31 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

The Moral Function of Doctrine
By Ellen T. Charry

"[The] divorce of theoretical from practical concerns in doctrinal exegesis has been maintained at a high price: Intellectual concerns have obscured the moral shaping function of Christian beliefs. Yet, a careful examination of many dogmatic treatises reveals concern for the moral effects of doctrine alongside coherence and intelligibility. Where the two are found together, ignoring the moral and pastoral questions in favor of those of coherence and intelligibility distorts the author's intention and robs the church of one of its central tasks: the formation of character."

According to the prevailing scholarly view, Christian doctrine developed as a series of reactions to two kinds of pressure: challenges to its coherence and challenges to its intelligibility.¹ The pressure for coherence came from Scripture, liturgical and sacramental practices, popular piety, and already formulated doctrine. To be coherent, doctrine, it was thought, must show internal consistency and also be in accord with the Scripture and with previously accepted church practices and beliefs.

The pressure for intelligibility came from pagans, Jews, and dissenters within the church.² In the face of these secular and non-Christian religious perspectives, Christian doctrine was pressed not only to be consistent but also to be intelligible to people from non-Christian intellectual frameworks. This quest for intelligibility spurred additional doctrinal development.

In addition to viewing doctrine as reactive, modern scholarship approached it as objective truth. Doctrine summarizes what Christian intellectuals believed and confessed to be the truth about who God is and what God has done and why, as a way of standardizing Christian belief and practice. Explaining specific doctrines also separated truth from error about theological matters. Careful argumentation became

Ellen T. Charry is currently a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton, New Jersey and will assume a teaching post at Perkins School of Theology in the fall of 1993. She is the author of Franz Rosenzweig and the Freedom of God. This essay is drawn from her ongoing research, which will culminate in her forthcoming book Educating the Soul: The Tropological Function of Doctrine.

¹ Maurice Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967).
² Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 11-120.

32 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

the vehicle for expressing the true faith. In two treatises, Augustine set the precedent for church leaders to decide true as opposed to false beliefs.³ The doctrines they adopted became the standards for ensuring church unity and discipline. Church leaders came to define the truth, which they identified with salvation. Deviation was defined as error and judged damnable. With this much power concentrated in the hands of bishops, political power struggles became tied to disputes over proper doctrine. Subsequently, doctrinal struggles came to divide Christian traditions from one another.

Reacting against this divisive history, George Lindbeck has recently suggested thinking about doctrine differently.⁴ His idea is to think of doctrines as rules for group identity and practice, analogous to the grammatical rules of spoken language. This enables communities to step back from trying to impose doctrine on one another in the name of an exclusive truth. Instead, one might think of doctrines as the behavioral norms of a subculture that create group identity. Lindbeck's approach adapts theories of cultural anthropology to religious communities. In this view, one becomes religious the way one comes to speak a language: through practice and habit. Religiousness is learned behavior rather than a confession of propositional truth claims or the expression of an inner emotional state or feeling.

I

A practical perspective stands in contrast to all of these approaches to doctrine. Focus on the subjective, or practical, side of doctrine has not often met with approval from church leaders. In the medieval period, for example, Anselm of Canterbury most closely articulated an objective doctrine of the atonement, the view that Christ's death satisfies the debt human beings owe to God. Peter Abelard's doctrine of the atonement, articulated in response to Anselm, was a more practical approach, stressing the change that occurs in the believer who meditates upon the cross. Christ's work, according to Abelard, does not happen outside or above the believer, but in the believer when Christ's sacrifice functions as a great example to teach the believer the deepest form of love. By and large, the ostensibly objective teaching of Anselm has dominated subsequent Western theology, while Abelard's views have been treated as marginal. This essay takes a fresh look at Anselm's classic work on the atonement and suggests that, on close examination, Anselm and Abelard have not been as far apart as has generally been supposed.

Preference for the theoretical over the practical meaning of doctrine is both a consequence of identifying salvation with possession of the truth (as opposed to error) and a result of historical factors. Jaroslav Pelikan has noted that theology was done by bishops in the patristic

³ "Of True Religion" and "The Utility of Believing" in Augustine: Earlier Writings, edited by J.H.S. Burleigh (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953), pp. 218-323.
⁴ George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).

33 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

period, by monks in the medieval period, and by university professors in the modern period.⁵ As the universities developed in the medieval period, learning and intellectual reflection became located in the educated classes. Academic study was defined as theoretical in opposition to practical, as the pejorative use of the term "academic" suggests. Knowledge as objective truth, uninfluenced by practical or utilitarian considerations, now dominated the academy, where theology was done. Today, academic theology focuses primarily on the history of, or grounds for making theological claims. Consideration of the effects of beliefs on the believer has been relegated to the province of practical, ascetical, moral, or pastoral theology as distinct disciplines in the modern theological curriculum.⁶

This divorce of theoretical from practical concerns in doctrinal exegesis has been maintained at a high price: Intellectual concerns have obscured the moral shaping function of Christian beliefs. Yet, a careful examination of many dogmatic treatises reveals concern for the moral effects of doctrine alongside coherence and intelligibility. Where the two are found together, ignoring the moral and pastoral questions in favor of those of coherence and intelligibility distorts the author's intention and robs the church of one of its central tasks: the formation of character.

The practical side of doctrinal exegesis asks after the divine rationale: Why did God do such and such, or do it in that way? It examines the texts of dogmatic theology as rhetorical texts constructed to influence the reader; they have lives and voices of their own. The proactive question asks: What kind of person did the author think God was trying to shape? What should happen to the believer who submits her or himself to Christian teaching? The practical voice of dogmatic exegesis is evident when an author says, "God did this in order that ... or to teach that..." It assumes that, while the theological minds that carved out the tradition did seek to resolve logical problems that seemed to beset Christian claims, at least some of them some of the time also kept the big picture in view. That is, they viewed dogmatic explication of the faith as an instrument of individual and societal formation and transformation, as an instrument of moral pedagogy.

Historical background and support for this approach to thinking about doctrine comes from work on both Plato and the Greco-Roman world. Classical thinkers from Socrates to Marcus Aurelius were concerned to elucidate a way of thinking about reality that promoted arete: moral excellence and proper citizenship. Werner Jaeger stressed that Plato's work was shaped by the moral and spiritual soul-searching

⁵ Pelikan, p. 5.
⁶ Modern theological curricula separate systematic from practical theology, and the latter is in turn subdivided into pastoral, moral, and ascetical theology. These divisions are wholly artificial from the perspective of pre-critical thought. This essay proposes a reading that reunites the dogmatic, moral, and spiritual dimensions of Christian doctrine so that Christian piety may again reflect this holistic understanding.

34 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

that took place in Athens after its military defeat by Sparta.⁷ Jaeger argued that Plato's philosophy was not simply an intellectual search for abstract notions of eternal truth, but a proposal for paideia: a disciplined educational approach to Greek cultural values that sought to train morally grounded, socially responsible governmental leadership. In other words, truth for Plato was not morally neutral; it was morally formative. It opposed the school of Greek rhetoric that, in Plato's view, sought simply to influence public opinion without concern for the moral content of policies advocated. Jaeger noted that Platonic paideia prepared the way for Christian paideia, which adapted the Platonic heritage of philosophy as an instrument of moral and, thereby, societal formation.

Robert Cushman, building on Jaeger's work some fifteen years later, argued that Plato's philosophy was a form of moral therapy based on a medical model.⁸ And Aristotle's Ethics stands perhaps as the greatest exposition of arete (excellence of character) from the perspective of the Athenian ruling class. Through Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle made his way into Christian moral thought.

Another source for thinking about the goals of doctrinal development in the patristic period comes from historians of the Roman period. The traditional Christian view, associated with the work of C. N. Cochrane, was that Christianity swept triumphantly over a decadent paganism, vanquishing the gods into oblivion. He argued that classicism was a complex of ideas involving humanism, law, and civil religion, deriving from the Greek enlightenment.⁹ It aimed to establish social order within the Roman republic and, eventually, within the empire. Yet, it failed to provide a lasting foundation for society because it was unable to overcome the gap between eternal reason and temporal reality in a way that adequately grounded both morality and science. It could not negotiate the tension between order and process, fate and responsibility, reason and history, eternity and development. Cochrane argued that the Christian doctrines of the incarnation as formulated by Athanasius, of the trinity as developed by Augustine, and of the church as worked out by Basil and Ambrose refashioned the Greek notion of the Logos as reason, order, and intelligibility into broad religious principles and social norms. Through their work, Christianity was able to base civil society on a notion of ordered process better than its Hellenistic predecessors. Christian doctrines connected change and eternity and actively encouraged individual responsibility to eternal moral standards.

Recent scholarship on this same period of church history has cast doubt on the moribund state of paganism at the time of the rise of

⁷ Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 3 volumes (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1944).
⁸ Robert Cushman, Therapeia: Plato's Conception of Philosophy, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958).
⁹ Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1944).

35 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

Christianity. From the archeological remains of pagan temples, documents, coins, and inscriptions, Robin Lane Fox has uncovered a robust paganism during the patristic period.¹⁰ While he disagrees with the portrayal of paganism as exhausted, he does not disagree with Cochrane's view that Christianity was attractive to one as powerful as the Emperor Constantine because of its moral power. While Constantine did see Christianity as an instrument of social unity for the empire, he also saw it as a vehicle of justice to root out wickedness and enable persons to advance toward perfection in virtue under God's leadership.¹¹

This historical background sets the stage for examining and recovering the practical voice of Christian doctrine. For ease of handling, I will divide Christian doctrines into three types: formal, material, and applied. Formal doctrines convey knowledge of God and God's will. They are the sources of theological authority or revelation: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Material doctrines constitute the religious claims of the Christian faith about God's identity and actions: the trinity, incarnation, atonement, and so on. Applied doctrines translate the substance of the faith into rites and practices for the church: liturgy, preaching, and sacraments. In this brief compass, I will offer one instance of doctrinal practicality from each of these three categories: Calvin's doctrine of knowledge of God the creator (a formal doctrine), Anselm's doctrine of the atonement (a material doctrine), and Luther's doctrine of the sacraments (an applied doctrine).

II

The organizing concept of the final 1559 edition of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion¹² is the awareness (cognitio) of God as teacher and guide, the sole proper standard of measurement of ourselves. It provides the model according to which we are to be conformed (I:1:2) in order to be restored to the true piety, righteousness, purity, and intelligence with which we were created (I:15:4) and to the contemplation of God, for which we were created (I:33).

Calvin focused on our knowledge of what God does in relation to us. He insisted that we inquire only into that of God which pertains to us. He identified two aspects of this relevant knowledge: concerning God the creator and God the redeemer. Recognizing and internalizing this awareness is practical; it matters to us. Awareness of God's righteousness, wisdom, and power orients us humbly and realistically in the world as gifted creatures of God's parental love. Without this awareness, we have a warped self-concept. With it, we grasp God's invitation to trust and love, to fear and reverence.

¹⁰ Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, (New York: Harper & Row, 1988).
¹¹ Ibid., pp. 636, 650.
¹² Citations from Calvin's Institutes are from the Library of Christian Classics edition, John T. McNeill, editor (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960).

36 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

The pious successfully balance that love and fear, living confidently, carefully, and gratefully. Calvin, via Augustine, opted for the method of character formation developed by Plato. It stressed intellectual knowledge and insight as the basis for personality transformation, including within its scope common sense, empirical knowledge, and everyday experience of the world.

Part I of the Institutes explains how the awareness we need of God as creator comes to us and how we are to utilize it. Calvin asserted that the awareness into which God cajoles us springs from what Edward Dowey later identified as conscience, a native ability to distinguish good from evil.¹³ It produces fear of God's anger as punishment for wrongdoing, but our conscience is so degenerate that the strategy backfires, producing a false confidence by which we judge ourselves by our own standards instead of God's. This results in alienation from God so that our life ceases to be God-guided. Sin is not a legal verdict of guilt pronounced on humankind by divine decree because of Adam's trespass; it is an actual description of how our lives are attuned or, rather, are out of tune. The theologian's task is to point out the many ways in which God has made proper awareness of divine love and justice available to us and how recognition of that awareness is to become the standard for attuning ourselves to God's melody. The tools of this realignment are restraint of intemperance and cultivation of gratitude. These clarify our confusion and cure our vanity, obstinacy, and pride.

Were we not so distorted and discordant, conscience would be able to discern God's goodness from our experience of God's works. Awareness of our own gifts, of the intricacy of the human body, and of our ability to think would demonstrate to us God's wisdom as creator, if only we were sufficiently clear-eyed to see it so. On top of this, experiencing the beauty and harmony of the world should lead us to recognize God's power and beneficence "to draw us to his love" (I:5:6). The governance of human society is yet another indication of God's mercy towards us. This awareness "whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself' (I:5:9) is not merely cognitive, but stirs us deeply, so that gazing upon God's works should turn and restore us. "When we descend into ourselves [we] contemplate by what means the Lord shows in us his life, wisdom, and power; and exercises in our behalf his righteousness, goodness, and mercy" (I:5:10).

Alas, the change of heart that should follow from this observation of God's work failed to materialize. So, God employed a more explicit device to get our attention: the written word. Calvin refers to Scripture as a pair of eyeglasses, an aid God gave in a further attempt to smash through our dullness, rouse the fat superego, root out our fanciful corruptions, and clear our confusion. Calvin maintained that Scripture

¹³ Edward A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin's Theology, (New York:Columbia University Press, 1952).

37 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

by and large recapitulates what we are too glassy-eyed to discern of God the creator, either by means of the conscience or by observing God's works. But it also contributes additional content to our knowledge of God beyond what we can know on our own: knowledge of the trinity, the history of creation, the scope of divine providence, and knowledge of God as redeemer.¹⁴

What we could not grasp through visual aids perhaps we can learn by hearing the story of God's involvement with us, "first to fear God, and then to trust in him. By this we can learn to worship him both with perfect innocence of life and unfeigned obedience, then to depend wholly upon his goodness" (I:6:2). In addition to observation, the publication of the creation story teaches us about God's eternality and parental goodness and love towards us (I:14:2).

Scripture's talk of angels similarly conveys God's beneficence towards us. By protecting, defending, and comforting us, angels display God's love. Perhaps, we may grow to understand that God has placed us beyond the reach of evil and is utterly trustworthy. God's intention is not that we mistake angels for God, but that we see them as emissaries of divine assistance (I:14:11).

This brief review of Calvin's doctrine of the awareness of God shows that the pastoral and moral dimensions of his theology are interrelated and intensely practical. Awareness of God's care comforts as it stimulates gratitude. God directs and prods us (who in Calvin's eyes are, according to Psalm 32:9, a cross between a horse that needs to be bridled and a mule that needs to be goaded) to become the persons God intends us to be, dependent yet responsible, humble yet active, awestruck yet exuberant, morally culpable yet safe and defended.

The Christian personality, in short, combines dependence and assertiveness grounded in anxiety and tempered by confidence and gratitude for God's care. Confidence and gratitude develop in response to God's proven track record exhibited through the natural world, the socially constructed world, and Scripture. Christian character takes shape as the Christian comes to see and hear distinctly. God employs various teaching methods to lead us toward a proper interpretation of what we experience, see, and fear in the world and Scripture. This moral-spiritual therapy is through experiential learning that orients our minds, attitudes, and behavior in a radically new direction: Godward.

III

One of the most influential discussions of a material doctrine in Christian history is Anselm's exegesis of the death of Christ.¹⁵ Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Human), written in 1098, is usually read as a

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 131.
¹⁵ Citations from Cur Deus Homo are from the Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson translation in volume III of the Treatises of Anselm of Canterbury published by Mellon Press.

38 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

classic example of the apologetic function of doctrinal exegesis. It is seen as an explanation of the cross that reconciles the justice and mercy of God in the face of the charge that the incarnation and the cross seem to deny them. Putting one's innocent son to death is, on the face of it, neither merciful nor just. The Christian claim that the Son of God died on the cross to save humankind suggested to skeptics either that God was powerless to redeem humanity without brutality, didn't know what else to do, or is vengeful (demanding Christ's death on the cross as payment). Anselm's treatise is usually read as a response to these objections, a support for the claims that God is all powerful, all knowing, just, and merciful. Yet, a close reading of the work suggests that, while this intellectual defense of the traditional attributes of God was certainly high on his agenda, Anselm also had a practical interest.

For Anselm, the incarnation and the cross are not two separate actions of God. They are intimately connected, a complex divine action to teach us humility, obedience, and justice tempered by mercy, all from Christ's example. Two texts, which Anselm twice quotes in tandem, reveal the intimacy of the cross and resurrection in his thinking: Hebrews 5:8 ("Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered") and Philippians 2:8-9 ("He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name...").

Anselm first joins these two texts to point out that, while the Hebrews text suggests that the Son was compelled to suffer, the Philippians text suggests that he volunteered for the mission. What appears as a confusion as to whether Christ went to the cross willingly or under compulsion is God's means of demonstrating that Christ voluntarily obeyed the Father's will in order for the world to be reconciled to God. It is an expression of Christ's love that teaches us obedience out of love for the saving justice of God.

In the next chapter, Anselm joins the two texts a second time. He suggests that the Hebrews phrase "he learned" must mean either "he caused others to learn" or "he learned in terms of experience that which he already knew about in terms other than experience." The argument is at pains to demonstrate that the taking on of human lowliness should not be misconstrued as a sign of divine powerlessness. Rather the incarnation/cross should be viewed as an intentional decision on God's part to teach us that justice can be satisfied (in this case through Christ's death) without abandoning mercy (the reconciliation of the world to God) as the primary norm. However, the theologian's task of demonstrating the harmonization of justice and mercy in the incarnation and cross is not simply to defend God. The task is also to show that Christ, being himself the supreme learner of obedience, is, thereby, the supreme teacher by example.

God's task is to bring restoration to a languishing creation. Now, since God could have chosen any number of ways to accomplish this,

39 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

Anselm probed for a particular reason why God selected the incarnation and cross as the ideal instruments of restoration. It was to give powerful expression to divine love so that we would focus on it rather than on power and justice alone (I:6). The Son's obedience unto death does exemplify submission to justice in order to save God's human children (I:8-10). The norm of humility and obedience, distilled from Philippians 2:8-9 and Hebrews 5:8, is learning humble obedience to the justice of God, even when the price is dear. Certainly, teaching that we are to learn to love justice so that we obey it voluntarily shows theology's role in maintaining civic order. But note that Christ's submission to justice is in the service of the larger goal of displaying divine mercy. So, the fuller teaching is that divine justice does not depend upon fear of punishment, but is to be embraced in loving obedience to a merciful Father.

Anselm's interest in his reader's moral character becomes clearly evident in the discussion of sin (I:11-15). He reminds us that human sin has besmirched the honor of God, which must be restored. But then, he immediately admits that we can neither honor nor dishonor God (I:15). All that our sinfulness does is create an appearance of disorder in God's perfectly symmetrical world, leaving us, at best, with diffused anxiety at our clumsiness. Thus, what began as an expression of divine mercy, to repay on our behalf what we are unable to pay, turns out to be payment for a sin (dishonoring God) that we are not even able to commit! By the end of Book I, the reader is led to wonder what, after all, is the point of the divine humiliation if we are unable to damage God's honor in the first place?

Book II opens with an abrupt shift of concern from the interplay of justice and mercy in God to a discussion of the human capability of knowing and acting justly. This hints that the two are not unrelated and that Anselm is, as previously noted, interested in how God models these character traits for us. But this theme is quickly set aside for the central issue of the treatise: explanation of how the death of the God-man redeems us. This discussion has been examined by scholars largely for its exposition of atonement. Christ's death satisfies the debt we owe to God for our sinfulness but are unable to pay, so that we get off free. But a key aspect of the divine strategy of restoring us to a state even more miraculous than our original creation, in Anselm's thinking, is to teach us to focus on our true destiny and purpose: the enjoyment of God through obedience.

Anselm admits that the means of our restoration is a self-offering of God for the sake of God's own honor; it goes on over our heads, so to speak. God's honor has not really been damaged because we can neither defame nor restore it (II:18). The point, therefore, is to provide us with a concrete model of what constitutes our true happiness: loving obedience to justice, which Anselm previously noted we are capable of knowing and following. He acknowledged that:

40 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

When [Christ] endured with patient kindness the injuries, the abuses, the crucifixion among thieves ... He gave men an example, in order that they would not, on account of any detriments they can experience, turn aside from the justice they owe to God. He would not at all have given this example if, as He was able to do, He had turned aside from the death that was inflicted upon Him (II:18).

And to be sure that the reader grasps his point, Anselm presses it home once again: "He gave an example, in order that no single human being should hesitate (when reason demands it) to render to God on behalf of himself that which one day he will summarily lose" his life. The cross graphically thunders that what we are to learn is true happiness: self-sacrifice for the rescue of others.

The person and work of Christ rivet our attention on the question of our orientation to God, whose mercy overbalances justice. Christ's incarnation and death are a humble offering of God to God, a strategy by which we are to learn humility and obedience from Christ, who lowered himself to us and learned obedience in order to rescue us.

Although it is never explicitly stated, this model of divine justice and mercy among the divine persons stands also, one suspects, as a standard of how justice and mercy are to be executed on earth. In positions of authority we are to imitate justice controlled by mercy as shown by the Father. When subordinate, we are to imitate the obedience, humility, and devotion to the restoration of justice on behalf of others modeled by the Son.

IV

Luther scholars often point to the pastoral function of Luther's sacramentology.¹⁶ The central element in the sacrament is the word of promise of forgiveness that accompanies the outward sign. The real gift of the sacrament is the soothing of tormented consciences.

Within this framework, Paul Althaus discerned two stages in Luther's sacramental thought.¹⁷ The early stage (1519-24) was formulated in opposition to Roman teaching. Here the sacraments transform the believer by binding him or her into the body of Christ through love shared within the church. In the later stage (1524-29), the earlier theme of Christian unity disappears in the face of arguments with the left wing of the Reformation. Beginning in 1524, Luther was drawn into the controversy over the real presence and neglected his earlier focus on the Lord's Supper as a sacrament of love.

One point that Althaus missed is that the pastoral function of the sacrament is also a moral function. Luther's 1519 treatise on baptism pointed out that God forms a therapeutic alliance with us in baptism. When we wage war against sin, knowing that its final overcoming in this life is impossible, God will overlook our enduring sin. Thus,

¹⁶ References to Luther's writings are to the English edition of Luther's Works, 55 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press).
¹⁷ The Theology of Martin Luther, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), p. 375.

41 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

baptism is the sign of this promise that acts like an army medic to keep us going under duress.

The early treatises on the Lord's Supper function much more concretely and are shaped by I Corinthians 10:16-7. The eucharist is not only pastoral, it actively transforms the communicant by love. Christians are changed and become the body of Christ by partaking of the food and drink of the Lord:

For this sacrament of fellowship, love, and unity cannot tolerate discord and disunity. You must take to heart the infirmities and needs of others, as if they were your own. Then offer to others your strength as if it were their own, just as Christ does for you in the sacrament (LW 35:61).

The ecclesial body is built, according to Paul, by ingesting the sacrament:

We Christians are the spiritual body of Christ and collectively one loaf, one drink, one spirit. Al I of this is achieved by Christ, who through his own body makes us all to be one spiritual body; so that all of us partake equally of his body, and are therefore equal and united with one another. Likewise, the fact that we consume one bread and drink makes us to be one bread and drink (LW 36:286).

Although the community-centered language regarding the Lord's Supper disappeared from Luther's writing after 1526, there is no reason to support the idea, as Althaus seems to, that Luther abandoned this view in favor of the theme of the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, which emerged in controversies with the left-wing reformers. In fact, it would seem that the concept of real presence was presupposed in the earlier emphasis on the transforming power of the sacrament and that, in the later controversies, the earlier position undergirded the insistence on the real presence. Knowing that one ingests the body and blood of the Lord through the sacrament not only impels us to imitate his love for others but also presses believers to experience themselves becoming the body of Christ in a most profound manner. Insistence on the real presence has a moral function; the believer lives into Christ through eating him.

Luther was deeply concerned about the ability of the laity to grasp the center of their faith and to apply it to their lives, and he believed that a purely symbolic teaching about the sacrament would lead them astray-not only because it led down a slippery slope to atheism but also because the condition for the Christian life is possession of Christ. Doctrinally, this "enchristicization" is accomplished through the real presence in the Lord's Supper. In his 1527 treatise, "Against the Fanatics," Luther spoke of the salutary effects of this imperishable food. It "transforms the person who eats it into what it is itself and makes his life itself spiritual, alive, and eternal.... [It] transforms the person who eats it and gives him the Spirit ... the hope of the resurrection ... and life everlasting" (LW 37:100). The moral dimension of this eating is as strong as that sounded in Luther's earliest

42 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

treatise on the subject:

It is as if a wolf devoured a sheep and the sheep were so powerful that it transformed the wolf and turned him into a sheep. So, when we eat Christ's flesh physically and spiritually, the good is so powerful that it transforms us into itself and out of fleshly, sinful mortal men makes spiritual, holy, living men (LW 37: 101).

The word that accompanies the sacrament of the table is a promise of the divine presence, with a hortatory overtone.

The real presence was the concrete application of the doctrine of justification, which regularly reassured the believer of Christ's presence to transform and to reform in the image of Christ, God's personal gift. The Christian life is possible only after one knows and accepts Jesus Christ as the instrument of divine mercy and righteousness.

In sum, the Christian life emanates from the sacraments. It is underwritten by the word of promise of the forgiveness of sins through baptism and of the gift of Christ in the Lord's Supper. Linking teaching about God's actions to the practice of the Christian life hinges upon being able to actualize what one believes God has done for us into one's inmost spirit and life. That is, Christian character is the effect of enchristicization, continuously recalling God's promised forgiveness sealed in baptism, relived through ingesting the gift of the Lord in his feast.

It should be noted that Luther's doctrine of the Christian life is unabashedly horizontal. Christian piety is interpersonal and social as well as directed heavenward. In the earlier writings, the emphasis is on Christians being transformed into relationship with one another, while in the later writings it is on being transformed into Christ himself for the purpose of social harmony and heavenly bliss. The two do not stand in tension but are a unity. Faith in the promise and presence of Christ nourishes the Christian life, which is a continuous transformation of the wolf we are into the sheep we are to become. Believing Christ's flesh to be in our flesh, we are remade.

V

For Calvin, Christian character formation is a function of the reformation of human thought along Platonic lines. Our own standard of judgment must be replaced with God's standard. God does this by confronting us on all sides with evidence of God's love and care. Like a 360-degree movie screen, experiences that point to God's power, wisdom, and goodness bombard us until our defenses are broken through by God's work and word. These fill us with awe and gratitude so that new attitudes and behavior replace our own. Calvin's legal training lurks beneath the surface in his insistence that the massive accumulation of evidence will persuade us of the error of our ways and rehabilitate us to our originally intended purity and righteousness.

Calvin's pedagogical method is experiential. When we experience God's justice and love through his works and word, we are able to

43 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

derive propositionally statable doctrines, such as the attributes of God. But we can also articulate norms for Christian piety. Doctrines and assertions about the nature of God are the result of the experience of God's works and attentiveness to God's revelation in Scripture, not the result of philosophical speculation. But adherence to, or confession of, doctrine itself is not, for Calvin, the agent of Christian transformation. Piety, whose foundation is humble gratitude, results from vulnerability to the work and word of God; moral and spiritual formation are of one piece for those attuned to God's leadings.

Anselm took a different approach. He relied on the emotional shock value of the stunning example set by God in the incarnation and the cross to stop us in our tracks and to command our attention. The objections to the Christian story-that the incarnation impugns divine power and the cross impugns divine mercy-turn out to be defenses that we erect against wanting to see the high standards of justice and mercy set out for us by God. The whole complex of redemptive events is a spectacular display of the divine strategy to gain our love for and obedience to God, thus arousing our own ability to live justly, obediently, and humbly. Anselm's imitative approach to character education is pedagogically sound: We become what we know.

The relationship of Father and Son is the model for our imitation. We are caught up into the story on three levels: as observers of parental behavior, as observers of filial behavior, and as interested observers whose fate hangs in the balance as the events unfold between the two main characters in the drama. Anselm offers two models of sonship: one in which the earthly child cannot meet the stringent parental demands and the other in which the divine child complies with an extreme demand for the sake of God's weaker offspring. The Father sets standards of behavior and respect, which the earthly child cannot meet. But his love overwhelms his standard of justice, and he devises an alternative way of having them be met that lets us, his earthly children, off the hook. As children, we rejoice at this reprieve; as parents, we learn to gauge our demands by what the child can handle and how she or he learns best.

Anselm's direct statements that Christ became human and died as an example mean that Christians are pressed beyond assimilating behavior that befits the earthly children of God toward imitation of the Son of God himself. Christ's primary motive was the salvation of others regardless of the cost to himself. This, it seems, and not less, is the standard God has set for us. The themes of sin as dishonor, ability or inability to pay what we owe, satisfaction and substitution are all a ruse to lead us to the true standard God has set for us in Christ: the rescue of others for the sake of justice and mercy working together. God leads us from what we think we can do (honor God and pay our debts) to what we really know we are unable to do (save others when our own safety is as risk). Ironically, just when we think we have gotten away

44 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

free and clear, we turn around and realize that God has socked us a real challenge.

Luther's approach to Christian character formation, or transformation, opts for yet a third model. The reformation doctrine of justification lies beneath Luther's norm that we rise to the stature accorded us by God. Our own expectations of ourselves respond to those set for us by God. God promises us forgiveness and gives us the divine presence. Luther assumed that our behavior can reflect the exalted stature with which we are graced. This does not at all diminish his insistence that justified sinners remain sinners. Transformation in sanctification does not imply that the believer reaches perfect holiness in this life, but it does suggest that a rising tide lifts all boats. Both God's intrusion into history and his continued self-giving in the Lord's Supper raise our eyes heavenward and entrust us with the very body of God, whom we are graced to become.

Luther's teaching strategy of promise and gift does not single out some for election, but includes all who accept the promise and gift in faith. Believing ourselves to be the beneficiaries of divine grace is the first step toward living into and up to it. And the fact that the whole community is lifted up together creates an upbeat tone of comradeship and commonality in a double undertaking that creates a community being built by God's grace.

Here we have three different approaches to Christian character formation. Calvin focuses on the power of experience as teacher. God showers us with evidence of divine power and love to arouse our gratitude. Anselm emphasizes imitation of Christ's example. It confronts us with a standard of moral behavior set by God. Luther stresses the gracious gift of Christ to believers. God invites believers to be transformed by the gift of his presence. Yet, common themes about the moral shaping function of doctrine surface despite the wide variations among these three theologians.

For all three, explanation of doctrine is more than a search for truth. It is a practical tool that unpacks the creeds, laying bare the Christian story as a teaching instrument, a vehicle of personal transformation that God has crafted for us. Such explanations aim to turn our heads, reorient and refocus our minds, and cause us to reflect deeply on who we are and what we do with our lives in light of what God does for us.

All three thinkers presume that God is absorbed with our salvation, plotting and strategizing how best to bring off our rehabilitation within the limits of our abilities. The texts create an aura of expectation and anticipation as to just how and whether God will succeed in thwarting our desire to resist God's luring. It seems to be a matching of wits, with God keeping one step ahead of us, enticing us, daring us to turn from ourselves in order to become our best selves.

Another common theme is that Christian character formation happens in a social context. Christians are embedded in a highly structured social framework which orients them in relation to God, the

45 - The Moral Function of Doctrine

natural world, and other people. Christians are not self-made or at sea in waves of normless options. The Christian story locates, orients, and orders the lives of believers so that they are never isolated or left to their own devices in choosing who they are to become. Christians are not self-creations but creatures bound to God and one another; their behavior, attitudes, and strivings take shape within those boundaries. Christians are not alone in the world, and they do not have to invent the means for attaining their happiness. God has given a roadmap with designated landmarks and rest stops. Thus, from a practical vantage point, dogmatic theology and the church that it sustains turn out to be a therapeutic community for those who hitch their wagon to the Lord's star.