Pietism, the major Protestant renewal movement in the 17th and 18th centuries, sought to bring the head into the heart, to recover an experiential-expressive faith, to continue Luther’s reform of doctrine with reform of Christian living, to complete justification by sanctification. Hence Pietism understood itself as “the Second Reformation,” as the “church always reforming.”
The leading figures of Lutheran Pietism understood themselves as true followers of Luther. Johann Arndt’s True Christianity (1605–1610), one of the most influential writings of early modern Protestantism, appealed to the young Luther’s esteem for late medieval mysticism, and emphasized Christian religious experience. Philipp Jakob Spener, “the Father of Pietism,” wrote the programmatic tract for Lutheran Pietism, Pious Desires (1675), as a “foreword” to a collection of Arndt’s sermons. Spener, who had extensive knowledge of Luther’s writings, called for improved pastoral formation and increased lay participation in the church (priesthood of all believers) through gatherings for prayer and Bible study (collegia pietatis). He supported his program by appeal to Luther’s emphasis upon living, active faith in Luther’s “Preface to Romans” and “Preface to the German Mass.” Unlike “radical Pietists,” who despairing of renewal separated from the established church, Spener was convinced that God would provide “better times” for the church as it was renewed from within (the ecclesiola in ecclesia).
Spener’s call for spiritual and ethical renewal, praxis pietatis, was sharpened by his follower, August Hermann Francke. Francke’s struggles with doubts of God led to his conversion experience in 1687, his so-called Busskampf, experienced as a rebirth. From this Francke introduced into Pietism the concern for a once-for-all datable conversion or rebirth that would initiate a life of progressive sanctification. Francke’s new emphasis upon progressive sanctification toward perfection departed significantly from Luther’s dialectical theology, which understood the Christian as sinner and righteous as the same time (simul iustus et peccator). On the other hand, Francke continued Luther’s emphasis upon the Bible and strove to make the Bible as accessible as possible to the laity. A professor of biblical languages at the new University of Halle, Francke corrected the Luther translation through his own highly skilled historical-philological exegesis and in the process influenced succeeding generations of biblical scholars.
A third-generation Pietist leader, Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, one of Francke’s students at the University of Halle, created a vibrant Pietist community on his estate when he welcomed Protestant refugees from Moravia in 1722. Although not a trained theologian like his predecessors Spener and Francke, Zinzendorf followed the Lutheran emphasis upon atonement as the basis for justification before God. He supplemented Luther’s theology of the cross with his experiential “heart-religion” (Herzensreligion); Christians must have Christ in their hearts, not just their heads.
Lutheran Pietists used Luther selectively to advance their understanding of the practice of piety.
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Martin Luther in Pietism
Carter Lindberg
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Martin Luther in German Historiography
Zachary Purvis
What does Martin Luther mean for Germany? Formulated in such a way, this is an impossible question, due in no small measure to the existence of many “Luthers” and many “Germanys.” But it also invites historical investigation. Luther has long held a privileged position in the writing of German history, stretching back to his own lifetime, even if the exact nature of that position has hardly remained static or uncontested. Luther’s position in the annals of German historiography testifies to the influence of social and political upheavals on the way in which historians understand the past—and vice versa. Each era’s critical events have encouraged certain aspects of Luther’s person and work to be remembered and others to be forgotten.
Like swapping between telephoto and wide-angle lenses, historical perspectives have moved between a narrow concentration on the German reformer’s biography and theology and a broader focus on the Protestant movement he launched in Germany. Historians have regularly enlisted Luther in an expansive, sweeping vision of the German Reformation and the emergence of the modern German nation-state with Otto von Bismarck. Indeed, contemporary ideas of nation and nationalism have had a determining influence on interpretations of Luther. This is true as much for German historians like Leopold von Ranke, writing toward the beginning of history’s professionalization as a full-fledged, independent academic discipline in the first half of the 19th century, as it is for those surveying Luther in the midst of the First World War, in the aftermath of Hitler and the Nazi era, in the postwar German Democratic Republic in the East and Federal Republic of Germany in the West, on the cusp Germany’s “turning point” (die Wende) of 1989–1990—and even for historians now situated in the 21st century.
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Martin Luther’s Influence on Legal Reforms and Civil Law
John Witte Jr.
The Lutheran Reformation transformed not only theology and the church but law and the state as well. Beginning in the 1520s, Martin Luther joined up with various jurists and political leaders to craft ambitious legal reforms of church, state, and society on the strength of Luther’s new theology, particularly his new two kingdoms doctrine. These legal reforms were defined and defended in hundreds of monographs, pamphlets, and sermons published by Lutheran writers from the 1520s to 1550s. They were refined and routinized in hundreds of new reformation ordinances promulgated by German cities, duchies, and territories that converted to the Lutheran cause. By the time of the Peace of Augsburg (1555)—the imperial law that temporarily settled the constitutional order of Germany—the Lutheran Reformation had brought fundamental changes to theology and law, to church and state, marriage and family, criminal law and procedure, and education and charity. Critics of the day, and a steady stream of theologians and historians ever since, have seen this legal phase of the Reformation as a corruption of Luther’s original message of Christian freedom from the strictures of human laws and traditions. But Luther ultimately realized that he needed the law to stabilize and enforce the new Protestant teachings. Radical theological reforms had made possible fundamental legal reforms. Fundamental legal reforms, in turn, would make palpable radical theological reforms. In the course of the 1530s onward, the Lutheran Reformation became in its essence both a theological and a legal reform movement. It struck new balances between law and Gospel, rule and equity, order and faith, and structure and spirit.
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The Reformation and the Establishment of Lutheranism in the Holy Roman Empire
Joachim Whaley
Martin Luther was a subject of the Elector of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire. His emergence as a reformer was made possible by the sponsorship he received in Wittenberg. He owed his survival to the protection afforded him by the Elector when Emperor Charles V outlawed him and ordered that the papal ban of excommunication be enforced in the empire. The audience to which Luther appealed was the general population of German Christians, both lay and ecclesiastical, who wanted a reform of the church and the reduction of the pope’s influence over it. That his appeal resonated so widely and so profoundly had much to do with a combination of crises that had developed in the empire from the 15th century. That his reform proposals resulted in the formation of a new church owed everything to the political structures of the empire. These facilitated the suppression of radical challenges to Luther’s position. They also thwarted every effort Charles V made over several decades to ensure that the empire remained Catholic. Lutheranism became entwined with the idea of German liberty; as a result, its survival was secured in the constitution of the empire, first in 1555 and then in 1648.
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The Influence of Renaissance Humanism and Skepticism on Martin Luther
William J. Wright
When Martin Luther began his academic studies at Erfurt, Renaissance humanism and skepticism had become well entrenched in the German academic world. He also found them at Wittenberg. Starting with Petrarch, humanists appeared in Italy who acquired the skills necessary to find solutions to their needs in the content of ancient pagan classics and Christian writings. Two major groups of humanists existed after the mid-15th century with distinct solutions for the needs they felt: rhetorical humanists epitomized by Valla and Neoplatonic humanists led by Ficino and Pico. Rhetorical humanism appealed to the heart and exempted the truth of Christian teachings from skepticism. Neoplatonic humanism sought to establish absolute truth by synthesizing the wisdom of all religions and philosophies.
It is well-known today that ultramontane Renaissance humanism was imported from Italy by large numbers of students from the north who studied there. German and other northern humanists mostly followed either in the path laid by Valla or that of Ficino and Pico. Luther was a beneficiary of the Christian humanism and biblicism of the rhetorical path, which also led to the development of the loci method of learning and the educational work of Melanchthon. The Neoplatonic path led to further development of logical solutions based on both Plato and Aristotle. This path developed remarkable syntheses of Christianity with ancient and medieval philosophies and religions, mostly meant to improve Christian life. Though familiar with the Neoplatonic path, Luther did not accept its basic views.
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The German Catholic Dioceses on the Eve of the Reformation
Charlotte Methuen
The structures of the late medieval Church into which Martin Luther was born and within which he received his education and theological training were complicated, particularly in the German lands. German bishops were territorial princes as well as spiritual leaders. Only a minority of German dioceses fell within temporal territories, but in most cases dioceses spanned several territories and some territories included areas in two or more dioceses. Abbots and abbesses were also rulers of independent territories, many of which answered only to the pope. Germany’s prince-bishops had considerable political power, exemplified in the college of electors who selected the Holy Roman Emperor. Of these seven, four were temporal political rulers: the King of Bohemia, Margrave of Brandenburg, the Count of the Palatine, and the Duke of (Electoral) Saxony; but the remaining three were Germany’s three Archbishops: of Cologne, of Mainz, and of Trier. Although such high-ranking church posts were not hereditary, the candidates for most German bishoprics were required to come from the high nobility, and many bishoprics effectively passed down families, or alternated between two families. The Archbishopric of Magdeburg, for instance, was generally held by a scion of the families of the Electors of Saxony and of Brandenburg. In addition, temporal rulers could hold and exercise spiritual power. Thus in Wittenberg, the Elector of Saxony claimed spiritual jurisdiction over the castle church and later over the town, and this was ceded by the Archbishop. In consequence, long before the Reformation, bishops and rulers were vying for authority and sometimes for territory. Not all ecclesiastical power was mediated through bishops: the Abbesses of Essen and Quedlinburg, like some abbots held their jurisdiction directly from the Pope. The German churches which emerged in the course of the Reformation were deeply influenced by their local contexts and by the patterns of relationship between the bishops and temporal political authorities, which in turn shaped emerging Reformation church orders.
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Religious Violence, Martyrdom, and Martin Luther
David M. Whitford
Violence was first experienced in the church as martyrdom. Under the Roman Empire, Christians were subjected to state-sponsored penalties ranging from fines to corporal punishment to execution. A number of prominent early theologians and apologists fell victim, including Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Origen, Cyprian, Perpetua, and Felicity. With the end of persecution under Constantine and then its eventual designation as the empire’s official religion, Christianity’s relationship to violence changed significantly. While some theologians had attempted to grapple with the question of whether Christians could join the Roman armies, the new relationship between church and state required new theological consideration. Accordingly, new questions arose: For example, could or should the state enforce right belief? Over time, three general approaches to violence emerged.
The first is a coercive model. In this model, the state (and then later, the church in places) used its punitive powers to enforce Christian orthodoxy and fight against its enemies, both within its own borders and externally. St. Augustine provided part of the justification for coercion in his “Letter 93: To Valentius,” in which he argued that not all persecution is evil. If persecution is aimed at bringing one to right belief and practice, it has a positive goal. Many heresy trials and later executions were supported by “Letter 93.” Later thinkers expanded the model of internal persecution against heretics to external attacks on those deemed threatening to Christianity from outside the church or outside the empire. The Crusades were largely justified on such bases.
The second is a pacifist model. Though perhaps the dominant model in the first two centuries of the church, it was quickly eclipsed by the other two perspectives. Early theologians such as Tertullian and Cyprian argued that because Christ forbade Peter to use the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christians were forbidden from using violence to achieve any ends, “but how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away” (Tertullian, On Idolatry, Chapter 19, “On Military Service.”) In the medieval period, the pacifist model was adopted by some monastic traditions (e.g., the Spiritualist Franciscans), but more commonly by what were then considered heretical movements, including the Cathars, Albigensians, Waldensians, and Czech Brethren.
The final model is often called the “Just War” perspective. The origin for this theory can be found in St. Ambrose’s response to a massacre of innocent people. He argued that while a Christian should never use violence for his or her own benefit, there were times when a Christian, out of love for neighbor, had to use violence to protect the weak or innocent. To stand by and watch the powerful attack or kill the innocent when one can do something to prevent it is nearly as great a sin as being one of the attackers. As with the coercive model, Augustine provided much of the framework for this view of violence. Augustine allowed that there were some righteous wars, fought at the command of God as punishment for iniquity. That view remained less influential and is more closely connected to the coercive model. Far more influential was his view that there were wars that were necessary for the protection of the homeland and the innocent. In this sense, he outlined two major principles that guided later thinking. First, a war must have a right (or just) cause (ius ad bellum), and one must fight the war itself justly (ius in bello). Just causes included defending the homeland, coming to the aid of an ally, punishing wicked rulers, or retaking that which was unlawfully stolen. Beyond the simple cause, it also had to be rightly intentioned—it could not be fought for vainglory’s sake, nor to take new lands. It had to have some method of state control, since states go to war, not individual people. When conducting the war, one also had responsibilities. One had to be proportional, have achievable ends, and fight discriminately (that is, between combatants, not combatants against civilian populations). Finally, and most importantly, war had to be a last resort after all other measures failed, and it had to be aimed at producing a benefit for those one sought to defend. In the medieval era, Thomas Aquinas added significant precision to Augustine’s framework.
All three models continued into the Reformation era. The advent of formally competing visions of Christianity following Luther’s excommunication by the pope and his ban by the emperor in 1521 at the Diet of Worms added new dimensions to these models. Martin Luther had occasion to comment upon all three.
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Martin Luther’s Catechisms
Ninna Jørgensen
The word “catechism” denotes instruction in the basic knowledge of Christianity. It is a Latin version of the term that the Greek Church Fathers employed when teaching converts before allowing them to be baptized and thus become full members of the church. The verb meaning “catechize” is known already in the New Testament (e.g., Acts 18:25; Gal. 6:6). The application of the noun to a specific textbook, however, originates in Martin Luther’s edition of such a book in 1529, Enchiridion: Catechism for simple vicars and preachers.
Luther composed two catechisms in the wake of the Peasants’ War (1524–1525), which also instigated systematic Roman Catholic Church visitations in Saxony, and Luther’s catechisms can be regarded as an integral part in the building up of a new magisterial (“state”) church. At that time, the Reformer had a comprehensive background in catechetical authorship, which had evolved during his more than twenty years as a preacher. His catechisms were the outcome of a preaching campaign on catechetical matters which he undertook in 1528 as a substitute for the vicar in Wittenberg, John Bugenhagen. For a few years he had demanded that a “catechism” (a sermon on the knowledge necessary for children and simple folk) be printed. Not satisfied with the efforts of his fellow reformers, Luther began to publish the basics on tablets intended to be hung on the wall. These tablets became literally worn out from use and are no longer extant, but they formed the basis of the booklet afterwards called “D. Martin Luther's Small Catechism.” Overnight the term “catechismus” became a universal word for a genre of books intended to convey the elements of doctrine to every member of Christian society. When Luther edited his sermons from the same campaign, he named the publication his “German (later ‘Large’) Catechism.”
The outstanding characteristic of Luther’s Enchiridion, or “Small Catechism,” was its verybrevity, which probably reflects the fact that it was conceived as an oral recitation of questions and answers. In using this form, Luther was preceded by a pastor in Schwäbisch Hall, John Brenz, who also produced his “Questions on Christian Faith for the Youth” in 1527, closely related to his preaching. Brenz included, as Luther would later do, the demand that applicants for the Lord’s Supper should first prove their knowledge of the basics of that belief. In a revised edition, Brenz’s catechism became extremely popular and coexisted with Luther’s in the southern parts of the German Reich, even after the latter was formally adopted as part of normative Lutheran doctrine with the publication of the Book of Concord in 1580.
The notion of a catechism as a short collection of formulas was, however, almost immediately superseded by a wider concept covering a wide range of instructions in faith. The short explanations were felt to be unsatisfactory and gave way to large “exposed catechisms.” Moreover, the catechisms soon became vehicles of confessional or even national identity. Both Reformed and Roman Catholic theologians closed in on essential doctrine in elaborate catechisms, most notably in the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 and the Catechismus Romanus of 1566.
Both rehearsing the catechism and enlarging the text by adding new glosses existed until well into the 19th century, when a combination of new pedagogical ideals and the full and final secularization of the schools gave way to more obvious methods of instruction in both church and school. By the middle of the 20th century, the catechisms were ousted by Bible history. Today the classical catechism is mainly seen as a challenge and a possible inspiration for combining a short text with substantial religious teaching.
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Martin Luther’s Concept of Doctrine
Friederike Nüssel
Luther conceives Christian doctrine drawn from the Bible and summarized in the articles of faith as the essential resource and topic of all Christian teaching and preaching. In contrast to both scholastic and post-Reformation theology, Luther emphasizes the strong connection and interdependence between doctrine and proclamation. While doctrine communicates God’s word in his law and his gospel, doctrine can only be pure if it does not confuse law and gospel but carefully distinguishes God’s demand in the law from the promise and gift of his mere grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus, the core topic of Christian doctrine is Christ’s redemption through his proclamation, his death on the cross, and his resurrection by which God in the power of his spirit graciously offers justification by faith alone. By representing God’s gracious revelation in the incarnation and redemptive and salvific activity of his son, Christian doctrine communicates the presence of the loving and justifying God who evokes faith and trust through his word. While Christian doctrine grants knowledge about God’s triune activity, it is not only informative, but communicates God’s promise efficiently.
In the course of the Reformation, Luther emphasized more the importance of the verbum externum as an instrument to communicate pure doctrine. To support Christian teaching and education, he wrote the catechisms in which he explains the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostle’s Creed as the essential resources of Christian doctrine, but unlike Melanchthon, he did not summarize Christian doctrine in loci theologici. Yet he understood the articles of faith to be inherently connected and inseparable as they refer to the unity of God. Thus, the systematic explanation of the Christian faith in Lutheran orthodoxy meets with Luther’s understanding of the structure of doctrine and his concern for fully exploring and apprehending God’s grace and justice as revealed in the gospel. At the same time, Luther always used doctrine in soteriological context. Because of its particular content, theological reflection of doctrine cannot exclude the dimension of proclamation.
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Martin Luther’s Writings
Robert Kolb
Luther’s reform spread as rapidly and as widely as it did because of his effective marshalling of the media of oral proclamation and the relatively new medium of printed materials produced with movable type. His use of printed materials to spread his Reformation embraced a number of genres. The medieval genre, including the ars moriendi and meditations on Christ’s passion, provided avenues to deconstruct and reconstruct the theology and practice of the medieval church. The disputation form of the Ninety-Five Theses generated both the expanded form of argument in the “sermo” and various expressions of polemical literature. Luther transformed catechesis with his Large and Small Catechisms, helped popularize the hymn as a medium of instruction and devotion, provided “continuing education” for parish pastors through published sermons, and formulated his message for public and pastoral consumption in other genres as well. Each of these genres served, in different ways, as means for the Wittenberg reformer to shape the message and practice of the church and its people. In each genre, he continued to experiment with effective ways of calling hearers and readers to repentance and of bringing them the comfort of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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The Luther Renaissance
Heinrich Assel
The Luther Renaissance is the most important international network for Luther research, as well as an ecclesial, ecumenical and cultural reform movement between 1900 and 1960 in Germany, Scandinavia, and Finland. It was the first exemplary attempt to construct theologically, under the conditions of modernity, a coherent unity of Reformation thought, based on various national discourses and with a focus on the person and experience of Martin Luther. For European Luther studies between 1910 and 1960, the impact of the Luther Renaissance is essential in regard to heuristics, methodology, and scientific results, as well as its ecclesial, cultural, and ecumenical applications. This impact, though declining since 1960, is still vivid, even in critiques and in the shift of paradigms in Luther research.
Recent research has comprehensively evaluated the national trends of the Luther Renaissance in Germany and in Sweden. Research has later addressed the Luther Renaissance in Denmark, Norway, and Finland.
Theologically, the German Luther Renaissance is the “other new start” in Protestantism after 1918, besides and alongside Dialectical Theology; scientifically, the Luther Renaissance responds to the crisis of historicism (e.g., in the work of Ernst Troeltsch) and is intertwined with the rise of Weberian-influenced religious history and sociology. It originated around 1910 with the gewissensreligiöse interpretation of Luther’s first Commentary on Romans (1515/1516, rediscovered and newly edited in 1908) by Karl Holl. Its visible breakthrough as a new theological paradigm came with Holl’s Luther, a comprehensive collection of his studies on Luther written between 1909 and 1921.
In Germany the Luther Renaissance included Karl Holl (1886–1926) and his school, most prominently Emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972); Carl Stange (1870–1959), and his network, including Rudolf Hermann (1887–1962) and Paul Althaus (1888–1966). It also comprised younger theologians such as Hans Joachim Iwand (1899–1960) or, in his early work, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945).
The German Luther Renaissance emphasized the foundational status of the experience of justification in two respects: in terms of religion as a “worldview” (Dilthey) and as a social theory of confessions (Troeltsch, Weber). Concurrent neo-Idealistic and neo-Kantian philosophies of religion were the background for interpreting justification as a foundational and orientational religious experience in the “crisis of modernity” after 1918.
The elaboration of this program during the 1920s developed in different directions, with increasingly contradictory results in the two branches of the Luther Renaissance: the school of Karl Holl, and the German-Swedish network of Stange, Hermann, Nygren Runestam, and Aulén. After 1933 international cooperation within the Luther Renaissance disintegrated because of contradictory theological, ecclesial, and political positions in conformity with or in critique of the (church) politics of the German Nazi party, with its militarism, racism, and totalitarianism. The German Luther Renaissance had lost its international nature by the end of the 1930s.
Current and forthcoming research will have to evaluate historically the international network of the Luther Renaissance before 1933, between 1933 and 1945, and after 1945, including the function of political theologies within the Luther Renaissance—both the totalitarian, racist, and fascist types, and the liberal-democratic, welfare-state types. The foci of recent and forthcoming research are overarching topics of the international Luther Renaissance; source strata of the later reception of Luther, methodological constraints and deficits of different national discourses as possible reasons for the shift of paradigms around 1960, and the long-lasting impacts of the Luther Renaissance.
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Martin Luther in Karl Marx
Paul R. Hinlicky
The topic of Luther in Marxism is vast and too diffuse to be useful to define issues and orient future research. However, the more limited topic of Luther in Marx is definite, manageable, and useful. If the framing of the relation between Luther and Müntzer first created by Müntzer and then adopted and popularized by Engels can be bracketed, and if the comparison of Luther and Marx is carefully controlled by Marx’s encounter with Luther texts, the result is a tacit but surprising claim by Marx to have found in Luther a predecessor in the analysis of capitalism. This surprise, however, entitles Luther to be heard afresh in his own voice in making his theological-ethical critique of mercantilism and monopoly finance in the 16th century. This new listening to Luther yields a concurrence between Luther and Marx regarding Marx’s claim that, in distinction from historical Christianity, the Marxist revolution brings an earthly, not otherworldly salvation; Luther, however, states just this difference differently, in terms of the Augustinian ordo caritatis. The double love commandment drives his own analysis of the proper Christian use of temporal goods. Beyond the exposé by Luther’s Augustinian theology of the false loves moving the civitas terrena, however, we discover the descent of critical social thinking to both Luther and Marx from the apocalyptic tradition of Second Temple Judaism. Recognizing this family resemblance makes visible the messianic divergence between the two. With this divergence clarified, new questions for Luther research arise.
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Martin Luther and the Holy Spirit
Lois Malcolm
Although often neglected in historical and theological studies of Martin Luther’s work, an understanding of the Holy Spirit undergirds his signal contributions to the history of theology and is essential to any case for his ongoing relevance to contemporary theology and practice. Drawing on biblical exegesis, Luther would reinvigorate the doctrine of the Holy Spirit he inherited from the Western theological tradition and from the Ancient Church. Nonetheless, he wrote in a variety of literary genres and in response to a range of issues. To address this linguistic and historical complexity, this article examines the role the concept of the Holy Spirit plays in his theology by providing readings of texts that have been influential on later appropriations of his work. In doing so, it focuses on two intertwined themes in his theology. First, it examines his understanding of the Holy Spirit in relation to justification—that is, the righteousness of God we receive as a gift by faith—looking at his early biblical theology and two especially influential texts, “The Freedom of a Christian” (1520) and his “Lectures on Galatians” (1535). Second, it discusses his portrayal of the Holy Spirit as sanctifier—that is, as the one who creates holiness or sanctification in us—in his most well-known catechisms, in the “Confession of 1528,” and in his “Lectures on Genesis” (1535) and “Sermons on John” (1537). Throughout, attention will also be given to his understanding of the Trinity, Word and sacraments, faith, hope, and love, and the themes of promise and gift. The article concludes with a sketch of historical work and a discussion of the influence of Luther’s pneumatology on later theology and current areas of research.
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Martin Luther’s View of Atonement and Reconciliation
Sibylle Rolf
The inquiry into the nature of atonement (or reconciliation) presupposes a broken relationship. Atonement (or reconciliation) brings about the restoration of the relationship, creating both a change in and renewal of it. Hence, atonement is recognized as a communicative and open-ended process, which needs continual repetition and renewal. Indeed, God reconciled the world with Himself once and for all (2 Cor. 5:19), but this atonement event is reappropriated in faith and put into effect again and again.
In Luther’s theology, atonement designates the communicative disclosure of God’s salvation revealed to believers in the person and work of Jesus Christ in two ways: in the proclamation of the gospel and in the existential impartation of the person of Jesus Christ to the believer, who in turn is freed to enter new life, trusting in God, in the process of reconciliation. In this atonement event mediated by the work of the Holy Spirit, sin is overcome; the death and life of Jesus Christ are appropriated by God for the believer, and the person is separated from his or her sin. Therefore, atonement rests completely on the creative, communicative action of the triune God. However, there is also a human aspect involved that anticipates the believer’s death in baptism and transfers the believer into a new life (2 Cor. 5:17–19).
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The Word of God in Martin Luther’s Theology
Jens Wolff
Luther develops a new concept of the Word of God that concentrates on the word and image of Christ. He uses performative images and presence metaphors not only in the field of Christology, but also in the field of creation and consummation. The Word of God and the image of Christ are the only medial possibilities for proclaiming the presence of God with the prevalence of the oral word over the written word (scripture). Christ is understood as the personal Word of God, which can be communicated only through interpersonal mediality and polysemy. The cultural technique of communication makes faith possible (e.g., through the sermon, Lord’s Supper, or baptism). Rhetoric is the effective and affective way to communicate this Word of God.
The rhetoric of the crucified as the imaginative Word of God is the medium that liberates the believer from being entangled with sin, hell, and death. Yet speech cannot be functionalized to become a guaranteed presence of this word—although Christ understands himself as a communicator. At the same time, his word is a rhetorical strategy for coping with the absence of God. The cry at the cross, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) is a verbal expression of the complete Godforsakenness of the crucified. The words on the cross express the radical absence of God. The rhapsodic cry is centered on abandonment. It cannot be whitewashed by ontology or logic. With these words Luther accentuates the negativity of the dead body as a communicative practice. The Word of God (and the word of the Christian) is characterized by polysemy: the word of the resurrection of Christ is gospel. Only this oral word enables the perception of resurrection. In many other dogmatic fields, such as creation, theological anthropology, incarnation, the sacraments, ecclesiology, and eschatology, faith and words belong together because God’s companionship with us is verbal. The iconic and metaphoric character of the word is not a representation of the fourfold sense of scripture, but a unique way to accentuate the performativity and at the same time the polysemy of the Word of God.
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Martin Luther’s Reform of Worship
Dirk G. Lange
Martin Luther’s reform of worship centers on gospel proclamation in its various manifestations. Gospel-centered worship necessarily de-centers the individual in his or her own quest for fulfillment or meaning. It de-centers the community from an inward, self-sufficient, closed-border understanding of identity. God comes to the believer and the community in worship through means (that is, through preaching and the administration of the sacraments). These means disrupt, confront, create, renew, and re-orient faith and love.
In A Treatise on the New Testament, That Is, the Holy Mass, Luther sums up the reform of worship in one sentence: “Christ, in order to prepare for himself an acceptable and beloved people, which should be bound together in unity through love, abolished the whole law of Moses. And that he might not give further occasion for divisions and sects, he appointed in return but one law or order for his entire people, and that was the holy mass” (LW 35:81; WA 6:355, 3–4). The law that Luther points to is none other than Christ himself coming to humankind, giving of himself, reconciling all of humanity with God. This work is finished. There are no other sacrifices to be made (The Misuse of the Mass, LW 36). Worship is now characterized by two things: thanksgiving and service.
In his reform of the liturgy, Luther argued that the liturgy is both about the word and the rites. The Word of God (as something “heard,” for example, in preaching) does not negate or replace the ritual of worship but the Word is encountered both in the preaching and in the rites (sacraments). Proclamation happens within the liturgical order. The liturgy is not displaced or replaced by preaching the Word alone. Though the sacraments, particularly the Sacrament of the Altar (or Holy Communion) was misused, Luther did not reject the sacrament per se but sought to re-establish a correct interpretation. Sacrament was not to be equated with sacrifice but with a gift from God. Therefore, Luther continually argued for the maintenance of the bond between Word and sacrament as constitutive of the liturgy.
A corollary reform involved retrieving the role of the body in worship. Proclamation employs earthly means. The gospel expressed in words (preaching) presents only half the picture because God’s Word also comes to the worshiping community through non-verbal means. Luther explains how the words are also seen and tasted, how they are received through and in the body.
A key aspect of these characteristics of the reform of worship is on the interior sources of the liturgy. Luther and reformers keep the ceremonies and traditions of the Mass as long as they do not burden consciences (that is, create guilt in a person by making them believe they must still do something to be reconciled with God). The Word, whether preached or embodied in the sacraments, must point the believer always towards the gospel, that is, towards God’s free gift of forgiveness, reconciliation, and new creation. If, however, the preaching and the sacraments are considered works that make a believer righteous before God, they are to be condemned for then they no longer serve the Gospel.
This reversal in the theology of worship takes shape in Luther’s two proposals for a liturgical order as it does in his writing on public worship and on the sacraments, notably Baptism and Holy Communion. Though he proposed liturgical orders, Luther constantly maintained that such orders should not become “rules” but serve as demonstrations on how evangelical freedom is to be maintained within the framework of God’s Word and sacrament.
Article
Baptism in Martin Luther’s Theology
Kirsi Stjerna
Baptism opens a window to the heart of Martin Luther’s 16th-century theology. It offers a perspective for how Luther understands the impact of grace and its channels, as well as the nature of justification in an individual’s life. In his teaching about baptism, Luther demonstrates the vital working of the Word and lays a foundation for a Word-centered and faith-oriented spirituality. With baptism, Luther articulates his vision for the purpose of the Church and the rationale for sacraments. Baptism reveals different sides of the theologian: one who argues with a zeal on the “necessity” of baptism and its meaningful God-mandated practice in Christian communities and another who imagines God’s saving grace too expansive to be limited to any ritual. The apparent tensions in Luther’s articulation can be understood from his overlapping agendas and different audiences: in his baptismal talk, Luther is both processing his own Angst about salvation and negotiating his developing position in relation to the medieval sacramental theology and other emerging reform solutions. While feistily refuting his opponents, he is also speaking from his personal religious experience of being as if reborn with the encounter of the Word of grace and passionately extrapolating his most foundational conviction: God’s unconditional promise of grace as the ground of being for human life, given to humanity in the Word. The matter of baptism leads to the roots of different Christian “confessional” traditions. The format of the ritual has generated less anxiety than differing theological opinions on (1) the role of faith in the validity of baptism, and (2) the effects of baptism in one’s life. Whether infant or adult baptism is favored depends on whether baptism is primarily understood as a sign of faith, a cause of forgiveness and transformation, or an initiation into the Christian community—or all of the above. Baptism is at the center of Luther’s theological nervous system; it connects with every other vital thread in the theological map. Baptism is a mystery and a matter of faith; it calls for a philosophical imagination and mystical willingness to grasp the questions of reality beyond what meets the eye. “I study it daily,” Luther admits in his “Large Catechism.” “In baptism, therefore, every Christian has enough to study and practice all his or her life. Christians always have enough to do to believe firmly what baptism promises and brings.”
