Grace in Nature and History: Luther's Doctrine of Creation Revisited1

Abstract

Interpreting Luther’s Trinitarian theology of creation, it is shown how Luther’s doctrine of creation is modelled on his soteriology. In his writing Against Latomus (1521) Luther established his famous distinction between the external grace of God (favor dei) and the divine gift (donom): the living Christ. A similar distinction can be re-constructed from Luther’s theology of creation as presented in his catechisms, sermons, tracts, and exegetical writings. Just as Luther makes a distinction between the Christ who takes side for us within God, and the Christ who is dwelling in the heart of the believer, Luther makes a the distinction between the fatherly love toward humankind (benevolentia), and the Father, Son and Spirit, who are at work from within the life of the creatures in God’s blessing (benedictio). There is an implicit notion of a pater pro nobis and a pater in nobis, which reflects, in the order of creation, the classic distinction between Christus pro nobis and Christus in nobis. According to Luther’s theology of the Eucharist and divine blessing, there exists a union between God and creature, which has a similar structure as the union between Christ and believer. There are distinctions to be drawn as well as correlations to be seen between the order of creation and the order of salvation.