I’ve always been uncomfortable with people who defend Christianity by appealing to an innate human sense of “aesthetics” or “beauty”. Christianity is ugly and repulsive. Christ was the stone that the builders rejected.
The ugliness of Jesus is the central theme of Martin Luther’s “Heidelberg Disputation”, which he penned in 1518. When I first read Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation a few years ago, I immediately judged it to be a pile of Zen koan-like sophistry. It’s very brief, formulated as 14 short paired “theses”, with each thesis followed by an “antithesis” (for a total of 28). Much as with Zen koans, though, subsequent life found me repeatedly saying, “Aha! That’s what he meant!”. The Heidelberg Disputation, above all else, is about the sheer repugnance of Christ.
It turns out that Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation is perhaps the most important document in the Reformation. This short document is far more important theologically than his “Ninety-Five Theses”. I learned later that Luther provided extensive commentary for each of the theses in Heidelberg Disputation. Gerhard O. Forde’s “On Being a Theologian of the Cross” walks through the HD and Luther’s associated commentary. The HD starts thusly:
1. The law of God, the most salutatory doctrine in life, cannot advance humans on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them.
2. Much less can human works, which are done over and over again with the aid of natural precepts, so to speak, lead to that end.
This is standard Pauline Christianity, from Romans. But Luther throws down the gauntlet in theses 3-4:
3. Although the works of man always seem attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.
4. Although the works of God are always unattractive and appear evil, they are nevertheless really eternal merits.
In his commentary, Luther expands, saying that the works of God always appear “deformed”. He cites Matthew 23 and Isaiah 53 in support. Matthew 23:27:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.
And Isaiah 53:2:
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him
Forde summarizes:
Our complaint — as is generally true of arguments with Luther! — does not really refute the argument but rather just illustrates it. We actually do “hide our faces” and look for something more, “positive, self-affirming, and attractive”. And so we don’t see. We can’t look. We call evil good and good evil. As addicts, as theologians of glory, we have no choice.
The rest of the Heidelberg Disputation systematically dismantles our human tendency to glorify “beauty”, and explains why Christ’s hideousness is just what we need. Luther touches deeply on “the problem of suffering” while annihilating our “aesthetics”, and culminates with this:
28. The love of God does not first discover, but creates what is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through attraction to what pleases it.
Scriptures command us to see Christ in the “last, the lost, and the least”. The dispossessed, the poor, the sick. The ugly and repulsive. Jesus never self-identifies with the strong, the healthy, the wise, or the powerful. The only time He self-identifies with people, it is with the weakest. See Matthew 25:40-45:
“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Clearly, Christ wants us to see Him in the most unattractive and dispossessed. Forde links this to Luther’s 28th and final thesis in a powerful conclusion:
This love of God that creates its object is contrasted absolutely with the love of humans. Human love is awakened by attraction to what pleases it. It must search to find its object and, one might add, will likely toss it aside when it tires of it.
Can you say “Rahab”? Forde continues:
The first part of [thesis 28] is clear because the love of God that lives in man loves sinners, evil persons, fools, and weaklings in order to make them righteous, good, wise, and strong. Rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good. Therefore, sinners are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive. For this reason the love of man avoids sinners and evil persons. Thus Christ says, “For I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” [Matthew 9:13]”
Even the Qur’an gets this right. As Forde explains:
The problem is that for a theology of glory the bad, poor, needy, and lowly cannot really exist. What really exists is the true, the good, and the beautiful, the great abstractions, the “invisible” things of God. Because the theologian of glory is always looking through what is actually given, the bad, poor, needy, and lowly are invisible.
Shall we compensate by saying that the poor, lowly, and ugly should have “equal opportunity” with the beautiful and privileged? If you answer “yes”, you’ve understood nothing about the Heidelberg Disputation. The least alone are Christ!
Shall we compensate by arguing that Christ’s teachings which we find “ugly” and “repugnant” should be counterbalanced with those teachings which we find aesthetically pleasing? Again, if you answer “yes”, you have failed to understand the Heidelberg Disputation.
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