Theolgia Crucis

In lieu of anything profound from me, please do look at Michael Jensen's excellent summary of Luther's theology of the cross. I am particularly excited by his conclusion:

For Luther, then, the Christian life is lived in the middle of a tension between faith and experience. Our experience only serves to contradict our faith. This was something Luther expounded when he thought that he might be martyred. Where was God in this? Luther used the word Anfechtung – 'temptation', or 'assault' – to describe this experience. The devil, the world and death are allied in a war against man. But of course, it is a work of God too, to reduce man to utter reliance on him and him alone. The only way to grow in the Christian life is to return to the foot of the cross and start all over again.

Please do read the whole thing. Everything I want my theological thinking to be is encapsulated in this one theme of Luther's.

I wanted to write something more here about the doctrine of Scripture, but I find that as much as I want it to, a blog cannot be a place for test-driving unfinished thoughts. Hopefully I'll come back to that later.