Bayer on Luther

Oswald Bayer says that for Luther faith is “divine work in us,” and that means for Luther that God “slays the old nature that belongs to the old world, the old Adam, and makes us new creatures, a new creation.” This is, in Bayers’ summary, the “decisive aspect of the Word [which faith responds to] that creates justifying faith. For Luther the customary alternative of ‘forensic’ or ‘effective’ is no alternative at all. The forensic is effective and the effective forensic. That is his answer to the much-debated question. What God says, God does. The reverse is also true. What God does, God says; his doing is not ambiguous. God’s work is God’s speech. God’s speech is no fleeting breath. It is a most effective breath that creates life, that summons into life. It is the ‘nature’ of God to create our of nothing, to be the Creator by the Word alone. This is not a speculative thought, for those who confess the one who creates out of nothing and gives life to the dead are those who have experienced the truth that God justifies the ungodly by his Word, creating a new self for the old Adamic self.”