luther's first thesis

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Martin Luther and the 95 Theses

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 6, 2019 | Original: October 29, 2009

Born in Eisleben, Germany, in 1483, Martin Luther went on to become one of Western history’s most significant figures. Luther spent his early years in relative anonymity as a monk and scholar. But in 1517 Luther penned a document attacking the Catholic Church’s corrupt practice of selling “indulgences” to absolve sin. His “95 Theses,” which propounded two central beliefs—that the Bible is the central religious authority and that humans may reach salvation only by their faith and not by their deeds—was to spark the Protestant Reformation. Although these ideas had been advanced before, Martin Luther codified them at a moment in history ripe for religious reformation. The Catholic Church was ever after divided, and the Protestantism that soon emerged was shaped by Luther’s ideas. His writings changed the course of religious and cultural history in the West.

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was born in Eisleben, Saxony (now Germany), part of the Holy Roman Empire, to parents Hans and Margaretta. Luther’s father was a prosperous businessman, and when Luther was young, his father moved the family of 10 to Mansfeld. At age five, Luther began his education at a local school where he learned reading, writing and Latin. At 13, Luther began to attend a school run by the Brethren of the Common Life in Magdeburg. The Brethren’s teachings focused on personal piety, and while there Luther developed an early interest in monastic life.

Did you know? Legend says Martin Luther was inspired to launch the Protestant Reformation while seated comfortably on the chamber pot. That cannot be confirmed, but in 2004 archeologists discovered Luther's lavatory, which was remarkably modern for its day, featuring a heated-floor system and a primitive drain.

Martin Luther Enters the Monastery

But Hans Luther had other plans for young Martin—he wanted him to become a lawyer—so he withdrew him from the school in Magdeburg and sent him to new school in Eisenach. Then, in 1501, Luther enrolled at the University of Erfurt, the premiere university in Germany at the time. There, he studied the typical curriculum of the day: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and philosophy and he attained a Master’s degree from the school in 1505. In July of that year, Luther got caught in a violent thunderstorm, in which a bolt of lightning nearly struck him down. He considered the incident a sign from God and vowed to become a monk if he survived the storm. The storm subsided, Luther emerged unscathed and, true to his promise, Luther turned his back on his study of the law days later on July 17, 1505. Instead, he entered an Augustinian monastery.

Luther began to live the spartan and rigorous life of a monk but did not abandon his studies. Between 1507 and 1510, Luther studied at the University of Erfurt and at a university in Wittenberg. In 1510–1511, he took a break from his education to serve as a representative in Rome for the German Augustinian monasteries. In 1512, Luther received his doctorate and became a professor of biblical studies. Over the next five years Luther’s continuing theological studies would lead him to insights that would have implications for Christian thought for centuries to come.

Martin Luther Questions the Catholic Church

In early 16th-century Europe, some theologians and scholars were beginning to question the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. It was also around this time that translations of original texts—namely, the Bible and the writings of the early church philosopher Augustine—became more widely available.

Augustine (340–430) had emphasized the primacy of the Bible rather than Church officials as the ultimate religious authority. He also believed that humans could not reach salvation by their own acts, but that only God could bestow salvation by his divine grace. In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church taught that salvation was possible through “good works,” or works of righteousness, that pleased God. Luther came to share Augustine’s two central beliefs, which would later form the basis of Protestantism.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church’s practice of granting “indulgences” to provide absolution to sinners became increasingly corrupt. Indulgence-selling had been banned in Germany, but the practice continued unabated. In 1517, a friar named Johann Tetzel began to sell indulgences in Germany to raise funds to renovate St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

The 95 Theses

Committed to the idea that salvation could be reached through faith and by divine grace only, Luther vigorously objected to the corrupt practice of selling indulgences. Acting on this belief, he wrote the “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” also known as “The 95 Theses,” a list of questions and propositions for debate. Popular legend has it that on October 31, 1517 Luther defiantly nailed a copy of his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. The reality was probably not so dramatic; Luther more likely hung the document on the door of the church matter-of-factly to announce the ensuing academic discussion around it that he was organizing.

The 95 Theses, which would later become the foundation of the Protestant Reformation, were written in a remarkably humble and academic tone, questioning rather than accusing. The overall thrust of the document was nonetheless quite provocative. The first two of the theses contained Luther’s central idea, that God intended believers to seek repentance and that faith alone, and not deeds, would lead to salvation. The other 93 theses, a number of them directly criticizing the practice of indulgences, supported these first two.

In addition to his criticisms of indulgences, Luther also reflected popular sentiment about the “St. Peter’s scandal” in the 95 Theses:

Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?

The 95 Theses were quickly distributed throughout Germany and then made their way to Rome. In 1518, Luther was summoned to Augsburg, a city in southern Germany, to defend his opinions before an imperial diet (assembly). A debate lasting three days between Luther and Cardinal Thomas Cajetan produced no agreement. Cajetan defended the church’s use of indulgences, but Luther refused to recant and returned to Wittenberg.

Luther the Heretic

On November 9, 1518 the pope condemned Luther’s writings as conflicting with the teachings of the Church. One year later a series of commissions were convened to examine Luther’s teachings. The first papal commission found them to be heretical, but the second merely stated that Luther’s writings were “scandalous and offensive to pious ears.” Finally, in July 1520 Pope Leo X issued a papal bull (public decree) that concluded that Luther’s propositions were heretical and gave Luther 120 days to recant in Rome. Luther refused to recant, and on January 3, 1521 Pope Leo excommunicated Martin Luther from the Catholic Church.

On April 17, 1521 Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms in Germany. Refusing again to recant, Luther concluded his testimony with the defiant statement: “Here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.” On May 25, the Holy Roman emperor Charles V signed an edict against Luther, ordering his writings to be burned. Luther hid in the town of Eisenach for the next year, where he began work on one of his major life projects, the translation of the New Testament into German, which took him 10 months to complete.

Martin Luther's Later Years

Luther returned to Wittenberg in 1521, where the reform movement initiated by his writings had grown beyond his influence. It was no longer a purely theological cause; it had become political. Other leaders stepped up to lead the reform, and concurrently, the rebellion known as the Peasants’ War was making its way across Germany.

Luther had previously written against the Church’s adherence to clerical celibacy, and in 1525 he married Katherine of Bora, a former nun. They had five children. At the end of his life, Luther turned strident in his views, and pronounced the pope the Antichrist, advocated for the expulsion of Jews from the empire and condoned polygamy based on the practice of the patriarchs in the Old Testament.

Luther died on February 18, 1546.

Significance of Martin Luther’s Work

Martin Luther is one of the most influential figures in Western history. His writings were responsible for fractionalizing the Catholic Church and sparking the Protestant Reformation. His central teachings, that the Bible is the central source of religious authority and that salvation is reached through faith and not deeds, shaped the core of Protestantism. Although Luther was critical of the Catholic Church, he distanced himself from the radical successors who took up his mantle. Luther is remembered as a controversial figure, not only because his writings led to significant religious reform and division, but also because in later life he took on radical positions on other questions, including his pronouncements against Jews, which some have said may have portended German anti-Semitism; others dismiss them as just one man’s vitriol that did not gain a following. Some of Luther’s most significant contributions to theological history, however, such as his insistence that as the sole source of religious authority the Bible be translated and made available to everyone, were truly revolutionary in his day.

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The 95 Theses: A reader’s guide

by Kevin Armbrust

October 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. Yet it is not the anniversary of any great statement Luther made as a reformer or in front of any court. There was no fiery and resounding speech given or dramatic showdown with the pope. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted the “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” to the church door in a small city called Wittenberg, Germany. This rather mundane academic document contained 95 theses for debate. Luther was a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, and he was permitted to call for public theological debate to discuss ideas and interpretations as he desired.

Yet this debate was not merely academic for Luther. According to a letter he wrote to the Archbishop of Mainz explaining the posting of the 95 Theses, Luther also desired to debate the concerns in the Theses for the sake of conscience.

Luther’s short preface explains:

“Out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following theses will be publicly discussed at Wittenberg under the chairmanship of the reverend father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology and regularly appointed Lecturer on these subjects at that place. He requests that those who cannot be present to debate orally with us will do so by letter.”

The original text of the 95 Theses was written in Latin, since that was the academic language of Luther’s day. Luther’s theses were quickly translated into German, published in pamphlet form and spread throughout Germany.

Though English translations are readily available , many have found the 95 Theses difficult to read and comprehend. The short primer that follows may assist to highlight some of the theses and concepts Luther wished to explore.

Repentance and forgiveness dominate the content of the Theses. Since the question for Luther was the effectiveness of indulgences, he drove the discussion to the consideration of repentance and forgiveness in Christ. The first three theses address this:

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [MATT. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.

3. Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortifications of the flesh.

The pope and the Church cannot cause true repentance in a Christian and cannot forgive the sins of one who is guilty before Christ. The pope can only forgive that which Christ forgives. True repentance and eternal forgiveness come from Christ alone.

Luther identifies indulgences as a doctrine invented by man, since there is no scriptural promise or command for indulgences. Although Luther stops short of entirely condemning indulgences in the Theses, he nonetheless argues that the sale of indulgences and the trust in indulgences for salvation condemns both those who teach such notions and those who trust in them.

27. They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.

28. Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.

God’s grace comes not through indulgences but through Christ. All Christians receive the blessings of God apart from indulgence letters.

36. Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters.

37. Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.

If Christians are going to spend money on something other than supporting their families, they should take care of the poor instead of buying indulgences.

43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better deed than he who buys indulgences.

The second half of the 95 Theses concentrates on the preaching of the true Word of the Gospel. Luther states that the teaching of indulgences should be lessened so that there might be more time for the proclamation of the true Gospel.

62. The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.

63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last [MATT. 20:16].

The Gospel of Christ is the true power for salvation (ROM. 1:16), not indulgences or even the power of the papal office.

76. We say on the contrary that papal indulgences cannot remove the very least of venial sins as far as guilt is concerned.

77. To say that even St. Peter, if he were now pope, could not grant greater graces is blasphemy against St. Peter and the pope.

78. We say on the contrary that even the present pope, or any pope whatsoever, has greater graces at his disposal, that is, the gospel, spiritual powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in I Cor. 12[:28].

Preaching a false hope is really no hope at all. As a matter of fact, a false hope destroys and kills because it moves people away from Christ, where true salvation is found. The Gospel is found in Christ alone, which includes a cross and tribulations both large and small.

92. Away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace! [JER. 6:14].

93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Cross, cross,” and there is no cross!

94. Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their head, through penalties, death, and hell;

95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace [ACTS 14:22].

Throughout the 95 Theses, Luther seeks to balance the role of the Church with the truth of the Gospel. Even as he desired to support the pope and his role in the Church, the false teaching of indulgences and the pope’s unwillingness to freely forgive the sins of all repentant Christians compelled him to speak up against these abuses.

Luther’s pastoral desire for all to trust in Christ alone for salvation drove him to post the 95 Theses. This same faith and hope sparked the Reformation that followed.

Dr. Kevin Armbrust is manager of editorial services for LCMS Communications. 

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Kevin Armbrust

11 thoughts on “the 95 theses: a reader’s guide”.

Thx. This article does clear up a number of difficulties in interpreting the drift & theme of the 95 thesis. The fact that he supports the pope’s office at this juncture is new to me.

Very useful as I prepare a Sunday School lesson. Thanks

As important as the 95 Theses were for the beginning of the Reformation, and since they are not specifically part of the Lutheran Confessions, are there any of the Theses that we Lutherans consider unimportant or would rather avoid, theologically speaking?

I wish Luther was here, maybe things would change in our country and bring more folks to Jesus .

“When our Lord and master Jesus Christ says, ‘Repent,’ he wills that the entire life of the Christian be one of repentance.”

This seemingly joyless statement is often quoted, less often explained, and easily misunderstood. Is Jesus calling for the main theme of Christian life to be, “I’m ashamed of my sin”?

The full sentence from Matthew 4:17 is, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” spoken when Jesus was beginning His ministry. This layman might paraphrase those words as, “Change your mindset, for divine authority is coming among you.” Indeed, when a very important person is coming to visit, we depart from business as usual, adjust our priorities, focus on careful preparation, and behave as befits the status of the visitor.

The word “repent” is recorded in Greek as “metanoeite”, which I understand to be not about remorse — not primarily about feelings at all — but about changing one’s mind or purpose.

The Christian life has a variety of themes, of which repentance is one. But repentance is not an end in itself. It is pivoting and changing course to pursue a direction that better fulfills God’s purposes as He gives the grace. For Jesus also willed “that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8) and “that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

Could you explain number 93? I need this one explained. Jackie

Agreed. 93 is confusing.

In contrast to the false security of indulgences referenced in 92, number 93 references the preaching of true repentance. With true contrition and repentance over our sins, we Christians humble ourselves to the truth that we have earned our place on the cross as punishment and condemnation. But then we find the eternal surprise and wellspring of joy that our cross has been taken away from us and made Christ’s own. In exchange He gives us forgiveness, life and salvation!

Thank you, James Athey.

I myself did not fully understand this thesis yesterday, when I searched the Internet for an explanation of it. I found that I was not the only person who was confused by it. I also found that Luther explained it in a letter that he wrote to an Augustinian prior in 1516. Here is his explanation:

You are seeking and craving for peace, but in the wrong order. For you are seeking it as the world giveth, not as Christ giveth. Know you not that God is “wonderful among His saints,” for this reason, that He establishes His peace in the midst of no peace, that is, of all temptations and afflictions. It is said “Thou shalt dwell in the midst of thine enemies.” The man who possesses peace is not the man whom no one disturbs—that is the peace of the world; he is the man whom all men and all things disturb, but who bears all patiently, and with joy. You are saying with Israel, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace. Learn to say rather with Christ: “The Cross, the Cross,” and there is no Cross. For the Cross at once ceases to be the Cross as soon as you have joyfully exclaimed, in the language of the hymn,

Blessed Cross, above all other, One and only noble tree.

It is posted here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/first_prin.iii.i.html

Magnificent!

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Martin Luther: Top 5 of the 95

His name was Martin Luther, and after October 31, 1517 everyone would come to know who he is.

Welcome to a special episode of 5 Minutes in Church History . This week we celebrate Reformation Day. In the church calendar, November 1 was known as "All Saints' Day." That makes October 31 the eve of All Saints' Day, or "All Hallowed Eve." We know it by its short name, Halloween .

Let's go back to the year 1517, for All Saints' Day, November 1, 1517, a display of newly acquired relics was scheduled for the church at Wittenberg. These practices had troubled a monk and a standout professor there at Wittenberg—the aforementioned Martin Luther. So, Martin Luther, on October 31, 1517 drew up a list of points for debate and he had 95 in total. Of course, we're talking about the 95 Theses. This is the document that started it all. This is the document that's at the beginning of Protestantism; and this is the document that we celebrate Reformation Day week.

I thought for Reformation Day this year we would talk about the Top 5 of the 95. So here it goes, the Top 5:

In the first Thesis Luther says, "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said 'repent' He intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance." Now after Luther wrote the 95 Theses, he also wrote a document called "Explanation of the 95 Theses," and in that text he explains that this word "repent" in the Latin Vulgate was translated as paenitentiam agite , which means, translated, as "Go, and do penance."

The year before 1517, in 1516, Erasmus published the Greek text and Luther had a copy of that Greek text. And he saw that the Greek word for repentance, metanoia , is not even close to the idea of paenitentiam agite . So this return to Scripture had an immediate impact on the very first of Luther's 95 Theses.

Our second in the Top 5 is number 27. Now we need a little background for this one as well. In Thesis number 27, Luther says, "They preach man made doctrines who say that it's so soon as the coin jingles into the money box, the soul flies out of purgatory." Now this is a reference to Tetzel. Tetzel was an enterprising monk who was selling indulgences, and he even came up with an advertising jingle, and in German it had a rhyme to it. The jingle went something like this:

As soon as the money in the chest rings, a soul from purgatory springs.

Our third in our Top 5 list is number 50. In Thesis 50 Luther says, "Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the indulgence-preachers he would rather that St. Peter's church should go to ashes than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep." Now we're getting to the real reason behind Tetzel's indulgence sale. The purpose of the indulgence sale was to raise money for the church. And the church needed the money because Pope Leo X back in Rome was literally bankrupting the church by building St. Peter's Basilica. This is the time of Michelangelo; this is the painting of the Sistine Chapel. And Michelangelo is not a cheap ceiling painter. So, the church needed to get money from somewhere, and out went Tetzel. And Luther saw right through this, and he said, "This is coming on the backs of the poor German peasants."

Our fourth is number 62. And number 62 doesn't need any exposition. I'll just plainly state it. Luther says this: "The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God."

Well that leaves our last of our Top 5. And for this I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to pull two together. And this is Theses number 92 & 93. "Away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, 'Peace, peace,' and there is no peace. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, 'Cross, cross,' and there is no cross."

So, I hope you enjoy celebrating Reformation Day this year. And as you do, remember Luther and his 95 Theses.

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ON THE PRIMARY PRINCIPLES

Luther’s life and teaching, by dr. wace, on the primary principles of luther’s life and teaching.

The present publication is offered as a contribution to the due celebration in this country of the fourth Centenary of Luther’s birth. Much has been written about him, and the general history of his life and work is being sketched by able pens. But no adequate attempt has yet been made to let him speak for himself to Englishmen by his greatest and most characteristic writings. The three works which, together with the 95 Theses, are included in this volume, are well known in Germany as the Drei Grosse Reformations-Schriften, or “The Three Great Reformation Treatises” of Luther; but they seem never yet to have been brought in this character before the English public. The Treatise on Christian Liberty has indeed been previously translated, though not of late years. But from an examination of the catalogue in the British Museum, it would appear that no English translation is accessible, even if any has yet been published, of the Address to the German Nobility or of the Treatise on the Babylonish Captivity of the Church. Yet, as is well understood in Germany, it is in these that the whole genius of the Reformer appears in its most complete and energetic form. They are bound together in the closest dramatic unity. They were all three produced in the latter half of the critical year 1520, when nearly three years’ controversy, since the publication of the Theses, on Oct. 31 1517, had convinced Luther of the falseness of the Court of Rome, and the hollowness of its claims; and they were x immediately followed by the bull of excommunication in the winter of the same year, and the summons to the Diet of Worms in 1521. Luther felt, as he says at the commencement of his Address to the German Nobility, that “the time for silence had passed, and the time for speech had come.” He evidently apprehended that reconciliation between himself and the Court of Rome was impossible; and he appears to have made up his mind to clear his conscience, whatever the cost. Accordingly in these three works he spoke out with a full heart, and with the consciousness that his life was in his hand, the convictions which had been forced on him by the conduct of the Papacy and of the Papal theologians.

Those convictions had been slowly, and even reluctantly, admitted; but they had gradually accumulated in intense force in Luther’s mind and conscience; and when “the time for speech had come” they burst forth in a kind of volcanic eruption. Their maturity is proved by the completeness and thoroughness with which the questions at issue are treated. An insight into the deepest theological principles is combined with the keenest apprehension of practical details. In the Treatise on Christian Liberty we have the most vivid of all embodiments of that life of Faith to which the Reformer recalled the Church and which was the mainspring of the Reformation. In the Appeal to the German Nobility he first asserted those rights of the laity, and of the temporal power, without the admission of which no reformation would have been practicable, and he then denounced with burning moral indignation the numerous and intolerable abuses which were upheld by Roman authority. In the third Treatise, on the Babylonish Captivity of the Church, he applied the same cardinal principles to the elaborate Sacramental system of the Church of Rome, sweeping away by means of them the superstitions with which the original institutions of Christ had been overlaid, and thus releasing men’s consciences from a vast network of ceremonial bondage. The rest of the Reformation, it is not too xi much to say, was but the application of the principles vindicated in these three works. They were applied in different countries with varying wisdom and moderation; but nothing essential was added to them. Luther’s genius—if a higher word be not justifiable—brought forth at one birth, “with hands and feet,” to use his own image, and in full energy, the vital ideas by which Europe was to be regenerated. He was no mere negative controversialist, attacking particular errors in detail. His characteristic was the masculine grasp with which he seized essential and eternal truths, and by their central light dispersed the darkness in which men were groping.

It occurred therefore to my colleague and myself that a permanent service might perhaps be rendered to Luther’s name, and towards a due appreciation of the principles of the Reformation, if these short but pregnant Treatises were made more accessible to the English public; and although they might well be left to speak for themselves, there may perhaps be some readers to whom a few explanatory observations on Luther’s position, theologically and politically, will not be unacceptable. My colleague, in the Essay which follows this, has dealt with the political course of the Reformation during his career; and in the present remarks an endeavour will simply be made to indicate the nature and the bearings of the central principles of the Reformer’s life and work, as exhibited in the accompanying translations.

It is by no mere accident of controversy that the Ninty-five Theses mark the starting-point of Luther’s career as a reformer. The subject with which they dealt was not only in close connection with the centre of Christian truth, but it touched the characteristic thought of the Middle Ages. From the beginning to the end, those ages had been a stern school of moral and religious discipline, under what was universally regarded as the divine authority of the Church. St. Anselm, with his intense apprehension of the divine righteousness, and of its inexorable demands, is at once the noblest and truest type of the great school of thought of which he was the founder. The special mission of xii the Church since the days of Gregory the Great had been to tame the fierce energies of the new barbarian world, and to bring the wild passions of the Teutonic races under the control of the Christian law. It was the task to which the necessities of the hour seemed to summon the Church, and she roused herself to the effort with magnificent devotion. Monks and Schoolmen performed prodigies of self-denial and self-sacrifice, in order to realise in themselves, and to impose as far as possible on the world at large, the laws of perfection which the Church held before their vision. The glorious cathedrals which arose in the best period of the Middle Ages are but the visible types of those splendid structures of ideal virtues, which a monk like St. Bernard, or a Schoolman like St. Thomas Aquinas, piled up by laborious thought and painful asceticism. Such men felt themselves at all times surrounded by a spiritual world, at once more glorious in its beauty and more awful in its terrors, than either the pleasures or the miseries of this world could adequately represent. The great poet of the Middle Ages affords perhaps the most vivid representation of their character in this respect. The horrible images of the Inferno, the keen sufferings of purification in the Purgatorio, form the terrible foreground behind which the Paradiso rises. Those visions of terror and dread and suffering had stamped themselves on the imagination of the medieval world, and lay at the root of the power with which the Church overshadowed it. In their origin they embodied a profound and noble truth. It was a high and divine conception that the moral and spiritual world with which we are encompassed has greater heights and lower depths than are generally apprehended in the visible experience of this life; and Dante has been felt to be in an unique degree the poet of righteousness. But it is evident, at the same time, what a terrible temptation was placed in the hands of a hierarchy who were believed, in whatever degree, to wield power over these spiritual realities. It was too easy to apply them, like the instruments of physical torture with which the age was familiar, to extort submission from tender consciences, or to xiii make a bargain with selfish hearts. But in substance the menaces of the Church appealed to deep convictions of the human conscience, and the mass of men were not prepared to defy them.

Now it was into this world of spiritual terrors that Luther was born, and he was in an eminent degree the legitimate child of the Middle Ages. The turning-point in his history is that the awful visions of which we have spoken, the dread of the Divine judgments, brought home to him by one of the solemn accidents of life, checked him in a career which promised all worldly prosperity, and drove him into a monastery. There, as he tells us, he was driven almost frantic by his vivid realization of the demands of the Divine righteousness on the one hand, and of his own incapacity to satisfy them on the other. With the intense reality characteristic of his nature he took in desperate earnest all that the traditional teaching and example of the Middle Ages had taught him of the unbending necessities of Divine justice. But for the very reason that he accepted those necessities with such earnestness, he did but realize the more completely the hopelessness of his struggles to bring himself into conformity with them. It was not because he was out of sympathy with St. Anselm or St. Bernard or Dante, that he burst the bonds of the system they represented; but, on the contrary, because he entered even more deeply than they into the very truths they asserted. Nothing was more certain to him than that Divine justice is inexorable; no conviction was more deeply fixed in his heart than that righteousness is the supreme law of human life. But the more he realized the truth, the more terrible he found it, for it seemed to shut him up in a cruel prison, against the bars of which he beat himself in vain. In one of his most characteristic passages, in the Introduction to his Latin Works, he describes how he was repelled and appalled by the statement of St. Paul respecting the Gospel, that ‘therein is the righteousness, or justice, of God revealed.’ For, he says, ‘however irreprehensible a life I had lived as a monk, I felt myself before God a sinner, with a most restless conscience, and I could not be confident that He was xiv appeased by my satisfaction. I could not, therefore, love—nay, I hated—a God who was just and punished sinners; and if not with silent blasphemy, certainly with vehement murmuring, I was indignant against God. As if, I said, it were not enough that sinners, miserable and eternally ruined by original sin, should be crushed with all kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, but God by the Gospel must needs add grief to grief, and by the Gospel itself must inflict still further on us His justice and anger. I raged with this savage and disturbed conscience, and I knocked importunately at Paul in that place, with burning thirst to know what St. Paul could mean.’ Such an experience is not a mere revolt against the Middle Ages. In great measure it is but the full realization of their truest teaching. It is Dante intensified, and carried to the inevitable development of his principles.

But if this be the case, what it meant was that the Middle Ages had brought men to a deadlock. They had led men up to a gate so strait that no human soul could pass through it. In the struggle, men had devised the most elaborate forms of self-torture, and had made the most heroic sacrifices, and in the very desperation of their efforts they had anticipated the more vivid insight and experience of Luther. The effort, in fact, had been too much for human nature, and the end of it had been that the Church had condescended to human weakness. The most obvious and easy way out of the difficulty was to modify, by virtue of some dispensing authority, the extreme requirements of Divine justice, and by a variety of half-unconscious, half-acknowledged devices, to lessen the severity of the strait gate and of the narrow way. Such a power, as has been said, was an enormous temptation to unscrupulous Churchmen, and at length it led to the hideous abuses of such preaching of indulgences as that of Tetzel. In this form the matter came before Luther in his office as parish priest and confessor; and it will be apparent from the Theses that what first revolts him is the violation involved of the deepest principles which the Church of his day had taught him. He had learned from it the inexorable character of the Divine law, the necessity and xv blessedness of the Divine discipline of punishment and suffering; he had learned, as his first Thesis declares, that the law of Christian life is that of lifelong penitence; and he denounced Tetzel’s teaching as false to the Church herself, in full confidence that he would be supported by his ecclesiastical superiors. When he found that he was not—when, to his surprise and consternation, he found that the Papal theologians of the day, under the direct patronage of the Pope and the bishops, were ready to support the most flagrant evasions of the very principles on which their power had originally been based—then at length, though most reluctantly, he turned against them, and directed against the corrupted Church of the close of the Middle Ages the very principles he had learned from its best representatives and from its noblest institutions.

Luther, in the course of his spiritual struggles, had found the true deliverance from what we have ventured to call that deadlock to which the grand vision of Divine righteousness had led him. He realised that the strait gate was impassable by any human virtue; but he had found the solution in the promise of a supernatural deliverance which was offered to faith. To quote again his words in the preface to his Latin works already referred to: ‘At length by the mercy of God, meditating days and nights, I observed the connection of the words namely “therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written: The just shall live by faith.” Then I began to understand the justice of God to be that by which the just man lives by the gift of God, namely, by faith, and that the meaning was that the Gospel reveals that justice of God by which He justifies us beggars through faith, as it is written: “The just shall live by faith.” Here I felt myself absolutely born again; the gates of heaven were opened, and I had entered paradise itself. From thenceforward the face of the whole Scriptures appeared changed to me. I ran through the Scriptures, as my memory would serve me, and observed the same analogy in other words—as, the work of God, that is, the work which God works in us; the strength xvi of God, that with which He makes us strong; the wisdom of God, that with which He makes us wise; the power of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God. And now, as much as I had formerly hated that word, the Justice of God, so much did I now love it and extol it as the sweetest of words to me; and thus that place in Paul was to me truly the gate of paradise.’ In other words, Luther had realised that the Gospel, while reasserting the inexorable nature of the moral law, and deepening its demands, had revealed a supernatural and divine means of satisfying and fulfilling it. All barriers had thus been removed between God and man, and men had been placed in the position of children living by Faith on His grace and bounty. He offers to bestow upon them the very righteousness He requires from them, if they will but accept it at His hands as a free gift. Their true position is no longer that of mere subjects living under a law which they must obey at their peril. They may, indeed, by their own act remain in that condition, with all its terrible consequences. But God invites them to regard Him as their Father, to live in the light of His countenance, and to receive from Him the daily food of their souls. The most intimate personal relation is thus established between Himself and them; and the righteousness which they could never acquire by their own efforts He is ready to create in them if they will but live with Him in faith and trust. That faith, indeed, must needs be the beginning, and the most essential condition, of this Divine life. Faith is the first condition of all fellowship between persons; and if a man is to live in personal fellowship with God, he must trust Him absolutely, believe His promises, and rest his whole existence, here and hereafter, upon His word. But let a man do this, and then God’s law ceases to be like a flaming sword, turning every way, with too fierce an edge for human hearts to bear. It assumes the benignant glow of a revelation of perfect righteousness which God Himself will bestow on all who ask it at His hands.

This belief is essentially bound up with a distinction on which great stress is laid in the Theses. It touches a point at once of the highest theological import, and of the simplest xvii practical experience. This is the distinction between guilt and punishment; or, in other words, between personal forgiveness, and the remission of the consequences of sins. In our mutual relations, a son may be forgiven by his father, a wrongdoer by the person whom he has injured, and yet it may neither be possible nor desirable that the offender should be at once released from the consequences of his offence. But for all generous hearts, the personal forgiveness is infinitely more precious than the remission of the penalty, and Luther had learned from the Scriptures to regard our relation to God in a similar light. He realized that he must live, here and hereafter, in personal relationship to God; and the forgiveness of God, the removal from him, in God’s sight, of the imputation and the brand of guilt, his reception into God’s unclouded favour—this was the supreme necessity of his spiritual existence. If this were assured to him, not only had he no fear of punishment, but he could welcome it, whatever its severity, as part of the discipline of the divine and loving hand to which he had trusted himself. His deepest indignation, consequently, was aroused by preaching which, under official sanction, urged men to buy indulgence from punishment, of whatever kind, as practically the greatest spiritual benefit they could obtain; and he devoted his whole energy to assert the supreme blessing of that remission from guilt, of which the preachers of indulgences said practically nothing. It is this remission of guilt, this personal forgiveness, which is the essential element in the justification of which he spoke. It involves of course salvation from the final ruin and doom which sin, and the moral corruption of our nature, would naturally entail; but its chief virtue does not consist in deliverance from punishment, nor does it in any way derogate from the truth that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” What it taught men was to accept all God’s judgments and discipline in perfect peace of soul, as being assured of His love and favour.

No divine, in fact, has ever dwelt with more intense conviction on the blessedness of the discipline of suffering and of the Cross. The closing Theses express his deepest feelings in this respect, and a passage in one of his letters, written before the controversy about Indulgences had arisen, affords a most interesting illustration of the manner in which the principles he came forward to assert had grown out of his personal experience. “Away,” he says, in the 92nd and 93rd Theses, “with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ‘Peace, peace,’ and there is no peace. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ‘The Cross, the Cross,’ and there is no Cross.” These somewhat enigmatic expressions are at once explained in the letter referred to, written to a Prior of the Augustinian order, on the 22nd of June, 1516. 1 1     Letters , edited by De Wette, i. 27. He says:—

“You are seeking and craving for peace, but in the wrong order. For you are seeking it as the world giveth, not as Christ giveth. Know you not that God is ‘wonderful among His saints,’ for this reason, that He establishes His peace in the midst of no peace, that is, of all temptations and afflictions.’ It is said ‘Thou shalt dwell in the midst of thine enemies.’ The man who possesses peace is not the man whom no one disturbs—that is the peace of the world; he is the man whom all men and all things disturb, but who bears all patiently, and with joy. You are saying with Israel, ‘Peace, peace,’ and there is no peace. Learn to say rather with Christ: ‘The Cross, the Cross,’ and there is no Cross. For the Cross at once ceases to be the Cross as soon as you have joyfully exclaimed, in the language of the hymn,

One other extract of the same import it may be well to quote from these early letters, as it is similarly the germ of one of the noblest passages in Luther’s subsequent explanation of xix the Ninety-five Theses. 2 2    It is a pleasure to be able to refer for this passage to the first volume of the new Critical Edition of Luther’s works, just published in Germany, page 613, line 21. This magnificent edition, prepared under the patronage of the German Emperor, is the best of all contributions to the present Commemoration. It must supersede all other editions, and it ought to find a place in all considerable libraries in England. A translation of the passage in question will be found in the Bampton Lectures of the present writer, p. 186. The letter was addressed to a brother Augustinian on the 15th of April, 1516. Luther says:—

“The cross of Christ has been divided throughout the whole world, and every one meets with his own portion of it. Do not you therefore reject it, but rather accept it as the most holy relic, to be kept, not in a gold or silver chest, but in a golden heart, that is, a heart imbued with gentle charity. For if, by contact with the flesh and blood of Christ, the wood of the Cross received such consecration that its relics are deemed supremely precious, how much more should injuries, persecutions, sufferings and the hatred of men, whether of the just or of the unjust, be regarded as the most sacred of all relics—relics which, not by the mere touch of His flesh, but by the charity of His most bitterly tried heart and of His divine will, were embraced, kissed, blessed, and abundantly consecrated; for thus was a curse transformed into a blessing, and injury into justice, and passion into glory, and the Cross into joy.” 3 3     Letters, edited by De Wette, i. p. 19.

The few letters, in fact, in our possession, written by Luther before he came forward in 1517, are sufficient to afford the most vivid proof both of the mature thought and experience in which his convictions were rooted, and of their being prompted, not by the spirit of reckless confidence to which they have sometimes been ignorantly ascribed, but by the deepest sympathy with the lessons of the Cross. The purport of his characteristic doctrine of justification by faith was not to give men the assurance of immunity from suffering and sorrow, as the consequence of sin, but to give them peace of conscience and joy of heart in the midst of such punishments. xx What it proclaimed was that, if men would but believe it, they could at any moment grasp God’s forgiveness, and live henceforth in the assured happiness of His personal favour and love. Of this blessing His promise was the only possible warrant, and like all other promises, it could only be accepted by Faith. Every man is invited to believe it, since it is offered to all for Christ’s sake; but by the nature of the case, none can enjoy it who do not believe it.

The ground, however, on which this promise was based affords another striking illustration of the way in which Luther’s teaching was connected with that of the Middle Age. Together with that keen apprehension of the divine judgments and of human sin just mentioned, the awful vision of our Lord’s sufferings and of His atonement overshadowed the whole thought of those times. St. Anselm, in the Cur Deus Homo, had aroused deeper meditation on this subject than had before been bestowed upon it; and in this, as in other matters, he is the type of the grand school of thought which he founded. As in his mind, so throughout the Middle Age, in proportion to the apprehension of the terrible nature of the Divine justice, is the prominence given to the sacrificial means for averting the Divine wrath. The innumerable Masses of the later Middle Ages were so many confessions of the deep-felt need of atonement; and formal as they ultimately became, they were in intention so many cries for forgiveness from the terror-struck consciences of sinful men and women. Luther was a true child of the Church in his deep apprehension of the same need, and it was precisely because he realised it with exceptional truth and depth that he was forced to seek some deeper satisfaction than the offering of Masses could afford. He reasserted the truth that the need had been met and answered once for all by the Sacrifice on the Cross; and by proclaiming the sufficiency of that one eternal offering he swept away all the “Sacrifices of Masses,” while at the same time he provided the answer to the craving to which they testified. The doctrine of the Atonement, as asserted at the xxi Reformation, is the true answer to that cry of the human conscience which the Church of the preceding age had vainly endeavoured to satisfy. The Sacrament, of which the Mass was a perversion, was thus restored to its true character on a pledge and an instrument of blessings bestowed by God, instead of a propitiatory offering on the part of men. The Cross of Christ, the favourite symbol of the mediæval Church, was thus held aloft by the Reformer in still deeper reality, as the central symbol of the Church’s message, and as the one adequate ground for the faith to which he called men.

Now the view of the Christian life involved in this principle of Justification by Faith found its most complete and beautiful expression in the Treatise “On Christian Liberty,” translated in this volume; and a brief notice of the teaching of that treatise will best serve to explain the connection between Luther’s cardinal doctrine and the other principles which he asserted. As is explained at the close of the introductory letter to Leo X. (p. 101), he designed it as a kind of peace-offering to the Pope, and as a declaration of the sole objects he had at heart, and to which he desired to devote his life. “It is a small matter,” he says, “if you look to its bulk, but unless I mistake, it is a summary of the Christian life in small compass, if you apprehend its meaning.” In fact, it presents the most complete view of Luther’s theology, alike in its principles and in its practice, almost entirely disembarrassed of the controversial elements by which, under the inevitable pressure of circumstances, his other works, and especially those of a later date, were disturbed. Perhaps the only part of his works to compare with it in this respect is the precious collection of his House-postills, or Exposition of the Gospels for the Sundays of the Christian Year. They were delivered within his domestic circle, and recorded by two of his pupils, and though but imperfectly reported, they are treasures of Evangelical exposition, exhibiting in a rare degree the exquisitely childlike character of the Reformer’s faith, and marked by all the simplicity and the poetry of feeling by xxii which his mind was distinguished. It is by such works as these, and not simply by his controversial treatises or commentaries, that Luther must be judged, if we wish either to understand his inner character, or to comprehend the vast personal influence he exerted. But in its essence, the Gospel which he preached, the substance of what he had learned from the temptations, the prayers, the meditations— tentationes, orationes, meditationes —of his life as a monk, is sufficiently embodied in the short Treatise on Christian Liberty.

The argument of the Treatise is summed up, with the antithetical force so often characteristic of great genius, in the two propositions laid down at the outset. “A Christian man is the most free lord of all and subject to none: A Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.” The first of these propositions expresses the practical result of the doctrine of Justification by Faith. The Christian is in possession of a promise of God, which in itself, and in the assurance it involves, is a greater blessing to him than all other privileges or enjoyments whatever. Everything sinks into insignificance compared with this word and Gospel. “Let us,” he says, “hold it for certain and firmly established that the soul can do without everything except the word of God, without which none of its wants are provided for. But, having the word, it is rich and wants for nothing, since it is the word of life, of truth, of light, of peace, of justification, of salvation, of joy, of liberty, of wisdom, of virtue, of grace, of glory, and of every good thing.” If it be asked, “What is this word?” he answers that the Apostle Paul explains it, namely that “it is the Gospel of God, concerning His Son, incarnate, suffering, risen, and glorified through the Spirit, the Sanctifier. To preach Christ is to feed the soul, to justify it, to set it free, and to save it, if it believes the preaching . . . For the word of God cannot be received and honoured by any works, but by Faith alone.” This is the cardinal point around which not merely Luther’s theology, but his whole life turns. God had descended into the world, spoken to him by His Son, His xxiii Apostles, the Scriptures, and the voice of the Church, and promised him forgiveness in the present, and final deliverance from his evil in the future, if he would but trust Him. The mere possession of such a promise outweighed in Luther’s view all other considerations whatever, and absolute faith was due to it. No higher offence could be offered to God than to reject or doubt His promise, and at the same time no higher honour could be rendered Him than to believe it. The importance and value of the virtue of Faith is thus determined entirely by the promise on which it rests. These “promises of God are words of holiness, truth, righteousness, liberty, and peace, and are full of universal goodness, and the soul which cleaves to them with a firm faith is so united to them, nay, thoroughly absorbed by them, that it not only partakes in, but is penetrated and saturated by all their virtue. For if the touch of Christ was health, how much more does that most tender spiritual touch, nay, absorption of the word, communicate to the soul all that belongs to the word? In this way, therefore, the soul through faith alone, without works, is by the word of God justified, sanctified, endued with truth, peace, and liberty, and filled full with every good thing, and is truly made the child of God . . . As is the word, such is the soul made by it; just as iron exposed to fire glows like fire on account of its union with the fire.” Moreover, just as it is faith which unites husband and wife, so faith in Christ unites the soul to Him in indissoluble union. For “if a true marriage, nay, by far the most perfect of all marriages, is accomplished between them—for human marriages are but feeble types of this one great marriage—then it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possesses, the believing soul may take to itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, Christ claims as his . . . Thus the believing soul, by the pledge of its faith in Christ, becomes free from all sin, fearless of death, safe from hell, and endowed with the eternal righteousness, life and salvation of its husband Christ.”

It is essential to dwell upon these passages, since, the force of the Reformer’s great doctrine cannot possibly be apprehended as long as he is supposed to attribute the efficacy of which he speaks to any inherent quality in the human heart itself. It is the word and promise of God which is the creative force. But this summons a man into a sphere above this world, bids him rest upon the divine love which speaks to him, and places him on the eternal foundation of a direct covenant with God Himself in Christ. As in the Theses, so in this Treatise, Luther reiterates that it in no way implies exemption from the discipline of suffering. “Yea,” he says, “the more of a Christian any man is, to so many the more evils, sufferings, and deaths is he subject; as we see in the first place in Christ the first-born and in all His holy brethren.” The power of which he speaks is a spiritual one “which rules in the midst of enemies, in the midst of distresses. It is nothing else than that strength is made perfect in my weakness, and that I can turn all things to the profit of my salvation; so that even the cross and death are compelled to serve me and to work together for my salvation.” “It is a lofty and eminent dignity, a true and Almighty dominion, a spiritual empire in which there is nothing so good, nothing so bad, as not to work together for my good, if only I believe.”

If we compare this language with those conceptions of spiritual terror by which Luther had been driven into a monastery, and under which, like so many in his age, he had groaned and struggled in despair, we can appreciate the immense deliverance which he had experienced. The Divine promise had lifted him “out of darkness and out of the shadow of death, and had broken his bonds in sunder.” It is this which is the source of the undaunted and joyful faith which marks the whole of the Reformer’s public career. “Whose heart,” he exclaims, “would not rejoice in its inmost core at hearing these things? Whose heart, on receiving so great a consolation, would not become sweet with the love of Christ: a love to which it can never attain by any laws or works? Who xxv can injure such a heart, or make it afraid? If the consciousness of sin, or the horror of death rush in upon it, it is prepared to hope in the Lord, and is fearless of these evils and undisturbed, until it shall look down upon its enemies.” Such a conviction, uttered in such burning language, lifted the same cloud of darkness and fear from the hearts of the common people of that day, and was welcomed as good tidings of great joy by multitudes of burdened and terror-stricken hearts. Nothing is more characteristic of Luther’s preaching, and of the Reformers who follow him, than the sense they display that they have before them souls “weary and heavy-laden.” Their language presupposes the prevalence of that atmosphere of spiritual apprehension and gloom already described, and their grand aim is to lead men out of it into the joy and peace and liberty of the Gospel. The consequence is that a new confidence, hope and energy is infused into the moral and spiritual world of that day. The tone of unbounded joy and hope which marks the earliest Christian literature, particularly in the Apostolic Fathers, re-appears in such a Treatise as we are considering, and in the whole religious thought of the Reformers; and it would almost seem as if the long agony of the Middle Ages had but enhanced the joy of the final deliverance.

It is unnecessary, for our present purpose, to dwell long upon the second point of the Treatise, in which Luther illustrates his second proposition that “a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to every one.” It will be enough to observe that Luther is just as earnest in insisting upon the application of faith in the duties of charity and self-discipline as upon the primary importance of faith itself. The spirit of faith, he says, “applies itself with cheerfulness and zeal” to restrain and repress the impulses of the lower nature. “Here works begin; here a man must not take his ease; here he must give heed to exercise his body by fastings, watchings, labour, and other reasonable discipline, so that it may be subdued to the spirit, and obey and conform itself to the xxvi inner man and to faith.” Similarly, he will give himself up to the service of others, and it is partly with a view to rendering them such service that he will discipline his body and keep it in due energy and soundness. He starts from the belief that God, without merit on his part, has of his pure and free mercy bestowed on him, an unworthy creature, all the riches of justification and salvation in Christ, so that he is no longer in want of anything except of faith to believe that this is so. For such a Father, then, who has overwhelmed him with these inestimable riches of His, must he not freely, cheerfully, and from voluntary zeal, do all that he knows will be pleasing to Him and acceptable in His sight? “I will, therefore,” he says, “give myself as a sort of Christ to my neighbour, as Christ has given Himself to me; and will do nothing in this life except what I see will be needful, advantageous and wholesome for my neighbour, since by faith I abound in all good things in Christ.” These practical considerations will afford the measure by which a man determines the discipline to which he subjects himself, and the ceremonies which he observes. They will not be observed for their own sake, but as means to an end, and therefore will never be practised in excess, as though there were some merit in the performance of them. They are like the scaffoldings of builders, valuable only as a temporary assistance, in the construction of the building itself. “We do not condemn works and ceremonies; nay, we set the highest value on them. We only condemn that opinion of works which regards them as constituting true righteousness.” In asserting these principles, Luther was certainly putting the axe to the root of the portentous growth of ascetic and ceremonial observances which prevailed in his day, and which were too generally regarded as of the very essence of religion. He enabled men, as it were, to look on such ceremonies from the outside, as a thing external to them, and to reduce or rearrange them with a simple view to practical usefulness. But no more earnest exhortations to due self-discipline, and to true charity, could well be found than are contained in the second part of the De Libertate

It will be evident, however, what a powerful instrument of reformation was placed in men’s hands by the principles of this Treatise. Every Christian man, by virtue of the promise of Christ, was proclaimed free, so far as the eternal necessities of his soul were concerned, from all external and human conditions whatever. Nothing, indeed, was further from Luther’s intention or inclination than the overthrow of existing order, or the disparagement of any existing authority which could be reasonably justified. His letter to Pope Leo, prefixed to the Treatise we have been considering, shows that while denouncing unsparingly the abuses of the Court of Rome, he was sincere in his deference to the See of Rome itself. But the principle of justification enabled him to proclaim that if that See or any existing Church authority, misused its power, and refused to reform abuses, then, in the last resort, the soul of man could do without it. In that day at all events—and perhaps in our own to a greater extent than is sometimes supposed—this conviction supplied the fulcrum which was essential for any effectual reforming movement. As is observed by the Church historian Gieseler, in his admirable account of the early history of the Reformation, the Papacy had ever found its strongest support in the people at large. In spite of all the discontent and disgust provoked by the corruption of the Church and the clergy, an enormous though indefinite authority was still popularly attributed to the Pope and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The Pope was believed to be in some sense or other the supreme administrator of spiritual powers which were effectual in the next world as well as in the present; and consequently when any controversy with the Church came to a crisis, men shrank from direct defiance of the Papal authority. They did not feel that they had any firm ground on which they could stand if they incurred its formal condemnation; and thus it always had at its command, in the strongest possible sense, the ultima ratio of rulers. The convictions to which Luther had been led at once annihilated these pretensions. “One thing and one alone,” he declared, xxviii “is necessary for life, justification and Christian liberty, and that is, the most holy word of God, the Gospel of Christ.” As we have seen, he proclaimed it “for certain, and firmly established, that the soul can do without everything except the word of God.” It is the mission of the Christian ministry, in its administration of the Word and Sacraments, to convey this Gospel to the soul, and to arouse a corresponding faith. But the promise is not annexed indissolubly to that administration, and the only invariable rule of salvation is that “the just shall live by faith.” By this principle, that vague fear of the spiritual powers of the hierarchy was removed, and men were endowed with real Christian liberty.

But the principle went still further; for it vindicated for the laity the possession of spiritual faculties and powers the same in kind as those of the clergy. All Christian men are admitted to the privilege of priesthood, and are “worthy to appear before God to pray for others, and to teach one another mutually the things which are of God.” In case of necessity, as is universally recognized, Baptism can be validly administered by lay hands, and English Divines, of the most unimpeachable authority on the subject, have similarly recognized that the valid administration of the Holy Communion is not dependent on the ordination of the minister by Episcopal authority. 4 4    See, for instance, Bp. Cosin’s Works, Appendix, vol. i., 31, in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology . Luther urges accordingly that all Christians possess virtually the capacities which, as a matter of order, are commonly restricted to the clergy. Whether that restriction is properly dependent upon regular devolution from Apostolic authority, or whether the ministerial commission can be sufficiently conferred by appointment from the Christian community or congregation as a whole, becomes on this principle a secondary point. Luther pronounced with the utmost decision in favour of the latter alternative; but the essential element of his teaching is independent of this question. By whatever right the exercise of the ministry may be restricted to a particular body of men, xxix what he asserted was that the functions of the clergy are simply ministerial, and that they do but exercise, on behalf of all, powers which all virtually possess. This principle Luther proceeded to assert in the first of the Treatises translated in this volume, the “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation respecting the Reformation of the Christian Estate.” This Treatise is perhaps the one which appealed most widely and directly to the German nation at large. Luther completed it at the very moment when the Bull of excommunication against him was being prepared, and it contributed, perhaps more than anything, to paralyze the influence of that Bull with the mass of the people and their lay leaders. It appeared in August, 1520, and by the 18th of that month more than four thousand copies had been already dispersed—a prodigious circulation, considering the state of literature at that day. The reader, however, will not be surprised at this popularity of the Treatise when he sees with what astonishing vigour, frankness, humour, good sense, and at the same time intense moral indignation, Luther denounces in it the corruptions of the Church, and the injuries inflicted by the Court of Rome on the German people. So tremendous an indictment, sustained with such intense and concentrated force, could hardly be paralleled in literature. The truth of the charges alleged in it could be amply sustained by reference to Erasmus’s works alone, particularly to the Encomium Moriæ; but Erasmus lacked alike the moral energy necessary to rouse the action of the laity, and the spiritual insight necessary to justify that action. Luther possessed both; and it was the combination of the two which rendered him so mighty a force. It is this perhaps which essentially distinguishes him from previous reformers. They attacked particular errors and abuses, and deserve unbounded honour for the protests they raised, and Wycliff in particular merits the homage of Englishmen as one of the chief motive powers in the first reforming movement. But they did not assert, at least with sufficient clearness, the central principle without which all reform was xxx impracticable—that of the equal rights of laity and clergy, and of the soul’s independence of all human power, by virtue of the truth of Justification by Faith. Luther’s doctrine of Christian liberty was the emancipation alike of individuals and of the laity at large. It vindicated for the whole lay estate, and for all ranks and conditions of lay life, a spiritual dignity, and a place in the spiritual life of the Church. It restored a sense of independent responsibility to all natural authorities; and it reasserted the sacredness of all natural relations. Practically, even if not theoretically, the Roman system had disparaged the ordinary relations of life as compared with the so-called “religious” or ecclesiastical. Luther, by placing all men and women on the same spiritual standing ground, swept away any such privileges; and gave men as clear a conscience, and as great a sense of spiritual dignity, in the ordinary duties of marriage, of fatherhood, and in the common offices of life, as in any ecclesiastical order.

The “Address to the Nobility of the German Nation” exhibits these principles, and their application to the practical problems of the day, in the most vigorous and popular form; and if some expressions appear too sweeping and violent, due allowance must be made for the necessity which Luther must have felt of appealing with the utmost breadth and force to the popular mind. But it remains to consider a further aspect of these principles which is illustrated by the third Treatise translated in this volume—that on the “Babylonish Captivity of the Church.” Luther, as has been seen, was appealing to laity and clergy alike, on the ground of their spiritual freedom, to abolish the abuses of the Roman Church. But it became at once a momentous question by what principles the exercise of that liberty was to be guided, and within what limits it was to be exerted. In a very short time fanatics sprung up, who claimed to exercise such liberty without any restrictions at all, and who refused to recognize any standard but that of their own supposed inspiration. But the service which Luther rendered in repelling such abuses of his great doctrine was only second to that of establishing the doctrine itself. The xxxi rule of faith and practice on which he insisted was indeed necessarily involved in his primary principle. Faith, as has been seen, was with him no abstract quality, but was simply a response to the word and promise of God. That word, accordingly, in its various forms, was in Luther’s mind the sole creative power of the Christian life. In the form of a simple promise, it is the basis of justification and of our whole spiritual existence; and similarly in its more general form, as recorded in the Holy Scriptures, it contains all truths, alike of belief and of practice, which are essential to salvation here and hereafter. The word of God, in whatever form, whether a simple promise, or a promise embodied in a Sacrament, or a series of revelations made by God’s Spirit to the soul of man, as recorded in the Bible, is the grand reality which, in Luther’s view, dwarfed all other realities on earth. It must needs do so, if it be a reality at all; but no one has ever grasped this truth with such intense insight as Luther. Consequently, in his view, the Anabaptist, who held himself emancipated from the authority of God’s word on the one side, was as grievously in error as the Romanist on the other, who superseded its authority by that of the Church; and in applying his great principle and working out the Reformation, Luther’s task consisted in upholding the due authority of the Scriptures against the extremes on both sides.

Now in the Treatise on the Babylonish Captivity of the Church he applies this rule, in connection with his main principle, to the elaborate sacramental system of the Church of Rome. Of the seven sacraments recognised by that church, he recognizes, strictly speaking, only two, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and the connection of this conclusion with the central truth he was asserting is a point of deep interest. Here, too, the one consideration which overpowers every other in his view is the supreme import of a promise or word of God. But there are two institutions under the Gospel which are distinguished from all others by a visible sign, instituted by Christ Himself, as a pledge of the Divine promise. A sign so instituted, and with such a purpose, constituted a peculiarly xxxii precious form of those Divine promises which are the life of the soul; and for the same reason that the Divine word and the Divine promise are supreme in all other instances, so must these be supreme and unique among ceremonies. The distinction, by which the two Sarcaments acknowledged by the Reformed Churches are separated from the remaining five of the Roman Church, is thus no question of names but of things. It was a question whether a ceremony instituted by Christ’s own command, and embodying His own promise in a visible pledge, could for a moment be put on the same level with ceremonies, however edifying, which had been established solely by the authority or custom of the Church. It was of the essence of Luther’s teaching to assert a paramount distinction between these classes of ceremonies and to elevate the two Divine pledges of forgiveness and spiritual life to a height immeasurably superior to all other institutions. He hesitates, indeed, whether to allow an exception in favour of Absolution, as conveying undoubtedly a direct promise from Christ; but he finally decides against it, on the ground that it is without any visible and divinely appointed sign, and is after all only an application of the Sacrament of Baptism.

If, moreover, the force of his argument on this subject is to be apprehended, due attention must be paid to the efficacy which he thus attributes to the two Sacraments. The cardinal point on which he insists in respect to them is that they are direct pledges from God, through Christ, and thus contain the whole virtue of the most solemn Divine promises. They are, as it were, the sign and seal of those promises. They are messages from God, not mere acts of devotion on the part of man. In Baptism the point of importance is not that men dedicate themselves or their children to Him, but that He, through His minister, gives them a promise and a pledge of His forgiveness, and of His Fatherly good will. Similarly in the Holy Communion the most important point is not the offering made on the part of man, but the promise and assurance of communion with the Body and Blood of Christ, xxxiii made on the part of God. It is this which constitutes the radical distinction between the Lutheran and the so-called Zwinglian view of the Sacraments. Under the latter view they are ceremonies which embody and arouse due feelings on the part of men. On the former principle, they are ceremonies which embody direct messages and promises from God.

It may be worth while to observe in passing the position which Luther assumes towards the doctrine of Transubstantiation. What he is concerned to maintain is that there is a Real Presence in the Sacrament. All he is concerned to deny is that Transubstantiation is the necessary explanation of that Presence. In other words, it is not necessary to believe in Transubstantiation in order to believe in the Real Presence. There seems a clear distinction between this view and the formal doctrine of Consubstantiation as afterwards elaborated by Lutheran divines; and Luther’s caution, at least in this Treatise, in dealing with so difficult a point, is eminently characteristic of the real moderation with which he formed his views, as distinguished from the energy with which he asserted them. Another interesting point in this Treatise is the urgency with which he protests against the artificial restraints upon the freedom of marriage which had been imposed by the Roman See. It would have been too much to expect that in applying, single-handed, to so difficult a subject as marriage, the rule of rejecting every restriction not expressly declared in the Scriptures, Luther should have avoided mistakes. But they are at least insignificant in comparison with the value of the principle he asserted, that all questions of the marriage relation should be subjected to the authority of Holy Scripture alone. That principle provided, by its inherent force, a remedy for any errors in particulars which Luther or any individual divine might commit. The Roman principle, on the contrary, admitted of the most scandalous and unlimited elasticity; and of all the charges brought by Roman controversialists against Luther’s conduct, none is marked by such effrontery as their accusations on this point. While there are few dispensations xxxiv which their Church is not prepared, for what it considers due causes, to allow, Luther recalled men’s consciences to the Divine law on the subject. He reasserted the true dignity and sanctity of the marriage relation, and established the rule of Holy Scripture as the standard for its due control.

Such are the main truths asserted in the Treatises translated in this volume, and it is but recognising an historical fact to designate them “First Principles of the Reformation.” From them, and by means of them, the whole of the subsequent movement was worked out. They were applied in different countries in different ways; and we are justly proud in this country of the wisdom and moderation exhibited by our Reformers. But it ought never to be forgotten that for the assertion of the principles themselves, we, like the rest of Europe, are indebted to the genius and the courage of Luther. All of those principles—Justification by Faith, Christian Liberty, the spiritual rights and powers of the Laity, the true character of the Sacraments, the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures as the supreme standard of belief and practice—were asserted by the Reformer, as the Treatises in this volume bear testimony, almost simultaneously, in the latter half of the year 1520. At the time he asserted them, the Roman Church was still in full power; and the year after he had to face the whole authority of the Papacy and of the Empire, and to decide whether, at the risk of a fate like that of Huss, he would stand by these truths. These were the truths—the cardinal principles of the whole subsequent Reformation, which he was called on to abandon at Worms; and his refusal to act against his conscience at once translated them into vivid action and reality. It was one thing for Englishmen, several decades after 1520, to apply these principles with the wisdom and moderation of which we are proud. It was another thing to be the Horatius of that vital struggle. These grand facts speak for themselves, and need only to be understood in order to justify the unprecedented honours now being paid to the Reformer’s memory.

It may not, however, be out of place to dwell in conclusion upon one essential characteristic of the Reformer’s position, which is in danger at the present day of being disregarded. The general effect of this teaching upon the condition of the world is evident. It restored to the people at large, to rulers and to ruled, to clergy and laity alike, complete independence of the existing ecclesiastical system, within the limits of the revelation contained in the Holy Scriptures. In a word, in Luther’s own phrase, it established Christian Liberty. But the qualification is emphatic, and it would be wholly to misunderstand Luther if it were disregarded. Attempts are made at the present day to represent him as a pioneer of absolute liberty, and to treat it as a mere accident of his teaching and his system that he stopped short where he did. But on the contrary, the limitation is of the very essence of his teaching, because that teaching is based on the supremacy and sufficiency of the Divine word and the Divine promise. If there were no such word and promise, no such Divine revelation, and no living God to bring it home to men’s hearts, and to enforce His own laws, Luther felt that his protest against existing authority, usurped and tyrannical as it might be, would have been perilous in the extreme. But when men shrank from the boldness of his proclamation, and urged that he was overthrowing the foundations of Society, his reply was that he was recalling them to the true foundations of Society, and that God, if they would have faith in Him, would protect His own word and will. The very essence of his teaching is summed up in the lines of his great Psalm:

Luther believed that God had laid down the laws which were essential to the due guidance of human nature, that he had prescribed sufficiently the limits within which that nature might range, and had indicated the trees of which it could xxxvi not safely eat. To erect any rules beyond these as of general obligation, to restrict the free play of nature by any other limitations, he treated as an unjust violation of liberty, which would provoke a dangerous reaction. But let men be brought face to face with God, and with His reasonable and merciful laws, let them be taught that He is their Father, that all His restrictions are for their benefit, all His punishments for their reformation, all His restraints on liberty for their ultimate good, and you have then established an authority which cannot be shaken, and under which human nature may be safely left to develop. In this faith, but in this alone, he let loose men’s natural instincts, he taught men that married life, and lay life, and all lawful occupations, were holy and divine, provided they were carried on in faith and in obedience to God’s will. The result was a burst of new life wherever the Reformation was adopted, alike in national energies, in literature, in all social developments, and in natural science. But while we prize and celebrate the liberty thus won, let us beware of forgetting, or allowing others to forget, that it is essentially a Christian Liberty, and that no other Liberty is really free. Luther’s whole work, and his whole power, lay in his recognition of our personal relation to God, and of a direct revelation, promise, and command, given to us by God. Any influences, under whatever colour, which tend to obscure the reality of that revelation, which would substitute for it any mere natural laws or forces, are undoing Luther’s work, and contradicting his most essential principles. If he was a great Reformer, it was because he was a great divine; if he was a friend of the people, it was because he was the friend of God.

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Martin Luther

Martin Luther (1483–1546) is the central figure of the Protestant Reformation. Whilst he is primarily seen as a theologian, the philosophical interest and impact of his ideas is also significant, so that he arguably deserves to be ranked as highly within philosophy as other theologians in the Christian tradition, such as Augustine or Aquinas. Nonetheless, in Luther’s case this may seem more problematic, as his attitude to philosophy and indeed reason can be hostile and dismissive. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that his position is more nuanced than that, and requires contextualisation: for his objection is only to reason put to certain theological ends, while his own thought is deeply steeped in the philosophical tradition, and contributed to it. At the same time, Luther’s ideas had a fundamental influence on northern European philosophers who came after him, such as Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, and Heidegger, all of whom worked within a broadly Lutheran context, and against the background of central Lutheran assumptions, often inculcated in them through their upbringing and education. [ 1 ]

Several key issues in Luther’s work make him of interest to philosophers and not just theologians or Reformation historians, and will be covered in this entry: his conception of the relation between theology and philosophy, and the place of reason in that relation; his negative conception of Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, and his relation to the nominalist alternative; his conception of divine and human freedom; and his conception of ethics and of social and political life. Luther’s influence on subsequent philosophers in the Lutheran tradition is considered in more detail in the separate entry on Luther’s influence on philosophy .

1. Luther’s Life and Works

2. theology and philosophy, 3. luther, aristotle, and nominalism, 4. luther on freedom of the will, 5. luther’s ethics and social philosophy, 6. luther’s influence, abbreviations for references to luther’s works, other works by luther, useful collections of some of luther’s main writings, luther’s life and work, theology and philosophy, luther, aristotle, and nominalism, luther on free will, luther’s ethics and social philosophy, other cited works, other internet resources, related entries.

Luther lived an interesting life in interesting times—where to a significant degree those times were made interesting by his life’s impact upon them. This impact began with the publication of his Ninety-Five Theses on 31 October 1517, in which as a young professor at Wittenberg he attacked the Church’s sale of indulgences; this was then followed by various further disputations and disputes as well as published works that defended his increasingly radical position, leading to his excommunication in 1521 and his famously defiant appearance at the Diet of Worms. Managing to escape capture under the protection of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, and after a period of seclusion at Wartburg castle, Luther returned to Wittenberg, where he continued his teaching, writing and translating; married; and engaged with the complex and fraught swirl of forces unleashed by his work at various levels—in theology, in the Church, in politics, and in society at large. While he had fathered the Reformation, as it has become known, he did not set out to divide the Christian Church, and the movement quickly took on a momentum that he could not control, but which still in certain fundamental ways bears the stamp of his thought.

Luther was born on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben in the Holy Roman Empire, not into the peasantry as he liked to claim, but into a relatively prosperous mining family. [ 2 ] His father, Hans, gave him a good education, intending for him to become a lawyer and thus assist the family business. In 1501 Luther went from school to the University of Erfurt, where in 1505 he became a Master of Arts, a degree which included the study and teaching of Aristotle, while he was also exposed to nominalism and to humanism. However, rather than continuing with his legal training, later in the same year Luther chose instead to enter the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt, much to the annoyance of his father—and as Luther explained it later, on the basis of a vow made in a violent thunder storm to St Anna (the patron saint of miners), that this is what he would do if he was spared. Whatever the truth in this story, in his own mind at least Luther seems to have understood his change of direction as a kind of conversion experience, and the entry into a new type of spiritual life.

However, Luther did not find this life an easy one, later recalling that while he tried to live without reproach and made full use of confession, he still felt that he “was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience” (“Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings”, 1545, WA 54:185/LW 34:336), in spite of the reassurances given him by his mentor Johann von Staupitz (1468–1524), then vicar-general of the observant wing of the Augustinians. This anxiety and fear meant the Luther underwent what he termed Anfechtungen , spiritual trials or temptations, as fears about his salvation could lead him to turn against God, while in later years he felt he was struggling with the devil. Luther was further disturbed by his father’s response when attending the first Mass at which his son officiated upon being ordained in 1507: his father suggested that Luther’s vow to St Anna may have been forced out of him by the devil, causing him to break the commandment to obey one’s parents. Some commentators have speculated that these two difficult relationships with father figures are not unconnected (for a classic but controversial study, see Erikson 1958; see also Roper 2016: 48–49).

As a monk in the monastery at Erfurt and as a temporary lecturer at Wittenberg, Luther’s education continued under his teachers Jodocus Trutfetter (1460–1519) and Bartholomaeus Arnoldi of Usingen (1465–1532), as he followed a theology curriculum dominated by Ockhamism, studying central texts such as Peter Lombard’s Sentences and commentaries on them by Gabriel Biel and Pierre d’Ailly, Aristotle’s works with Ockham’s commentaries, and major works by Augustine, while also lecturing on some of them. In 1512 Luther replaced Staupitz at the university in Wittenberg as professor of the Bible, a position he was to hold until his death. [ 3 ] Earlier in the same year, Luther made his only excursion beyond German lands, travelling to Rome on behalf of Staupitz; he was later to present this as an experience that began to turn him against the religious rituals and practices he found there, including that of indulgences.

It was this issue of indulgences that in 1517 led Luther to write ninety-five theses intended for debate or disputation on the topic, criticising this widespread practice as selling the remission of sins; this practice had been intensified by the efforts of Pope Leo X to raise funds for a new basilica of St Peter in Rome, efforts that were spearheaded locally by a Dominican friar Johann Tetzel. While according to legend Luther nailed the text of the theses to the church door, in reality it seems he merely sent them to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, and perhaps they were posted up on the door by someone else; but it was thanks to printed versions that they soon began to circulate more widely. This condemnation of indulgences was an act of some defiance within the politics of the Church, as was the criticism of the authority of the power of the Pope which Luther associated with it; but earlier in the same year Luther had taken a step of a more intellectually radical kind with another set of theses, that have come to be called his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology , and which grew out of his lectures and reading in previous years, particularly his engagement with Psalms, Paul’s letters, and the works of Augustine and the latter’s attacks on Pelagianism. In this disputation, written with characteristic vehemence, Luther sketched out what may be called an uncompromising Augustinianism in opposition to what are portrayed as the more Pelagian positions of figures such as Scotus, Ockham, and Biel, behind which was said to stand the malign influence of Aristotle. At the heart of this dispute, as we shall see, is the key issue of grace, and whether this can be attained and earned through our efforts by “doing what in us lies” ( facere quod in se est ). This question raised in the context of scholastic theology also provides the intellectual background to Luther’s argument against indulgences in the Ninety-Five Theses , which to him were in effect just another dubious method of gaining merit.

It was against this background that around this time Luther had his so-called “tower experience”, which like the thunder storm, was later portrayed by Luther as a life-changing moment in a way that may be more myth than fact, and is named after the tower of the monastery in Wittenberg where it is said to have occurred (1532, WA TR 3 no 3232a–c/LW 54:193–4). In recounting the event, Luther explains that he came to radically re-think how it is that justification and hence salvation is possible for us at all: namely not through our attempts to conform to God’s law, but through faith as a form of “passive righteousness”. From this realization, Luther later claimed (in his preface to the edition of his works published in his life time) that he was freed from his anger against an accusing God, and the anxiety that no such God could ever be known to be placated; instead he now recognised God’s gratuitous love and salvation, bestowed on us through divine grace (1545, WA 54:186/LW 34:336–7).

Luther was able to develop this new position further in another disputation, this time held in Heidelberg in 1518, where thanks to the controversy unleashed by the Ninety-five Theses , he was invited by Staupitz to present his theological ideas to the triennial assembly of the German Augustinians. In this Heidelberg Disputation , Luther continued his assault on “works righteousness”, and developed further an associated attack on free will, while he also presented a contrast that was to prove fundamental to his thinking, between a “theology of glory” and a “theology of the cross”. He associated the former with his opponents, and himself with the latter, arguing that it is only through despair at our failure to gain salvation for ourselves that we are truly made ready to be given salvation through grace. It now became clear to his audience that Luther (who to mark this change in perspective had just previously started signing himself “Luther” in short for “ eleutherios ” or the “freed one”, instead of his family’s actual name of “Luder”) was attempting not merely to confront the Church on the issue of indulgences, but also to question what he perceived to be its misguided theological outlook.

Luther’s position on indulgences, and his challenge to the Pope, had now begun to draw the attention of higher authorities in the Church, and in 1518 he was summoned to Augsburg to meet with the papal legate Cardinal Tommaso de Vio, known as Cajetan, who was investigating the matter. He tried to get Luther to recant, but he refused to back down in any way. In 1519, Luther travelled to Leipzig for another disputation, this time with Johann Eck, a theologian who had earlier criticised his Ninety-Five Theses . The confrontation was a highly charged affair, also conducted in printed pamphlets and associated satirical texts written by supporters, in which Luther again vehemently defended his ground. Eck then travelled to Rome to make his case, hence contributing to the papal decision to issue the bull Exsurge Domine on 15 June 1520, which threatened to excommunicate this troublesome opponent.

Luther’s response was characteristically defiant, later that year burning the bull in front of his supporters in Wittenberg, while himself accusing the Pope of heresy and worse in his reposts which included Against the Cursed Bull of the Antichrist . Having just published his Treatise on Good Works in which he set out his fundamental position on the relation between grace and works, Luther responded to this new situation in three significant writings also published in 1520: Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation , The Babylonian Captivity of the Church , and The Freedom of a Christian . The first two texts argue his case against the Pope and key practices of the Church, and the third reflects on how freedom is possible for human beings trapped in sin. Unsurprisingly, given his recalcitrance, Luther’s formal excommunication followed on 3 January 1521, in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem . This was followed by a summons from Charles V, the recently elected head of the Holy Roman Empire, for Luther to attend the Diet, or regular imperial assembly, at Worms. Choosing to accept the summons despite the great personal risks involved, knowing that in rather similar circumstances the Czech theologian Jan Hus (c. 1372–1415) had been burnt at the stake for heresy, Luther was once more asked to recant, and once more he refused. It is again doubtful whether he actually uttered the famous words “here I stand, I cannot do otherwise”, but he is recorded as summarizing his position by saying:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. (1521, WA 7:838/LW 32:112)

Fearing for his safety after this defiant performance, which did indeed lead to the Edict of Worms declaring him a heretic and an outlaw, Luther was spirited away to the Wartburg castle under the protection of the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise. Barring a brief secret visit back to Wittenberg in December 1521, he was based there until he could return openly to the city on 6 March 1522. While at the Wartburg he began his German translation of the New Testament, which would be followed (in serialised fashion) by the Old Testament, and eventually the landmark Luther Bible of 1534/1545. He also responded to criticism in support of the Pope by a Louvain theologian in Against Latomus (1522), re-iterating key elements of his position concerning the relation between sin and grace in forceful language.

As well as responding to attacks from the Catholic Church, in this period Luther began to face increasing challenges from his “own people” within the reform movement itself. [ 4 ] Upon returning to Wittenberg from his relative seclusion, Luther found himself embroiled in controversies over the direction being taken by other figures such as Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (1486–1541) and Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525), and was caught up in associated theological disputes, while also facing growing political opposition. Luther preached the Invocavit (Lenten) Sermons which restored order to the city, and responded to his fellow reformers in A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to all Christians to Guard against Insurrection and Rebellion (1522), and to some of these political difficulties in his pamphlet On Temporal [or secular: weltlicher ] Authority: To What Extent it Should be Obeyed (1523), in which he drew a distinction between two kingdoms or empires ( die zwei Reiche ) in an attempt to make clear where he took the limits of the power of princes to lie. Now no longer a monk, he published On the Estate of Marriage in 1522, and himself married Katharina von Bora in 1525, after she had left her convent with other nuns, convinced by Luther’s arguments against monasticism. The marriage was a successful and happy one, and they were to have six children together, of whom two daughters were to die young, affecting Luther greatly. Meanwhile, theological and doctrinal disputes were to persist for the rest of Luther’s career, on issues such as the Eucharist (or Lord's Supper: Heiliges Adendmahl ) and baptism, both within the evangelical movement involving figures such as the sacramentarian Karlstadt, and the Swiss reformers Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) and Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531), and outside it with the Anabaptists. On both issues, Luther resisted the accounts of these sacraments as having a mere symbolic value, often arguing that this viewpoint comes from an urge to put reason above the authority of scripture (see, for example, Against the Heavenly Prophets (1525, WA 18:62–125, 134–214/LW 40:79–223), That These Words of Christ, “This is My Body”, Etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics (1527, WA 23:38–320/LW 37:3–150), and Concerning Rebaptism (1528, WA 26:144–74/LW 40:229–62)).

In 1524, Luther faced criticism from a different quarter, as the leading Christian humanist Desiderius Erasmus was finally persuaded to engage with Luther’s position in print, and despite Luther’s earlier hopes for his endorsement, [ 5 ] chose instead to focus critically on the latter’s view of freedom which had been initially expressed in the thirteenth of Luther’s theses from the Heidelberg Disputation (1518) and further underlined in Luther’s response to the bull of Leo X (1520). [ 6 ] Erasmus replied to the latter in his A Diatribe or Discussion on Free Will ( De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio )—where “diatribe” here is used not in the modern sense, but in the earlier sense of looking for a consensus on probable opinion through discussion. Luther, however, responded a year later to Erasmus’s intentionally measured and urbane effort with what amounts to a diatribe in the modern form, entitled De servo arbitrio , which may be translated “On the bondage [or slavery] of the will [or free choice]”. Luther’s invective shocked and offended Erasmus, who replied with his two volume Protector of the Diatribe ( Hyperaspistes diatribae ) [ 7 ] in 1526 and 1527, in which Erasmus’s language is almost as intemperate as Luther’s own. As Luther emphasised, at the heart of this dispute lay issues that were central to his thinking, concerning grace, human agency, and divine knowledge and power, played out against the background of Augustine’s earlier disputes with Pelagianism, of which Luther insistently accused Erasmus, much to the latter’s frustration.

Luther was also drawn into controversy of a more political and social kind, as he sought to respond to the events known as the “Peasants’ War” or “Peasants’ Revolt” ( Bauernkrieg ), when in 1525 large areas of central Europe saw agrarian grievances lead to more general disorder, partly fuelled by appeal to reformation ideas, and partly by an appeal to scripture which Luther himself had seemed to champion. Luther first responded with relative moderation in his Admonition to Peace , in which after criticising both the rulers and the peasants, he urged dialogue between the two parties. But the on-going violence led him to take sides with the secular authorities, as the title of his next work made clear: Against the Thieving, Murderous Hordes of Peasants . The vehement tone of this text shocked even Luther’s supporters, and led him to attempt to clarify his position further in An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants , though his basic stance was not much changed, and by then the damage was done. That stance was perhaps politically expedient to ensure continuing support from the princes for his reformation, but it nonetheless continues to raise questions regarding the integrity of his political judgement, and more generally for the significance of his social and political thought. In the same period, Luther sought to instill his form of theology and religious practice on the growing reformed communities through his German Mass (1526) and his catechisms (1529).

In 1530, Luther was drawn into a further Diet, this time at Augsburg but, fearing for his safety, Luther himself remained in Coburg, while his position was represented by his gifted younger protégé Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), who had first joined Luther in Wittenberg in 1518. The aim of the Diet, to be attended by the Emperor Charles V, was to achieve some reconciliation between the Catholic and reformed positions. Luther forwarded his strongly worded suggestions as to how the latter should be represented in his “exhortation”, but Melanchthon opted instead to present a more moderate position to the Diet, in 28 articles later known as the Augsburg Confession . This was part of a process through which Melanchthon sought to mediate and in some respects soften Luther’s own views, not always to the liking of the latter, though their close relationship remained largely intact. The Diet ended in failure and, fearing suppression from imperial forces, Luther wrote his Warning to his Dear German People (1531), in which now he sanctioned armed resistance, arguing that defence of the gospel overrode civil obedience. Instead, however, the list of Lutheran territories continued to grow, forming the League of Smalcalden in 1531. It was a Diet of this League held in 1537 which Luther was to address with his Smalcald Articles ; published in 1538, these contain his last word on confessional and doctrinal issues. He also argued against a council called by the Pope in The Councils and the Church (1539). While still at Coburg, Luther defended some of his practices on translation against critics in On Translating: An Open Letter (1530), particularly the accusation that in Romans 3:28, in the key phrase “faith alone,” the word “alone” is not in Paul’s text. When back in Wittenberg after the Diet of Augsburg, Luther was to lecture on Galatians in 1531, lectures which were published in 1535 and 1538.

In his last years, Luther continued to fight for his legacy, which included his mock-reluctant acceptance of an edition of his collected works to which he contributed an only partially reliable preface on which (as we have seen) some colourful but probably fictional stories of his life were to draw—though for all that it remains a revealing document. These years are marred by his vitriolic attacks on both Turks (and thus Islam) and Jews, in a marked change of tone from his earlier more considered and appreciative reflections, which had included That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew (1523)—although his positive remarks are based on hopes of Jewish conversion, while many of his comments in his unpublished lectures on Psalms had been hostile; partly because those hopes did not materialise, by 1538 Luther was writing Against the Sabbatarians , a polemic which he was to continue to the end of his life in further anti-Jewish texts. [ 8 ]

The end of that life was to come on 18 February 1546, in the town of Eisleben where he had been born. At the burial ceremony in Wittenberg, Melanchthon spoke the eulogy. He noted that while he could not deny the complaint that “Luther displayed too much severity” in dealing with his opponents, nonetheless he cited one of those opponents in response:

But I answer in the language of Erasmus, “Because of the magnitude of the disorders, God gave this age a violent physician”. (1546 [1834–60: 729–730]; the reference is to Erasmus 1529 [1999: 100])

Whilst there is no doubt that Luther saw himself primarily as a theologian, as we have seen his education also involved significant philosophical aspects, whilst he engaged with philosophical issues and debates throughout his career. Nonetheless, he was concerned to demarcate clearly between the two disciplines, which for him also involved becoming clear about the limitations of reason in relation to matters of faith. In some contexts, this led him to polemicizing against reason and philosophy (most notoriously in his assertion that “reason is the devil’s whore” as it “can do nothing else but slander and dishonour what God does and says” ( Against the Heavenly Prophets , 1525, WA 18:164/LW 40:175)); but as many would now argue, it would be wrong to take such remarks in isolation and out of context, and to thereby characterise his position as “irrationalist” in a broad sense. Rather, it would be more accurate to say that he was keen to keep reason within its proper boundaries and under the right tutelage.

One text that brings out some of the complexities of Luther’s position on these issues is Disputatio de homine (“The Disputation Concerning Man”, 1536). Comprising 40 theses, the first 9 present the view of human beings and our relation to the world proposed by “philosophy or human wisdom”, which is then contrasted with the view taken by theology (see Ebeling 1977, 1982, 1989; but cf. White 1994: 60–81 for criticisms of Ebeling). The position of philosophy is not rejected entirely, but shown to be severely truncated in the light of theology. According to philosophy, a human being is an embodied animal equipped with a reason that relies on sensations or experience; it thus conceives of us in merely mortal terms and in relation to the world around us. Luther agrees that in this context philosophy is right to view reason as

the most important and the highest in rank among all things and, in comparison with other things of this life, the best and something divine,

for in this realm

it is the inventor and guide of all the arts, medicine, law, and of whatever wisdom, power, virtue, and glory human beings possess in this life. (1536, WA 39.I:175/LW 34:137)

Luther thus also agrees that it is reason that makes the fundamental difference between human beings and animals, by virtue of which we are given dominion over the latter, so that reason is “a sun and a kind of god appointed to administer these things in this life” (ibid.). And Luther also asserts that even after the Fall, God did not take away this role for reason, but continued to uphold it, so in this context it remains a divine gift and a fundamental way in which we fit into God’s creation. Thus, set within a worldly arena, Luther here and elsewhere [ 9 ] is happy to affirm the value and function of reason, and philosophy’s high estimate of its significance.

However, Luther then goes on to argue that precisely because philosophy is confined to reason that operates within empirical constraints, [ 10 ] and is unaided by revelation, faith, and scripture, it cannot hope to tell us the whole story about human beings and the world, for which the extra resources available to theology are required, which can thereby put all this in relation to God and so define “the whole and perfect human being” (1536, WA 39.I: 176/LW 34:138). This means that theology can not only treat God as fundamental in its account of efficient and of final causes (as creator, and as the source of eternal happiness and salvation respectively), but it also sees human beings in the light of the Fall and also of grace and salvation, in a way that reason without theology cannot fathom—and if it tries to do so, will distort in a fundamental way.

A contemporary empiricist or naturalistic philosopher might have little cause to challenge Luther’s assumptions concerning the nature of reason, and so accept this demarcation between philosophy and theology. However, a more rationalistic philosopher might question whether Luther underestimates the a priori capacities of reason, thus giving reason more of a role within the theological realm when it comes to our knowledge of God. In response, Luther makes several related claims. First, while he does not reject such a priori knowledge altogether (which he takes to be innate), he stresses it is severely limited, partly because it can only bring us a rather general knowledge of God, [ 11 ] and partly because it can never lead to the kind of certainty regarding God which can be found through faith and taking seriously his promise to us, particularly when it comes to matters of salvation. [ 12 ] Second, he has theological reasons connected not just to the Fall itself but also to his conception of the “hiddenness” of God, to question the scope of such rational capacities, so that reason knows “that there is a God, but it does not know who or which is the true God” ( Lectures on Jonah (1526, WA 19:206/LW 19:54–55). Third, in attributing these capacities to ourselves, there is the danger of a kind of theological pride which will disastrously distort our proper relation to God. Fourth, to take reason to be capable of more than helping us navigate the world is to misunderstand its function in our epistemic economy, an economy which can ultimately be traced back to God’s design. [ 13 ] Finally, and perhaps most importantly, reason must struggle to make sense of the sheer gratuitousness of God’s forgiveness of our sins, which transcend its sense of justice and fairness, and will as a result lead us to question and doubt that forgiveness, with disastrous consequences. [ 14 ]

For Luther, these limitations of reason can be felt within theology in the kind of puzzlement and perplexity which reason feels when confronted by the scriptures and faith, where such puzzlement combined with an undue estimation of reason can lead to the overthrow of the latter by the former. But viewed from Luther’s perspective, this is clearly unwarranted, as within theology this puzzlement is precisely to be expected and even predicted, given the hiddenness of God on the one hand and the effects of the Fall on the other, as well as God’s desire to humble us. [ 15 ] Luther is thus happy to revel in the apparently paradoxical nature of religious belief, on some accounts going as far as accepting a doctrine of “double truth”: namely that the same proposition might be true in theology and false in philosophy, and vice versa . That he held this view may seem supported by Thesis 4 of the Disputation Concerning the Passage: “The Word Was Made Flesh” (John 1:14)’ of 1539, which states:

The Sorbonne, the mother of errors, very badly laid down that the same thing is true in philosophy and in theology. (WA 39.2:3/LW 38:239)

However, it is more commonly held that in making this claim, Luther has something more moderate in mind, which is suggested by Thesis 1 of this Disputation:

Although the saying “Every truth is in agreement with every other truth” is to be upheld, nevertheless, what is true in one field of learning [ professionibus ] is not always true in other fields of learning. (ibid)

This can be interpreted as holding that realms of truth are diverse, in the sense that some truth can only be stated in certain fields but not others, but nonetheless all truths are consonant with one another (see Gerrish 1962: 53–4; White 1994: Chapter 3; Dieter 2009; Luy 2017: 15–16; and see Bianchi 2008 for a history of this issue).

Nonetheless, even this more modest position means that Luther can claim that there are truths in theology that philosophy cannot grasp or properly articulate in its own terms, and when it tries to do so, will generate what in philosophy appear to be absurdities or aporia—such as the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the Eucharist, both of which require different ways of thinking than is available to philosophers, who can aspire to no more than “creaturely thought” ( The Promotions disputation of Erasmus Alberus , 1543, WA 39.2:254/Appendix to Bielfeldt, Mattox, & Hinlicky 2008: 191–197, 194). [ 16 ] It is in this context that Luther can speak of the language of theology needing to be “new” because it behaves differently from that of the “old” language of philosophy, though not necessarily from the language of ordinary life, which can be more flexible than that of philosophy in certain respects (cf. White 1994: 332–48, Bielfeldt 2002b). Likewise, because the philosopher operates with formal systems of syllogistic logic, which do not sufficiently take into account the special nature of the objects of faith, such logics will also break down when dealing with theological matters. [ 17 ] To philosophy, these problems will wrongly suggest that theology is nonsensical or is grasping at falsehoods, while instead Luther argues it just highlights the limitations of philosophical concepts and methods when dealing with the subject-matter of theology (see White 1994 for more extensive discussion of these issues). As Luther puts it in Disputation Concerning the Passage: “The Word Was Made Flesh” :

St. Ambrose has rightly said that the dialecticians have to give way where the apostolic fishermen are to be trusted. (1539, WA 39.2:4/LW 38:239)

However, having marked out a hierarchy between philosophy and theology in this manner, Luther does not entirely reject a role for reason within theology, when properly understood, and when thereby illuminated by faith so that it becomes “right reason” ( recta ratio ). [ 18 ] Thus, as Gerrish has argued in relation to Luther’s famous statement when asked to recant at the Diet of Worms, that he refused to do so unless “convinced by the testimony of Scripture or plain reason”, Luther did not mean here to set up reason alongside scripture, but rather to accept the evidential authority of rational inferences from it (Gerrish 1962: 24–5). [ 19 ] Likewise, while his doctrine of putting scripture first as the basis for faith ( sola scriptura ) means he has a correspondingly dim view of theological debates carried out at a purely philosophical level, Luther nonetheless accepts the importance of reason to the interpreter and translator of the scriptural texts such as himself. Indeed, part of his grounds for rejecting Erasmus’s humanistic appeal to authority and tradition in matters of interpretation lies in Luther’s confidence in the capacity of reason to make the Bible clear, when properly coupled with faith and the “understanding of the heart” (see Grosshans 2017: 15–17). However, Luther was himself to face the challenge of those (such as the Anabaptists and the Sacramentarians at the Colloquy of Marburg in 1529) who interpreted scripture in different ways, and for whom conscience guided by “right reason” was to counsel different responses to such key passages as “For this is my body”, leaving little agreed common ground on which to adjudicate these disputes; some see this situation as ironically generating a kind of scepticism which is the very converse of the certainty which Luther himself craved and claimed to make possible. [ 20 ]

Luther’s conception of the relation between theology and philosophy, faith and reason, may also be seen to influence his corresponding assessment of mysticism. On the one hand, against the perceived rationalism of the scholastics, Luther was clearly attracted to the need for inner experience, and spoke of achieving a kind of union with or participation in God, while attaching great merit to some writings in the mystical tradition, particularly the Theologia deutsch, a late fourteenth-century work which he discovered and twice edited, in 1516 and 1518, wrongly attributing it to Johann Tauler (c. 1300–1361), though it is influenced by the latter’s ideas. At the same time, Luther also distanced himself from mystical writers such as Dionysius, whose theology (like that of the so-called “Zwickau Prophets”) he accused of making the mediating role for Christ redundant (cf. 1537, First Disputation Against the Antinomians , WA 39.1:389–91, translated in Sonntag (ed. and trans.), Only the Decalogue is Eternal , 55–57), while it is debatable whether Luther’s emphasis on the authority of scripture is compatible with a mystical approach (for further discussion, see Oberman 1992: 126–54, and Leppin 2017b).

To the extent that Luther is critical of philosophy and of reason, this hostility is often directed at Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition in particular; and in general, Luther’s departure from Aristotle marks one of the most philosophically distinctive and interesting aspects of his thinking. As with Luther’s critique of reason, however, some of his more notoriously negative judgements—such as his claim in the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology that “the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light” (1517, WA 1:226/LW 31:12)—need to be balanced against other more positive judgements, and set in context. Part of that context is the reception of Aristotle’s work itself, as it was interpreted in its own terms, and also placed against the background of Christian thought within the scholastic tradition, where it can be a complex matter to place Luther himself into these debates (see Andreatta 1996, White 1996, Dieter 2001 (discussed in Wicks 2007), Dieter 2017).

Broadly speaking, there are three levels in Luther’s critical engagement with Aristotle and his influence: objections at the institutional level, at the level of general Christian theology, and at the level of Luther’s own theological outlook.

At the institutional level, Luther’s concern was over the place of Aristotle within the universities, which had been cemented through the decision in 1255 of the faculty of liberal arts in Paris to include all Aristotle’s known works within the curriculum. This is the context of Luther’s assertion, in To the Christian Nobility of 1520, that in the universities “the blind pagan teacher, Aristotle, is of more consequence than Christ”, so that the universities “need a good, thorough reformation” (WA 6:457/LW 44:200) in order to replace the centrality of Aristotle’s works with the study of scripture and of the Christian faith—and Luther was not alone in having this concern. He thus argues that Aristotle’s Physics , Metaphysics , De anima , and Ethics should all be removed from the curriculum, while his Logic , Rhetoric and Poetics should be retained in an abridged form without commentary, as aids to speaking and preaching. In this way, Luther clearly hoped, rather than “labouring with persistent industry to comprehend only Aristotle” ( Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses 1518, WA 1:611/LW 1:222), students would have time to devote themselves to the more worthwhile study of the Bible instead. [ 21 ]

Luther’s choice of works to set aside also reveals what he took to be theologically problematic about the content of Aristotle’s philosophy at the second level. In commenting on De anima , Luther objects that it contradicts Christian teaching on the immortality of the soul. He also says that the Physics is fundamentally flawed, elsewhere arguing that this is because Aristotle has no conception of the Biblical account of creation ( Lectures on Genesis , 1535–1545, WA 42:63/LW 1:84). In both areas, Aristotle is hampered by his hylomorphism, his view that matter and form are interrelated, so that in this respect Luther favours Plato over Aristotle.

More interesting, however, is the third level of Luther’s engagement with Aristotle, where his critique focuses on issues central to Luther’s own theology. In To the Christian Nobility , this can be seen in Luther’s response to Aristotle’s Ethics , which is described as being “the worst of all books” as it

flatly opposes divine grace and all Christian virtues, and yet it is considered one of his best works. Away with such books! Keep them away from Christians. (1520, WA 6:458/LW 44:201)

Luther is here contrasting his own account of justification through faith with the idea of justification through works, which he associates with the Aristotelian tradition and traces back to Aristotle’s Ethics . For here, Luther argued, one can find the idea that virtue is something to be developed through our own efforts and instilled in us through habituation, thus making the idea of good works central to the idea of moral improvement. While perhaps plausible in a secular context, once this idea is transposed into understanding our relation to God, Luther took it to be disastrous as it led to the view both that we could act rightly without God’s grace, and that we could to some extent earn his good judgement by doing so, without seeing this grace as unmerited. This, however, is to generate a sense of pride in our own abilities which precisely negates the possibility of good action, for reasons we will consider further in the next section. Luther thus sets his own view in opposition to the Aristotelian one in the Disputation Against Scholastic Philosophy when he writes that “We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds”, so that as a result “Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace” (1517, WA 1:226/LW 1:12). Luther’s criticisms of Duns Scotus, Gabriel Biel and William of Ockham on these issues elsewhere in the Disputation make clear how he sees them as relating to this fundamental Aristotelian error, while his reference to Augustine’s anti-Pelagianism in the first two theses equally makes clear the theological mistake that Luther sees in all such views. And while Luther does not mention him explicitly in the Disputation , not surprisingly he elsewhere occasionally but strongly criticizes Aquinas for also falling under the baleful influence of Aristotle on this issue. [ 22 ]

It has also been argued by commentators that this radical critique of Aristotle from the perspective of his view of justification and grace also results in a departure not only from Aristotle’s ethics of the virtues, but also some fundamental assumptions of Aristotelian metaphysics, and its commitment to the substance/attribute model. This change in outlook is said to arise out of Luther’s conception of grace as unmerited, so that in attributing righteousness to a person, this is extrinsic to them, a matter of God’s verdict and hence forensic assessment, and so grounded in his relation to the person rather than in the attributes of the person themselves, which from another perspective remain that of the sinner. Viewed in this relational way, the Christian is thus “both justified and sinner” ( simul iustus et peccator ), in a manner that is hard to capture on a traditional Aristotelian substance/attribute model. [ 23 ] However, the so-called “Finnish interpretation” of Luther, which challenges this purely forensic and relational approach to justification, correspondingly makes Luther’s challenge to traditional Aristotelian ontology less radical. On the Finnish interpretation, justification involves actual participation in the divine life, and thus has ontological implications for the justified individual. [ 24 ]

Luther also felt dissatisfied with the Aristotelian framework of substance and accidents, and matter and form, in relation to his distinctive views concerning other aspects of Christian doctrine, particularly concerning the Eucharist, where for example in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church , Luther argues strongly that the Aristotelian assumptions which had structured much of the debate on these matters were wrongly used to support the “babble” of transubstantiation rather than his preferred view of real presence (1520, WA 6:510–511/LW 36:32–4) [ 25 ] —though he also accuses Aquinas of causing difficulties through his misinterpretation of Aristotle, rather than just blaming Aristotle himself (1520, WA 6:508/LW 36:29). In general, Luther’s approach here is that we should take literally the word of scripture which he thinks support his view, rather than fall for using a pre-Christian philosophy which may seem to make the Eucharist more comprehensible, but which really does not, and which anyway is not appropriate goal for what should remain a mystery and a matter of faith.

Through Luther’s engagement with Aristotle, it is also intriguing to try to locate him in the complex patchwork of disputing schools that arose in this late medieval period concerning the proper interpretation of Aristotle’s work, and the challenges it faced. One such challenge was from Ockham’s nominalism or (to use the more contemporary label) “termism”; and Luther was to present himself as belonging to this position. [ 26 ] However, this issue is merely one of a broad spectrum of debates that shaped the wider dispute between the so-called via antiqua and via moderna , where the latter has links to (but cannot be identified with) nominalist approaches. This has led to a considerable amount of scholarly discussion and research, which has brought out how Luther’s education came through the via moderna , but that he also occupied a position that was independent of any school. [ 27 ]

Just as Luther’s distinctive conception of justification and grace plays a crucial role in his debates over the value of Aristotle, so similar issues play a crucial role in his discussion of a related philosophical issue, namely the value and nature of freedom, both human and divine. The central text here is of course The Bondage of the Will , in which as we have seen Luther engages with Erasmus on precisely this issue.

The structure of Luther’s response to Erasmus is largely determined by the structure of Erasmus’s De libero arbitrio , as it attempts to reply to Erasmus point by point. Erasmus’s work begins with a preface and introduction, and ends with a brief epilogue, while in between it has three parts: the first dealing with scriptural texts that Erasmus takes to support free choice; the second dealing with texts that might seem to oppose it; and the third a part which examines Luther’s earlier arguments against free choice in his response to the papal condemnation of 1520. This text is Luther’s Assertio omnium articulorum published in December of that year, in which (following John Wyclif (1324–1384)) he defended and went beyond the claim from the Heidelberg Disputation which had been condemned, namely that “Free will, after the Fall, exists in name only, and as long as it does what it is able to do, it commits a mortal sin” (WA 1:354/LW 31:40). [ 28 ] Correspondingly, Luther’s reply to Erasmus has a brief introduction, and then five main parts: the first two discuss Erasmus’s preface and introduction; a third part which questions Erasmus’s use of scriptural passages in support of free choice, and a fourth which uses scriptural passages against it; and a fifth part which challenges Erasmus’s arguments against the position Luther defended in the Assertio , while the final part marshals Luther’s general argument against free choice.

In an introduction heavy with irony and sarcasm (which sets the rhetorical tone for much of the rest of the book, and which so offended the urbane Erasmus), Luther apologies for his delay in replying to Erasmus’s Diatribe , but says that the cause was “neither pressure of work, nor the difficulty of the task, nor your great eloquence, nor any fear of you”, but rather “sheer disgust, anger, and contempt” at the quality of Erasmus’s work, and its “evasive and equivocal nature”:

you fancy yourself steering more cautiously than Ulysses between Scylla and Charybdis as you assert nothing while appearing to assert something. (WA 18:601–2/LW 33:17)

Nonetheless, Luther declares, he has seen that he really ought to overcome this aversion and respond to those who have entreated him to reply to Erasmus, as in expressing his views he may succeed in winning over a reader to the truth and the Spirit that informs Luther’s works, where that reader might even be Erasmus himself.

In the first main part, which focuses on Erasmus’s preface, Luther begins by picking up on Erasmus’s statement that outside “the Holy Scripture…and the decrees of the Church” (Erasmus 1524 [1969: 37]), he is cautious in making assertions, and even would prefer the attitude of the Sceptics, who suspend judgement on complex matters such as free will. In response, Luther rises to the bait, where on the one hand Erasmus was clearly contrasting his more modest position with Luther’s own Assertio and sense of conviction more generally, as well as on the other hand making a point of referring to the authority of the Church alongside scripture. Against Erasmus, Luther argues that scepticism is not an appropriate outlook for Christians who are called on to assert their faith as trust in God, while also criticising him for putting any weight on the decrees of the Church, rather than on scripture alone, which Luther insists is clear enough in its essentials and what it tells us, even though the mind of God himself may be harder to fathom, and it may be difficult for us to make philosophical sense of doctrines such as the Trinity. Moreover, Luther criticises Erasmus for his suggestion that it is not in fact necessary for the Christian to try to settle matters relating to free will, particularly given the dangers that attach to speculating on such questions. In response, Luther argues that this issue cannot be avoided and is central, for

as long as [Christians] are ignorant of what and how much they can do, they will not know what they should do; and being ignorant of what they should do, they cannot repent if they do wrong; and impenitence is an unforgivable sin…[so] if we do not know these things, we shall know nothing at all of things Christian, and shall be worse than any heathen. (WA 18:614/LW 33:35)

Likewise, Luther argues, the question of divine foreknowledge and of whether everything happens necessarily is also an issue which cannot be avoided:

For if you doubt or disdain to know that God foreknows all things, not contingently, but necessarily and immutably, how can you believe his promises and place a sure trust and reliance on them?… [T]his is the one supreme consolation of Christians in all adversities, to know that God does not lie, but does all things immutably, and that his will can neither be resisted nor changed nor hindered. (WA 18:619/LW 33:42–3)

Luther then goes on to criticise Erasmus’s suggestion that discussion of these issues should be kept from common ears, for fear of leading people astray and causing strife, responding that the Word of God is not to be supressed, and anyway tumult is to be expected from a doctrine as radical as Christianity. Luther also challenges Erasmus’s claim that the Lutheran position on free will, even if it were true, if widely broadcast would have deleterious effects on the life of the believer, making them more likely to give up any attempts to combat their evil, and to no longer believe in a God who punishes them for what they cannot control. For Luther, however, this is simply to beg the question, as living a better life and believing in God are not things we can bring about in ourselves, but only occur through God. Moreover, on Luther’s account, it is only by recognizing our impotence in these respects, and being thereby humbled regarding what we can do and what we can understand, that we have any chance of standing in the right relation to God at all.

Finally in this part, Luther turns to consider Erasmus’s contention that there is a fundamental paradox in the idea that “whatever is done by us is done not by free choice but of sheer necessity” (WA 18:139/LW 33:64; cf. Erasmus 1524 [1969: 41]), where he makes several key claims that will be developed further in what follows. First, he argues that this is entailed once we accept that our salvation is the work of God, from which it follows that if we do good it is a result of his agency, while if that agency is not present all we can do is what is bad, so that we lack any power of choice in this matter. However, secondly Luther stresses that this does not mean we are compelled or forced to act as we do, so that

by “necessarily” I do not mean “compulsorily” [ coacte ], but by the necessity of immutability (as they say) and not of compulsion,

when a man is without the Spirit of God he does not do evil against his will [ nolens ], as if he were taken by the scruff of the neck and forced to it, like a thief or a robber carried off against his will to punishment, but he does it of his own accord and with a ready will [ libenti voluntate ]. (WA 18:634/LW 33:64)

Thus, though we lack free choice, we do not lack free will, understood as a force that leads us to act, a force that grows stronger the more it is resisted. At this point, Luther makes his famous use of the traditional simile, that the human will is like a horse that can fall under two riders, Satan or God, who will determine which way it goes, but like a horse it follows either perfectly willingly:

If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills, as the psalm says: “I am become as a beast [before thee] and I am always with thee” [Psalms 73:22–23]. If Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan will; nor can it choose to run to either of the two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of it. (WA 18:635/LW 33:65–6)

Luther further argues that as Erasmus himself allows that free choice without the grace of God is “entirely ineffective” (Erasmus 1524 [1969: 41), he does not really disagree with Luther’s position, as

to say that free choice exists, and has indeed some power, but that it is only an ineffective power, is what the Sophists call oppositum in adjecto [a contradiction in terms]. (WA 18:636/LW 33:66)

The only being with genuine free choice, Luther asserts, is God, and it is misleading to apply the term to us, so that it would be best if we did not attach it to human beings at all—or if we must continue to use it, to do so only in relation “to what is beneath him and not what is above him”, where it makes some sense to speak of free choice in a limited sense:

That is to say, a man should know that with regard to his faculties and possessions he has the right to use, to do, or to leave undone, according to his own free choice, though even this is controlled by the free choice of God alone, who acts in whatever way he pleases. On the other hand in relation to God, or in matters pertaining to salvation or damnation, a man has no free choice, but is a captive, subject and slave either of the will of God or the will of Satan. (WA 18:638/LW 33:70)

In the second part of his text, Luther turns to Erasmus’s introduction, where Erasmus had questioned Luther’s position on the grounds that few of the saints, Church fathers, and scriptural authorities have adopted a view of this sort. Luther’s response is that while these authorities may have said there is free choice, in their actions they have not shown they possess it, while they also have all conceived of it in rather different ways, so it is not clear that there is any consensus here at all—and at the same time, Luther argues that the all-important figure of Augustine is on his side, not Erasmus’s as the latter had claimed. Given this confused picture, Luther concludes that as a result, the matter must be settled by appeal to scripture alone, and not by appeal to the authority of previous commentators, or of the Church. Luther thus proceeds to the first main part of Erasmus’s text, in which Erasmus had offered a number of biblical passages that he claimed to support the idea of free choice.

At the beginning of Part Three of his own work, before getting on to these passages, Luther begins with an important critique of the definition of free choice with which Erasmus had started his discussion:

By free choice in this place we mean a power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from them. (WA 18:661–2/LW 33:102–3, citing Erasmus 1524 [1969: 47])

Luther raises various objections to Erasmus’s definition (for Erasmus’s replies, see 1529 [1999: 261–91]). First, he points out that as free choice applies to God and angels, Erasmus is wrong to define it as applying only to human will. Second, he argues it is misleading to apply the term “free” to human choice, as this would wrongly imply that a human being “can do and does, in relation to God, whatever it pleases, uninhibited by any law or any sovereign authority”, which Luther takes for granted is not what Erasmus has in mind. The human will clearly cannot simply do as it pleases when it comes to matters of eternal salvation, as if it operated in a normative vacuum. Rather, the will is obliged by God to act in different ways, so it is only free insofar as it fails to do so because it is “vertible” or “mutable”, by failing to do what is required of it by being turned away from the good, which is hardly a form of freedom to be admired, as Augustine and others have noted. Thus, while Erasmus’s attempted definition confuses matters, Luther argues that the question at issue is therefore whether human beings have the capacity to actively and legitimately turn their will to follow or not follow what God has made it right to do—so Luther says that when he uses “free choice” in what comes next, he will be using it in this way.

Luther’s third objection is that even when we get clear what we are trying to define, Erasmus’s definition is itself unclear, particularly the terms “to apply”, “to the things which lead” and “to turn away”. The only way to understand “to apply” and “to turn away”, Luther argues, is to think that the will is not merely a power that gives rise to action, but at the same time stands between that willing and action, as a capacity for deciding how the will is to be exercised, as a

capacity or faculty or ability or aptitude for willing, unwilling, selecting, neglecting, approving, rejecting, and whatever other actions of the will there are. (WA 18:662–3/LW 33:105)

However, this then means, Luther argues, that on Erasmus’s account, if a human being does “the things which lead” to eternal salvation, this is not just because they have willed these things, but rather have chosen to act on them through exercising this capacity for choice—which is enough to make him a semi-Pelagian, who believes in this capacity for choice even though he disagrees with Pelagius himself over our ability to also know unaided the matters of salvation and thus the good concerning which we are said to choose. Moreover, Luther argues, this view contradicts what Erasmus himself had said previously, namely that “in those who lack grace” the power of the will is “unable to perform the good” (Erasmus 1524 [1969: 49]) and is thus (as Luther puts it) “incapacitated without grace” (WA 18:665/LW 33:108), and so not able to “apply itself” to such matters at all. Luther thus poses a question to Erasmus which he thinks could also be posed to the Scholastics (who are labelled as Sophists throughout this text):

If anyone told you that a thing was free which could operate by its own power only in one direction (the bad one), while in the other (the good one) it could of course operate, though not by its own power, but only by the help of another—would you be able to keep a straight face my friend? (WA 18:665/LW 33:109)

Luther then turns to consider Erasmus’s treatment of the effect of the Fall on the human will, in which Erasmus had distinguished three views on where this left free choice once the Pelagian option is set aside: those that hold human beings can choose to strive towards the good but cannot attain it without grace (co-operative grace); those who hold that left to ourselves we only choose to sin, so that grace alone can enable us to attain the good; and those who hold there is no free choice at all, which is thus said to be “an empty” name—where Erasmus calls this view “the hardest of all”, and is of course the one put forward by Luther himself (as well as John Wyclif in his early work, who Erasmus associated with Luther, an association the latter was happy to accept). [ 29 ] Luther’s strategy in response is to argue that by conceding that human beings without grace cannot will the good, Erasmus has already ruled out the first option even though he is clearly attracted by it, while Luther argues that the second must collapse into the third, as if free choice in humans is always for sin, it always goes in one direction and so is not really choice at all. Luther also makes a diagnostic point, that underlying Erasmus’s confusion here is the idea that while the will cannot will the good unaided, it is not necessarily therefore committed to willing the bad but still has some choice, as it could remain in a “neutral” position between the two; but Luther rejects this picture, as once the will has turned away from the good, it is willing the bad, rather than being in some “middle” or “unqualified” state.

Luther then returns to the passage from Ecclesiasticus 15:14–17 with which Erasmus had prefaced his discussion, to consider how Erasmus uses it to support his view. Luther first considers the opening line, which says that “God… left [man] in the hands of his own counsel”, which might suggest that we are left free to choose; but Luther counters that this only means we are given dominion over the rest of the creatures on earth, while beyond this we remain bound by the commandments of God which are referred to in the next line of the biblical text. However, Luther then considers one of Erasmus’s key arguments, namely that talk of such commandments here and in many other passages also implies we have free choice, for otherwise they would make no sense, and nor would the punishment attached to failing to act on them be warranted, thus raising the problem for Luther of “ought implies can”, and of imputation (cf. Erasmus 1524 [1969: 50]).

In response to the first issue of “ought implies can”, Luther uses this as an occasion to bring out the folly of reason when it considers such matters, because reason thinks it can appeal to our ordinary use of words like “ought” and “must” to infer “can”—but Luther thinks that in fact even in ordinary practice, we can intelligibly tell someone they ought or must do something, knowing full well they cannot, as when a parent does so in order to demonstrate to a child the limitations of their ability, or a doctor in order to demonstrate such limitations to their patient. Luther argues that Scripture, unlike Erasmus, takes our human limitations very seriously, so it is therefore not surprising that such uses of command language abound, where Luther deals with many similar passages in the same way:

The words of the law are spoken, therefore, not to affirm the power of the will, but to enlighten blind reason and make it see that its own light is no light and that the virtue of the will is no virtue,

and he cites Paul as being on his side:

“Through the law”, says Paul, “comes knowledge of sin” [Romans 3:20]; he does not say the “abolition” or “avoidance” of sin. (WA 18:677/LW 33:127)

In response to Erasmus on this issue, Luther thus offers what has been called his “convicting” view of the law, which is designed to reveal our impotence to us, thus provoking the kind of despair and sense of helplessness that can open us up to grace, in accordance with the “theology of the cross”—a process Erasmus would forestall if we took him seriously, and inferred instead that because we fall under the law, we can take steps to follow it through our own choice (cf. WA 18:680–1/LW 33:133).

Luther also deals with the problem of imputation and divine punishment, which seems to arise if we lack free choice: for how can our sins be imputed to us, and how can God allow us to be punished when we cannot do otherwise and he could remove the defect in our will which means we are not saved but are punished? Here Luther appeals to the inscrutability of God’s plans and purposes, into which we are not entitled to probe:

[W]hy that majesty of his does not remove or change this defect of our will in all men, since it is not in man’s power to do so, or why he imputes this defect to man, when man cannot help having it, we have no right to inquire; and though you may do a lot of inquiring, you will never find out. It is as Paul says in Romans 11 [ sic ; the correct reference is 9:20]: “Who are you, to answer back to God?” (WA 18:686/LW 33:140)

Likewise, Luther goes on to argue that when it comes to rewards, these are similarly unearned, where to think otherwise will only lead to a kind of works righteousness.

Finally, in the concluding discussion of this third part of his text, Luther repeats a claim he has made at several previous points: namely, that if Erasmus’s arguments prove anything, they prove too much, by establishing the full-blown Pelagianism Erasmus thinks he can avoid. For, if the arguments from “ought implies can” and from imputation are taken seriously at all, then they would establish that we are not merely free to the limited degree Erasmus claims, but are fully free to do the good, so that “if anything is proved, complete freedom of choice is proved with it”—but this is “a complete subversion” of what Erasmus wanted to show, as he tried instead to argue for the more moderate view that “such a free choice can do nothing good and is in bondage to sin” (WA 18:696/LW 33:156). Luther claims, therefore, that Erasmus’s position undermines itself.

In the fourth part, Luther now considers Erasmus’s arguments challenging those scriptural passages which seem to count against free choice, such as Exodus 9:12: “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh”. Luther criticises not only Erasmus’s various interpretative suggestions, but also his motives in offering them, which is to try to make God’s actions morally comprehensible to our reason, rather than simply accepting the goodness of God (WA 18:707–8/LW 33:173–4). He goes on to suggest that for our reason to ask for more than this, and to insist that God is constrained by certain moral norms, is to violate God’s omnipotence, thus leading Luther to take clear sides on the so-called Euthyphro dilemma, in adopting a form of voluntarism that may be traced back to Duns Scotus and to Ockham:

He is God, and for his will there is no cause or reason that can be laid down as a rule or measure for it, since there is nothing equal or superior to it, but it is itself the rule of all things. For if there were any rule or standard for it, either as cause or reason, it could no longer be the will of God. For it is not because he is or was obliged so to will that what he wills is right, but on the contrary, because he himself so wills, therefore what happens must be right. Cause and reason can be assigned for a creature’s will, but not for the will of the Creator, unless you set up over him another creator. (WA 18:712/LW 33:181)

Luther then follows Erasmus’s discussion, in turning from this text to Paul’s discussion of it in Romans 9:15–18, which raises the issue of divine foreknowledge, and how that relates to free choice in human beings. In considering this issue, Erasmus had made use of the scholastic distinction between the necessity of the consequence and the necessity of the consequent, arguing that while it may be that if God wills something it happens necessarily (necessity of the consequence), it does not follow that this happening is necessary (necessity of the consequent), thus leaving space for free choice (Erasmus 1524 [1969: 66–8]). In response, Luther argues that divine foreknowledge makes this distinction moot: for if we allow this foreknowledge, then what God knows must happen necessarily otherwise he could not know it infallibly in advance; and if God did not have this knowledge,

you take away faith and fear of God, make havoc of all the divine promises and threatenings, and thus deny his very divinity. (WA 18:715/LW 33:186)

Luther thus rejects Erasmus’s attempt to leave any space for free choice, given divine foreknowledge (for Erasmus’s response, see Erasmus 1527 [1999: 493–520]):

If God foreknows that Judas will turn traitor, or that he will change his will to betray, whichever God has foreknown will necessarily come about, or else God will be mistaken in his foreknowing and predicting, which is impossible. (WA 18:722/LW 33:194–5)

After the discussion of some other relevant scriptural passages, Luther returns to consider Erasmus’s motives in resisting what Luther takes to be the plain meaning of these texts in his conclusion of this fourth part—which is that Erasmus wishes to constrain God within the bounds of what is comprehensible to human reason, and so refuses to let God be God. In response, Luther writes:

Human nature [ caro ] does not think fit to give God such glory as to believe him just and good when he speaks and acts above and beyond what the Code of Justinian has laid down, or the fifth book of Aristotle’s Ethics . The Majesty that is the creator of all must bow down to one of the dregs of his creation, and the famed Corycian cavern must reverse its role and stand in awe of the spectators!… [W]hat becomes of the potter’s power to make what he likes, if he is subjected to merits and laws and not allowed to make what he likes, but required to make what he ought? (WA 18:729–30/LW 33:206–7)

Furthermore, Luther argues, if we did try to hold God to human norms of justice, we should be as critical of divine grace and forgiveness, which also violates these norms—or if it does not, and God rewards only those who deserve it, then in the case of someone who receives this reward in full, their goodness must be wholly due to their will, thus denying a role for grace at all (WA 33:733/LW 33:211). Luther argues once again, therefore, that Erasmus’s argument overshoots and so undermines itself.

In the fifth part of his text, Luther moves on to discussing Erasmus’s arguments over the scriptural passages which Luther had used to challenge free choice in his Assertio . In response and in defending his own interpretation of those passages, Luther makes a number of similar points to those used in previous parts, such as: Erasmus ignores the convicting sense of the law (WA 18:736/LW 33:216); he confuses lack of free choice with coercion (WA 18:747/LW 33:233); he treats free choice as if it could occupy normatively neutral ground (WA 18:750/LW 33:237); and his argument overshoots, so that if followed consistently it results in Pelagianism (WA 18:755/LW 33:245). Likewise, in the sixth part, when offering further passages against free choice, Luther again reiterates his earlier arguments, particularly that works in accordance with the law do not justify (WA 18:764/LW 33:258); that the role of the law is to bring knowledge of sin (WA 18:766/LW 33:261); that Erasmus’s position is an unstable form of semi-Pelagianism (WA 18:769–70/LW 33:267–8); that divine foreknowledge and predestination leave no room for free choice (WA 18:772–3/LW 33:272); that free choice is not in a neutral space between good and evil (WA 18:779/LW 33:281–2); and that our dominion over creation does not entail that we have free choice in relation to God (WA 18:281/LW 33:284–5). In the concluding pages, Luther makes vividly clear the underlying spiritual concerns which motivate his position: namely that for salvation to be dependent on the properly used free choice of the believer is to leave the believer in the sort of uncertainty regarding salvation which had plagued Luther’s own earlier spiritual life, and which he was now thankful to have escaped, once he saw that “God has taken my salvation out of my hands into his, making it dependent on his choice and not mine” (WA 18:783/LW 33:289). Moreover, he adds the Christological argument: if human beings had the capacity to save themselves through their choices, Christ would have died in vain.

Luther’s rethinking of these issues of grace and salvation were not seen by him as merely concerning the individual’s relation to God, but also to have wider ethical and social implications concerning the relation of individuals to one another, and of individuals to the community to which they belong. It is thus clear throughout his writings that Luther saw his transition from “justification through works” to “justification through faith” as having a major impact on his conception of ethics and social philosophy.

At the centre of Christian ethics is the commandment to love one’s neighbour; but Luther thinks this is only properly understood and made possible on his account of our relation to God, for a variety of reasons. First, if justification it to be earned through works, our justification remains uncertain in a way that fuels the kind of introspective anxiety that makes it impossible to love the neighbour, by instead turning us in on ourselves. [ 30 ] Second, these works become instrumental in earning our own salvation, thus no longer involving genuine concern for our neighbour but only for our own well-being. [ 31 ] Third, the works that will be our primary focus are religious works such as penance, and thus not ethical ones that concern the neighbour. [ 32 ] Fourth, if we think we can achieve good works without a prior act of grace, this will fuel a pride and sense of self-cultivated virtuousness which will cause us to look down on the neighbour rather than love them, a difficulty that leads Luther to be critical of the kind of virtue ethics associated with the Aristotelian tradition. [ 33 ] Thus, by starting with justification through works we will be unable to truly love the neighbour, for as we have seen, this love will be blocked by a mixture of anxiety about our own salvation and pride at our own achievements, so finally the most we will be able manage in relation to the neighbour is a kind of dutiful obedience of the commandment as a law, which itself gets in the way of a genuine attitude of love.

By contrast, Luther argues, once we move from justification through works to justification through faith, love of the neighbour becomes possible as these obstacles are removed. Instead of feeling both anxious and prideful, the believer is released from this anxiety through the promise of a grace that does not have to be earned, and from their pride by realising that this grace is unmerited. This frees the individual from their self-absorption which had turned them in on themselves, and enables them to face outwards towards the neighbour, who they no longer view as an instrument to their own salvation. In experiencing God’s love of us through grace, and of Christ’s giving of himself for us, we then turn to express this love not only to God, but also to pass on this gift to the neighbour, thereby doing the good works we ought to do in a spontaneous way rather than feeling compelled to act in an imperatival manner. [ 34 ] This shift in perspective is captured by Luther’s famously dialectical claim in The Freedom of the Christian : “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none”, in so far as the Christian is freed from following the law in an instrumental manner and out of fear for its penalties; on the other hand “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all” (WA 7:21 (German), 7:49 (Latin)/LW 31:344), as the Christian feels a gratitude to God and to Christ that also opens them up to their neighbour, who they serve in love. [ 35 ] Luther thus insists that works still play a fundamental role in the Christian life, but a role that takes a different and healthier form.

Likewise, as Luther made particularly clear towards the end of his life in his dispute with Johann Agricola (1494–1566) in his open letter Against the Antinomians (1539) and associated Disputations (1537–40), whilst the freedom of the Christian means that they are freed from a kind of subjection to the law and fulfilling it plays no role in their salvation, this does not mean that they are somehow outside or beyond the law, and nor does this mean that the preaching of the law should play no part in the life of the Church. As regards the latter point, we have already seen that consciousness of law can play an important “convicting” role in leading to the kind of despair that opens us up to grace. And as regards the former point, while the Christian qua Christian will not feel the law as a constraint or as a vehicle for salvation, this does not mean that the law does not apply to them. Luther also presents himself as occupying a similar middle position when it comes to ceremonial laws (cf. The Freedom of the Christian WA 7:70–3/LW 31:375–77). [ 36 ]

Moreover, Luther’s theological anthropology of course recognizes that we are not just Christian, but also have to deal with the “outer man” or “fallen man” who still requires control, so that the Christian who is also human will find it hard not to see the law as something before which they are required to submit, though they will do so willingly. Likewise and more generally, the Christian lives in a society in which not all are good, so that laws are required in order to constrain the behaviour of the wicked—which alongside its “convicting” use, is the other function of the law in Luther’s account. [ 37 ] Such laws will require authority in those who institute and enforce them, an authority grounded in the important role that these public bodies play in enabling fallen human beings to live together, and thus in fulfilling God’s purposes for the world.

In recognizing how far law and the legitimacy of public authorities and social structures rest on the role of both in furthering the ends of God’s creation, there is an important connection between Luther’s ethics and social philosophy and the theistic natural law tradition. Moreover, Luther forms part of this tradition in frequently arguing on the basis of Paul’s statement in Romans 2:15, that this natural law “is written in the depth of the heart and cannot be erased” ( Against the Antinomians WA 50:471/LW 47:110), so that human beings are naturally born with a knowledge of fundamental moral precepts, which are accessible to us through reason and felt through conscience. However, the Fall has impacted on this knowledge, which is why there can also be a place for a law that is revealed to us, as Moses did to the people of Israel, and preached on that basis, though in doing so what is revealed does not provide us with a new law, but reawakens our awareness of the law that is written on our hearts. [ 38 ] Furthermore, while the decalogue is fundamental and eternal, [ 39 ] other aspects of the law of Moses are more context specific and require further elaboration. [ 40 ] In some discussions, however, Luther distinguishes between the natural law which applies and is known to all and which “even the heathen, Turks, and Jews have to keep if there is to be any peace or order in the world”, and “the law of Christ, and of the gospel, which is not binding on the heathen”, and which requires more than the former law, such as love of the enemy and the willingness “to give up life and property, and let whoever takes it have it”, and thus if necessary to set aside temporal goods ( Admonition to Peace , 1525, WA 18:307–311/LW 46:27–29).

This distinction reflects a wider distinction in Luther’s ethics and social philosophy, between the structures necessary to enable the flourishing of fallen human beings as parts of God’s creation, and a concern with our spiritual lives to which different considerations apply. This distinction is reflected in Luther’s well-known but complex and evolving distinction between “two kingdoms” [ die zwei Reiche ] and the related distinction between “two governments” (or “regiments”) [ die zwei Regimente ]. The worldly or temporal kingdom is where human beings live within the world, which is structured by God to make this possible into three “orders” or “hierarchies” or “estates”, which were the politia or civitas , the oeconomia , and the ecclesia , namely government and state, the household and economic human interactions more generally, and the Church. The individual then has an office or calling or station within these various orders, which because these are divinely ordained are a way for individuals within their station to serve God, and may give some individuals in certain offices authority over others. Within the worldly kingdom, therefore, there are also worldly authorities operating at the political and social level (including within the Church), who should exercise that authority with a view to enabling fallen human beings within God’s creation to live together as well as they can; they therefore do not get that authority from the world, or exercise it on their own behalf, so that in this sense they also fall under divine authority and are subordinated to God’s spiritual kingdom, while nonetheless remaining distinguishable from it in terms of their primary focus, which is “life and property and external affairs on earth” ( Temporal Authority , 1523, WA 11:265–6/LW 45:111–2). By contrast,

[t]he spiritual government or authority [ Regiment oder Amt ] pointed Christians above itself, towards God, to do right and find salvation. (WA 51:241/LW 13:197)

As this is the kingdom of grace, and God’s grace is present in Christ, it is ruled by Christ who brings the gospel and grace to human beings, in conjunction with the Holy Spirit. As a spiritual being who is also a citizen of the world, the Christian therefore lives under both governments, as well as a two-fold law, reflected in the distinction between the natural and Christian law outlined above. [ 41 ]

This complex structure obviously raises the question of how these two aspects of the Christian life can be related, and whether they can come into conflict. Luther’s position here is nuanced, as while he distinguishes between these aspects in the way we have seen, he does not treat them dualistically as is sometimes suggested, by separating off the this-worldly from the other-worldly, the temporal from the spiritual, the outer from the inner, or social life from the individual’s relation to God. Rather, in On Temporal Authority , Luther argues that while “no one can become righteous in the sight of God by means of the temporal government” (1523, WA 11:252/LW 45:92), and while Christians who have the Holy Spirit in their heart have no need of such a government to constrain them (1523, WA 11:249–50/LW 45:88–9), nonetheless the Christian who is enabled by God’s love to love the neighbour will thereby be engaged with what this requires of them in the world as a result of this neighbour love, including occupying its various offices and upholding its laws, which can include if necessary exercising force over others. [ 42 ] The Christian will not adopt these practices for their own good, or think that following them counts as a route to their own salvation; but they will see that these practices can be necessary for the good of the neighbour, and that love for the neighbour will therefore involve not withdrawing from the world into spiritual other-worldliness and isolation, but engaging with it.

However, this approach of course gives rise to a further question: namely, under what conditions should the Christian be committed to supporting the secular authorities, particularly when their power is made greater through Luther’s downgrading of the authority of the Church in temporal matters. This issue was made vivid for Luther in the context of the Peasants’ Revolt discussed above. On the one hand, Luther places limits on political obedience, as princes have no absolute authority but are merely the “masks” or larvae of God, and so are themselves constrained to act as God ordained, and so for the good of their people and in accordance with God’s word; the people of a prince who does wrong in these terms are therefore not required to obey him. [ 43 ] Moreover, such princes are not to compel their citizens on matters of faith, which do not fall under their jurisdiction. [ 44 ] On the other hand, as the individual Christian should ultimately have little concern for their own temporal interests, if the secular power acts against those interests, the Christian will not see this as giving them a right to rebel and overthrow the secular power, [ 45 ] while only God can act as its judge and inflict punishment upon those who rule. [ 46 ] It remains a matter of dispute whether Luther succeeded in striking a stable balance here, as on other issues discussed above.

Luther’s thinking exerted a considerable influence not only on his own time and on his immediate contemporaries, but also on those who have come after him. While his most significant impact has of course been in theology, and while it would be wrong to suggest that there is anything like a Lutheran school in philosophy, nonetheless Luther has played an important role for a range of key philosophical figures from Hobbes and Leibniz, to Heidegger. This impact is considered in more detail in a separate entry, as well as his influence on “modernity” more broadly. For a fuller discussion, see the entry on Luther’s influence on philosophy .

• [WA] D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe , 65 vols in 127. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883–1929, Abteilung 1: Schriften vols 1–56.
• [WA TR] D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe , 65 vols in 127. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883–1929, Abteilung 2: Tischreden vols 1–6.
• [WA DB] D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe , 65 vols in 127. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883–1929. Abteilung 3: Die Deutsche Bibel vols 1–12.
• [LW] Luther’s Works , American edition, 55 vols. St Louis and Philadephia: Concordia and Fortress Press, 1958–86; new series, vols 56–75, 2009–.
• The Sermons of Martin Luther , edited by John Lenker, 8 vols (Reprint: Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989).
• The Book of Concord , edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000.
• Only the Decalogue Is Eternal: Martin Luther’s Complete Antinomian Theses and Disputations , edited and translated by Holger Sonntag, Minneapolis, MN: Lutheran Press, 2008.
• Martin Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People: A Reader , Brooks Schramm and Kirsi Stjerna (eds.), Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012.
• A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians, Based on Lectures Delivered at the University of Wittenberg, in the Year 1531 , 1531/1575 [1953], Philip S. Watson (ed.), London: James Clark. A revised and completed translation based on the “Middleton” edition of the English version of 1575.
• Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings , edited by John Dillenberger, Garden City: Anchor Books, 1961.
• The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings , William Russell (trans.), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2017.
• The Annotated Luther , edited by Timothy J. Wengert et al., 6 vols., Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015–17.

Translations have been modified where necessary.

Primary texts

• Luther, Martin, 1545, “Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings” (WA 54:179–87/LW 34:323–38).

Secondary texts

• Brecht, Martin, 1981 [1985], Martin Luther: sein Weg zur Reformation, 1483–1521 , Stuttgart: Calwer. Translated as Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483–1521 , James L. Schaaf (trans.), Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1985.
• –––, 1986 [1990], Martin Luther: Zweiter Band: Ordnung und Abgrenzung der Reformation, 1521–1532 , Stuttgart: Calwer. Translated as Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521–1532 , James L. Schaaf (trans.), Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990.
• –––, 1987 [1993], Martin Luther : Dritter Band : Die Erhaltung der Kirche, 1532–1546 , Stuttgart: Calwer. Translated as Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532–1546 , James L. Schaaf (trans.), Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993.
• Carlyle, Thomas, 1841, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History , London: James Fraser. Reprinted 1983, New York: Chelsea House.
• Ebeling, Gerhard, 1964 [1970], Einführung in sein Denken , Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Translated as Luther: An Introduction to his Thought , R. A. Wilson (trans.), Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1970.
• Erikson, Erik H., 1958, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History , New York: Norton.
• Helmer, Christine, 2019, How Luther Became the Reformer , Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
• Hendrix, Scott H., 2015, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Leppin, Volker, 2010 [2017a], Martin Luther: vom Mönch zum Feind des Papstes Darmstadt: WBG. Translated as Martin Luther: A Late Medieval Life , Rhys Bezzant and Karen Roe (trans.), Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017.
• Melanchthon, Philip, 1546 [1834–60], “Oratio in funere D. Martini Lutheri”. Reprinted in Corpus Reformatorum , Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider (ed.), Halix Saxonum: C. A. Schwetschke, 1834–60, vol 11, 726–734.
• Metaxas, Eric, 2017, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World , New York: Viking.
• Oberman, Heiko Augustinus, 1977 [1981], Werden und Wertung der Reformation , J. C. B. Mohl: Tübingen. Revised, abridged, and translated as Masters of the Reformation: The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe , Dennis Martin (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511897399
• –––, 1982 [1989], Luther: Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel , Berlin: Severin und Seidler. Translated as Luther: Man Between God and the Devil , Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (trans.), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Rex, Richard, 2017a, The Making of Martin Luther , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.
• Roper, Lyndal, 2016, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet , London: Bodley Head.
• Schilling, Heinz, 2012 [2017], Martin Luther: Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs , München: C. H. Beck. Translated as Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval , Rona Johnston (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Luther, Martin, 1518, The Heidelberg Disputation (WA 1:353–74/LW 31:35–70).
• –––, 1536, Disputation Concerning Man (WA 39.1:175–80/LW 34:133–44).
• –––, 1539, Disputation Concerning the Passage: “The Word Was Made Flesh” (John 1:14) (WA 39.2:3–30/LW 38:235–77).
• Barone, Marco, 2017, Luther’s Augustinian Theology of the Cross , Eugene, OR: Resource Publications.
• Becker, Sigbert W., 1999, The Foolishness of God: The Place of Reason in the Theology of Martin Luther , second edition, Milwaukee, WI: Wisconsin Publishing House.
• Bielfeldt, Dennis, 1990, “Luther, Metaphor, and Theological Language”, Modern Theology , 6(2): 121–135. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0025.1990.tb00211.x
• –––, 2002a, “Luther on Language”, Lutheran Quarterly , 16: 195–220.
• –––, 2002b, “Luther and the Strange Language of Theology: How ‘New’ is the Nova Lingua?”, in Caritas et Reformatio: Essays on Church and Society in Honor of Carter Lindberg , Carter Lindberg and David Mark Whitford (eds.), St Louis, MI: Concordia Publishing House, pp. 221–244.
• Bielfeldt, Dennis D., Mickey Leland Mattox, and Paul R. Hinlicky, 2008, The Substance of the Faith: Luther’s Doctrinal Theology for Today , Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
• Bianchi, Luca, 2008, Pour une histoire de la “double verité” , Paris: Vrin.
• Blanshard, Brand, 1974, Reason and Belief , London: George Allen & Unwin, Chapter 5 (“Reason and Faith in Luther”). [ Blanshard 1974 available online ]
• Bornkamm, Heinrich, 1959, “Faith and Reason in the Thought of Erasmus and Luther”, in Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich , Walter Leibrecht (ed.), New York: Harper, pp. 133–139.
• Büttgen, Philippe, 2011, Luther et la Philosophie , Paris: Vrin.
• Dalferth, Ingolf U., 1988, Theology and Philosophy , Oxford: Blackwell, Chapter 7 (“The Law-Gospel Method”), pp. 76–88.
• Dieter, Theodor, 2009, “Martin Luther”, in Early Modern Philosophy of Religion , Graham Oppy and N. N. Trakakis (eds.), London: Routledge, pp. 33–46.
• –––, 2011, “Martin Luther’s Understanding of ‘Reason’”, Lutheran Quarterly , 25: 249–78
• Ebeling, Gerhard, 1977, Disputatio de homine: Erster Teil: Text und Traditionshintergrund , Tübingen: Mohr.
• –––, 1982, Disputatio de homine: Zweiter Teil: Die philosophische Definition des Menschen , Tübingen: Mohr.
• –––, 1989, Disputatio de homine: Dritter Teil: Die theologische Definition des Menschen , Tübingen: Mohr.
• Forde, Gerhard O., 1997, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputations, 1518 , Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
• Grosshans, Hans-Peter, 2017, “Reason and Philosophy in Martin Luther’s Thought”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion , John Barton (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.343
• Gerrish, B. A., 1962, Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hamm, Berndt, 2010 [2014], Der frühe Luther: Etappen reformatorischer Neuorientierung , Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Translated as The Early Luther: Stages in Reformation Reorientation , Martin J. Lohrmann (trans.), Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014.
• Heine, Heinrich, 1835 [2007], Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland . Translated as On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany , Howard Pollack-Milgate (trans.), in On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings , Terry Pinkard (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 3–120
• Hockenbery Dragseth, Jennifer (ed), 2011, The Devil’s Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition , Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
• Kellerman, James A., 2008, “A Pure Critique of Reason: Reason within the Limits of Sound Theology Alone”, Logia , 17(4): 31–38.
• Kolb, Robert, 2002, “Luther on the Theology of the Cross”, Lutheran Quarterly , 16: 443–466.
• Leppin, Volker, 2017b, “Luther’s Mystical Roots”, in Melloni 2017: 157–171. doi:10.1515/9783110499025-010
• Lohse, Bernhard, 1958, Ratio und Fides: Eine Untersuchung über die ratio in der Theologie Luthers , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
• Luy, David, 2017, “Martin Luther’s Disputations”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion , John Barton (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.285
• Malter, Rudolf, 1980, Das reformatorische Denken und die Philosophie: Luthers Entwurf einer transzendental-praktischen Metaphysik , Bonn: Bouvier.
• Marshall, Bruce D., 1999, “Faith and Reason Reconsidered: Aquinas and Luther on Deciding What Is True”, The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review , 63(1): 1–48. doi:10.1353/tho.1999.0041
• Mattes, Mark, 2013, “Luther’s Use of Philosophy”, Lutherjahrbuch , 80: 110–141.
• McGrath, Alister E., 1989, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; second edition, 1998; third edition, 2005; fourth edition, 2020. doi:10.1017/9781108560702
• Popkin, Richard H., 1979, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Rex, Richard, 2017b, “Luther Among the Humanists”, in Melloni 2017: 203–220. doi:10.1515/9783110499025-013
• Steinmetz, David C., 1980, Luther and Staupitz: An Essay on the Intellectual Origins of the Protestant Reformation , Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Vercruysse, Joseph E., 1981, “Gesetz und Leibe: die Struktur der ‘Heidelberger Disputation’ Luthers”, Lutherjahrbuch , 68: 7–43.
• Zur Mühlen, Karl-Heinz, 1984, “Luthers Kritik der Vernunft im Mittelalterlichen und Neuzeitlichen Kontext”, in Lutheriana: zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers , pp. 3–15.
• Luther, Martin, 1517, Disputation Against Scholastic Theology (WA 1:224–8/LW 31:3–16).
• –––, 1522, “Preface to the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans” (WA DB 7:2–27/LW 35:365–80).
• –––, 1526, The Disputation Concerning Justification (WA 39.1/LW 34:145–96).
• Andreatta, Eugenio, 1996, Lutero e Aristotele , Padova: Nuova Vita.
• Balserak, Jon, 2017, “The Medieval Heritage of Martin Luther”, in Melloni 2017: 141–156. doi:10.1515/9783110499025-009
• Bielfeldt, Dennis, 2016, “Martin Luther and Ontology”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion , John Barton (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.351
• Braaten, Carl and Robert Jenson (eds.), 1998, Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation , Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
• Carlisle, Clare, 2013, “The Question of Habit in Theology and Philosophy: From Hexis to Plasticity”, Body & Society , 19(2–3): 30–57. doi:10.1177/1357034X12474475
• Dieter, Theodor, 2001, Der junge Luther und Aristotles , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• –––, 2014, “Luther as Late Medieval Theologian: His Positive and Negative Use of Nominalism and Realism”, in The Oxford Handbook to Martin Luther’s Theology , Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel and L’Ubomír Bakta (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 31–48
• –––, 2017, “Scholasticisms in Martin Luther’s Thought”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion , John Barton (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.265
• Eckermann, Willigis, 1978, “Die Aristoteleskritik Luthers: ihre Bedeutung für seine Theologie”, Catholica , 32: 114–30.
• Ghiselli, Anja, Kari Kopperi, and Rainer Vinke (eds.), 1993, Luther und Ontologie , Helsinki: Luther-Agricola Society.
• Grane, Leif, 1962, Contra Gabrielem: Luthers Auseinandersetzung mit Gabriel Biel in der Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam 1517 , Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
• –––, 1969, “Luthers Kritik an Thomas von Aquin in De Captivitate Babylonica”, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte , 80: 1–13.
• –––, 1970, “Die Anfänge von Luthers Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thomismus”, Theologische Literaturzeitung , 95: 241–250.
• Hägglund, Bengt, 1955, Theologie und Philosophie bei Luther und in der occamistischen Tradition , Lund: C W K Gleerup.
• –––, 1957, “Was Luther a Nominalist?”, Concordia Theological Monthly , 28(6): 441–452.
• Hampson, Daphne, 2001, Christian Contradictions: The Structures of Lutheran and Catholic Thought , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511487743
• Janz, Denis R., 1983, Luther and Late Medieval Thomism , Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
• –––, 1989, Luther on Thomas Aquinas , Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
• Joest, Wilfried, 1967, Ontologie der Person bei Luther , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
• Juntunen, Sammeli, 1998, “Luther and Metaphysics”, in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther , Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson (eds.), Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, pp. 129–160.
• Kärkkäinen, Pekka, 2017, “Nominalism and the Via Moderna in Luther’s Theological Work”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion , John Barton (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.266
• Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti, 2006, “Salvation as Justification and Theosis: The Contribution of the New Finnish Luther Interpretation to Our Ecumenical Future1”, Dialog: A Journal of Theology , 45(1): 74–82. doi:10.1111/j.0012-2033.2006.00296.x
• Kirjavainen, Heikki, 1984, “Luther und Aristoteles: Die Frage der zweierlei Gerechtigkeit im Lichte der transitiven vs. intransitiven Willenstheorie”, in Luther in Finnland , Mikka Ruokanen (ed.), Helsinki: Schriften der Luther-Agricola-Gesellschaft, pp. 111–129.
• Kohls, Ernst-Wilhelm, 1975, “Luthers Verhältnis zu Aristoteles, Thomas und Erasmus”, Theologische Zeitschrift , 31: 289–301.
• Kusukawa, Sachiko, 1995, “Law and Gospel: The Reforms of Luther and Melanchthon”, in The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 27–74.
• McGrath, Alister E., 1985, Luther’s Theology of the Cross , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Oberman, Heiko A., 1992, The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought , Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
• –––, 1963 [2000], The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism , Harvard: Harvard University Press; reprinted Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000.
• –––, 2003, “Luther and the Via Moderna: The Philosophical Backdrop of the Reformation Breakthrough”, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , 54(4): 641–670. doi:10.1017/S0022046903008005
• Oehlschläger, Gerhard, 2003, “Der junge Luther und Aristoteles”, LutherJahrbuch , 70: 93–125.
• Oliva, Adriano, 2012, “Luther et la philosophie: Sur un ouvrage récent”, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques , 96(2): 293–312. doi:10.3917/rspt.962.0293
• Osborne, Thomas, 2002, “Faith, Philosophy, and the Nominalist Background to Luther’s Defense of the Real Presence”, Journal of the History of Ideas , 63(1): 63–82. doi:10.1353/jhi.2002.0006
• Pesch, Otto Hermann, 1967, Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin: Versuch eines systematisch-theologischen Dialogs , Mainz: Grünwald.
• Vignaux, Paul, 1971, “On Luther and Ockham”, in The Reformation in Medieval Perspective , Steven E. Ozment (ed.), Chicago: Quadrangle Books, pp. 107–118.
• White, Graham, 1994, Luther as Nominalist: A Study of the Logical Methods Used in Martin Luther’s Disputations in the Light of their Medieval Background , Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society.
• Wicks, Jared, 2007, “Luther and ‘This Damned, Conceited, Rascally Heathen’ Aristotle: An Encounter More Complicated than Many Think”, Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology , 16(1): 90–104. doi:10.1177/106385120701600108
• Zur Mühlen, Karl-Heinz, 1981, “Luthers Kritik am scholastischen Aristotelismus in der 25. These der ‘Heidelberger Disputation’ von 1518”, Lutherjahrbuch , 48: 54–79.
• Luther, Martin, 1525, The Bondage of the Will (WA 18: 600–787/LW 33:3–295).
• Erasmus, Desiderius, 1524 [1969], On the Freedom of the Will , E. Gordon Rupp and A. N. Marlow (trans.), in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation , Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1969, pp. 35–100. Also translated by Peter Macardle in Erasmus 1999: vol 76, pp. 4–90.
• –––, 1526, Hyperaspistes diatribae adversus servum arbitrium M. Lutheri , translated by Clarence H. Miller as A Warrior Shielding A Discussion of Free Will Against the Enslaved Will by Martin Luther, book one , in Erasmus 1999: vol 76, pp. 91–298.
• –––, 1527, Hyperaspistes diatribae adversus servum arbitrium M. Lutheri , translated by Clarence H. Miller as A Warrior Shielding A Discussion of Free Will Against the Enslaved Will by Martin Luther, book two , in Erasmus 1999: vol 77, pp. 334–749.
• –––, 1999, Collected Works of Erasmus , Charles Trinkaus (ed.), Peter Macardle and Clarence H. Miller (trans.), Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Alfsvåg, Knut, 2015, “Luther on Necessity”, Harvard Theological Review , 108(1): 52–69. doi:10.1017/S0017816015000036
• Boisset, Jean, 1962, Érasmus et Luther: Libre ou serf-arbitre? , Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
• Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke, 1982, “Stoic Luther: Paradoxical Sin and Necessity”, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte , 73: 69–93.
• Forde, Gerhard O., 2005, The Captivation of the Will: Luther vs Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage , Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
• Fromm, Erich, 2001, The Fear of Freedom , second edition, Abingdon: Routledge.
• Gaebler, Mary, 2013, The Courage of Faith: Martin Luther and the Theonomous Self , Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
• Hodgson, Peter C., 2009, “Luther and Freedom”, in The Global Luther: A Theologian For Our Times , Christine Helmer (ed.), Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, pp. 32–48.
• Jenson, Robert W., 1994, “An Ontology of Freedom in the De Servo Arbitrio of Luther”, Modern Theology , 10(3): 247–252. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0025.1994.tb00039.x
• Kolb, Robert, 2005, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method: From Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord , Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
• Lodone, Michele, 2017, “Erasmus and Luther: Free and Bound Will”, in Melloni 2017: 281–294. doi:10.1515/9783110499025-017
• Martin, Wayne, 2009, “Ought but Cannot”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 109(1pt2): 103–128. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9264.2009.00260.x
• –––, 2010, “The Judgement of Adam: Self-Consciousness and Normative Orientation in Lucas Cranach’s Eden”, in Art and Phenomenology , Joseph D. Parry (ed.), London: Routledge, pp. 105–37.
• McSorely, H. J., 1969, Luther: Right or Wrong? An Ecumenical-Theological Study of Luther’s Major Work, The Bondage of the Will , Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.
• Massing, Michael, 2018, Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind , New York: HarperOne.
• Pigden, Charles R., 1990, “Ought-implies-can: Erasmus, Luther and R. M. Hare”, Sophia , 29: 2–30.
• Saarinen, Risto, 2011, “The Lutheran Reformation”, in his Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought , Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 3.
• Smith, John H., 2011, Dialogues Between Faith and Reason: The Death and Return of God in Modern German Thought , Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, Chapter 1 (“Erasmus vs. Luther: Philo- logos vs. Faith”), pp. 23–44.
• Trinkaus, Charles, 1999, “Introduction” to Erasmus 1999: vol 76, pp. xi–cvi.
• Urban, Linwood, 1971, “Was Luther a Thoroughgoing Determinist?”, The Journal of Theological Studies , 22(1): 113–139. doi:10.1093/jts/XXII.I.113
• Luther, Martin, 1519, Two Kinds of Righteousness (WA 2:145–52/LW 31:293–306).
• –––, 1520, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (WA 6:497–573/LW 36:3–126).
• –––, 1520, The Freedom of the Christian (WA 7: 1–38;42–73/LW 31:327–77).
• –––, 1520, To the Christian Nobility (WA 6:404–69/LW 44:15–114).
• –––, 1522, A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion (WA 7:676–87/LW 45:51–74).
• –––, 1522, Invocavit (Eight Wittenberg) Sermons (WA 10.3:1–64/LW 51:70–100).
• –––, 1523, Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (WA 11:245–80/LW 45:75–129).
• –––, 1525, Admonition to Peace (WA 18:281–334/LW 46:3–43).
• –––, 1525, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants (WA 18:291–334/LW 46:45–55).
• –––, 1525, An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants (WA 18:357–61/LW 46:47–85).
• –––, 1526, Whether Soldiers Too Can be Saved (WA 19.2:623–62/LW 46:87–137).
• –––, 1529, On War Against the Turk (WA 30.2:107–48/LW 46:155–205).
• –––, 1535, A Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (WA 40.1:40–688 and 40.2:1–184/LW 26:1–461 and 27:1–144).
• –––, 1537–40. Antinomian Theses and Disputations (WA 39.1:343–584, WA 39.2:124–44, translated in Holger Sonntag (ed and trans), Only the Decalogue is Eternal: Martin Luther’s Complete Antinomian Theses and Disputations . Minneapolis: Lutheran Press, 2008).
• –––, 1539, Against the Antinomians (WA 50:468–77/LW 47:99–119).
• Alfsvåg, Knut, 2016, “Natural Theology and Natural Law in Martin Luther”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion , John Barton (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.368
• Althaus, Paul, 1965 [2007], Die Ethik Martin Luthers , Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn. Translated as The Ethics of Martin Luther , Robert C. Schultz (trans.) Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007.
• Andersen, Svend, 2010, Macht aus Liebe: Zur Rekonstruktion einer lutherischen politischen Ethik , Berlin: De Gruyter.
• –––, 2018, “Two Kingdoms, Three Estates, and Natural Law”, in Lutheran Theology and the Shaping of Society , Bo Kristian Holm and Nina Javette Koefoed (eds.), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 189–214. doi:10.13109/9783666551246.189
• Baker, Robert C. and Roland Cap Ehlke (eds), 2011, Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal , St. Louis, MO: Concordia.
• Bayer, Oswald, 1998, “Nature and Institution. Luther’s Doctrine of the Three Estates”, C. Helmer (trans.), Lutheran Quarterly . 7: 125–59.
• –––, 1995 [2007], Freiheit als Antwort , Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Translated as Freedom in Response: Lutheran Ethics: Sources and Controversies , Jeffrey F. Cayzer (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Biermann, Joel D., 2014, A Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics , Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
• Bornkamm, Heinrich, 1955 [1966], Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen im Zusammenhang seiner Theologie , Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn. Translated as Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms in the Context of his Theology , Karl H. Hertz (trans.), Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966.
• Cargill Thompson, W. D. J., 1969, “The ‘Two Kingdoms’ and the ‘Two Regiments’: Some Problems of Luther’s Zwei-Reiche-Lehre ”, The Journal of Theological Studies , 20(1): 164–185. doi:10.1093/jts/XX.1.164
• –––, 1984, The Political Thought of Martin Luther , Brighton: Harvester Press.
• Carty, Jarrett A., 2017, God and Government: Martin Luther’s Political Thought , Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
• Couenhoven, Jesse, 2017, “The Protestant Reformation”, in The Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy , Sacha Golob and Jens Timmermann (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 208–220. doi:10.1017/9781139519267.017
• Cranz, F. Edward, 1956, An Essay on the Development of Luther’s Thought on Justice, Law and Society , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Estes, James, 2005, Peace, Order and the Glory of God: Secular Authority and the Church in the Thought of Luther and Melanchthon, 1518–1559 , Boston: Brill.
• Heckel, Johannes, 1973 [2010], Lex charitatis: Eine juristische Untersuchung über das Recht in der Theologie Martin Luthers , 2nd edn, Cologne: Verlag Böhlau. Translated as Lex Charitatis: A Justistic Disquisition on Law in the Theology of Martin Luther , Gottfried G. Krodel (trans.), Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
• Herdt, Jennifer, 2019, “Natural Law in Protestant Christianity”, in The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics , Tom Angier (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 155–178. doi:10.1017/9781108525077.009
• Holm, Bo Kristen, 2019, “Luther, Seneca, and Benevolence in Both Creation and Government”, in Apprehending Love , Pekka Kärkkäinen and Olli-Pekka Vainio (eds.), Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society, pp. 287–312.
• Irwin, Terence, 2007, “The Reformation and Scholastic Moral Philosophy”, in his The Development of Ethics, Volume 1: From Socrates to the Reformation , Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 29.
• –––, 2012, “Luther’s Attack on Self-Love: The Failure of Pagan Virtue”, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies , 42(1): 131–155. doi:10.1215/10829636-1473127
• Laffin, Michael Richard, 2016, The Promise of Martin Luther’s Political Theology , London: Bloomsbury.
• Lazareth, William, 2001, Christians in Society: Luther, the Bible and Social Ethics , Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
• Lindberg, Carter, 2003, “Luther’s Struggle with Social-Ethical Issues”, in McKim 2003: 165–178. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521816483.010
• MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1967, “Luther, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza”, in his A Short History of Ethics , London: Routledge, Chapter 10.
• McKim, Donald K. (ed.), 2003, The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther , Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521816483
• McNeill, John T., 1941, “Natural Law in the Thought of Luther”, Church History , 10(3): 211–227. doi:10.2307/3160251
• Meilaender, Gilbert, 1988, “The Examined Life is Not Worth Living: Learning from Luther”, in his The Theory and Practice of Virtue , South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 100–26.
• Nitti, Silvana, 2017, “Luther and Political Power”, in Melloni 2017: 241–263. doi:10.1515/9783110499025-015
• Raunio, Antti, 1998, “Natural Law and Faith: The Forgotten Foundations of Ethics in Luther’s Theology”, in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther , Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (eds.), Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, pp. 96–124.
• –––, 2006, “Divine and Natural Law in Luther and Melanchthon”, in Lutheran Reformation and the Law , Virpi Mäkinen (ed.), Leiden: Brill, pp. 21–61.
• Saarinen, Risto, 2005, “Ethics in Luther’s Theology: The Three Orders”, in Moral Philosophy on the Threshold of Modernity , Jill Kraye and Risto Saarinen (eds.), Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 195–215.
• Sanders, E. P., 1977, Paul and Palestinian Judaism , London: SCM Press.
• Schorn-Schütte, Luise, 2017, “Luther and Politics”, in Melloni 2017: 565–577. doi:10.1515/9783110499025-034
• Skinner, Quentin, 1978, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume 2: The Age of Reformation , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Part One. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511817892
• Troeltsch, Ernst, 1912 [1992], Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen , Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Translated as The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches , Volume II, Olive Wyon (trans.), New York: Mcmillan, 1931. Reprinted Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992.
• Voegelin, Eric, 1998, History of Political Ideas, Vol. IV: Renaissance and Reformation , in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin , volume 22, David L. Morse and William M. Thompson (eds.), Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
• Wannenwetsch, Bernd, 2003, “Luther’s Moral Theology”, in McKim 2003: 120–135. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521816483.007
• Whitford, David M., 2003, “Luther’s Political Encounters”, in McKim 2003: 179–191. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521816483.011
• Wingren, Gustav, 1942 [1957], Luthers lära om kallelsen , PhD thesis, Lund: C.W.K. Gleerups Förlag. Translated as The Christian’s Calling: Luther on Vocation , Carl C. Rasmussen (trans.), Philadelphia: Muhlenburg Press, 1957.
• Witte, John, 2002, Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511613548
• Wolin, Sheldon S., 2004, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought , expanded edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Chapter 5 (“Luther: The Theological and the Political”), pp. 127–147.
• Wright, William J., 2010, Martin Luther’s Understanding of God’s Two Kingdoms: A Response to the Challenge of Skepticism , Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.
• Boyle, Nicholas, 2008, German Literature: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780199206599.001.0001
• Melloni, Alberto (ed.), 2017, Martin Luther: A Christian Between Reforms and Modernity (1517–2017) , Berlin: De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110499025

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Luther’s Werke , a site with links to the Weimar edition
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Luther

Aquinas, Thomas | Aristotle | Augustine, Saint | Christian theology, philosophy and | Duns Scotus, John | Erasmus, Desiderius | free will: divine foreknowledge and | hiddenness of God | Luther, Martin: influence on philosophy | medieval philosophy | mysticism | Ockham [Occam], William | universals: the medieval problem of | voluntarism, theological | Wyclif, John

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the following for extremely useful comments on previous versions of this entry, and for general discussions of Luther that have helped shape the views expressed herein: Maria Rosa Antognazza, David Bagchi, David Batho, Ryan Byerly, Sophie Grace Chappell, Benjamin Crowe, Theodor Dieter, Josh Furnal, Daphne Hampson, Susanne Herrmann-Sinai, Iona Hine, Bo Christian Holm, Volker Leppin, Wayne Martin, Alister McGrath, John Monfasani, Kees van Kooten Niekerk, Rory Phillips, Simon Podmore, Bjørn Rabjerg, Richard Rex, Daniel Roche, and Joe Saunders.

Copyright © 2020 by Robert Stern < r . stern @ sheffield . ac . uk >

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Luther's 95 theses

An extremely rare document, this is a copy of the first printing of Martin Luther’s 95 theses as a pamphlet. 'Disputatio … pro declaratione virtutis indugentiarum', by Martin Luther (Basel, 1517).

Martin Luther 's attention in his 95 theses of 1517 focused on the Church's sale of indulgences.

Selling full or partial remission of the punishment for sin was a lucrative source of income for the Pope and his administration by the 16th century.

While criticism of the practice was not unusual, the tumultuous impact of Luther's 95 theses was unexpected.

He had written and made them public to start off an academic debate. Once he translated them into German, however, the theses gained widespread popularity.

Distributed across Europe

As posters and pamphlets, the theses were printed and distributed across the Holy Roman Empire's territories in northern and central Europe.

Of the few hundred copies printed, those produced in Nuremberg and Leipzig were issued as posters, those in Basel as pamphlets.

Luther's introduction

The 95 theses are introduced with the following words:

'Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place.

The academic disputation never took place, but Luther's theses sparked the Reformation.

A copy of the first edition of Luther's 95 theses is one of the highlights of the display 'The Reformation: What was it all about?' at the National Library from 19 October to 10 December 2017.

'The Reformation'

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by Dr. Martin Luther, 1517

Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther (1517)

Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter. In the Name our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance. 2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests. 3. Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh. 4. The penalty [of sin], therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven. 5. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons. 6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and by assenting to God's remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would remain entirely unforgiven. 7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest. 8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying. 9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity. 10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who, in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penances for purgatory. 11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept. 12. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition. 13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be released from them. 14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the imperfect love, of the dying brings with it, of necessity, great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear. 15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair. 16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ as do despair, almost-despair, and the assurance of safety. 17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror should grow less and love increase. 18. It seems unproved, either by reason or Scripture, that they are outside the state of merit, that is to say, of increasing love. 19. Again, it seems unproved that they, or at least that all of them, are certain or assured of their own blessedness, though we may be quite certain of it. 20. Therefore by "full remission of all penalties" the pope means not actually "of all," but only of those imposed by himself. 21. Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope's indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved; 22. Whereas he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which, according to the canons, they would have had to pay in this life. 23. If it is at all possible to grant to any one the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is certain that this remission can be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest. 24. It must needs be, therefore, that the greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and highsounding promise of release from penalty. 25. The power which the pope has, in a general way, over purgatory, is just like the power which any bishop or curate has, in a special way, within his own diocese or parish. 26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in purgatory], not by the power of the keys (which he does not possess), but by way of intercession. 27. They preach man who say that so soon as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul flies out [of purgatory]. 28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone. 29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be bought out of it, as in the legend of Sts. Severinus and Paschal. 30. No one is sure that his own contrition is sincere; much less that he has attained full remission. 31. Rare as is the man that is truly penitent, so rare is also the man who truly buys indulgences, i.e., such men are most rare. 32. They will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon. 33. Men must be on their guard against those who say that the pope's pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him; 34. For these "graces of pardon" concern only the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, and these are appointed by man. 35. They preach no Christian doctrine who teach that contrition is not necessary in those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessionalia. 36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon. 37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon. 38. Nevertheless, the remission and participation [in the blessings of the Church] which are granted by the pope are in no way to be despised, for they are, as I have said, the declaration of divine remission. 39. It is most difficult, even for the very keenest theologians, at one and the same time to commend to the people the abundance of pardons and [the need of] true contrition. 40. True contrition seeks and loves penalties, but liberal pardons only relax penalties and cause them to be hated, or at least, furnish an occasion [for hating them]. 41. Apostolic pardons are to be preached with caution, lest the people may falsely think them preferable to other good works of love. 42. Christians are to be taught that the pope does not intend the buying of pardons to be compared in any way to works of mercy. 43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better work than buying pardons; 44. Because love grows by works of love, and man becomes better; but by pardons man does not grow better, only more free from penalty. 45. 45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God. 46. Christians are to be taught that unless they have more than they need, they are bound to keep back what is necessary for their own families, and by no means to squander it on pardons. 47. Christians are to be taught that the buying of pardons is a matter of free will, and not of commandment. 48. Christians are to be taught that the pope, in granting pardons, needs, and therefore desires, their devout prayer for him more than the money they bring. 49. Christians are to be taught that the pope's pardons are useful, if they do not put their trust in them; but altogether harmful, if through them they lose their fear of God. 50. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter's church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep. 51. Christians are to be taught that it would be the pope's wish, as it is his duty, to give of his own money to very many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole money, even though the church of St. Peter might have to be sold. 52. The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it. 53. They are enemies of Christ and of the pope, who bid the Word of God be altogether silent in some Churches, in order that pardons may be preached in others. 54. Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or a longer time is spent on pardons than on this Word. 55. It must be the intention of the pope that if pardons, which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell, with single processions and ceremonies, then the Gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies. 56. The "treasures of the Church," out of which the pope. grants indulgences, are not sufficiently named or known among the people of Christ. 57. That they are not temporal treasures is certainly evident, for many of the vendors do not pour out such treasures so easily, but only gather them. 58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and the Saints, for even without the pope, these always work grace for the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell for the outward man. 59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church were the Church's poor, but he spoke according to the usage of the word in his own time. 60. Without rashness we say that the keys of the Church, given by Christ's merit, are that treasure; 61. For it is clear that for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases, the power of the pope is of itself sufficient. 62. The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God. 63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last. 64. On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is naturally most acceptable, for it makes the last to be first. 65. Therefore the treasures of the Gospel are nets with which they formerly were wont to fish for men of riches. 66. The treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the riches of men. 67. The indulgences which the preachers cry as the "greatest graces" are known to be truly such, in so far as they promote gain. 68. Yet they are in truth the very smallest graces compared with the grace of God and the piety of the Cross. 69. Bishops and curates are bound to admit the commissaries of apostolic pardons, with all reverence. 70. But still more are they bound to strain all their eyes and attend with all their ears, lest these men preach their own dreams instead of the commission of the pope. 71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed! 72. But he who guards against the lust and license of the pardon-preachers, let him be blessed! 73. The pope justly thunders against those who, by any art, contrive the injury of the traffic in pardons. 74. But much more does he intend to thunder against those who use the pretext of pardons to contrive the injury of holy love and truth. 75. To think the papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God -- this is madness. 76. We say, on the contrary, that the papal pardons are not able to remove the very least of venial sins, so far as its guilt is concerned. 77. It is said that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could not bestow greater graces; this is blasphemy against St. Peter and against the pope. 78. We say, on the contrary, that even the present pope, and any pope at all, has greater graces at his disposal; to wit, the Gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in I. Corinthians xii. 79. To say that the cross, emblazoned with the papal arms, which is set up [by the preachers of indulgences], is of equal worth with the Cross of Christ, is blasphemy. 80. The bishops, curates and theologians who allow such talk to be spread among the people, will have an account to render. 81. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due to the pope from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of the laity. 82. To wit: -- "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial." 83. Again: -- "Why are mortuary and anniversary masses for the dead continued, and why does he not return or permit the withdrawal of the endowments founded on their behalf, since it is wrong to pray for the redeemed?" 84. Again: -- "What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own need, free it for pure love's sake?" 85. Again: -- "Why are the penitential canons long since in actual fact and through disuse abrogated and dead, now satisfied by the granting of indulgences, as though they were still alive and in force?" 86. Again: -- "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?" 87. Again: -- "What is it that the pope remits, and what participation does he grant to those who, by perfect contrition, have a right to full remission and participation?" 88. Again: -- "What greater blessing could come to the Church than if the pope were to do a hundred times a day what he now does once, and bestow on every believer these remissions and participations?" 89. "Since the pope, by his pardons, seeks the salvation of souls rather than money, why does he suspend the indulgences and pardons granted heretofore, since these have equal efficacy?" 90. To repress these arguments and scruples of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christians unhappy. 91. If, therefore, pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the pope, all these doubts would be readily resolved; nay, they would not exist. 92. Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," and there is no peace! 93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Cross, cross," and there is no cross! 94. Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell; 95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than through the assurance of peace.

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Volume 44 - Issue 1

Disputation for scholastic theology: engaging luther’s 97 theses.

The essay first seeks to unpack the anthropological and soteriology teaching of Martin Luther’s diatribe “against scholastic theology,” that is, against Semi-Pelagian or Pelagian moral anthropology in his 97 Theses of September 1517. Second, the essay turns to ways in which the theological task is located by Luther in the history of sin and grace, thus connecting his teaching against the anthropology of the scholastics with his methodology for studying theology academically, further clarifying the precise nature of the objections to scholasticism raised by Luther and other reformers (such as Calvin). Third, the essay concludes by charting a set of four protocols for systematic or scholastic theology today, so as to reconfigure the intellectual practice as an exercise in intellectual asceticism or discipleship that is part of the broader process of the sanctification of human reason.

In fall 1517, a German monk offered theses for disputation which would shake the faith and practice of the world around him. 1 They cut against the grain of ecclesiastical and theological practice and would set a course for ongoing reform and challenge according to God’s Word. We do well to consider afresh those principal concerns at the root of the Protestant Reformation. So we turn again to Wittenberg, to Luther, and to the 97 theses. That’s right. On September 4, 1517, Luther participated in a disputation regarding sin and the will, nature and the experience of Christian salvation. This academic disputation, (much) later dubbed the “Disputation against scholastic theology,” has not gained the level of acclaim garnered by the later “95 Theses or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” but they will capture our attention and prompt some thinking regarding what shape theological practice might take this side of Luther’s witness. 2

These theses actually cut right to the heart of so many of Luther’s abiding concerns. Far more than the focus on indulgences to come two months later, these theses turn directly to issues of human nature and divine salvation. They forecast in many ways that great text which would so mark Luther’s legacy, his 1525 response to Erasmus entitled The Bondage of the Will . They thread the needle of assaulting the latent tradition which he finds so marred by hubristic excess without shirking his abiding commitment to learn from Augustine, who had himself been a formative thread of that late medieval fabric. 3 In many ways, these theses, like the Heidelberg Disputation of the following year, will do the hard work of beginning to connect the emerging Reformational vision of sin and grace with matters of intellectual authority and theological formation. Here we see the force and the tension of Luther’s theology.

In this essay I want to argue with Luther seemingly against Luther. That is, by tracing Luther’s anthropology and soteriology through, I will seek to show that today a scholastic theology with certain disciplined protocols in place prompts us to lean against our sinful proclivities and to linger longer before the life-giving Word of God. In so doing, however, I will seek to sketch an approach to scholastic theology which ties its task to the pursuit of theological discipleship and even intellectual asceticism. To do so means that the description offered here differs from some lingering assumptions about scholasticism and about the practice of systematic theology today and challenges the disciplinary status quo in some fundamental ways. As much as the argument seeks to argue for the ongoing need for the theological calling, then, it also aims to reorient the way in which that practice follows in much of its modern exercise by reorienting systematic theology as a form of intellectual asceticism. 4 In so doing Luther is a genuine prompt, in as much as he not only reflected upon the stranglehold of sin (in the 97 theses) but also sought in multiple ways to orient theology around his account of sin and grace (in various texts). While arguing with Luther regarding our sinful proclivities and our dire need for God’s gracious intervention even in the life of the mind, then, we will also turn beyond and, to some extent, against Luther to espouse an argument for a distinctly scholastic practice of theology so as to further those spiritual ends. Four specific aspects regarding the shape of a sanctifying approach to scholastic theology will conclude the proposal.

Unto those ends, the essay first seeks to unpack the anthropological and soteriology teaching of Luther’s diatribe “against scholastic theology,” that is, against Semi-Pelagian or Pelagian moral anthropology in his 97 theses. Second, the essay turns to ways in which the theological task is located by Luther in the history of sin and grace, thus connecting his teaching against the anthropology of the scholastics with his methodology for studying theology academically and clarifying the precise nature of the objections to scholasticism raised by Luther and other reformers (such as Calvin). Third, the essay concludes by charting a set of four protocols for systematic or scholastic theology today, so as to reconfigure the intellectual practice as an exercise in intellectual asceticism or discipleship that is part of the broader process of the sanctification of human reason.

1. With Luther against Semi-Pelagian or Pelagian Moral Anthropology: Analysis of the 97 Theses of September 1517

Luther did not pull punches. Whether in woodcuts or theses, homilies or treatises, he was not hesitant to name names and give addresses. So here in his 97 theses from September 1517, he took many luminaries to task: Aristotle and Ockham, the Cardinal and Gabriel, Porphyry and the philosophers, the Scholastics and Scotus. 5 Take Aristotle alone as an example. “Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace,” Luther claims “in opposition to the scholastics” (Thesis 41). He will specifically oppose the Philosopher’s contentions regarding happiness (Thesis 42), but more often ranges rather widely by saying, first, that “it is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle” (Thesis 43); second, that “no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle” (Thesis 44); third, “briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light” (Thesis 50); and fourth, “even the more useful definitions of Aristotle seem to beg the question” (Thesis 53). He only comes up for air, as it were, to offer Porphyry similar, even if more abbreviated, treatment, saying that “it would have been better for the church if Porphyry with his universals had not been born for the use of theologians” (Thesis 52). Yet “in these statements,” he concludes, “we wanted to say and believe we have said nothing that is not in agreement with the Catholic church and the teachers of the church” (conclusion). 6

Knowledge, lies, and exaggeration—these terms frame the beginning of Luther’s theses. “To say that Augustine exaggerates in speaking against heretics is to say that Augustine tells lies almost everywhere. This is contrary to common knowledge” (Thesis 1). To fall foul of this problem would grant victory to Pelagius and the heretics (Thesis 2) and make “sport of the authority of all doctors of theology” (Thesis 3). While Luther begins widely, using generalities such as “against heretics” or even employing the phrase “almost everywhere,” it becomes plain that his eye is upon the Pelagian controversy, for he shifts immediately and without comment to say, in Thesis 4, that “It is therefore true that man, being a bad tree, can only will and do evil.” Over against “common opinion,” he adds that “the inclination is not free, but captive” (Thesis 5). Nor can the will regulate or reform itself, as if its ill bent were merely a temporary conundrum, for “it is false to state that the will can by nature conform to common precept” (Thesis 6). “As a matter of fact,” Luther states, “without the grace of God the will produces an act that is perverse and evil” (Thesis 7). Long before Erasmus’s writings on freedom provoke Luther’s 1525 Bondage of the Will , he warns lest the church be tempted into giving any quarter to ideas of innate moral neutrality or goodness. Thus lies the path of Pelagius.

Luther walks a tightrope here in affirming the depravity of the human creature. Over against the Manicheans, he first states that “it does not, however, follow that the will is by nature evil, that is, essentially evil” (Thesis 8). “It is nevertheless innately and inevitably evil and corrupt” (Thesis 9). 7 Somehow essential or natural evil is excluded, while innate and inevitable evil is affirmed. A good while later, Luther will speak “in opposition to the philosophers” by saying that “We are not masters of our actions, from beginning to end, but servants” (Thesis 39). He later gives a concrete example, speaking of anger and lust (cf. Matt 5:21–30). “Outside the grace of God it is indeed impossible not to become angry or lust” (Thesis 65), but “it is by the grace of God that one does not lust or become enraged” (Thesis 67). Luther offers a summative remark and then a further clarification. First, the summative remark: “Therefore it is impossible to fulfill the law in any way without the grace of God” (Thesis 68). Then the further clarification: “As a matter of fact, it is more accurate to say that the law is destroyed by nature without the grace of God” (Thesis 69). If Thesis 8 said that the will is not naturally, that is, essentially evil, then Thesis 69 plainly must speak of nature in a different vein, circumscribed by the fuller phrase “nature without the grace of God.” This depiction of graceless nature riffs not on that described in Thesis 8 (nature or essence) but on what appeared in Thesis 9 (the innate and inevitable evil and corruption of the will). Luther plainly wants to affirm the created goodness of the human will, as well as its utter derangement and degradation with the onset of evil and the loss of grace.

Where then comes hope? Can such a vivid depiction of sinfulness find its way beyond utter despair and misanthropic despondency? Luther gestures toward grace at this point as a way of pointing ultimately unto God. “The best and infallible preparation for grace and the sole disposition toward grace is the eternal election and predestination of God” (Thesis 29). Luther not only affirms the divine prevenience here but also goes on to deny certain assumed qualifications or supplements. First, “on the part of man, however, nothing precedes grace except indisposition and even rebellion against grace” (Thesis 30). 8 Second, human struggle does not identify its own need or the divine remedy, for Luther goes on to say that “this is false, that doing all that one is able to do can remove the obstacles to grace” (Thesis 33). 9 Our problem is twofold: “in brief, man by nature has neither correct precept nor good will” (Thesis 34). Humans not only walk in what he deems an “invincible ignorance” or perceptional darkness, but they are also disinclined to the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Grace does not come at the prompting of human ingenuity, nor does the human even incline themselves to its provision. But grace does provide. Indeed, over against all the language of inability and of darkness, one must cast Luther’s powerful affirmation of the reality of grace. “The grace of God is never present in such a way that it is inactive, but it is a living, active, and operative spirit; nor can it happen that through the absolute power of God an act of friendship may be present without the presence of the grace of God” (Thesis 55).

Friendship proves to be a central term in the argument here. “An act of friendship is not the most perfect means for accomplishing that which is in one,” nor even “for obtaining the grace of God or turning toward and approaching God” (Thesis 26). Yet “an act of friendship is done,” though Luther is impelled to clarify “not according to nature, but according to prevenient grace” (Thesis 20). And this prevenient grace really affects the will. While “everyone’s natural will is iniquitous and bad” (Thesis 88), “grace as a mediator is necessary to reconcile the law with the will” (Thesis 89). “The grace of God is given for the purpose of directing the will, lest it err even in loving God” (Thesis 90). Luther here notes the shadow side of the bound will, namely, that human distortion can mar even that which is pious. Even love of God can be inflected in such a way that it ceases in so doing to follow the direction of the one whom it is thereby loving. 10

Underneath all this talk of willing and of warfare, of friendship and of formation, Luther eventually comes to talk of loves. He does so by asking “what is the good law?” He offers two demurrals. First, “not only are the religious ceremonials not the good law and the precepts in which one does not live (in opposition to many teachers)” (Thesis 82), “but even,” second, “the Decalogue itself and all that can be taught and prescribed inwardly and outwardly is not good law either” (Thesis 83). Human custom nor even divine mandate does not in and of itself constitute the good law, not until one presses further to the true definition. “The good law and that in which one lives is the love of God, spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Thesis 84). Love fulfills the law (Rom 13:8), yet law forms love (John 15:7, 10).

Indeed, the need for law from the outside matches disordered love. “Anyone’s will hates it that the law should be imposed upon it; if, however, the will desires imposition of the law it does so out of love of self” (Thesis 86). Indeed, “anyone’s will would prefer, if it were possible, that there would be no law and to be entirely free” (Thesis 85). The human desires to go their own way. 11 This waywardness takes a particularly disturbed tack when it comes time to reflect on human efforts to reform or revitalize our problematic proclivities. Even—perhaps especially—in our moral programs, our own self-direction becomes most apparent and harmful.

Luther accents this ironic fate when coming to the conclusion of the disputation where he offers his final two theses regarding the proper relation of our will and God’s own will. First, “we must make our will conform in every respect to the will of God” (Thesis 96, explicitly disagreeing with Cardinal Cajetan). Second, we conform our will unto God’s “so that we not only will what God wills, but also ought to will whatever God wills” (Thesis 97). In other words, it is not enough to bring our questions to the surface and to conform to God’s answers. We must do the difficult work of self-examination and of intellectual and moral repentance such that we trace God’s direction still further unto the very questions up for consideration. God not only answers the need, but God defines the need itself. Not only moral energy but also a distinctly Christian epistemology, swirling round the vocation of theological discernment, marks the dependent yearning of the sin-sick human. God does not merely give truthful answers, but he provides the life-giving questions.

Perhaps an analogy will help. Imagine struggling with a severe course of an auto-immune disease. Months of struggle did not go as one would have expected, for the normal rhythms of palliative and medical care did not offer reprieve from ills. Typical remedies actually worsened the situation, and finally one was shipped to the emergency room in a truly dire situation. When clarity came, the takeaway was rather direct: the immune system is one’s own worst enemy, for its efforts to protect and to strengthen are actually precisely what undercuts one’s own flourishing. So ongoing care requires scaling down the strength of the immense system, a bombardment of force meant to weaken the defenses which themselves weaken the self. What might strike us is the way in which this is true spiritually as well. Not only our moments of utter disinterest in God or even of stick-necked insouciance, but also our pious and zealous attempts at reform actually further our sin-sick struggles. We demand the recalibration of our wills by God’s own will, so that we no longer harm ourselves by inclining toward rhythms of evil excess or of moral malpractice. As Luther says, we need a mediator (Thesis 89). And as he insists, resting on that mediator will involve professing that “to love God is at the same time to hate oneself and to know nothing but God” (Thesis 95). We suffer inability not only in addressing but also in identifying the actual character of our plight.

With that finale in mind, we do well to turn to ask how Luther’s theses might help prompt us to consider the task of academic, that is, scholastic theology today. Luther not only alerts us to the stranglehold of sin and the need for grace, but he gestures toward the way this must shape the practice of theological work also. Because the theologian is a moral agent before God—a sin-sick sinner panged by death, Devil, and the depravity within—his protest of Semi-Pelagian and Pelagian anthropology and his celebration of God’s radical grace must impinge on the process of divine revelation and of God’s sanctification of human reason.

2. With Luther for Scholastic Theology: Theological Parameters for Intellectual Discipline

Theology does not hold a monopoly on concerns regarding moral formation. In his 1911 Cambridge Inaugural Lecture as Kennedy Professor of Latin at the University of Cambridge, A. E. Housman addressed “The Confines of Criticism.” 12 He began with survey, noting the ways in which British and German literary criticism had drifted into non-critical forms of analysis. “In short, while the English fault is to confuse this study with literature, the German fault is to pretend that it is mathematics.” 13 Each tendency marked a drift toward an extraneous mode of mental functioning, either that of literary creation or of sequential and numerical method. Both ruin literature in their own way by pressing it into another mission, whether of a socio-political, moral, or scientific tilt. When Housman probes the root of these tendencies, he says “there is a very formidable obstacle: nothing less than the nature of man himself.” 14 And “our first task is to get rid of them, and to acquire, if we can, by humility and self-repression, the tastes of the classics.” 15 To this anthropological diagnosis, Housman also offered a prescription: “we must be born again.” 16 But what hope or future expectation can be offered by this moral critic? Housman concludes only with this offering: “It is well enough to inculcate the duty of self-examination, but then we must also bear in mind its difficulty, and the easiness of self-deception.” 17

Luther’s anthropology seems to agree with Housman regarding the “nature of man himself” and the fundamental need to be born again, lest we take up the task of theology and comport it toward the protocols of other fields, whether of the politeia or the psyche . But Luther and the Reformed Christian are not left with mere self-examination, not even primarily with self-examination. In the remainder of this essay, I want to explore the ways, first, in which the divine discipleship of our theological reason is necessitated by Luther’s anthropology and, second, the manner in which a particular form of scholastic theology may help channel such reform and maturation of the theologian.

Martin Luther knew that theological practice must be defined with distinctly theological categories. This could be his undoing, of course, as he sometimes reduced theology to the topics of the justifying God and the sinning human in his extrapolations on Psalm 51. 18 In that kind of claim, he clearly locates the theological task within the orbit of sin and redemption; indeed, sufficiently and solely within such an orbit. 19 His constriction there—tying theology notably and narrowly to justification—evidences a concern to think the theological task within the matrix of redemption from slothful or hubristic reason. In another notable text, the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, he offered his perceptive vision of the difference between the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross. Again, questions might be raised regarding whether or not this is an overly constricted breadth—with “cross” standing in for the posture of faith in its full range and perhaps with an overly lush antipathy to the full spectrum of revealed media for theological contemplation—but we can appropriate this approach without falling into any latent historicism. Michael Korthaus has shown this theme to be one that attains any methodological significance only in the twentieth century, as it appears only six times in this small portion of the early Luther’s corpus. 20 While it has been cherished by those who have sought to tether metaphysical contemplation rather constrictively to the historically immanent, it need not take such a parasitic approach to the classical tradition of Christian dogma. In a more chastened form focused on the question of the theological practitioner (rather than so much on the object of that theological practice), the theology of cross serves as yet another reminder that we deal here with the sanctification of reason. 21 In at least these two ways, then, Luther was committed to locating the practice of theology amidst the valleys of human sin and the vista of divine grace.

Luther sought to address the practice of theology in light of sin and grace in a still third frame. Luther identified three rules for theology in his comments on Psalm 119, where David heralds the law of the Lord as life-giving. Luther identified the call to oratio , first, wherein “you should immediately despair of your reason and understanding.… But kneel down in your little room and pray to God with real humility and earnestness, that he through his dear Son may give you His Holy Spirit, who will enlighten you, lead you, and give you understanding.” 22 Luther next summoned us to meditatio , a second action wherein the theologian joins with David to “talk, meditate, speak, sing, hear, read, by day and night, and always about nothing except God’s Word and commandments.” 23 Oswald Bayer says here that “Luther swims against the tide of common opinion in not seeing the process of listening turned inwards but rather opened outwards.” Rather, “when we meditate,” he says, “we do not listen to our inner selves, we do not turn inwards, but we go outside ourselves. Our inner beings live outside themselves in God’s Word alone.” 24 Third, the monk calls us to tentatio that we might find suffering to be our teacher. Spiritual attack ( Anfechtung ) will come for the little Christian who meditates on God’s Word, for the one who meditates will say, with David in Psalm 119 and elsewhere, that the Word drew enemies of varying sorts. But the student will also be able to say of those enemies what Luther spoke of the papists and the fanatics, namely, that “they have made a fairly good theologian of me, which I would not have become otherwise.” 25

Prayer and suffering are worthy topics, yet we will focus our attention now upon meditation as Luther’s second concern for true theology. 26 In particular, we want to consider what it means to lead a life ordered to the external Word of God and in what ways this shapes the academic practice of theological contemplation or meditation. In his 1535 Lectures on Galatians , Luther would say: “And this is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive.” 27 How do we contemplate these promises and that truth such that we are taken out of ourselves and offered true certainty?

Before we conclude by suggesting four protocols of scholastic reflection and its attention to the external, life-giving Word of God, we do well to linger briefly over the adjective “scholastic.” In either the post-Reformation or the post-manualist moments, for Protestants and Roman Catholics respectively, scholastic can sometimes be taken simply as a prompt for traditional or historic protocols. Along those lines, we do well to observe that the dominant tradition of the late medieval university and the via moderna (Gabriel Biel especially) were opposed ardently by Luther. 28 But we dare not read his opposition as a global dismissal of tradition or of medieval academic culture. In a letter penned to Johannes Lang on May 18, 1517, Luther had offered this assessment of changes afoot at the University of Wittenberg: “Our theology and St. Augustine are by God’s help prospering in our university, while Aristotle descends gradually toward a coming everlasting oblivion. The lectures on the Sentences are being despised, and no one can hope to have hearers unless he lectures on Scripture, on St. Augustine, or on some other ecclesiastical doctor.” 29

Luther was not assaulting tradition as tradition nor even the protocols of academic theology, but a specific set of anthropological judgments that he deemed to be out of step with Augustine and, more significantly, the soundings he had made in lecturing on Holy Scripture (especially on Romans, the Psalms, and Hebrews at this point). More significantly, though, scholasticism defines a method which is matched to and prompted by the material under examination. As L. M. de Rijk defined it, scholasticism in either its medieval or later Protestant forms is “a collective noun denoting all academic, especially philosophical and theological, activity that is carried out according to a certain method, which involves both in research and education the use of a recurring system of concepts, distinctions, proposition-analyses, argumentative strategies, and methods of disputation.” 30 Historiography of scholastic method has taken a markedly contextual turn in the last fifty years, observing ways in which the moniker “scholastic” related to protocols and methods rather than any particular ideological inflection. The methods were meant to vary by way of subject matter, so that the object delimits its approach and defines its analysis.

Particular protocols follow from this material-molded approach to theology. To take but one example: in his forays into assessing John Calvin’s relationship to the practice of scholastic thought, Richard Muller has identified four features of this sort of academic theology in the late medieval or early modern university context: scholastic theology identifies an order and mental pattern suitable to the debate at hand, uses the thesis or questio to frame discussion, orders theses to be discussed by way of thesis and standard objections, and then refutes objections and provides exposition of the correct answer. 31 These protocols in varying ways belie a commitment to follow the organization of the subject matter, not one’s own predilections, and to remain alert to opposing viewpoints lest one drift into myopic narrowness or remain in unchallenged confusion. A look to other settings of a scholastic order would accent different protocols, and theological students will rejoice to learn that this need not involve reinstituting the public disputation as the chief protocol for examining students of divinity.

A commitment to tradition will come only indirectly then, to the extent which tradition or traditions are themselves overt prompts from the subject of theology itself, namely, divine self-revelation. In the case of theological contemplation, the triune God upon whose face we seek to gaze and whose name alone we seek to exalt has given birth not only to our wisdom but to a whole host of heavenly confessors and a lively communion of saints, within whose chorus we take our part. So scholastic commitment is not inherently opposed to the textualism of humanistic studies in the sixteenth century, though it would come into conflict with iterations of literary study that refused to read those texts as apostolic scripture and insisted on orienting its focus upon them in the guise of comparative religious literature of the ancient world. 32 A fully orbed Trinitarian theology of revelation will insist that the prophet ministry of the Risen Christ involves the unique instrumentality of the words of his prophets and apostles (Heb 4:12–13), as well as the realization that his “Word dwells richly” amidst the testimony of the whole company of the redeemed (Col 3:16–17). Any scholastic or tradition-marked characteristics of theology, then, ought to flow from the entailments of divine action and its promised forms, not from some presumption of the antique or exotic bearing intrinsic force. The rule of faith and rule of love govern the protocols of our intellectual life and the way in which we presently honor the past and look unto the future. In a sense, then, a scholastic bent to theology follows from a spiritual vision regarding the intellectual life. If we are to throw ourselves into the tasks of the academic life, then we want to do so out of an abiding commitment to the cause of intellectual asceticism. 33

Without suggesting that disputations or a question-and-answer format is necessary, a scholastic or academic study of theology helps frame and form our spiritual contemplation of the God who has revealed himself climactically in Jesus Christ and in his life-giving Word. While scholasticism defines the procedures and not necessarily any predetermined philosophical results of our academic inquiry, these methods are themselves motivated by certain anthropological and moral principles. Indeed, there are specifically theological reasons for accenting particular academic protocols as they help foster theological virtues, habits, practices, and order that marks the well-equipped man or woman of God (2 Tim 3:16–17). Those working recently in intellectual history and the history of the university have rightly noted that scholasticism does not reduce to a particular philosophical, ethical, or theological commitment, over against some older suggestions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that scholastic method carried with it a full bore commitment to a particular set of material principles. While a scholastic method does not necessarily equate to a full bore philosophy, and while scholastic method is not homogenous, we do well to note nonetheless that intellectual protocols match anthropological and theological principia .

3. Scholastic Protocols for Sanctifying Systematic Theology: Four Practices for Theology Today Prompted by Luther’s Reformational Teaching on Sin and Grace

If not quodlibet or recitations of catechisms, then what might scholastic protocols look like today? I conclude by suggesting four patterns of scholastic or systematic theological procedure for our consideration today. 34 These principles flow from two realities attested in Luther’s theses: first, that human being is marked by a need for sustenance from beyond and further imprinted by a sinful distortion to close in upon itself and, second, that the triune God acts so as to give and to glorify life in Christ. These are meant to be protocols for theological practice in the land of the gospel and this time of God’s patience, a time which the apostle Peter tells us is meant for intellectual repentance (2 Pet 3:15). Luther’s theses may well fund certain scholastic disciplines, but these protocols and the theology espoused by Luther would summon much common description and practice of “systematic theology” to account. It is not the status quo , but a spiritual quest of intellectual asceticism and theological repentance before God’s life-giving Word that we wish to describe here.

First, a scholastic approach to theological reflection will seek to draw our attention to the breadth of God’s Word. Concern for order and scope matches the Pauline claim regarding the value of the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The Marcionite challenge was the first threat to the Christian faith in the post-apostolic era, and it struck at the roots of the canonical form of the Christian way. In that second century challenge, Irenaeus and others had to manifestly demonstrate that the prophetic witness of the Old Testament and the scripturally-infused texts of the apostles were bound together with the witness of Paul and the other evangelists. 35 The early theologians commended the catholic faith by attesting the wholeness (lit. kata holos ) of Scripture, namely, that the triune confession of one God in three persons was an achievement of a two testament canon and that, apart from the perduring pressure of the prophets of Israel, the doctrine of God would take quite different form. 36

Biblical breadth may be lopped off or excised in a variety of ways. Canonical amputation can occur in other areas—anthropological and sexual matters being particularly obvious instances in contemporary discourse 37 —but this matter of the being of God is surely the most salient and significant. Scholastic theology prompts us to read and then to read on, not to get snagged merely in the genre, corpus, or epoch that transfixes our curiosity or encourages our ecclesiastical niche or comports most with pertinent issues in our cultural moment. Rather, scholastic theology disciplines us to be alert to the whole counsel of God, for “ all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable” (2 Tim 3:16, emphasis mine). In so doing the scholastic prompt of exploring biblical breadth pushes against any parochialism (of the denominational tradition, of one’s socio-political formation, or of personal predilection) and pressures toward a catholic theology of the whole.

Second, a scholastic approach to theological reflection will summon us to fix anew our emphases and priorities in the places where God’s own Word draws our attention. The question of order and sequence, as well as the attendant concern for proportion, helps alert us to another area of biblical formation. Because even our love can go awry by perhaps willing with God though not, as Luther put it, willing “whatever God wills,” we must be reoriented to the north star of God’s own light. Invariably our experience raises questions and our reason sees connections, but our own forays into intellectual reflection must always be taken before the Word’s own self-presentation. What does the whole counsel of God commend? What bears “first importance” (1 Cor 15:3) over against its secondary and tertiary matters? We can go astray not only in misperceiving an element of the biblical tapestry but in failing to distinguish the foreground from the background. Only attention to the whole canonical canvas will bring into relief the relative emphasis and consequent prioritization that best conveys the elements of biblical doctrine.

An exercise in Luther reception can illustrate the point. How might priorities go haywire? One need only prioritize justification as the criterion of the gospel and treat it ahead of the person of Christ, that is, the whole Christ. In the approach of Gerhard Forde and the self-proclaimed “Radical Lutherans” we can see the kind of disorder caused by treating one crucial strand of Christology and soteriology as if it were the leading and lone article of that confession. Christ becomes functionally a cipher for the balm of the conscience. Such approaches may lay claim to following the (early) words of Philipp Melanchthon: “to know Christ is to know his benefits.” 38 But Melanchthon presumed a trinitarian and Christological metaphysics—and a contemplative focus in liturgy and theology upon the triune God’s perfection—that his post-Kantian and post-Ritschlian heirs no longer embody. Failing to proclaim Christ in his fullness and eternality before Christ in his justifying capacity leads not only to a misprioritization but an outright distortion of the doctrine of justification. 39 The justifying word easily becomes the affirming conscience, rather distant from the concrete life, death, and resurrection of the Redeemer. A response to these “radical” readings of Luther that have flowed from the early twentieth century Luther renaissance need not in any way renege on the sufficiency of Christ or the peace that he brings, but it will take the form of always tethering peace and reconciliation to his concrete action and union with his person. By refusing to sever the person and work of Christ, theology can accent the whole Christ and insist that the gift of his person marks a higher priority than any single blessing found therein, whether justification or sanctification. Only by attending to priorities will we be alert to the manifold principles of divinity.

Third, a scholastic approach to theological practice provokes us to attend to the ways in which the Holy Scriptures take common terms and employ them to fundamentally singular purposes. Luther turned toward the way in which Aristotelian thought had been brought into the fold of Christian divinity in the late medieval period. After running the gauntlet of critical analysis in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (with the input of Averroes and Avicenna, as well as Albert and Thomas), the philosopher’s categories were employed in Christian ethics and theology. Luther retorts: “It is an error to maintain that Aristotle’s statement concerning happiness does not contradict Christian doctrine” (Thesis 42). The notion of beatitude apparently suffered from definitional ambiguity and an overly pacific posture by the schoolmen toward the descriptions of the philosopher. Indeed, Luther says that “it is very doubtful whether the Latins comprehended the correct meaning of Aristotle” (Thesis 51). But the error was not only theirs, for “even the more useful definitions of Aristotle seem to beg the question” (Thesis 53). In challenging reason and its absorption by the contemplation of faith in recent Latin theology, Luther reminds us that terms do not come in self-explanatory, singular fashion. They must be defined, and Christian divinity must turn to the Word of God for such direction in discerning whether the language of the Gentiles can be employed in a given instance or whether there must be a distinction drawn.

Scholastic theology serves a crucial missiological purpose, therefore, in casting light upon the ways in which we have only human words to use in our testimony of God and our pointing to his own Word. Common terms are employed, to be sure, yet the divine communication through ordinary human language transfigures and puts the common to a sacred use, and our own witness must regularly return to reflect on the ways in which latent assumptions about the meaning of stock language can tempt or incline us to misperceptions. Our vocabulary draws on adoption and marriage to convey fellowship with God, though the divine family cannot be construed along sociological lines. We do know the love of God, so rich and full that Song of Songs can employ erotic imagery to convey it, and yet it is qualitatively distinguished from and analogically related to other experiences of love shown and love lost. 40 Particularly in a culture marked more and more by biblical illiteracy, we must observe how even colloquial engagement of the biblical writings is cross-cultural. We must be alerted to ways in which God cannot be constrained within the bounds of our terms as common construed. Systematic theology’s scholastic mode serves missiological purposes, in as much as we are increasingly alert to the fact that the claims of the gospel and the categories of the “whole counsel of God” are “foolishness to the Greeks.” 41

Fourth, a scholastic approach to theological practice demands of us an accounting for what manner of cohesion may be observed in our pilgrim state, lest we be satisfied with a fragmented witness to the way in which Christ speaks his Word (Heb 1:1–2). We can be tempted perhaps to itemize the themes and the idioms of scripture as an index of distinct topics to be accessed each in their own distinct manner. Perhaps the need to think coherently becomes most apparent when addressing the moral entailments of the way of Jesus. Whereas our contemporaries might be prone to assess the virtues of discipleship as nothing more than social mores or group preferences, these moral entailments extend from basic Christian confessions. 42

So Paul’s words in Romans 4 manifest the way in which the posture of faith befits the human creature who has been created wholly by God’s life-giving Word, resurrected in the Spirit’s raising of Jesus from the dead, and now also justified and granted the full rights and privileges as an heir of Abraham. Faith ethically matches the metaphysical frame of these creational and covenantal actions by the triune God. 43 Apart from viewing the summons to trustful existence in such a doctrinal frame, the call to conversion becomes something without depth and meaning, a reduction to arbitrary moral posturing. Indeed, apart from a fit with the metaphysical and moral frame of elemental Christian doctrines, the summons to faith actually suggests a potentially misanthropic calling for the human. Such was Nietzsche’s judgment. Yet we do not view the call of Jesus in a vacuum. The one who beckons us to follow is the one who made us, the one raised by the Father’s power, and the one who names us as righteous and well-pleasing in union with him. Thus, his call that we submit our will unto his own and that with him we journey through the valley by faith en route to the paradise of the redeemed is no summons to slavish surrender and no manifesto for misanthropic misery. Rather, the call of Jesus—the morals of life in this one—are the most elemental and glorifying of any humanisms, because the human has been viewed first and only within a theological matrix marked by inflections across the scope and sequence of the divine economy. God gives life. Live by borrowed breath. God raises the dead. Live by his power. God justifies the ungodly and adopts the orphan. Live by his declaration. Appreciating the links between creation and new creation, as well as the delightful news of Jesus’s resurrection that stitches them together, helps grant depth and beauty to his summons to us. Scholastic theology does not tuck items away in boxes, but it does prompt us always to ask how the varied divine works manifest God’s being and pressure us to work by way of reduction ( reductio ), that is, of tracing all truths back unto God. Scholastic theology will demand of us questions of a metaphysical register, lest morality and the salvific economy flit around like disjointed phenomena.

These comments are mere sketches of four principles for a scholastic theology today. Even when extended more fully, these four moves will not erase questions or remove quandaries. In each respect, these protocols of a scholastic or systematic theology call for us to remain alert and to stay vigilant—indeed, that is precisely the point of scholastic practice as a protocol for pilgrim theology. This attentiveness takes a particular form. We are neither emboldened to spiritual self-mastery nor to intellectual self-defense, as if fear of ignorance or incoherence calls for us to be on guard. Just the opposite. In these ways, we have been sketching how the “fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps 111:10) and beginning to tease out protocols by which that fear might take disciplinary shape in our academic enterprises. Luther has reminded us of our terrible need for that formative discipline given our sin-sick and death-doused condition, where even our efforts at intellectual repentance remain hamstrung by self-direction. Affirming that kind of reformational or Augustinian anthropology has prompted an argument for the significance of theological practice taking scholastic shape as a means of turning outward and entrusting one’s intellectual journey unto the source of all wisdom. If we want our theology to be not only a practice of methodological competence and material conversation but ultimately a formation of Christian wisdom, then our alertness to the anthropological condition in Luther’s “Disputation against Scholastic Theology” should be paired with a concerted vision for theological contemplation by also offering a “Disputation for Scholastic Theology.”

[1] This essay was delivered as an inaugural lecture for the John Dyer Trimble Chair of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando on 6 September 2017. Many thanks to Scott Swain and Ryan Peterson for feedback.

[2] Martin Luther, “Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, 1517,” in Career of the Reformer 1 , Luther’s Works 31, ed. Harold J. Grimm, trans. Harold J. Grimm (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1957), 3–16 (citations of Luther’s Works are hereafter abbreviated LW ); see WA 1:221–28 for the German original in the so-called Weimar Ausgabe. Numbering varies in editions as Thesis 55 has been divided into two theses in the work of Vogelsang, leading to a total of 98 theses.

[3] On the complicated legacy of reading Augustine on all sides, see now Arnoud S. Q. Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620 , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[4] Sarah Coakley has also sought to reorient the discipline in an ascetic register, albeit in a very non-scholastic fashion (see her God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay “On the Trinity” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014]). For interaction with her proposal and an argument that a more focused scholastic protocol might more effectively serve her stated purgative-spiritual goals, see Michael Allen, “Dogmatics as Ascetics,” in The Task of Dogmatics: Explorations in Theological Method , ed. Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2017), 189–209.

[5] On the scholastic backdrop of the disputation, see especially Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); David C. Steinmetz, “Luther among the Anti-Thomists,” in Luther in Context , 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 47–58; Brian Gerrish, “Luther Against Scholasticism,” in Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford; Clarendon, 1962), 114–37. Jared Wicks has addressed a “Wittenberg Augustinianism” evident in these early texts ( Man Yearning for Grace: Luther’s Early Spiritual Teaching [Washington, DC: Corpus, 1968], 178, 197). Indeed, Luther spoke of a theology shared with Andreas von Karlstadt as “our theology” and of their community as “us Wittenberg theologians.” His first thesis given in this disputation was adapted from a line by Karlstadt (Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet [New York: Random House, 2017], 209).

[6] Unfortunately we do not possess further argumentation or qualification for these theses (as with either the famous 95 theses regarding indulgences or those prepared later for the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518), on which see the helpful assessment of Jared Wicks, Man Yearning for Grace, 372–73.

[7] On the anti-Manichaean and anti-Pelagian readings of Augustine’s corpus, see Steinmetz, “Luther and Augustine on Romans 9,” in Luther in Context , 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 21.

[8] Luther consistently reads Gregory of Rimini as the one scholastic theologian avoiding the error of Thomas, Scotus, and Ockham (as in his 1519 “Resolutions on Propositions debated at Leipzig”); see Steinmetz, “Luther among the Anti-Thomists,” 57. Cf. Risto Saarinen, “Weakness of Will: Reformation Anthropology between Aristotle and the Stoa,” in Anthropological Reformations: Anthropology in the Era of Reformation , ed. Anne Eusterschulte and Hannah Wälzholz, Refo500 28 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 17–32.

[9] Latin: facere quod in se est .

[10] The issue of hypocrisy arises regularly in the theses (see Theses 76–78 especially).

[11] See Theo Dieter, Der junge Luther und Aristoteles. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Theologie und Philosophie , Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann 105 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 80–107.

[12] A. E. Housman, The Confines of Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

[13] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 37.

[14] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 40.

[15] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 34–35.

[16] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 35.

[17] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 43.

[18] Martin Luther, LW 12:305; see WA 40 II:319; see also Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation , ed. Thomas H. Trapp (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 38–39.

[19] Otto Hermann Pesch has argued that this approach to theology varies greatly from that of Thomas Aquinas. One need not affirm Pesch’s distinction to affirm that Luther rightly locates theology amidst the vagaries and valleys of the spiritual journey, the gifts and the grain of the economy of redemption. See Otto Hermann Pesch, “Existential and Sapiential Theology—The Theological Confrontation Between Luther and Thomas Aquinas,” in Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther , ed. Jared Wicks (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), 61–81; see also Michael Root, “Continuing the Conversation: Deeper Agreement on Justification as Criterion and on the Christian as simul iustus et peccator ,” in The Gospel of Justification in Christ: Where Does the Church Stand Today? , ed. Wayne Stumme (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 42–61.

[20] Michael Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie: Geschichte und Gestalt eines Programmbegriffs in evangelischen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 405. See Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation, 1518,” LW 31:35–70; cf. Lectures on Genesis 1–5 , LW 1:11, 13, 14 (on 1:2), 45 (on 6:5–6), 72 (on 6:18).

[21] John Calvin also offers something of a theologia crucis in his reading of the Corinthians Epistles, on which see Michael Allen, “John Calvin’s Reading of the Corinthians Epistles,” in Reformation Readings of Paul: Explorations in History and Exegesis , ed. Michael Allen and Jonathan Linebaugh (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 175–81.

[22] LW 34:285–86. (translation altered by Oswald Bayer); WA 50:659, lines 5–21.

[23] LW 34:286; WA 50:659, lines 22–35.

[24] Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way , 53.

[25] LW 34:286–87; WA 50:660, lines 1–16.

[26] See especially Ronald Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. 111–24.

[27] Luther, Lectures on Galatians , LW 27:387; WA 40 I: 589–90.

[28] On the prevalence of Biel behind the disputation, see especially Leif Grane, Contra Gabrielem: Luthers Auseinandersetzung mit Gabriel Biel in der Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, 1517 , Acta Theologica Danica 4 (Kopenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962), 371–85.

[29] Letter to Johannes Lang, May 18, 1517, in WA,Br 1 : no. 41.

[30] L. M. de Rijk, Middeleeuwse wijsbegeerte: Traditie en vernieuwing (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977), 25 (cited in Martin Bac and Theo Pleizier, “Reentering Sites of Truth: Teaching Reformed Scholasticism in the Contemporary Classroom,” in Scholasticism Reformed: Essays in Honour of Willem J. Van Asselt , ed. Maarten Wisse, Marcel Sarot, and Willemian Otten [Leiden: Brill, 2010], 36).

[31] Richard A. Muller, “Scholasticism in Calvin: A Question of Relation and Disjunction,” in The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 28. The literature on scholasticism in its medieval and post-Reformation settings has burgeoned in recent years; for introduction and survey, see especially Ulrich G. Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology , trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010); and Willem. J. Van Asselt, with T. Theo J. Pleizier, Pieter L. Rouwendel, and Maarten Wisse, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism , trans. Albert Gootjes (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2011).

[32] On this adaptation of reading strategies, see Michael Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Jeffrey Morrow, “The Politics of Biblical Interpretation: A ‘Criticism of Criticism,’” New Blackfriars 91 (2010), 528–45; Morrow, “The Bible in Captivity: Hobbes, Spinoza and the Politics of Defining Religion,” ProEccl 19 (2010), 285–99. The significant shift here is the tilt toward historicism, on which see now Frederick Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

[33] Language of intellectual discipleship or asceticism has been helpfully unpacked in Fergus Kerr, “Tradition and Reason: Two Uses of Reason, Critical and Contemplative,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 6 (2004), 37–49; Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and Following Christ , Christian Theology in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 36, 81, 140. Some parallel approaches in medieval literature are thoughtfully analyzed by Peter M. Candler, Jr., Theology, Rhetoric, Manuduction, Or Reading Scripture Together on the Path to God , Radical Traditions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), with regard to the use of the language of ductus , skopos , and an itinerarium , though his theological account fails to press on to offer much covenantal or Christological specificity in its broadly participationist metaphysics and also offers a severely mangled reading of early Protestant theology and the development of sola Scriptura (esp. 13–16); similarly inclined, though overly focused on categories of embodiment, is Nathan Jennings, Theology as Ascetic Act: Disciplining Christian Discourse (New York: Peter Lang, 2010).

[34] The concept of systematic theology is not without debate regarding definition either. For a survey of recent approaches and a proposal with which I am largely sympathetic, see John Webster, “Introduction: Systematic Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , ed. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1–15.

[35] Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching , trans. John Behr (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 68.

[36] See esp. Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 376; C. Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” ProEccl 11 (2002), 295–312; Christopher Seitz, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible , Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

[37] Luke Timothy Johnson, Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 70–75; Stephen Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 97–127; Sylvia Keesmaat, “Welcoming in the Gentiles: A Biblical Model for Decision Making,” in Living Together in the Church: Including Our Differences , ed. Greig Dunn and Chris Ambidge (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 2004), 30–49, for a supposedly pneumatologically-prompted counter-argument to Israelite Scripture regarding same sex unions in Acts 10–15. For a critical reply, see Michael Allen and Scott Swain, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 74–78. Such canonical reconfiguration began prior to debates regarding gender identity or same-sex unions, in discussions regarding gender and ecclesiastical office (see, e.g., Mark Husbands, “Reconciliation as the Dogmatic Location of Humanity: ‘Your Life is Hidden with Christ in God,’” in Women, Ministry, and the Gospel: Exploring New Paradigms , ed. Mark Husbands and Timothy Larsen [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007], 127–47).

[38] Philipp Melanchthon, Loci Communes in Melanchthon and Bucer , ed. Wilhelm Pauck, Library of Christian Classics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1969), 21.

[39] See the penetrating analysis of David Yeago, “Gnosticism, Antinomianism, and Reformation Theology: Reflections on the Costs of a Construal,” ProEccl 2 (1993), 37–49.

[40] Similar concerns could be raised regarding so many other biblical and doctrinal terms, as, e.g., Richard Hays raises the now popular term “liberation” as another pertinent illustration ( The Moral Vision of the New Testament [New York: Harper, 1995], 203–4).

[41] See Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988); John Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 4–5.

[42] See especially Oliver O’Donovan’s repeated argument that moral theology is neither an addendum to nor a mere repetition of Christian doctrine but is a thinking out or unfolding of the moral involvements of various doctrinal claims (e.g., “Sanctification and Ethics,” in Sanctification: Explorations and Proposals , ed. Kelly M. Kapic [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014], 150–66).

[43] See the repeated emphasis on this connection as viewed through three doctrinal lenses (creational, Christological, and eschatological) in David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009).

Michael Allen

Michael Allen is John Dyer Trimble professor of systematic theology and academic dean at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.

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The Lord Is Good: Seeking the God of the Psalter

Justification

The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics

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21 Luther on Baptism and Penance

Jonathan Trigg, Independent scholar, London, United Kingdom

• Published: 16 December 2013
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Luther criticized the medieval restriction of baptism to an initiating role in the Christian life and expanded its place on the basis of Romans 6:3–11 to embrace daily dying and rising in repentance and reception of forgiveness. God commanded baptism as a form of his Word and promised forgiveness, life, and salvation through it. Luther opposed both veneration of baptismal water apart from the Word and rejection of the saving power of the Word connected to the water. He insisted that baptism leads to and requires faith. Christ also commanded confession and absolution. Luther rejected ‘satisfactions’ as a part of this sacrament, stressing private confession for the forgiveness of sins.

I.1. Context

Baptism was the foundational sacrament in the medieval economy of salvation—yet the role that it played was essentially a closed one; it was necessary for salvation but by no means sufficient. The legacy of Augustine’s concentration in his debates with the Pelagians on the negative role of baptism in the removal of original sin was its gradual reduction to a closed historical event, from which the Christian sets out in need of penance and new sources of grace. If the force of baptism is effectively exhausted in the initial entry into grace and the removal of original sin, it is scarcely surprising that it plays a limited and essentially static role. The course of Luther’s theology, and of what cannot be separated from his theology—his personal struggle for salvation—can and should be understood precisely as a rediscovery of the continuing force of baptism in its promise and power in the life of a Christian.

The more clarity Luther was to achieve in his understanding of this in his struggles, the greater became his anger and grief that Christians should for so long have been robbed of their freedom and their comfort and of the gospel itself. This gives the right context for understanding the trajectory of baptism as it appears and functions in Luther’s output over time. It is simply described. In the years before his break with Rome references to it in his lectures are relatively rare ( Jetter 1954 ; Spinks 2006 : 3–4). By the time of the Lectures on Genesis (1535–45) the means of grace in general and baptism in particular are very much in the foreground; references are frequent, and Luther will introduce them into contexts where at first sight neither the text nor the subject matter before him seem to require it ( Trigg 1994 : 13–15). Between these two end-points we can see a gradual but persistent upward gradient. Why?

The first factor operating in the particular case of baptism stems from its medieval confinement. Although Luther’s ‘reformation breakthrough’ to a new understanding of the righteousness of God, justification, and faith did not at first present itself as a recovery of baptism and baptismal freedom, this connection had certainly been made by the time of the 1520 tract The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (WA6.526,34–543,3; LW36.57–81). From 1520 onwards, Luther is increasingly vociferous in his insistence that the ship of baptism remains afloat as the ark of salvation; there has been and will be no ‘shipwreck’ and thus no need to seek any lifeboat or ‘second plank’ in substitution. 1 Said another way: grace is indivisible; Luther regarded the supplementation of ‘baptismal grace’ by means of supplementary or replacement ‘graces’ available through different sacraments or works not only as unnecessary but impossible: God’s grace, given in baptism, is one ( Jetter 1954 : 230).

The second step upwards in the profile of baptism applies not only to this sacrament but to the means of grace in general. In the 1520s, especially from about 1527, Luther is increasingly aware of his need to contend with new sets of opponents. He sees opponents like Zwingli, and various elements of the ‘Radical Reformation’, as in varying ways undermining the efficacy and objectivity of the sacraments, even if they do so in the name of faith and the Word. In their magnification of faith and the inward, they despise the commonplace outward—mere water, such as a maid washes with or a cow drinks—and they ignore the fact that God has bound his word of promise and command to that despised outward thing.

It is only once this new set of controversies had had their full impact that Luther’s baptismal theology came to its full expression.

I.2. Structure

It is rather easier than might be expected (given his generally polemical, prolix, and unsystematic style) to set out the structure of Luther’s baptismal theology. In the Large Catechism of 1529 2 he provides a four-fold pattern: (1) the foundation of baptism in the joining of water and the Word (that is, the word of promise and command); (2) the purpose, benefits, and effects of baptism (in effect, salvation); (3) the use of baptism, which can be expressed as the relationship between baptism and faith; and (4) the significance and appropriateness of the sign of baptism, and its right appropriation by the Christian (thus, perhaps, the character it stamps upon the life of a Christian). Most of the important issues in Luther’s baptismal thought and the apparent difficulties in relating it to his wider theology find their place in this structure, and this essay will follow it. However, although Luther deals in an excursus with infant baptism in the third section as part of his teaching on baptism and faith, and much of the material in this excursus is indeed of direct relevance to his understanding of baptism and faith, his defence of infant baptism itself (5) will require separate treatment.

Water and the Word. Luther embraces Augustine’s formula, accedat verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum (the Word is added to the element and makes a sacrament) as the foundation of his understanding of baptism. Luther’s emphatic insistence on the inseparability of Word and water provides him with the answer to those he sees as despising the water as mere water, such as a cow drinks or a maid cooks with (WA51.129,26–36; LW51.376; BSLK 695; BC 459). Luther’s understanding of the means of grace through which God chooses to reveal himself will tolerate neither the despising of the appointed externals nor an attempt to seek God apart from them. To treat the water of baptism as mere water is to ignore the Word joined to that water; it leads to an idolatrous attempt to seek God other than where he has chosen to be found, namely concealed under his opposite, hidden under and revealed in something as ordinary and unimpressive as water (e.g., WA42.10,3–10; LW1.11; Trigg 1994 : 72–3).

But if the Anabaptists and others despise the water, there are those who commit what may appear to be the opposite error of venerating it apart from the Word. Thus Luther neither tolerates those who ascribe power to the water itself (WA43.387,42–388,6; LW4.349) nor countenances the vain boasting of those who presume on the fact of their baptism without the response of faith (e.g. WA46.707,20–708,9; LW22.197). The two errors are in reality one: they separate what should be joined, water and Word.

Given the polyvalence of ‘word’ in theological discourse, not least in Luther’s, it is important to clarify in what sense it should be taken in this context. In the Large Catechism Luther begins with the dominical command in Mt 28:19, and Mk. 16:16 (the latter in effect adds the category of promise to that of command). This is the instituting Word which invests the water of baptism with its dignity and power: ‘Baptism is no human plaything but is instituted by God himself…What God instituted and commands cannot be useless’ (BSLK 692; BC 457). But if in the catechism Luther is very precise about the Word which is joined to the water, increasingly in his later period there is a marked vigour and fluidity in what Luther says about the Word spoken in baptism. In baptism and the other means of grace we hear God speaking to us, and promising the forgiveness of sins (WA42.514,31–34; LW2.353). We are promised the Kingdom (WA43.204,34–205,2; LW4.96); we are vouchsafed the abiding favour of God (WA44.272,14–30; LW6.364). The conjoining of water and Word establishes the right response of the Christian to his or her baptism—to listen to the Word spoken there, in faith—and this emphasis on listening to what is said to me in my baptism opens the way to a new emphasis on its abiding significance and power in the life of a Christian. Sometimes the Christian must be like Jacob and actively cling to the promise made in baptism though he or she sees nothing of its fulfilment, as Jacob clung to the promise of his inheritance despite being forced into exile (WA43.568,14–23; LW5.203).

The defining characteristics of Luther’s baptismal theology, including those which divided him from his contemporaries, all flow from its foundation in the inseparability of water and Word.

What baptism does. In the second section of Luther’s treatment of baptism in the Large Catechism , he asks about its purpose, its gift and its effect. The answer he gives is simple, comprehensive, and unqualified: the gift of baptism is that we should be saved, which is to be ‘delivered from sin, death and the Devil and to enter into the kingdom of Christ and live with him forever’ (BSLK 695–696; BC 438,25). Elsewhere he speaks of baptism conferring rebirth, incorporation into the Second Adam, holiness, righteousness, wisdom, readmission to paradise, and delivery from the hands of the Devil (WA47.13,13–20; LW22.285; WA33.535,2–537,30; LW23.333–334; WA40,2.381,26–383,17; LW26.241–242; WA31,2.564,9–11; LW17.389: WA43.424,25–32; LW4.401; WA43.526,2–8; LW5.141–142). All this happens ‘in the hands of the priest’, and there is no reticence in the post-baptismal prayer in Luther’s liturgy of 1526; ‘[almighty God] hath regenerated thee through water and the Holy Ghost’ (WA19.541,14–17; LW53.109; cf. WA47.14,24–15,9; LW22.286–287).

However, this unqualified language of baptismal regeneration may mislead. Even within this second section Luther insists upon the need for faith, but faith ‘must have something to believe’, so it is to ‘cling to the water and [believe] it to be Baptism in which there is sheer salvation and life’ (BSLK 696; BC 460). If faith is required for the right use of the sacrament, how far can we understand the regeneration of baptism as tied to and completed in the moment of administration? Part of the answer lies in the category of promise; a new identity is received in baptism, yet faith must struggle against appearance to perceive it. But the hidden nature of the new identity bestowed at baptism does not go the whole way to resolve the difficulty; Luther’s language requires more subtlety in understanding the connection between the moment when the water is poured and the new birth (and, we might add, understanding the new birth in itself). There are those who have been baptized and yet have no use of their baptism in faith; they may boast of it, but they are Christians in name only (WA46.707,17–708,19; LW22.197–198). Even this qualification, however, does not go far enough—anyone who regards his or her baptism as a closed act, and who presumes upon it, risks failing to see that the word of promise which God continues to speak in baptism continues to demand the response of faith. In other words, despite Luther’s unqualified language about the benefits and use of baptism, he cannot be understood as telling the individual baptized Christian that his or her new birth is wholly a past event; at all times it is an event which also lies ‘before’ us. The significance of baptism, treated in the fourth section in the catechism, makes this clear.

Baptism and faith. ‘Without faith Baptism is of no use, although in itself it is an infinite, divine treasure.’ ‘Baptism…is not a work which we do but is a treasure which God gives us and faith grasps’, in the same way that Christ on the cross is no work but a treasure offered in the Word and to be received by faith (BSLK 697, 698; BC 460, 461). Luther’s persistent adherence to a double principle is clear. First: faith does not create the sacrament, nor does it validate it. Second: the sacrament is of no benefit or use in the absence of faith.

To boast of the outward rite itself, simply to trust in the water poured, is to follow the presumption of Esau (WA43.387,21-388,9; LW4.348–349), whose trust in his primogeniture Luther sees repeated in the church of Rome’s boasting of the externalities of baptism and the other means of grace; they do not apprehend them in faith. ‘The heart must believe it’ (BSLK 698; BC 461). Luther’s insistence on the unprofitability of baptism without faith is fully evident in the catechism; and he adheres to it in his latest work (e.g., WA44.713,26–30; LW8.184): ‘The Sacrament of the Altar, Baptism, and the Word in the sermon are at hand. But you have as much as you believe’ (WA44.719,24–37; LW8.192). However, as his treatment of infant baptism will show, what does and what does not constitute ‘faith’ in this context requires some refinement.

Well before 1529, Luther is aware that he is fighting on at least two fronts. There were those who insisted on a conveyance of grace simply in the performance of the act; now there are others who so decry the tying of grace to anything external that they charge Luther with reintroducing a works-righteousness in his emphasis on baptism. Baptism is indeed a work—but it is God’s work; and thus a treasure whose inherent worth is not compromised by how it is received. In his 1528 treatise Concerning Rebaptism Luther uses the image of gold whose worth is not debased merely because of its misuse by a thief; baptism is debased neither by the absence of faith nor by post-baptismal sin (WA26.159,25–161,34; LW40.246–248). The answer to the case of baptism without faith is simple: faith. This is a matter of grounding faith upon its object, and not the other way about. Faith based on the work of God is secure in its foundation, but against the rebaptizers Luther insists that baptism grounded on faith must always be uncertain because the faith of human beings wavers and fails.

Thus Luther’s understanding of the means of grace—and perhaps of baptism in particular—is an important clue to his concept of faith, particularly in the later period. It cannot rely on itself, it is directed away from itself to God in Christ; it cannot and need not assess itself—in short we may say that it is unselfconscious.

Sign and signification. There is no obvious word or phrase in English to translate significatio , which is in effect the subject matter of the final section of Luther’s treatment of baptism in the Large Catechism . He asks the question, Why this sign of being dipped in the water and drawn out again? If in his second section the reformer is describing the benefit and gift of baptism, which can be summarized as salvation and everything pertaining to it, here there is a narrower concentration on the ‘how’, or rather upon the stamp which his or her baptism implants upon the life of the one baptized.

The fittingness of being plunged in water is shown in the shape of the life of a Christian, which is ‘simply the slaying of the old Adam and the resurrection of the new man, both of which actions must continue in us our whole life long. Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily Baptism, once begun and ever continued’ (BSLK 704; BC 464–65). Baptism and death are interchangeable terms in Scripture (WA42.369,3–19; LW2.153), and ‘in Baptism all Christians begin to die, and they continue to die until they reach the grave’ (WA45.506,38–507,12; LW24,50–51). The sign is a double one; as with the drowning so with the lifting up from the water: ‘the thing it signifies—the spiritual birth and the increase of grace and righteousness—even though it begins in baptism, lasts until death, indeed, until the Last Day. Only then will that be finished which the lifting up out of baptism signifies’, Luther said in his 1519 sermon on baptism (WA2.727,30–728,9; LW35.30).

Regeneration, the new birth, is neither to be divorced from the rite of baptism, nor is its meaning to be exhausted in the moment when the water is poured. Like the salvation which is its gift, the significance of baptism is future as well as past and present. Although Luther is happy to speak of a journey begun in baptism and continued in faith, and speaks of a strengthening of that faith as the journey progresses (e.g., WA45.499,16–27; LW24.42), there is another dynamic in Luther’s thought which both qualifies the idea of spiritual progress and forbids the Christian from consigning baptism—act and significance—to the past. Luther in the catechism insists that daily repentance is nothing other than a continual return to baptism (BSLK 706; BC 446), and we should not be surprised that he assumes and requires this continual return to the beginning as at any point in time the Christian cannot examine, assess, or rely upon the results of any progress in the life of the Spirit ( Prenter 1953 : 97). Reliance upon and glorying in righteousness as a possession is a continual temptation, and Luther clearly assumes that the journey from active to passive righteousness, law to grace, Moses to Christ, is one that will have to be made many times: the continual need to return to the beginning imposes a circular pattern to the life of a Christian (WA40,1.49,24–50,16; LW26.10; Trigg 1994 : 169–71).

The Christian is simul justus et peccator , at once righteous and a sinner, at all times on (or bisected by) the boundary between the two kingdoms, flesh and spirit. The correlate of this theme in Luther’s baptismal theology is the continual and repeated call to hear the word of promise spoken in baptism, and to die the daily death that it signifies. Luther’s distinctive emphasis upon the vocation, or vocations, of all Christian people is rooted in this baptismal call to die to self. In the matrix of callings and obligations of daily life at work, in the home, in society, we have the arena in which God brings this baptismal death to pass (WA42.369,3–37 713; LW2.153–155; WA43.672,25–673,36; LW5.354–5).

Infant baptism. Luther asks, ‘Do children also believe, and is it right to baptize them?’ (BSLK 700; BC 462), thus introducing his teaching on infant baptism in the Large Catechism with two questions rather than with one. We might conclude that by posing the matter thus, he shows that the possibility—or reality—of infant faith is the foundation of his argument, and some argue that it is indeed the cornerstone of the later Luther’s position ( Scaer 1999 : 147–56). In Concerning Rebaptism he appears to be advancing two different arguments about infant faith (WA26.144–174; LW40 241–246). The first is simply that Scripture shows that some children have faith; in telling us that the children offered to idols or slaughtered by Herod were innocent, it implies faith on their part, to which Luther adds the Lord’s words about the kingdom belonging to children. Luther’s concept of faith is such that children are by no means excluded. But the second argument is dominant; and this is not so much an assertion of the existence of infant faith as a denial that Scripture excludes it. The burden of proof falls on those who base their requirement for rebaptism of those baptized as infants; they cannot prove what they need to prove, namely that infants cannot believe.

But infant faith cannot be the ultimate foundation of Luther’s defence of infant baptism, simply because to make faith in any way the foundation of baptism runs directly counter to his thinking. Even in Concerning Rebaptism , where infant faith is to the fore, Luther uses a variety of defences. Some are idiosyncratic, as when Luther, claiming common ground with the Anabaptists to the extent of agreeing that the pope is the Antichrist, says that as Antichrist reigns in the temple, among holy things, this of itself shows the holiness of that amongst which he has been presiding, including baptism as it has been practised from the beginning. Logically this is an extension of the argument that if baptism as practised since the time of the apostles had not been true baptism, there could have been no church and no giving of the Spirit—there have been both, so the opponents’ position is absurd (WA26.168,27–169,2; LW40,1.256–257; Trigg 1994 : 99–107, offers a synthesis of Luther’s defences). The core of Luther’s approach rests in the heart of his understanding of baptism as the Word inseparably joined to the water. Luther can afford to sit light, as it were, to infant faith as a hypothesis, as to the waxing and waning of faith over the course of any life, precisely because he refuses to ground the validity and objectivity of baptism in that faith. In the same way, this denial of faith as foundational frees him at various times to advance the faith of others ( fides aliena ) (BSLK 702; BC 443), and the nature of baptism as a covenant ‘with the heathen’, from which children must not be excluded (WA26.169,20–35; LW40,1.257–258). Faith is not certain of itself; it attends to God’s command and promise, and ultimately to Christ himself.

I.3. Significance

The deep-rooted image of him as above all the man of faith makes Luther’s baptismal theology something of a surprise for the new student, who might well share Karl Barth’s puzzlement, in that ‘the main themes of [Luther’s] theology—law and gospel, justification by faith alone, the freedom of a Christian man, etc.—hardly prepare us for the statement that a small child becomes a Christian in baptism’ ( Barth 1969 : 169). Yet a closer inspection reveals that far from sitting uneasily in the context of his wider thought, Luther’s approach to baptism reflects and illuminates many aspects of it. So his insistence that faith does not constitute baptism but receives it preserves that faith from becoming one more exercise in human spirituality to add to all the others, and places the weight entirely on the promise of God. His refusal to allow the denigration of ‘mere water’ is fully aligned with his theology of the cross, God hidden under the mask of what is his opposite, or under what is despised. His refusal to understand the Christian life as progress onwards and away from the portal of baptism is likewise an expression of Luther’s understanding of the Christian as simul justus et peccator , righteous and a sinner at the same time, never progressing beyond the need to hear and receive the gracious promise of God in the present moment.

II. Penance: The Keys, Confession, and Absolution

There are two strands in Luther’s approach to penance. The first is marked by an intense sensitivity to any assertion that it is a necessary supplement to baptism, or that it is a source of ‘replacement grace’ to deal with post-baptismal sin. This suspicion is combined with a protest against the ways in which the papacy has limited, burdened, and exploited penance and thus hindered its salutary use as one of the means of grace. Entangled with this is the second strand: Luther’s emphatic appreciation of penance as a means of grace.

Luther’s vocabulary is fluid: he speaks of the ‘Keys’, of penance, of forgiveness of the neighbour, of confession and absolution; and these are not readily disentangled from one another. Although when Luther refers to ‘the signs’ or the means of grace he will typically include ‘the Keys’ in his list, the others also make their appearance. If the language is fluid, Luther’s insistence that the means of grace are in no way to be separated from one another is not. The Keys are not to be considered apart from the ministry of the Word (WA42.636/7; LW3.124); nor is penance to be separated from baptism or the Supper. It is preparation and approach to the Supper, but the foundational link is with the abiding ship of baptism, to which it is a return ( Rittgers 2004 : 58, 136).

Luther does not achieve consistency concerning whether this is to be considered as a sacrament; in his tract The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) he describes it as such, but the Large Catechism of 1529 speaks of two sacraments. However the fluidity of Luther’s treatment of the God-appointed ‘signs’ or means of grace remains in that in the section on the Lord’s Prayer he interprets the fifth petition as the appropriation of a word of promise: ‘forgive, and you shall be forgiven’.

The foundation of Luther’s teaching on the sacrament of penance is the same as that of baptism and the Eucharist. It is the divine word of command and promise; and nothing is received other than by faith. Luther appears to allow a much greater fluidity of practice than in the case of baptism, however. Confession of sins may be made to a brother—or sister (WA6.541,1–25; LW36.87)—and the words of pardon and comfort need not always be spoken by a pastor or priest. At one end of the range of Luther’s thought on confession and absolution we have his formal instructions to pastors on the ministry of the Keys (e.g., WA26.220,1–19; LW40.296; where it is assumed that pastors will not admit to communion without individual examination beforehand); at the other the simple, yet also sacramental, forgiveness of the neighbour (WA32.424,1–4; LW21.150).

If the Augustinian principle is applied to penance as a sacrament, what is the divine Word joined to the element? And, for that matter, what is the element? In 1519 Luther gives Mt. 16:19 (‘whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven…’) as the former. The ‘element’ appears to be the words of absolution spoken by the priest although he also states that an individual Christian—even a woman or a child—can speak these words (WA2.714,3–20, 716,25–35; LW35.9, 12). As in the case of the other sacraments, the worthiness and intention of the minister are not determinative of its validity—the priest’s words can be trusted even if he is jesting, or if he himself is under the ban (WA2.717,6–25; LW35.13–14). It is the truth of these words of absolution which have to be apprehended in faith, and faith alone is the mode of appropriating this sacrament. Luther’s approach to the three constituent parts of the sacrament distinguished in the tradition—contrition, confession, and satisfaction—is shaped by this principle.

Because faith is the only way of receiving a sacrament, we are free to refrain from assessing the depth of contrition for sin, or the adequacy of the satisfaction offered—to rely on either is beside the point: ‘For Christ did not intend to base our comfort, our salvation, our confidence on human words or deeds, but only upon himself, upon his words and deeds’ (WA2.714–723; LW35.10). So far as contrition is concerned, Luther does not deny the value of true contrition for sins, indeed he is prepared to dissuade people from confession when hatred of sin is feigned rather than genuine (WA6.159,21–35; LW39.30). Yet even if contrition is the inevitable result of attending to God’s Word (of command or threat: the law) Luther decries teaching which encourages Christians to rely on that contrition, as indeed he deplores reliance on any aspect of what we would now call ‘spirituality’. True contrition is the fruit of faith in the Word (WA6.544,21–545,8; LW36.83–84). Thus understood, contrition is not to be dissociated from faith—and they closely resemble one another in that neither need be, nor indeed should be, self-aware.

Luther accepts and endorses the practice of private confession but rails against the restrictions and reservations with which the papacy has hedged it about, including the reservation of certain cases to bishops or to the pope himself, or indeed to priests at all: ‘For there is no person to be compared with a Christian brother’ (WA6.546,11–17; LW36.86). The Keys belong to the whole church. The application of Luther’s theological principles to the way a Christian should approach auricular confession is shown in a 1520 tract, A Discussion on How Confession should be made (WA6.157–169; LW39.27–47). Among the recommendations are these (not necessarily in Luther’s order): pray for a sense of good intention (=contrition?) if you think you lack it; admit and confess that all you do is tainted by sin, and that full knowledge (and therefore full confession) of sin is impossible; confess those sins of which you are aware, while admitting ignorance; do not be overanxious about categories of sin; and above all, do not trust in your confession but in the merciful forgiveness of God. To avoid this last error, which is the trap of over-scrupulosity, Luther goes so far as to endorse the somewhat surprising advice that on occasion one should go to mass without confession, or when one has been drinking, simply so as to learn to trust in God’s mercy and not in one’s ‘correct confession’ (WA6.166,1–30; LW39.40–41).

Luther’s view of true satisfaction is simply expressed: this is ‘the renewal of life’; or, in the words of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery, ‘Go and sin no more’ (Jn. 8:11). For this true satisfaction the papacy has substituted a catalogue of burdens and tortures, all heaped on ‘poor consciences’ to the ruin of body and soul (WA6.548,33–549,14; LW36.90). Perversely the Roman church lays invented burdens on sinners while wrongly ignoring the necessary dying to the flesh. Thus in one sense their harshness is to be deplored, while in another they are tricking Christians into the delusion that they need not die the death begun in their baptism—Luther holds to his protest against all the stratagems used to conceal this truth begun as early as 1517 in the Ninety-five Theses: ‘Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell.’

But Luther is uncomfortable with the language of satisfaction, however it is interpreted. He insists that the true satisfaction is seen in only one place: ‘our Lord Jesus Christ is the one and only Victim with which satisfaction has been made to the wrath of God’ (WA44.468,5–16; LW7.227).

The abuse of satisfaction does not exhaust the tyranny of the perversion of the Keys under the papacy, so far as Luther is concerned. He accuses the papacy of having fashioned laws, prohibitions, reservations, and powers for itself; all out of what has been given to the Church to free souls from sin by means of repentance and forgiveness. But his most vehement protest is against penance as ‘the second plank’ or lifeboat to which one must cling when baptismal grace is lost, a strand in the teaching of the church traceable to Jerome. The unsinkable ark of baptism remains (WA6.529,22–34; LW36.61). Penance cannot be understood other than as a recall to it. This leads us back to what we called the trajectory of baptism and its profile in Luther’s thought over time, and in particular why it has become so.

Luther rails against the false comfort offered by the church as a substitute for true penance and a following of Christ ‘though penalties, deaths, and hells’. But his fury at what he perceives as the loss of true comfort is still greater, comfort found in the freedom of the sinner justified by God’s grace in Christ, the release from all necessity of seeking salvation elsewhere, the Christian’s identity as a child of God. Luther increasingly came to express this loss precisely in terms of the loss of baptism; already in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church he sees the extinction of the power of baptism amongst adults as the work of Satan (WA6.527,9–22; LW36.57f.). ‘The reformation of Luther began at this point; it was Luther who first cracked the basis of the penitential system started by Hermas, namely the presupposition that baptism is merely a closed historical act and repentance a subsequent act’ ( Goppelt 1962 : 201). Goppelt may be wrong in seeing his refusal to accept a limit or an end to baptism as the starting point for Luther’s ‘breakthrough’ strictly in terms of the development of his thought over time. We might better understand Luther’s insistence on the continuing force of baptism as the consequence of—or, probably better—as an expression of the gospel as he had come to understand it.

The vehemence at the loss of baptism he expresses in The Babylonian Captivity and indeed the increasing role it plays in his writings in the years that followed may be taken as a measure of his own bitter experience of this loss and of his various failed attempts to make it good using the means the church offered him.

III. Luther on Baptism: Possible Avenues of Inquiry

Iii.1. baptism and the church: ‘purity’ and ‘rightness’.

Luther’s theology of baptism as of the other means of grace begins with the assertion that God is truly to be encountered there, and that he is calling his church into being where the ‘word is heard, where baptism, the sacrament of the altar and absolution are administered’ (WA43.596,38–598,6; LW5.244–245). The voice of God is truly heard in baptism; it is never silenced, and does not need human additions to be effective. Individuals differ in their hearing of and response to this Word, and faith must guard against presumption, as for Luther the Christian never graduates from the entry level class; he or she always stands in need of repentance and faith in the promise. The boundary or entry which baptism represents always passes through the Christian in the present moment (in which God speaks his Word); there is always the possibility of following Esau and the false church in a presumptuous reliance on the title deeds, rather than following Jacob and attending to the promise. The boundary between true and false is real, but radically elusive, and one relies on it only to find oneself on the wrong side.

This central assertion about the ministry of Word and sacrament can lead in another direction, however. Luther often supplies adjectives to his declarations about the means of grace: there are plenty of occasions when he speaks of the ‘right’ teaching of the ‘pure’ Word and of the ‘right’ administration and use of the sacraments in a manner thoroughly consonant with Article VII of the Augsburg Confession. For instance: ‘…the holy sacrament of baptism, wherever it is taught, believed, and administered correctly according to Christ’s ordinance’ is a mark of the church (WA50.630,21–631,5; LW41.151). Some strands of the Lutheran tradition interpret the qualifying adjectives in a manner which appears to limit their recognition of the unity of the Church, the community of all those under the sign of baptism and addressed by the promise spoken in it.

Which is more fundamental to Luther: his insistence on God’s abiding word of promise spoken to all at all times in their baptism, and its sufficiency as a sign that the people of God are gathered to hear it; or his insistence on drawing distinctions between pure and impure, right and corrupted administration and use of baptism and the other means of grace? How does the answer to this question determine the church’s understanding and practice of baptism?

III.2. Infant Baptism in a Secular Age

Luther, like his contemporaries, assumed that baptism would be virtually universal. There were the Jews living amongst the Christians, about whom Luther’s pronouncements have become notorious. And on the eastern fringes of Europe was the Turk, a potential physical threat, but by no means the most dangerous spiritual one; Luther always looked for these within the company of those who claimed to be the church, as, for instance, one must always look for the papal ‘Antichrist’ reigning in the midst of holy things rather than anywhere else. In a world where baptism was virtually universal with only these two exceptions, it is unsurprising that Luther and many others found any denial or refusal of infant baptism to be an alarming discomfort, threatening them (in Barth’s words) with a form of spiritual agoraphobia.

But now, in a multicultural and increasingly secular world, how Luther’s defence of infant baptism is understood will affect its interpretation in a world where baptism is by no means universal. If infant faith is fundamental, what justification could there be for restricting the sacrament to the children of believers? Or does in fact an irreducible covenantal element (perhaps linked to fides aliena —the faith of others, parents, godparents, the church) underlie Luther’s defence?

Barth, Karl ( 1969 ). Church Dogmatics , vol. IV.4, trans. G. W. Bromiley . Edinburgh: Clark.

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Goppelt, Leonhardt ( 1962 ). ‘The Existence of the Church in History according to Apostolic and Early Catholic Thought’. In Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation: Essays in Honor of Otto A. Piper , ed. William Klassen and G. F. Snyder . New York: Harper, 193–209.

Jetter, Werner ( 1954 ). Die Taufe beim jungen Luther. Eine Untersuchung über das Werden der reformatorischen Sakraments- und Taufanschaung . Tübingen: Mohr.

Prenter, Regin ( 1953 ). Spiritus Creator , trans. John Jensen . Philadelphia: Muhlenberg.

Rittgers, Ronald K. ( 2004 ). The Reformation of the Keys . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Scaer, David ( 1999 ). Baptism . Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics. St Louis: Luther Academy.

Spinks, Bryan D. ( 2006 ). Reformation and Modern Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From Luther to Contemporary Practices . Aldershot: Ashgate.

Trigg, Jonathan ( 1994 ). Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther . Leiden: Brill.

For example, WA6.529,22–34; LW36.61; references to the ‘second plank’ ultimately stem from Jerome, Epist . 130,9. At first this tradition restricted the restoration of grace after post-baptismal sin to one episode of repentance and absolution.

BSLK 691–707; BC 456–67. The sub-heading ‘infant baptism’ in this edition rather obscures the structure of Luther’s thought; it is to be understood as part of the third section on baptism and faith.

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Harvard Divinity Scholar, Student Explore Museums as Sites for Buddhist Ministry

This interview is one in an ongoing series exploring the intersection of art and religion in HDS courses.

How can we imagine a better world from within our current context? When Charles Hallisey , MDiv ’78, and Molly Silverstein, MDiv ’22, began discussing their Harvard Divinity School course “The Museum as a Buddhist Institution,” this question directed their investigations and collaboration.

Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures, met Silverstein while she was a student at HDS. While pursuing her degree, Silverstein helped organize the Faith in Arts Initiative at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in North Carolina, where she previously worked. Faith in Arts was an interdisciplinary program series that explored the role of art in spiritual practice. Her combined experience of working at the museum and her studies at HDS became part of her conversations with Hallisey about the possibilities for reimaging religious experiences outside of denominational religion. Hallisey’s long-term research interests intersected with Silverstein’s on-the-ground experiences in museums, and they started generating course ideas.

The result was an experience-led inquiry into the place of religious encounters within secular institutions and the potential for museums to be places for individual learning, community building, and ministry. While some students brought art history backgrounds, the majority of the students came to the course with experience across a vast expanse of backgrounds, with an interest in Buddhism or curatorial practices. This interview explores how the course originated, some of the student's field experiences as coursework, and the central query: how can museums become sites for ministry?

HDS: Where did the idea for this course come from?

Silverstein: When I first started taking Professor Hallisey's classes, I went to a conference at the Black Mountain College Museum on spirituality and art and told Professor Hallisey I would be out for the conference. He told me that he loved Black Mountain College, and that's how we started talking about museums.

Hallisey : When I learned more about Molly’s background in museums and her academic experiences, I began to think more about museums as sites not only for educating about Buddhist life and practice but also for Buddhist ministry. I had already been keeping track of shows that New York museums were doing on Buddhist art and their cooperation in making the public more aware of things about the Buddhist world. I also knew people who were involved in teaching meditation in museums. I'm also a big fan of the New York Times art critic Holland Cotter, someone I described in the class as one of the great Buddhist thinkers of contemporary America.

It was just like a synergy of long-standing interests of mine that got ramped up by meeting Molly and talking to her and her gentle enthusiasm for ideas that I would toss out that then made me think it was more and more doable. Once we started to investigate more things together, a course became something that was completely feasible and quite interesting.

In addition, my long-term interests were grounded by something I heard from a Lutheran bishop, who said, “We are living in the end times of denominational religion.” Since a school like Harvard Divinity School is premised on the existence of denominational religion, I wondered how a place like Harvard Divinity School might begin to prepare itself for a future without denominational religion.

Combining these three threads, Molly and I decided to harvest the low-hanging fruit and ask, “What's going on in these museums where people do Buddhist practices, and educate about Buddhist ideas, life, and places that are outside more conventional centers of Buddhist practice and life?”

HDS: What educational benefits do you see from exploring museums as a religious space in the instruction of your HDS students?

Hallisey: While most museums won’t be religiously based because they are public and secular institutions, they can still be sites where people do ministry. While not ignoring the profound differences between museums and hospitals, doing ministry in museums might not actually be much different than people being chaplains in a hospital. Perhaps the emerging and evolving practice of Buddhist ministry is leading the way in how this can be so.

A hospital is not a religious institution. You do have religiously-identified hospitals, of course, but even those that are not religiously-identified have chaplains. In other words, there is a space within hospitals that has become institutionalized to allow the spiritual needs of those who come into that building to be addressed. We think that something analogous is beginning to happen in museums.

Currently, the self-understandings and missions of museums are expanding. The museum has become both an educational space and something else already. To take just one example, some museums now offer programs that use art as therapy. For example, the Rubin Museum in New York is dedicated to education about Himalayan Buddhist art, but they also promote various caregiving activities in the museum. They have programs for people with dementia, as well as programs for caregivers of people with Alzheimer's and dementia. They have all kinds of family days with professionals who do art as therapy, and they do stuff with children, whether with their families or on school trips. Such programs make it clear that the public services of a museum are expanding. And some of those services now, I would say, look like what we count as ministry at Harvard Divinity School.

HDS: For this course, did you participate in any experiences outside the classroom?

Hallisey: The members of the class visited a lot of museums. The whole class didn't travel together to museums, but there were a variety of field exercises that individuals and small groups were doing. For assignments, students went and did their own explorations, which came together in the class as a whole. In the Boston area and especially at Harvard, there are lots of museums, so it was easier for members of the class to go to these museums and explore what was displayed there.

The Rubin Museum in New York had a show about Buddhism that was being shown at the Boston College Museum in the fall. So, that became a key case study.

We were also fortunate to receive funding from the Ho Family Foundation that made it possible for everyone in the class to travel to New York to see a major show of Indian Buddhist Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “ Tree and Serpent:  Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE-400 CE .” The art show also happened to be funded through the Ho Family Foundation. A number of the people in the class took advantage of that to go to the Rubin Museum on the same trip. It was clear, in student conversations and writing assignments following these visits, the real impact they had on the group’s shared understanding.

Silverstein: The one place we also visited together as a class was the CAMLab at Harvard . It's an AI interactive exhibition focused on cultural heritage sites worldwide. The exhibitions right now are focused on ancient Buddhist cave shrines and dances.

Hallisey: The exhibit we visited was an experiment the CAMLab was running about the experiences that virtual reality can make possible. Museums are doing quite a lot of expansion and rethinking their purposes and what they're capable of. That inquiry has led them to incorporate more of what today is called “intangible cultural heritage.” Museums have become more intentional about the experiences that people have when they're visiting their displays. When we visited the CAMLab, their displays showed us what it would be like to go into ninth-century Chinese caves that were sacred sites for Buddhist rituals.

They had all these paintings of individual dancers, which, if you were studying, you would be limited to viewing them as if they were frames in a film or individual pictures. But when we moved around the space with AI and virtual reality, we could see the dancers' motion, which you miss when you view them as still frames. Now, you can do that artificially with AI and virtual reality.

Some students felt the virtual experience was odd, and others said it was incredible. They would have never been able to see it without that kind of virtual experience. While disoriented, they felt a different sense of moving in space.

Museums are changing a lot. So, imagining possibilities for future Buddhist ministry in museums also needs to acknowledge how museums are imagining different futures for themselves. Sometimes, that may involve people doing Buddhist rituals within the museum to show what is displayed as art as part of a religious or ritual context in the Buddhist world. Within that also is taking advantage of things that new kinds of technology make possible.

HDS: What were the goals that you had while teaching this course for your students?

Hallisey: One of our goals was, how do we prepare ourselves to perceive possibilities for better futures in ministry? A part of the academic field of Buddhist studies has a very strong orientation, looking back, toward tracing the history of Buddhism. While we learn a lot from that, we don't learn how to become what we are not already.

What I wanted to come out of this course was, how do we help ourselves prepare to bring about better futures when what currently exists is not good enough or will not continue? That line of questioning has been so fruitful that I've persuaded Molly that we should keep exploring this kind of thing together.

It may be that museums are a particularly appropriate thing for religious scholars at Harvard Divinity School, which describes itself as a multireligious institution, to pay attention to. It's in museums that we see the possibilities of taking the multiplicity of religions seriously rather than just the sectarian or denominational divisions between religions.

In the museum, we see not only see different religions side by side, we see their histories in which they are shown to be completely interacting with each other. It makes it obvious that each religion can't be fully understood without making sense of its interactions with other religions. There are important lessons in that for our future here at HDS, but also for our world at large.

I came into the course fully understanding and disclosing to students that Molly and I were not experts on the intersectionality of religions and that we were depending on the members of the class to help us learn something about it and figure out what we should carry forward from it. I don't know if we could write a thesis from what came out of the course, but I think all of us experienced a sense of shared exploration and experimentation that pervaded the course. For me, that's a goal in its own right, and that space is valuable as a student to have a course that just wants you to be completely open and ask questions, and it’s not only about accumulating information.

HDS: Are there any artistic spaces you find yourself in?

Silverstein: I recently took an art class at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston where you sketch the different paintings. I was thinking a lot about this course during the process of sketching the paintings and just how sketching forces you to sit with something for long periods of time. When we first started thinking about the course, we discussed several books that speak about sitting with a painting for hours and how that experience changes your relationship with the art.

Hallisey: At the Harvard Art Museums, there is a particularly well-designed space with a number of Buddha images in it. Two of the four walls in the room are glass looking out onto Broadway. There is also an installation of these gigantic round stone balls outside those glass walls, yet still in the museum. They mediate between what's outside and inside. And having gone to the room several times, the glass walls and the stone balls kind of make the images take on an appearance that they're actually facing the world outside of the museum.

One of the things that this particular installation asks of us is to go outside the space of the exhibit room and see the images from the world outside. I am reminded of this almost every day. I may be driving home on Broadway coming toward the museum in the evening when it's dark, but when I see that exhibit room all lit up, I see those Buddha images looking out the windows, looking at all of us out there. And, in my car, I know that while the museum is not a Buddhist temple, it is doing what Buddhist temples commonly do, in the sense of being a space that is both apart and intimately connected to everything around it.

HDS: Do you believe art can change our world?

Hallisey : I think it does, but we must have a strong qualification about that, too. Last night, I was reading Muriel Barbary’s wonderful novel, A Single Rose , and a poem by the Japanese Buddhist poet Issa is quoted a few times in it. The poem says, "In this world, we walk on the roof of hell, gazing at flowers." And so with that in mind, it can seem that in the museum, we are only gazing at flowers, but there is still a world outside that is close to hell or even part of hell. When I see the room of Buddha images lit up inside from the street outside, I remember that it's not that the gazing at flowers and the roof of hell are unconnected. Rather, we must never forget that the two are connected and that we have to figure out how to connect them today in different ways than they were once connected in the past. Otherwise, we just go back outside to walk on the roof of hell all over again.

Silverstein: I think that speaks to some hopeful element of this moment where the museum as an institution is being questioned and viewed with a lot of cynicism and righteous anger. If you think of that shift as a way of really bringing the world and its problems into the museum space and helping the museum remind us that the museum itself is in the world, it's an important moment and can potentially open us up to a whole new realm of human possibilities.

—by Maddison Tenney, HDS communications editorial assistant  

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