Psalm 2 (KJV) Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? ---- Thought for the day: Deus absconditus sub contrario: (Picking up the thread on some earlier ruminations citing to Barrett and Mailer. I thought, Saturday morning -- A great time for a romp through the labyrinth of theodicy. What say you!) Writes Laura Welker as part of her Masters thesis in Y2006: Luther, in typical fashion, scatters his theology of the hidden God throughout his extensive writings. His perspective is ever in flux in accordance with his current topic of address. In such circumstances, it is difficult, if not impossible to portray a single, comprehensive summary of who Luther believes the hidden God to be. Richard A. Muller offers an attempt at defining the Deus absconditus, but still falls short of Luther’s complex theology: The paradox of God’s unknowability and self-manifestations as stated by Luther. The issue is not that God has been hidden and has now revealed himself, but rather that the revelation that has been given to man defies the wisdom of the world because it is the revelation of the hidden God. God is revealed in hiddenness and hidden in his revelation. He reveals himself paradoxically to thwart the proud, under the opposite, omnipotence manifest on the cross.3 This is the foundation of Luther’s theology of the Deus absconditus. In order to compel the believer to trust in God in spite of all reason and sense, God hides himself under everything that is contrary to his nature, even “under the form of the worst devil.”34 _____ 3 Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology 34 Luthers Works /LW 7:175 (1545). Luther continues: “This teaches us that the goodness, mercy, and power of God cannot be grasped by speculation but must be understood on the basis of experience.”
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 16:00:21 +0000
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