A timely dose of the controversial theologian doing what he did best, i.e. taking the theology of the cross to its existential limits. Via the introduction to The Protestant Era:
“You cannot reach God by the work of right thinking or by a sacrifice of the intellect or by a submission to strange authorities, [ed: religious or not]… You cannot, and you are not even asked to try it. Neither works of piety nor works of morality nor works of the intellect establish unity with God. They follow from this unity, but they do not make it. They even prevent it if you try to reach it through them. But just as you are justified as a sinner (though unjust, you are just), so in the status of doubt you are in the status of truth. And if all this comes together and you are desperate about the meaning of life, the seriousness of your despair is the expression of the meaning in which you still are living. This unconditional seriousness is the expression of the presence of the divine in the expression of utter separation from it. It is this radical and universal interpretation of the doctrine of justification through faith which has made me a conscious Protestant.” (pg XV)
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That’s heartening and beautiful. Thank you.