LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 154

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154

IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

have the general knowledge, namely, that God is, that He has created heaven
and earth, that He is just, that He punishes the wicked, etc. But what God
thinks of us, what He wants to give and to do to deliver us from sin and death
and to save us—which is the particular and the true knowledge of God—this
men do not know.”45 Indeed, so narrowly does Luther—like the confessors—
define “true” knowledge of God in terms of gospel knowledge, he can not
only reject knowledge of God’s existence and creative activity as being “true”
knowledge; he can further state: “Nor is this knowledge your belief that Christ
was born from a virgin, suffered, died, and rose again. No, you have the true
knowledge of God when you believe and know that God and Christ are your
God and your Christ.”46
While rightly emphasizing the narrow scope of that which Luther defines as “true” knowledge of God—that is, knowledge of the gospel, which is
inaccessible to natural reason—one ought also to recognize how expansively
Luther is able to conceive of that which natural men may—indeed, should—
acknowledge on the basis of reason alone. Thus, for example, despite his
frequent summary of natural knowledge in simple terms of knowing “that
there is a God,” Luther regularly allows that men naturally know not only of
God’s existence, but also of certain of his attributes. As noted above, Luther
could assert in his commentary on Jonah that “the natural light of reason”
itself “regards God as kind, gracious, merciful, and benevolent.”47 Nor is this
an isolated example; virtually the same appears both in his “early” works and
his “mature” works.48
Luther’s own expansive view of natural man’s knowledge—though
never saving knowledge—of God is especially worth noting because it is not
unusual for commentators to posit a radical break between the theology of
Luther and the Lutheran dogmaticians on this point. For this reason, brief
attention is finally given to the Lutheran dogmatic tradition, especially during
the immediate post-Reformation era of “Lutheran orthodoxy.”

D. The Doctrine of the Dogmaticians
Representative of interpretations setting Luther against the Lutheran
dogmaticians—even the earliest of these—is one prominent quotation and
45

Luther, Lectures on Galatians, AE 26:399.

46

Martin Luther, Sermons on the Second Epistle of St. Peter (1523), AE 30:152.

47

Luther, Lectures on Jonah, AE 19:54.

48
See, e.g., Luther, Lectures on Romans (1515), AE 25:157, where natural knowledge conceives
of God as “invisible, immortal, powerful, wise, just, and gracious,” and Martin Luther, Lectures
on Genesis (1538), AE 3:117: “the heathen also have this understanding; they know that there is a
supreme deity, that he must be worshiped, called upon, and praised, and that one should take
refuge in him in all dangers. . . . They call God a helper, kind, and forgiving.” It does deserve
noting, however, that Luther could, on occasion, speak in direct contrast to such views. So, e.g.,
he could also write that “God so orders this corporal world in its external affairs that if you
respect and follow the judgment of human reason, you are bound to say either that there is no
God, or that God is unjust.” Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (1525), AE 33:291.

critique of Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560). Commenting on the natural
knowledge of God, Melanchthon could write:
There flashes in the mind the knowledge which affirms not only
that there is one God, the Maker of the whole world and order,
in all nature, but also teaches what kind of God He is, namely,
wise, beneficent, just, One who assigns like things to like things,
truthful, One who loves moral purity, One who demands that
our obedience conform to His will, and One who punishes with
horrible punishments those who harshly violate this order, as
the whole history of the human race bears witness.
In assessing such remarks, one commentator bluntly declares: “How far
away from Luther we now are!”49 In light of Luther’s views briefly elucidated
in the previous section, however, there appears little warrant for supposing
that this conclusion of Melanchthon is “far away” from Luther’s own.
That Luther’s contemporary, colleague, and co-author of the Confessions
did not radically deviate from Luther on this point requires emphasis because
it has been rightly noted that “Lutheranism on the whole followed Melanchthon in working out its position on natural theology.”50 Further, that the
later Lutheran theologians do indeed follow Melanchthon deserves emphasis
on account of suggestions that the dogmaticians progressively fall away not
only from Luther on this point, but even from Melanchthon himself.51 Again,
though, it would be far more accurate to conclude that the orthodox dogmaticians not only do not go beyond the conclusions of Luther and Melanchthon,
but even that “[o]n no point does Lutheran orthodoxy go beyond the Lutheran
symbols in its teaching concerning the natural knowledge of God.”52
It is certainly true that the dogmaticians, in the interest of clarification,
harmonization, and explication, introduce terms and distinctions found infrequently or not at all in Luther and the Confessions. It is likewise the case that
the nature and scope of multi-volume dogmatic treatises allowed their authors
to treat the subject in greater detail and at greater length than was deemed
necessary in the exegetical, polemical, or confessional writings of Luther and
his contemporaries. It might even be acknowledged that the seventeenthcentury dogmaticians are much more emphatic in their defense of man’s natural knowledge, and the possibility of a natural theology, than were Luther and
the confessors. Each of these moves, however, was prompted, in large part, by
the rise of controversies non-existent in Luther’s own day.
Most notably, the Socinian heresy deriving from the teachings of Fausto
Paolo Sozzini (1539–1604) flatly rejected the confession that natural man

49

Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 52 n. 4, and 53.

50

Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 1:176.

51

Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 50–51.

52

Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 2:29.

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had any innate knowledge of God or any capacity for naturally acquiring
knowledge of God. It is especially in view of this denial of biblical and
confessional testimony that the seventeenth-century dogmaticians frame
their approach to the topic. Abraham Calov is representative in this respect,
offering his summary propositions regarding man’s natural knowledge in the
context of refuting the Socinian position. In opposition to the Socinian denial
of reason’s ability to acquire some natural knowledge of God, for example, he
concludes that “man, destitute of the revealed Word of God, can attain, by the
use of sound reason, to some knowledge concerning God, His being and His
general will or providence.” Similarly opposing the Socinian denial of any
innate knowledge, he also concludes that “not only the faculty or power of
knowing God, but also a certain knowledge of God, belongs to us by nature.”53
That Calov’s position is hardly unique among the Lutheran theologians is
rightly noted in its being described as a “typical Lutheran treatment of natural
theology.”54

The Flacian and Socinian controversies with regard to the natural
knowledge of God are significant, however, not merely because they prompted the orthodox dogmaticians to formulate and defend more clearly and
extensively the Lutheran position on the subject. They are significant also
because they make evident that from the time of the Reformation itself, and
even within Lutheranism itself, prominent objections to this position have
been put forward. Because such objections have become only more frequent
in subsequent centuries, the following section surveys and assesses some of
these critiques and their impact on contemporary thinking about the subject.

That Calov, though treating the topic in much greater detail, remains
consistent with his predecessors is perhaps hardly surprising in light of the
fact that they, too, had already been forced to respond to denials of natural
knowledge—and not from an outside sect such as the Socinians, but from
within Lutheranism itself. Though not going so far as the Socinians in rejecting
the possibility of some naturally acquired knowledge of God, Matthias Flacius
(1520–1575) argued already in the sixteenth century that man’s nature had
been so thoroughly corrupted by the fall into sin that no innate knowledge
of God remained.55 It is with a view to Flacius that dogmaticians such as
Johannes Quenstedt (1617–1688) not only defend the assertion that all men
do have a natural knowledge of God, but also that this knowledge is “true”
knowledge: “that the natural knowledge of God is true, is evident from this,
that the apostle expressly calls it truth, Rom. 1:18 sq., and with the addition,
the truth of God, v. 25.”56

53

Abraham Calov, Systema Locorum Theologicorum (1655–77), quoted in Heinrich Schmid, The
Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1899), 108.
54
Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 1:179; see also at 1:173: “There is nothing
particularly original or new in the way Calov and the later Lutherans deal with the subject of
natural and revealed theology.”
55
For an overview of the “Flacian Controversy” in which context this point arises, see F. Bente,
Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord (St. Louis: Concordia, 1965), 144–52. See also Preus,
The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 1:176–8.
56
Johannes Questedt, Theologia Didactico-Polemica (1685), quoted in Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 108. It is to be noted that Quenstedt here freights the
word “true” in the broader epistemological sense, rather than the narrower soteriological sense
employed by the Confessions. He also qualifies the scope of this truth by immediately acknowledging that “we must distinguish between the natural knowledge of God, considered in and
through itself, and in so far as it has united with it imperfection, corruption of reason, and a
proclivity to various errors.”

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2016 Convention Workbook

III. Natural Knowledge and Natural Theology
An overreaction to rationalism has made us lukewarm toward natural
theology, which in older times was seen as the necessary underpinning of positive theology. These gaps must of necessity be filled.
~ Ernst Hengstenberg57

A. Enlightenment Opposition
When attention is primarily given to the Lutheran church, the seventeenth
century is often deemed the “Age of Orthodoxy.” But the same century also
inaugurated the European Enlightenment and what is often perceived as the
“Age of Reason.” With respect to the natural knowledge of God, an explicit connection between the Lutheran dogmaticians and the Enlightenment
philosophers is sometimes posited, as in the assertion that “the development
of ‘natural theology’ is the march of history from Luther’s primal experience
(Urerlebnis) up to the Enlightement.”58
It cannot be denied that this era did indeed witness, in some quarters, a
crass reduction of natural theology to “natural religion.” Affirming both that
God reveals himself in nature and that man’s natural reason is capable of
deriving some knowledge of God from this revelation, the English Deists, for
example, proceeded further to assert that God would be unjust if requiring
the confession of something more than this natural knowledge. John Toland
(1670–1722), for instance, bluntly demanded to know: why “should God
require us to believe what we cannot understand?”59 As such beliefs would be
“contrary to Reason,” he purported to demonstrate that the specially revealed
57
Quoted in Frederick Gregory, Nature Lost? Natural Science and the German Theological Traditions of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 116.
58

Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 57.

59
John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), extracted in Documents of the Christian Church,
ed. Henry Bettenson and Chris Maunder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 346–7.

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