Summary

Martin Luther critically engaged with tradition in his interpretations of the Lord’s Prayer. As a result, he occasionally departed from a line of interpretation even in later years because he had taken up an idea from the traditional canon. His spiritual approach to prayer, reflected in his interpretations of the Lord’s Prayer, was also developed in critical dialogue with tradition. Luther’s spiritual treatment of the Lord’s Prayer either remained within its linguistic realm or became an element in a practice that reinterpreted the classical model of lectio—meditatio—oratio—contemplatio. When he established the three rules of the study of theology with his oratio, meditatio, and tentatio, this was informed by the fact that he identified existential need as the context for this exercise. Regarding the inner qualities of the spirituality of prayer, Luther called for prayer to be made up of words within a dialectic of law and the gospel rather than deliberately imagined internal images. This also held true when it came to Luther’s view on the particular experience of the Holy Spirit. For him, the only difference was that the petitioner should actively pray with his own words before and after experiencing the Spirit, but remain passive during the actual experience, shifting into a listening mode and praying with the words that flowed into him through the Holy Spirit from the Word of God Himself. This experience represented the pinnacle of this complex spiritual practice, being a specific form of contemplatio. Luther also developed his understanding, with regard to the theology of repentance, of the Lord’s Prayer in particular and of prayer in general by critically engaging with tradition. The fact that he interpreted other petitions of the Lord’s Prayer in terms of the fifth petition, confession, was a sign of his rethinking of the theology of repentance. This reevaluation was the result of Luther’s taking his doctrine of justification as the basis for the doctrine of prayer at the same time as adhering to the framework, in terms of the theology of repentance, for the interpretation of prayer that was defined by tradition.