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Fascinating article in Pro Ecclesia: Christopher Jackson argues that too much has been made of the distinction between theologian of glory & theologian of the cross. It is frequently offered as a key insight into Luther; Jackson deflates it.
Yes, it's in the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, 19-22, and it's a powerful, tense little bit of Lutheran cut-and-thrust: In context, it's focused on soteriology & the role of good works rather than on, say, the doctrine of revelation & a corresponding theological method.
And then Luther never uses this language to make these points again. Never. So anybody who picks up "theologian of glory/the cross" dichotomy as a key to Luther has to promote it as an underlying framework explicitly formulated in 1518 & then laid aside, never revisited.
Well, how about the Lutheran tradition, then? It turns out the distinction between a theologian of glory (bad) and a theologian of the cross (good) isn't deployed in the Book of Concord, Melanchthon, Chemitz, Gerhard, or in the 19th c. revival of Confessional Lutheranism.
So when's it resurface? In 1929, (!) w/von Loewenich's Luthers Theologia Crucis: "For Luther the cross is the distinctive mark of all theology... not a chapter in theology but a specific kind of theology...the center that provides a perspective for all theological statements."
And away it goes: Forde & Kolb use it as a "hermeneutical or methodological guide." Missouri Synod theologians also treat it as key to a "Lutheran Mind." So it's no particular tribe in Lutherland that has taken it up; Jackson cites both Trueman & Revoice appealing to it recently.
"Be a theologian of the cross, like Luther, not a self-deceived theologian of glory" is certainly the way I learned Lutheran theology, both in a Methodist seminary using lots of primary texts plus Forde & company; and then later when studying with Lutheran theologians.
The most important phase of Jackson's argument is his case that Luther in fact develops a real theology of glory, in precisely the terms that would be rejected by the modern "theology of cross vs. theology of glory" paradigm (shoutout here to @theologygurl's 2000 article on this)
He also argues the Cross/Glory dichotomy, raised to a methodological key, mutilates Luther's teaching on Christian formation & exacerbates the cartoony view that Lutherans lack a theology of sanctification. Some modern Lutherans do, & use the cross/glory line to keep lacking it.
In a brief conclusion, Jackson says this methodologically inflated cross/glory dichotomy can be seen as another instance of what Yeago calls reducing Luther to a kind of Spitzensatztheologie:
Well, there's more interesting stuff in the fairly concise article. But it has jolted me out of a rut my thinking had got into. I still love the Heidelberg Disputation. But I'm now alert to how some terms from it have been appropriated and recontextualized unhelpfully.
Okay, one more thought: this seems to me to be parallel to the way "The Wesleyan Quadrilateral" was formulated in the 20th c, linked tenuously to Wesley, & then employed not just as a supposedly Methodist way of doing things but exported to eager recipients in other traditions.
