24. Luther, continued

Luther’s political legacy has strong paradoxes. In part, this is because he had to make decisions and pronouncements on the fly as events rapidly evolved.

From Luther’s thought come notions that link to political thought as it is also evolving: a belief in equality and the competence of individuals; skepticism of automatic deference to authority as “knowing better”; the role of reason and evidence in decision-making; individualism and self as source of the meaning and purpose of life. Yet, paradoxically, Luther has his own authoritarian side when he speaks directly to politics. Political authority and submission to it are still necessary because we are in need of order (here, he is Augustinian indeed). This takes us down an odd path: having challenged the authority of the Catholic Church to make moral judgments, Luther has left us with no law beyond human law by which to judge the political order. He did not challenge the medieval hierarchical political system.

Interestingly, Anderson notes, despite the strong assault on Catholicism, it and Christianity in other forms survive, but the centrality of Aristotelian logic will just about collapse in the modern era.