Modem Theology 6:2 January 1990 ISSN 0266-71777 $3.00 LUTHER, METAPHOR, AND THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE DENNIS BIELFELDT J The question of the semantics of Luther's theological language has not received the attention it deserves. In settling the "big issues" in Luther scholar- ship researchers have tended to avoid asking really new questions of the Luther texts. The result has been a rather uncontroversial Luther. But Inge Lonning, President of the Seventh International Luther Congress, charged those assembled in Oslo in the summer of 1988 that it was time to "make Luther controversial again." Bringing controversy back to Luther scholar- ship, however, demands a change in paradigm; a change in questions asked, and presuppositions about how those questions are addressed. 1 1 wish to explore a rather controversial area of Luther inquiry by directing the following question to the Luther texts: What are the semantic conditions for the possibility of linguistic meaning in the theological utterances of Martin Luther? More than fifty years have passed since A. J. Ayer summed up the attitudes of the early Logical Positivists by claiming that the utterances "of the theist are not genuine propositions at all." 2 While it is tempting for us today to deride the Positivists for their naivete in globally identifying linguistic meaning with empirical verifiability, their challenge to theology to justify the legitimacy of the meaningfulness of its claims has been important in re- focusing theology's attention on the tools of its trade: its own words. What is really meant when a theologian claims that "God is in Christ," or that "Christ is made sin," or that "this bread is Christ's body?" Do theological words reference extra-mental objects, or mental concepts and images? Do they possess determinate senses establishing conditions for literal and/or symbolic reference? Are they meaningful only because they address the ontological depth of existence itself, and effect a reconstitution of an individual's pre-objective "webs of significance?" Or do the words of theology Professor Dennis Bielfeldt, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas 67456, USA