In the Swedish history of Christian thought there are various interpretations of the Reformation and of Martin Luther and his work. In the 17th century, Luther predominately stood out as an instrument of God’s providence. In the 18th century, among the pietists, he was regarded as a fellow believer, in the 19th century as a hero of history, and in the 20th century during the Swedish so-called Luther Renaissance as a prophet and an interpreter of the Gospel. This does not necessarily mean that the interpretations of Luther merely reflect the various thought patterns of different epochs, that whatever is said about Luther is inevitably captured by the spirit of the time. The serious study of Luther’s writings could also lead to contradictions with common thought patterns and presuppositions. One could say that Luther’s writings have worked as “classics,” not merely confirming the status quo but also generating new patterns of thought and deed, making him something rather different than just a name, a symbol, or a flag, which sometimes have been assumed. And one can only hope that his writings will continue to work in the same way in years to come. Anyway the reception of the Lutheran heritage in Sweden is well worth studying since it in some ways differs from the reception in other Evangelic countries.
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Martin Luther in Sweden
Carl Axel Aurelius
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The Twofold Rule of God
John R. Stumme
During the 20th century there was a remarkable change in the interpretation of Martin Luther’s approach to society. During the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries, many understood that Luther advocated a sharp separation between gospel and world, faith and politics, church and state. Faith or religion was understood to be a private affair that had nothing to do with the autonomous functioning of government and other secular institutions. Christians were to obey the existing powers, even if unjust or authoritarian, and serve their neighbor through acts and church institutions of mercy. Lutherans were called quietists, defeatists, and dualists, and Karl Barth alleged that Luther’s understanding of law and gospel allowed other gods to claim allegiance alongside Jesus the Lord. And then especially there were the Lutheran failures in the Nazi experience.
All of this spurred theologians to critically evaluate their tradition and to take a fresh look at Luther in order to assist the church to be a more responsible presence in a changing world. In the middle decades of the last century, there was an impressive outpouring of historical and theological studies on what was being called Luther’s “two-kingdoms doctrine.” These studies did not exonerate Luther from all the ills of the tradition that bears his name, but they did reveal that other ideas and interests led to Luther’s approach often being wrongly interpreted and ideologically misused. These studies offered new interpretations, often differing in their positions and emphases, which demonstrated the complexity, the “labyrinth” (Johannes Heckel), of Luther’s thought and also revealed something about the social location of the interpreter. Yet there was wide agreement that Luther in his life and his theology did not disdain or withdraw from social and political life. On the contrary; a revisionist strain saw Luther’s theological distinctions to be essential for the church both to preserve the uniqueness of the gospel and to encourage Christians to participate critically in society. Questions remained, yet many in various contexts found in Luther a way for the church to affirm both justification and justice.
This all too brief sketch of the controversial and checkered history of interpretation of Luther’s thought on society since the early 20th century sets the stage for turning to Luther himself. In addressing social and political issues, Luther moves out from the center of his theology. That center is justification, the belief that people, sinners before God, are forgiven and justified by faith alone because of Jesus Christ. Christians living in faith before God also live at the same time in the networks and institutions of society where they are freed and called to love their neighbor. For Luther Christians always live in these two realms or relationships in which God is active; the loving God who justifies also creates the world in which Christians and others live. Better labels for Luther’s approach than “two kingdoms” are “the twofold rule of God” or “the two realms.”
Luther works out his understanding of political authority and its relation to spiritual authority as part of the twofold rule of God. He does so while protesting the abuses in the church and leading a reforming movement. He is concerned to show the proper function of Word and sword and their relationship. His 1523 treatise Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed sets out his perspective, which later he developed and modified.
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Martin Luther in the Eyes of His Roman Catholic Opponents
Jared Wicks
From late 1517 into early 1521 Catholic theologians and church officials examined Luther’s publications for erroneous doctrines and to weigh the gravity of his heterodoxies. Pope Leo X issued on June 15, 1520, the official censure, in Exsurge Domine, of forty-one positions Luther had advanced, under qualifications as “dangerous,” “erroneous,” or “heretical.” The ranking academic body of Europe, the University of Paris, added on April 15, 1521, its Determinatio that Luther was advancing erroneous or heretical positions in 104 positions lifted from his works.
On the way to these judgments, the Dominicans Johann Tetzel, Sylvester Prierias, and Cardinal Cajetan played roles, as did the university theologians of Louvain and Cologne, while Johann Eck contributed significantly to Exsurge Domine. The censures, however, lacked clarity in presenting Luther and his doctrine, since they listed his errant propositions unsystematically and with little precision on their gravity. From them remained the fact of Luther’s condemnation.
German Catholic pamphleteers of 1518–1530 sketched Luther as subverting authorities, both civil and ecclesial. Eck’s handbook of Catholic defenses (1525) added traits of Luther’s revival of Manichaean heresies and opening the doctrinal field to the frenzied Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Anabaptists. Johannes Cochlaeus chronicled Luther’s life and works amply, with readings in the worst light, from which Catholics for centuries were schooled to perceive Luther as ever-changing but thoroughly pestilential in his impact on both church and world.
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Martin Luther, Jews, and Judaism
Dorothea Wendebourg
Martin Luther was engaged with the topic “Jews and Judaism” all his life, from his earliest works until his last. The main context for his preoccupation with this topic was interpretation of Holy Scripture, particularly in his many and ample lectures on books of the Old Testament, starting with the “Dictata supra Psalterium,” his first lecture on the Psalms (1513‒1515), down to his “Lecture on the Book of Genesis” (1535‒1545). In addition, he wrote several treatises on the question of how Christian society should relate to the Jews living in its midst, most important, “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew” (1523) and “On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543). These writings were, however, to a large extent also exegetical works. Altogether Luther’s attitude toward the Jews and Judaism is characterized simultaneously by continuity and by radical change: (1) continuity is obvious in his theological statements on Judaism which were based on a certain hermeneutics of the Old Testament centered in the Messiahship of Jesus Christ; and (2) change in his demands regarding the treatment of contemporary Jews which in earlier years followed his conception of the Two Kingdoms whereas in later times he came back to the traditional ideal of corpus Christianum. This change led to contradictory receptions of his statements on the topic in the course of history. All this is reflected in the research on the subject since the beginning of modern historical scholarship.
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Martin Luther’s Reformatory Discovery
Dietrich Korsch
In the debate on Luther’s Reformatory Discovery two elements come together: the systematic question of how to determine the essential content of reformatory theology, that is, the core of Reformation itself, and the historical question of the point in his life at which Luther reached this insight. The debate arose first in the late 19th century, when the essence of Protestantism was brought into question and scholars tried to find an answer in the writings of Luther himself.
This historical and methodological conjunction leads to different results concerning both the religious content of the discovery and the date when Luther discovered it. Two main answers have been given. The first supposes that it is the logical structure of self-annihilation and divine affirmation that is specifically reformatory. Luther came to this insight during his first lecture on Psalms, about 1514. This means that he certainly knew what his new theology contained when the indulgences controversy broke out. The second theory underscores that Luther had to establish a kind of outward kerygmatic reality in order to make the inner conflict and contradiction of sentiments acceptable. He reached this position only in 1518, that is, after the beginning of the controversy over indulgences in 1517. Therefore, the final development of Luther’s reformatory insight took place in the confrontation with the ecclesiastical powers of his day.
For many years the debate focused upon a late text by Luther, namely, the preface of the first volume of his Latin works in 1545. It has to be admitted that Luther offered there his own recollection of the beginning of his new theology. But he did so quite briefly, concentrating only on the notion of iustitia passiva. This is a proper term for the content of the reformatory insight, but Luther did not fully explain the spiritual and practical context. Therefore, one must imagine that the Reformatory Discovery came about through a longer process of theological reflection, including its biblical, conceptual, spiritual, and ecclesial consequences. It is significant that the conflict with the Roman Church came up exactly when Luther stressed the externality of God’s Word for establishing the inner status of humankind before God. The church can only be the medium, not the subject, of salvation. And the correspondence to God’s Word means quite simply faith, that is, the acceptance of being accepted by God.
One must reckon here with a process that began with Luther’s first lectures in 1513 and came to an end by 1520. Luther’s “On the Freedom of a Christian” of 1520 clearly shows his reformatory discovery fully established.
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Martin Luther’s Pastoral Writings
Ronald K. Rittgers
Luther was first and foremost a pastor who was deeply concerned with the care of souls. While the study of his controversial writings provides important insight into various aspects of his theology, it was his pastoral writings that arguably made the greater impact on his contemporaries. These writings spanned his entire career, examined numerous topics, and appeared in various genres. Luther’s deep commitment to producing pastoral works aimed at edification and consolation, especially of the laity, may be seen as a continuation of a late medieval trend that was similarly concerned with spiritual nurture and guidance. Consolation was a dominant theme in Luther’s pastoral writings, but so was the call to a deeply earnest Christianity that embraced suffering and affliction for the sake of the gospel. Luther’s pastoral writings were intended to help pastors minister to the needs of their flocks, but in many cases these works were directed to the laity, both to console and exhort them in the Christian life and also to mobilize them for ministry to one another.
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Martin Luther in the German Enlightenment
Albrecht Beutel
The Age of Enlightenment made an epochal paradigm shift in the assessment of Luther. This upheaval is exemplified in brief case studies from the literature, historiography, and theology of that period. These studies show that the German Enlightenment overcame the fixation on Luther’s theology, which was limited to its own time, while it formed a structural discipleship—doing in that context what Luther had done in his—of Luther. In this way, it could recognize its own historical responsibility with critical autonomy while still invoking Luther’s spirit and character.
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Martin Luther in Central Europe: Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia
L'ubomír Batka
The reception of Luther in central Europe has been influenced by the Counter-Reformation and re-Catholicization more than anywhere else. Protestantism was so widespread in this area throughout the 16th century that it largely reduced the Roman Catholic Church to a minority confession, but 500 years later it comprises a majority. The diaspora situation did not leave space for academic research in Luther’s theology. This article focuses on just two regions of central Europe that can serve as typical case studies: parts of the lands of the Bohemian crown, and of the kingdom of Hungary. Similarities could be found in other parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, but particular historical complexities make it difficult to speak about central Europe as a whole.
In its early phase, Luther’s thought spread primarily in regions where the population was able to read Reformation texts in German: Silesia, North Bohemia, Moravia, Upper Hungary, west Hungary, and Transylvania. From about 1520, it was predominantly the cities along the routes of German traders that contributed to the spread of Luther’s writings in central Europe. In addition, the strong political position of the estates influenced the reception of Luther’s theology in certain areas more than in others. Moreover, the catechetical work done in schools under humanistic influence supported the idea of reformation and religious tolerance. Luther had a much more lasting impact on piety and spirituality through his Small Catechism and hymns than through theological reception, for example in Slovakia. In Bohemia, in contrast, Luther’s works were first translated into another national language, and there occurred theological reflection from various angles, yet no lasting tradition of Lutheranism was established.
Reformation in Slovakia, as in like in Hungary, Austria, and Poland, was dominated by Lutherans, whereas in Bohemia and Moravia the Hussite reformation and religious freedom allowed the development of various other confessions, such as Utraquism and the Unity of the Brethren. In central Europe, the Reformation started earlier but was broadly established later than in western Europe. In the first half of the 1520s, the impact of Luther was sporadic and not connected throughout larger areas. After the battle at Mohács and the Diet of Augsburg, the call for ecclesiastical reform was more broadly accepted, first in the cities with predominant German populations, then by the nobility, and by the 1540s by Hungarians, Slovaks. The Letter of Majesty in Bohemia (1609), and the Peace of Vienna and Diet of 1608 in Hungary constituted legal recognition of the evangelical communities. The Reformation in Bohemia and Hungary was more diverse than anywhere in western Europe. The confessionalization of the Reformation reflected and accentuated ethnic differences throughout the region.
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Martin Luther and Lutheran Orthodoxy
Andreas Stegmann
The theology of early modern Lutheranism was based on Martin Luther. From the mid-16th century to the start of the 18th, the theology developed and taught at Lutheran universities in Germany (in modern research called “Lutheran Orthodoxy”) centered on the Lutheran confession and took place within the institutional setting of church and university created by the Wittenberg Reformation. Luther’s theology was pervasive throughout early modern Lutheranism owing to basic confessional material such as the Luther Bible, Luther’s hymns, Luther’s Catechisms, Luther’s book of prayers, Luther’s liturgies, Luther’s homilies, Lutheran confessions, individual and complete editions of Luther’s works, Luther anthologies, and Luther memoria. This orientation reflects not so much an intensive preoccupation with his person and work and fundamental reflection on his authority, but rather stems from the natural presence of Luther in the Lutheran church and its theology.
This reception is tangible not only in intertextual references, such as when his work is mentioned, quoted, or paraphrased, but also in the approach, completion, and content of theological thinking. Lutheran Orthodoxy continued contributing to the theological work of the Lutheran Reformation, especially in biblical exegesis, soteriology, and Christology, but also in anthropology, ecclesiology, and ethics. Although Lutheran Orthodoxy at times abbreviated or went beyond some points of Luther’s thought, resulting in a broad spectrum of diverging theological positions, it largely remained within the framework created by the Wittenberg Reformation in the 16th century. In fact, many theological initiatives of the Reformation did not come to fruition until the post-Reformation period, and many theological problems that had remained unresolved were then clarified. Hence, Lutheran Orthodoxy must be regarded as the legitimate heir and authentic interpreter of the theological legacy of the Lutheran Reformation. Because the potential of the Lutheran Reformation can be seen in Lutheran Orthodoxy, examining it can bring a fresh perspective on the history of the Reformation.
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Martin Luther in Denmark
Niels Henrik Gregersen
In Denmark, Martin Luther was initially seen as a humanist reformer on a par with other humanists, but during the 1520s he increasingly became a divisive figure separating those wanting only to reform the Roman Catholic church from within, and those working for a break with Rome. Ways of understanding Luther differed widely within the evangelical camp too. Early “Lutherans” in Denmark, such as Hans Tausen and the drafters of the Confessio Hafniensis of 1530, presented legalistic and spiritualistic elements. In 1536, however, King Christian III announced the Reformation of Denmark, using robust Wittenberg theologians such as Johann Bugenhagen and Peder Palladius to reform the church, the university, and the society at large. Since then Denmark has been an unusually homogeneous Lutheran country, compared to Lutheran areas of Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries, including Luther’s own Sachsen. Yet Danish views of Luther have changed significantly over the centuries, especially after the national awakening in the 19th century. Thereafter, Luther was seen as a church father, though also as a somewhat remote figure. In 20th-century theology, N. F. S. Grundtvig and Søren Kierkegaard served as mediating figures between premodern Lutheranism and contemporary theology. After World War II, the Reformation is still widely regarded as formative for Danish history, albeit in combination with other inspirations. A secular mindset grew stronger both within and outside the Evangelical-Lutheran Church, with some promoting a liberalist interpretation of Luther’s two-kingdoms doctrine, and others challenging the Evangelical-Lutheran Church’s status as the “People’s Church.” By January 1, 2016, 76.9 percent of the Danish population were tax-paying members of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark.
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Martin Luther in North America
Mark A. Granquist
The United States as a country was religiously formed by Reformed Protestants, who were later joined by substantial numbers of immigrant Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Jews. The role of Martin Luther in this religiously varied and pluralistic society has often changed over time, and has depended greatly on the context of those who have written about him. In some periods of time, especially the 18th century, Luther was little noticed or commented about, generally a figure solely in the distant past. In the 19th century, many American writers and scholars took notice of Luther, but often as a past symbol of some reality the author wished to address. Thus, Luther was seen essentially as one of the first modern individuals in the West, standing for religious and personal liberty against the reactionary forces of church and state. Some Protestants noted him for his stance against the medieval Western church and the papacy, which mirrored their own anti–Roman Catholic positions; American Roman Catholics saw him as the cause of the splintering of the true church and the author of all that was religiously problematic. After the Civil War, scholars began to access modern German scholarship about Luther, and the Luther birth anniversary of 1883 was perhaps the high point of his reputation in America. In the 20th century, there were positive and negative developments. On the negative side, two world wars soured Americans on things German, and some saw Luther as contributing to the rise of the Nazis and of the Holocaust. On the positive side, many of Luther’s works were translated into English, and many new historical and theological studies of the reformer were produced in English, along with translations of European works. American Lutherans began to produce substantial contributions to Luther studies, and newer works, even among Roman Catholics, sought to put Luther into his historical and theological contexts.
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Martin Luther on Death and Dying
Susan C. Karant-Nunn
In the late 15th century, when Martin Luther was born and grew up, death was very much present. Family, friends, and neighbors seldom reached what we today would consider a middle age, and women of childbearing age were at special risk. Catholic clergy took pains to offer Christians at every social level ways in which they could prepare themselves for the happiest possible afterlife.
When Martin Luther joined the order of Augustinian Eremite Friars in 1505, he had never read a Bible. He now gained access to one that the brothers of the Erfurt house had in their library. Luther read it intently. He found that numerous Catholic points of theology and practice were not validated in scripture. In 1517, he chose the issue of indulgences on which to attack church practice, in view of the fact that the ordinary people in Wittenberg to whom he regularly preached—he was not their pastor—sacrificed a great deal to pay for certificates of indulgence.
As a result of his encounter with the Bible, Luther proceeded to dismantle long-standing Catholic belief concerning death and treatment of the dead. He disqualified the Virgin, saints, and priests as intermediaries between individual souls and God. He insisted that as a result of the Fall of Adam and Eve, humans could not perform good deeds to earn themselves entry to Heaven. They had, instead, to rely on the atoning power of Christ’s death on the cross to pay the penalties that they deserved for their continual sinning. Those who had faith in the atonement would be saved. Justification by faith supplanted a theology of justification by good works.
Gradually, over about twenty years, new Lutheran liturgies for ministering to the sick and dying and for burying the dead were introduced. Beginning at about midcentury, preachers were instructed to compose funeral sermons for just about every burial. These constitute a new literary subgenre. Many were published for reading by a larger audience, and as many as a quarter million of such printed sermons have survived. Visible as a theme within them is the traditional belief that every Christian should strive to achieve a “good death.” The phrase meant that dying people should cling fervently to the certainty that Christ has paid the penalty for faithful Christians’ sins.
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Martin Luther’s Theology of Authority
Martin J. Lohrmann
Martin Luther’s reforms involved complicated questions of authority. On one hand, Luther defied the greatest authority figures of his day: the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire; on the other hand, he can be accused of setting himself up as a new authority or of defending the status quo at the expense of more sweeping reform. The theological and practical rationale behind Luther’s views of authority will be investigated.
Luther’s critique of power and view of social systems grew out of his theological conviction that God alone rules creation and liberates people from sin and death. Because the Bible is the primary place of Christian knowledge for who God is and what God does, Luther’s view of scriptural authority also requires examination of the principles Luther developed to help Christians understand and live out their faith in biblically grounded ways. On this point, Luther had to address critiques from Rome that he interpreted the Bible subjectively and individualistically, even as he sought to curtail this same tendency among more radical reformers. Luther’s biblical interpretation uniquely combined elements he received from late-medieval monastic life, scholastic theology, and humanist scholarship.
How these theological and scriptural influences informed Luther’s conflict with papal authority will be examined. As has often been remarked, Luther did not set out to attack the papal church. Nevertheless, his Ninety-Five Theses (1517), which questioned the theology and practice surrounding the sale of indulgences, invited questions of papal authority with respect to money, the penitential system, and the afterlife. Early opponents of Luther like Sylvester Prierias and John Eck quickly identified such affronts to the authority of the church hierarchy and its dominant theologies, turning the discussion of indulgences into a broader controversy about papal authority. With writings including To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate and Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (both written in 1520), Luther confirmed the depth of his critique, which further escalated issues of authority related to theology, biblical interpretation, ecclesiology, and politics.
By what authority could an Augustinian brother and small-town university professor make such bold assertions? Luther believed that his job to serve as pastor and professor made him duty-bound to focus on central matters of faith, even if the institutional church opposed his insights. His method of biblical interpretation and view of church authority extended to reforms concerning “the office of the keys,” a historical term that, in a broad sense, describes the scriptural foundations of authority within the church and, more narrowly, refers to the particular means by which sins are forgiven through the church’s ministry.
Finally, these challenges took place in the context of a politically established European Christianity known as “Christendom.” Luther therefore also addressed how the spiritual message of the gospel related to the political realities of his day. His approach to this topic—also visible in the work of his colleague Philip Melanchthon—offers a perspective that is at once specific to the early modern period and stands as an enduring contribution to European political theory. In summary, Luther’s multifaceted engagement with questions of authority provides a fascinating matrix through which to explore and understand his work.
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Theological Language in Martin Luther
Joachim Ringleben
In Christianity, theological language must be understood against the background of the multifaceted semantic field of Logos. “Logos” (as “word” and as “linguistic reason”) is used in multiple contexts: (1) Trinitarian theological (John 1:1); (2) creation (Gen. 1:3) and revelation-theological (Jesus Christ “the Word of God” [ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ]: Rev. 19:13); and (3) soteriological-eschatological (“Word of Life,” 1 John 1:1). These references are mediated through the philosophy of language’s concept of “translation” (Johann Georg Hamann) and the idea of divine condescension into human language.
In Luther, religious language as the language of the Bible is to be understood on the one hand by its character as a living address to humankind and on the other as an immediate confession of the believer in spontaneous reaction to it. In biblical language, the Word of God, conveyed in human terms, comes closer to us than we do to our own selves and transforms our earthly existence to the goal of everlasting life.
Theological language is intellectual interpretation and conceptual reflection on religious language with a theoretical aim—in other words, its intent is to reach an agreement about itself under the conditions of the overall context; it concerns the truth of religious language and texts.
Because Luther—linguistically aware to the highest degree—recognized the specific distinctiveness of biblical language, and of New Testament language in particular, his writings contain an abundance of differentiated reflections on the state of appropriate theological language. The Word of God in our human language requires theology to have a “different” or “new” logic (and philosophy) in its articles of faith. All traditional philosophical terms and logical forms of judgment and conclusion must be “translated” into Christianity—even, for example, the concept of the human being and of the Word itself.
In particular, the unity of God and man in Christ compels a new sort of language or way of thinking. The imaginative form of spatial prepositions (such as “in”) must be rethought in determinate negation. In God, opposites coincide.
Because God’s Word is directed against the self-conception of the sinner before God, it comes to humankind essentially in the twin linguistic structure of “Law” and “Gospel”; these categories also define theological language in a specifically Reformation sense.
New Testament language, in its fundamentals, is eschatologically oriented. Hence, categories such as “substance” or “essence” (essentia) must be rephrased on the condition that nothing has already been defined, and everything is still developing. Luther undertook this with an eschatology of the Word of God.
As Luther shows in the case of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, “This is my body …,” the new logic is a genuinely linguistic logic, or rather thinking from language. Traditional (formal) logic replaces the logic of real language with an artificial model.
Finally, Luther also reflects on the linguistic status of the word “God” as a grammatical subject. Here, too, he wants the word “God” to be comprehended as a fluid substance, understanding it essentially as a verb—as a linguistic expression of movement—thus embodying the Reformation idea of “for me” (pro me).
Ultimately, it is always about the important role of two linguistic aspects in theological language: grammar on the one hand, which should receive fundamental attention, and linguistic usage (usus loquendi) on the other, the comprehension of which is also crucial. Thus, Luther’s understanding of theological language could be summarized in this statement: theology, understood linguistically, is a grammar of the language of the sacred scriptures.
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Martin Luther’s Theological Aesthetics
Mark Mattes
Theological aesthetics is the theory or view of beauty in relation to God, including how the senses bear on or contribute to matters of faith. It has a long and important tradition in all forms of Christian faith, since this faith affirms that God is beautiful and therefore desirable. In both the Eastern and Western churches, views of beauty have appropriated criteria not only from the Bible but also from pre-Christian antiquity, borrowing from Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and others. These views tend to see beauty in metaphysical terms, that is, that the core of reality is to be understood on the basis of not only being, truth, goodness, and unity (the “transcendentals,” defining the reality of all things) but also (with some exceptions) beauty.
Interpreting the scriptures, Christian thinkers in late antiquity, such as Augustine, singled out proportion as a criterion for beauty, and the Pseudo-Dionysius singled out light. Thomas Aquinas adopted these two perspectives, rooted in the wider Greek philosophical tradition, and added integrity or perfection as a third criterion. Late medieval nominalists and mystics did not focus on theological aesthetics but the piety and spirituality of “bridal mysticism,” mediated through Bernard of Clairvaux, present in Luther’s training in the friary, facilitated these views for Luther.
Luther appreciated aspects of this metaphysical tradition, such as the role of mathematics as indicating humanity’s eternal destiny or the cosmic role of proportion in musical intonation and rhythm. However, he was more powerfully influenced by other developments in the late Middle Ages, seen for instance in Jean Gerson, which heightened the affects over the intellect, intellectualizing beauty less and acknowledging how beauty moves and transforms people. He rejected that aspect of the tradition which was apt to view beauty as an end goal of an itinerary of spiritual transformation into more godlike traits, a “theology of glory.”
For Luther, God is the primary actor in the story of human salvation, not the human. God’s work of humbling humans “turned in upon themselves” is anything but beautiful: it is painful, indeed deadly, for “old beings.” But God’s proper work of regenerating and renovating humanity, including awakening human senses to “innocent delight,” is most beautiful indeed. The justification of sinners before God is due to their being “adorned” in Christ’s beauty, his righteousness, empowering them to cooperate with God in God’s ongoing “poetic” creativity.
As bearing human sin, Christ subverts the standard medieval criteria of proportion, brightness, and integrity. But because Christ assumes the consequences of sin and sin itself and takes it away, sinners through the “happy exchange” receive the beauty proper to Christ. Through the renewal effectuated by the word, humans receive creation as gift and are genuinely awakened to its beauty, similar to the beauty that God made it originally. As new creatures, believers’ desire is reoriented to desire what God desires.
While it is not a central concept (he devotes no treatises or disputations to it), it colors how we understand his view of justification and his view of human receptivity and gratitude. It has important ramifications for worship, the arts, and life.
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Martin Luther’s Trinitarian Hermeneutic of Freedom
Piotr J. Małysz
Luther puts forth a Trinitarian hermeneutic of human willing and the will’s freedom. Luther’s thought in this area is best seen as a response to a problem that medieval theology inherited from Augustine. The puzzle concerns the conceptualization of divine and human agencies. Medieval theology, despite its commitment to emphasizing divine grace, articulated the reality of the two agencies in a way that practically, and then also conceptually, privileged human initiative instead. Luther, in contrast, returns to Augustine’s intuition, though not quite his language, and proposes that nothing short of a Trinitarian conception of freedom will do for the affirmation of human choice that, nonetheless, presupposes and defers consistently to divine initiative and support.
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Martin Luther’s Perspective on Political Life
Ralph Keen
Luther’s position on the duties of rulers to preserve social order and on the obligation of subjects to obey them for the sake of civil tranquility is scripturally grounded, principally in Romans 13:1–7, and presupposes an anthropology in which humans are so sinful as to need worldly government. The foundations of Luther’s thought about politics can be located in two sources: his doctrine of the Two Kingdoms and his understanding of the Pauline precept in Romans 13 to obey worldly authorities. Woven into each of these positions is a theological anthropology that holds that fallen humanity is too sinful to survive without divine aid. In the political realm, this aid takes the form of civil government; as a correlate, the authority of the church for Luther is limited to spiritual matters only and has no influence in the governance of the people. Luther’s defense of the social order and civil government set him in sharp opposition to the leaders of the Peasants’ War and led him to support the Protestant princes in their opposition to the Holy Roman Empire (founded on the spurious authority of the Roman Catholic Church in political affairs) after the 1530 Diet of Augsburg. In his defense of obedience to worldly powers and his grounds for justified resistance to impious rule, Luther left a seemingly ambiguous legacy that manifested itself after his death in a division over advocates of obedience to a conciliatory ruler (who wished to reintroduce elements of Roman worship) and purists who insisted that such obedience was a violation of Luther’s intention.
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Martin Luther on Marriage and the Family
Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Marriage was at the heart of Martin Luther’s break with Rome and the Reformation that followed. He preached sermons praising marriage beginning in 1519 and several years later wrote his first formal treatise attacking the value of vows of celibacy and arguing that marriage was the best Christian life. In 1525 he followed his words by deeds and married a nun who had fled her convent, Katharina von Bora. What started as a marriage of principle and mutual esteem became one of affection and deep emotional bonds. Luther continued to attack the celibate life of Catholic clergy and nuns and to celebrate marriage as a godly estate throughout his career, in sermons, formal treatises, lectures, advice manuals, letters, comments on legal cases, and casual conversation. In all of these, he both praised marriage and family life and commented on its burdensome side, moving from theoretical speculations while he was a celibate monk to reflecting on his own experiences as he became a family man, though his basic theology of marriage did not change much after the early 1520s. His words were direct and blunt, even in formal treatises. Sexual desire was inescapable for all but a handful, he argued, so should be channeled into marriage. Vows of celibacy should be rendered void, and monasteries and convents should be closed or much reduced in size. He agreed with St. Augustine on the three purposes of marriage, in the same order of importance: the procreation of children, the avoidance of sin, and mutual help and companionship. He praised spousal love but asserted that the ideal of reciprocal love in marriage was not an ideal of equality. Proper marital households were hierarchical, for the wife was and had to be the husband’s helpmeet and subordinate. Bearing children was the “precious and godly task” for which women were created, he wrote, and death in childbirth and even the deaths of children were part of God’s plan, though he himself was devastated when his twelve-year-old daughter died.
As cities and territories in Germany and then beyond became Protestant, they passed marriage ordinances and established institutions to regulate marriage, turning to Luther for advice on such issues as divorce, desertion, secret engagements, and parental consent. In making their decisions, judges slowly applied the new Protestant ideas about marriage, which people also learned about through sermons, artwork, and pamphlets. In general, however, other than clerical marriage, actual Protestant marriage patterns were not that different from Catholic ones. They fit with secular values as well, for rural and urban residents of all religious persuasions regarded appropriate marriages and stable families as essential to the social order. Recent scholarship has generally rejected earlier views that the Protestant Reformation by itself brought about dramatic change—for good or ill—in marriage and instead noted ways in which the reformers, including Luther, built on ideas and practices that were already there, especially in the middle-class urban milieus in which most of them grew up.
Article
Natural Theology and Natural Law in Martin Luther
Knut Alfsvåg
For Luther, the understanding of the world is determined by his theology of creation, according to which the world is created as an expression of the creative love of the eternal God. Natural theology, then, is the ability to interpret all created phenomena as gifts of the Creator, and natural law is the ability to align one’s life with this principle of lovingly serving everything created.
However, in a sinful world afflictions and anxiety makes it impossible to maintain an attitude of unconditional trust toward God based on natural reason. In spite of the possibility of reaching a fairly correct understanding of God as the giver of gifts, one will therefore never learn through natural reason alone to trust God as one’s savior.
The re-creation of a trusting attitude toward God is only possible through God’s presence in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The creative power of the gospel message thus entails the rediscovery of the significance of the natural knowledge of God and morality. A full appreciation of the natural is therefore dependent on having one’s trust in God re-established by an action of unconditional divine love. From within this perspective, natural law retains its traditional and positive significance.
In this way, Luther integrates aspects of late medieval theology without being fully aligned with any of its prevailing schools of thought. Like the nominalists, he understands God as activity, not as substance, but not in the sense that God can be seen as arbitrary. For Luther, the trustworthiness of God’s promises is what anchors Christian theology. Luther’s understanding of the hidden God is therefore quite different from the nominalist idea of God’s absolute power.
For Luther, theology’s dialogue with philosophy is important. He maintains, however, that rationality that is not explicitly grounded in a theology of creation will never develop an adequate worldview. Following his emphasis on the theology of creation, in his evaluation of the natural Luther was always looking for thought structures that would let the discontinuity of grace be fully appreciated.
Article
Martin Luther and Monasticism in the Later Middle Ages
Eric Leland Saak
When Martin Luther entered the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine in July of 1505, he entered a world that had been shaped by the diverse and varied monastic culture of the later Middle Ages. Luther became a new man in Christ by donning his monastic habit and very quickly rose to positions of responsibility within the order, first as a doctor of theology and then as district vicar. As professor of the Bible at Wittenberg, Luther was also the pastor of the parish church and, in this context, initiated a pastoral concern with the practice and theology of indulgences that was to set off what has become known as the Reformation. His critique was that of a late medieval Augustinian Hermit. Yet Luther had not been inculcated with the theological or spiritual traditions of his order. Consequently, his early theological development was conditioned by the Franciscan tradition (e.g., Ockham) more than by the Augustinian, even as he eagerly studied the works of Augustine himself. Nevertheless, when Luther came into conflict with the papacy, he remained an obedient friar. The origins of his Reformation, therefore, must be analyzed in the context of his monastic life and the monastic culture of his world.
Unfortunately, scholarship has devoted little attention to the monastic world Luther entered. While there has been much debate for over a century over the extent to which Luther inherited his Augustinian theology from members of his order, the order as such has receded into the background, with the focus being on abstract theological positions. Further research on Luther and the late medieval monastic world has the opportunity to shed new light on the development of Luther’s theology, going beyond the debate over continuity. When Luther stood before Emperor Charles V at Worms in 1521, he did so as Brother Martin Luther, a faithful, obedient, observant Augustinian Hermit. He remained such even as he published his harsh critique of the compulsory nature of monastic vows, while he nevertheless still gave validity to living the monastic life, providing one did so freely. He broke from his monastic past only in 1524 when he finally took off his habit and then, less than a year later, married Katharina von Bora. With Luther’s marriage to Katie, he put his monastic life behind him. To understand Luther’s early development, therefore, we cannot rely on his own later reflections but must return to analyze anew the historical context of that development, and that context was his monastic life and the culture of late medieval monasticism.
