Theology Of Glory Vs.Theology Of The Cross
Tullian Tchividjian Blog | July 10, 2012
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free
It is not exactly breaking news to say that our culture has an aversion to suffering, regardless of how inescapable it may be. This is because we---you and me---have an aversion to suffering. Who wants to suffer? But the conscious avoidance of pain is one thing; the complete intolerance, or outright denial of it, is another.Why do we run so hard from something so inexorable, so much so that we often make the painful situation even worse? Setbacks fly in the face of our dearly held beliefs about progress. They rub against the grain of our collective obsession with personal control, that is, our sin. Celebrated American novelist Jonathan Franzen put it this way:
We have this notion in this country, not only of endless economic growth but of endless personal growth. I have a certain characterological antipathy to the notion of we're all getting better and better all the time. And it's so clearly belied by our experience. You may get better in certain ways for 10 years, but one day you wake up and although things are a little bit different, they're not a lot different.
It's true. Despite the inevitability of suffering, everything in our culture points toward progress, progress, progress. And I'm not just talking about classic rock anthems like The Beatles' "Getting Better," or Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop." Unfortunately, our churches often espouse a Christianized version of this gospel of progress, framing the life of belief as primarily about personal improvement. What may start out as a faithful by-product of Christian belief soon becomes its focal point, inadvertently serving as the foothold for Original Sin, aka the innate God complex hiding within us all. Such is the default curved-in-on-itself position of the human heart, or what Augustine termed incurvatus in se.
Perhaps you've heard this tendency expressed as a legalistic formula: "The reason for suffering and the lack of abundant life among Christians is due to lack of faith. Or, if you fall ill or come upon hard times financially, maybe it's because there's a hidden skeleton in your closet that needs to be confessed and exposed." Sadly, such thinking has also seeped into our evangelism: "Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and all your dreams will come true"---despite the fact that the general tenor of the New Testament suggests increased suffering for believers, not decreased. Which isn't to say that Christians never experience victory over areas of compulsive sin and brokenness. They certainly do! But as beautiful and miraculous as these thanksgivings may be, they are not the gospel. In fact, the thinking that ties suffering to faithlessness actually is in the Bible---but it's not affirmed, it's condemned! What is affirmed, however, is God working through our afflictions.
This is where Martin Luther, the great leader of the Protestant Reformation, comes in. One of his most important and lasting contributions to the faith involves the distinction between the "theology of glory" and the "theology of the cross." These two divergent views did not originate with Luther. They are as old as the hills; he simply gave them names. It may sound like an esoteric distinction, but it is just as essential today as it was in the sixteenth century.
"Theologies of glory" are approaches to Christianity (and to life) that try in various ways to minimize difficult and painful things, or to move past them rather than looking them square in the face and accepting them. Theologies of glory acknowledge the cross, but view it primarily as a means to an end---an unpleasant but necessary step on the way to personal improvement, the transformation of human potential. As Luther puts it, the theologian of glory "does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil." The theology of glory is the natural default setting for human beings addicted to control and measurement. This perspective puts us squarely in the driver's seat, after all.
One way to understand this dynamic is to look at the ways people talk about painful experiences. If someone has just undergone an ugly, protracted divorce, for example, he or she might say something like, "Well, it was never a good marriage anyway," or "But I've really learned a lot from this whole experience." This kind of rationalization tries to make something bad sound like it is good. It is a strategy to avoid looking pain and grief directly in the face, to avoid acknowledging that we wish life were different but are powerless to change it.
In the church, one hallmark of a theology of glory is the unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of ongoing sin and lack of transformation in Christians. A sign that you are operating with a theology of glory is when your faith feels like a fight against these realities instead of a resource for accepting them. The English poet W. H. Auden captured it beautifully when he wrote,
We would rather die in dread / Than climb the cross of the moment / And let our illusions die.
A theology of the cross, in contrast, understands the cross to be the ultimate statement of God's involvement in the world on this side of heaven. A theology of the cross accepts the difficult thing rather than immediately trying to change it or use it. It looks directly into pain, and "calls a thing what it is" instead of calling evil good and good evil. It identifies God as "hidden in [the] suffering." Luther actually took things one key step further. He said that God was not only hidden in suffering, but He was at work in our anxiety and doubt. When you are at the end of your rope---when you no longer have hope within yourself---that is when you run to God for mercy. It's admittedly difficult to accept the claim that God is somehow hidden amid all of the wreckage of our lives. But those who are willing to struggle and despair may in actuality be those among us who best understand the realities of the Christian life.
A theology of the cross defines life in terms of giving rather than taking, self-sacrifice rather than self-protection, dying rather than killing. It reorients us away from our natural inclination toward a theology of glory by showing that we win by losing, we triumph through defeat, and we become rich by giving ourselves away. Of course, our inner theologian of glory can be counted on to try to hijack the theology of the cross and make it a new, more reliable scheme for self-improvement. But the theology of the cross happens to us and in spite of us. For the suffering person, this is a word of profound hope.To avoid confusion, a quick word about the term glory. It is indeed a biblical word that has its appropriate use. I am aiming to untangle the myriad ways we fuse God's glory with our own glory. So the "glory" in the theology of glory is human glory focusing on human effort intended to earn God's favor or exalt human achievement. The late great Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde put it like this:
A theology of glory ... operates on the assumption that what we need is optimistic encouragement, some flattery, some positive thinking, some support to build our self-esteem. Theologically speaking it operates on the assumption that we are not seriously addicted to sin, and that our improvement is both necessary and possible. We need a little boost in our desire to do good works.... But the hallmark of a theology of glory is that it will always consider grace as something of a supplement to whatever is left of human will and power.
In the theology of glory, life becomes a ladder. Each little victory or improvement brings us one rung closer to the top---which is always just out of sight. At death, if all goes according to plan, we will enter the heavenly courts with a nicely wrapped gift for God that includes an equitable balance of our good versus bad actions, our moral scorecard, if you will. This image may seem ridiculous, but if we're honest, it characterizes more of our religious life and mentality than we would care to admit. As we tell ourselves this story, we communicate that God exists for our benefit, happiness, self-fulfillment, and personal transformation. Those aren't necessarily bad things, and God isn't necessarily opposed to them, but God in Christ cannot be reduced to a means to our selfish ends. He is the end Himself!
The house of religious cards "that glory built" collapses when we inevitably encounter unforeseen pain and suffering. When the economy tanks and you lose your job of thirty years, or when, God forbid, your child gets into a car accident (or is exposed to something damaging). When you simply can't keep your mouth shut about your in-laws even though you promised you would. When the waters rise and the levee breaks. Suddenly, the mask comes off, and the glory road reaches a dead end. We come to the end of ourselves, in other words, to our ruin, to our knees, to the place where if we are to find any help or comfort, it must come from somewhere outside of us. Much to our surprise, this is the precise place where the good news of the gospel---that God did for you what you couldn't do for yourself---finally makes sense. It finally sounds good!
Yet the message hasn't changed, and neither have the facts. They were there all along. Indeed, He was there all along. It might even be that He is communicating the same thing He communicated once for all on Calvary, what Fyodor Dostoyevsky paraphrased so beautifully in the fourth chapter of The Brothers Karamazov: "You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again."
Comments:
July 16, 2012 at 09:32 AM
Law & Gospel is the "lost hermeneutic" of the Protestant Reformation. Praise God for WHI, MR, & brothers like you, Tullian, sounding this clear trumpet sound once again. Theologian of cross v. glory is, I think, the underlying biblical presupposition of the L&G distinction (and it is rooted in 1 Cor 1 & 2). One question that has been bothering me. Isn't CW often an exercise in stoking the Old Adam, that inner theologian of glory that yet abides in our flesh? CW, to me, seems like an exercise in ascent to heaven. The old Western liturgy, reformed according to Scripture, seems more suitable to receiving the gifts of the Gospel - Christ coming down to us to apply the benefits of His Gospel, via the humble means of Word & Sacrament.
July 15, 2012 at 08:08 AM
good words as always. all i would add is that the cross both promises and delivers both honest owning of our brokeness and sinfulness, but also promise of healing and hope. In the corrective against one extreme i would encourage us to ensure we don't neglect the other.
July 15, 2012 at 06:40 AM
Pastor Tullian,
I've only read Gerhard Forde's essay on sanctification in Alexander's "Christian Spirituality", but I absolutely LOVED it. So freeing! I'd like to see what else Forde has. Where's a good spot in his work to start reading?
July 14, 2012 at 12:20 AM
Thanks for a great post, Tullian! I'm glad to see that a fellow Presbyterian finds the distinction between a "theology of glory" versus a "theology of the cross" helpful and enriching. My Lutheran friends love it, and speak of it regularly, but I am afraid that the theme is not very well known of and spoken of in contemporary Reformed circles. Way to get the ball rollin'!
July 13, 2012 at 10:12 AM
Judging from this excerpt, your book is quite thought-provoking! I particularly found your explanation of "theologies in glory" fascinating. I'd never thought of it quite that way, and your thoughts opened my eyes. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts, and I look forward to picking up a copy of your book!
July 13, 2012 at 09:32 AM
Good article resp. excerpt from your book, Tullian.
By the way, if credence can be given to ‘Wikipedia’ then I’d like to say, “Happy birthday!” :)
Uh...and reading your last messages on Twitter, I saw that you ‘earnestly thought about’ turning 40 on Friday the 13. Honestly, I got to know my husband on Friday the 13, 1988, and I was convinced that the date means nothing, particularly for believers (though there were some superstitious ‘voices’ in our Roman Catholic families who wanted to make us believe that this would be a bad omen).
Many blessings,
Susanne
July 13, 2012 at 02:43 PM
PASTOR
good post if a little esoteric, which I like.
Dr Garth Roswell from Gordon Conwell theological Seminary touched on the challenge of Modernity when he spoke of a kind of Social Darwinism that creaped into the church in the late 19th and early 20th century. He said that a social "progress" and or gospel of wealth began to erode the underlying priciples of faith. How to apply faith to a needy world when we are captured by the progress mentality.
July 13, 2012 at 01:55 PM
Great article. This is a much needed corrective to our American idolatry of progress and success. But I am a little uncomfortable with this:
"In the church, one hallmark of a theology of glory is the unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of ongoing sin and lack of transformation in Christians. A sign that you are operating with a theology of glory is when your faith feels like a fight against these realities instead of a resource for accepting them."
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this. Do we have to choose between accepting the reality of our sinfulness and fighting against that reality? Why can faith not be both a resource for accepting my weakness and limitation and a fight against them, in the power of the Spirit, for the glory of Christ? It seems that's the kind of faith the NT epistles encourage us to live out.
July 12, 2012 at 11:38 PM
If anyone has time to hear an excellent class on the 'theology of glory vs. the theology of the cross'...this is it:
http://theoldadam.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/where-god-meets-man.mp3
I was at this class...it was a lot of fun, and very enlightening.
Enjoy.
July 12, 2012 at 08:28 AM
I love these verses on the theology of glory and the cross: Christ in us, the hope of glory Col 1: 27b; we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. 2 Cor 3 18
July 11, 2012 at 10:23 PM
Pastor Tullian
I have listened to WHInn since the beginning
I have read how many books
And it has never been so clear as to how I should
see the difference between LAW and GOSPEL? how can it be?
Now for it to sink in and to read as much of ur blog as possible
see how it all fits together-and NOT on my navel
But my place at the foot of the CROSS not Glory
I I I just dont get why it has taken this long to get it
I have been so busy trying to measure up -
trying (even by some of the reformed guys books etc) of how I am to
measure up.
OH you cant be a Christian if you do that - or this
especially if it is a life long area of never surrendering that sin over
- you're doomed buddy. and so on.
I could go on and on - nah
gotta get focused on the vertical element and not the horizontal.
I am so grateful for what I have discovered here via WHInn
I bought the book Jesus Plus Nothing = Everything
and Pless' book - so got some great reading to do
pray that the enemy dont mess with my head - he likes it the other way - defeated.
What else could RMS 7 be about - huh ?
Thanx Tullian!!!
mike
July 11, 2012 at 08:43 PM
Hi everyone, perhap it is somewhere in the middle where both the theology of Glory and Theology of the Cross intersect? Can we consider that there is a possibility of both Victory and suffering?
It is not either or, but BOTH?
It is not a concept about being "balanced" by the way.
July 11, 2012 at 08:39 AM
[...] (Billy Graham’s grandson) forthcoming book hasn’t been released yet, I have read a few excerpts of it and feel like this can be very helpful for all of our people in the church–and in [...]
July 11, 2012 at 08:07 PM
“The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.
And if children, heirs also; on the one hand, heirs of God; on the other, joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified with Him.”
-Romans 8:16-17
The New Testament does emphasize “good” coming about through or in the midst of suffering (2 Cor. 4:16-17; Rom. 8:17, 29-30; Heb. 12:10-11; 1 Pet. 1:7, 4:12-13; Phil. 3:10; Col. 1:24; Luke 9:24; John 12:24-25). It does so because God’s concept of “good,” of “leading many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10), is so much different from our natural concept. Our natural concept is to see “good” as material blessings, human glory, self-sufficiency, a reforming of the flesh, “your best life now.” But the New Testament reveals that “all things work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose" for the “good” is that we would be gain nothing other than Christ, being conformed to His image through the cross by the power of His resurrection for the Body of Christ as the expression (glorification) of His life.
Our environment is largely beyond our control; and human existence is full of chaos and unavoidable suffering. While suffering does not become other than suffering, pain doesn’t become any less painful in itself, and the outward environment may not change a bit, nevertheless “all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose” because He’s there with us and we gain Him in the midst of trials. Through trials we become increasingly dependent upon Him and begin to live and serve through the cross and by the Spirit for the Body.
July 11, 2012 at 07:24 PM
Great post for Americans!
July 11, 2012 at 07:10 AM
[...] When you are at the end of your rope—when you no longer have hope within yourself—that is when you run to God for mercy. It’s admittedly difficult to accept the claim that God is somehow hidden amid all of the wreckage of our lives. But those who are willing to struggle and despair may in actuality be those among us who best understand the realities of the Christian life. – Tullian Tchividjian (from his article Theology of Glory vs. Theology of the Cross) [...]
July 11, 2012 at 05:36 PM
This very short (under 5min.) audio will expand on Pastor T's post:
http://theoldadam.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/our-best-is-not-good-enough-1.mp3
July 11, 2012 at 04:45 AM
This post confuses me somewhat and part of the confusion lies on how to live-out believe in the sovereignty of God in general. The question is this: If one accepts whatever life deals out to us on the basis that we are accepting 'the cross' or 'providence' why should Christians bother to pray for anything at all? Isn't part of the motivation to pray in the first instance a desire for relief or 'victory' of some sort? I fear that the unintended consequence of this post could be to produce lazy and demoralized Christians much unlike the Luke 18 persistant-in-faith-and-prayer widow.
July 11, 2012 at 04:30 PM
John S.,
Two thirds is being awfully generous. I would put it over 90%.
July 11, 2012 at 04:02 AM
[...] Links I Like Aaron Armstrong — July 11, 2012 — Leave a comment Links I Like | Blogging Theologically | Jesus, Books, Culture, & TheologyHello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Theology Of Glory Vs.Theology Of The Cross [...]
July 11, 2012 at 02:54 PM
My personal experience tells me I am naturally wired with this 'glory' theology, it's what I drift toward. I have to fight to live in the light of the objective truth's of the cross of Christ.
My experience in evangelism bears out the popularity of this ideology among the churched as well. In my experience probably two third's of the those who are church goers and/or call themselves Christians have this view. I can't see their heart but i fear for their lives because they don't mention a thing about the cross (or even Jesus) unless spoon feed to them. Sometimes they ascent to agree, sometimes not. 'Glory theology' proper is a false gospel, a wolf in sheep's clothing. In essence a works based salvation where Jesus is just a tack on.
July 10, 2012 at 10:09 AM
I am very excited for this book. Thank you for fleshing out this doctrine of grace and Gospel in each and every area of life that we may more fully take comfort in the God of our salvation.
http://onceforalldelivered.blogspot.com/
July 10, 2012 at 09:37 AM
Great stuff! Dr. Gene Veith covers some pretty good ground on this topic. His book "Spirituality of the Cross" is really good and spends a great amount of time on this particular subject.
July 10, 2012 at 06:48 PM
Way to go Jerry! You're the expert man! Why don't you enlighten everyone instead of taking cheap shots on a blog.
Absolutely great posting Tullian!!
July 10, 2012 at 03:49 PM
Dr. Veith's book is theology for the timid. The most recent source is Gehard Forde, Being a Theologian of the Cross, which in turns builds on a masterpiece, von Loewenich's, Luther's Theology of the Cross. However, realize that the theology of the cross versus the theology of glory is about as paradoxical as anything explored by Luther. I believe the very title of Dr. TchivIdjian's forth coming betrays a lack of full understanding because that is not what the theology of the cross is about.
July 10, 2012 at 02:19 PM
Good stuff, Pastor T..
We are all theologians of "glory", at heart. Hence the desire to improve where God is concerned, and to kick in what we can.
The theology of the cross says that all of that, all our best efforts, along with our other sin (ha!), has been nailed to the cross with Jesus. Put to death. That's where the theologian of the cross begins...with death. Then we are free to live in the knowledge that "it is finished".
Keep it com in', Pastor.
August 7, 2012 at 10:53 AM
[...] “Theologies of glory” are approaches to Christianity (and to life) that try in various ways to minimize difficult and painful things, or to move past them rather than looking them square in the face and accepting them. Theologies of glory acknowledge the cross, but view it primarily as a means to an end—an unpleasant but necessary step on the way to personal improvement, the transformation of human potential. As Luther puts it, the theologian of glory “does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil.” [...]
Loving The God Hidden In Suffering – Part I « Musing Matt
July 30, 2012 at 05:58 PM
[...] they don’t want to admit their weakness. They don’t want to admit that they, to use another’s words, “wish life were different but are powerless to change it.” One way to avoid it is to [...]