I. LUTHER’S THEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION#

If there is anything moderns know about Martin Luther, it is that he nailed the Ninety-five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to a church door and with each blow of the hammer openly defied a moribund and even corrupt Catholic Church. But Luther’s act on All Hallows Eve in 1517 was not an act of rebellion. It was, in fact, just the opposite — the act of a dutiful son of mother church.

Someone (scholars are unsure who it was) took the original Latin text of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, translated them into German, and distributed them all over Germany. When the German people realized that Luther was standing up against abuses in the church, he became a hero throughout Germany, and the Reformation was born.

Luther’s father, Hans Luder, was a respectable and successful Thuringian miner who attained considerable although not enormous wealth. He was therefore able to ensure that his second son received a good education.

Background and Early Education#

One of eight children, Martin was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, but grew up in Mansfeld. When Martin turned fourteen, he was sent to a preparatory school in Magdeburg and later in Eisenach, where he seems to have come under the influence of the Brethren of the Common Life. He attended the University of Erfurt, where he received his baccalaureate in 1502 and a master’s degree in January 1505, graduating second in his class.

Luther took unusual pride in his peasant roots. His ambitious and hardworking father seems to have been a strict parent who did not spare the rod in disciplining his children.

In an age when fathers ruled, the elder Luther decided his son was to become a lawyer, so Martin went off to law school in Erfurt. But circumstances soon would place young Luther on a different path.

While some scholars claim that Luther’s rebellion against the pope was rooted in his hatred for his father, other evidence and other historians suggest the contrary.

Not long before his change of heart, the plague had swept through Erfurt and taken the life of a close friend. This loss seems to have shaken the young Martin and turned his attention to deeper spiritual concerns.

Soon after beginning law school, he was returning to Erfurt from Mansfeld when he was overtaken by a sudden thunderstorm. A lightning bolt struck a tree perilously close by, and the young Luther, in a fit of fear, called upon St. Anne, the patron saint of distressed travelers, vowing to become a monk if only she would spare his life. St. Anne did spare his life, and Luther, true to his promise, entered the monastery of the Augustinian Hermits.

Late medieval piety taught that the only way someone could be assured of salvation was to flee the temptations of the secular world and devote oneself to God. To this conventional wisdom, Luther bowed his head and entered the monastic life in July 1505.

A. The Monastic Life#

In July 1505 Luther entered the black cloister, the observant congregation of the Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt and one of the more rigorous religious orders, convinced that the life of a monk was the surest path to salvation.

Luther had the good fortune to come under the tutelage of Johann Staupitz, who exercised a fatherly influence on the devout young monk. When his severe efforts at monastic piety proved spiritually unsatisfying, and he was plagued with doubt (Anfechtungen), Staupitz took young Luther under his pastoral wing, urging him to contemplate God’s grace. In later years, Luther praised Staupitz for first opening his eyes to the gospel.

Despite his anxieties, Luther was a successful monk. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1507, and his academic abilities were quickly recognized by Staupitz, who then arranged to have his young protégé appointed as an instructor at the new University of Wittenberg.

After receiving his doctorate in 1512, Luther succeeded Staupitz as Professor of Scripture at the new university. As a young professor, Luther lectured on books of the Bible, but he was no ivory-tower theologian. He was also a pastor and preacher in the parish church, regularly preaching three sermons a week.

B. The Evangelical Breakthrough#

Scholars differ on the timing of Luther’s discovery of the decisive doctrine with which he was so identified, justification by faith alone (sola fide). Rather than seeing his theological discovery as a single decisive event, we should view it more as a gradual process.

It is clear that as early as his lectures on the Psalms (1513–15) and Romans (1515–16) he was beginning to think differently about how the individual sinner finds forgiveness from a righteous God. Only after some years of biblical study under the inspiration of the theology of Augustine did Luther arrive at a more fully formed distinctive doctrine of justification by faith alone.

As Luther continued to lecture on the Bible, his conception of God’s righteousness underwent a profound transformation.

• His early education had taught him to think of God’s righteousness as an “active righteousness” that demands that humans in their own strength measure up to God’s righteous standards.

• Luther came to the conviction that human effort is utterly unable to achieve this standard of righteousness unless God grants it graciously without regard to merit.

It was in the words of Romans 1:17 (“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith”) that Luther found solace for his own spiritual strivings. The “righteousness of God” in this text is not, as he had been taught, referring to a divine attribute, but to the divine activity of clothing sinners in the righteousness of Christ through the gift of faith.

Luther’s Romans lectures in particular contain most of the key concepts that would resound throughout history, such as the “alien righteousness” of Christ, “faith alone justifies”, and we are “at the same time sinners, yet non-sinners”.

Luther had rejected the concept of meritorious works by 1513–15. Further, he discovered the gracious character of God’s righteousness by the time he lectured on Romans in 1515. In the early years of the Reformation (that is, before 1535), Luther did not make a sharp distinction between justification and sanctification. Early on, he considered justification both an event and a process. For the German Reformer, both are gifts from God, and both come to the Christian via faith.

Luther’s understanding of justification underwent a shift after 1530, when he was much more inclined to stress the difference between justification and sanctification. This shift is first clearly manifested in his commentary on Galatians (1535).

In the early years of the Reformation, Luther did not necessarily characterize justification in forensic categories. His metaphors for justification tended to be of the marriage relationship or the medical process of healing. But Melanchthon seems to have inspired him to employ legal language. This was first done explicitly in Luther’s Apologia of 1530, and thereafter the theological trend led to such an emphasis on forensic imputation that sanctification was distinguished from forensic justification.

Luther set the course that others would follow, but a proper understanding of this period must recognize that his initial insights provoked decades of Protestant refinement. Despite the diversity, there seems to have been an irreducible core of a distinctive Protestant doctrine of justification, centering on the imputed righteousness of Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

In the sixteenth century, an “evangelical” was simply another word for “Protestant.” The first Protestants appropriated the term because they believed they had recovered the euangelium, which they were convinced had been long obscured by the medieval church. Protestant theologians tended to define the gospel in doctrinal terms of justification by faith alone, priesthood of all believers, and the ultimate authority of the Bible.

The crucial distinction between Roman Catholics and Protestants was that the latter saw the exclusive ground of justification as the imputed righteousness of Christ. This was the one thing all Protestants held in common and the thing that distinguished them from Rome. With this central idea in place, Reformers variously configured other accompanying aspects of justification.

C. The Indulgences Controversy#

The selling of indulgences was the historical fulcrum around which the early events of the Reformation revolved.

Pope Julius II permitted the sale of indulgences in 1507 to raise money to build St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and Pope Leo X renewed approval in 1513. Pope Leo later made a deal with Albert of Brandenburg, archbishop of Mainz (Germany): If Archbishop Albert would agree to allow the sale of indulgences, Leo agreed to split the profits with him.

Luther had already criticized indulgences as early as 1514, so why did the Ninety-five Theses cause such uproar? The flashpoint centered around Johan Tetzel, a Dominican who had been hired to travel all over Germany selling indulgences. This was fully in keeping with the church and Pope Leo’s agreement.

Since Frederick the Wise, a prince in the electorate of Saxony, refused to let Tetzel into his territory, Tetzel set up shop just over the border in the duchy of Saxony. Frederick was concerned about the money leaving his territory, so he was very sympathetic when Luther expressed his outrage over this practice. Perhaps key to Frederick’s support was George Burckhardt (known as Spalatin), Frederick’s private secretary, a court preacher, and an advocate for Luther.

D. The Sacrament of Penance#

At the heart of medieval Catholicism was the sacrament of penance, which sometimes is called the “second plank of salvation.” The medieval Roman Catholic Church believed that the first plank was baptism, which was commonly administered to infants. Baptism washed away the culpa (guilt) of original sin, but neither plank washed away the poena (punishment).

In late medieval theology, every sin deserved two kinds of punishment, eternal and temporal.

• Christ’s atoning work on the cross took away the eternal punishment of sin, but the temporal punishment still required a payment.

• It was necessary for the sinner to provide some sort of penance to remove the temporal effects of sin.

The Fourth Lateran Council defined penance in 1215 as requiring three responsibilities of the sinner: contrition, confession, and satisfaction.

1. Contrition can be defined as genuine sorrow over the commission of a sin.

2. Confession in the Catholic Church, according to 1 John 1:9, required an oral admission of sins to a priest, who serves as the intermediary between God and man.

3. Satisfaction required that God be satisfied, or compensated somehow, for the dishonor incurred by the sin. Typically this came in the form of having to say special prayers, fasting, almsgiving, or taking a pilgrimage. This sacrament was not intended to be a purely mechanical or perfunctory exercise, but a means of relieving the sinners of their burden.

Having successfully completed these three things, absolution or forgiveness for sins could be granted by the priest, based on the condition that the sinner sincerely and successfully completed the acts of penance or satisfaction. If contrition was not genuine, the confession not entirely complete, or the acts of penance not fully carried out, the sinner was required to spend some time in purgatory in order to burn off temporal punishment for sin.

Purgatory was pictured as a burning by fire or a cleansing of those sins that still remained outstanding at the end of life. Almost all people, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, would go to purgatory.

This naturally gave the clergy a great deal of power over the lives of the laity, as they depended on the clerics to dispense certain blessings that had eternal benefits.

Treasury of merit#

One such tool that the clergy used to dispense these blessings was the so-called “treasury of merit.”

On what basis did a priest or pope claim to have the authority to produce satisfaction? The answer was the treasury of merit, a “spiritual reservoir” containing an infinite number of meritorious deeds. These merits were dispensed by the pope or his designated agents, but ultimately the pope had the only key.

In 1460 Pope Sixtus IV decided that the buying of indulgences not only was good for the sinner in this life, but could be applied to deceased family members in purgatory as well.

During Luther’s generation these elaborations of the doctrine of indulgences were still relatively new. The spirituality of the late medieval church was in profound decline, and there was significant corruption with respect to the way the religious system functioned. The personal lives of many priests reflected this decay. It was common for priests, who could not marry, to have mistresses or concubines.

II. FROM CONTROVERSY TO REFORMATION#

A. The October Revolution of 1517 (Ninety-five Theses)#

Luther was appalled that people were lured across the border into ducal Saxony to be relieved of their money and persuaded to purchase indulgences.

• Luther was concerned with Tetzel’s crass abuse of a papal indulgence

• He was concerned about the economic exploitation.

• He explicitly mentions “money” or “wealth” in nine of the theses, thereby suggesting that he was contemptuous of Tetzel’s financial exploitation of Luther’s fellow Wittenbergers.

There had been long-standing resentment in Germany that so much money was funneled to Italy to support the lavish lifestyles of cardinals and other clergy.

Luther was troubled by Tetzel’s actions and wrote up these ninety-five assertions to be debated with his theological colleagues at the University of Wittenberg. The church door functioned as an academic bulletin board, so it was the appropriate place to notify fellow faculty members of a faculty meeting.

Following proper ecclesiastical protocol, Luther sent a copy to Archbishop Albert. Someone realized its significance and had it translated into German, printed, and distributed throughout Germany. Perhaps it was someone from Albert’s court who, like so many Germans, was disturbed by Roman interference in German affairs.

In a relatively short period of time, Luther was perceived as a loyal German standing up to the Roman religious occupation of Germany, and Albert was seen as a collaborator with the enemy of the German people. A groundswell of support for Luther emerged in late 1517 and early 1518.

From Exploitation to Papal Authority#

Despite Luther’s boldness, there was nothing in the Ninety-five Theses that rejected traditional Catholic doctrine. Luther’s concerns were fundamentally no different from Erasmus’s criticism of the church. He did not reject papal authority, the sacrament of penance, or the concept of indulgences. He did, however, stand firmly against exploitation of his congregants.

Even though the Ninety-five Theses were intended for discussion purposes of the theological faculty at Wittenberg, the papacy saw in them an implicit challenge to the authority of Rome.

• The official response to the theses by Sylvester Prieras (1518), as the title indicates (Dialogue Concerning the Power of the Pope), asserted that the deeper issue beneath Luther’s criticism of Tetzel was papal authority.

• Luther’s colleague at Wittenberg, Dr. Jerome Schurff, professor of canon law, cautioned, “Do you wish to write against the pope?… It won’t be tolerated.”

• Emperor Maximilian in his letter to Pope Leo X (August 5, 1518) asserted that in the Ninety-five Theses “the authority of the Pope is disregarded” and added that they appear to be “injurious and heretical.”

• Tetzel himself (in 1518) characterized Luther’s challenge as an overt denial of the authority of the pope.

What Luther intended to address as a matter of the abuse of indulgences quickly became a matter of the authority of the pope.

B. The Heidelberg Disputation (1518)#

In April 1518, Luther was sent as a delegate to the triennial meeting of the Augustinian Hermits in Heidelberg. Staupitz gave him the opportunity to articulate and defend his views in the customary disputation. Luther proposed forty theses, and his Wittenberg student Leonhard Beier defended them.

Heidelberg provides an early glimpse into what was important to Luther immediately after the indulgences controversy. Luther was much more concerned to address the larger theological doctrines that underlay his deepest convictions, such as original sin, free will, law-gospel distinction, and grace.

In general, two things were very clear.

1. First, Luther had embraced an intensively Augustinian reading of the apostle Paul.

Paul and Augustine are the twin sources of his theology. His understanding of original sin was so rigorous that he rejected out of hand the notion of free will. This same Augustinian conviction became the focus of one of Luther’s most important writings, The Bondage of the Will (1525).

2. Second, the forty theses manifest Luther’s white-hot anti-Scholastic and anti-Aristotelian sentiments.

His antipathy toward his own Nominalistic education is evident in thesis 16. Luther had reached the conclusion that Scholasticism and Aristotle could not coexist with Paul and Augustine. Many who read his Heidelberg theses decided they could not coexist with Luther. His old friend Jodocus Truttvetter placed a Theta (Greek abbreviation for thanatos, which means “death”) by each thesis.

But others embraced Luther with enthusiasm. Martin Bucer, a Dominican monk who attended the disputation, was captivated by Luther and paid him the highest compliment he could: “I have just seen the next Erasmus.” At this point, no one realized where Luther would lead.

C. Encountering the Power of Rome#

Pope Leo X got wind of Luther’s theses and initially concluded that Luther was merely a “drunken monk” who would change his mind once he sobered up. But three months went by and the “drunken monk” was still at it, so the pope asked Prierias (Silvester Mazzolini), the Master of the Sacred Palace and Dominican professor of theology, to investigate.

Prierias concluded that Luther had crossed the line into heresy, and he wrote a dialogue against him, thinking this would put an end to the German problem. But Luther was bolder than anyone realized and wrote a reply in early August 1518 calling Prierias’s dialogue “supercilious.”

Pope Leo lost patience and on August 7 ordered Luther to appear in Rome within sixty days to recant his heresies. Further, the pope demanded that Elector Frederick should arrest and deliver this “child of the devil” to the papal legate. Frederick did not arrest Luther, but he did arrange a meeting with the papal legate — another Dominican, Cardinal Cajetan (Thomas de Vio) — at the upcoming Diet of Augsburg in October.

The monk and the cardinal met three times in Augsburg (October 12–14).

• The cardinal was courteous, but insisted on a retraction and submission to papal authority.

• Luther stubbornly refused to recant his opinions.

He asserted that Scripture has ultimate authority, to which Cajetan thundered in response, “The pope is above the council and also above the Holy Scripture. Recant!”

Cajetan then pressed Staupitz to put pressure on Luther to recant. Instead, Staupitz secretly released Luther from his monastic obedience so that he no longer represented the Augustinian order. Afraid of retaliation, Luther fled the city and soon afterward (in November) made a formal appeal to a general council to settle the dispute.

Dominicans viewed themselves as the self-appointed guardians of Catholic doctrine and papal primacy. These Dominican preoccupations inevitably inclined them to frame the indulgences controversy principally as an attack on papal authority.

There was one final papal attempt to persuade Luther to recant his views. Pope Leo sent his nuncio (ambassador) and chamberlain, Karl von Miltitz, to meet with Luther. Instead of confrontation, Miltitz employed a circuitous strategy. At their meeting on January 6, 1519, the papal nuncio expressed sympathy toward Luther and laid blame for the indulgences controversy at the feet of Tetzel, but he also implored Luther not to destroy the unity of the church. Miltitz agreed that the accusations against Luther should be settled in Germany by a German bishop and not in Rome. For his part, Luther agreed that he would seek the pardon of the pope and advocate unity.

In a letter of March 3, 1519, Luther humbly acknowledged the authority of the papacy and affirmed that he had never sought to undermine the Roman Church, although he still expressed concerns over the sale of indulgences.

D. The Leipzig Disputation (1519)#

Dr. Johann Eck (Johann Maier of Eck), one of the leading theologians at the University of Ingolstadt, sought a public debate with Luther and published twelve (later thirteen) theses against Luther in December 1518. Luther immediately replied with thirteen countertheses. Sparks flew, so it was agreed that a disputation should be held in Leipzig between Eck and Luther and his senior colleague at the University of Wittenberg, Karlstadt (Andreas Rudolph Bodenstein von Karlstadt).

On July 5 Eck accused Luther of being dangerously close to the “Bohemian heresy” (of Jan Hus). Initially Luther rejected the association, but later reversed himself, declaring, “Among the articles of Jan Hus, I find many that are plainly Christian and evangelical.”

In the eyes of Duke George of Saxony, this was tantamount to sympathy for the Devil. In the hearing of all, the duke shouted, “The plague is upon us!”

The more Luther was provoked, the more defiant he became. On July 7 he argued that church councils could err. Eck seized on this as undeniable heresy: “If you believe that a council, legitimately called, has erred and can err, be then to me as a Gentile and a publican. I do not have to explain further what a heretic is.”

Eck was declared the victor by Duke George, and the theological faculties at Cologne and Louvain joined in condemning Luther as a heretic. However, not everyone gave the victory to Eck. Town councilman Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg sided with Luther, as did the humanists Willibald Pirckheimer and Johann Oecolampadius. As it turned out, Leipzig was Luther’s Rubicon.

E. The New Holy Roman Emperor#

During the Leipzig disputation, the combatants received news that a new emperor had been elected on June 28 for the Holy Roman Empire. It was Charles V of Spain. Emperor Maximilian had died on January 12, and much political haggling ensued. Charles was the front runner, in large part because Maximilian was his grandfather and had been advocating for Charles in order to retain the Hapsburg hold on the empire.

Rome opposed the election of Charles because it would enhance his already vast power. Charles was already the King of Spain, the Netherlands, and Naples; the Duke of Burgundy; and with his brother, Ferdinand, heir to Austria. Furthermore, the king’s rule extended to the new world of the Americas. The Catholic Church did not want such a powerful rival.

Initially, the papacy found common cause with Francis I of France and supported his candidacy. Like the church, Francis did not want to see Charles’s power grow, especially since it would mean that France was surrounded entirely by Hapsburg territories. However, as summer grew near and the political maneuvering escalated, it became clear that Francis did not have the clout or the finances to secure election.

For a time, the papacy supported Frederick the Wise as the alternative imperial candidate. Although Frederick had little ambition for this title, the papal courting of the elector had an unexpected benefit for Luther. The papacy realized it would be imprudent to pursue actively the elector’s favored theologian, and the movement that would soon emerge gained precious time to incubate.

F. Luther’s Growing Defiance#

It was fortuitous that the new Holy Roman Emperor was Charles and not Francis.

• Francis was a poor loser and became a thorn in Charles’s flesh, launching four wars against him during the remainder of Luther’s life.

• Suleiman the Magnificent and his Turkish armies posed a serious threat on the eastern border of the empire.

The effect of this two-front war was to pull the emperor’s attention away from the empire and distract him from dealing decisively with Luther.

In 1520 Luther boldly began to put his distinctive convictions to pen and paper. The result was the publication of several books, which marked Luther’s break from Rome.

• One of the most significant works of Luther is On the Papacy of Rome, written in May 1520.

• In August he wrote The Address to the German Nobility.

• A third book was written in September and a fourth in November, titled On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and The Freedom of the Christian Man respectively.

All of these were either written or translated in the German vernacular, thus ensuring broad circulation.

1. On the Papacy of Rome#

Luther became convinced that the true church was not necessarily identified with the Roman Catholic Church, and he said so in this provocative volume. According to Luther, the true church is the person who listens to God’s Word.

In 1517 Ulrich von Hutten had published Lorenzo Valla’s proof that the ancient ecclesiastical documents supporting papal supremacy — the Isodorian Decretals and the Donation of Constantine — were forgeries. This research fueled Luther’s conclusion that the Antichrist was on Peter’s throne in Rome.

The most egregious manifestation of the Antichrist in Rome was the papal claim to infallibility. To Luther, this assertion was the epitome of anti-Christian behavior.

2. The Address to the German Nobility#

In this address Luther argued that the church was corrupt and unable to reform itself and therefore it was the German nobles who must take up the task of reformation.

Luther maintained that the Roman Church had built three walls to preserve its power over people and nations.

1. The first wall attacked by Luther was the idea that popes, bishops, monks, and priests are spiritually superior to laity.

His view was that all Christians belong to the same spiritual estate by virtue of their baptism and faith. These alone grant entrance into the kingdom of God. This was an early version of what came to be known as the “priesthood of all believers.”

2. Luther demolished the second wall when he rejected the Roman assertion that only the pope has the right to interpret Scriptures.

Luther strongly emphasized that laypeople have the right to read and interpret the Scripture for themselves.

3. The third wall torn down was the claim that only the pope could summon church councils.

Luther reminded his German readers that the emperor, not the pope, had called the famous Council of Nicea in 325. Thus the German nobility had every right to convene a church council if it so willed.

Luther added insult to injury in the remainder of the book by chastising the worldly pomp and greed of the pope and his cardinals. Rather, popes should renounce temporal power and dedicate themselves to prayer and the study of Scripture.

Luther was advocating nothing less than the complete abolition of papal authority over the state — and he found a receptive German audience.

3. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church#

In Luther’s most defiant work, published in 1520, his attack penetrated to the very heart of the Roman Church, namely, its sacramental system.

For Luther, the papacy was a lustful Babylon that had maliciously abused the sacraments as a means of holding the church captive. The sacraments, including baptism and the Lord’s Supper, controlled every key event in the lives of ordinary Christians from the cradle to the grave. Luther reserved his most serious challenge for the sacrament of the Eucharist.

He identified three errors of the sacrament by which the papacy held the church captive.

1. The practice of withholding the cup from the laity

Since the thirteenth century it was common practice not to give the common people Communion wine. Scripture, Luther argued, requires that both the bread and wine be offered to the faithful (called “Communion in both kinds”).

2. The Medieval Theory of “Transubstantiation”

Luther believed that something profoundly mystical is present with the bread and wine, but he rejected the medieval theory of “transubstantiation” to explain this mystery. He held that there is no miraculous change from the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. Luther attacked this by rejecting the underlying Aristotelian distinction of “substance” (internal qualities) and “accidents” (external appearance).

Luther much preferred another theory in which Christ is “really present” in, with, and under the elements yet without a miraculous change in the elements themselves. Some have called this view “consubstantiation”, although Luther himself never used this term to describe his personal view. The elements do not themselves become the body of Christ, but for Luther, the sacrament is more than just a symbolic event or a memorial.

3. The Sacrifice of the Mass

The Roman Catholic Church taught that every time the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, Christ is actually resacrificed. For Luther, this was the most abominable bondage of all. The mass was a gift of God to man, not a gift of man to God. So that everyone could better understand this gift of God, Luther stressed that the mass should be in the vernacular.

“They [Roman Catholic] make God no longer the bestower of good gifts to us, but the receiver of ours. Such impiety!”

When it came to the sacrament of baptism, Luther had a much more agreeable attitude toward Rome. Luther did think the church had overly relied on the second plank of penance rather than the first plank of baptism for bringing regeneration. He affirmed infant baptism, but also ascribed faith to infants. It is not beyond the realm of possibility, he speculated, that infants themselves may exhibit a kind of seed faith.

Luther has been widely criticized as holding a view of baptismal regeneration that was inconsistent with his view of justification by faith alone.

As for the remaining traditional sacraments (confirmation, marriage, penance, ordination, and extreme unction), Luther rejected all as without a divine promise or an external sign.

In an interesting side comment he dismissed the sacrament of extreme unction partly because it was traditionally based on James 5:14–15, an epistle he judged unworthy of the apostolic spirit.

In the final analysis, Luther upheld only two of the traditional seven sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

4. The Freedom of the Christian Man#

In a last-ditch effort at reconciliation, the papal nuncio Miltitz persuaded Luther to make a conciliatory gesture. Luther complied in what is considered one of his best writings (October 1520). Contained in this work is the famous Lutheran paradox of the Christian life: The Christian is the lord of all, and subject to none, because of faith; he is the servant of all, and subject to everyone, because of love.

Faith and love are, for Luther, the two governing principles for the Christian life. Faith expresses the Christian’s relationship to God, love the relationship to humanity. These two Christian principles are interdependent, that is, where there is faith, there will also be love.

Accompanying the treatise was Luther’s third and final letter to Pope Leo X.

• Luther’s first letter (1518) humbly submitted to the authority of the pope.

• In his second letter (1519) Luther portrayed himself as the pope’s humble servant, but refused to recant.

• In this third letter (1520) he addressed the pope as an equal and pitied him as a “lamb in the midst of wolves.”

Luther absolved Leo personally, but characterized the church as a “lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death and hell.” Whatever reconciliation was to be gained by the treatise was lost by the personal letter.

Johann Eck’s work was not finished after the Leipzig debate in 1519. He soon went to Rome and assisted papal jurists in preparing the papal bull titled Exsurge Domine, issued on June 15, 1520. The papal bull cited forty-one alleged errors and gave Luther sixty days to recant or be excommunicated.

Luther defied the pope, and on December 10, 1520, in front of the people of Wittenberg he burned the papal bull at a bonfire on the bank of the Elbe River. The sixty days had already passed, and Luther had not recanted, so the pope issued the bull of excommunication (Decet Romanum Pontificem) on January 3, 1521.

Elector Frederick had been remarkably supportive of Luther, even in the face of papal threats.

• Frederick was not eager to get into hot water with the pope, but German pride may have inclined him to support Luther against the greed of the papacy.

• Luther was a major draw for the prince’s pride and joy, the newly established University of Wittenberg.

Frederick’s support was all the more remarkable, since there is no clear evidence that he embraced Luther’s theology or that the two men had ever had a personal conversation.

Frederick did solicit opinions of others, including the most respected scholar in Europe, Erasmus of Rotterdam. To the papal charge that Luther was a heretic, Erasmus replied to Frederick: “Luther has committed two sins. He has grasped the pope’s crown and the monks’ bellies.”

G. The Diet of Worms (April 1521)#

Rome had rendered its ecclesiastical decision about Luther. Now it was the emperor’s turn to deal with Luther from the perspective of the state. Once the pope excommunicated Luther, it then became the judicial responsibility of the Holy Roman Emperor to bring Luther to trial.

Ever since the Leipzig disputation, Frederick the Wise had pressed the young Charles V to allow Luther to appear at the next imperial diet (the formal assembly of all the princes of the Holy Roman Empire). Initially, the emperor hesitated, but the elector finally prevailed, and Luther was summoned to a hearing at the imperial Diet at Worms in April 1521. Luther was fully aware of the danger, but was equally determined to take his case to the emperor.

It took Luther two full weeks to travel from Wittenberg to Worms, and every mile along the way revealed immense popular support. Word of this triumphant procession created enormous anxiety among the imperial dignitaries in Worms. As his wagon neared the city on April 16, a hundred nobles rode out to accompany Luther, which made for a rather grand entrance to Worms.

The imperial marshal informed Luther that he was scheduled to appear before the Diet the next day (April 17) at 4 pm. He arrived promptly at the Bishop’s palace, but was not summoned until 6 pm. As he entered the great hall of the Bishop’s palace, he found himself standing before more than two hundred of the most powerful men in Germany.

Besides the young Emperor Charles V, there were six of the imperial electors, papal legates, archbishops, bishops, dukes, margraves, princes, counts, deputies, and various ambassadors from foreign courts. Several hundred Spanish soldiers ringed the hall, and thousands of spectators filled the streets.

The imperial prosecutor, Dr. Johann von der Eck (not Johann Eck who debated Luther at Leipzig), called out to him with two questions.

Pointing to a table with his writings, Dr. von der Eck asked Luther if they were his. Dr. Schurl, Luther’s advocate, asked that the titles be read, and they were. Luther acknowledged authorship of the books.

The imperial prosecutor then asked Luther to renounce them. This second question caught Luther off guard, for he had expected a hearing and not a summary condemnation. Luther appealed to the emperor for additional time to think before answering the question. After brief consultation, the young emperor gave Luther twenty-four hours.

Luther spent a sleepless night consulting with friends and regaining his composure. His resolve remained. In a letter he wrote that evening to a friend, he said, “I will not retract one iota, so Christ help me.” After waiting two hours again the next day at the Bishop’s palace, he was admitted to the diet. Though somewhat timid the day before, on this day his voice was firm and resonant.

After apologizing for his unfamiliarity with courtly etiquette, Luther explained, first in German and then in Latin, that his writings belonged to different categories.

• First, some were devotional writings that were edifying for Christians, and even his opponents would not want him to renounce those.

• Second, there were some writings against the corruptions of the papacy.

To renounce those would be tantamount to affirming wickedness, and that he could not do.

• Third, some of his works were directed against individuals who defended papal corruption.

He confessed that he had at times used harsh words, but wickedness had to be dealt with, and therefore he would not retract them either.

He then urged Charles V to begin his reign by upholding the Word of God. The imperial princes felt Luther had evaded the question. They had asked for a simple yes or no, but he had offered qualifications and explanations. They again asked for an unequivocal statement. Luther then gave his famous reply in Latin:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor wise to go against conscience.

Dr. von der Eck blasted Luther, saying, “Abandon your conscience, Martin, for your conscience errs.” Luther began to reply, but the emperor quickly dismissed the proceedings amid shouting from the Spanish soldiers, who were chanting, “To the flames!” Charles V was only twenty-one, but he kept his word and permitted Luther to walk out of the Bishop’s palace alive.

The following day, Charles called the diet back into session to discuss its response. Frederick the Wise defended Luther. Complicating the decision was the fact that the German people were solidly behind Luther. The last thing the new emperor needed was civil war in Germany.

Fear of a peasants’ revolt prompted the archbishop of Mainz to plead with the emperor to make another effort to persuade Luther to cooperate. In the immediate aftermath of the diet, a series of imperial and ecclesiastical emissaries met with Luther, desperately seeking some kind of compromise. Various concessions and modifications were offered if only Luther would recant. Luther steadfastly rejected every proposal.

On April 26 Luther was finally permitted to leave Worms with only the emperor’s promise of protection for twenty-five days. The diet continued to discuss Luther’s fate for nearly a month. Finally, Elector Frederick left on May 23 before any decision was rendered. Two days later, the emperor made the inevitable decision and issued an imperial edict declaring Luther an outlaw of the empire.

The Edict of Worms was severe. It not only proclaimed Luther a criminal, but also prohibited anyone from assisting him in any way on penalty of death. All his books were banned as well. For the rest of his life, Luther was declared a heretic of the church and an outlaw of the state.

Much to his surprise, Luther departed Worms alive. Jan Hus had been given the same imperial promise of safe conduct, yet was burned at the stake at the Council of Constance in 1415. Danger was still in the air as Luther departed on April 26. As his wagon neared the small town of Moehra, on the evening of May 4, five soldiers intercepted the wagon and kidnapped Luther.

As it turned out, this kidnapping was part of an elaborate plan to save Luther’s life. Before Luther left Worms, a clandestine message from Elector Frederick was conveyed to Luther that his journey home would be interrupted and he would be taken to a secret location for his own safety. Luther mounted a waiting horse, which took him to the Wartburg Castle in the Thuringian forest.

H. THe Wartburg Castle: Luther’s Patmos#

When he was seized by the elector’s soldiers, Luther had managed to bring one of his most precious possessions: his Greek New Testament. This would turn out to be one of the most important actions of the Reformation period, because this text became the primary resource for his German translation. The first and perhaps most important act of reenvisioning a new church was his translation of the New Testament.

For nearly a year (May 1521 – March 1522) Luther submitted to the elector’s enforced isolation at what he called his “Patmos.”

• Luther grew his own disguise — a full beard and a full head of hair covering his tonsure.

• He wore the garments of a knight and took the name “Junker George.”

• This soldier seemed to have an unusual devotion to the Bible, for he spent endless hours reading and writing, even taking his meals in private.

Although in protective custody, Luther used his time to produce a barrage of writings. Besides many letters from the “land of the birds” to colleagues, he wrote:

• A commentary on the Magnificat

• A Latin exposition of the Psalms

• A tract against Latomus (Jakob Masson) in which he provides one of his most articulate expositions of his doctrine of justification

• The German “postils” (sermons) for Advent

• Various polemical works

• One of his most bitter barbs was against the secretary to Duke George of Saxony, Hieronymus Emser, whom Luther dubbed “the goat of Leipzig.”

But the most enduring literary legacy from the Wartburg was his brilliant translation of the New Testament.

In the remarkable period of three months, Luther produced a German translation unlike any previous translation. His translation was based on the original Greek text rather than the outdated Latin Vulgate, and it used a philosophy of translation that stressed clarity and sensitivity to the rhythms of everyday German.

Erasmus’s 1519 critical Greek edition of the New Testament was never out of reach during the crucial months of translation. When Luther returned to Wittenberg, he brought his completed translation to his close friend, the Greek scholar Philipp Melanchthon, who offered refinements.

When he translated Romans 3:38, he added the word “alone,” so that it read, “… justified without works of the law, by faith alone.” Critics accused him of distorting the teaching of the Bible, but he insisted that this was the apostle’s true intent.

Luther’s theological commitment also affected his view of the canonicity of the book of James. While he did include this epistle in his New Testament translation, he denigrated it in the preface as “an epistle of straw,” because it appeared to teach justification by works. If it was canonical — and Luther was not entirely sure it was — it belonged to the lesser New Testament epistles. Although somewhat dubious about the canonicity of Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation (which he described as a “dumb prophecy”), he did not exclude them from his German translation.

Luther’s German New Testament was an immediate success. It was first published in Wittenberg in September 1522 and was so popular that it had to be republished in December. Luther then turned his efforts to the Old Testament, and the complete German Bible was finally published in 1534.

I. Luther’s Collaborators in Reformation#

While translating the New Testament at Wartburg Castle, Luther’s reformation continued without him. Leadership of the reform movement fell to two of Luther’s university colleagues:

• Melanchthon (1497–1560), who was the first professor of Greek

• Karlstadt (1480–1541), the dean of the Wittenberg faculty

Melanchthon#

Melanchthon had fallen under Luther’s spell and became a favorite almost immediately upon his arrival in 1518. These two men had a profound spiritual connection that was so deep that it survived theological differences when Luther’s other relationships did not.

Melanchthon completed the first draft of the first Protestant systematic theology, Loci Communes, in April 1521 and sent it to Luther in the Wartburg. Luther was so enthusiastic about this book that he said it was worthy of inclusion within the canon of Scripture.

Melanchthon would have a significant impact on Lutheranism as a great educator — he was called the “Praeceptor Germaniae” (the teacher of Germany)—and as the author of one of the primary documents of Lutheranism, the Augsburg Confession (1530).

Particularly after Luther’s death, Melanchthon’s own theology developed in a different direction, leading to decades of theological wrangling among Lutherans for Luther’s “true” legacy, which finally reached resolution in the Formula of Concord (1577).

Karlstadt#

Luther’s relationship with Karlstadt began well but ended badly.

When the young Luther arrived at the University of Wittenberg in 1512, Karlstadt was dean of the faculty. The two colleagues collided in 1516 when Karlstadt rejected Luther’s interpretation of Augustine. The junior professor challenged his dean to read Augustine for himself. Karlstadt did and humbly confessed that Luther was right.

The dean became a champion for Luther’s new Augustinianism, although over time, subtle differences eventually caused division.

• Karlstadt tended to focus on the Christian’s regeneration and internal moral renewal

• Luther’s more external legal justification and the paradoxical notion of simul justus et peccator (simultaneously a sinner and righteous)

Inevitably, these differences led to a breach in their relationship.

During Luther’s Wartburg period, a struggle surfaced for the soul of the Reformation.

• How does one move from the old discredited ecclesiastical structures to new structures and new relationships?

• How does one distinguish between those who would join the Reformation movement for personal gain, and those whose consciences compel them to embrace the new religion with sincerity?

• Who would lead the Reformation?

III. THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPACT OF THE REFORMATION#

A. Wittenberg Chaos#

With Luther in the Wartburg, Wittenberg lost its bearings for a time. With papal authority rejected in favor of biblical authority, Luther and his followers had to work out the practical and social implications of the new theology. Long-established practices and policies were now put to the biblical test.

From the Wartburg, Luther had sought to designate Melanchthon as interim leader of the reform movement in Wittenberg. He requested that Melanchthon replace him temporarily as the preacher in the city church, but the town council balked at the thought of a married layman leading the worship. Almost by default, leadership fell to Karlstadt, thus setting the stage for the first significant breach within the new reform movement. In his enthusiasm to establish a “New Order” for Wittenberg, Karlstadt unleashed a firestorm.

Without Luther’s presence to qualify his bold assertions, Karlstadt took Luther’s criticism of the Roman mass to heart and began to preach mandatory reforms.

On Christmas Day in 1521, Karlstadt broke with tradition by celebrating mass without vestments, dressed as a layman, employing the German language, and most significantly, distributing the bread and the wine to the laity — something that had been prohibited since the twelfth century.

Although Karlstadt sought orderly reform, his break with tradition inspired outbreaks of iconoclasm: sermons were disrupted, and priests were pelted with stones and dung.

• Subsequent sermons denounced pictures and images as violations of the second commandment.

• Gabriel Zwilling led some of the Augustinian monks in smashing statues, burning pictures, and destroying other symbols of the old faith.

• Karlstadt, who as a priest had taken a vow of celibacy, flaunted centuries of church law by openly marrying Anna von Mochau.

In January 1522 he presented the Wittenberg city council with a proposal for social and religious reform.

Into this increasingly volatile situation in Wittenberg came the “Zwickau Prophets” — Nicholas Storch, Marcus Thomae (Stübner), and Thomas Dreschel. These “prophets” had come under the apocalyptic teaching of Thomas Müntzer in the south German city of Zwickau. Arriving soon after Christmas, they claimed divine authority through dreams and visions. Under the influence of the Spirit they rejected traditional teaching on infant baptism and the priesthood, and they were convinced the world would soon come to an end.

The Zwickau Prophets eventually left Wittenberg, but things were clearly getting out of hand. Melanchthon was overwhelmed and made an appeal to Luther to return to Wittenberg and restore order.

Invocavit sermons#

By February the city was in such an uproar that the city council begged Luther to return. He arrived back in Wittenberg on March 6, and the following Sunday began his famous “Invocavit sermons,” in which he denounced violence and made a plea for patience and tolerance.

Luther retained many of the old forms of worship and for a time even resumed wearing the monk’s hooded cowl. He did change the wording of the mass so that there was no hint of a repeated sacrifice or transubstantiation, and he continued distributing the bread and wine to the laity.

Karlstadt quietly submitted to the slower pace of reform, but he was deeply disappointed. He left Wittenberg in the summer of 1523 to become the parish priest in the small town of Orlamünde, where he implemented reforms as he saw fit.

The Wittenberg Reformers did not approve of Karlstadt’s ideas, and a small treatise war ensued between Luther and Karlstadt. The Wittenbergers especially became concerned that Karlstadt was in league with the violent revolutionary teaching of Thomas Müntzer and moved to have him expelled from the electorate of Saxony (September 1524).

In the following years, Karlstadt came to identify most closely with the Zürich Reformers and their eucharistic theology. He served as a pastor in Zürich from 1530 to 1534 and later as a professor of Old Testament in Basel until he died in 1541.

There is a measure of irony in the fact that one of Luther’s earliest advocates died as a Zwinglian.

B. The Peasants Revolt (1524-25)#

Luther’s reformation movement, although he never intended it, opened the door for ideas much more radical than those of Karlstadt. The world of early sixteenth-century Germany was full of injustice and oppression.

• The Catholic Church spiritually exploit Christians

• Landowners also exploited peasants for financial gain

A reformation in doctrine was not worth its salt if it did not impact the people and their daily lives — or so they believed.

In such tumultuous times, all kinds of opportunists and fanatics crawled out of the woodwork. Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525) was one of those strange persons who led the oppressed astray.

Müntzer himself was probably from the artisan class, and this comports with the fact that he received a university education, first at Leipzig and then at Wittenberg (1517–19). Drawing from the medieval mysticism of the Dominican monk John Tauler, Müntzer came to believe that the Word of God must be heard from God’s own mouth and not from theology books or even the Bible. Müntzer replaced Luther’s sola scriptura with a sola experientia. This message was not well received, and Müntzer was repeatedly dismissed from pulpits in Zwickau, Prague, and Allstedt.

Müntzer’s sola experientia took a violent turn in Allstedt. He began referring to himself as the “hammer and sickle” of God against the ungodly. In his infamous “Prince sermon” (July 13, 1524), he pressed Duke John of Saxony to embrace violent revolution.

On May 12, 1525, he led seven thousand peasant soldiers into battle near Frankenhausen against the German nobles. It was a slaughter. Over six thousand peasants were killed, while the nobles lost only six soldiers. Müntzer fled to the nearby town, where he was discovered hiding in an attic. After being tortured, he was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pike as a warning to other peasants.

For the previous two hundred years, peasants had periodically revolted throughout Europe (most notably Italy, France, England, and Bohemia). In southern Germany the Bundschuh revolt from previous decades, signified by the laced shoes of peasants in contrast to the buckled shoes of the upper classes, had been a subterranean threat fueling animosity among the peasants and fears among the German nobility.

In Upper Swabia, Sebastian Lotzer, a tanner, and Christoph Schappeler, a pastor, declared the peasant grievances in the Twelve Articles of Memmingen (March 1525), all justified by biblical proof texts. This rather modest document clearly manifested evangelical influence by linking the gospel and divine justice with the peasants’ cause.

With the rise of the Reformation as a popular movement, the common man linked socioeconomic justice with Christian salvation. As later became evident, the revolt included not only peasants, but also other disaffected persons, including miners and townsmen.

Luther was very sympathetic to the plight of the peasants. He responded to the Twelve Articles with his Admonition to Peace in May 1525. He placed the largest part of the blame for the trouble squarely on the shoulders of the secular and ecclesiastical landowners. However, just as Luther had a word for the oppressors, he also had a word for the oppressed: No matter how just your cause, rebellion is never excusable for the Christian. He concluded by urging both groups to negotiate peacefully.

Unrest spread to Thuringia (part of eastern Germany). The peasants destroyed castles and monasteries and seized several towns. Amid reports of peasant atrocities, Luther exploded with another book, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants, in which he infamously exhorted the landowners to “smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel.”

Luther later admonished the landowners for their cruelty, and he urged clemency, but it was too little too late. Estimates are that more than 100,000 peasants were killed in the war. The Reformation had uncovered deeper social unrest and had failed to curtail injustice for productive long-term change.

C. Reformation and Political Realignment#

No matter how much Luther wanted the Reformation movement to focus on spiritual and theological matters, it necessarily involved him in politics. It must be remembered that there was no separation of church and state in the world of the sixteenth century.

• It was the church that declared Luther a heretic

• It was the state that had the responsibility to put heretics on trial

The Holy Roman Empire#

The Holy Roman Empire had a population of about 15 million, and they were ruled over by various territorial princes, prince-bishops, counts, dukes, and various lesser lords in more than 350 principalities. Ostensibly, this vast empire was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor, who held a sacred duty to uphold and defend Christianity.

The title of “Emperor” carried with it responsibility for the medieval concept of the Corpus Christianum, by which the state and society are unified under the ultimate authority of the Roman Catholic Church. But this theory was not always a reality, and that was nowhere more true than in the empire.

Charles firmly believed that the Reformation movement should be crushed, Roman Catholicism upheld, and the unity of the empire restored. However, complex circumstances worked against the emperor’s desires.

• First, the German princes were committed to maintaining political power within their realms, regardless of the emperor’s policy.

This political self-aggrandizement served the Reformation well. Throughout the early period of the Reformation, political opportunities trumped support for traditional Catholic religion.

• Second, the constantly challenging and shifting alliances between the empire, France, and the papacy kept Charles distracted from what appeared to be a minor squabble among monks in Saxony.

The incessant Hapsburg-Valois wars between France and the emperor allowed the papacy to play one side against the other and always kept Charles off balance.

• Third, the Turkish threat of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–66) on the eastern borders of the empire sent chills down Charles’s spine.

Suleiman led an army of more than 200,000 soldiers and posed the first serious threat in six hundred years to the Corpus Christianum and the integrity of Europe. He destroyed the Hungarians at the battle of Mohacs in 1526 and laid siege to Vienna in 1529. Vienna, the gateway to the Holy Roman Empire, may very well have fallen if Turkish supply lines had not been overstretched.

These three political realities shadowed every major religious debate, colloquy, or treatise of the early Reformation period. They also explain why Charles V was largely absent from the empire for most of the turbulent years and was unable to deal decisively with the defiant German monk.

With an absentee emperor and an inherent sense of independence, the territorial princes saw an opportunity to advance their cause and in some cases to enhance their coffers. In his Address to the German Nobility in 1520, Luther had already called on the German princes to take the lead in bringing reform to Germany. Many responded in the affirmative.

• Some acted out of theological conviction

• Others were more opportunistic, viewing adherence to Luther as veritable entitlement to the wealth of the old church

• The Catholic princes of northern Germany allied themselves in 1525.

• The following year, the leading evangelical princes, Philip of Hesse and Duke John of Saxony, formed a defensive alliance.

Imperial diet at Speyer#

The one political mechanism that allowed for direct interaction between the emperor and the princes was the imperial diet (Reichstag). Two key imperial diets held at Speyer in 1526 and 1529 led to religious division in the empire. At both diets the Archduke Ferdinand (the brother and representative of the emperor), the territorial princes, the ecclesiastical nobility, and the representatives of the imperial cities met to discuss the important issues confronting Germany.

Imperial Diet in 1526

As fate would have it, the year 1526 was a bad year for the empire.

• Turkish armies had invaded Hungary

• Pope Clement VII had joined forces with Francis I of France to wage war against Charles V

The participants realized the military maelstrom that threatened the empire made it impossible to enforce the Edict of Worms and bring Luther to justice. In the light of the practical realities of the situation, it was agreed by Catholics and evangelicals alike at the Diet of Speyer (1526) that each territorial prince would decide the religious issue on his own.

Imperial Diet in 1529

The political landscape had changed yet again.

• Charles V had been victorious over Francis I

• His troops savagely sacked Rome, forcing Pope Clement VII to take refuge in the castle San Angelo

Archduke Ferdinand tried to regain the imperial upper hand on the religious issue and demanded that the 1526 agreement be nullified. The goal was the religious reunification of the empire as a Catholic nation.

The Lutheran princes were defiant and issued a protestatio (protestation) against this abrupt turn, arguing that they were bound by the agreement of 1526. The protestatio was signed by five imperial princes and fourteen imperial cities:

1. John of the electorate of Saxony

2. Philip of Hesse

3. George of Brandenburg-Ansbach

4. Wolfgang of Anhalt

5. Ernst of Braunschweg-Lüneburg

These “protests” by the Lutheran princes and the imperial cities at the Diet of Speyer mark the historical origins of the term “Protestant” as well as the religio-political division in Germany.

Imperial Diet at Augsburg (1530)#

The defiant protestations of the Lutheran princes prompted Charles V to turn his personal attention to the religious question in Germany once again at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530. The emperor had reason for optimism:

• He was fresh from victory over France

• The pope was in a subservient and therefore cooperative mood

• Suleiman and his Turkish armies had withdrawn from the siege of Vienna.

Charles intended to settle the religious question at the Diet of Augsburg once and for all.

Charles had requested that the Protestants present a statement of their beliefs at the diet. Melanchthon, with Luther’s consent and advice, produced the famous Augsburg Confession for the emperor.

The confession was remarkable for its careful wording and conciliatory tone. Melanchthon skillfully avoided controversial doctrines such as purgatory or papal authority. It was a clear attempt at reconciliation without giving up the essentials of the Lutheran faith — all in an effort to maintain peace in the empire.

After hearing the Confession on June 25, 1530, Charles appointed Johann Eck of Ingolstadt and others to provide a Confutatio, which was presented on August 3. Charles then demanded that the Protestants acknowledge they had been refuted, without having had opportunity to interact with their detractors. Melanchthon hastily managed to compose an Apology (a defense of the Confession), but Charles refused to receive it.

Augsburg was a defining moment in the history of the Reformation, for now it was absolutely clear that the emperor was unwilling to engage serious religious debate. Moreover, the Protestant princes for their part were unwilling to capitulate to a foreign emperor. Augsburg signaled that the religious divide was now unbridgeable, and the parties began to prepare for a possible war.

The Schmalkald League#

Within months, the Protestant princes formed the Schmalkald League — a defensive alliance led by John Frederick of electoral Saxony and Philip of Hesse.

This raised the thorny question of resistance. Luther had long been on the record opposing any active resistance to the authorities, as he had in the Peasants War; but when his movement was threatened, he reluctantly conceded that armed resistance to the emperor was justifiable in order to defend the gospel.

Just when a war seemed inevitable, the Turks renewed their attacks on the eastern border of the empire, and Charles judged that the time was not right for a military solution to the religious problem in Germany. Charles was forced to grant formal religious toleration for more than a decade in exchange for military and financial support from the Protestant princes in his war against the Turks.

Despite his opposition to Lutheranism, Charles did sanction exploratory dialogues between select Protestant and Catholic theologians. Discussions in 1540 and 1541 culminated in the famous Colloquy of Regensburg.

• The Catholics led by Cardinal Contarini and the theological moderate Johann Gropper were able to reach surprising agreements on clerical celibacy and Communion in both kinds and even reached formal agreement on the doctrine of justification.

• The Protestants, led by Melanchthon and Martin Bucer, could not accept transubstantiation or papal authority

So the colloquy eventually foundered.

In 1543 the archbishop of Cologne embraced Protestantism, and in 1546 the elector of the Palatinate converted to the Reformed faith. Now the Protestants had a four-to-three majority among the imperial electors (Saxony, Brandenburg, Palatinate, and the archbishop of Cologne) over the Catholic electors (the king of Bohemia and the archbishops of Trier and Mainz). If Charles were to die, this majority of electors would determine the next emperor.

D. The Schmalkald War#

Charles prepared for war.

• With France subdued for the moment, he secured financial support from Rome.

• He was able to bribe Duke Moritz of Albertine Saxony with the promise of an elector’s title if he would betray his prince (John Fredrick, elector of Saxony).

Philip of Hesse had entered into a bigamous marriage, putting his throne at risk and thus making him vulnerable to imperial pressure. Philip reluctantly agreed to remain neutral if the emperor attacked the Schmalkald League. Above all, Luther’s death in February 1546 left the Protestants in mourning and unprepared for war.

Charles launched the so-called “Schmalkald War” with his assault on the Protestant princes in July 1546. With the ruthless Duke of Alba directing imperial troops, the decisive coup de grâce was delivered to the Protestants at the battle of Mühlberg (April 24, 1547).

Mühlberg was a hollow victory. Neither the Protestants nor the papacy were any more cooperative than before.

• Charles imposed the Augsburg Interim as a temporary religious solution until the Council of Trent reconvened.

• He sweetened the deal for the Protestant territories by permitting clerical marriage and Communion in both kinds.

• Protestant opposition was especially strong in Saxony, where the new elector Moritz granted even more concessions in what was known as the Leipzig Interim.

• Protestant leaders in Magdeburg denounced the interim as the work of the Devil and produced the first Protestant justification for active resistance to ungodly state authority.

In the final analysis, the interim failed.

Elector Moritz soon betrayed the emperor. Enlisting the secret support of Henry II of France, in 1552 Moritz rallied Protestant princes and launched a surprise attack on Catholics, forcing Charles to flee across the Alps. An uneasy stalemate between Protestants and Catholics held sway until the Diet of Augsburg in 1555.

Charles now accepted the realization that the religious settlement within any given territory would be decided, not by the emperor, but by the territorial prince. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio (“the ruler determines the religion”) became political reality. The Peace of Augsburg now recognized two legal religions in the empire: Lutheran and Catholic.

This legalization did not extend to the Reformed branch of Protestantism or Anabaptists. The settlement was not a triumph for toleration, but for political pragmatism.

E. The Reformation of Marriage#

While Luther was living incognito in Wartburg Castle, Karlstadt implemented another of Luther’s proposals from 1520, namely, marriage for clergy. Karlstadt not only advocated it, but led by example.

On Christmas Day 1521, Karlstadt caused a stir by celebrating the mass in German without his vestments, and then he distributed both elements to the parishioners — but he was not yet finished with his rejection of Catholic Tradition.

The following day he announced his engagement to Anna von Mochau, daughter of a poor nobleman, and married her a few weeks later (January 19, 1522).

The next month, on February 10, Justus Jonas, a fellow professor at Wittenberg and one of Luther’s most intimate friends, followed suit and married.

Suddenly, married clergy were all the rage — for everyone except Luther. While approving these particular clerical marriages and generally upholding the right of clergy to marry, Luther was reticent to take the plunge himself. And then he met Katie von Bora.

Luther and Katharina von Bora#

Katharina von Bora (1499–1552) was born to a noble family near Leipzig. Following the customs of the time, the ten-year-old daughter was placed in the Cistercian convent of Nimbschen. Katie appears to have accepted her life until she and several nuns secretly read Luther’s On Monastic Vows in 1522. The nuns embraced Luther’s rejection of clerical celibacy and decided to abandon the cloistered life. When family members refused to assist the nuns, they turned to Luther himself, who was happy to help.

Luther enlisted as a coconspirator Leonhard Koppe, who smuggled twelve nuns from the Nimbshen nunnery in empty herring barrels in April 1523. Koppe delivered nine to Luther’s doorstep in Wittenberg. (Three nuns had returned to relatives.) Remarkably, he found husbands for all except Katie von Bora.

Luther found not one, but two prospective husbands for her.

• The first, Hieronymus Baumgartner, under pressure from his family, married a richer bride

• The second prospect, Dr. Kaspar Glatz, was rejected by Katie as too old.

Katie took matters into her own hands and specifically suggested two other prospects — Luther or his friend Nicolaus von Amsdorf.

Luther had begun to feel the loneliness of bachelorhood, and he expressed his willingness to “take pity” on poor Katie and marry her. The private ceremony took place on June 13, 1525, and a public celebration was held on June 27.

Luther did not marry for love. On the wedding invitation to Amsdorf, Luther confessed, “I feel neither passionate love nor burning for my spouse.” However, a remarkable thing happened after Luther married: he fell in love with his wife. Unlike other Reformers, Luther openly declared his love: “I love my Katie; yes, I love her more dearly than myself.”

Luther and Katie enjoyed a feisty, vibrant, and deeply affectionate twenty-one-year marriage relationship that produced six children.

The theology of clergy marriage#

Luther’s marriage was certainly significant for him personally and also as a theological statement about the viability of married clergy. It became the paradigm for a new Protestant understanding of marriage.

For centuries marriage had been entangled with dowries and social status. Luther’s marriage changed all that. He and Katie had no social status — he was a heretic and outlaw, and she was a runaway nun with no dowry at all. Luther’s marriage reconfigured the reason for marriage from a consideration of dowry and social status to mutual affection. From that point on, social historians have noted that European cultures embrace love as the essential component for a happy marriage.

Luther and Katie changed the way the Western world thought about marriage. Luther’s advocacy for married clergy and his own example inaugurated a social reformation every bit as momentous — perhaps more so — than the ecclesiastical reformation.

For more than a millennium, celibacy had been the ideal of the Christian life.

• Augustine argued that sex, even in marriage, inevitably involved sin.

• Jerome ranked celibacy above widowhood, and to him, both existed on a higher spiritual plane than marriage.

Luther and Katie changed that valuation for the modern world.

F. The Reformation of Poor Relief#

By the sixteenth century poverty had become a persistent reality in more lives than ever before. Estimates are that 25 percent of the population of Europe was regularly underfed.

Luther became the first major reformer to address the theory and praxis of early modern poor relief and social welfare, and he did so from the standpoint of his theology.

As principalities and territories became Protestant, they became independent from Catholic authority. In a very real sense, when city councils and territorial princes embraced Protestantism, they not only assumed authority for the practice of religion, but also acquired new jurisdiction over the wealth and property of the old church.

• Before the Reformation, relief of the poor came from a plethora of loosely affiliated church agencies — local parishes, mendicant orders, and confraternities.

• With the Reformation came a sociopolitical reconfiguration whereby responsibility for poor relief was allocated to a centralized secular authority.

This centralization gave Protestant regimes a more coherent and therefore more effective policy for the poor.

• Begging was prohibited in Protestant communities.

• Hospitals, schools, orphanages, soup kitchens, and shelters came under the authority of the government and were funded through a “common chest” that was replenished by the entire community.

This reconfiguration of poor relief was directly related to the central theological convictions that gave rise to Luther’s reformation.

For two hundred years the legacy of Francis of Assisi had linked begging with Christian piety. Francis and the Franciscans taught that begging most fully represented one’s relationship with God. That is, begging powerfully illustrated a person’s spiritual impoverishment and thus one’s absolute dependence on the gifts of God.

Luther insisted that charity to the poor did not hold meritorious value. He, with his vigorous Augustinian anthropology, agreed that all humanity is spiritually impoverished and in need of God’s grace, but absolutely denied that any human good works, including giving to the poor, could merit God’s grace in salvation.

Salvation, said Luther, is based exclusively on God’s grace, not on meritorious works. Salvation by grace alone does not preclude good works; it merely makes them a consequence of God’s grace.

The true children of God would indeed practice caritas (charity), but it would be mediated through the Protestant governing authorities that were to dispense charity to the poor based on the Christian ethic of brotherly love. In keeping with the Protestant view of unmerited grace, Christians were not to view the poor as beggars, but as poor brothers and sisters who, through divine providence, had been deprived of the means of subsistence through no fault of their own.

Protestants could not eradicate poverty or even begging, but they did reconfigure the practical and theological significance of caritas. Charity was no longer meritorious, but was rather an act of worship.

IV. THE DARK SIDE OF LUTHER#

Protestants have been inclined to cast Luther into the role of religious hero. Calvin himself called Luther an “Apostle.” It is true that Luther was heroic in risking his life at the Diet of Worms for what he believed is the heart of the gospel. But heroism became more difficult when struggling to preserve the Reformation movement and his legacy.

The early Luther lived and taught as if he had nothing to lose. Yet success was a powerful intoxicant, especially when truth was at stake. Over time, with the expansion of Lutheranism, the founder had much to lose, and Luther the risk-taker became Luther the defender of the movement at any cost.

A. Philip’s Bigamy#

Philip, landgrave of Hesse, not only was one of the first princes to ally with the Lutheran cause, but was also the architect of the Schmalkald League, a defensive alliance of princes who supported the Protestant movement. Only the electors of Saxony were more strategically important than Philip of Hesse. So it was a very delicate matter when Philip sought Luther’s support for a bigamous marriage.

Like most princes, Philip had married for political purposes — in his case, Christina, daughter of Duke George of Saxony. Because of the political nature of the marriage, no one raised an eyebrow when he continued to enjoy a long string of mistresses. This was considered acceptable (even by Christina) as long as Philip remained discreet.

His newfound evangelical faith seems to have troubled his conscience somewhat, and while he continued the affairs, he declined to partake of Communion for fifteen years. Then he met and fell deeply in love with a beautiful young noblewoman from his court, Margaret van der Saal. At first he sought to make her his mistress, but her mother refused and insisted on marriage or nothing. Divorce was out of the question, and that left only bigamy.

Interestingly, Philip did not pursue this course of action without consulting with his wife, who actually agreed to the bigamous marriage as long as her offspring were designated rightful heirs. Philip was not unaware that some of the Old Testament patriarchs had more than one wife and, in keeping with the Protestant stress on the authority of Scripture, convinced himself that his case for bigamy had biblical precedent.

Philip sought out Luther, as well as Melanchthon and Martin Bucer, as to the permissibility of a bigamous marriage. Luther had argued years earlier, regarding Henry VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon, that bigamy was preferable to divorce. Luther fatefully approved the bigamous marriage, partly out of concern for Philip’s troubled conscience and partly out of political expediency. It was a decision that would cost many lives and nearly destroy Lutheranism itself.

Biblical and moral considerations aside, there were serious legal issues as well. Bigamy, it turns out, was against imperial law, which meant that Philip was vulnerable to his archnemesis — Emperor Charles V. In order to keep his title and domain, Philip was compelled to sign a nonaggression pact with Charles V. Six years later, when the time was right, Charles would launch a surprise attack against the Lutheran princes and the Schmalkald League while Philip, the most powerful member, remained neutral. The results were catastrophic.

Whatever the judgment on this matter, Luther failed both as a moral leader and as a political strategist. By supporting Philip, Luther jeopardized the very movement he sought to preserve.

B. Anti-Semitism#

In 1543 he wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, urging Germans to:

• Burn Jewish synagogues, schools, and homes

• Destroy all Jewish religious writings

• Prevent rabbis from teaching on penalty of death

In a decision that would reverberate in the Nazi era of the mid-twentieth century, Luther advocated that Jews be enslaved to the German people.

Luther’s rage against the Jews in 1543 marks a dramatic volte face from his pro-Jewish stance in earlier years.

In 1523 he had written a tract with the intentionally provocative title Jesus Was Born a Jew. Luther urged the German people to see Jews as God’s chosen people, whom Christians should view in a cordial, even brotherly manner. In a world that blamed the Jews for everything from the plague to ritual murder of Christian youths and profanation of the eucharistic host, Luther was remarkably tolerant.

Instead of advocating pogroms against the Jews as was done in the Crusades (where Jews were slaughtered in Germany), or expulsion as was done in England (1290), France (1306), Spain (1492), and Portugal (1497), Luther sought to evangelize the Jews.

Luther was gravely disappointed when his personal attempts to evangelize Jewish rabbis in the 1530s were without success. A few years later, he heard a rumor that rabbis actually managed to convert some Lutherans to Judaism, which sent Luther into a rage. Against the advice of friends, Luther unleashed a furious assault on the Jews in the 1540s.

But was Luther really anti-Semitic? This is a more complex question than is generally realized.

• Luther shared many of the cultural biases of his century and his countrymen. In this general sense, Luther exhibits a racially motivated anti-Semitism.

• There is a growing scholarly awareness that Luther was animated primarily by a theological anti-Semitism. As he perceived them, Jews had consistently rejected the gospel and for that reason should be utterly condemned.

Luther’s zealousness for the gospel seems to have clouded his better judgment. Whatever his primary motivations were for his belligerence toward the Jews, in the final analysis no excuse is adequate.

C. Luther’s Death#

The older Luther got, the more temperamental he became. This animus shows itself in more broken personal relationships, more virulent attacks against the Zwinglians, and hostility toward the Jews. He was plagued with all sorts of medical problems: kidney stones, constipation, hemorrhoids, and headaches — to name the illnesses he mentions most often.

Perhaps the most storied episode of kidney stones occurred during a trip to Schmalkald in February 1537. Urination became impossible, he could not keep food down, and his entire body became swollen. So severe was this medical condition that Luther commended himself to God and prepared to die. On the way back to Wittenberg, he passed the kidney stone.

Luther’s life ended in 1546 where it had begun, in Eisleben. He had traveled there with his three sons (Hans, Martin, and Paul) to mediate a dispute between two brothers, both counts of Mansfeld. He seems to have suffered a mild heart attack upon arrival, but recovered sufficiently to bring the negotiations to a successful end. Once the affair was settled, Luther was exhausted and retired to his room on February 17. A series of further heart attacks followed, causing him to drift in and out of consciousness throughout the night.

In the early morning hours of February 18, his close friend Justus Jonas leaned over the barely conscious Luther and asked: “Reverend Father, are you ready to die trusting in your Lord Jesus Christ and to confess the doctrine you have taught in his name?” Luther weakly but audibly replied “yes,” which was the last word he ever spoke. Word quickly reached Wittenberg the next day.

Luther was gone, but his legacy survived.

V. LUTHERANISM AFTER LUTHER#

After the debacle of the Schmalkald War, Lutheranism regained its balance at the Diet of Augsburg (1555). With legal status in the empire, Lutheranism continued to expand, principally in the Scandinavian countries.

Adherents to Lutheranism could be found even in the remote region of Russia known as Muscovy, when Czar Ivan IV (1553–84) expressed curiosity about Lutheran writings that had been imported from Denmark. For a time, a small German church was established in Moscow, until Orthodox bishops complained and had it shut down.

Lutheran expansion was, however, hindered significantly by doctrinal divisions. Even before Luther’s death there were theological quarrels, but they were held in check because Luther was the final arbiter in all disputes. With Luther gone, the competition for Luther’s true legacy nearly destroyed Lutheranism.

Two warring factions emerged:

• The “Gnesio-Lutherans” (genuine Lutherans) led by Nicolaus von Amsdorf (1483–1565) and Mattias Flacius Illyricus (1520–75), whose stronghold was the University of Jena

• The “Philippists,” who looked to the leadership of Philipp Melanchthon and the University of Wittenberg.

The Gnesio-Lutherans believed themselves to be the true inheritors of Luther’s reformation, while the Philippists were more moderate and revisionist in theology.

The Adiaphora controversy#

In the wake of the Augsburg Interim, the first major quarrel emerged between the two Lutheran factions — the adiaphora controversy.

• Melanchthon judged the Leipzig Integrim the better part of wisdom to accept the restoration of some of the traditional Catholic ceremonies on the grounds that these were “matters indifferent” (adiaphora in Greek) or peripheral to the essence of the gospel.

• Flacius took exception, arguing that “nothing is an adiaphoron in the case of confession.”

This was the beginning of a series of controversies (Majorist, Synergist, Crypto-Calvinist, and others) that would engulf Lutheranism for the next twenty years.

The Majorist controversy#

The Philippist Georg Major, a professor in Wittenberg, argued that salvation must be attended by good works, hence “good works are necessary for salvation.” This infuriated Amsdorf, who replied infamously that “good works are harmful for salvation.”

Although it was primarily a difference concerning theological emphasis, tempers continued to flare in the Majorist controversy over the proper relation of good works and salvation.

The Synergist controversy#

Another version of this dispute flared in what came to be known as the Synergist controversy. In 1555 the Philippist Johann Pfeffinger (1493–1573) inquired as to the role of the human will in conversion. The Gnesio-Lutherans Amsdorf and Flacius charged Pfeffinger with the heresy of “synergism,” the assertion that the human will cooperates (synergein in Greek) with divine grace in salvation.

The Crypto-Calvinist#

Yet anrother controversy materialized, centering on the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.

Gnesio-Lutherans accused Melanchthon and the Philippists of reconfiguring Luther’s understanding of the Eucharist in favor of a more Calvinistic view, hence the Crypto-Calvinist controversy. Luther had taught that Christ’s body is ubiquitous and thus able to be present in heaven and also really present “in, with and under” the elements in the Eucharist.

Melanchthon inclined toward a more Calvinistic view, which stressed the bodily presence of Christ in heaven, but that the believer who rightly partakes of the elements is spiritually lifted by the Holy Spirit into the real spiritual presence of Christ.

And so it was, Lutheranism was plagued by incessant controversy for decades.

The Formula of Concord#

It was not until the 1570s that efforts at reconciliation began to make headway. Jacob Andreae (1528–90), chancellor of the University of Tübingen, became a credible mediator and led the way to unity between the Gnesio-Lutherans and the Philippists. Andreae, ably seconded by Martin Chemnitz and others, produced the Formula of Concord in 1577.

The Formula managed to satisfy most Lutherans by creatively combining the thought of Luther and Melanchthon so that it was endorsed by two-thirds of all German Lutheran princes. Theological unity was finally achieved and Luther’s legacy preserved.