10.3.2012 LUTHER III -FAITH

....at this time L was giving lectures on the book of hebrews (spring 1517-spring 1518)...

65.last ....'by this time L had almost completely given up the use of medieval methodology. he calls attention to unusual hebrew or greek constructions, offers conjectures regarding unclear texts and pays more attention than before to grammatical questions. but he does not permit any of these matters to divert him from theological exegesis. here, for the first time, he sums up the relationship between God and man, in which the scholastics distinguished many different steps, in the one word: faith. in the order of salvation, as it was taught by the scholastics, the concept faith was only a subhead, but with L faith receives universal significance, comprising the whole of the relationship of man to God. in this connection he speaks the pregnant word,
'not the sacrament, but faith conveys salvation.
faith and cross are joined together most closely.
'the whole life of the christian consists of faith, that is to say, in cross and suffering.
more clearly than before he defines the relationship between word and faith:
faith is trust in the word of Christ. it begins when God opens our ears for the gospel.
'if you ask the christian what work it is that makes him worthy to bear the name christian, he can give no answer but this:
by the hearing of the word of God,
ie. by faith.
the ears are thus the only organ of the christian, in view of the fact that he is not justified through the works of any other part of the body, but only through faith, and so is made a christian.

this emphasis upon hearing as an instrument of faith is connected with an emphasis on the hiddenness of that faith, both as to its subject and its object.
'to hold to god means to look away from the world and all created things.
to bear the image of Christ means to live according to the mind and example of Christ...
but by nature we can neither understand nor love these treasures, because the are invisible, incomprehensible, and wholly hidden from us, unless the grace of God opens our eyes to them. for the same reason the spiritual man can be judged, known or seen by no one, not even by himself, since he lives in the most intense darkness of God.
in this connection L wrote a beautiful sentence, which might well be called a classic summation of his theology:
'oh, it is a wonderful thing to be a christian and to have this hidden life-not hidden as a hermit in a cell, not even in the human heart with its impenetrable abysses-=but in the invisible  God Himself, to live amid the things of this world, while feeding one's soul on Him who reveals Himself nowhere else than in the poor tokens of the word and the hearing alone.