Luther

Luther (1483–1546)

Message

The will is not free to choose God. It is ridden: either by God or by sin, and it does not choose its rider. Erasmus’s moderate freedom saves morality and empties faith, because a will that can turn itself has no need of a promise. Scripture is clear on this, externally in the Word and internally only where the Spirit gives assent. Justification is forensic and total: the sinner is reckoned righteous for Christ’s sake while remaining a sinner. Simul justus et peccator—at once righteous and sinner. The Christian is free lord of all, subject to none, in faith; and dutiful servant of all, subject to all, in love. The Mass, merit, and the intact will are the same error: man contributing a share to his own rescue.

Content

The Ninety-Five Theses (1517) open the public fight on penance and merit. The Freedom of a Christian (1520) states the two-fold lordship and servitude. De servo arbitrio, The Bondage of the Will (1525), is the book that belongs on this branch: a point-by-point refusal of Erasmus’s Diatribe (1524). Later catechisms teach the same anthropology to the household.

Presentation

Polemic as theology. He writes as if moderation were a vice. Sentences are built to corner. The 1525 book is a long letter that will not let the opponent remain slippery. German and Latin are both weapons; the German is for the church, the Latin for Erasmus.

Method

Scripture against philosophy’s smoothing. He distinguishes the external clarity of the text from the internal clarity that only the Spirit gives, and then refuses Erasmus the right to park the doctrine of the bound will among “useless” mysteries. Assertion replaces dialectic. The self is not explored as Kierkegaard will explore it. It is accused, then consoled by a verdict it did not earn.

Summary

Augustine’s damaged will becomes the believer’s crisis. Righteousness is imputed, not grown. The sinner remains sinner in himself and stands righteous in Christ. Pelagius has returned as Christian humanism; Luther sends him out again.

What shaped him

People: Staupitz, who aimed his terror toward the wounds of Christ; Erasmus, the opponent who clarified him; Paul. Place: Mansfeld, Erfurt, Wittenberg, the Wartburg. Formative experiences: the thunderstorm vow; monastic scrupulosity; the “tower experience,” however dated, in which Romans 1:17 ceased to be an accusation; the Diet of Worms (1521). Cultural events: indulgences and the Renaissance papacy; humanist confidence in a will that could cooperate; the Peasants’ War, which hardened his fear of a freedom misunderstood as license.

Quotes

“The Holy Spirit is no skeptic, and the things He has written on our hearts are not doubts or opinions, but assertions more certain than life itself.”

“A man must delight in assertions, or he is no Christian.”

Free choice without grace “is not free at all, but the permanent prisoner and bondslave of evil.”

Simul justus et peccator: at the same time righteous and sinner.

“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

“Let God be God.”