'Abba! Father!' (Galatians 4:6): Justification and Assurance in Martin Luther's Lectures on Galatians (1535)

Joseph Lortz and Jared Wicks, the two greatest twentieth-century Roman Catholic scholars of Luther, reach opposite conclusions about Luther’s attitude toward religious experience. For Lortz, Luther was a subjectivist through and through, but for Wicks, Luther was an opponent of religiosities of subj...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Chester, Stephen J. (Author)
Format: Print Article
Language:English
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Published: [2018]
In: Biblical research
Year: 2018, Volume: 63, Pages: 15-28
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Bible. Galaterbrief 4,6 / abba / Abba / Luther, Martin 1483-1546 / Justification / Reformation
IxTheo Classification:CB Christian life; spirituality
HC New Testament
KAG Church history 1500-1648; Reformation; humanism; Renaissance
KDD Protestant Church
NBK Soteriology
NBM Doctrine of Justification
Further subjects:B Bible. Galatians; Theology
B Experience (Religion); Christianity
B Justification; Biblical teaching
B Bible. Galaterbrief 4,6
B Assurance (Theology)
B Abba (Word)
B Luther, Martin, 1483-1546
Description
Summary:Joseph Lortz and Jared Wicks, the two greatest twentieth-century Roman Catholic scholars of Luther, reach opposite conclusions about Luther’s attitude toward religious experience. For Lortz, Luther was a subjectivist through and through, but for Wicks, Luther was an opponent of religiosities of subjective experience. I argue that these different judgments are rooted in a polarity within Luther’s attitudes themselves. In his exegesis of Gal 4:6, Luther expounds justification by faith in powerfully experiential terms, but the experience involved is that of trusting in the divine promises contained in Scripture and therefore knowing an assurance of salvation, oftenin defiance of all other human experiences and the feelings they evoke. Justification is for Luther a kind of “anti-experience” by which everything else in human experience is to be evaluated, and not vice versa. The implications of this are assessed for interpretation of Luther in the liberal Protestant tradition and in contemporary historical scholarship.
ISSN:0067-6535
Reference:Kritik in "Response (2018)"
Contains:Enthalten in: Biblical research