Let me start by attempting to summarize the relevant parts of Lutheran Theology as I understand it now. One of the primary, if not the primary, distinctions in Lutheran theology is that of Law vs. Gospel. Law is defined functionally rather than ontologically (not sure if that's the right word). In other words, Law is defined by what it does rather than what it is. When Luther says Law, he doesn't necessarily mean the Mosaic Law or some abstract moral law, although he could, but he means anything that does Law to us. Luther talks about two functions of the Law: the pedagogical (from Paul's use of παιδαγωγός [paidagogos] in Galatians 3:24-25) and the civil. The civil use (function) of the Law refers to keeping order here on Earth in our day-to-day lives. This could mean Mosaic Law, but it could also mean the laws of our government and society. The pedagogical use is that which shows us our separation from God, that which shows us our sin. This can refer to anything, from Jesus' greatest commandments to Romans 3:23 (for all have fallen short) to a nagging conscience. One of my favorite images Luther uses is that of leaves rustling in the wind on a dark night in the woods. Anything that causes fear in you, anything that reminds you of your own mortality̶̶̶̶-- this is fulfilling the pedagogical function of the law.
Obviously we find the pedagogical use of the law to be... unpleasant, and we are willing to do anything to silence that voice. We look for solutions and schemes which will bring us closer to God and make us worthy of him. At the same time, we are terrified of God and are bound (like, with chains) to reject him. I know that, for those of us brought up in the Church, it can be hard to really understand that kind of fear of God. We, at least in the tradition I grew up in, are much more likely to talk about being buddies with God than subjects of him. Imagine for a moment what we know about God on our own apart from what has been directly revealed to us. We end up with the "God of the philosophers," as Pascal calls him in Pensées. We end up with an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God. This God is the creator/source of all there is (good and bad) and yet we want to say that he is all-loving as well. This God is so big as to be incomprehensible to us and he is the one in charge of our destinies. Luther refers to this God of natural theology as the "Hidden God." This is God in himself. This is a God that, ultimately, is hidden from us. In his book Where God Meets Man, Gerhard Forde puts it this way:
...general concepts and ideas such as almightiness, immutability and even predestination do not in the first instance reveal God to us so much as they hide him from us. They do not at first comfort or console us so much as they frighten or even repel us...But the point in saying that God is hidden is to lead us to recognize that this is exactly the way God intends it to be. He does not want to be known as he is "in heaven," in his mere "almightiness" or even merely as "the God of predestination."
Note that we are not denying that this is how God is, but we are saying that we can never really know God in this way. This God, the Hidden God, is just too big and too frightening for us to know. We are never sure if he is for us or against us. We're never quite comfortable saying what he is or isn't doing. Luther says that the Hidden God is often indistinguishable from Satan. Who's responsible for Hurricane Katrina? What about the earthquake in Haiti? 9/11? Many said that this was God punishing us while others would say that it was the act of Satan, if they gave it a supernatural cause. The fact is that we have no idea what the Hidden God is doing or not doing, nor do we know why. So how can we know God? I'll continue Forde's quote:
He wants to be known as the God in the manger or at his mother's breasts, the God who suffered and died and rose again. His almightiness, his unchangeability, the threat of predestination- all these things are "masks" which God wears, so to speak, to drive us to look elsewhere, to look away from heaven and down to earth, to the manger and the cross, to preaching and the sacraments.
God is hidden in the abstract so that he can be revealed in the concrete, in his history with humanity culminating in Jesus Christ. This God, the Revealed God, is the source of Gospel. This is the good news that we have: God is indeed for us and not against us and has worked everything out for our good.
So here's my issue: what does it mean for God to be both Hidden and Revealed? How can we say that the Revealed God is the same as the Hidden God, who is so hidden as to be easily confused with Satan? How do we know that the promises made to us by the Revealed God will be upheld by the Hidden God? I have some beginnings of ideas, but for now I'll let the questions stand.
