Luther

By Scott Hendrix

Abingdon Pillars of Theology is a series for the college and seminary classroom designed to help students grasp the basic and necessary facts, influence, and significance of major theologians. Written by noted scholars, these books will outline the context, methodology, organizing principles, primary contributions, and key writings of people who have shaped theology as we know it today.

"Martin Luther would be shocked to hear that he is appearing in a series called pillars of theology. To be sure, the professor of biblical interpretation with a doctorate in theology was a theologian. In fact, teaching theology for thirty-four years at the University of Wittenberg brought into Luther's large household, managed by his wife Katharina von Bora, the only salary he ever earned. Still, like most theologians, Luther never thought of himself as having a theology. A theologian becomes a pillar of the discipline in the estimation of admiring readers, but they are not the focus of this book. My purpose is to lay the groundwork and identify the pieces that were later used to construct what is now called Luther's theology." From the book

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: May 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781426763243

Scott Hendrix

46 Caswell 1196 Fearrington Post Pittsboro, NC 27312

Book preview

LUTHER

Other books in the Abingdon Pillars of Theology series

Eugene TeSelle, Augustine

Terrence Tice, Schleiermacher

Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr

Eberhard Busch, Barth

LUTHER

SCOTT H.

HENDRIX

LUTHER

Copyright © 2009 by Abingdon Press

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37202-0801 or [e-mail].

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hendrix, Scott H.

Martin Luther / Scott H. Hendrix.

p. cm. — (Abingdon pillars of theology)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-687-65641-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Luther, Martin, 1483-1546. I. Title.

BR332.5.H46 2009

284.1092—dc22

[B]

2008038691

Scriptures quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

Preface

Martin Luther Chronology (1483–1546)

1. Laying the Groundwork

2. Becoming Luther

3. Shaping a Theologian

4. Two Realizations

5. Living with the Bible

6. Theme of a Lifetime

7. Living as Christians

8. Theology for the Church

9. Confessing the Faith

10. A Kingdom of Promise

11. Becoming a Pillar

Notes

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

This book attempts the nearly impossible: to explain briefly and understandably how and why Martin Luther became a prominent theologian who is still studied and appreciated. No one has read everything he wrote or everything that has been written about him; the sources and interpretations are countless. The complete critical edition of his writings, known as the Weimar Edition and started in 1883, the four-hundredth anniversary of Luther’s birth, is still not complete. So far it contains more than one hundred volumes. The American Edition of his writings in English has fifty-five volumes, and some of its translations are outdated. Since this book is an introduction for English readers, the American Edition has been quoted and cited, although in some cases a passage has been translated differently or rendered in inclusive language. The bibliography contains mostly sources in English.

Historians and theologians tend to view Luther and the Reformation differently. This book is a blend of perspectives. It has become common for historians to refer to reformations in the plural, but this book deals primarily with the German Reformation and I have stuck with the singular. Some theologians debate whether Luther was Protestant or Catholic, and in some Lutheran circles he is called evangelical catholic in order to distinguish Lutherans from Protestants and to emphasize that Luther wanted to reform the old church and not start a new one. Those theological agendas have little to do with the historical Luther. Luther and his German contemporaries called their movement evangelisch, and that term included the early Swiss Reformation until the controversy over the Lord’s Supper separated the followers of Zwingli (and later Calvin) and the followers of Luther into Reformed and Lutheran churches. Luther used other names for his opponents, most of them not complimentary. Catholics were papists, Zwinglians and Anabaptists were swarming fanatics (Schwärmer). Muslims were Turks, because during Luther’s lifetime, Islam, in the form of Ottoman armies from Turkey, threatened Christian Europe. Jews were the people of God, but Europe had a long history of Christian anti-Judaism that also infected Luther.

I have retained the word evangelical for the early reform movement, even though the word means something different to many English readers. Modern evangelicals associate it not with particular denominations of Christianity, but with characteristics like personal conversion, a literal reading of scripture, specific moral positions, and informal styles of worship. For Luther and other reformers, evangelical was applied to a movement or church that was centered on the gospel or good news of Christianity, in contrast to the Roman or papal church that was not, in their view, gospel-centered. Luther’s favorite word, however, was not catholic, protestant, or evangelical, but Christian. He saw himself as a reformer of Christendom, not as a reformer of the Roman Catholic Church or the founder of a Protestant church. More about Luther’s perspective and reforming agenda is found throughout the book because they were crucial to his theology.

The book covers most of the themes that were prominent in his theology but does not argue that a particular doctrine or topic was the key to his thought. Since the book maintains that Luther did not have a single theology, it makes little sense to isolate a theme like justification by faith as the single key to his thought. Nonetheless, the various themes are held together by his reforming agenda and the vision of true Christianity that guided his work. My presentation of these themes is, of course, a result of how I have read and taught Luther’s theology (I still use the term) over the years, and in the final chapter I do risk some specific judgments about future interpretations of his thought. Mainly, however, I have tried to let Luther’s theology stand on its own, as it must if it is to be a pillar.

Scott H. Hendrix

Professor of Reformation History and Doctrine Emeritus

Princeton Theological Seminary

August 5, 2008

MARTIN LUTHER CHRONOLOGY (1483–1546)

CHAPTER ONE

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

Martin Luther would be shocked to hear that he is appearing in a series called pillars of theology. To be sure, the professor of biblical interpetation with a doctorate in theology was a theologian. In fact, teaching theology for thirty-four years at the University of Wittenberg brought into Luther’s large household, managed by his wife Katharina von Bora, the only salary he ever earned. Still, like most theologians, Luther never thought of himself as having a theology. A theologian becomes a pillar of the discipline in the estimation of admiring readers, but they are not the focus of this book.¹ My purpose is to lay the groundwork and identify the pieces that were later used to construct what is now called Luther’s theology.

Five principles will help us understand how Luther himself practiced theology.

First, Martin Luther’s theology cannot be presented or understood apart from the world in which he lived. His life and his work were defined by four contexts: (a) sixteenth-century Germany, where he lived and died; (b) Electoral Saxony, an important territory in the Holy Roman Empire, to which Luther was confined after being declared an outlaw in 1521; (c) the small town and University of Wittenberg, where Luther worked from 1512 to 1546; and (d) the Wittenberg cloister of Augustinian Hermits, in which Luther dwelled initially as a monk and then as a husband and father after his marriage in 1525.

All four settings contributed vital elements to Luther’s theological practice. He was reared and schooled in the deep piety of late medieval Germany, and he profited from the intellectual currents of Christian humanism that insisted on the value of education and the study of languages. With the help of his colleagues, he became a gifted translator of the Bible and a master of lucid and expressive German that made him—through the new printing technology—a popular writer. Because the Holy Roman Empire was a patchwork of independent cities and territories, the political clout of the electors of Saxony shielded Luther from the imperial ban and permitted their young university at Wittenberg, founded in 1502, to develop into a haven of the new evangelical theology.