1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:16,808 Hello, I'm Kevin Golden, Dean of Theological Research and Publication at Concordia Seminary 2 00:00:16,808 --> 00:00:18,101 in St. Louis. 3 00:00:18,101 --> 00:00:20,228 Welcome to Concordia Theology. 4 00:00:20,228 --> 00:00:23,273 We're blessed today to spend some time with Dr. Robert Kolb. 5 00:00:23,273 --> 00:00:28,987 He's an emeritus member of our faculty and has his latest contribution to the church 6 00:00:28,987 --> 00:00:32,031 and to our study of Luther coming out in May. 7 00:00:32,031 --> 00:00:35,744 So that's a little bit down the road, but it's a good chance for us to talk about it 8 00:00:35,744 --> 00:00:40,331 now so that everyone gets ready for it and they can make sure they can get in their pre-order 9 00:00:40,331 --> 00:00:42,083 and things like that. 10 00:00:42,083 --> 00:00:48,173 The name of this latest book is Face to Face, Luther's View of Reality. 11 00:00:48,173 --> 00:00:51,426 And that's a gripping title to say the least. 12 00:00:51,426 --> 00:00:55,597 But I thought maybe, Bob, the way that we'd start off the conversation is by taking a 13 00:00:55,597 --> 00:01:00,435 look at the little Latin preposition, Coram, that kind of drives us. 14 00:01:00,435 --> 00:01:07,942 So Coram, we use this a lot of times in theology, Coram Deo, before God, in the presence of 15 00:01:07,942 --> 00:01:12,697 God, Coram Mundo, before the world, and this is how we are to live. 16 00:01:12,697 --> 00:01:14,240 But you go a lot farther than that. 17 00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:17,619 But just start off by telling us about that preposition. 18 00:01:17,619 --> 00:01:20,955 What was the genesis of this project? 19 00:01:20,955 --> 00:01:22,457 A very interesting genesis. 20 00:01:22,457 --> 00:01:29,130 I've been a longtime friend of Tony Steinbren who was president of the Missouri Synod's 21 00:01:29,130 --> 00:01:31,424 New Jersey district at the time. 22 00:01:31,424 --> 00:01:40,266 He wanted me to come and gave me the assignment of a pastoral workshop retreat over, I don't 23 00:01:40,266 --> 00:01:48,858 know, three, four days on the campus of Princeton University and Seminary. 24 00:01:49,067 --> 00:01:55,573 He had fallen in love with the Coram distinctions, I suppose, when he was a seminarian and had 25 00:01:55,573 --> 00:02:01,246 maybe even done some master's work with the preposition Coram. 26 00:02:01,246 --> 00:02:10,004 And so he talked about Coram Deo, our relationship with God, Coram se ipso, our relationship 27 00:02:10,004 --> 00:02:12,257 with ourselves. 28 00:02:12,257 --> 00:02:18,221 That was a concept that the very important Luther scholar Gerhard Ebeling had surfaced. 29 00:02:18,221 --> 00:02:24,519 And it's there in at least one Luther text that I found, although reflection on the self 30 00:02:24,519 --> 00:02:28,857 wasn't too common in the 16th century. 31 00:02:28,857 --> 00:02:35,446 And then he distinguished Coram Mundo and Coram hominibus, which I kind of thought were 32 00:02:35,446 --> 00:02:37,448 the same thing. 33 00:02:37,448 --> 00:02:43,913 But what I did in the book is look at our relationship with the world in the Johanan 34 00:02:43,913 --> 00:02:54,799 sense of the good creature of God that is under Satan's power, but that Christ came 35 00:02:54,799 --> 00:02:58,094 to redeem John 3.16, for instance. 36 00:02:58,094 --> 00:03:02,807 So I looked at institutions and the larger cultural picture. 37 00:03:02,807 --> 00:03:09,063 And then in the chapter on our relationship with other human beings, talked about Luther's 38 00:03:09,063 --> 00:03:11,691 understanding of the Christian calling. 39 00:03:11,691 --> 00:03:25,663 And then I gave a lecture here in 2017, apart from that experience on Coram Deo, our confrontation 40 00:03:25,663 --> 00:03:32,420 with the devil, because I think Luther's key to Luther's thought is also his view of sin 41 00:03:32,420 --> 00:03:33,713 and evil. 42 00:03:33,713 --> 00:03:40,011 And then I split the part on Coram Deo by looking at the hidden God and the revealed 43 00:03:40,011 --> 00:03:46,142 God, revealed in the doctrine of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ, and then revealed 44 00:03:46,142 --> 00:03:48,144 in the means of grace. 45 00:03:48,144 --> 00:03:56,736 So it all fits together and supports my basic argument that while Luther was basically an 46 00:03:56,736 --> 00:04:02,700 Aristotelian in his view of reality, he thought things have substance and accidents instead 47 00:04:02,700 --> 00:04:08,248 of atoms and all that sort of thing. 48 00:04:08,248 --> 00:04:15,672 He saw that underneath Aristotle's description as foundational is the fact that God is creator 49 00:04:15,672 --> 00:04:21,844 and has a relationship through his word with everything that he made. 50 00:04:21,844 --> 00:04:31,771 He said leaves, frogs, whatever, they're all words in God's language. 51 00:04:31,771 --> 00:04:34,899 They are his creation and therefore the relationship. 52 00:04:34,899 --> 00:04:41,489 Now I love how you take that Coram and even in the title of the book, face to face, because 53 00:04:41,489 --> 00:04:46,744 as an Old Testament guy, a lover of Hebrew, that's a very Hebraic way to do it, which 54 00:04:46,744 --> 00:04:51,582 Luther himself was a bit of a lover of Hebrew as well. 55 00:04:51,582 --> 00:04:56,713 But this is the common prepositional phrase that we get in Hebrew, lifnei, which means 56 00:04:56,713 --> 00:05:01,592 to the face of, to be in the presence of, to be before somebody. 57 00:05:01,592 --> 00:05:04,971 And that's kind of reflected here, but also kind of gets to this reality. 58 00:05:04,971 --> 00:05:10,226 And I think this is huge when it comes to just how Hebrew, the Hebrew mind thinks is 59 00:05:10,226 --> 00:05:15,940 that everything is again, concrete and real that, and this is how God deals with us as 60 00:05:15,940 --> 00:05:18,151 well and how we deal with each other. 61 00:05:18,151 --> 00:05:19,152 Yeah. 62 00:05:19,152 --> 00:05:26,325 Luther was trained by professors who came out of the medium of a optimist strain of 63 00:05:26,325 --> 00:05:27,327 thinking. 64 00:05:27,327 --> 00:05:34,792 What that meant was that while there are divine ideas that have shaped the world, our concept 65 00:05:34,792 --> 00:05:39,047 of table, let's say, comes out of our experience with tables here and now. 66 00:05:39,047 --> 00:05:46,346 I think that influenced Luther's way of understanding the real presence in the Lord's Supper. 67 00:05:46,346 --> 00:05:53,561 And the way he took seriously the exploration of colleagues in botany and astronomy and 68 00:05:53,561 --> 00:06:02,028 everything else, took seriously the exploration of our world because down here and directly 69 00:06:02,028 --> 00:06:10,286 in our face to face relationships is God's reality, the one that he spoke into existence. 70 00:06:10,286 --> 00:06:13,956 So let's kind of flush that out a little bit because I know that's exactly what you do 71 00:06:13,956 --> 00:06:19,712 in the book is that you look at seven specific, if I remember correctly, quorums. 72 00:06:19,712 --> 00:06:25,385 So our relationship, our face to face kind of again, concrete relationship in seven different 73 00:06:25,385 --> 00:06:26,385 aspects. 74 00:06:26,385 --> 00:06:29,388 So what are those seven and maybe take us through those? 75 00:06:29,388 --> 00:06:33,810 Well, I start with the hidden God and that's not really face to face because- 76 00:06:33,810 --> 00:06:34,811 Well there you go. 77 00:06:34,811 --> 00:06:35,812 Yes, yeah. 78 00:06:35,812 --> 00:06:36,813 He's hidden. 79 00:06:36,813 --> 00:06:37,814 Yeah, right. 80 00:06:37,814 --> 00:06:39,190 And Luther put up no trespassing signs. 81 00:06:39,190 --> 00:06:42,527 He wasn't one of these mystics who wanted to float off. 82 00:06:42,527 --> 00:06:48,908 He was influenced by a certain mystical school in the late middle ages. 83 00:06:49,450 --> 00:06:53,913 That was an important stage in his development, but he really grew beyond that. 84 00:06:53,913 --> 00:07:02,171 Our colleague, Norman Nagel was very eager and anxious to point that out that Luther 85 00:07:02,171 --> 00:07:09,846 moved on from that whole way of looking at things. 86 00:07:09,846 --> 00:07:13,766 But I examined what that concept of the hidden God means. 87 00:07:13,766 --> 00:07:24,527 And then I go on to talk about our relationship with death, sin, Satan, God's wrath, God's 88 00:07:24,527 --> 00:07:25,570 judgment. 89 00:07:25,570 --> 00:07:31,325 Those were the enemies that Christ came to overcome. 90 00:07:31,325 --> 00:07:36,914 And then I talk about who God is and Luther wasn't much on speculation. 91 00:07:36,914 --> 00:07:40,835 So he didn't have an elaborate doctrine of the Trinity. 92 00:07:40,835 --> 00:07:48,134 He went through the ancient creeds and took them at face value and didn't want to say 93 00:07:48,134 --> 00:07:50,094 very much more. 94 00:07:50,094 --> 00:07:58,227 But on the two natures of Christ, he had a very strong thrust against, over Zwingli particularly 95 00:07:58,227 --> 00:08:05,818 in his day, who thought that Christ's human nature was sitting at the right hand of God. 96 00:08:05,818 --> 00:08:07,737 The Lutherans did some nasty things. 97 00:08:07,737 --> 00:08:21,042 Johannes Brenz, who was one of Luther's disciples, said about Zwingli or said to Zwingli ideas. 98 00:08:21,042 --> 00:08:27,048 Well, he couldn't be sitting at the right hand of God yet because if his human body 99 00:08:27,048 --> 00:08:35,431 is restricted to being human, then the distance between here and there, he wouldn't be there 100 00:08:35,431 --> 00:08:39,101 in 1500 years yet because he's walking. 101 00:08:39,101 --> 00:08:44,899 And that was the nature of the polemic of the day that Zwingli and said some nasty things 102 00:08:44,899 --> 00:08:48,361 about Lutherans too. 103 00:08:48,361 --> 00:08:53,574 So Luther is very strong on what we call the communication of attributes or the, I'd like 104 00:08:53,574 --> 00:08:59,830 to translate it, sharing of characteristics so that even though the human nature of Christ 105 00:08:59,830 --> 00:09:07,088 never has this broader sense of presence, because it shares the characteristic with 106 00:09:07,088 --> 00:09:13,386 the divine nature, it can be present, for instance, in the Lord's Supper. 107 00:09:13,386 --> 00:09:18,766 And then I go on to talk about the means of grace as the way of God's coming to be present 108 00:09:18,766 --> 00:09:21,269 with us here and now. 109 00:09:21,269 --> 00:09:25,398 And then talk about our relationship with the world and Luther's positive appreciation 110 00:09:25,398 --> 00:09:33,072 of the world as culture and how he appreciated gifts of music and literature and all that 111 00:09:33,072 --> 00:09:34,740 sort of thing. 112 00:09:34,740 --> 00:09:39,954 But then how he fights the world, which is a little bit repetition of the earlier chapter. 113 00:09:39,954 --> 00:09:43,666 And then finally, his relationships with other human beings. 114 00:09:43,666 --> 00:09:51,007 So with that kind of complex view of the world, on one hand, positive, on the other hand, 115 00:09:51,007 --> 00:09:56,053 battling against it, is that a way to kind of simply approach it as, hey, it is God's 116 00:09:56,053 --> 00:09:59,432 creation, it is a good thing as a result, but it's also fallen. 117 00:09:59,432 --> 00:10:03,019 And so therefore you have to grapple with that fallen reality. 118 00:10:03,019 --> 00:10:10,985 And I think that our Lutheran tradition has a particularly strong and helpful view of 119 00:10:10,985 --> 00:10:16,574 what it means to be in the world because it appreciates culture as a gift of God, sees 120 00:10:16,574 --> 00:10:20,494 all kinds of cultural gifts, science and the like. 121 00:10:20,494 --> 00:10:21,871 First article is a wonderful thing. 122 00:10:21,871 --> 00:10:23,414 Yeah, yeah. 123 00:10:23,414 --> 00:10:34,300 Luther's not unique, obviously, but Luther has some special, especially strong emphases 124 00:10:34,300 --> 00:10:37,470 that he brings out on the first article. 125 00:10:37,470 --> 00:10:41,432 Also on the third article, he's sometimes called the second article theologian, pure 126 00:10:41,432 --> 00:10:42,433 and simple. 127 00:10:42,433 --> 00:10:45,686 No, he's really a Trinitarian theologian. 128 00:10:45,686 --> 00:10:54,528 But yeah, so he's got this idea that the world is our Father's property and that there are 129 00:10:54,528 --> 00:10:59,200 squatters, Satan and all his supporters. 130 00:10:59,200 --> 00:11:07,541 And so he's both appreciative and critical of culture in a, again, not a unique way, 131 00:11:07,541 --> 00:11:14,131 I suppose, but in a way that separates himself from some of the theologians who are more 132 00:11:14,131 --> 00:11:19,595 influenced by Plato and who are more otherworldly. 133 00:11:19,595 --> 00:11:21,722 He was a very this-worldly person. 134 00:11:21,722 --> 00:11:22,723 Yeah, yeah. 135 00:11:22,723 --> 00:11:26,143 Now, I want to circle back to something that was coming into the conversation and it's 136 00:11:26,143 --> 00:11:28,521 specifically Christ. 137 00:11:28,521 --> 00:11:34,235 And if we think about face to face, again, if you want to see the face of God, you've 138 00:11:34,235 --> 00:11:39,031 got to look at Christ, that he is our means to see God. 139 00:11:39,031 --> 00:11:43,160 He is the visible member of the Trinity, et cetera, et cetera. 140 00:11:43,160 --> 00:11:48,207 So how core was that to Luther's teaching? 141 00:11:48,207 --> 00:11:53,921 I think while it's unfair to say Luther's only a second article theologian, that's the 142 00:11:53,921 --> 00:11:56,215 center of the whole thing. 143 00:11:56,215 --> 00:12:00,261 His personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 144 00:12:00,261 --> 00:12:04,974 He feared Christ as the judge he had seen in many medieval altars as he was growing 145 00:12:04,974 --> 00:12:15,734 up and he came to appreciate what a wonderful plan God has for us in his second person becoming 146 00:12:15,734 --> 00:12:17,820 one of us. 147 00:12:17,820 --> 00:12:25,995 And so his sermons on John 1 are just magnificent testimony to his love for Christ and Christ's 148 00:12:25,995 --> 00:12:28,747 love for us. 149 00:12:28,747 --> 00:12:31,500 So let's maybe expand to that. 150 00:12:31,500 --> 00:12:33,711 So he's not only a second article. 151 00:12:34,003 --> 00:12:39,300 He runs with the second article, obviously, but he's also a first article, a third article. 152 00:12:39,300 --> 00:12:41,510 He's a Trinitarian theologian. 153 00:12:41,510 --> 00:12:48,392 So maybe is there anything in this book specifically, but if it's not go there anyway. 154 00:12:48,392 --> 00:12:53,147 Regarding how, you know, what would Luther's approach be then towards the spirit? 155 00:12:53,147 --> 00:12:55,816 Well it's very strong. 156 00:12:55,816 --> 00:12:59,612 Does that relate even to the means of grace that I know you deal with within the book? 157 00:12:59,612 --> 00:13:00,613 Yeah. 158 00:13:00,613 --> 00:13:02,490 The Holy Spirit is in action. 159 00:13:02,490 --> 00:13:05,034 We see that in the small catechism. 160 00:13:05,034 --> 00:13:11,665 He's the one who brings us to faith and gathers the church in the one true faith. 161 00:13:11,665 --> 00:13:18,339 So yes, Luther sees, well for instance, he says on Holy Scripture, nowhere is God more 162 00:13:18,339 --> 00:13:21,967 present than in the pages of Scripture. 163 00:13:21,967 --> 00:13:30,768 I did a workshop on evangelism for Hal Sinkvile's doxology program once and Hal had to take 164 00:13:30,768 --> 00:13:34,688 a second look as I sent him the outline because there was one part that said, don't open 165 00:13:34,688 --> 00:13:37,274 that book, it'll kill you. 166 00:13:37,274 --> 00:13:40,694 And that was simply my presentation of the law. 167 00:13:40,694 --> 00:13:43,531 And so we had a lot of fun with that. 168 00:13:43,531 --> 00:13:52,498 But I think we have all experienced the deadly nature of what we find in Scripture for the 169 00:13:52,498 --> 00:13:59,755 sinful self and the delightful, joyful nature of Scripture as the Holy Spirit brings Christ 170 00:13:59,755 --> 00:14:03,175 to us through its pages. 171 00:14:03,175 --> 00:14:11,725 And so in the Scriptures as sort of the foundation of everything else, but then in oral and other 172 00:14:11,725 --> 00:14:19,858 written and in sacramental means, this key concept for Luther is the promise. 173 00:14:19,858 --> 00:14:26,240 But God's promises aren't only about the future because God's making them, they determine 174 00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:28,325 the present reality too. 175 00:14:28,492 --> 00:14:33,789 And so that's why Luther can say that you and I are truly completely righteous in God's 176 00:14:33,789 --> 00:14:37,501 sight, even though we still experience our sin. 177 00:14:37,501 --> 00:14:41,547 That's one of parts of Luther's genius, I think, that he sees this tension that we really 178 00:14:41,547 --> 00:14:47,845 can't logically solve between being righteous and sinful at the same time. 179 00:14:47,845 --> 00:14:53,475 I want to also circle back to, you mentioned, Coram Diabolo, who we are before the devil, 180 00:14:53,475 --> 00:14:56,437 or we are those in relation to the devil. 181 00:14:56,478 --> 00:14:58,314 Expand on that a little bit for us. 182 00:14:58,314 --> 00:15:02,818 That was one of the interesting things that came out of my study of On Christian Freedom, 183 00:15:02,818 --> 00:15:13,454 which in 1520 was Luther's way of, well, Before On Christian Freedom appeared in that year, 184 00:15:13,454 --> 00:15:19,877 On Good Works had appeared, that's kind of a programmatic presentation of evangelical 185 00:15:19,877 --> 00:15:20,961 piety. 186 00:15:20,961 --> 00:15:24,590 But then came two deconstructive works. 187 00:15:24,590 --> 00:15:32,014 One was his open letter to the German nobility, where he went after about 30 pious practices, 188 00:15:32,014 --> 00:15:40,439 or not so pious practices, that reflected a medieval concept of being Christian. 189 00:15:40,439 --> 00:15:53,953 And then he talks about the whole hierarchical ritualistic system of medieval piety. 190 00:15:53,953 --> 00:15:56,372 And on the Babylonian captivity. 191 00:15:56,372 --> 00:16:00,709 And then he comes with On Christian Freedom as a construction of what the Christian life 192 00:16:00,709 --> 00:16:02,961 should look like. 193 00:16:02,961 --> 00:16:12,638 And in that whole process, then he does not describe the devil as one of our enemies. 194 00:16:12,638 --> 00:16:13,889 And I said, what? 195 00:16:13,889 --> 00:16:16,809 I had never noticed that before. 196 00:16:16,809 --> 00:16:23,524 And then I looked in a book by a German theologian, Hans Martin, on Luther and the devil, and 197 00:16:23,524 --> 00:16:26,318 he's got very few references before 1520. 198 00:16:26,318 --> 00:16:27,736 Oh, very interesting. 199 00:16:27,736 --> 00:16:28,737 Yeah. 200 00:16:28,737 --> 00:16:33,283 And I think that reflects medieval theology, that they didn't know quite what to do with 201 00:16:33,283 --> 00:16:39,289 the devil, because many of them didn't want to get that serious with evil. 202 00:16:39,289 --> 00:16:40,290 And so it's after- 203 00:16:40,290 --> 00:16:42,209 Sounds like our own age a little bit too. 204 00:16:42,209 --> 00:16:43,210 Yes. 205 00:16:43,210 --> 00:16:45,546 And maybe becoming less so that it's- 206 00:16:45,546 --> 00:16:48,549 Yeah. 207 00:16:48,549 --> 00:16:54,430 In 1521, he was excommunicated and he was outlawed. 208 00:16:54,430 --> 00:16:56,974 Two death penalties on top of each other. 209 00:16:56,974 --> 00:17:02,396 And all of a sudden, the devil becomes much more visible in his writings. 210 00:17:02,396 --> 00:17:07,067 And so Luther took the devil very seriously. 211 00:17:07,067 --> 00:17:16,160 Heiko Obermann, the great Luther scholar, half a generation, generation older than I, 212 00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:21,623 he said that, and he was an expert on the middle ages, and he said, Luther's view of 213 00:17:21,623 --> 00:17:27,629 the devil is much deeper, much more serious than any of the medieval theologians that 214 00:17:27,629 --> 00:17:29,965 he had studied. 215 00:17:29,965 --> 00:17:37,723 His biography of Luther, Luther man between God and the devil is a good exposition of 216 00:17:37,723 --> 00:17:38,724 that whole relationship. 217 00:17:38,724 --> 00:17:39,725 Yeah. 218 00:17:39,725 --> 00:17:43,937 That title itself just kind of bears significant weight itself to say about. 219 00:17:44,146 --> 00:17:49,359 And even for a more casual approach towards Luther, one of the things that people most 220 00:17:49,359 --> 00:17:55,657 quickly recognize is, of course, is Reformation hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, and certainly 221 00:17:55,657 --> 00:18:02,623 has significant attention given there to the old evil foe and the reality of the devil 222 00:18:02,623 --> 00:18:03,957 standing before us. 223 00:18:03,957 --> 00:18:04,958 Yes. 224 00:18:04,958 --> 00:18:05,959 Yeah. 225 00:18:05,959 --> 00:18:13,175 And Luther says he comes as the black devil that really wants to just make evil evil. 226 00:18:13,175 --> 00:18:18,847 But he also comes as the white devil and tempts us to have confidence in our own good 227 00:18:18,847 --> 00:18:22,142 works for instance, rather than in Christ. 228 00:18:22,142 --> 00:18:30,067 And so he sees a daily battle, and that's why he says in the fourth question on baptism 229 00:18:30,067 --> 00:18:36,573 in the small catechism that every day we have to have the Holy Spirit repeating our baptismal 230 00:18:36,573 --> 00:18:37,991 death and resurrection. 231 00:18:37,991 --> 00:18:41,245 Romans 6 was a very important passage for him. 232 00:18:41,245 --> 00:18:42,246 Yeah. 233 00:18:42,329 --> 00:18:44,748 And then we go back to the work of the Holy Spirit. 234 00:18:44,748 --> 00:18:50,087 So not just a second article theologian, but really the totality that's being brought in here. 235 00:18:50,087 --> 00:18:51,088 Yeah. 236 00:18:51,088 --> 00:19:00,139 I think it's not on every page, obviously, but at key points he cites Romans 4.25, Christ 237 00:19:00,139 --> 00:19:07,146 died on account of our sins and was raised to restore our righteousness for our justification. 238 00:19:07,146 --> 00:19:14,486 And then I think Paul picks that up in Romans 6 where that comes to us in baptism. 239 00:19:14,486 --> 00:19:18,907 We are buried with Christ and raised to walk in his footsteps. 240 00:19:18,907 --> 00:19:24,371 And that move is there in Luther. 241 00:19:24,371 --> 00:19:26,373 Yeah. 242 00:19:26,373 --> 00:19:30,544 Well, as our time is starting to draw to a close, the question I would have you answer 243 00:19:30,544 --> 00:19:36,592 is as you think about this new book, Face to Face, what is the big thing that you would 244 00:19:36,592 --> 00:19:39,011 want your readers to take away from it? 245 00:19:39,011 --> 00:19:48,020 I think the theme that we've already addressed, the presence of God and his continuing relationship 246 00:19:48,020 --> 00:19:53,442 with us and the fact that he always wants to be in dialogue with us. 247 00:19:53,442 --> 00:20:02,034 Luther's understanding of faith is really much like Eric Erickson's concept of trust. 248 00:20:02,034 --> 00:20:04,912 It grabs the whole of our person. 249 00:20:04,912 --> 00:20:13,629 And if we really trust the word of absolution and say, OK, God, if you say so, I'm righteous, 250 00:20:13,629 --> 00:20:18,717 then we're going to want to act that out in righteous deeds. 251 00:20:18,717 --> 00:20:25,599 And so this idea of trusting in Christ and what he's done for us becomes the key to our 252 00:20:25,599 --> 00:20:28,602 relationship with God and with the world. 253 00:20:28,602 --> 00:20:29,603 Yes. 254 00:20:29,603 --> 00:20:31,980 And with other human beings. 255 00:20:31,980 --> 00:20:36,193 And so that's the exciting thing about Luther's theology. 256 00:20:36,193 --> 00:20:43,408 It fits so nicely into 21st century life in the Western world. 257 00:20:43,408 --> 00:20:46,912 Incredibly practical because it's, again, about not only your relation, how you relate 258 00:20:46,912 --> 00:20:50,540 to God, how he relates to you, but your fellow human being as well. 259 00:20:50,540 --> 00:20:52,542 Yeah. 260 00:20:52,542 --> 00:20:55,921 Now, that title also, Face to Face, the other thing that it just kind of gets hold of in 261 00:20:55,921 --> 00:21:02,219 my mind is the great eschatological promise that we are given is that, hey, the day is 262 00:21:02,219 --> 00:21:06,556 coming and we will see him face to face. 263 00:21:06,556 --> 00:21:11,853 And that is in many ways, I would just say the epitome of biblical theology is that we 264 00:21:11,853 --> 00:21:17,317 behold God face to face because that's the way it was before the fall. 265 00:21:17,317 --> 00:21:18,610 Beholding God face to face. 266 00:21:18,610 --> 00:21:19,611 You have the fall. 267 00:21:19,611 --> 00:21:21,238 And what does God do thereafter? 268 00:21:21,238 --> 00:21:25,617 He's always at work so that he can dwell amongst his people. 269 00:21:25,617 --> 00:21:27,619 He does it through means. 270 00:21:27,619 --> 00:21:30,038 He does it through tabernacle and temple. 271 00:21:30,038 --> 00:21:32,207 He does it in our incarnate Lord. 272 00:21:32,207 --> 00:21:34,584 He's doing it through the means of grace. 273 00:21:34,584 --> 00:21:37,045 And he's going to do it face to face. 274 00:21:37,045 --> 00:21:38,046 Yeah. 275 00:21:38,046 --> 00:21:39,047 On the last. 276 00:21:39,047 --> 00:21:44,803 And Luther really, again, this idea that the future is a present reality. 277 00:21:44,803 --> 00:21:45,804 Yes. 278 00:21:45,804 --> 00:21:54,521 Luther sees that, although it's an incomplete vision or listening, maybe an incomplete listening 279 00:21:54,521 --> 00:21:56,440 to God. 280 00:21:56,440 --> 00:22:00,777 He's here now talking to us and it doesn't get realer than that. 281 00:22:00,777 --> 00:22:01,778 Correct. 282 00:22:01,778 --> 00:22:02,779 Well, this is wonderful. 283 00:22:02,779 --> 00:22:06,199 I'm really looking forward to this book coming out once I can pick it up and actually read 284 00:22:06,199 --> 00:22:07,951 it from cover to cover. 285 00:22:07,951 --> 00:22:11,747 But also I know it's going to be a great blessing for our readers as well. 286 00:22:11,747 --> 00:22:15,667 Blessings and congratulations on another great contribution for the life of the church. 287 00:22:15,667 --> 00:22:16,752 Thanks Kevin. 288 00:22:16,752 --> 00:22:20,964 And thank you for joining us also for our latest edition here on Concordia Theology. 289 00:22:20,964 --> 00:22:21,840 Please join us again.