Having Faith in the Herd

 



HAVING FAITH IN THE HERD


BY

DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS


Luther identifies many kinds of righteousness, for instance the righteousness of the emperor, the Torah, the parents, and so on. But "over and above all these there is the righteousness of faith or Christian righteousness, which is to be distinguished most carefully from all the others. For they are all contrary to this righteousness, both because they proceed from the laws of emperors, the traditions of the pope, and the commandments of God, and because they consist in our own works and can be achieved by us with 'purely natural endowments,' as the scholastics teach, or from a gift of God. These kinds of righteousness of works, too, are gifts of God, as are all the things we have."

According to Luther, the righteousness of the various works are active while the righteousness of faith as Luther explains it is passive; God works through the person.

"For here we work nothing, render nothing to God; we only received someone else to work in us, namely, God.... This is a righteousness hidden in a mystery, which the world does not understand."

Luther's works are full of mysteries, of absurd statements that cannot be explained without reference to "god's mysteries." Contradictions in these matters cannot be helped, although they might be concealed by logical sophistries - self-conscious man is a self-contradiction. Nonetheless, experienced logic-jugglers can see the ambiguities very well and take turns taking equal and opposite stances.

Since faith is passive, it would seem no work at all would be required to maintain it; even maintaining faith implies work, hence maintenance would be disallowed under the strictest definition of the passive faith required to "receive the Lord." We might think that those who have faith would have no reason to defend it, except that they, for love of others, or, as they prefer to put it, for the love of god, would bring others to the same freedom they enjoy. However, we notice most faithful people seem rather desperate to prove their faith, as if it were an insecure, uncertain, fragile thing, and some definite community of agreement is needed to have it. No man stands alone.

Luther quotes Paul: "Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." (1 Cor. 10:12).

Even in the absence of an objective personal god, the absolute freedom of the individual is tempered by nature and that includes other human beings without whom the individual would have no actualized or relative freedom; that is, a freedom relative to something, the freedom from resistance, from the inertia or force of something or another. Nor is he human without others of his kind; he would have no existence as such.

Thus we observe many who fervently profess faith in god but whose ferver seems to give their profession the lie. They do not seem to have been graced with faith, for they strive for company in that faith, as if they have no strength in it, are not as certain as they would be, and are afraid of that absolute freedom which would leave them alone in the world, as omnipotent as their god, without any need for faith or works, without any need of thoughts or justifications whatsoever, without any need for a god to justify them and excuse and save them, and fully responsible, alienated and alone.

It seems they have no genuine faith in god, and cling to each other instead, for their faith is actually in the herd. This is one of god's mysteries. 

xYx

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