Word Doctrine

I was lately asked to briefly describe my Christian faith.  After a bit of noodling, I settled on Nicene, little-c catholic, reformish with a bit of Lutheran sympathy, mainly with his view on the Word.

I confess that I owe most of my understanding to people who read Luther, and less to Luther himself.  But orthodox Lutheranism describes the several attributes of the word, one of which is efficacy:

When used theologically the term implies, as John Theodore Mueller wrote, that the Scriptures possess. . .the creative power to work in man,  who by nature is spiritually dead, both saving faith and true sancification The Word of God does not merely teach man the way of salvation and show him the means by which he may attain it; but by its truly divine power (vis vere divina) it actually converts, regenerates, and renews him. This unique efficacy is possessed by no other book in the world . . . for the divine efficacy of Scripture is nothing else than God's power in the Word.

 There's some good support of this idea in the Scripture.
The first is the Creation story itself, in which God speaks the world and universe into existence. God says, "Let there be light," and then light comes into being.  Hebrews 11:3 says, "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible."

The second is prophecy.  A common refrain in the Old Testament is, "The word of the Lord came to me, saying...."  While God's speech is mediated here (he is speaking through another), it is no less effective.  As he says through Isaiah:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.  (Is 55.10,11)

The New Testament speaks to the idea of efficacy as well.  Paul says of God that he brings life to the dead and "calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Ro 4.17; the context is God's promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations).

We might lastly consider (although there are more passages) the well-worn quote from Hebrews 4:12, that the "word of God is living and active."  The verse abscribes agency to God's word:  it is alive and energetic.  It acts.


I think the consequences of this are pretty staggering.  The idea of justification, for starters:  that God calls us righteous is not simply a pleasant fiction—it is the creative word of God.  When we read that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word, we are reading that the Word itself opens the ears to hear and believe.  And when we read that the Word of God Himself became flesh and dwelt with us—this is just astonishing.