{"id":4840,"date":"2019-09-09T16:57:32","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T23:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=4840"},"modified":"2019-09-17T04:37:21","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T11:37:21","slug":"the-new-book-the-essential-fordeis-pseudo-forde-2a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=4840","title":{"rendered":"The new book, The Essential Forde<\/em>, is pseudo-Forde (2a)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Click here for PDF version<\/a> <\/center>\n\n\n\n

In 1971 Gerhard Forde shifted from teaching in the Church\nHistory department to Systematic Theology. He said this shift did not make any\nmajor transition in his thinking or teaching, adding: \u201cIt did mean, however,\nthat I have always taught systematics from a historical base \u2013 as it ought to\nbe taught!\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forde\u2019s statement above is noted by Nicholas Hopman in his\nintroduction to Forde\u2019s life in The\nEssential Forde. <\/em>How odd that Forde\u2019s editors note his concern for\nhistorical context and then fail to provide historical\ncontext or bibliographical references for Forde\u2019s own writings.[2]<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopman\u2019s fellow editor, Steven Paulson, writes of the\npurpose of The Essential Forde<\/em>: \u201cBut\nwith this volume, we especially want to introduce Forde to a new generation of\npastors, theologians, and other church leaders who do not know him.\u201d[3]<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is a new generation supposed to understand Forde without\nbibliographic references and historical context? The implicit message of The Essential Forde <\/em>is: \u201cLook no further\nthan what we give you here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forde\u2019s context, however, is crucial to understanding him\nand the wider Lutheran world. He lived and wrote in the heart of the twentieth century\nLuther renaissance. Forde:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[M]ost of Luther was largely\nunknown to the Lutheran church, especially in America, until quite recently,\nand the most important dimensions of his theology are actually 20th<\/sup>\ncentury discoveries. The phenomenon known as \u2018Luther\u2019s Theology\u2019 is actually\nquite a new thing, particularly for American Lutherans. What it means to be a\ntheologian of the cross, for instance, was virtually unknown until 1929 when\nWalter von Loewenich published his book on the subject. It did not appear in\nEnglish until 1976. The Bondage of the <\/em>Will\ndid not really emerge as an alternative to received Lutheran anthropology until\nmid-century. The significance of Luther\u2019s struggle with the basic letter\/spirit\nmetaphysic of medieval \u2013 and for that matter modern \u2013 catholic Christendom for\nhermeneutics and theological method also developed largely after the Second\nWorld War and is still unfolding. The recovery of the doctrine of vocation is\ndue largely to 20th<\/sup> century Swedish Luther research. And so on. When all of this is put together with<\/strong> current biblical studies<\/strong>, especially the recovery of New Testament\neschatology, a theology with a radically different<\/strong> \u2013 in today\u2019s terms, eschatological \u2013<\/strong> shape begins to emerge.<\/strong>\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new generation needs tools for assessing its heritage.\nWhat was rediscovered in the twentieth century Luther renaissance? What have we\nlearned from current biblical studies? Why can\u2019t a verbal inspiration\nhermeneutic be combined with a law-gospel hermeneutic? Why did Forde call\nhimself a post-liberal Lutheran? Forde writes about all these questions and\nmore:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat brings a post-liberal\nLutheran back to faith in the triune God, the divine\/human Redeemer, the\natonement, the resurrection, the church, i.e., the main corpus of traditional\ncatholic doctrine? Most assuredly not<\/strong>\nthe magisterial authority of an infallible ecclesiastical office or assertions about the inerrancy of an\ninfallible Scripture.<\/strong> And not,\ncertainly, just romantic nostalgia for the safety of a lost conservative haven.<\/strong>\nThe Enlightenment has swept all that away\u2026.The \u2018post liberal Lutheran\u2019 is, of\ncourse, something of a shadowy, if not menacing, figure on the contemporary\nscene, perhaps not yet clearly defined, often a puzzle to both friend and foe,\nusually mistaken simply for a hard-line conservative confessionalist or\northodoxist. But that is seriously to\nmisread the situation.<\/strong> It is a post-Enlightenment, post-liberal position. A\npost-liberal Lutheran is one who has been through the options spawned since the\nReformation and realizes that they have all been used up. Least of all does\ninfallibilism or reactionary conservatism of any sort provide an answer. In any\ncase, Lutherans have always been uneasy with infallibilist solutions to faith\u2019s\nquestions. Even where they have flirted with the ideas of scriptural\ninfallibility they have had some anxiety and suspicion that it might be\ncontrary to a gospel appropriation of the scriptural message. But attempts to\nground faith in \u2018natural religious experience\u2019 of some sort are also perceived\nfinally to undercut the gospel as well and do not finally liberate. Thus the\npost-liberal has been driven to reach back beyond the confessional, \u2018orthodox,\u2019\nand liberal settlements and compromises of the post-Reformation era to the\nroots of the Reformation protest, particularly in Luther himself\u2026.What is it in\nthe theology of Luther that attracts a post-liberal and impels a return to the\ncatholic faith?….One could say many things or approach the matter from\nseveral different angles. Here, however, it will have to do to say it is simply\nthe peculiar realization that the proclamation of the gospel when rightly done\nas the \u2018word of the cross\u2019 itself cuts\nthe ground out from under previous ways of doing theology, and<\/strong> does it more surely and radically than the\nEnlightenment ever did.<\/strong>\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his Forward to The\nEssential Forde<\/em> James Nestingen writes that the book provides \u201ca wonderful\nsampler of Gerhard\u2019s work.\u201d[6]<\/a>\nA sampler without bibliographical information, without historical context, and\nwithout the larger picture of Forde\u2019s leadership in the twentieth century\nLuther renaissance.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a>\nGerhard Forde, \u201cThe One Acted Upon,\u201d dialog<\/em>\n36\/1 (1997) 61.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a>\nNicholas Hopman, \u201cForde\u2019s Life,\u201d The\nEssential Forde<\/em>, 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a>\nSteven Paulson, \u201cForde Lives!\u201d The\nEssential Forde, <\/em>18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a>\nForde, \u201cSatis est<\/em>: What do we do when\nother churches don\u2019t agree?\u201d 12-13. Emphasis added. Available here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Forde,\n\u201cThe Catholic Impasse: Reflections on Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue Today,\u201d Promoting Unity. Themes in     Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue<\/em>. Eds. H.\nGeorge Anderson and James R. Crumley Jr. (Augsburg: Minneapolis, 1989) 67-77,\nhere 72-73. Emphasis added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> James\nNestingen, The Essential Forde<\/em>, xv.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1971 Gerhard Forde shifted from teaching in the Church History department to Systematic Theology. He said this shift did not make any major transition in his thinking or teaching, adding: \u201cIt did mean, however, that I have always taught systematics from a historical base \u2013 as it ought to be taught!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4840"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4889,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4840\/revisions\/4889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}