“I am Joseph!”

Preface

This investigation of Luther’s last lectures on Genesis is a linguistic-literary analysis of his commentary on the narrative of the Joseph story. It is about language and suffering, the theology of the cross and the language of God.ⁱ This investigation is a heuristic one, demonstrating how Luther’s reading of Scripture becomes a springboard for developing new insights. Some of these insights lead his readers back to first things, to what in this book I call, protology, as opposed to eschatology. Finally, this book also investigates Luther’s interpretation of “sending” in the Joseph stories as a spiritual-mystical language of God.

Luther’s lectures launch new insights. In terms of first things, for example, Luther relates, “I am Joseph” (Gen 45:3) to “I am the Lord your God” (LW 8:4–12), which inspires one to relate “I am Joseph” to the story of the burning bush (Ex 3:1–6) that Moses beheld on Mount Horeb: He goes closer to see why the flames do not consume the branches. Moses hides his face but still dares to ask for God’s name. God says, “I am who I am,” i.e., “I am” the One who will not give you my name. “I am” the ineffable. “I am” and people in the fallen world, like Joseph’s brothers, are dumb-struck and speechless. I am the One who heard ←ix | x→the cry of the slaves hard-pressed by their Egyptian taskmasters of the Pharaonic empire. Like the voice Paul hears in Acts 9:5, (LW 8:27) “I am Jesus” whom you are persecuting, – whom you crucified, whom rather than over you, you wanted no one but Caesar. You refuse to have the God of truth and compassion, life, and love to rule over you.

Now the theology of the cross is not merely the theography of Jesus, meaning the story of his crucifixion. The theology of the cross is an epistemology. Reliable knowledge does not only derive from the senses, nor from reason, nor from the way Kant put them together in his transcendental philosophy, where in his Copernican revolution of thought he placed reason within its boundaries and then foolishly, religion in the boundaries of it. Knowledge attained in the ←x | xi→theology of the cross does not allow its scope to remain inside the limits of human reason. Nor allow it to remain in the abstract, cerebral regions of the mind to avoid the body, the emotions, compassion, and the social struggle for justice, speaking the truth to power: Pharaoh, Caesar, dictator, or any tyrant. According to the Axial Age Theory of Karl Jaspers, every genuine religion was launched by a protest against a divine king. In the sixteenth century renewal of faith, called the Reformation, one also cannot fail to notice that Martin Luther stood up against both the emperor and the pope.

With Luther’s “Behold, the Word of God,” he suddenly becomes aware of the performative nature of divine language. (James Samuel Preus still calls it causative language in the section of this book called “Outside Resources.”) Surprisingly, Oswald Bayer makes the performative, using the term promissio, for a closer theological reception of Luther, the pivot, the turning point, of the Reformation. In this investigation it was necessary to go beyond J.L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words to John R. Searle’s contributions. In his essay “How Performatives Work,” Searle shows that the performative is an executive, self-referential speech act. That certainly brings the name of Yahweh to mind: “I am who I am.” Then ←xi | xii→how uncanny that the two most prominent meanings of Joseph’s Egyptian name are a divine performative: “God speaks and he exists” and an allusion to the epistemology of the theology of the cross: “the one who uncovers what is hidden [in the darkness].”

The Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis is taken by Ricoeur from abstract intellect into embodied affects and forms of life with orientation, disorientation or dislocation and reorientation. Finally, Jan-Olav Henricksen has orientation, transformation, and legitimation. His first two concepts go to the heart of this work, but not legitimation. Doctrine does not seem to relate to performative language or the experience that promises become fulfilled in the form of their opposites. And sentence meaning opposed to speaker meaning plays havoc with logic, whether ancient, medieval, or modern argumentation. The tone of voice can completely contradict what is said. “It doesn’t matter to me,” can be said in a way that one becomes aware how much it matters. That two negatives make a positive, but two positives do not make a negative: a joke responds, “Yeah, yeah!” ←xii | xiii→and the tone of voice in which those two “yeses” are said amount to a negation. And performatives like promises and commands are not true or false, but kept or broken, obeyed or disobeyed.

Introduction and Preliminary Information

The Joseph story in the last chapters of Genesis, which Gerhard von Rad calls, the Joseph Novelle, can reduce a reader to tears. Then Martin Luther amplifies the story in such a way that his lectures become like an epic drama.¹ How can lectures expounding on what Luther considered the holy pages of Scripture accomplish such a feat? In his book Potiphar’s House, James L. Kugel has an apt answer to this question. Luther provides a narrative expansion, he writes, which can be described as “an exegete’s practice of adding dialogue, actions, motives, [emotions], and events not explicitly found in the Scripture itself.”² “Emotions” need to be added to James Kugel’s description, because natural feelings or affects are so important to Luther.

←1 | 2→A perfect example of Luther’s expansion of the terse biblical words³ can be shown when Luther comes to the place where Joseph finally sets aside his Egyptian identity as Zaphenath-Paneah and without his interpreter, speaks to his brothers in Hebrew and says: “I am Joseph!” The brothers thought him completely gone and long dead, but there he was and he had understood everything they had said to each other in Hebrew! His brothers had successfully hidden their cold crime for 22 years. “I am Joseph!” he repeated. “Is my father still alive?” Thunderstruck, they cannot speak. Luther writes:

They could not utter a word. But the gentleness and kindness [that Joseph] poured out upon them [after his tough love] give them the confidence to speak more confidently. Although Scripture does not mention what was spoken on both sides, this can be easily inferred from their feelings: perhaps those who were innocent [of their crime against Joseph] – Dan, Issachar, Benjamin, etc. – said: “Ah, my brother Joseph, we shrank back with all our hearts from such an evil deed! But you, Simeon, what great sadness and pain you have brought upon our father!” Simeon acknowledged and deprecated his fault in humility, saying, “Ah, dear Joseph, I am the scoundrel; I deserve to be broken on the wheel and tortured by you!” Judah and Reuben said, “We wanted to set you free and restore you to your father.” Yet they sinned because they gave the advice to sell their brother.⁴

Simeon’s words, in Luther’s medieval anachronism, can bring a good laugh to the reader. Imagine for someone to suggest that he deserved to be punished by being tortured and broken on the wheel! Who could ever be contrite enough to want such a punishment? (Of course, Luther could not have known how people were punished in ancient Egypt.) None-the-less, however, this citation illustrates Luther’s ←2 | 3→imaginative expansion of the Biblical narrative and his vicarious and empathetic involvement in the Joseph story. And to use the terms of Mickey Mattox, his words “unite the times,”⁵ i.e., Luther’s medieval times with those of ancient Egypt.

Thus Luther’s expansion of the Joseph narrative, in the very last lectures of his life, is a delight to read. He died in Eisleben, the city in which he was born, three short months and a day after completing them.⁶

Luther’s final lectures contain some of his most mature theology. Throughout the first eight volumes of Luther’s Works, placed at the beginning of the fifty-five volume English set of his works, wonderfully placed because of their significance, he recapitulates and rehearses the many themes of his theology. In these last lectures, volumes six, seven, and eight, however, he features his (1) Word of God Theology with the (2) Theology of the Cross; what he calls the (3) language of God; and what can be called his (4) Theology of Language, in terms of divine performatives.

Luther started lecturing on the Joseph story in the Book of Genesis, chapters 37–50 in September of 1543 and ended them on Tuesday, November 17, 1545.⁷ He had begun with Genesis as a whole, i.e., chapter 1 on June 1, 1535, usually lecturing on Tuesdays. Reading these volumes, you can sit in with the hundreds of students, attending the coveted lectures of the famous Dr. Martinus Lutherus of Wittenberg: they would have taken place in Latin, of course, with many outbursts in colloquial German, when a point was particularly poignant.⁸

←3 | 4→Martin Brecht, who wrote the three volume definitive biography of Martin Luther, introduces his last Genesis lectures with these words:

Among the stories of the patriarchs, Luther ascribed to the stories about Joseph, coming at the end of the narrative, a very high standing in Scripture. Joseph began his life in such a sorrowful way, that his father, Jacob, had a very difficult time persevering in hope [through all the bitter circumstances] until the story finally came to a happy end. Luther felt that he was not equal to the task of explicating this material and would have liked to leave it to someone else. Nevertheless, having once begun, he continued his exposition, although he considered it a penetrating review rather than a proper treatment of the text. But this was too modest a judgment on his part. Once again his rich empathy with the profoundly troubled in a situation filled by suffering leaves a strong impression on us. He gives the Joseph narrative a psychologically deep interpretation. Again and again the unshakable faith in the providence of God comes to the fore. Melanchthon is certainly correct when he ascertains that like other highly gifted intellectuals, Luther’s exposition became more simple and nearer to life with advancing age.⁹ Melanchthon rushed Veit Dietrich to get Luther’s Genesis commentary published. Luther himself, on the other hand, felt his work to be too verbose and not weighty enough. When the year 1545 began, he yearned to end his lectures or to die before their completion.¹⁰

From Martin Brecht’s very apt characterization of Luther’s detailed exposition of the Genesis Joseph Novelle, some themes can be gleaned that are very important. Luther certainly underestimated the value of his own work. His work is more than “a penetrating review.” In this interesting way to phrase empathy, he penetrated the stories of Joseph in these chapters of Genesis with his own life.¹¹ ←4 | 5→Calling his work “a penetrating review more than a proper treatment of the text,” also brings Kenneth Hagen to mind and his critique of calling Luther’s lectures a “commentary” on Genesis, in the modern scientific sense.¹² Much more needs to be said about Luther’s giving the narrative a psychologically profound interpretation. (Martin Brecht would certainly not be averse to calling it a theologically profound interpretation, in the sense of an “In Depth Theology.”)¹³ He notes that Luther’s empathy is uninhibited for the sorely oppressed biblical characters and in the meanwhile he celebrates the salvific outcome of the steadfast faithfulness of God. And that Luther discerns how profoundly troubled these Old Testament saints were, “in situations filled by suffering,” despite living their faith in the promises of God. These words bring Luther’s Theology of the Cross to mind.

Melanchthon’s evaluation of Luther’s last lectures is quite true to the mark as well. To “simplicity and nearness to everyday life,” he could have added an “intense poignancy of human feeling” in the face of the ultimate questions, disappointments, and assurances in life. Brecht mentions Veit Dietrich and Philipp Melanchthon hurrying Luther’s lectures to the press. The mention of Philipp Melanchthon and Veit Dietrich touch upon another important preliminary issue.

Peter Meinhold argues that both Melanchthon and Dietrich edited Luther’s Genesis lectures, while preparing them for publication, but, for example, substituting Melanchthon’s viewpoints about the law in the stead of Luther’s. Mickey Mattox shows that critique to be inaccurate, and Meinhold’s whole thesis as well, because it is not based on clear textual evidence.¹⁴ And Jaroslav Pelikan notes that ←5 | 6→it is problematic to see Luther’s early writings as canonical and normative and from them to throw suspicion on the mature theology of his last lectures.¹⁵

But on first reading, evidence almost seemed to support Meinhold’s suspicion. It came as a shock to read Luther saying, “one has to do what is in one,”¹⁶ the very statement that he contradicted with “we need do nothing to be saved,” that we should be completely passive before God (coram deo), justified by faith. But then he explains that he means it in a different sense, i.e., that if means are at hand that exist, they should not be neglected in order to tempt God.

When you have a ladder, there is no reason for throwing yourself out of a window, nor should you go through the middle of the Elbe when you have a bridge.¹⁷

When such means are at hand and someone does nothing, according to Luther, in one case, on the left, it is usually out of despair; or in the other case, on the right, it is out of presumption, when someone wants direct intervention from God, neglecting the means at hand. One should humbly do what reason instructs one to do and then leave the rest to God.¹⁸

The paralysis of not being able to do anything is overcome by the good faith that God “will [still] be working all things through you.”¹⁹ God will be your strength and help, not like your being a puppet, but, with Christ in your heart, you will be your true self making your faith become active in love and making your love seek justice (out of the strength that comes from above). Thus Luther’s ←6 | 7→saying, “one has to do what is in one,” which seemed like the old Luther mellowing out from being completely passive before God, turned into the capacity for action in the duties and responsibilities we have in life before others (coram hominibus).

Minor additions in the text by editors, however, are present; for example, when the expression “dear reader” comes up: Luther would not have said that in a lecture.²⁰ Perhaps one could suspect another hand in the many classical allusions present in the text.²¹ But then on February 16th the very last words that Luther penned on a scrap of paper before he died were: