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USING THIS LIST TO BEST ADVANTAGE. Use
this list to put a focused edge on your review of the
excerpts from Luther's works that are part of our
readings.
- How many of these do you find clearly enunciated
in the Ninety-five Theses? Which
seem to enter only with the theological tracts of
1520 (the year of Luther's
excommunication)?
- Which are simply not
mentioned?
- In which instances might this be
merely because they are not
immediately to the point of the
issues to be stressed in
connection with Tetzel's
indulgence?
- In which might this be because
Luther has not yet arrived at
them?
Do you find some that are directly
contradicted by claims Luther makes in
the course of the Ninety-five Theses?
Are there others you detect as hinted
at, but not fully developed?
If you wanted to know more about some of these, you
would probably want to look beyond our excerpts from On
Christian Liberty, The Babylonian Captivity of the
Church, and An Address to the Nobility of Germany. Can
you guess which of these tracts would be most promising
for exploring which issues?
The Key
Theological Tenets
Here are some of the features commonly recognized as
characteristic of Luther's mature theology.
- (1) The idea
that the ultimate authority is neither the Pope
nor Councils nor the tradition of the Church as
expressed in the Canon Law, but the Word of God
alone, as expressed in the life of Christ and the
Scriptures.
- (2) The idea
that justification is achieved by faith alone,
and that works are completely ineffective in
contributing to salvation, although genuine faith
will always issue in good works (acts of mercy,
love).
- (3) The idea
of the priesthood of all believers, which
abolishes the idea of a special clergy set apart
from the laity. (See below, in
connection with the issue of whether Ordination
constitutes a sacrament.)
- Consequence: destruction
of the basis for a clerical
theocracy. (This does not,
however, rule out the possibility for the
sort of theocracy achieved in Calvin's
Geneva.)
- (4) The idea
that sacraments are to be understood as (a)
outward signs of invisible grace (b) instituted
by Christ and (c) exclusively
Christian.
- (5) The idea
that, given this criterion set, the sacraments,
strictly considered, are limited to two, baptism
and the Lord's Supper. (The following discussion
amounts to a summary of what is to be found in
Chapter 2 of Roland H. Bainton's The
Reformation of the Sixteenth Century
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1952),
pp. 4650).
- Marriage
is out: it is valid among Jews
and Muslims as well as
Christians. It is instituted
by God (in Genesis 2) and approved
by Christ; hence it is a rite that should
be blessed by the Church, but which is
nevertheless not a monopoly of the
Church.
- Consequences: One
of the ways in which the medieval
Church had been able to intervene
in the political affairs of
feudal nobility was through its
regulation of
marriage. Valid
marriage was recognized in Canon
Law only beyond the seventh
degree of biological relationship
(and there were additional
restrictions governing spiritual
relationships [god-parentage]
established by
baptism). Exceptions
were possible, but only via
dispensations (special papal
permissions). Since
the nobility of Europe was
thoroughly interrelated, it was
virtually impossible to arrange a
politically suitable marriage
without running afoul of the
Canon Law
proscriptions. The
Pope therefore was in a position
to extract political concessions
(to say nothing of cash) from
noble families pursuing their
dynastic aims through marriage
policy.
Ordination
is not instituted by
Christ. Though a rite of the
Church, it confers no indelible
status. What distinguishes a
minister from the rest of the
congregation is simply that the
congregation has delegated to him the
performance of a particular office, in
virtue of his administrative abilities
and/or qualities as a scholar and
preacher.
- Consequences: the
doctrine of the priesthood of all
believers [see (2)above].
Extreme
unction (anointing a dying
person with oil) is nothing but
superstition.
Confirmation,
not having been instituted by Christ, is
not a sacrament, though it is worth
retaining as a rite of the Church.
Penance
approaches being a sacrament, inasmuch as
Christ enjoins everyone to "Be
penitent" (see Thesis 1 of the Ninety-five
Theses) and confession (an element of
the traditional sacrament) had its uses
for the sinner, but it doesn't make the
cut, because Christ never instituted
visible signs for the invisible bestowal
of grace enabling the sinner to be
penitent.
- (6) The two
remaining sacraments are given a very different
interpretation from what is to be found in
medieval Catholicism. Here it is
useful to quote extensively from Bainton (cited
above).
- As to the Lord's Supper: "In
the case of the Mass Luther was strongly
insistent that there is no
sacrifice. The priest does not
offer up God upon the
altar. Calvary is not
re-enacted. The reason is that
a sacrifice is something presented by a
man to God, whereas man is simply
incapable of offering
anything. [See the connection
with Augustine?] God gives, man receives
and is thankful. The Supper of
the Lord was originally called a
eucharist, that is to say, a
thanksgiving, and this is still its
primary meaning. Luther denied
the doctrine of transubstantiation,
according to which when the priest
pronounces the words "this is my
body," the accidents of bread and
wine remain but the substance is altered
into the body and blood of
God. Any such miracle
performed by the word of man Luther
repudiated, but he did not deny a real
and even a physical
presence. His position was
that matter and spirit are not
antithetical. The physical was
created by God, is permeated by God, and
is a fit vehicle for communication of the
divine. God is omnipresent in
all the material world, and Christ as God
is also ubiquitous
[everywhere]. But we do not
perceive their presence because our eyes
are holden [captive]. God is a
hidden God who has chosen to make himself
known at three points: in the
flesh of Christ, in the word embedded in
Scripture, and in the elements of the
sacrament. What the minister
does, then, is not to make God, but to
lift the veil and disclose his
presence. The sacrament is a
rite of communion with God and Christ and
of fellowship with
believers. These two words sum
up the whole, thanksgiving and
fellowship. To describe this
rite, the expression Lord's Supper
is to be preferred to the word Mass
which is nowhere to be discovered in the
Bible" (Bainton, op cit, 48).
- As to baptism,
"Luther's theory presented peculiar
difficulties. He insisted that
the sacraments are without efficacy apart
from the faith, but he retained infant
baptism. In what sense could
this be said to rest on
faith? There were among
Luther's followers those who came to feel
that his position logically pointed to
adult baptism after the individual had
arrived at an experience of conscious
personal faith. [The reference
is to the "Anabaptists," the
ancestors of the Mennonites, the
Moravians, and the Baptists.] But Luther
himself distinguished two levels of
faith. There is faith awake
and faith asleep. Since faith
in any case is a gift of God, why should
not God confer it upon a
child? Then again Luther
shifted his ground and held that the
child was sustained by the faith of the
sponsor because children are from the
outset participants in the life of the
Christian community. The
question of adult versus infant baptism
has very far-reaching consequences for
the theory of the Church, because adult
baptism goes with the view that the
Church is a gathering of all who have had
an experience of regeneration, whereas
infant baptism points to the Church
comprising the entire community in a land
where everyone born is also
baptized. Here is the problem
of the sect and the Church, of the small,
select, voluntary conventicle
over against the comprehensive
institution coterminous with state and
society. Luther had a
difficult time making up his mind between
these ideals and Protestantism
subsequently split into churches and
sects" (Bainton, op cit 50).
- (7) Monasticism is
abolished.
- Theological issues. Here
is Bainton's account (op cit 51)
of the complex of theological reasons
that combined to produce this
result: "[Luther] was
slow in coming to this conclusion, and it
was not indeed until after he had been
excommunicated that he abandoned
the cowl. The reason was partly
biblical, that no warrant could be
discovered in the New Testament for
lifelong vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience. But even more the
attack was a deduction from Luther's
principle that man can do nothing to save
himself. Inasmuch as
monasticism was regarded as the area par
excellence where man could perform works
of supererogation,
Luther was destroying the prevailing
motive for taking the
cowl. The monasteries need not
for this reason have succumbed and indeed
Luther had no objection if unmarried
persons desired to live in community and
engage in some form of religious
endeavor, provided they did not suppose
that they were thereby ingratiating
themselves with God. As a
matter of fact, subsequent to the
Reformation Catholic monasticism has
become less a way of salvation and more a
vocation for the achievement of
particular tasks on earth. And
as such it might have survived in
Protestantism, but it did not, probably
because there was still another reason,
namely that Luther repudiated the
distinction between the
precepts and the counsels of perfection. The
entire Christian ethic, he held, is
binding upon everyone and not upon monks
alone. As all are priests, so
all are monks, which in practice meant
that none are monks because the Gospel is
best exemplified amid all of the tasks of
daily life in home and school, workshop
and farm. These are the
callings rather than the monastic
life. The ethic of the Gospel,
then, is not to be conserved by
segregation."
- Political issues. A
quite different set of reasons
contributed to make the abolition of
monasticism welcome among the secular
princes who provided Luther with
protection from Rome. Luther's
doctrine opened the way for them to
confiscate and sell off abbeys and
convents, which had (in virtue of
bequests) accumulated vast holdings in
real estate in the course of the middle
ages. The proceeds from the
sale of these properties provided a
welcome one-time infusion of cash into
the princely coffers. More
importantly, it provided a new sector of
the land-owning class committed to the
maintenance of the prince's sovereignty
and of the new religion, since any
restoration would be followed by a
restitution (of property to the
Church). And, depending upon
how the titles of the new properties were
contrive, they could serve as a taxable
asset in perpetuity.
- This process of
"harvesting" the wealth
of the Church, to alleviate
deficits in the royal or national
treasury, and to install a group
of politically reliable
supporters across the country, is
something we see repeatedly in
history. Henry VIII
did it in the course of the
Anglican break with
Rome. So did the
French Revolution, at the end of
the 18th
Century. It happens
again in the course of the
Mexican Revolution in the 1920s.
For many historians, such
phenomena raise
interesting question of
the role of political and
economic forces in
religious
movements. There
is no doubt that Luther
himself and vast numbers
of individuals who
rallied to the Protestant
cause were sincere in
their religious
convictions. (The
history of martyrdom on
all sides of the
religious splits that
ensued silences all doubt
on this issue.) At the
same time, the success of
a movement that provokes
the mobilization of
massive power against it
depends on its own
ability to mobilize power
in quite material
terms. The
support of the German
princes was clearly a
decisive factor in the
ability of Lutheranism to
withstand the assault of
the Catholic forces under
Emperor Charles
V. Economic
considerations were in
turn serious factors in
the appeal to them not
only of Luther's initial
protest (which, if valid,
made illegitimate the
hemorrhage of north
German wealth to the
grandiose glorification
project of the Pope) but
of the implications of
his post-excommunication
theology for the fate of
monasticism.
- Again, Bainton (op cit 5354):
- "As far as society is concerned the
resultant view is one of sober
hopefulness. Luther envisaged
neither a long course for history nor the
erection of a Utopia. Even
Christians, he held, cannot restore
Paradise, and the unredeemed unless
checked will produce a
pigsty. But they can be
restrained, because even the natural man
is not devoid of moral insight and
capacity. When Luther said
that all men are sinners he did not mean
that all men are criminals. In
the eyes of God no man has any standing
but from the point of view of society he
may be a good husband, father, and
magistrate. The Turkish Empire
[which was Muslim], said Luther, is
better administered than a Christian
state. At this point he was
appropriating the Stoic Christian
tradition of natural law, according to
which all men everywhere are endowed with
reason and able to recognize and
administer justice when their own
personal claims are not
involved. Therefore force
under law can be an instrument of equity.
- "It is to be exercised by the
magistrate and by him alone, for if force
be used by each for himself anarchy is
bound to result. It is not to
be wielded by the
Church. Luther excluded the
sword from private and ecclesiastical
hands. He would countenance no
revolution and no
theocracy. The state, he held,
is the agency ordained of God to punish
the bad and protect the
good. War, if justly waged, is
a pursuit in which a Christian man may
engage, but only under the constituted
authorities and never on his own or under
the Church. The whole concept
of a crusade as an ecclesiastical
enterprise was thus ruled
out. The state within its own
sphere is to be unimpeded by the
Church. Luther's ideal was
that parallelism of church and state
which had been espoused by the German
emperors in the Middle Ages against the
papalists and had been eloquently
defended by Dante. It has
never proved to be a workable
plan. When church and state
are the co-ordinate arms of Christian
society, one will prove to be the right
arm and the other the
left. The outcome tends to be
either Caesaropapism or
theocracy. Protestantism was
to discover this all over
again. Lutheranism developed
in the direction of Caesaropapism,
Calvinism developed theocracies, while
the smaller sects [the Anabaptists]
avoided both by a separation."
Comment:
- The role of the state is to keep
order among the
unredeemed. Of course
it ought to be run by Christians
who (it is hoped, but not of
course known) are
redeemed. That is, if
everyone were regenerated, the
state would be
unnecessary. But since
not everyone is (indeed, perhaps
only a minority is), the state
(force, "the sword") is
necessary and legitimate
(ordained by God). The
redeemed are nevertheless bound
to obey the decrees of the
state unless of course
these run positively counter to
the precepts of right
religion in order to set
a good example.
Notes
A conventicle in a general sense is
simply an assembly. The term came to be used
of the meeting of a religious congregation. As
the religious conflicts unleashed by the Reformation
became more bitter, the term tended to be used to refer
to secret meetings of worshipers committed to a faith not
permitted under civil law (for example, the English
nonconformists, from whom the Plymouth Colony in
Massachusetts stemmed). From this usage
developed still another, of an unlawful assembly (not
necessarily even religious) for an evil or sinister
purpose. None of these senses is exactly
what Bainton has in mind in his usage of the term in this
passage. (Can you see how this is so?)
Could you adapt one of these to match what the
writer evidently has in mind on this
occasion?
- This process is called "coming to terms with
the author." Sophisticated and serious
readers know they must be constantly engaged in
it, especially in connection with a language's
more abstract vocabulary. The
terminology at hand for designating mental
practices and non-physical qualities and entities
tends to be somewhat limited, whereas the range
of ideas a given one of these terms gets called
upon to convey can be quite wide and
various. Over time, any language
community constantly forms new concepts as new
occasions demand. After a while, an
abstract term takes on the character of an
adjustable end wrench. Whenever we
take such a out of the toolbox for use on a
particular occasion, we are likely to have to
change it from the "setting" it happens
to be on when we pick it up, if we want it to be
able to do the job at hand. (Otherwise
we won't be able to get anything done or
we end up botching the job altogether!) And when
we encounter a word like this in our reading, we
are probably going to have to adjust the concept
it happens first to bring to mind from the
recesses of our memory. If we don't,
the passage as a whole will end up being
unintelligible, or we will end up with a positive
misunderstanding. Return.
The cowl is the special
"habit" or robe worn by
monks. (Different monastic orders could be
distinguished by the different cowls their members wore.)
To take the cowl, then, means to become a
monk by taking the vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience. (Similarly, to "take the
veil" meant to enter a convent.) To leave the
cowl meant to abandon one's vows and leave the
order. Return.
Supererogation is performance beyond
what was regarded as necessary for salvation
specifically, the doing of good deeds of the kind
attributed to the saints, or of which ordinary humanity
is incapable. It is such deeds that produced
the surplus of merit that accumulated in the Treasury of
Merit drawn upon in issuing indulgences. (Cf.
Clement VI's reasoning in the bull Unigenitus
[1343].) Return.
Under the medieval Christian theory of redemption, the
precepts are rules of conduct binding upon
all Christians. The counsels of
perfection describe the ideal of life known as
the imitatio Christi, or the Imitation of
Christ. One of the functions of this
distinction is to find a practical way of dealing with
troublesome passages like Luke 14:25-34.
Return.
Caesaropapism is a system in which the
head of the church (the Pope, the Patriarch) is
subordinate to the head of state (Caesar, the Emperor,
the King). Bainton alludes here to the fact
that, especially in Germany (and Prussia in particular),
the clergy ended up as a branch of the civil
service. Many historians have seen this
tradition of reluctance to call into question the
legitimacy of state policy as having contributed in an
unfortunate way to the relatively passive behavior of the
Lutheran Church as a whole during the Hitler
era. (The behavior of a few
individuals most notably Dietrich
Bonhoeffer is a different
matter.) (The role of the Vatican during the
same period has also been criticized. See, for
example, the famous play The Deputy, by Rolf
Hochhuth.). Return.
Return to Reading List #2. 
Suggestions are welcome. Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .
Contents copyright © 1997 by Lyman A.
Baker.