character has not only been taken from the usage of the Bible; it is also the only possible way to do justice to the fact that faith is addressed by a divine “You” (Du). Every attempt to construct God’s “essence” (Wesen) hypothetically from His “attributes” (Eigenschaften) must run aground on the diastasis of wrath and mercy. Since a chronological detaching of the one by means of the other is unthinkable, the potentiality of both in God would have to be accepted. For Luther, of course, the efficaciousness