19 minute read
Simul Iustus et Maleficent? Reading Luther's Doctrine for Contemporary Proclamation
Martin Luther
Introduction
Lutherans are notoriously good at slogans: justification by faith, real presence, the priesthood of all believers, simultaneously saint and sinner. But too often theological slogans such as these have come to wield an influence wider than their comprehension. The aim of this short essay is to expand both the comprehension and, then and therefore, the usefulness of the last of these listed slogans. Shorthanded among the cognoscenti simply as “the simul,” the fuller phrase is simul iustus et peccator, rendered most frequently into English as “simultaneously saint and sinner” (even though the semantic domain of iustus would more frequently lead to translations like “justified,” “just,” or “righteous,” meanings which predominate in Luther ’s relevant discussions). In pursuit of this aim, we will proceed in three steps. First, we will read and summarize three passages from Luther where this formulation is articulated in his expositions of Romans and Galatians. Second, we will listen sympathetically to a contemporary artistic narrative that offers its own exploration of moral complexity and hope for redemption. Finally, in light of these parallel readings, we will offer some very brief suggestions to enhance our telling of the good news of Jesus in the contemporary contexts in which such artistic narratives find their home.
Expositions of Romans and Galatians
In the Romans lectures of 1515, Luther formulated the simul in his explanation of verse 4:7, which quotes the words of Psalm 31:1, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven.”1 Luther begins with an emphasis on the self-awareness of the saints. They know their own sin clearly. Luther explains, “The saints are always sinners in their own sight.” They confess the words of Psalm 51, “‘My sin is ever before me,’ that is, I always have it in my mind that I am a sinner.”2 In Luther ’s view, this is no delusion, no unfortunate failure of self-esteem. “Thus in their own sight and in truth they are unrighteous…They are actually sinners.”3 But this is only half the picture. Even while they are sinners “actually” and “in truth,” they are also righteous. God reckons them as righteous because of their confession. “They are actually sinners, but they are righteous by the imputation of a merciful God…they are sinners in fact but righteous in hope.” God does not impute their sins to them, but rather, graciously and in response to their faith in Christ, he imputes the status of SIMUL righteousness. This is news both wonderful and familiar to any who have read Luther before.
Luther also explains that this gift of righteousness by God’s imputation is the beginning of a life of struggle against sin. “For we believe in Him who promises to free us, and in the meantime we strive that sin may not rule over us but that we may withstand it until He takes it from us.”4 The justified Christian sinner is like a sick man “who believes the doctor who promises him a sure recovery and in the meantime obeys the doctor ’s order in the hope of the promised recovery and abstains from those things which have been forbidden him, so that he may in no way hinder the promised return to health or increase his sickness until the doctor can fulfill his promise to him.”5 Making the analogy clear, Luther explains that the sinner “is still a sinner, but he has the beginning of righteousness, so that he continues more and more always to seek it.”
Luther is aware that sin is more than outward acts of disobedience and interprets Paul similarly. Sin is a power or active agent at work in us, a tinder which sparks the flame of transgression. “It is no longer I that do it but sin which dwells in me,” Luther quotes from Rom 7:20. So every “act of sin (as it is called by the theologians) is more correctly sin in the sense of the work and fruit of sin, but sin itself is the passion, the tinder, and the concupiscence, or the inclination, toward evil…”6 This passion or inclination to evil brings forth sinful action, which is more properly understood as the fruit of sin at work within us.7 Righteousness works by the same logic in the opposite direction. So also “…our righteousness from God is the very turning toward the good and the avoiding of evil which is given to us inwardly through grace,” so that our good works become “the fruits of righteousness.” But the Christian should not expect to experience the entire removal of sin in this life, except only by imputation. “Experience bears witness that in whatever good work we perform, this concupiscence toward evil remains and no one is ever cleansed of it.” Luther is not shy to describe this kind of striving against sin as obedience to God, always remembering that it merits nothing. It is the result of God’s imputation of righteousness, not the cause of it. “The mercy of God is that this (sin) does remain and yet is not imputed as sin to those who call upon Him and cry out for deliverance.”8
There is an energy in Luther ’s simul that is sometimes missing in contemporary uses of the doctrine. The description of Christians as sinners to whom righteousness is reckoned may seem at first to represent a kind of stasis, a settled condition in the present age. But Luther imagines this reckoning of righteousness to be the beginning of something more dynamic. There is direction and movement in his fuller explanations of the simul. Christians are on their way to health and the cure of their disease. This agrees with Paul’s own rhetoric and suggests that we should think of the simul not so much as ontological stasis as eschatological dynamism, as an example of the dawning new creation. Thus, Paul writes to the still imperfect yet now righteous-by-faith Roman Christians and exhorts them in the eschatological direction of obedience to God and away from the power of sin. “Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness” (Rom 6:12-13).
Luther again articulates and explains the simul in his 1519 Galatians commentary with his comments on Gal 2:18, “But if I build up again those things which I tore down, then I prove myself a transgressor.” Luther ’s comments in this context agree with and expand his views from the Romans lectures. Whereas the Romans lectures put more focus on the experience of the saints who know their own sinfulness, now Luther ’s conviction about the dual experience of the Christian – both righteous and sinner – is expanded by being more directly grounded in the ambivalent testimony of Scripture. “Scripture establishes both facts.”9 The first epistle of John will say, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves (1 John 1:8),” and also “We know that everyone who is born of God does not sin” (1 John 5:18). Similarly Job is, on the one hand, a righteous and innocent man who, on the other hand, prays for the removal of his iniquity.10 Luther explains the seeming contradiction by describing Job as simul iustus, simul peccator. 11 Neither simple claim of Scripture is true to the exclusion of the other. Both are true at the same time, and the tension between them is truer than either pole could be on its own.
Perhaps unsurprisingly this same description of the complexity of the person of God leads again to similar reflections on the struggle against the sin that remains. Luther twice uses the noteworthy phrase “what is left of sin.” First, he explains that “what is left of sin and falls short of fulfilling the law is not imputed” to the Christian because they believe in Christ. Then he explains that the task of faith is “to drive what is left of sin out of the flesh” and that faith accomplishes this task “by means of various afflictions, hardships, and mortifications of the flesh.” Luther ’s description of the simul is not static but dynamic.
Luther calls once more on his increasingly familiar formula, simul iustus et peccator, in his 1535 Galatians commentary to explain Gal 3:6, “Thus Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.”12 As in the earlier examples, the same themes emerge in relationship to one another: the dual experience and status of the Christian, the Christian’s relationship to the sin that remains, and the dual nature of sin and righteousness as both internal powers and external works.
In this context, Luther adds something of an encomium to faith, answering the question why God reckons faith to us as complete righteousness, even when our righteousness remains in fact incomplete. “Faith justifies because it renders to God what is due him.”13 Faith attributes glory to God. It regards him as “truthful, wise, righteous, merciful, and almighty.” This is the most acceptable allegiance to God and sacrifice to God, and thus by faith the Christian fulfills the Law’s demand.14 “Therefore faith alone attributes glory to God.”
But even in this condition of worship and fulfilling the law by faith, “after faith there still remain remnants of sin in the flesh.”15 Righteousness is imputed to us, and it “does indeed begin through faith.” Its effect on us is the “first fruits of the Spirit,” but not the perfect righteousness that must wait “until the day of Christ.”16 Luther also continues to distinguish between the internal work of sin and its external effects. The “inner diseases of the heart, such as unbelief, doubt, contempt and hate for God” are the “fountain and cause of all evils,” whereas the “outward and course faults” are “little streams that proceed from those fountains.”17
The general content of Luther ’s views remains consistent across these passages. Christians are sinful in fact but righteous by imputation at the same time. They strive against the remnants of sin to bear the fruit of the Spirit in this life while awaiting a full victory over sin in the eschatological future. And the sin against which they strive is not merely a set of external deeds or behaviors but an internal force animating those behaviors.
Equally important, the expressed rhetorical context for Luther ’s views is also consistent. His purposes are to undercut the false righteousness of the hypocrites and sophists who think that they are no longer truly sinners and to give hope and consolation to the contrite who put their faith in the merciful forgiveness of God, to explain and defend the conviction that they are truly righteous by faith, even though they know they are still truly sinners in deed. Recognizing these twin rhetorical purposes explains what is missing from these passages: any real sense of exhortation to Christians in their struggle against sin. As we have noted above, Luther acknowledges and explains the nature of this struggle, but even in his comments on obviously hortatory Pauline passages Luther demurs to repeat the apostle’s rhetoric. His explanations of Gal 5:13, 16, and 25 in the 1519 commentary are all like this, and the same is true for his explanation of 5:16 again in the 1535 commentary. He explains there that Christians should walk by the Spirit and not the flesh, which means that they should regard their righteousness as coming from the Spirit and not from their walking.18 This is fine and true, of course, but the rhetorical target has moved. By 5:16, Paul has begun to argue for and urge the right use of spiritual freedom and power; Luther is still guarding against a misunderstanding of the source of righteousness. .
But Luther can sometimes shift gears. Consistent with his typical allergy to the self-righteousness of religious leaders in his own day, Luther seizes on Paul’s indictment of “vainglory” in Gal 5:26 and his exhortation to walk by (or conform to) the Spirit in 5:25.19 Similarly passionate exhortation can be found in his explanation of Gal 5:13.20 Luther paraphrases Paul, “Now it is up to you to be diligently on your guard not to use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.” He regards it as a terrible and widespread evil to transform the teaching about justification by faith into a license for the flesh. “Therefore,” Luther explains, “we teach and exhort our followers with great care and diligence” not to think of the freedom of the spirit as a “pretext for evil,”21 but rather “for them to be servants of one another through love.” The tendency of Luther elsewhere in these commentaries to lean away from Pauline exhortation should be read as evidence of his evaluation of the rhetorical needs of his context and not misinterpreted as a conviction that such exhortation is out of place or ineffectual.
Contemporary Artists and Audiences
Turning now to a different mode of reflection, we find contemporary artists and audiences expressing dissatisfaction with one-dimensionally good and evil characters and exploring their own questions about moral complexity. The creators of Wicked22 did this for the witches in the Wizard of Oz.23 Netflix has done it more recently for the characters of Karate Kid24 in their series Cobra Kai,25 and Disney has reimagined the famous characters of Sleeping Beauty26 in their blockbuster movie Maleficent,27 focusing especially on the stories of King Stefan and the eponymous Maleficent.
Maleficent
Stefan turns out to be complicated only in the sense that things are often not what they seem. His character in Sleeping Beauty is benign; in Maleficent he is malignant. He is introduced as a thief; he develops by vain ambition; and he ascends to reign by deceit and violence. He is also revealed to be an orphan, which opens the possibility that the audience would understand him as wounded and regard him sympathetically as having good reasons for his faults. But this is a possibility that the narrative itself leaves undeveloped.
Maleficent is more interesting. She is introduced as a trusted healer and protector. She shows compassion and forgiveness to Stefan and returns both him and his stolen item to where they belong (perhaps suggesting already the journey back to original goodness that her own character will eventually travel). She is also capable of real violence and destruction, though only after grievous provocation. She is an illustration of the now common proverb that “hurt people hurt people.” In the course of her story, she gradually comes to regret her acts of vengeance. She tries, unsuccessfully, to undo them, and she longs for the forgiveness that she does not expect to receive. In the end she turns from her wicked ways, eschewing the opportunity to kill Stefan and refusing to become her worst self. Stefan goes the opposite direction. He lunges at Maleficent to conquer her by violence and stumbles into the death of Gollum, plummeting to his demise and losing his life for the sake of the thing that promised him life but destined his life to ruin from the very beginning.
Stefan tells a realistic story. Many of us never learn. Our concupiscence and negative choices spiral, and fear overtakes us. We become increasingly worse versions of ourselves, with disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the people and natural world around us. Maleficent tells a hopeful story, and the audience must ask whether it is a plausible hope. Might we be people who are deeply good on the inside and only harm others when we ourselves have been harmed? Can we learn and grow ourselves out of our problems? To which of us would this apply? And what is the evidence around us for this organic process?
The character of Aurora (that name!) suggests that perhaps the story has its own doubts about Maleficent’s prospects if left to her own devices. Aurora is the one whose light shines in the darkness and begins to overcome it, turning the malevolence of her enemy back toward benevolence. Aurora names Maleficent her fairy godmother. By Aurora’s reckoning, Maleficent is good, and this reckoning begins to turn her toward the good. She who was cursed speaks grace and unleashes a power that begins to unravel the curse itself.
The analogy should not be exaggerated, and the intention here is not to demonstrate that Disney has unwittingly told a Gospel tale. But perhaps it is an invitation to tell the Gospel to a world that suspects that something like the simul might be true, or at least wishes that it could be. Must we all be defined by our worst moments? Is it possible that curses can be undone? Are there lights that can shine in deep darkness and not be overcome? Is forgiveness real, possible, and good? Who may grant it, and what are its effects?28
The watching public is all too aware that destructive forces and outcomes are everywhere, without good explanations for why. We grow increasingly cynical about non-apology apologies, especially from the powerful when they are caught red-handed, and sometimes we react by canceling the guilty beyond any hope of redemption. Admittedly, many demonstrate that they want not forgiveness but mere forgetfulness anyway. In all these ways we are tempted to locate the problem of sin and evil somewhere safely outside of ourselves. But the hero of this story has blood on her hands, and we the audience are invited to identify with her in ways that were never true in Sleeping Beauty. She longs for forgiveness and a different future, but she cannot get from here to there on her own. And Aurora’s intervention, tantalizing though it may be, is mostly a case of blind naivete and mistaken identity with felicitous consequences. But the diagnosis and the hope that come from the true light of the world are even better than that, not least because that light has come into the world in a history beyond fiction. Evangelical theologians and all witnesses to the Gospel would do well to listen sympathetically to those in our world who are looking for what the simul enables us to see. If we will be patient to walk around respectfully inside their stories, perhaps they may come to inhabit the story within which all other stories are seeking their place.
Steve Turnbull is the senior pastor at Upper Arlington Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio, where he lives with his wife Amy, their two children, and one delightfully incorrigible Labrador Retriever.
Endnotes
1Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, American Edition, vols. 1–30, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–76); vols. 31–55, ed. Helmut Lehmann (Philadelphia/Minneapolis: Muhlenberg/Fortress, 1957–86); vols. 56– 82, ed. Christopher Boyd Brown and Benjamin T. G. Mayes (St. Louis: Concordia, 2009). Hereafter LW. LW 25:257-277. The specific formula is found on p. 260, “…for he is at the same time both a sinner and a righteous man.”
2LW 25:257.
3LW 25:258.
4LW 25:260. The language of “striving,” which appears throughout this essay, will be recognized by many as an uncomfortable fit in at least some streams of Lutheran theology and piety, even though related terminology appears in both Luther and the Pauline epistles. The controversy is well beyond the confines of the present context, and Luther’s usage will simply be reflected here. Perhaps those who see the difficulties well could advance the overall discussion elsewhere by developing an account of Luther’s approving usage of the language and concepts and distinguishing it from other, unhelpful developments.
5LW 25:260.
6LW 25:259.
7Contemporary scholars are more divided on the exegesis of Romans 7, especially regarding the identity and role of the “I,” but the representation of sin as an active agent is unmistakable. According to Paul, sin may exercise dominion in death and reign over mortal human bodies (Rom 5:21; 6:14). Humans can be enslaved to sin, and sin can even “seize an opportunity” and “dwell in me” (Rom 6:17, 29; 7:8, 17).
8LW 25:259-60.
9LW 27:230.
10LW 27:230-31. Luther cites Job 1:8; 7:21; and 9:20.
11LW 27:231.
12LW 26:232 for the specific quotation of the formula.
13LW 26:227.
14This agrees with Luther’s contention in the earlier Galatians commentary that Gal 2:18 is about the tearing down of sin, not the law. In fact, the law is established and fulfilled through faith. See LW 27:228-229.
15LW 26:229.
16LW 26:230.
17LW 26:230.
18LW 27:63-66.
19LW 27:97-105.
20LW 27:48-51.
21LW 27:29.
22Schwartz, Stephan and Gregory Maguire. 2004. Wicked: a new musical.
23Langley, Noel, Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Mervyn LeRoy, Florence Ryerson, Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, et al. 1939. The Wizard of Oz. Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
24Avildsen, John G., Bill Conti, and Brooks Arthur. 1984. The Karate Kid. Delphi II Productions; Jerry Weintraub Productions.
25Heald, Josh, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg. 2018. Cobra Kai. Netflix.
26Clark, Les. Clyde Geronimi, Wolfgang Reitherman, and Hamilton Luske. 1959. Sleeping Beauty. Buena Vista Film Distribution Company.
27Stromberg, Robert, Linda Woolverton, Joe Roth, Angelina Jolie, Michael Vieira, Don Hahn, Palak Patel, et al. 2014. Maleficent. Jolie Pas; Roth Films; Walt Disney Pictures.
28There are countless, still broader themes in the narrative imagination of the Maleficent story that would be worthy of further reflection in other contexts. Consider that the primordial evil that gives rise to all the ills of the story is the juxtaposition of two adjacent cultures, inhabited by different races of creatures, segregated by misunderstanding and mutual fear, and brought into violent conflict by the imperial ambitions of the leader of one of them. Consider the crisis point of the story when a powerful man exploits erotic love and female trust to expand his power and advance his career. Or consider the persistent faith in the power of “true love” even as stories like this one replace romantic love with the love between sisters and friends.
