By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Many passages in Luther's writings may suggest only too easily that his is, indeed, a "theocentric" view in the sense of the Lundensian theologians, or even that he tacitly presupposes the God of classical theism. Thus, for example, he says in "Treatise on Good Works (1520)" that God is "a God who gives to everyone and takes nothing for what he gives" (LW, 44: 64).
But the context makes clear that his point is, in fact, a different point. He wants to say that God gives solely and simply because God is who God is, not because of anything that the creatures do or can do. In this sense, God's is a giving that takes nothing for what God gives.
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