Dominus Mortis

Book excerpt: Modern interpreters typically attach revolutionary significance to Luther’s Christology on account of its unprecedented endorsement of God’s ontological vulnerability. This passibilist reading of Luther’s theology has sourced a long channel of speculative theology and philosophy, from Hegel to Moltmann, which regards Luther as an ally against antique, philosophical assumptions, which are supposed to occlude the genuine immanence of God to history and experience. David J. Luy challenges this history of reception and rejects the interpretation of Luther’s Christology upon which it is founded. Dominus Mortis creates the conditions necessary for an alternative appropriation of Luther’s Christological legacy. By re-specifying certain key aspects of Luther’s Christological commitments, Luy provides a careful reassessment of how Luther’s theology can make a contribution within ongoing attempts to adequately conceptualize divine immanence. Luther is demonstrated as a theologian who creatively appropriates the patristic and medieval theological tradition and whose constructive enterprise is significant for the ways that it disrupts widely held assumptions about the doctrine of divine impassibility, the transcendence of God, dogmatic development, and the relationship of God to suffering.