Reformation Monday: Luther and aliens

Well, not really.  That was just a teaser headline.  Actually Luther talked about 'alien faith' and of course he wasn't talking about particularly righteous residents of Mars.  In fact, it was a key element in his explanation around baptism.

As Lutherans, we baptize infants; other Christian denominations prefer to wait until the child has reached the 'age of reason' and  can declare their faith for themselves.  Our choice to baptize infants has nothing to do with their innocence; Luther was very clear on that point.  Once you are breathing, you stand on the other side of a huge gap from the Divine simply because you are human and not God.  The church generally calls that gap 'sin' but if you picture it as a deep chasm between the life we live and the life of Divine perfection, that will work just as well.

At the same time, Luther recognized that it is impossible to determine whether an infant has any trust in God, awareness of Jesus or response to the Holy Spirit.  An infant cannot declare its faith in the Triune God.***

The faith that brings an infant to the baptismal font is not the faith the infant declares, but the faith of those who carry the child to the water.  Those who offer up this helpless child to the God trust that God will love the child even more than they do; they baptize as an act of that faith.  Before any other power can lay claim to this child, the parents/grandparents offer this child to the promise of resurrection that is Jesus.  It is their faith.....an alien faith.....that is a faith outside of the child......which brings the child forward.

Luther uses this concept again to talk about an 'alien righteousness' which is the righteousness of Jesus the Christ.  It is the righteousness of Jesus which covers us through baptism, in our lives and in our physical deaths.  It is a righteousness which comes from outside us, not from inside us (by our own doing).  In fact, Luther might say (although I am fairly sure he never did) that God is an alien God:  God comes to us, God is outside us.  We would not know God without God revealing Godself to us in Jesus.   But that is enough aliens for one day.  Let's just enjoy the picture and the joy we see in that child's face.


***Now, as an aside, I strongly believe that in reflecting on an infant's totally dependent relationship to its parents, and its complete and selfless trust in their love and care for them, Luther would have been able to recognize the core relationship of love that reaches its perfection in the love of God for all of humankind.  At its core, this dependence and trust is faith (as Luther explains in his explanation to the first commandment in his Large Catechism).  Infants live in complete trust of the other - the purest form of faith that we achieve on this side of the great divide.