Deeper understandings Moral failure
The road to grace goes through judgment By Daniel M. Bell Jr.
“ I
therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.” Would anyone dispute the power of this moment in our worship? Is not the gospel offered with radiant and pristine clarity in the declaration of absolution? While there are other moments in the lit- urgy when the gospel shines with such beautiful and striking trans- parency, surely none surpasses this moment in the conciseness and lucidity with which the heart of the gospel is proclaimed. And yet, if anything was ever
a textbook example of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace,” the typical Protestant practice of con- fession is it. Recall the famous pas- sage in his The Cost of Discipleship: “Cheap grace is the preaching of
forgiveness without requiring repen- tance, baptism without church disci- pline, communion without confes- sion, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Channeling my inner Francis Ford
Coppola, I sometimes put the ques- tion to students in a form inspired by the famous baptism scene in his movie The Godfather. I ask them, “Does grace mean that as chapel starts I can run down the street to the convenience mart, shoot six people and then return in time for one of my esteemed colleagues to pronounce the good news of my complete and total absolution for sin? And I am
14
www.thelutheran.org
forgiven in less time that it takes me to reload?” Cheap grace is confession with-
out naming sin, without discipline, without change (repentance, turning, metanoia). In short, it’s grace without judgment. That this claim strikes our ears as
grating, as if someone were dragging her fingernails across our theological chalkboards, suggests that we have lost sight of confession as a practice of judgment and of judgment as good news, as a means of grace. Indeed, we mistakenly think the
Reformation has set us free from all but the most generalized, abstract, useless confession—confession devoid of judgment. This, however, finds no basis in Scripture where we are told to bind and loose, and to exercise right judgment (John 7:24; Matthew 7:1-5). Nor does it find support with Martin Luther, who pointed out that confession, with the attendant discipline called penance (“fruits of repentance” in the Book of Concord), when not abused was an aid to troubled souls and that we should run a hundred miles, if neces- sary, to practice it.
Good news of judgment Judgment is good news. Thank God for judgment or else we would be stuck in sin. For judgment is God’s
While sin does bother God, I would venture that the reason it bothers God is because it’s bad for us.
“no” to sin. It’s God’s refusal to leave us in sin. God’s pardon of sin is a wonder- ful thing for which we rightly rejoice. But the good news doesn’t stop
with pardon. Indeed, pardon without judgment is not good news. Certainly it’s not the good news that Christ offers. This is the case because sin is
bad for us. But the way sin is often talked about, it’s easy to forget this. Frequently we talk about it as if the only problem with sin is that it both- ers God. While sin does bother God, I would venture that the reason it bothers God is because it’s bad for us. Look at newspaper headlines;
look in the mirror. All around us we see the destructive effects of sin. As Genesis 3 suggests, sin distorts and corrupts our relations with our- selves, with others, with the rest of creation and with God. For this rea- son the early church used to speak of sin not only as disobedience but also as a kind of civil war, where the com- munion for which we were created is replaced by endless struggle and conflict with our neighbors.
Editor’s note: This series is intended to be a public conversation among theo- logians of the ELCA on various themes of our faith and the challenging issues of our day. It invites readers to engage in dialogue by posting comments online at the end of each article at
www.thelutheran.org. The series is edited by Michael Cooper-White, president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (Pa.), on behalf of the presidents of the eight ELCA seminaries.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52