THE SCANDAL OF RELIGIONThis intentional unity, continuity, and clarity is the very ‘‘illusion’’ that performative
speech acts create.^18
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, speech acts belonged first and foremost to the do-
main of theology. They were modeled upon the age-old idea of the magic power of the
creative divineverbumthat called into being the existing universe, time and space, in
seven days. This one-time act, which is then disseminated into the created things, the
given world about which one can make constative statements, true or false, is not what
interests Luther, however. Instead, he re-reads the Bible as a speech act performed by a
transcendental consciousness. But because the intention of this consciousness is never
fully disclosed (God remains foreverdeus absconditus), it takes a corresponding con-
sciousness, the assurance of the human subject of the continuity and the transparency of
the promise, to recognize the divine promise. This recognition is what Luther calls faith,
and faith manifests itself in the subject’s dealings with the revealed God (deus relevatus),
as well as in his social dealings with other subjects. Luther’s theology of the performative
has nothing to do with the magic power of the divine word; rather, it describes speech
acts as dynamic processes: not as magic words that produce static substances but as essen-
tially social and intersubjective events.
God revealed himself in Scripture, and the subject’s primary obligation is to recognize
Scripture as a transparent, consistent message, as essentially one and the same promise
made by God (Christ, the Spirit). Luther describes the effect of the divine speech act as
analogous to an orator’s performance: the ‘‘holy spirit’’ is a speaker. It teaches and exhorts
but also knows how to blame—and ‘‘faith’’ has an affective component. It is a passion to
which alone the ‘‘spirit’’ is able to move the ‘‘heart’’ of the reader or listener.^19 Yet faith
is not to be understood, in rhetorical terms, as persuasion; the ‘‘assurance’’ of the believer
contains a surplus of conviction that separates ‘‘faith’’ (a theological term) from merely
being persuaded (a rhetorical term).^20 The former requires the interlocutor’s active partic-
ipation, while the latter is an effect to which she submits. Scripture, Luther insists, is
essentially reducible to an oral announcement, a locutionary act, a gospel: ‘‘we can...
take it for certain that there is only one gospel, just as the new testament is only one book.
...Evangelis a Greek word meaning glad tidings, good news, welcome information, a
shout, something that makes one sing and talk and rejoice.’’ The good tidings constitute
a promise, for ‘‘there is only one faith and only one God: the God who makes promises.’’^21
Luther understood the unique spoken word as iterable and took this iterability to guaran-
tee the continuity of intention: ‘‘This gospel may be proclaimed in few words or in
many.’’^22 Thus the logocentric idea of the gospel hinges on its repetition through writing.
The privileged example of the iterability of writing in the period was the reproducibility
and variability of printed type. The four gospels do nothing other than repeat thesame
one gospel, as do all the texts that Luther considers to constitute authentic Scripture.
‘‘Now God, in order to strengthen such faith, often promised this evangel, this Testament
of his, through the prophets of the Old Testament.’’^23 Moreover, Luther claims that their
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