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Siegbert W. Becker, The Foolishness of God : The Place of Reason in the Theology of Martin Luther. Milwaukee : Northwestern Publishing House, 1982. pp. x, 266.
This study by an American Lutheran pastor attempts to separate the rationalistic and antirationalistic (or irrationalistic, a dangerous word) strains in Luther's thought in order to show that reason is indeed an important element in his system as a whole but its function in purely theological activity is limited. Knowledge of God himself has been denied man since the Fall ; faith is the only means of awareness, and has no place in our understanding of God. Reason even in its corrupted state is the greatest gift of God, but it can never attain a knowledge of God, who presents himself in such forms as a voice, a dove, water, bread, wine ; and in these forms alone can we find and grasp him. The Platonicpatristic notion of logos leads us away from God ; and this is true if one believes in a break between divine and human spirit. One can, I think, hold such a view without necessarily believing in the Fall as a cause of it, and it would have been interesting had Mr. Becker examined whether Luther's metaphysics would have forbidden such a communion on other grounds : if knowledge for Luther is, as Becker claims (p. 49), a personal and subjective relationship, would the difference between God and man before the Fall have allowed for such a relationship or knowledge ? In other words, we must know what we fell from, and Becker does not ciue us in on Luther's view of this. More importantly, what...