1082. What Luther attributes . . .

SCANNED PDF

1. What Luther attributes to a "natural," or "general," knowledge is, roughly, what I argue is essentially human in arguing that to be human at all is to exist by faith. That is to say, we are naturally, or generally, aware both that there is a God and that the demand of this God is the demand of love (in the sense of the "Golden Rule"). But, like Luther, I agree that anything else, beyond this, is controversial, in that different religions, etc. offer different understandings of what God thinks of us and requires of us, in particular.

2. The uniqueness of the gospel, and hence of the Christ who is the explicit ontic source authorizing it, is to be located in (1) its radicalizing representation of the reality and demand of God; and (2) its offer of forgiveness, notwithstanding sin, i.e., our willful refusal to live in accordance with what we naturally, or generally, know. In other words, Christ re-presents the demand and the gift, or the gift and the demand, of God.