Martin Luther’s Hidden God: Toward a Lutheran Apologetic for the Problem of Evil and Divine Hiddenness

Preface

Mid-December 2014 found me pushing my mother in a wheelchair down a hallway in the senior-care facility that had recently become home for her. Lewy body dementia had robbed her of her independence, making round-the-clock care necessary. Wheeling her into her room, I fashioned a makeshift altar out of her tray table and prepared the elements of the Lord’s Supper. After the words of institution, we began to pray the words our Savior gave us when—staring at the woman gazing blankly past me and mumbling incoherently—asking God to do his will on earth and in heaven stuck in my throat like cement. I literally could not speak as tears welled up in my eyes. This amazing woman who had birthed, loved, nurtured, and provided for me my entire life to this point was suffering mightily. Susan, my wife, became the preacher in that instant and confidently continued to pray until the prayer was complete. After regaining a measure of composure, I gave my mom the bread and wine as Jesus said to do, painfully aware that the only certainty I had of God’s benevolence is the gospel promise given in the word and sacrament.

My experience that day confirmed yet again what I had learned from the expositions of Martin Luther’s writings done by Gerhard Forde, Steven Paulson, and others. Luther was on to something with his distinction between God preached in the gospel and the terror of God not preached outside the gospel. Unfortunately, my experience also confirmed that much of the other scholarly and pastoral work about evil and suffering is, for various reasons, bogus, offering no real or lasting comfort and often making the problem worse. Against that backdrop, I offer the following work.

I’ve attempted to do at least two things in this book. First, I’ve endeavored to establish some characteristics of a Lutheran apologetic for the problem of evil and divine hiddenness before offering a preliminary sketch of the apologetic. In contrast to the bulk of thought about the problem of evil, my goal is to demonstrate the advantage of an apologetic based on Luther’s thought. Second, though limited, I’ve attempted to actually do some apologetics. Out of necessity, I have interacted with a broad range of theologians and philosophers, thus producing some potentially complex scholarly content, but my intent for the work is pastoral. Ultimately, my prayer is for the reader to be comforted by the promise of the gospel proclaimed for you.

The formal research and writing of my work here began with the pursuit of the MA Theology degree from Concordia University Irvine. The faculty graciously allowed me to tailor all my research papers and my final thesis around the theme of Martin Luther’s hidden God. Being able to research and write major portions of this book and have it critiqued by scholars while simultaneously earning a master’s degree was immensely helpful. I want to thank the faculty and staff of Christ College, Concordia University Irvine for allowing me to study with them. Thinking together with brothers and sisters in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod was enlightening, challenging, and very rewarding. I am certainly better for the experience. I’m especially grateful to my faculty advisor, Dr. Daniel Deen, whose keen insight helped shape much of this work.

I would also like to acknowledge the following people. I want to thank my wife, Susan, who encouraged me to start this process and has held me accountable for finishing. It never would have gotten off the ground, much less been finished, without her support. I want to thank the dear saints of Nativity Lutheran Church, Brandon, Mississippi, for their gracious support of my continuing education endeavors. My work would have been impossible without them. A pastor couldn’t ask for a finer congregation to shepherd. A hearty thank-you goes to Mr. Glen Owen, whose interest in my work prompted his considerable financial support for the project. I am grateful to Linda Skupien for courageously working through the draft and offering her editorial insights for clarity. Finally, I am grateful to the taxpayers of the United States of America for funding much of my degree through the Post 9/11 GI Bill. What a grand deal for service members who have first had the privilege of serving the citizens of this great country to then receive financial help with an education.

Scott Landrum

Reformation 2021

Introduction

Throughout history, people have wrestled with the problem of evil and posed the question in a variety of forms. Succinctly stated, why is there evil if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good?

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The topic is complex, as the selected readings in Michael Peterson’s lengthy volume The Problem of Evil detail; important thinkers from the disciplines of literature, philosophy, and theology struggle for answers, the certainty of which remains elusive.

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Modern pupils of Irenaeus tell us that evil is a tragic but necessary tool for the development of our true humanity. Augustine assures us that evil is our fault, a product of misplaced freedom. Thomas Aquinas tepidly argues that there can be no evil coming from God, while David Hume, along with his contemporary disciples, reverse the equation, beginning with evil before concluding that there can be no God. The crushed bodies of women and children piled high after the Lisbon earthquake reduce Voltaire to conclude fatalistically that whatever is, is right. The character Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov cannot reconcile God’s existence with the evil and suffering so prevalent in the world. Followers of the process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and the like encourage us to work hard, because evil is something that can be overcome by struggle and attention to detail. We could go on with examples, but the bottom line is that at least one of two assumptions is shared by those just mentioned. Either God’s existence should be denied, or his actions in the world should be explained or defended for not behaving according to law, reason, or rationale.

For theists and polytheists, who assume at least some degree of divine benevolence, the problem of evil gives no quarter. On the other hand, technically, there can be no problem of evil for atheists denying the existence of a divine being, benevolent or otherwise. Still, few, if any, escape the existential suffering produced by the presence of evil in the world. Therefore, the impact of evil is universal, affecting believer and unbeliever alike.

Divine Hiddenness

One dimension of the problem of evil is the disconcerting specter of God’s hiddenness.

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In response to the vast amount of evil and suffering in the world, one could reasonably expect God to make his presence and benevolence known by some means. Yet, no universally discernible reply is forthcoming. The resultant dilemma is called divine hiddenness. In the book Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, Daniel Howard-Synder and Paul K. Moser have compiled a selection of essays that treat various dimensions of divine hiddenness.

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In his contribution to the work, entitled The Silence of the God Who Speaks, Nicholas Wolterstorff offers an especially pertinent description of divine hiddenness, calling it biblical silence. He describes this silence as God’s refusal to answer questions of extreme importance to those suffering, a silence made worse by the fact that God has in times past responded through Scripture.

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Given the gravity of the topics, one shouldn’t be surprised that the problem of evil and divine hiddenness continues to be a major part of current theological and philosophy-of-religion debates. A simple search of Amazon.com yields several pages of results for books about the subject matter. Atheist and agnostic authors use the problem of evil and God’s silence as proof that God, or a being like God, doesn’t exist. Theists, on the other hand, offer reasonable arguments for continued belief in God despite divine hiddenness and the problem of evil. Additionally, some scholars attack the issue by constructing models of theodicy or by building a logical defense.

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All of the scholars, both atheists and theists, analyze the problem of evil and divine hiddenness, arguing passionately and cogently, yet come to varied and sometimes opposite conclusions, signaling the difficulty of articulating a convincing understanding.

Martin Luther and the Problem of Evil and Divine Hiddenness

Martin Luther was no exception to the quandary of divine hiddenness, and reconciling God’s existence and benevolence with the presence of evil in the world was perhaps his most vexing theological challenge. Far from an academic theological topic, divine hiddenness was for Luther, like all humanity, personal. Magdalena, his teenage daughter, died in his arms tragically, forcing him to wrestle with the hidden God. Luther tackled the difficulty with his teaching on the distinction between God unpreached, or hidden, and God preached—that is, revealed and proclaimed in the gospel. He explains, We have to argue one way about God or the will of God as preached, revealed, offered, and worshipped, and in another way about God as he is not preached, not revealed, not offered, not worshiped.

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The interpreter of Luther commonly discovers three understandings of divine hiddenness in the Reformer’s thought. One, seen most clearly in the Heidelberg Disputation, is God’s hiddenness in offensive opposition to the expected. God, the dead Jew hanging wasted on a cross for the sin of the world, is the epitome of the unexpected! A second hiding place for God is the Holy Spirit’s work through word and sacrament. The Holy Spirit gives faith to whom he pleases through the common means of water, bread, and wine combined with the word of the gospel spoken through the mouth of a sinful preacher. Luther writes:

Our know-it-alls, the new spirits, claim that faith alone saves and that works and external things add nothing to it. We answer: It is true, nothing that is in us does it but faith, as we shall hear later on. But these leaders of the blind are unwilling to see that faith must have something to believe—something to which it may cling and upon which it may stand. Thus faith clings to the water and believes it to be baptism, in which there is sheer salvation and life, not through the water, as we have sufficiently stated, but through its incorporation with God’s Word and ordinance and the joining of his name to it. When I believe this, what else is it but believing in God as the one who has bestowed and implanted his Word and has offered us this external thing within which we can grasp this treasure.

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Third, Luther refers to God as hidden, or not preached, denoting God acting wrathfully as penalty for transgression of the law. Oswald Bayer, whom we’ll hear from later, refers to this aspect of divine hiddenness as "understandable