19 minute read
VOCATIO EX NIHILO: LUTHER’S CONCEPTION OF VOCATION IN HIS GENESIS LECTURES
Mark Menacher
Vocation
The term “vocation” is derived from the Latin noun vocatio and from the verb vocare, meaning “to call.” In an article entitled “Choosing a Vocational School or Certificate Program” on the Federal Trade Commission’s website, one finds the following, “Vocational schools and certificate programs train students for skilled jobs, including automotive technicians, medical assistants, hair stylists, certified nursing aids, electronics technicians, paralegals, and truck drivers. Some schools also help students find possible employers and apply for jobs.”1 More traditionally, the 1982 edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “vocation” as “1. divine call to, or sense of fitness for, a career or occupation. 2. employment, trade, profession, ...”2 The notion that “vocation” refers chiefly to learning some sort of trade or skill is commonplace, particularly in the English-speaking world. Today, “vocation” understood as a “divine call,” except in the usage of religious societies or institutions, would arguably be considered quaint but naively anachronistic.
Even within religious societies and institutions, defining a “divine call” is fraught with difficulties. In many religious circles, it is quite common to hear people say, “God led me to ...,” or “God placed it on my heart to ...,” or “The Spirit moved me to ...” How does one quantify or qualify or criticize such oftentimes deeply held convictions of “divinely inspired” vocation, especially if such persons are conducting their (selfperceived) “callings” in a charitable or at least a benign way? In contrast, having been issued “a proper [public] call,” career clergy often look condescendingly upon such utterances, but should they, and if so, why?
For Lutherans as per Article XIV of the unaltered Confessio Augustana (CA) “no one in the church shall publicly teach or preach or distribute the sacraments without an orderly call” (ordentlichen Beruf in German), or as in the Latin version, “no one in the church ought publicly to teach or to administer the sacraments unless duly called” (rite vocatus).3 So, what is an “orderly call,” and what does it mean to be “duly called”?
For Lutherans as per Article XIV of the unaltered Confessio Augustana (CA) “no one in the church shall publicly teach or preach or distribute the sacraments without an orderly call.”
Altering the Unaltered
Unfortunately in recent years, answering this question has become unnecessarily complicated by some who prefer their own “altered” version of CA Article XIV, which in the first edition of the Kolb-Wengert Book of Concord states that “no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call” (note the addition of “[public]”).4 In a similar vein but opposite in action, the K-W BoC also alters the reading of CA Article V, as compared with 1998 German version, Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche (BSLK), by deleting note 1 which states, “Luther did not understand the office of preaching in a clerical sense.”5 As one could extrapolate from Tappert’s expanded elucidation of this same note, taken together such additions and deletions to the Lutheran Confessions are misleading,6 and deliberately so. They represent a determined effort to undermine the Reformation’s “system crashing” (systemsprengend) principle inaugurated by the concept of the priesthood of all believers, which abolished “the difference between clerics and the laity” and arguably represents the truly re-forming impetus for the Reformation.7
If Luther sought in his treatise To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate (1520) to attack the first of three walls of the “Romanists,” namely the division between the spiritual and temporal estates,8 i.e., between clergy and laity, then the attempts in modern times by many so-called Lutherans to reerect this first wall have been aptly described by Theodore Tappert already in the 1950s as a “neo-Romantic remythologization” of the church.9 This “neo-Romantic remythologization,” in turn, can be viewed as a reaction to various streams of the historical-critical method of interpreting Scripture, especially Rudolf Bultmann’s program of demythologizing the New Testament. For many Christians, such “scholarly” methods seem to have undermined, if not dissolved, the authority of Scripture. All controversies regarding “higher critical” methods of interpreting Scripture aside, the various, old and new humanistic attempts to analyze, rationalize, intellectualize, psychologize, contextualize, moralize, and politicize the Bible, have created a void in global Protestantism which clerics with vested interests have sought to fill with themselves.
If, for Luther, the Bible was once the Reformation’s weapon of papal “mass” destruction, the post-Reformation, humanistic dissection and demythologization of Scripture necessarily brought Luther down with it. With Scripture discredited, Luther dispatched, and one’s fellow priests dumbed and drummed down, adulterating the Lutheran Confessions was a matter of course and would hopefully go either unnoticed or perhaps even be rewarded.10 Despite current impressions and deceptive intentions, the following brief depiction of Luther’s understanding of Christian vocation will show that calling and being called is not the purview of ecclesial institutions and their clergy, but rather that vocare reflects the very life of God.
Luther’s Commentary on Genesis
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth... And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:1, 3), because “In the beginning was the Word, ...” (John 1:1). Within the Triune God, according to Luther, God the Father is the speaker who creates, and God the Son is the uncreated Word through whom the Father’s speaking creates all things.11 As interpreted through Romans 4:17, “God, in fact, calls (vocat) things which do not exist into being, and he does not speak grammatical terms but true and abiding things.”12 For Luther, God creating everything out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) through the word, and God calling nonexistent things into being, are two sides of the same coin.
After six days of “very good” creating, including making adam both male and female in his own image, God rested, but the serpent tested, and Adam and Eve tasted the tempting fruit salad. Then, the Lord called (vocavit) Adam and inquired where he was. “The phrase, ‘He called (vocavit) him,’ is to be so understood that he called (vocaverit) Adam to judgment [because of the sin for which God declared Adam alone to be responsible]. However, here some raise the question regarding the person through whom Adam has been called (vocatus est).”13 In response to such queries, Luther is happy to accept that God’s call was mediated by angels, in the same way that human magistrates do not speak or act of their own accord but rather in God’s stead. Either way, “what scripture calls (vocat) the judgment of God is to be understood as the judgments which are exercised or administered through human beings.”14 Thus, whether in the spiritual or in the temporal domain, Luther displays here his predilection for God’s call to be mediated interpersonally.
For Luther, God creating everything out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) through the word, and God calling nonexistent things into being, are two sides of the same coin.
God’s calling of Adam in the garden after the fall should not be viewed simply as a vocal effort to locate humanity’s first parents. “Indeed, [God] wants to show Adam that despite being hidden he was not hidden from God and that while fleeing God he had not flown God. For this happens naturally in all sin, that we stupidly try to escape God’s wrath, and yet we cannot escape it. It is extreme stupidity when we suppose that the more likely remedy [to sin] lies in fleeing from God rather than in returning to God. Unfortunately, our sinful nature cannot return to God.”15 Despite that, [God] “wants humanity to aspire to regain the lost image of God and to begin to hate sin more as the cause of this great evil, and God further wants Adam to admonish his descendants regarding what followed after sin; namely, that after being demented by Satan and having believed that he would be like God, he became like the Satan himself.”16 Whether calling everything into being or calling his creatures out of their self-inflicted self-destruction, God’s nature is reflected in his calling, his continual calling because only God’s word can create and recreate.
Although they were called before God for judgment, Adam and Eve watched as the serpent was condemned and cursed, and they instead were comforted by God’s promise of the forthcoming “seed of the woman,” namely the Son of God, who in due course would prevail against the serpent and sin. “Thus, remission of sins and full reception in grace are shown here to Adam and Eve as absolution from guilt and redemption from death, as liberation now from hell and from those fears by which they were nearly slain at God’s appearance.”17 The “seed of the woman,” a descendant of Adam and Eve, would not only crush the head of serpent under foot but would also enlist Adam and Eve in this battle against God’s enemies. The promised victory of the future Christ provided Adam and Eve with consolation in the present and also with the hope that they too would overcome death and be raised to eternal life on the last day.18 Thus, for Luther, the “good news” regarding the faith-creating gospel of Christ was readily in the world before humanity’s first parents could really grasp the gravity of their self-induced sin.19
Being called to this hope by the word of God, Adam and Eve as pious parents, in turn, became preachers (concionatos) who often and much told their children about the will and worship of God, about paradise and their calamitous fall into sin, and about the continual need to guard against such sin. More importantly, they would have also taught their children about the promise of the “seed of the woman” and about the promised future liberation from the calamities of sin.20 Luther concludes, “Adam and Eve are not only parents, nor do they simply rear their children and prepare them for this present life, but in fact they also perform the office of priests (Sacerdotum officio). Because they are filled with the Holy Spirit and because they are illuminated by the knowledge of Christ’s coming, they impart to their children the very hope of a future liberation and encourage them to offer gratitude to such a merciful God.”21 As priestly parents, Adam and Eve were called to preach both law and gospel to their children.
Luther concludes, “Adam and Eve are not only parents, nor do they simply rear their children and prepare them for this present life, but in fact they also perform the office of priests (Sacerdotum officio).”
Such good and pious teaching gains two kinds of hearers who give rise to a twofold church (gemina ecclesia). The true church is modeled after Abel, and the impious, hypocritical church follows in Cain’s footsteps. Cain’s church imitates the world, does not believe God’s promises, and is, according to Luther, embodied in the papacy. Conversely, despite being powerless, cast down, and even deprived of the name “church,” Abel’s ecclesia is nonetheless pious and believes God’s word. Not surprisingly, Luther considers Abel’s church manifest in the Wittenberg Reformers’ efforts.22
In Luther’s view, the gospel of the promised “seed of the woman” is borne by as many patriarch-priests as God deems necessary to propagate a viable witness to his promise,23 no matter how insignificant such priests appear in the world’s eyes. After Abel’s death, Seth and his son Enos and others became priests.24 Enoch was a chief prophet and priest who had six patriarchs for teachers.25 “Moses” (as the author of Genesis) describes Noah as “a supreme pontiff and priest, whom Peter calls (vocat) a ‘herald of righteousness.’”26 In contrast to the continued ungodliness and idolatry of the world even after the flood, Luther cites Abraham as embracing and honoring Noah’s son, Shem, not only “as the only minister or priest of the true God,”27 but also as a supreme pontiff, greater than the Roman pontiff.28 Foreshadowing the arrival of the “seed of the woman,” Luther maintains that Shem is none other than Melchizedek, the king of Salem. By virtue of holding a twofold office (munus) of king and priest29 and by being interpreted according to Hebrews as existing “without beginning or end,” Shem/Melchizedek serves as “a prototype of our priest, Christ, who is an eternal priest.”30
After the flood, ...Noah with his son Shem and his descendants governed the church. This is to make evident that our article of faith is true, that we believe in one, holy, catholic church in all ages, from the beginning of the world until the end of the world. ... So, the descendants of Shem have been heirs of the promise concerning Christ, whom God wanted preserved and defended in order that persons might exist with whom the church or the word might be found. For these cannot be separated: where the word is, there is the church, there is the Spirit, there is Christ, and everything... The fathers had a carnal succession just like later there was a carnal succession in the priesthood. However, Christ has not begotten sons in a carnal way. Accordingly, the church is hardly bound only to a place or to persons, but is there where the word is. Where the word is not, even if titles and office are there, the church is not there because God is not there.31
The Calling of Abraham
Perhaps the most theologically concise account in Genesis of what Lutherans cherish as justification by grace alone through faith alone takes place in the calling of Abraham. Like his father, Terah, Abraham served other gods, was thus an idolater, and merited not only reproof but also death and eternal damnation. Nonetheless “[God] has called (evocavit) him out of that impious church into another place.”32 “This granting of favor, that is, being liberated from idolatry, is not of one’s own merits or strength but solely of God’s mercy and calling (vocantis).”33 For “the Lord does not cast [Abraham] aside in this misery, but he calls (vocat) [Abraham], and through the call (vocationem) makes everything out of him who is nothing (nihil).34 “Thus, Abraham is ... nothing but material which the divine majesty through the word calls (evocat), grasps, and forms into a new human being and into a patriarch. Such is the universal rule that man of himself is nothing, is capable of nothing, and has nothing except sin, death, and damnation, but almighty God through his mercy makes it so that he is something and is liberated from sin, death, and damnation through Christ, the blessed seed.”35 God, whose word calls everything into being and reenacts the same when he calls sinners to repentance, forgiveness, and the priesthood, also calls redeemed and recreated sinners to particular offices. The term “office” is derived from officium in Latin and refers to a duty, obligation, or service (not to a room in a building). The corresponding term in German is Amt. For Luther, all offices are divinely instituted by God’s word. As indicated above, Adam and Eve perform the office of priests. With the word of God, the Holy Spirit exercises his office (officium) to accuse the world of sin and to recall (recovet) it to repentance and recognition of its fault (vitium).36 As already indicated, the Spirit of God officiates and administers the word of God through his saints. As such, Noah was “a faithful minister of the word (verbi minister) and thus an instrument (organum) of the Holy Spirit.”37 Consequently, the word of God when proclaimed (pronunciatur) by a human being is truly God’s word.38 As a priest, Noah functioned in the office/duty (munus) of bishop.39 Likewise, Abraham was chosen by God to be a bishop.40 Luther quips, “Here, now, ask our pontiffs and bishops, ‘Who anointed Abraham that he should exercise his pontifical office (Pontificale officium) among his people?’”41
In Luther’s view, exercising the office of God’s word is not primarily patterned after patriarchal “ecclesial” use and practice but is founded familially on Adam and Eve as humanity’s first priestly parents. “[God] has firstly entrusted (commendavit) the word to parents... and afterward to the teachers (doctores) in the church.” For the sake of good order, “the minister should teach in the church; the magistrates should govern the state, and parents should rule the home or the household; for these human ministries have been instituted by God ...”42 “Thus, when a government by virtue of its office calls (convocat) fellow citizens into military service to maintain peace and to avert injustice, obedience is shown to God.”43 Conversely, “disobedience towards parents is a manifest sign of imminent curse and calamity, as is contempt for the office of ministry and of civil government.”44 For Luther, God in his two realms reigns over fallen humanity both in the kingdom of the gospel and in the kingdom of the law by calling sinners through his word, mediated through human instruments in those two realms, to serve his creation both individually and corporately in a common priesthood ordained by Christ. Perhaps the preceding paragraphs will cast new light on a familiar text taught to some of us by our parents, namely Luther’s explanation to the third article of the Apostles’ Creed, which reads, "I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church he daily and abundantly forgives all my sins, and the sins of all believers, and on the last day he will raise me and all the dead and will grant eternal life to me and to all who believe in Christ. This is most certainly true."45
In Luther’s view, exercising the office of God’s word is not primarily patterned after patriarchal “ecclesial” use and practice but is founded familially on Adam and Eve as humanity’s first priestly parents.
All Christians Are Called
The God who called everything into existence out of nothing (vocatio ex nihilo) is the same God who continually calls his fallen creatures back into fellowship with himself. Fallen humanity’s response to that call gives rise to two churches, one which heeds God’s call and one which does not. Both churches have their priests who serve their God or their god(s), respectively, in the offices either to which they are divinely called or to which they have appointed themselves. Those in the office of proclamation (Predigtamt) who harbor the urge publicly or privately to denigrate their fellow priests in the pews, because they are not “ordained” in some pseudosacramental sense,46 may wish to contemplate whether they, from Luther’s perspective, are in the right church.
Mark D. Menacher, PhD serves as pastor of St. Luke's Lutheran Church, in La Mesa, California.
Endnotes:
1Federal Trade Commission, “Choosing a Vocational School or Certificate Program,” Accessed 15 Aug. 2023, https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/choosingvocational-school-or-certificateprogram#:~:text=Vocational%20schools%20and%20certificate%20programs%20t rain%20students%20for%20skilled%20jobs,employers%20and%20apply%20for% 20jobs
2J. B. Sykes ed., The Concise Oxford Diction of Current English (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1982), 1202.
3Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 12th edition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 69 (hereafter as BSLK).
4Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord - The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 46 (hereafter K-W, BoC), in which the word “[public]” was not only inserted into Article XIV but was then wrongly cited in note 78 as having been part of the 1580 Book of Concord.
5BSLK, 58 note 1, “Luther verstand das Predigtamt nicht klerical.” The note continues that since his treatise “Sermon on Good Works” (WA VI 250ff), Luther considered the divine ordering of society to be equally constituted between the ecclesial, marital, and statutory estates.
6Theodore G. Tappert, ed. and trans., The Book of Concord - The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 31 note 1 (hereafter Tappert, BoC), “This title [‘The Office of the Ministry’] would be misleading if it were not observed (as the text of the article makes clear) that the Reformers thought of the ‘the office of the ministry’ in other than clerical terms.”
7Volker Leppin, “Wie reformatorisch war die Reformation,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 99.2 (June 2002), 174-175.
8D. Martin Luthers Werke - Kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883), 6:406, 21-23-407, 10-28 [hereafter as WA]. Unless otherwise stated, translations are the author’s. Corresponding references to the same where existent are cited from Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols., J. Pelikan and H. Lehmann, eds. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House and Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955), 44:125-127 [hereafter as LW].
9Theodore Tappert, “Directions in Lutheran Losses to Other Communions,” Lutheran Quarterly 14 (2000): 206-208, especially 208.
10The notable exception to this trend is Kristian Baudler, Martin Luther’s Priesthood of All Believers - In an Age of Modern Myth (New York: Oxen Press, 2016), in which Baudler takes Timothy Wengert to task not only as an editor of the K-W, BoC but also for Wengert’s persistent program of what this author calls “laity bashing,” perhaps most prominently displayed in Timothy J. Wengert, Priesthood, Pastors, and Bishops - Public Ministry for the Reformation & Today (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).
11WA 42:13-14, 15, 17 = LW 1:16-17, 19, 22.
12WA 42:17, 16-17 = LW 1:21.
13WA 42:129, 21-23 = LW 1:173.
14WA 42:129, 25-27 = LW 1:173.
15WA 42:129, 39-130, 5 = LW 1:173-174.
16WA 42:166, 27-31 = LW 1:223.
17WA 42:142, 15-18 = LW 1:190.
18WA 42:143, 5-7 = LW 1:191.
19Cf., WA 42:376, 1-41 = LW 2:162-164.
20WA 42:183, 11-24 = LW 1:246.
21WA 42:183, 34-39 = LW 1:247.
22WA 42:184, 1-185, 22; 186:18-187, 41 = LW 1:247-249, 251-253.
23WA 42:423, 28-34 = LW 2:229.
24WA 42:342, 42-343, 1 = LW 2:114.
25WA 42:253, 5-6 = LW 1:344.
26WA 42:271, 8-9 = LW 2:13.
27WA 42:536, 18-19 = LW 2:382.
28WA 42:537, 8-12 = LW 2:383.
29WA 42:536, 28 = LW 2:382.
30WA 42:535, 32-33 = LW 2:381.
31WA 42:423, 20-24; 423, 35-37-424, 1; 424, 3-8 = LW 2:228-229.
32WA 42:436, 30-31 = LW 2:246.
33WA 42:437, 3-4 = LW 2:246.
34WA 42:437, 14-15 = LW 2:246.
35WA 42:437, 31-36 = LW 2:247.
36WA 42:290, 34-38 = LW 2:40
37WA 42:293, 13; 18-19 = LW 2:44
38WA 42:320, 10-11 = LW 2:82
39WA 42:378, 5 = LW 2:165
40WA 42:501, 5-9 = LW 2:334
41WA 42:467, 13-14 = LW 2:287
42WA 42:320, 27-321, 2 = LW 2:82-83
43WA 42:455, 36-37 = LW 2:272
44WA 42:385, 6-7 = LW 2:175.
45Tappert, BoC, 345.
46James M. Kittelson, “Historical and Systematic Theology in the Mirror of Church History: The Lessons of ‘Ordination’ in Sixteenth-Century Saxony,” Church History 71.4 (December 2002), 743-773.
