?...The mere separation of Christian theology from philosophical theology and the interpretation of the world, time and man's self leads only to the self-isolation of theology and helps no one... The important thing, therefore, is to think of the God of the cross quite consistently not only in the sphere of theology but also in the sphere of social life and the personality of man, in the realm of society, politics and finally even that of cosmology. (216-217)
"The death of Christ cannot only come to fruition in an existentialist interpretation, in the ability of the believer to die in peace, important thought that may be. The crucified Christ must be thought of as the origin of creation and the embodiment of the eschatology of being. In the cross of his Son, God took upon himself not only death, so that man might be able to die comforted with the certainty that even death could not separate him from God, but still more, in order to make the crucified Christ the ground of his new creation, in which death itself is swallowed up in the victory of life and there will be 'no sorrow, no crying, and no more tears.' Revelation 5:12 and 7:17 therefore say that 'the lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength and honour and thanksgiving and praise' and the 'conqueror will lead them to living streams of water' and 'death will be no more, because the former things have passed away' (21:4)" (217-218)
"The event of the resurrection of the crucified Christ makes it necessary to think of the annihilation of the world and the creation of every being from nothing... No Christian eschatology is possible without the knowledge of the God who creates from nothing and raises the crucified Christ. But if one looks at the world and all that happens in this history, the metaphysical decisions are made in the light of a hope which is both this-worldly and transcendent. The new possibilities in the world spring from the world as a possibility of the creator God. The history of God is then to be thought of as the horizon of the world; the world is not to be thought of as the horizon of his history. The cross is 'set up in the cosmos to establish the unstable', we read in the apocryphal Acts of Andrew. There is a truth here: it is set up in the cosmos in order to give future to that which is passing away, firmness to that which is unsteady, openness to that which is fixed, hope to the hopeless, and in this way to gather all that is and all that is no more into the new creation." (219)
Endnotes
Note 1: Romans 1 is typically taken in a surface reading as a condemnation of selected behaviors which result from not believing in God. But note in the passage that it is not unbelief that is the issue, but the human tendency to create our own religion in our own image (not honoring God, not thanking God, becoming futile, becoming fools, exchanging God's glory for human glory), within the larger argument of the need for the gospel for those both outside and inside of Judaism ... consistent with the development of Paul's argument in Romans of a universal need for the message of Jesus, both for the Jews (under the law, Romans 2) and the Greeks / Gentiles (outside of the law (Romans 1). The first section of Romans presents this as a sustained argument with the conclusion of the matter found in chapter 3:9ff and 3:21ff. And as far as the list of example behaviors under judgment in Romans 1, the argument is made with a list that is not confined to any particular subset of special sins but is wide indeed, concluding with "unloving" and "unmerciful."
Note 2: Peter Lombard, 12th century scholastic theologian, Paris, wrote Four Books of Sentences which became a standard textbook of theology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lombard. More explanation of Lombard's argument ... "The Christian theological formulation used by Lombard.. maintains the excellentia of man as compared with everything else and his convenientia (similitude) with all other creatures. As a being with intelligence, man is not only a part of the creation but also stands over against it. This gives him his 'ex-centric position', which is also called his self-transcendence. By his intelligence he transcends creation, and by his insight, his ability to see through things, he gains a share in the wisdom of God. His capacity is heightened by his power to reason from the visible to the invisible, from the many to the one, from realities to the one who brings about reality. The heuristic interest lies in man's excellentia. The consequence is the exaltation of man above all creatures and his departure from convenientia with all creatures. This course of knowledge is the basis of all cosmological arguments for the existence of God." (209)
Note 3: 1 Corinthians 1:21 - For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
Note 4: (My comment) This reminds me of the central "woe" of the 7 woes against the religious leadership in Matthew 23:23, in which Jesus calls them out for placing value on the trivial and neglecting that which is important. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices - mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy and faithfulness." Even more so this is reminiscent of the central woe of the 7 woes of Isaiah 5, namely "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." *(For students of text criticism, what I mean by the "central" woe is the 4th line of a 7 line chiasm, a literary or poetic structure. Interesting in the case of these two poems that in the Isaiah version, one interpretation is that, due to text corruption or rearrangement of the original material, the 7th "woe" was relocated to Isaiah 10:1 in the existing version of Isaiah (I did a paper on this about 30 years ago). And in the Authorized Version (KJV) of the woes pronounced by Jesus in Matthew 23, there are actually 8, with the one found in Matthew 23:14 having been removed from modern translations due to the conclusions of text criticism on what is taken to be the original form of the 7 line structure.)
Bibliography:
Jurgen Moltmann. The Crucified God. 1974. Harper & Rowe, Publishers. (First Fortress Press edition published in 1993.)