23. The Reformation: Martin Luther
Challenge to the existing political order by Machiavelli is joined by challenge to the religious order by the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, who posts 95 theses for debate on the church door at Wittenberg. Both challenges are to the Medieval synthesis joining Christianity to Aristotelian reason, and involve issues of legitimacy of authority. Luther is hardly the first reformer of Christianity or the first to express concern about papal over-reach, but his reach and lasting significance went beyond many others. He challenged the notion that the church should be organized like a monarchy, a hierarchical state whose leader rules not by true consent and selection by the community but by divine right. Luther takes on the priestly control of sacramental power (what Anderson calls “the mechanization of salvation”).
Anderson looks at Luther’s life and his own crises, formative of his radical thought. Luther’s theological stance, that reason and human effort do not save us but salvation requires grace, goes back to Augustine and Paul, and it alone would not have caused the revolution for which he was eventually responsible. Almost accidentally, it was his challenge to the selling of indulgences and extra church collections for Rome that sets things off. The 95 theses call for an academic debate on indulgences and the divine political economy, the type of disputation within his role as a professor. But it set off a larger political event because it connected with German discontentment over all of the extra collections going to Rome. The pope asked Luther to recant; Luther refused; and soon enough he was calling the pope the anti-Christ. His call for elimination of the papacy links to the rise of German nationalism. Luther’s theology becomes more radical; the pope excommunicates him; and soon Luther says salvation can only come by leaving the Catholic Church. His refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms is, on the one hand, a model of Scholastic reasoning: given that he could find no scriptural basis nor a basis in natural reasoning for the sacramental approach nor for the sale of indulgences, he is bound by truth and conscience to reject them. Luther turns things on their head, stating in effect that the individual is the ultimate judge, and it’s up to authority to provide the burden of proof before an individual believes or consents. This is a truly modern, skeptical and individualistic approach, akin to that of modern politics and the skeptical questioning of modern science.
Anderson looks at Luther’s life and his own crises, formative of his radical thought. Luther’s theological stance, that reason and human effort do not save us but salvation requires grace, goes back to Augustine and Paul, and it alone would not have caused the revolution for which he was eventually responsible. Almost accidentally, it was his challenge to the selling of indulgences and extra church collections for Rome that sets things off. The 95 theses call for an academic debate on indulgences and the divine political economy, the type of disputation within his role as a professor. But it set off a larger political event because it connected with German discontentment over all of the extra collections going to Rome. The pope asked Luther to recant; Luther refused; and soon enough he was calling the pope the anti-Christ. His call for elimination of the papacy links to the rise of German nationalism. Luther’s theology becomes more radical; the pope excommunicates him; and soon Luther says salvation can only come by leaving the Catholic Church. His refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms is, on the one hand, a model of Scholastic reasoning: given that he could find no scriptural basis nor a basis in natural reasoning for the sacramental approach nor for the sale of indulgences, he is bound by truth and conscience to reject them. Luther turns things on their head, stating in effect that the individual is the ultimate judge, and it’s up to authority to provide the burden of proof before an individual believes or consents. This is a truly modern, skeptical and individualistic approach, akin to that of modern politics and the skeptical questioning of modern science.
Learning Events
- Global Hot Spots Lecture Series - December 11
