Abstract

In the second half of the twentieth century, the overcoming of the infuence of Kant’s philosophy on the interpretation of Luther’s theology gave the impetus to a new shift in the Luther studies. However, it also revealed the importance of the theological intuitions of the Reformer on the current philosophical-theological debate on the possibility of restoring metaphysics and ontology in particular. The study aims to present the ontological dimension and the orientation of some of these intuitions present in Luther’s commentary on the Letter to the Romans. This dimension is determined by his conviction that the revelation of the trinitarian God in Christ has shown the truth of being in general, and of human being in particular, the truth of the fact that this being is structurally related but also of the fact that, in the historical space, this relationship has to bring to date and to augment what is happeniing by means of following the Crucified and Risen Logos of the Creator, and uniting with his Holy Spirit in the communion of believers.

Highlights

  • In the second half of the twentieth century, the overcoming of the infuence of Kant’s philosophy on the interpretation of Luther’s theology gave the impetus to a new shift in the Luther studies

  • The “majority of contemporary Luther scholars, and those belonging to the Lutheran confession, acknowledge that, in the case of Martin Luther, they are faced with a creative and radical rethinking of the ontological categories in the light of the dialectic structure of the Christian mystery and Ľubomír Žák of revelation: the christological event and its actualisation in the work of the Spirit oblige us to redefine ontology [...]”1

  • I begin, from the assumption that, despite the divergences among Luther scholars on their subject’s type of ontology, there is a marked convergence on a fundamental characteristic of this ontology: the centrality it gives to the category of relation

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Summary

Form and the Substitution of Forms

Some passages of the Lectures – the dictum and the author’s way of arguing – give an immediate impression his struggle to grasps the great complexity of the above-mentioned “realties”, including their internal structure. When Luther employs the term “form” in the context of the reflection on human beings and their justification by God, it is clear that he does not intend to refer to the level of human behaviour or to the sphere of psychological/spiritual interiority (the conscience) but rather to indicate something fundamental, essential, concerning the level of the human being in some way. It should be remembered, with reference to what is formulated and in the context of the explanation of vv. That is clear from the comment on these verses found in one of the first pages of the Lectures[15]

The Substitution of Forms in the Person of Christ
God Works as Creator – ex nihilo
The Idea of Esse as Actus-Relatio
Attempt at an Ontology in the Light of Revelation
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