Placher on Luther & relying on grace

I’m re-reading William Placher’s The Domestication of Transcendence. His argument, in a nutshell, is that, starting in about the 17th century, thinking about God moved sharply away from an emphasis on mystery and the inadequacy of all human language and concepts when applied to God (as he finds in St. Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin) and toward an obsession with formulating clear and distinct ideas about God and making God part (even if the most important part) of a metaphysical scheme or system.

In chapter 6, “The Domestication of Grace,” Placher discusses how post-Reformation groups like the Pietists, Jansenists, and Puritans recoiled from the Reformers’ radical doctrine of grace and fixated upon discerning the signs of grace in themselves and in others. This led, almost inevitabley, to the idea that the successful and respectable members of society must be among the elect, and the poor and disreputable must be among the reprobate.

In the Pietists this took the form of endless introspection in order to determine whether one had been justified or not, as well as an almost obsessive avoidance of anything that might smack of impropriety, like dancing, joking, etc.

Placher contrasts this with Luther’s attitude:

If we are justified by grace alone through faith alone, he said, then we can take risks in our faith. After all, a Christian should not think “he is pleasing to God on account of what he does, but rather by a confident trust in his favor he does such tasks for a gracious and loving God and to his honor and praise alone. And in so doing he serves and benefits his neighbor.” The person trying to earn salvation can never fully concentrate on either the glory of God or the good of a needy neighbor; one will always be thinking about how much credit a morally good act will build up in one’s own account. If we realize that we need not worry about our salvation, by contrast, that “for ourselves we need nothing to make us pious,” then we act out of “pleasure and love.” “If someone desires from me a service I can render him, I will gladly do it out of good will, whether it is commanded or not. I will do so for the sake of brotherly love and because service to my neighbor is pleasing to God.” I can glorify God because God deserves the glory, and I can help my neighbors because they need my help; my own fate already rests secure in God’s grace.

Such confidence ought to free Christians from worrying overmuch about moral rules. Luther even proposed that, to make sure we do not take our own virtues too solemnly, we should from time to time consciously exercise our Christian freedom in a harmless way: sleep too late, eat or drink more than usual, take part in a practical joke. A faithful relation to God, he proposed, is like a good marriage. “When a husband and wife really love one another, have pleasure in each other, and thoroughly believe in their love, who teaches them how they are to behave to one another…?” They do not need checklists of instructions–indeed, if they are resorting to such checklists, then something has already gone wrong with the marriage–but they spontaneously do “even more than is necessary,” and freely, “with a glad, peaceful, and confident heart.” (p. 90)

The Pietists tended to look in themselves for assurance of their salvation. But Luther always insisted that we look outside of ourselves, that faith have something external to the self to hold on to. This is why he emphasized so strongly the promise in our baptism, in God’s word, and in the Lord’s Supper. We should, in other words, always look to Christ.