Exploring Paradoxical Christian Freedom in 2017
The year 2017 invites a fresh examination of the work of Martin Luther whose offering of the 95 Theses for debate provoked the beginning of the Reformation 500 years ago this year. Luther’s insights about the nature of the gospel expressed in the 95 Theses ripened, and came to fine expression in his treatise of 1520 known as “The Freedom of a Christian,” often regarded as a succinct summary of Luther’s theological wisdom. Central to “The Freedom of a Christian” is Luther’s famous statement, which is the heart of the treatise, and arguably captures central sensibilities of the whole Lutheran tradition: “A Christian person is a free sovereign, above all things, subject to no one. A Christian is a dutiful servant in all things, subject to everyone.”1 This is clearly a paradoxical statement, and there is a sense that Luther’s and Lutheran epistemology centers on paradoxical propositions. That is to say, if it is paradoxical, then it is true. Luther explores and elaborates on this paradox throughout the treatise.
Freedom is the fundamental theme of the paradox and treatise. Luther’s rediscovery of gospel freedom was so transformational that he changed his name from Luder (meaning bait, lout or scoundrel) to Luther (from Greek and Latin, “eleutherius,” the “free one”).2 The freedom which Luther proclaims involves, yes, the individual Christian person, but much more. In our individualistic age, the notion of Christian freedom is presumptuously easily reduced to the individual. Our times, however, call for a more expansive view of Christian freedom; Luther offers this in asserting God’s freedom as the source of Christian liberty. Further, Christian freedom has implications for others, the subjects whom the Christian person engages and serves. Additionally, Christian freedom involves the means of engagement with others, and contexts for ethical living. Thus, Christian freedom is best understood in this most comprehensive way.
Let us take up the first proposition in the paradox: “A Christian person is a free sovereign, above all things, subject to no one.” This is true because of God’s freedom. God freely chose to love humanity. God freely chose to become incarnate in Christ Jesus. God freely chose to justify sinners by radical, loving grace alone, effective through faith and apart from human efforts to win God’s favor. In short, God’s freedom begets the freedom of a Christian. The Christian is thus free from bondage to works of the law, sin and death; a freedom won through Christ’s death and resurrection. Our true Christian freedom consists of this: in faith we simply trust in and thus receive God’s unfathomable mercy. In such justifying and trusting faith, we are free, subject to none.
This fundamental reality of the Christian being “subject to none” in gracious freedom forms the basis for the second dimension of the paradox: “A Christian is a dutiful servant in all things, subject to everyone.” This second proposition lays the bedrock foundation for Christian ethics in a Lutheran key. I believe that a Lutheran approach to ethics is brilliantly poised for relevance in our post-modern intellectual climate because its logical conclusion leads to identifying and dismantling the violence of instrumentality evident in some forms of Christian ethics. That is, the instrumentality that essentially concludes, “I will do good to you, not because you are an end in yourself, but rather that you and my doing good are means to another end, namely, working out my personal salvation.” Such instrumentality can subjugate the other to bondage for my need of salvation, thus rendering the other secondary, and at worst, dispensable. Such commodification of the other is arguably a form of violence that has historically and currently led to all manner of bondage-inducing and death-dealing interventions. However in the Lutheran ethic, I am free in Christ to be completely for you, the other, no strings attached. By God’s grace, the horizons open up to free me from performance anxiety about my salvation. Thus, in the freedom of such a non-anxious presence, I can see you, honor you, and attend to you in the greater fullness of who you are. My freedom as a Christian then frees you, the other, to be fully who you are as a beloved child of God. This provides the opportunity to partner in becoming all that God meant to be.
Now anchored in divine freedom and love, we can boldly and courageously experiment with methods of ethical engagement, contextualizing our manner of loving treatment according to the needs and opportunities of our circumstances. In such contextual freedom, we can, according to a quip attributed to Luther, “sin boldly, but believe more boldly still,” taking risks together, ever seeking the greatest possible embodiment of service that makes sense in our day.3 “Subject to none, subject to all” thus centers on multiple dimensions of freedom: God’s, mine, and yours, even in political and societal arenas.
So how do we existentially access such freedom? For Luther and for Lutherans, Christian freedom is experienced directly from the gospel in its various forms: preaching, baptism, Eucharist, confession and forgiveness, and mutual conversation and consolation among brothers and sisters in Christ.4 Through such faith-inducing and faith-strengthening encounters with the gospel, we are united with Christ whose Spirit then empowers us to engage our servanthood freedom for the sake of the world. That is to say, when we hear the gospel in our deep places, God’s love in Christ is unleashed in us in the power of the Spirit, and we then naturally express that love in our lives and with others.5
Luther sums it up in the following: “My God, through Christ, out of sheer compassion, purely and freely, gave me, an unworthy and damned person, without my deserving it, the full riches of all righteousness and salvation, so that from this point forward I need nothing more than to believe it is so.”6 This, in essence, is what it means to be “subject to none.” Luther continues, “Aye, to such a Father, who has inundated me with abundantly overflowing possessions, I shall, freely, cheerfully, and for nothing in return, do what well pleases him and in relation to my neighbor also become a Christ, the way Christ became for me, and do nothing else than what I see is necessary, useful, and a blessing to my neighbor, since through my faith I already have enough of everything I need in Christ.”7 This is what it means to be “subject to all.” Luther concludes, “Look, this is how love and pleasure for God flow out of faith, and how out of love flows a free, willing, and cheerful life, lived freely, serving the neighbor for nothing.”8
So what, and what now? How does our current zeitgeist engage the paradox, “subject to none, subject to all”? Well, our age totally gets, or thinks it gets, the “subject to none” part of the paradox. That is, according to the distorted logic of our age, freedom is a licentious disregard for people, and consequences do not matter. This is a corrupted, reductionist “freedom from” without any balancing with “freedom for.” Popular media culture produces little appreciation for the “subject to all” aspect of the paradox. Our current cultural captivity cries out for balance in this season of extremes. Luther’s paradox provides such life-giving balance.
Moreover, in terms of the arenas of ethical engagement, our Christian freedom provides grounds for protest and resistance to any form of subjugation. In our distressed, depraved, dangerous day, in our bondage to the many ways of sin and death, we, who are sons and daughters of the Reformation, are beckoned to live up to our polemical designation as Protestants, that is, protesters, reclaiming our Reformation heritage for the love and healing of the nations. The gospel gives us the gift of freedom from fear and freedom for courage. That is to say, we are free to courageously assert truth, reframing Luther’s own defiant posture, “Here we stand, we cannot do otherwise” than nurture the conditions of freedom for all to be and become who they are in God.9
Finally, here is a practical consideration for preachers who seek to nurture the experience of gospel freedom that unleashes God’s love in us for others. Preach to the raw places, the terror, the sense of scarcity, the wall-building spirit of captivity which current political and commercial interests are hell-bent on shamefully and shamelessly exploiting for their own licentious ends. In defiant contrast to these, speak to those raw places in the lives of the persons in your care with the palpable word of radical grace that breaks everything open, and frees us to go for broke. Because we are not broke. In Christ Jesus, we have all that we need in abundance for seeking the healing of the nations.
Notes
1. Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” in Luther’s Spirituality, trans. and ed., Philip Krey and Peter Krey, (New York: Paulist Press, 2007), 70.
2. Thomas Kaufmann, A Short Life of Martin Luther, trans. Peter Krey and James Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 1 and 11.
3. As a possible example of ethical engagement rooted in an expansive view of contextual freedom in the gospel, consider the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which approved the ordination of gay and lesbian persons in committed relationships.
4. This particular listing of the means of grace, which also features mutual conversation and consolation, is included in Luther’s Smalcald Articles.
5. Union with Christ via faith is an important theme in Luther’s “The Freedom of a Christian,” where Luther invokes bridal mysticism, a prominent feature of Medieval Christian Spirituality. In this treatise (ibid., 75), Luther writes, “Not only does faith impart so much that the soul becomes equal to the divine word — completely full of grace, free, and blessed — but it also unifies the soul with Christ as a bride with her bridegroom. It follows from this marriage, as St. Paul says, ‘that Christ and the soul become one body.’” In union with Christ we have God’s power to engage our neighbors in divine love.
6. Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” in ibid. 87.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Recall Luther’s likely legendary statement at the Diet of Worms when he was asked to recant his theological views: “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”
