Giertz a neo-scholastic gnostic? A reply

 This summer, I came upon a blog review about Hammer of God from someone with a Catholic background. The review particularly felt there was little the book did to engage non-Protestant spirituality, so I naturally suggested Faith Alone (also by Giertz) since one of its main characters is a Catholic priest. My friendly co-reviewer not only went on to read my review of the book but at least one other post of mine on Giertz and the book itself. He later left me a comment linking his review which you can find here. I was rather shocked to find it accuse Giertz of pacifism against Nazi Germany, gnosticism, and neo-scholasticism. It also suggested a strong divide between Giertz and Luther. It will be the task of this blog post to offer a reply, and a defense of Giertz towards these accusations and clarify. I fear that it has terribly missed the mark. This appears to be a result of trying to understand Giertz according to a Catholic theological paradigm.

1. An Honest Assessment
I felt in general, the blog reflected a poor grasp of Lutheran theology (Giertz and the tradition he pulled from), something I already commented on in his review if Hammer (which he references in the post). He definitely does write from a Roman Catholic  standpoint, and from that, I should not be surprised that he is not too positive in his view of Faith Alone in that there is a clear Reformational critique of the Catholic theological schema that he is still steeped in. This comes out especially in his concern of Giertz's critiques of self-righteous piety, alms-giving, prayer, etc. Both the passages of scripture he quotes and the other sources he cites gives the impression that faith is to be lived especially through imitatio Christi. And frankly, like his Catholic compatriots of the Reformation, faith seems to be entirely misunderstood as "knowledge". This is a similar misunderstanding for the Reformers, where faith is understood largely as an assent to a series of facts/events. Melanchthon was careful to stress that what the evangelical preachers mean by faith is something entirely different. 

"The opponents imagine that faith is nothing more than a knowledge of history...But the faith that justifies is not only a knowledge of history; it is to assent to the promise of God, in which forgiveness of sins and justification are bestowed freely on account of Christ. To avoid suspicion that it is merely knowledge, we will add further that to have faith is to desire and to receive the offered promise of the forgiveness of sins and justification. 
It is easy to determine the difference between this faith and the righteousness of the law. Faith is that worship which receives the benefits that God offers; the righteousness of the law is that worship which offers God our own merits. God wants to be honored by faith so that we receive from him those things that he promises and offers." (Apology IV) 

In the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon defines the fundamental difference as believing "not only the history but also the effect of the history" (Article XX, Latin text). The author responed to my comment to him that "Luther never taught faith as an understanding or idea but a living trust in the word of promise" but seems to misunderstand what I meant by that, seeing it especially as living trust as described by Ratzinger (who I would say emphasizes one's own action more than trust in the promise itself). Additionally, he does not see this as what Giertz taught. He sees the goal of Giertz's theology to be the "right mental password". Giertz however understood faith exceptionally as a trust more than a formulaic set of ideas:

"There is still one more thing that marks a great faith. "Say only one word." More than anything else, it is faith in the word of Christ. It needs this word. it takes a firm grip on his word and holds it fast." (Giertz, Preaching from the Whole Bible)

"This man [who cries 'I believe, help my unbelief'] reacts in a way that can teach us something about true faith. He trusts in Jesus." (Giertz, The New Testament Devotional Commentary Vol 1)

"...a faith which can never die must mean a real life fellowship with Christ...There is faith which is called Christian but which is nothing else than a theory without life." (Giertz, "Faith Which Can Never Die")

We will see later that this same understanding of faith is found in Faith Alone specifically. 

It was interesting, however, to read a review from a Catholic frame of mind. I thought that to some degree there would be more interest because of the Catholic character of Father Andreas who is perhaps the most three-dimentional character in the book. Giertz went to I think a great extent to capture the character's spirituality and show deep Catholic piety and why one would be more drawn to it and think higher of it than the new evangelical faith that was Sweeping Sweden at the time. I was surprised that the review spent rather little time on that as a whole. Instead, he was only able to point out the places where he felt that Giertz might have short-strawed Catholicism: namely, in the decision of the priest to shift to a different sacrament when unction could no longer be offered, and the need for penance to offer absolution. I do not know if there was "wiggle room" as it were in those days to shift to say reconciliation if unction was no longer an option. It does seem to be a reasonable speculation, although we should grant that Giertz may be in the right here (he was an astute historian). While that seems logical to us, there were in various corners of Catholicism at this time extremely rigid superstitions that did not allow wiggle room in practices. Some groups insisted that a certain number of candles on the altar were necessary for the mass - but they did not agree on what that number was (see Bokenkotter, Concise History of the Catholic Church, p244). Prior to the Reforms of Trent (and this book is set in the years just before Trent), such rigid and competing ideas abounded. The author is right that absolution precedes the penance. However, it was conditioned on penance (see Spitz, The Protestant Reformation p76). And the absolution could only absolve the guilt, not remit the penalty. The acts of penance were sometimes referred to as "satisfaction". In fact, penance was the term often used for the sacrament as a whole because of its central role in the sacrament. What Giertz is speaking on when Andreas desires to speak the absolution was that it could not be given apart from penance, even if absolution precedes it in the sacramental rite. 

Overall though, I found the inability to connect with Father Andreas' faith interesting. I don't know if it is because it simply does not accurately enough reflect the author's Catholic spirituality (although if so he does not say why not as his critique of Giertz's portrayal seemed focused on those sacramental inaccuracies) or because the author struggles with Giertz's ultimate critique of it and the Father's inability to in the end derive comfort from it. The book's ultimate charge of the shallowness of deep piety certainly seemed to strike on a nerve, but it is only the book's charge that is taken up, not the accuracy of its portrayal of the piety. This is (if I may infer here) telling.  

2. Freedom of a Christian 
To help clarify and really bring to the fore what Giertz is getting at, we need to look at a few things that live in the background of this work. First, we should bring up the chief Reformational document behind this book: the climax of Martin Luther's three great treatises of 1520: Freedom of a Christian.

Freedom was Luther's great reply to Leo's papal bull Exsurge Domine of that same year. This particular work stands out in his works that followed because of the accompanying open letter to the Pope that Luther included with the treatise. Luther asserts his reasoning for stirring up controversy and appeals to the pope. "Therefore, most excellent Leo, allow me this once to make my case here and to accuse your true enemies.". Ultimately, the work is Luther's attempt to lay out the relationship between his Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone with his teachings on good works. What particularly is the relationship between the two?

In this Luther ultimately asserts that a Christian who is justified by faith is freed for good works to the neighbor. This freedom comes by way of his entire spiritual condition being tended to by Christ. Therefore, the Christian may instead turn her focus to the neighbor with love. This causes Luther to propose two seeming contradictory theses:
   1. A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none.
   2. A Christian is a perfectly bound slave of all, subject to all. 

These two ideas he probably best captures in his quote "We conclude therefore that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in our neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor."

This view totally accords with Paul's words "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Eph 2:8-10).

And Christ's own words, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers" (John 15:5-6).

An important background piece: this work was beloved to Giertz's first wife, who died shortly before he wrote Faith Alone. Along with more of the dark night of the soul spirituality that Faith Alone has perhaps in relationship to her death, the emphasis on this work also cannot be stressed enough. This is abundantly clear in Martin's conversations with Peder:

"God does not want to have my good works. My neighbor shall have them. God wants to have my faith. So I shall trust him, pray to him at every turn and receive the Word that works faith within me. Before God, I shall not try to be pious. There I shall recognize that I am a great sinner. I shall not come jingling my good works. That is only to tease and challenge God. They are still like worm-heavy apples. There is always something wrong about them, and before God, they do not do. But to the neighbor, they can be good. You can very well foster your children, be decent toward your wife, serve your king, and help the poor, though there is much pride and smugness remaining in your poor heart. So God will use you to serve your neighbor even though you are a great sinner. He will not make you into some saint that he can put up among his pure angels, but he will let you live by grace and all the more grace you receive from heaven the more shall you serve here on earth - without demanding to be rewarded or asking to get a halo for it." -p202

The author even quotes one line from this, but misses the whole thrust. The author's assessment of spirituality in the book as a "secret password" based faith that does not seem interested in "love of Christ, or imitation of Christ, or even love of neighbor". Read this whole section and tell me that love of neighbor, and a lived faith, or worship do not matter in Faith Alone. On the contrary, these things are important, but they are put into their proper places which happens by faith. When these things supplant faith it is then that the salvation history is disregarded. Even Matthew 25 (which the author references as a way of suggesting Jesus wants our good works for himself) does not place love of neighbor at the center of the Christian's faith. This is abundantly clear by the mere fact that they did not focus on the good they did in faith. Faith understood through works is ultimately faith in good works. Faith in Christ will result in good works. This understanding is totally lost in the author's assessment of the book, yet it theologically undergirds the entire story.

3. The Ordo Salutis
The next thing we need to note is Giertz's use of the ordo salutis (order of grace). This is essential to understanding what he is doing theologically with the narrative of Faith Alone (as well as in Hammer of God). I tried to point this out to the blogger when I encouraged him to read Hammer according to "spiritual impoverishment". This is Giertz's way of understanding how it is that God works upon a person. What is especially important is Giertz's understanding of it not (as the author) puts it "The will to salvation" but rather the opposite:

"How does man find his way to God? First of all, we must understand that it is not man who finds the way to God by eventually working his way to him. No, rather, it is God who finds his way to man's heart." (Giertz, "Life by Drowning").

This is a crucial misunderstanding on the author's part of Giertz's work and again almost certainly comes from a view of the will born from a Catholic theological framework. It is important to wonder how this difference (as well as Giertz's understanding of faith) could be so blatantly missed. Especially once we get Herr Peder's sermon at the end:

"What then would carry us to God? What would be able to make a bridge over the bottomless abyss? Nothing in either heaven or earth except for the Mediator that God himself put between him and us. Nothing other than Christ, God's own Son, who became our brother to build a bridge across the abyss...

"Then on that day, he opened a path to God for sinners...You can now walk in peace on the path I have built even into my Father's heaven...

"...So in his love, he has prepared us a salvation that depends on faith alone. He has let Christ prepare a perfect redemption so that nothing more is proven than that we in faith, receive this work that is already completed. And this faith is not a work that we do. That which we achieve with our own faith that which is strong and perfect, or a faith that we embellish with love or good resolve, with that we immediately make it into a wretched visible work of man, and then we have shoved a new work and a new sin between God and us. Now, this true faith is nothing other than this, that the soul that is poor, destitute, and naked receives the Savior who is rich, righteous, and holy. He who has nothing may receive Him who possesses everything." -p252-254

The order of grace describes a series of the soul's experiences as God works faith on a person. To better understand the ordo itself one would do well to read "Life by Drowning". There Giertz addresses what are the heart of the ordo: the call (awakening), enlightenment by the law, and enlightenment by the gospel. This theology drives the narratives of both Hammer of God and Faith Alone.

Giertz talks more about the order in his recently translated Shepherd's Letter (check out my review). He writes:
"[The order of grace] is directly contrary to that which it is sometimes considered to be. In typical conformity with a doctrine of works, the skewed view tends to conceive of the order of grace as a teaching about the soul's way to God through a series of reforms and purifications. What the order of grace really describes is the complete opposite, how God's Spirit reveals man's total inability to convert himself, to honestly love God and altruistically serve his neighbor. Just so he helps a man come forward to the Redeemer who alone can save him. Seen most deeply, the order of grace is a teaching about faith, not a description of stages that man must go through in order to be a true Christian. It is a description of all the obstacles in the heart of man that arise on the way of faith, and of the work through which God's Spirit broke them down. What is essential in the order of grace is not the order but the grace."

I couldn't help but note how Giertz says the order emphasizes grace while the author quite differently said "One does not enter heaven because of undeserved grace but because of one's belief in undeserved grace". He misunderstands faith as a work instead of a result. And the ordo describes the ways God's grace brings about that result. Faith Alone is not about formulaic belief, but about understanding humanity's need for a Redeemer. What troubles the author perhaps most is that it is a total need for a Redeemer. The author begins the review with a quote from Ratzinger (you may know him as Pope Benedict) that understands justification by faith alone largely as justification by faith and works, for it defines justification by faith as "walking in the way of martyrdom" and to "prefer what is right and true". Justification by works is defined as trying to save oneself by one's own efforts in "isolated concentration" and wanting "to make life a self-sufficient totality". The wording defines faith in such a way that its nature is ultimately in itself and not in God. Faith becomes defined by one's commitment. Justification by works is spoken of in a way that allows the pious to exclude their own works from its definition. They are not "isolated" or "self-sufficient" works since they still rely on grace and are connected to the way of Jesus. The quote reads more like a comparison of semi-pelagianism and pelagianism than a comparison between the views of Augustine and Palagian. Whether or not that is Ratzinger's full intention of the wider work, I cannot say for certain. But the thrust of his assessment is that Giertz replaces walking the way of Christ with saying the right words. This reading of Ratzinger on faith alone would make Giertz's work seem contrary to faith since that is a faith understood through religious works. What Giertz is presenting instead is (as I pointed out to him in regards to Hammer) faith understood as spiritual impoverishment upon which everything that is relied on when Christ should be is taken away. "It is precisely our crowns of glory that Jesus Christ must take from all of us before he can be our Savior" (p241). It is coming to experience how it is that Jesus could say "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matt 5:3).

We should here join our friend in quoting Jesus from Mark 12 in regards to the greatest commandment: to love God with the whole heart and the second like it, to love one's neighbor as oneself (Mark 12:28-31). The difference that Faith Alone (as well as Luther, as well as myself) assert is not that those things don't matter, but that man will never be justified by trying them. Love instead becomes active in faith (Gal 5:6), whereby it is enlivened by God's own love (1 John 4:19). This too was part of Herr Peder's sermon:

"When we have been justified by pure grace through faith alone - then works come. Between God and us, as reasons for salvation, there is nothing to place. Faith alone stands there. Works do not have their place between God and us but between our neighbor and us. When grace and forgiveness pour down upon us from above, then the stream floods further. We become endearing and cordial, we help, pray, and forgive. Yet, the more we receive of undeserved forgiveness, the more we have to give of the love that serves our neighbor without asking for reward. But these deeds that in truth could be called good deeds, they have nothing to do with the righteousness that applies before God." -p255

What was seen as a formula of belief in Faith Alone should not be seen as earning grace through right belief, but right belief that comes through the right sharing of the message of grace. "How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" (Rom 10:14).

Indeed, this assertion by the author that one does not receive heaven because of undeserved grace but "one's belief in undeserved grace" is soundly incorrect in Giertz's theology in general or the story itself. See again the extended quotes from the sermon above. It is won for us and opened up for us by undeserved grace shown in Jesus'. That is what it means to receive it by faith! Only when it is seen as a result of God's message of grace in Christ can this be understood. Instead the author goes to the end of the story and references the phrase "I received back heaven when I was led to believe in the undeserved grace." This was the proof that it was not undeserved grace but belief in it that mattered. A wider look at the verse however helps reveal again the proper theological message:

"Peder," he said, "it is strange: today I have received back both heaven and earth...both the church and the kingdom." The priest looked at him, puzzled. "Yes, I mean I received back heaven when I was led to believe in the undeserved grace. Now heaven above is open to me, and I will never again barter with God, only thank him. But when I understood this forgiveness of sins, I also found peace on earth. Before, I bartered with men and left them because of their sins. Now I know that we all bear the same cross and that I am the greatest among sinners. Now I will gladly help and serve. Now I am glad to be able to sit like the others in the church pews. And now I believe that I will go back to my old place at the castle and do what good I can - and I can live every day in the forgiveness of sins." He was quiet for a minute. "Peder," he said, "isn't it strange that everything is so simple when one has the forgiveness of sins? Is it not the heart of the whole of our existence this atonement and the forgiveness of sins?" ... "Yes," he said, "so it is. This is the heart of everything: the atonement and the forgiveness of sins."

With exception to one line I omitted (to avoid spoilers) this is how the book ends. Tell me, does that quote teach one to rely on secret password or undeserved grace? Indeed the title (Faith Alone: the Heart of Everything) and the final line both speak of what is the heart of everything: Jesus Christ who our faith is in and who won our atonement and forgiveness of sins.

4. Giertz in World War II and Luther on Rebellion

Next we need to address the claim that Giertz was all about pacifism in the face of Nazi Germany. Faith Alone was written in the 40's. This led the author to assert that Herr Peder's insistent opposition towards rebellion was a message about resistance to Naziism, and that Giertz was either a coward or had a twisted philosophy. Before we get into Giertz and Nazi Germany specifically, it is important to see that Giertz is not simply making his own theological assertion here, he is instead espousing Luther's.

One thing about Luther was he did not believe that rebellion was godly. This is problematic to American Lutherans whose own national history is built on rebellion, it's troublesome as we look back and criticize German Lutherans under Hitler, but it's true. Luther felt God governed the left hand kingdom through the state. This becomes most pointedly shown in his response to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525. Luther was particularly appalled that the Gospel was being used as justification for murdering, pillaging, and taking by force. He also had a lot to lose as it risked his relationship with German authorities that were protecting him from the church if they grew sour on the Reformation. But, to his credit, Luther maintains this opposition even when it is in his favor with the Smalkald League against the emperor. It is not until Bekenntnis by Amsdorf and Flacius in 1548 (after the events of Faith Alone) that we have Lutheran theology of resistance.

Luther's view was that subjects were vocationally to be subject to those in authority, and those in authority were vocationally to execute justice. This meant it was the responsibility of authorities to deal with other corrupt authorities. "The fact that the rulers are wicked and unjust does not excuse disorder and rebellion, for the punishing of wickedness is not the responsibility of everyone, but of the worldly rulers who bear the sword." (Admonition to Peace).

Giertz takes a similar approach in Faith Alone: 
"A Christian never rebels...To suffer injustice is hard but salutary. One should not try to escape the cross with violence...He who takes up the sword shall die by the sword. The Master said that just when Peter wanted to take justice into his own hands. God still allows the sword to go where it is needed. He can set one authority against the other. He can set the council against the king and the king against the Kaiser. And finally, he can use the sin of one to punish the other." -p199

We must therefore, first state that Giertz, whether one agrees with it or not, is pleased to see written at the time of Nazi Germany's tyranny or not, is 
1) not advocating complete pacifism. This view expects other governments to act to stop the tyrant. It is rebellion that is seen as a trespass of one's God-given duties and often to avoid cross-bearing. Also,
2) this is a view that predates Hitler by four hundred years and was predominant among Lutherans. It brought a bad rap to a lot of prominent German Lutherans (not named Bonhoeffer) to espouse this view, especially because some used it inappropriately to support Hitler.

If anything, one can actually see from Giertz an honest struggle with this view as well played out in a few subtle moments, as if to suggest Giertz agreed with but nevertheless struggled with the view. Just before the quote above Martin asks Peder "Do you then mean that a man should never try to push a tyrant out of the way?" And then the recent history of Sweden's independence was brought to the fore of Martin's mind and before going into the quote I read above Peder prefaces it with, "You ask more than any man can answer." Also, from the conclusion of the conversation on p206 Martin asks a more pointed question to the issue at hand (I will not quote it here because of spoilers, but it began "But if the king now allows.." The priest's face becomes pursed, he starts to sweat, and it says the scrivener never received an answer to his question.

Also, Peder can hardly be seen as a champion to cowardly or silent pacifism. At the start of the story he put his wife in hiding so he could continue his pastoral duties, believing that it may cost him his life. When the rabble came to the troops, he was part of the intervention that tried to keep the tenuous peace. And at the end, he spoke so harshly the soldiers questioned his loyalty. Just because one does not suggest being a part of a plot to kill Hitler like Bonhoeffer did not mean they were cowards or advocated doing nothing in the face of Naziism. There are other forms of resistance.

Now let's note a few things about Giertz and World War II specifically, because Giertz does speak about it in several of his works. The World Wars were to Giertz the absolute epitome of humanity's inability to shake depravity. 

"Three years after [1911] came the World War. Humankind was shocked. Was such a thing possible in a world that was to be guided by human reason and the indwelling power of goodness in the human heart?...Then at last came peace, and that was even worse - a permanent condition of crisis and chaos, revolution and reaction, rising international unrest, until we landed once again in a new war, compared to which the first one was only an idyll. In this world of lies and broken promises, of deportations and prison camps, of destruction, murder, and torture we no longer speak of man's natural goodness or of the "natural law of love";" ("The Big Lie and the Big Truth"). 

"A whole state can reject all belief in sin, as did Hitler's third Reich, but that does not hinder slavery, falsity and violence and other sins from bearing their bitter fruit." ("How Modern is the Grace of God") 

Likewise, he felt that teaching people the old faith was important towards preventing giving up the faith for tyrany:

"And the Christianity which proved that it could stand fast when the storms really came and the totalitarian state showed its satanic face, that was a faith which was solidly grounded in the Word of God and would not yield an inch from what God had spoken. Germany is a real lesson to us. Those Christians who were counted as modern, up-to-date and undogmatic, were usually those who were swept away in the brackish waters. Those who recently had been liberal Christians became Deutche Christen. Those who remained steadfast were the despised conservatives and old-fashioned Christians who had never departed from the confession, and still remained loyal to the ancient hated confessions, those which have been despised by the world and yet have overcome the world." ("Faith Which Can Never Die").

These three quotes all come from Message of the Church in a Time of Crisis which was brought into English in 1953, meaning all these works are likely written within 10 years of Faith Alone and come in and around the time of World War II itself. But lest one assume that it is all talk, or that Giertz only did something after (since I cannot tell you the date all these were first put to pen), we do have another source on this matter: Birgitta Giertz (Bo's daughter). Several years ago, Birgitta shared memories of her father that were translated into English. These memories can be found at 1517.org. It is the second of these three posts that is relevant here as she shares memories especially during World War II. Here we can see that Giertz was particularly active in sheltering refugees from the war. This included a family whose father was in a concentration camp, a family whose father fought in the resistance, and a couple of Danish boys who he had no idea were coming or ever knew about but when they came to the border they were told to say they were coming to see Bo Giertz. When Bo was asked about it, even though he knew nothing about it, he said yes and took them in. With this atmosphere in the home, Birgitta recalls:

The presence of our Danish guests gave rise to many questions and discussions about society and politics; about right and wrong, and the different opportunities and obligations to take a stand and do something. Dad was very clear in these conversations. He clearly opposed Nazism and was just as clear when it came to how an individual should behave. One has to speak out when he encounters something that is wrong, and one has to set up and help those who need it. And this is something one has to do regardless of the consequences it might have for himself. A concrete example of this attitude showed in his conduct a few years later when he actively wrote and worked against the Baltic Repatriation. This was the first time I realized that which I later came to see was a foundational feature of dad’s personality; to fight for that which one thought to be right regardless of what it costs.

5. Neo-Scholastic and gnostic?

As the author tries to make sense of Faith Alone without assenting to his assertions, he ultimately makes two equally wild conclusions: either Giertz is a gnostic or a neo-scholastic. He uses gnostic as a means to categorize the "secret password" view and neo-scholastic to I think try to make sense of the ordo salutis, since he particularly sees it as trying to apply philosophical frameworks to theology and he makes a frankly strange assessment of ontology that I can not adequately say I fully understand. His case for neo-scholasticism is that ontologies instead of humans mediate salvation. 

Giertz is not a gnostic. The author fails to understand the difference between gnosis and kyrgma. Faith Alone is not about secret passwords and formulas but about proclaiming Jesus Christ alone! Gnostics believed they possessed the secrets and only had to unlock them. True evangelical Christianity proclaims Jesus Christ. That is revelatory. Paul speaks of it this way, and we would hardly consider him gnostic:

"I became [the church's] servant according to God's commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints." -Colossians 1:25-26

This mystery revealed is the gospel, which Paul says is revealed "by faith for faith" (Rom 1:17). It is thoroughly biblical to understand that the gospel is only truly understood "by faith" and its message of undeserved grace is "for faith". Gnostic thought is also rather escapist in quality typically. This too does not reflect the story of the characters in Faith Alone.

Likewise, we cannot call this neo-scholasticism. The author misrepresents Giertz as speaking of devotion to devotion itself. "Perhaps Giertz believes ontologies but not humans mediate salvation. That is, while adoring Mary and Saints is excessively sentimental, adoring the doctrine of undeserved grace, "praying" to faith, etc. are valid methods of interpretation." This view is a total skew of the story. No one prays to faith in the story. Andreas prays "Dear Lord" not "Dear faith", together Peder and Andreas pray "You have redeemed us, Lord, faithful God." There are no grounds for this except that one assumes that if saints are done away with, something must be put in their stead. But the only thing the book tolerates in their stead is Jesus. Humans are vessels of mediating this message, but not primarily through the lives of saints but the preaching of the Gospel. 

This reflects what Giertz has said elsewhere:

"We know very well that faith is not true so long as there is a secret or open trust in our own merits. Now the church's task is to let the Word work a true faith...the church preaches seriously and penetratingly about sin and grace, about the heart's corruption and Christ's atonement, about the contrast between self-righteousness and God's righteousness. Then she crushes all false supports of faith and anchors faith where it shall be anchored, on Christ the rock." (Giertz, A Shepherd's Letter)

Conclusion

The author's understanding of Giertz's theology as a "will to salvation" and "password" faith understand the entire book from the working of the individual who must truly desire God aright, and seek out and unlock the secret within him. This viewpoint is entirely unchristian. It leaves the work of Jesus and his church totally out of it. One can not read Faith Alone and adequately present its contents if one has left Christ and the church's ministry out of it. It is wildly antithentical to Giertz's theology in this book and beyond. This review sadly sells everything short and reads it according to a schema that is not there. His assessments of the implications of this story in the context of World War II are engaging, but come from an ignorance of the roots of that theological framework or of Giertz's engagement in life and theology around the topic. The devotion to Ratzinger's understanding of justification by faith will leave one struggling with Faith Alone because of the way Ratzinger (or at least as he was quoted and presented) offers a more semi-pelagian understanding of justification by faith that is frankly justification by faith and works, which will hardly make grace be solely from faith alone through Christ alone. 

The author does get right this note in his conclusion: "Catholics often criticize Lutherans for taking steps designed to make reconciliation harder." This leads him to conclude of Giertz, "To those still under Giertz's teaching, though, the full weight of the semantic formula must be carried, so they believe, to enter Heaven." He is right in the assessment, that Catholic spirituality is easier. However, it is not comforting or correct in this matter. "Many people view Christian faith as something easy," Luther writes, "and quite a few people even count it as if it were related to the virtues. They do this because they have not judged faith in light of any experience, nor have they ever tasted its great power" (Freedom of a Christian). What the author is experiencing is what happens when Law and Gospel are rghtly distinguished. This will ultimately show one to be powerless in reconciling oneself to God. 

Yet, as is the entire point of the book, the Gospel accomplishes all.

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation." -2 Corinthians 5:18-19

"One is not righteous who does much, but the one who, without works, believes much in Christ. The law says 'do this' and it is never done. Grace says "believe in this" and it is already done." -Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation.

"But if I can't believe it?"

...

"Then you should give God the glory and believe it anyway."
 -Bo Giertz, Faith Alone

Armchair Book Review: A Shepherd's Letter

 The best thing of Giertz's since Christ's Church is now available in English for the first time!

After first encountering Bo Giertz through Hammer of God, I quickly sought out anything else of his I could find. One of the first things was "Liturgy & Spiritual Awakening". It solidified my conviction that this guy was a gift for the church. I later read how L&SA was a portion of a larger work of Giertz's: Herdebrev. The work was done as a manifesto of sorts for his diocese upon his election to bishop in 1949. I had gotten a copy in Swedish some time ago, but I kept hearing rumblings that it was coming to English. Well, the wait is finally over with A Shepherd's Letter: The Faith Once and For All Delivered to the Evangelical Church, translated by Bror Erickson. Before getting into the work itself let's talk about the cover judgment:

As usual, 1517 delivers a fine quality matte cover. This book gets some props for other elements. Similar to how I really liked their cover for Luther's Galatians commentary, I really like the cover art for this one as well. The quill pen is simple yet communicative, and the stem turned into a Shepherd's crook is a great touch. While I'm not generally a fan of the golden color it really works with the blue font and white art. And it stands out nicely on my shelf. It is also a more pleasing shade than the slightly more mustard color for Year of Grace Vol 1. The font is a rather large size (especially compared to the readable but small font size of the New Testament Devotional Commentary Vol 1). There are a few helpful footnotes (though not as many as say in Faith Alone), and in general Erickson has done a fine job in translating. I will note there were a few spots in the book that were a little harder to read at first glance than is typical of Bror's translating, and I am unsure as to whether that was a result of translator or the material translated. Given Bror's history I would lean towards the latter, but there were a couple moments where I felt the reading was not as smooth as I am used to (your spoiling me Bror!). But one can hold up his portions that have also been translated by Nelson (the one who translated L&SA as well as Hammer and other works of Giertz's in the mid-twentieth century) and see the quality of work he does. One can also compare Nelson's translation of "Message of the Church in a Time of Crisis" with Erickson's here (more on that in a moment).

To the work itself, in short it has instantly vaulted to my top 3 works of Giertz's along with Christ's Church and Message of the Church in a Time of Crisis. I love Giertz's commentaries, novels, and sermons but as a reader of theology I gravitate towards his works that just give you his theology in a more straightforward (less artistic - be it narrative, sermon-craft, commentary, etc) way. And like those, you practically can find yourself being roused as you read it. The work reads with a sense of grandioseness. It was in reading this grandiose beginning that I started to feel like right away some of this was familiar. Giertz can be known for sharing similar phrases, illustrations, or points from time to time, this can be especially seen in some of his material on baptism theology. But this seemed overly familiar. So much so it made me open up Message of the Church in a Time of Crisis, a work prepared by Nelson in '53 in anticipation of Giertz's trip to the US. He included a series of essays and excerpts from Giertz, including the book's namesake, a piece entitled "Message of the Church in a Time of Crisis", this essay mirrors the first 21 pages of A Shepherd's Letter, from the chapter entitled "Crises and Sources of Strength", and the last three paragraphs (that appear after the section break) in that chapter appear as Nelson's openening to L&SA (the rest of the material to be found on p53-77 in Shepherd's Letter). When I mentioned to Bror I suspected this overlap between "Message of the Church" and Shepherd's Letter, he was not so sure precisely because of how Giertz can repeat. So I checked more thoroughly to confirm this. And I can say that every sentence of the first ten paragraphs in "Message" appear in Shepherd's Letter, at that point I started jumping paragraphs and could find the start of every paragraph in "Message" in Shepherd's Letter almost always as a paragraph start, though on a few occasions the paragraph break was not in common, but nothing in "Message" could not be found in A Shepherd's Letter. It is worth noting that there is a bit of material in Shepherd's Letter that does not appear in "Message" and it is noticeably almost always material specific to the Church of Sweden, which leads me to believe Nelson omitted it. 

This is significant, because I love Message of the Church as a whole. It is probably my favorite of all of Giertz's works in English. Right away, I find its opening essay is the grand opening for A Shepherd's Letter. This sets the tone for the work as a whole. The work is rousing and evangelical in nature. It is immensely quotable (as friends of mine on Facebook quickly found as I bombarded them over the days I read from it with quotes). This is Giertz at his best, and for my favorite theologian that is saying something! I cannot stress enough how good of a read this is.

Giertz's work is essentially divided into three main parts: The inheritance from the early church, the Reformation, and the Awakenings. Strangely Erickson places the last part as a subsection of the second, but in Herdebrev it is put into a separate chapter entirely and this clear sectioning can be seen in the end of his introduction on p22. Perhaps it is because of the noticeable difference in size from the third section to the other two and that it is the only one to not include subsections that leads to this decision. In his introduction Giertz states his intention in turning to lessons from these momentous moments in church history:

"So our working plan is this: to learn from the past to be able to meet tomorrow, to dive as deeply into the church's great river of life so that we are prepared to proclaim Christ's Word before new men and live his life in the manner that belongs to this new century in the church's history."

This work really gives us Giertz's core theological convictions. Giertz was never interested in forming new trends in theology but in faithfully adapting the message to the church today. This interest is part of his giftedness. He shows here his ability to find the heart and best of the past. This gives a lot of his work a timeless quality. Yet when you read him, there is something fresh in his work that makes it feel truly contextualized to his world (and to a somewhat lesser extent our own).

Giertz begins with the inheritance of early church with a subsection on the scriptures, and here there is both a lot of material of his you will find elsewhere packed together (see for example his essay "The Bible's View and the View of the Bible" in works like Then Fell the Lord's Fire and The New Testament Devotional Commentary Vol 1) and some unique ways in which he speaks of the Word and preaching. Here we see some of his helpfulness in homiletical construction, as he gives insight into more concrete ways of preaching the law. The chapter also includes the subsection "Liturgy & Spiritual Awakening" as well as sections on Dogma, the Lord's Supper, and the Pastoral Office. It was nice to have a work on the pastoral office that did not address the issue of women's ordination, since that was the major controversy of Giertz's day. I have in the past noted that it is prevalent enough in his works that it is hard to miss, and that does make it harder to get acceptance by him in the ELCA. This is a work that even while addressing the office specifically, does not go into that area where he and my church would be in clear disagreement. That makes this also perhaps the next work of his to really push towards opening up more ELCA Lutheran's towards Giertz as a theologian. And that is great because his stuff on the pastoral office is great.

I do have to admit though, that I encountered in this work in his section on the Lord's Supper another area where I strongly disagree with Giertz. He posits that "it does not really do much to preach about the sacrament" which I would greatly disagree with. Now a little later he does say "It certainly has great meaning to preach the Lord's Supper. It is particularly needed in some places to be said that Jesus 'receives sinners and eats with them.'" And to his credit, I understand the point he is making. He is arguing that the sacrament preaches far more in the act than in the sermon. "It is better to let them preach themselves, just as they do..." and "That which remains to be said concerning the Lord's Supper, it says better itself." And I agree with him here, in that the Sacraments carry their own unique giftedness towards proclaiming to the Christian and therefore its greatest effect is in the form and purpose for which Jesus gave it. Nevertheless, I was taken aback by this statement regarding not preaching the sacrament. Granted, perhaps the key word too is "about". Something in this section just did not sit right with me. There was, however, plenty of good material even here. I owe inspiration for my Maundy Thursday sermon to his material on 1 Cor 11:26 on p84. 

The second part of the book was in fact perhaps the best in terms of an avid reader of Giertz getting some material not abundant in his other available works: that would be his chapter on the inheritance from the Reformation. While this theology in general appears elsewhere, it is taken up here in much a more formal and complete form than one is likely to find anywhere else in his English works. His subsections deal with justification by faith, view of man, life in society, the freedom of the church, and evangelical freedom (as well in English the awakenings, but we will talk about that separately). These last three sections in particular are a real gift and very well laid out. Giertz demonstrates again his ability to capture the heart of these theological concepts. His work on vocation is phenomenal and really deserves credit. But there are few places where he takes it up with the same amount of material as he does here (I suspect Kyrkofromhet might include a significant portion towards this, but that is still in translation). The only place I can think of that rivals this section in the works of Giertz on vocation would be "What Is an Evangelical Lutheran Christian". We also see his concern for the relationship between the State and the Church in this section.

The last section regards the Awakenings, and here it is clear that Giertz felt more of a need to defend the importance of this moment in Swedish history towards the church's future. I'm curious if the term väckelse ("awakening") carried some wider baggage or connotations as it does in English (Erickson even has to give a footnote distinguishing these awakenings from the great awakenings in America). He puts forward four characteristics of awakening: 1) a sense that something must happen with man, 2) conversion is a work of God through the Word, 3) concern that faith must be true, and 4) emphasis on daily repentance. The second is perhaps the most important as he talks about the ordo salutis which I've talked about elsewhere as it becomes a central method of Giertz's theological application. 

It's worth also noting his conclusion chapter, since here we see Giertz's vision that the church hold fast to the message through these inheritances as she adapts to new situations and changing landscapes. He talks about the need for organizational restructuring (something he does oversee in his time as bishop and attests to in his essay "Kyrkan i smältdegeln"), and urban awakenings. He emphasizes that there is something similar in their content and yet this commitment to the past cannot be a reason to resist all adaptation. "We do not learn from the past in order to conserve what men thought and did. Human traditions may never be so dear to us. We can still dispense with them."

I'm probably never going to not recommend a Giertz book. But some deserve a stronger push than others towards our awareness and need to read it. This is one of those books. It comes with my highest recommendation. Biased though I am towards Giertz as a whole, it's hard to see how someone who desires the evangelical faith to flourish in the church today would not want to read or share this material.

This really is a message for the whole church. I'll close with a quote from his section on awakening:

This is the church's way. We know very well that faith is not true so long as there is a secret or open trust in our own merits. Now the church's task is to let the Word work a true faith. The disciples are all who hear the Word and receive it with sincere hearts. So, the church does not need to test the faith of an individual. She does not hold examinations of faith as a condition for access to her sanctuaries or the Lord's Supper. Everyone who wants to take the path of discipleship and follow his master to be instructed, he is welcome. Yet for all this, the church preaches seriously and penetratingly about sin and grace, about the heart's corruption and Christ's atonement, about the contrast between self-righteousness and God's righteousness. Then she crushes all false supports of faith and anchors faith where it shall be anchored, on Christ the rock. -p195

Armchair Book Review: Unveiling Mercy

 Chad Bird's devotional balances everything about as well as any devotional out there.

When I first met Steve Byrnes from 1517 Publishing, he kept telling me how I have to read this Chad Bird guy. I must admit I had never heard of Bird before. I later found I had come across a quote of his but he wasn't a name that I had particularly taken note of. Reading his devotional Unveiling Mercy: 365 Daily Devotions Based On Insights from the Old Testament Hebrew has totally changed that. I now stop to catch videos of his when I see them pass through my Facebook feed, listen to his "40 Minutes in the Old Testament" podcast, and hope at some point to get his book The Christ Key. To put it simply, Bird's book was the right kind of everything.

I believe language is important, but no one demonstrates this as well as Bird. In just about every devotion I read, I found the word study he offered enlightening. Yet the book is not heavy or anything. It is perfectly accessible to anyone all the while I always found it insightful and not too shallow. It deepens your biblical knowledge. I first used it for my church's weekly prayer pauses where we would read from a devotional, and eventually switched over to it for my own personal daily devotions as I enjoyed it so much.

The book is very well drawn out. Each devotion is ascetically pleasing to the eyes, easy to delineate between date, title of the devotion, Hebrew word, biblical text, and devotion itself. No page looked cluttered or busy. No devotion felt too long or drawn out. Along with showing the word in the Hebrew letters at the top, in the devotion itself he would transliterate it in italics so it was always clear one was encountering a Hebrew word. The devotion would often give background on the word such as its roots or where else it was used in scripture or its wider meaning. In each way one felt they had a better grasp on the devotional text at hand. 

But the most important piece, what makes this such a good devotional and so highly recommended, was that every devotion ultimately moves towards Christ. Bird's Old Testament commentary is the most Christocentric devotional I've ever read. I love that about the book. It helps us truly understand Jesus as the heart of the Scripture, fights against the modern marcionistic tendency to divorce Jesus from the God of the Old Testament, and sheds new lights on both the devotional text at hand and Christ himself. This feature alone, even if it didn't have the wonderful word studies would make this devotional as evangelical (in the true sense of the word) as any and worth my recommendation. 

Each devotion ends with a very brief prayer, sometimes from the scriptures themselves. The devotions would sometimes from one day to another be one texts rather close to one another, really enriching therefore some biblical texts as a whole.

I honestly have no critique of this book. I can't speak highly enough about it. People who want a Jesus-focused, enlightening, accessible daily devotional will likely do no better than this book. It earns my highest grade.

Armchair Book Review: Augsburg Confession: A Guide For the Perplexed

A great little resource to accompany those who could use a little help understanding arguably the most important document in Lutheran history, though I wish it included that document.

My newest read from 1517 Publishing is Mark Mattes little booklet The Augsburg Confession: A Guide for the Perplexed.

I'm big for the Augsburg Confession, as my first line might hint at. I think there is no other document that is more definitive or important towards understanding and articulating Lutheranism and the faith it professes. Mattes himself says "in terms of public statement of faith, the most important document for Lutherans is the Augsburg Confession...adhered to by all Lutheran churches throughout the world." But sadly most Lutherans are not actually familiar with the AC. Former hymnals like The Lutheran Hymnary used to even include it in each hymnal, but now the only confessional documents most Lutherans encounter are the ecumenical creeds and the Small Catechism. On top of it, having taught courses on the confessions for our synod, I can say that the style in the AC is just a bit more difficult for some folks. That is where this little booklet comes in.

Mattes tiny booklet (17 pages, easily read in one brief sitting) provides a simple introduction and summary of the articles of the Augsburg Confession. He offers both a brief historical introduction to the document itself and then offers in his own words a good summary of each article of faith (and at times how it differed from those other church traditions of the Reformation). As such, this little book is easily accessible and helpful for laity in particular in accessing one of their confessional documents. It's small enough, concise enough, and helpful enough that it could also probably serve as a resource in a church narthex to have available for visitors interested more in Lutheranism.

To help give a sense of the size, here it is held up against a church hymnal. Am I the only one who reads a title like that and right away assumes it would be a copy of the Augsburg Confession?

My biggest issue with the book is that it does not include the text of the Augsburg Confession itself. I won't lie about my disappointment over this, since when I first got it the cover made me think that the bulk of the document was the AC itself surrounded by helpful notes, background, etc from Mattes. I actually said when I got it, "This is great, its even smaller in size than my copy of the AC, it'll be perfect to take with me." And when I paged through that impression continued since the layout at first glance appeared to be just that (until I read more closely). Because the AC is not something one might have access to readily (although you can access a translation here for free) and Mattes' notes would best be read side-by-side with one, that makes for my greatest disappointment with the work.

Here one can see the inside layout.

This document could be an aid to new students of theology, but especially to your typical Lutheran who would like to become more knowledgeable about Lutheran doctrine. For those who do not struggle with the AC as it is and are familiar with its historical background it will likely not offer much. Although I will say Mattes' ability to summarize some of the longer articles (especially in the second part of the AC) into a more succinct paragraph could have its benefits even for those quite familiar with it).

As a major fan of the AC and one who wants more people to be able to read our confessional documents I praise Mattes' work. I am even considering using it the next time I teach confessions in my Synod School of Theology. It's lack of including the AC when at first glace I expected that to be it's main content definitely takes it down a bit in my rating, since it loses some of its usefulness for me as a resource in my ministry that I thought it would have (it honestly would probably have been inserted into my Bible that I take with me in ministry). Those who think they could benefit from what is included, most definitely should get this booklet.

Arbitrating the MLB/MLBPA Nightmare

How is it that the MLB and MLBPA have their heads so far in the sand they cannot see how desperate the situation is?

Let's just point out a few things:

-People think there is already too much money in sports. And as such they hate seeing players get huge contracts (even though ownership still largely holds tons of green behind the curtain). With no salary caps and a strong union, the perception of greed is a huge turn off to tons of fans. Therefore, whenever money becomes holdups in the game - to a team pushing to get over the hump in competitiveness, when a player leaves for greener (pun intended) pastures, or labor disputes - fans get furious.

-add to that the diminishing interest in baseball. Some of this is to other sports, but some to other industries such as gaming and media that have exploded among newer generations of fans.

-then on top of this you have the commissioner's failed attempts to make baseball more exciting, yielding minimal gains at the cost of massive frustration to current fans.

-don't forget about a Covid shortened 2020 season that forced us to spend half the year without baseball and the other half less interested. Oh, and it featured more rule changes that fans hated.

-then throw in a couple scandals, like back-to-back World Series teams being investigated and penalized for electronic sign stealing and the realization that a great number of pitchers are using sticky substances to alter their grip and spin rate. And for good fun we will put as a cherry on top the fact that MLB handled that issue horribly too.

In short, Major League Baseball has not had a good run in recent years, and the blame is aplenty. 

Now enter 2021-2022 Offseason, in which just when the offseason was starting to get interesting the owners issued a lock-out due to the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and the inability of the League and Players' Association to negotiate a new one. This was supposed to help with leverage and maybe speed things up, but those same owners then proceeded to drag their feet in meetings for negotiations. Now we are told we have until the end of February, then any delays will result in canceled regular season games. 

Now all of the sudden there are regular meetings between the two sides. 

How ridiculous does this sound?

I love baseball's offseason, because so much activity happens and teams are filled with all sorts of possibilities. The reset button is hit and hope comes back alive for fans. But instead of that, most fans have sat around twiddling our thumbs wondering if there is even going to be baseball. Perhaps the MLBPA and the MLB owners and commissioner have not yet realized how desperate the situation is. Neither of them can afford to lose games over the CBA negotiations. The impact this has on the game that is already in a rough spot cannot be overstated.  

Therefore it is up to me to save baseball for us fans. I have decided to arbitrate the matter based on the reports of the most recent negotiations. Since they cannot decide and in some areas are worlds apart I will close the gap and settle the matter so we can get on with some baseball.

Minimum Salary: MLB wants 640k rising to 680k by 2026, the PA wants 775k rising to 895k, a 135k to 215k gap.

My ruling: No player is cut out of the massive revenues quite like the guys making the minimum. In this area I am all for the players and rule entirely in their favor: 775-895k!

Competitive Balance Tax: MLB 214mm rising to 222mm with harsher penalties for overages, MLBPA 245mm rising to 273mm. A 31-51mm gap. 

My ruling: Nothing hurts free agent spending like this, but when you look at the still sizeable gap in spending power that already exists between small and large market clubs it seems hard to justify such a significant raise as the MLBPA is seeking without furthering the feeling of haves and have nots. I am siding more in MLB's favor therefore, with a 222 million starting point rising 5mm a year maxing at 242 in 2026. However I am not granting MLB stricter penalties for overages. Teams already respond accordingly to the current penalties.

Pre-arb Bonus Pool: MLB 20mm to be distributed among top 30 pre-arb players, MLBPA 115mm among 150 top players. A 95 million and 120 player difference .

My Ruling: having limited the earning power of free agents with the CBT, it's absolutely important that the pre-arb players be prioritized. Therefore I am again ruling in favor of the MLBPA, at 90mm (a reasonable rate of 3mm per club) for the top 100 players.

Super-two Eligibility for Arbitration: MLB Top 22% of 2+ years service time, MLBPA 75%. A 53% difference.

My ruling: The name of the game for this CBA arbitration is get the poorest players paid. If MLB wants to maintain control of overall spending that especially impacts the free agent market then players should get more money sooner. I award MLBPA the full 75%.

Service Time Manipulation: MLB offering draft picks to teams whose players finish in top 3 for major awards, MLBPA wanting a full year of service granted for top finishes, with openness to draft picks for team.

My ruling: While it is my opinion that both of these proposals are lacking since they only incentivize not manipulating the service time of instant stars instead of any player, you work with what you get at the negotiating table, so I will accept both proposals. The teams get extra draft picks to incentivize putting their best young players on the field while the player receives the full year if he's good enough even if his team tried to hold him back. 

Anti-tanking Measures: MLB lottery for top four picks, MLBPA top seven with exclusion for multiple finishes below thresholds based off of market size.

My ruling: Given that usually 2-3 teams are tanking at any given time a top four lottery seems too small. I agree with the top seven lottery. I also agree with an exclusion from the lottery for teams that fall below a threshold for 3 or more years (2 is too short of a window to sometimes turn a franchise around). Additionally, it will only be different for large market teams if their spending is below a certain threshold, since a team could very easily be bad and have difficulty changing course if they have too much salary tied into players who rapidly declined.

Revenue Sharing: MLB no changes, MLBPA 30mm reduction.

My ruling: This is an instance where I stand with MLB. Being a fan of a small market team I've seen the fruits of revenue sharing. While MLBPA might be sour about how some small market teams have spent it, a reduction does not improve spending on players but only hurts them, especially as long at the CBT threshold stays lower. Therefore there will be no change.

Expanded Playoffs: MLB 14 teams, MLBPA 12 teams. 

My ruling: While I did like some things about the bracket system we saw in the 2020 playoffs, we also saw sub-.500 teams in the playoffs (my Brewers included). That really is kind of a joke. We don't need nearly half the league in the playoffs. MLBPA is awarded the 12 team recommendation.

Universal Designated Hitter: Both sides are in agreement.

My ruling: both sides are wrong. I would be open to new ways of determining if there is a designated hitter, such as there only being a DH as long as the starter remains in the game or the DH being determined by each individual team for their home games (at either start of the season or series by series). But a plain old universal DH brings down the strategy of the whole game. 

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

This CBA would grant real wins to each side. MLB gets what it primarily wants which is the tax threshold kept relatively close. MLBPA on the other side will advance the salaries of a massive number of players, arguably those who need it most. Additionally, the massive increase in super-two players and base salary will push up arb numbers and cause more non-tenders to allow players to reach free agency faster (along with fighting against service time manipulation that also will get players to free agency faster). Not only will this benefit controlled players, but it help close the gap between middling free agents and replacement level players, which should increase the value of such free agents as the alternative will no longer be as cheap. The biggest question I cannot answer is how much will these increases matter towards the tax thresholds for most teams.

So there you have it. I just saved baseball for 2022. You're welcome.

Armchair Book Review: Luther's Commentary on Galatians

 

Martin Luther's greatest commentary has been "digitally remastered" as it will in this new edition.

Luther has lectured on several books of the Bible. Romans gets a lot of attention because of how Luther himself attributes later his Reformation breakthrough to that book and we can see early development of justification by faith really starting to take shape within that commentary. However, as Green notes in How Melanchthon Helped Luther Discover the Gospel (review here) Luther's mature theology of justification, especially of forensic justification is not fully developed yet at that time. Green argues that for one to really see the mature Luther, one should read his 1535 Commentary on Galatians developed from his lectures on the book. It is important to note the edition as Luther also lectured on Galatians in 1519. But that edition - like his Romans commentary - is at the time of Luther's own development of Reformation Evangelical theology and far smaller in size than this edition.

Serious readers in Luther definitely need this book for this reason. There are few works of Luther that compare in size or depth, especially with that Mature Luther theology Green speaks of. Along with works like Bondage of the Will this is a Hallmark Luther masterpiece. Don't expect a quick read, as Luther says at the start of his preface "I can hardly believe I was so wordy" and that is an understatement. But because of his excessive size, you will get justification like hardly anywhere else in Luther's works. You will get comparisons to scholastic belief and pastoral concern that we see often in Luther, but you will get much more nuanced pieces as well. The work is particularly importantly towards Luther's theologies of the simul (the Christian being simultaneously saint and sinner), how God is revealed, the bondage of the will, and the proper distinction of Law and Gospel. Because of the situation Paul faces with the church in Galatia the book works well for Luther and engaging his own contemporary issues. The book features Luther's uncompromising style, and his commentary along with discussing modern issues or the theological implications of the verse often also include his homiletical style of paraphrasing. There are many moments in which he says things along the lines of "It is as if Paul were saying..." followed by a quotation to help one have a better understanding of the text. 

Now as I got this edition from 1517 Publishing, already having a copy from the American Edition of Luther's Works (vol 26-27), similar to my review of 1517's Freedom of a Christian I was particularly interested in how this edition stacked up against the competition. And my review in that respect could not be higher as this edition certainly surpasses that of LW's. Here are several things I noticed in comparison:

• Yes I know, you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. But we do. Whereas with Freedom of a Christian my critique centered on the cover, I couldn't be more pleased with this one (pictured above). I mean, there is just no getting around it: it's cool. And along with being cool it evokes the idea that you're going to get Luther taking to the mic, getting the word out. It evokes the right image. Also, it gives you some really important information - that it is the later 1535 edition of his commentary on Galatians not his 1519 one, that it is a commentary that is actually developed from his lecture notes, and that it is put into today's English. I've commented in the past on 1517's nice matte covers and this one is no different.
• Economically speaking this edition is nicer than the LW because it comes in a single edition whereas the LW copy requires two volumes (owing in large part to the 1519 Commentary also being included). Yet as a single edition it does not suffer greatly from font size or spacing. This is something 1517 in general needs to be commended on again. As I am currently reading Bo Giertz's commentary on the synoptics (expect a review on that in the future), I have noticed how there is actually quite a bit crammed into a single page, but it doesn't feel crammed when reading, one has to take sort of a backed up view to realize just how much they've actually done that. This tells me 1517 has done well in finding a font, size, and spacing that gets the most without making the reading experience suffer. While this book is in no means a large print book, and might be hard for those who old eyes, I had absolutely no objection to its size.
• I was surprised to find that LW did not even include Luther's prefaces but only his introductory summation of Paul's argument in Galatians. This is sad, especially because some of Luther's wit comes through in this part of the book. Like his outline of the book given the mock title "Let's Hear it for Self-Righteousness and its Fifty Select Virtues Resulting from Works! As Penned by the Apostle Paul to the Galatians" in which he highlights from the chapters fifty claims of Paul about justification by works that immediately show why they are contrary to the Gospel of justification. 
• The overall layout of the book is superior as well to LW. The use of bold for highlighting when we moved on to a new verse made for more noticeable transitions when paging through than LW's italics. It also allowed the headings for argument transitions (which were done like LW in italics) to be more distinguishable from the verse transitions. Additionally, LW put where we were in the commentary in the inner margin of the header whereas 1517's puts it more noticeably in the center of the header. These little things made for subtle but noticeable improvements on the reading experience. Another detail that this includes that LW does not is the dates and breaks of the lectures.
• The work is full of translator footnotes. I'm an absolute fan of footnotes (as I lamented in my review of Green who used endnotes). Most of the footnotes are merely sharing the original Latin, which though I am not proficient in even I was still able to find at times inciteful. And had I a better grasp of the language I would imagine would be very helpful. There were at times also references to word plays, historical references, and differences from other English editions. All these make for a good scholastic edition and therefore give this book a place in academia.
• The book however is not falsely advertising when it says "in today's English" on the cover. I found that as I held it side by side with my LW edition the English was definitely smoother and the work superior. This was really important because one of the questions I asked myself as I looked at this work was "why would I want this edition over against the others that are already out there?" As you can hopefully see, it is my belief that this work is worth the buy.
• There are some sections italicized and referenced as left out of the first English translations that were included in this edition. However, I am unsure as to what editions these may be and if any are new enough that readers may likely still be using them. The sections I checked against LW were included in that edition. But it's worth noting that some editions are inferior to this in regards to whole paragraphs missing.
• There are sections where there exists some decent amount of differentiation in translation. I was surprised at the way one translation would put a phrase in the preceding to succeeding sentence as opposed to the other. There were even areas where they did not both include or agree on a scriptural reference. I was also confused by how even some of the headings/delineations to new verses did not always agree. Not having the original I'm unsure as to which edition is closer to Luther or taking more liberties. But I was surprised to see this happen. I also noticed that this edition often split some paragraphs from the LW edition, which was helpful again on the eyes and overall layout of the book.

Overall, one of Luther's monumental achievements has received a commendable new look and is a worthy investment even for those who already possess predecessor copies. Translator Haroldo Camacho has done a commendable job in producing an edition that will serve academia as well as readers looking for Luther in more accessible English than some past editions. Luther's paraphrase of Paul's meaning of the final verse may just as well stand for his own intentions in these lectures: 

I have taught Christ to you with all purity, I have urged you, I have reproached you, I have not left anything undone that would be of benefit to you. There is nothing else I could have told you. But with all my heart I pray that our Lord Jesus Christ bless and multiply my effort and govern you by His Spirit throughout eternity.

Armchair Grade: A, 9/10

Top 10 Games of Thrones Moments

 So I recently re-watched all of Game of Thrones in a semi-binge stretch. I've seen the whole series before - several seasons multiple times - but this was the first time I did the entire series from start to finish in one short stretch. As I did, I was reminded of how much I must agree with those who feel the final seasons to be pretty disappointing and frankly too Hollywood script in style. But it really doesn't change the fact that overall Game of Thrones still stands out as one of the finest shows ever to air. George RR Martin's characters are deep, his story compelling, and his twists memorable. On top of all that the show had great production values. It featured a great cast, fantastic props/costumes/sets, emotional music, and graphics that so far stand well the test of time. Sure it had it's drawbacks, like the final season controversies, or how some night scenes were done in too much dark making watching it really difficult (which sadly happened often in fighting sequences where quick movement and cuts made it even harder), and some storylines were way too drawn out. I mean, when the season 1 finale ends with dragons born and whitewalkers marching but neither enter into the seven kingdoms until season 8...I mean, come on!). But this blog is about some of my favorite moments in this, one of my favorite series. This is your one and only warning of SPOILERS. And at this point, if you haven't watched the series yet you don't really get to cry about spoilers.

1. Bring Me Ned's Head. This was one of those first real disappointing moments in the series, before you learned not to get too attached to any character because they could be given the axe (or in Ned's case, the sword). But that is precisely why this moment is so important for me. The show already had intrigue and twists, but this was the moment it was clear that this would not be like other shows. Up to that point it had seemed like Ned was the main character. In any normal story he would be safe (at least until the end of the series). Didn't matter how many CTU directors kicked the bucket, you always knew Jack Bauer makes it. But in Game of Thrones, you can be Ned freak'n Stark and it won't matter.
   
   
   
   
2. Petyr loses the game. It was probably the last real twist in Game of Thrones, that is, of the sort where you think you know where things are going and then someone changes the course of the game. The truth is, when it happens to Little Finger, it was not done well. That is, it never is really clear if Arya and Sansa are playing Little Finger the whole time or just at the end. And if the whole time why are they doing it when they are alone, and if at the end what causes them to shift gears and work together. Whereas other twists may have been unexpected, they are not totally out of the blue. But all issues with how this played out aside, Little Finger's death was the most satisfying one since Joffrey drank the kool-aid at his own wedding. And the real truth was there was a point where it started to feel like there was a real chance the show would end with him on the iron throne. It was about the only outcome I was not prepared to accept. So when he died in the season 7 finale, I breathed a sigh of relief.
3. The Knighting of Lady Brienne. It may sound strange, but this may be my single favorite moment in the entire series. Of all the things that felt fitting, none were more so than this. Brienne really earns her place as a character in the show, and her loyalty and honor is unflinching. In such a corrupted world, she stands out in a good way. And it is so true to character that Jaime Lannister wouldn't care a lick about tradition and be willing to knight a woman. When he does it really is the climax of their friendship too more than the eventual sex scene. And it is beautifully mirrored in the series finale when she fills in his history in the book of the knights of the king's guard. When you add to all that it happens on what they imagine will be the last night of their life, it is an emotional honor. There may be a lot of bad decisions in the final season, but the stuff between around Jaime and Brienne's characters may be the best, and were still well done in that season.
   
   
   
   
4. Jaqen's Grin. It was a simple moment, but when Jaqen H'ghar tells Arya she has finally become no one, and Arya asserts instead that she is a Stark and is going home, Jaqen actually grins for the briefest of moments. While the ambiguity leaves room for interpretation, I took it to mean that all along that's what he really intended for her. At the very least he did not seem disappointed that she would not remain there among the faceless men. It also explains his place in Westeros may have been intentional all along. But most importantly as a viewer one has a certain level of excitement that comes in Arya going home and pride in Arya really claiming her identity when for pretty much the entire show after season 1 she had been hiding who she was. And knowing her commitment to her list, it was bound to lead to something entertaining. Which brings us to...
   
   
   
   
5. Lord Frey's last supper. Okay, so I really didn't like that when Arya came back to Westeros, she's all of the sudden the greatest warrior alive. It was kind of fun the first time you see it, but the more you do the more it doesn't make sense and the more it makes her too super. She nearly dies from another girl in Braavos, but Brienne of freak'n Tarth who bested all the best of Westeros fights her to a draw? Arya didn't learn how to be the best fighter, she learned how to be a skilled one. But more importantly she learned how to wear faces. It was that trick which she put to great effect against the Frey's. It was in that style that Arya's character should have been carried forward the rest of the show (again, final season flaws). Not only did Arya's ability to assassinate the Frey's feel fitting to her character and the show as a whole, but the way she made him eat his own children was an ode to a children's story referenced earlier in the series about the fate the befalls those who shed blood under a false security of hospitality. 
   
   
   
   
6. Tyrion's Confession. To be sure his confession in the Vale was also entertaining, but few moments in the show were as memorable as when Tyrion confesses his disdain for everyone in King's Landing after his father uses his lover to get him wrongly convicted of murdering Joffrey. Peter Dinklage nailed the scene. Whether it was his brokenhearted emotion when she started lying, or his utter frustration and bitterness in the middle, or his self-satisfied pride in not only telling everyone off but believing he will get off by declaring a trial by combat. Add to it the hallowed sound of the Rains of Castemere that played dramatically when he concluded and you just have to give it up as the most complete scene in the entire series. I've watched that scene alone sometimes it's so good. That monologue is like Al-Pacino-at-the-end-of-Scent-of-a-Woman kind of good.
   
   
   
   
7. Jaime's first and last embrace. After traveling to Dorne to get Myrcella back for the queen, Jaime and Myrcella have an open and honest conversation below deck of the ship. In it, he is about to admit that he is Myrcella's father when she affirms it first. And in her affirmations she gives Jaime a warm embrace. The significance is well acted out, for this was the first time Jaime gets to hold his kid as his own. While he had always known Myrcella to be his daughter, it was the first time for him to be known as father. And it is the significance of that embrace, which any dad can appreciate, but being a father of an adopted child perhaps strikes me a bit more as I recall too the first time I was called and received as dad. Thus this moment pulls at my heartstrings. And it makes her death that unfolds during that embrace that much more tragic.
   
   
   
   
8. Liberation of the Unsullied. Along with her underdog status, the thing that really makes so many viewers want to see Daeneryus take the throne was when she proved to not only be strong, but just. And that moment came especially in season 3 when she negotiates (against all urging) the trade of one of her dragons in return for the entire army of the unsullied, a group that would become the backbone of her forces throughout the series. But instead of accepting slave soldiers for her dragon, she uses her dragon to burn the master and frees all the unsullied, having them slaughter all the slave masters. This revolutions convinced many that she was not only different from her mad father, but would be different from the slew of other contenders for the crown in the show. Even after her increase in cruelty and the death it brought her, the unsullied remained unceasingly loyal to her. But along with applauding her revulsion to slavery and her style of conquering slavers' bay, the act really made her story more interesting, her chances of taking the throne significant, and her fanbase much wider.
   
   
   
   
9. Aemon's Past. Maester Aemon is really a kind, wise, and generally enjoyable tertiary character. And when he reveals to Jon his family origins and his own feelings over the fall of his own house he adds another layer to his character. One of my favorite moments to that comes towards his final moments when a from his deathbed he feels little Sam's head and starts speaking about his little brother Egg. This moment - along with its general sweetness to the character of Aemon - was of significance to me because of my love for A Tale of a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms which follow the exploits of Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg, who would grow to become King Aegon ([V] I think). There are several other references to these two, but this one is the best.
   
   

   
   

   
10. Arya's Hound. Probably the best subplot in all of Game of Thrones is the exploits of Arya and the Hound together. Their animosity and eventual partnership is funny, entertaining, and emotional. This comes to climax when Brienne finds Arya and the Hound suspects her to be a Lannister agent looking to take Arya back to King's Landing. When Brienne asks if Arya would be safer with Clegane and he says she would and that he's protecting her, it makes official what had already been clear - she was no longer his hostage. It also is a major point in Clegane's own redemption narrative. Plus the fight that followed proved to be another great victory for Brienne of Tarth, further cementing her as the greatest warrior in Westeros.
    
    
    
    

    
    
    

Armchair Book Review: Reclaiming the Reformation

 A fine calling to look to the Augsburg Confession for the church's future, but while providing breadth lacks some in depth. 

My newest read courtesy of the generosity of the folks at 1517 Publishing is Magnus Persson's book Reclaiming the Reformation: Christ for You in Community translated by Bror Erickson, who as usual does well to bring the work into a smooth, working English such that one is not thinking about it being a translation. As per usual you can also expect the product quality to be quite fine, with the nice matte covers that one comes to expect from 1517 now. You also get the pure faith alone theology that one would expect from them as well.

Persson's book is essentially a desire to understand and shape the church according to the Augsburg Confession, especially article VII "[The Church] is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel". To return to this vision he follows Luther's marks of the church from his work "On the Councils and the Church". Each chapter explores these marks such as baptism, the Word, communion, the office of ministry, etc. He essentially is making a case that this is what the church needs to reform itself around instead of trends, entertainment, numbers, popularity, or relevance. The basic concept of the book is one I totally agree with and felt made a nice backbone. 

The book had three distinct gifts. First, covering a decent amount in a relatively small book (just under 200 pages). He really does have a lot to say on each topic and covers a pretty expansive breadth of angles around each theological topic. Additionally he writes in a pretty accessible style. I would think this book, while it may be too much for someone new to the faith, would be perfectly accessible to a lay person who wanted to go deeper in his/her studies. And that reader would probably be pretty satisfied with what was covered. Lastly, Persson is good at gathering scripture passages to root each section and teaching firmly according to the biblical witness. 

The book did have a few downsides as well though. For one, while I agreed with by large with what he wrote, I did not find much pleasure of the read. I found myself often checking to see when the chapter ended and so forth as I was trying to do a chapter a day. And for me, I think the issue was not an objection to the content or even the writing style (he does have some nice quotable moments), but rather the waters felt just a foot too shallow for me. That's why I kind of temper it as saying this book is probably good for the experienced lay person, or early theology student, but not so much for the more theologically immersed. For a guy who professed in the beginning the central role Giertz had on his own theology, this is where he was inferior to Giertz, who was perhaps more accessible and profound. Persson's work did not hit with the same profound ability of articulation.

Also interesting is his own personal story, which one gets hints at within the book. His journey includes a charismatic background (which he still identifies as, though not a "fanatic" as he puts it) and a rather large and popular church in Sweden (all the more an accomplishment to have such over there). His journey, and his work a bit remind me of Tullian Tchividjian, though Tchividjian could be a bit more accessible and a bit deeper in his theology. But their overall style has some similarities and accessibilities. 

In all, I found it a hard book to grade because of how much I agreed with and was impressed by it and yet how I felt like the water was up to my sternum the whole time, hence why I felt it was important to note that there is a specific level of person this book is intended for. I should also note that he mentions that he sees this book as a first in a series of books he plans to write, with each successive one covering a single mark of the church. If so, that may be the next level of depth that I wanted. Nevertheless, this one is a good call to shape ourselves according to our understanding of what the church really is, and to see past the glamor or the struggles to embrace her according to these marks and the gospel they proclaim.

Armchair Grade: C+/B-

[*Additional note: This is not a despairing C, as this overall review should make clear. This book is good for what it is, but what it is is not what I give my high grades for.]

If this sounds like a good book for you, order your copy here.

Armchair Book Review: How Melanchthon Helped Luther Discover the Gospel

 Those looking for a relatively-short-yet-insightful work on Luther's theology of justification, and especially those with interest in Melanchthon will need to get this book by Lowell Green.

My newest read from 1517 Publishing is the reprinting (the work is originally from 1980) of Lowell Green's work How Melanchthon Helped Luther Discover the Gospel: The Doctrine of Justification in the Reformation. A title I found both true and yet to some degree wanting. As one can see from my first line assessment, the title does reflect the areas it touches. Yet I must confess that I expected a greater emphasis on the "how" and found a great portion of the book either looking at a) what is Luther's reformational theology of justification and b) how did it compare/contrast with Melanchthon's?

That being said, I really enjoyed the book. I honestly wasn't sure at first, because the first couple chapters read like a battle of historians, where Green focuses on errors of various Luther scholars who either confuse Luther's justification theology because of failing to recognize its development over his career or who dismiss his later justification theology (what he refers to as the "mature Luther") in favor of his earlier presentations of the theology that Green argues (convincingly, I might add) was still in development. In many ways, the book is ultimately about refuting "analytic" justification in favor of a "forensic" view of justification. The way he goes about refuting it is by ultimately showing Luther's theology coming under the influence and shape of Melanchthon's which was clearly forensic.

From these two issues (Luther's developing theology of justification and ultimately settling on forensic justification), Green then goes into Melanchthon. As a fan of Melanchthon who thinks his late career controversies with the gnesios has sadly soured him in the eyes of Lutherans for so long, it was really nice to see a work that was willing to give him a lot of his own due credit and be able to show where he was ahead of Luther in some essential areas of what would become confessional Lutheran theology. Scott Keith, who writes a forward, puts it well: "Additionally, when Melanchthon is relegated as unimportant, due to his perceived later doctrinal errors, his contributions to not only Lutheranism, but also the Church as a whole, are too easily overlooked." Part of the importance of this work was that Green wrote about and researched Melanchthon at a time when very few did.

The book is divided into three parts: 1) The Problem of the "Young Luther", 2) How Melanchthon Helped Luther Develop in His Views, and 3) The Reformational Doctrine of Justification. The things I liked best about the work were:

• Green's careful scholarship. I was blown away by his ability to comprehensively reference, and not only reference but deeply analyze what was referenced. He never just gave a quote and left it at that, but instead explained it, noted contextual elements that may be lost in just reading it isolated, and judged the reliability or weight of any given quote. For instance, he regularly would note when quoting Luther's works that were actually words of Luther's written by another how reliable that scribe was, and if there were variants what was to be preferred. He was able to assess how Luther used the same terms differently over various periods of time.
• The study of Luther's and Melanchthon's developments and how they differed but impacted each other. Not only did I learn a lot of new things in these regards (because, as Green laments, too many historians paint a broad stroke over the figure's whole life), but it helped one better appreciate the different style of Luther and Melanchthon. Keith in his introduction identifies these styles (and Green does too, but not in quite the same way) as Luther the preacher, Melanchthon the teacher, unified in their doctrine of justification by agreement on its forensic nature. 
• For how informative it was, the book is not exceptionally long (just under 240 pages). It didn't feel drawling. Though it got into the weeds in detail, one doesn't feel bogged down in them. Especially after the first part, the chapters are a pretty decent length, although I do recall feeling like a few of the chapters on Melanchthon in part 2 were perhaps too short. A surprise for a book by a Melanchthon scholar who bemoaned the lack of appreciation he had heretofore received from historians and theologians.

There were, however, a few things I did not like as much. These things included:

• Endnotes. Any work that makes significant use of references and scholastic commentary on one's own assertions ought to use footnotes so the reader is not forced to constantly jump to the end of the chapter to track down the reference as I was on a regular basis. because he used so many references, I would have liked easy access to them.
• While I really was fascinated by what I was learning in the early chapters, they felt at times a bit pretentious in their style. This isn't unique to Green, but rather typical I find in a lot of historians when they are refuting. It's hard to read such sections without reading in at least some degree of ego. Perhaps it is because I came out of the Fordean school of forensic justification already, but I felt that he went on about how wrong some other historians were for a bit too long when I was already on board as a reader and ready for him to move on.
• Speaking of which, there were several themes and concepts that were just a bit too repetitive  in the work. While they may help with overall point retention, it made the work feel a bit bloated (which is crazy to think about since I already noted that it actually packs quite a bit in a relatively small book!).

I do also wonder how accessible the book would be to someone not extremely versed in Reformation history and theology. This last critique therefore comes with hesitancy, since I cannot say definitively. But my gut tells me that if I had little to no exposure to these things, the book may be above me. That's not a blight per se, but rather an awareness that the reader would do well to have some knowledge of the world and circumstances it engages. But if you are, and especially if you have an interest in Luther, Melanchthon, or justification, then you really need to have this book on your shelf. I would consider it an essential to having a more firm understanding of Luther's development and of Melanchthon in general.

As those things apply to me, I can't help but recommend this book as fascinating, informative, and a work well worth its reprinting.  

Armchair Grade: A-/B+

If you would like to purchase the book, you can get it direct from 1517 Publishing here.