Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, Part II

Luther Restates the Dualism

The Western Church has long been afflicted by an enervating dualism that placed a priority upon heaven at the expense of earth.  Heaven had to do with God, spiritual realities, eternity; earth had to do with physical and material reality, the body, and atoms.  It was temporal.  It would pass away.  The realm of matter, and service in it, was only a means to an eternal end. Therefore, it was relatively unimportant in the big scheme of things.

There are many problems with this perspective--which is essentially a re-presentation of Greek pagan thought.  Not the least is that most Christians spend the majority of their time, energy, and attention on work, on activity and labour in the material world.  In the end, it is all going to come to nothing.
  One outcome is an inevitable hierarchy of callings: those who engage in spiritual work or whose calling is to work in the Church are more important, more spiritually engaged, and closer to God.  Those who spend their life coal-mining are more worldly, less close to God.

Luther attempted to deal with this spiritual-worldly dualism by calling our attention to the doctrines of the priesthood of all believers and divine calling.  Luther argued from Scripture that there is no hierarchy of believers: all equally are priests.  Therefore, the labourer--the ditch digger, or coal miner for example--is equally holy, and equally spiritual with the preacher and missionary.  All are engaged and called as priests.  All callings, or vocations, are equally holy because they represent a calling from God Himself.

Luther's rendition of the holiness of all lawful callings and their spirituality is startling, thrilling and liberating.  Working with the truths of God's absolute transcendence over the creation, and His complete immanence within it, and with His appointment of secondary agents and causes, Luther developed a sparkling conception of God at work in and through our earthly callings.  When a mother fed a baby, for example, God was feeding the baby, said Luther.  When a farmer planted seed and grew a crop, God was planting the seed and growing food. 

But--and here is the problem with Luther's rendition--all this spiritual labour belonged to the kingdom of this world, of the earthly and material realm, which would finally come to an end, when the heavenly kingdom alone would exist for eternity.  In that heavenly kingdom there would be no marriage, child bearing, or crop planting.  Therefore, whilst all lawful vocations in the kingdom of this world were deeply spiritual, they were also temporary and would pass away.

Darrell Cosden, in his book The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, renders it this way:

According to Luther, the Christian lives in two spheres, or governments, under God.  These are as opposite from one another as faith is from works and as heaven is from earth, although both depend upon each other and are essential in God's order.

The spiritual kingdom or government in Luther's view is strictly heavenly.  It is Christ's kingdom of the gospel and is focused on the "inner man" receiving eternal life--heavenly life through justification alone.  It is the kingdom where the Spirit leads people to faith so that, in faith, Christ's lordship is exercised in a person's heart. . . . The spiritual kingdom that focused on the inner man (spirit) rather than the outer man (material and earthly life) is the ultimate standard by which to order and evaluate all of life, including our work(s) which, spiritually speaking, have no heavenly value.

The earthly kingdom in contrast is not, as one might jump to conclude, worthless in God's sight.  Nor, strictly speaking, is it "secular", as if it has nothing to do with God.  It is part of the spiritual life.  However, it is strictly subordinate to the heavenly kingdom. . . . The earthly kingdom finds its place, and therefore its value, in its service to the heavenly kingdom--the ultimate.  The worldly government, like the heavenly, is instituted and administered by God--but is concerned with the "outer" rather than the "inner" man.  Its purpose is always to point to the inner man and thereby to direct us to justification, which consists of a righteousness distinct from us but through which we now live.  Cosden, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, p. 44.

What is immediately striking is that Luther's view is very close to that espoused by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical on work (considered in Part I).   The callings in the Kingdom of the World have value but only insofar as they contribute to the inner man--or, in John Paul's conception--the subjective aspects of human personality.  Luther's Two Kingdom View, whilst trying to establish all lawful callings in this world as spiritual, fails in the end, because the Kingdom of the World is always subordinate, instrumental, and temporary. It is a means to an end. 

Luther thus maintained the medieval dualism in Western Christian thought.  It is Luther's view which has come down through Protestant evangelicalism, bequeathing the same pagan errors nursed within Western Christendom.  As Cosden puts it:

While Luther cut out one hierarchy of callings with his new conception, in its place he inadvertently erected another.  And it is this hierarchy of callings, carried on into evangelicalism, which lies at the heart of our view of work that simply does not work. (Ibid., p. 48)

 Part III on reforming our view of earthly work will turn to the Scriptures.