Good works are not repudiated

"Good works are not repudiated, but their aim and direction have been radically 'horizontalized' [through 'sola fide']: they have moved from Heaven to earth; they are no longer done to please God but to serve the world."

 (Oberman:  Luther:  Man between God and the Devil,  p.192.)

A proper theologian must have a Devil

"I did not learn my theology at once, but had to seek ever deeper after it.  That is where my spiritual distress led me;  for one can never understand the Holy Scriptures without experience and tribulations... If we do not have such a Devil, then we are nothing but speculative Theologi, who handle their thoughts badly and speculate about everything with their reason, that it must be like this and like that; just like the way of the monks in the monasteries."  

Luther in Oberman, p.185 (Man between God and the Devil)

Luther and the Wealth of Scripture / Oberman

From Heiko Oberman's book:

"Yet, as Luther pointed out at the beginning of his professional career and at the end of his life, all his discoveries could not exhaust the wealth of the Scriptures.  In his early Psalm lectures he said:  "If you, O human being, cannot grasp some scriptural passage completely and are capable of unveiling the concealed truth only in part--be it as large as it may--then know that there is witness there that points past you and will only be revealed to you or others in the future."  One might assume that this was a beginner exercising the humble restraint befitting a monk and that the expert, the Reformation Luther, would overcome it.  But that was not the case.  A note in Latin was found next to Luther's deathbed;  he wrote it two days before he died:

No one can understand Virgil in his Bucolics and Georgics unless he has spent five years as a shepherd or farmer.  No one understands Cicero in his letters unless he has served under an outstanding government for twenty years.  No one should believe that he has tasted the Holy Scriptures sufficiently unless he has spent one hundred years leading churches with the prophets.  That is why:  1.  John the Baptist, 2.  Christ, 3.  the apostles were a prodigious miracle.  Do not profane this divine Aeneid, but bow to it and honor its vestiges.  

In view of Luther's life-long struggle to clarify the Scriptures in questions crucial to salvation, his "last words" may sound like a confession of resignation.  This, however, is misleading.  The point is rather that to study the Scriptures is like a journey--full of surprising discoveries. 

This is followed by the statement "We are beggars" in German, and in Latin again, "That is true."





A doctor of theology for thirty-four years, practiced in the translation and exegesis of Scripture--notwithstanding all this experience, he had to admit that he was overwhelmed by the depth and wealth of the Scriptures, which no man would ever fathom in a single lifetime.

In view of Luther's life-long struggle to clarify the Scriptures in questions crucial to salvation, his "last words" may sound like a confession of resignation.  This, however, is misleading.  the point is rather that to study the Scriptures is like a journey--full of surprising discoveries.  He once compared his scriptural studies to a walk through a forest:  "There is hardly a tree in this forest that I have not shaken and obtained apples or picked berries from."  Certainly his statement did not lack pride, but neither did it make any claim to his having finished with the Scriptures.   

During his last, ten-year(!) course of lectures on the Book of Genesis (1535-45), Luther took another extended walk through the woods and gathered the fruits of his roamings into concentrated summaries of his theology.  Although these lectures deserve to be used as an introduction to Luther's world of faith, they have nearly fallen into oblivion owing to the prevailing interest in the young Luther as well as to the complex history of how they have come down to us.  

The theme throughout is the wild rage of the Devil, who seeks unceasingly to destroy the Son of God everywhere:  "He is his target," because His birth and death are the agents of divine redemption.  The Devil's battle against Christ makes the "walk through the woods"  necessary and divests it of its arbitrariness.  Luther's single-mindedness is demonstrated in his interpretation of the story of Jacob's ladder.  Jacob was fleeing from his brother Esau.  One night he dreamt of a ladder that reached into Heaven, with angels of God ascending and descending it  (Gen. 28.12-14).  Luther was able to illustrate the whole of his Reformation theology by means of Jacob's dream at Bethel:  through God's Word and spirit, Christians are led up to Heaven and, in their faith, united with Christ.  Christ Himself, however, descends to lead Christendom.  The ladder connecting Heaven and earth is the incarnation of God;  it is what the Devil hates most and is perpetually fighting against.  The Devil wants to tear the faithful away from Christ, their ladder to Heaven.  

Luther had long been a master in finding ever new and graphic ways of combining the various realms of god's work--in Christ, in justification, in the Creation--into a single vision.  Now the kingdom of the Devil had received sharp contours as well.  thirty years earlier "sing, world, and Devil" had still formed the traditional medieval phalanx of evil.  To escape the Devil one had had to avoid the world and seek salvation where there was no room for sin--most safely at a monastery.  But now the Devil was the opponent of the world created by God, seeking to destroy all the forces involved in protecting God's creation:  family and economy, state and Church.  Luther's walk had taken him out of the monastery and into the world."

(Luther.  Man between God and the Devil.  Oberman. pp. 166-168)






--I have to say, this quote above helps me understand Luther's lasts words better.  The Bible was for him inexhaustible supply and food for thought.  He did not expect that he could ever fully plum its depths.   Everywhere he found it speaking about his dear Lord Jesus Christ.  We can refresh ourselves from his attitude easily.  He also offers us nourishment, and I am grateful for it.

The commentary on Genesis is available free at I-books.  I have lately peeked into it and was greatly intrigued by it.  Thought the commentaries are 500 years old they are thorough and deep and show forth Luther's great experience in life and in scripture.   They are very worthwhile reading, as Oberman says, though apparently neglected.

Oberman on Luther / Angels on pins and Augustine as exegete

"The question of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin was soon being cited by the humanists to demonstrate the stupidity of the scholastic. Luther, too, took an interest in this seemingly abstruse problem, not in order to solve it but in order to point out that faith dwelt in a realm of its own.  The question is not as ridiculous as the answer--as with the soul, all we know about angels is what is revealed in Scriptures:  "Everything that is added to faith is certainly only imaginative speculation"--unfounded and thus uncertain, pure invention.

This is an adumbration of the principle of the new Wittenberg theology that Luther would formulate seven year later "against the whole of scholasticism": "The whole of Aristotle is to theology as shadow is to light."  Contemporaries immediately recognized the import of the attack, as Aristotle, who had become academic theology's great authority in the course of the thirteenth century, had provided the terminology and categories used to establish the central concepts of the Holy Scriptures and Church doctrine:  God is the "prime mover"; the soul, as "form," determines the human being;  justification takes place through the "infusion" of "the power of grace"; the sacrament of the mass transforms the "substance" of bread and wine; man is "free" to decide between good and evil.  Gaining a critical grasp of all these basic notions and finding new biblical terms for them was to cost Luther years.

The knowledge that there was an infinite, qualitative distance between Heaven and earth became an established principle for Luther as early as 1509:  all human thought, as noble, effective, and indispensable as it might be to solve problems in the world, does not suffice to fathom salvation because it cannot reach Heaven.  Questions of faith must be resolved through the Word of God or not at all.  The temptation--or compulsion--to sanctify the words of man and believe in them is satanic.  When God is silent, man should not speak;  and what God has put asunder, namely Heaven and earth, man should not join together.

Thus not even Augustine, especially Augustine the neo-Platonist, could become the new, infallible authority, because that would merely have been replacing one philosophy with another, substituting Plato for Aristotle.  Augustine was the exemplary scriptural exegete who since 1509, had given Luther the means to demonstrate the extent to which theology had degenerated into a mouthpiece for Aristotle.

The alternative is clear:  whatever transcends the perception of empirical reality is either based on God's Word or is pure fantasy.  As a nominalist Luther began making a conscious distinction between knowledge of the world and faith in God, but through Augustine he realized that his school lagged far behind its own basic principle:  Scripture was being violated by philosophy."  (Man between God and the Devil. p. 160)

More reading, less blogging

The internet was not working, then we had a power outage for half a day--and now the internet works again...

So, reading wise I finished the end of Brecht's third book on Luther on the "Jews, Turks and Pope".  This was instructive.  This section dovetails with a book I am also reading about the history of the Jewish people in Germany:

For a little idea I will tell you that the last bit I read was about the Shabbatean mysticism, which was a movement that calculated the arrival of the Messiah to a particular year, led by Shabbetai Zevi.  Calculating the year of  arrival of the Messiah was a pre-occupation of some streams of  Judaism, utilizing secret knowledge of numbers, etc. The Shabbatean movement swept across Jewish communities in Europe, including those in Germany, inducing individuals to sell their goods and make plans to go to Palestine:

After dividing up the kingdoms of the world among his followers, Shabbetai Zevi set sail in December for Constantinople.  But when his ship arrived there in February 1666, he was arrested and held by order of an alarmed vizier.  Undeterred, pilgrims came from afar to visit him, while preparations for the messianic age continued through the diaspora.  Shabbetai Zevi, brought before a court attended by the Sultan, was accused of having represented himself as the Messiah and was given a choice between death and conversion to Islam. In a mood of deep dejection, he agreed to submit to the Islamic faith, in which he nominally remained until his death in 1676.

Even this betrayal did not burst the bubble of Jewish ardor.  While the rabbinate tried to hush up the whole affair, true believers sought higher justifications for these stunning events, and the powerful effect of that intense messianic year, 1666, survived in Jewish culture as the core of an underground mystical doctrine that lasted into the eighteenth century.  It became a public scandal in 1751, when Jacob Emden, a rabbi in Emden, accused Jonathan Eybeschuetz, the eminent rabbi of Hamburg, of distributing secret amulets with Shabbatean inscriptions.  Although an international council of rabbis exonerated Eybeschuetz, the aura of shabbateanism clung to him...  p. 83

So much.  After that comes a section on "The Court Jew", who was apparently a richer individual "who served a prince or noble lord, most often as financial advisers and bankers but also as tax administrators, suppliers of military materiel [sic?] like horses, provisions, and weapons, or purveyors of jewels, antiquities, and other luxuries.  These Jews, who profited immensely from their opportunities, also lived in two worlds.  Dressed in the latest fashion, exempt from the onerous badge and other marks of Jewish dress, speaking several languages and well educated, they enjoyed the advantages of their wealth.  Yet serving at the pleasure of a prince who might prove fickle, whose mind might be turned against hem, who might suddenly die, made theirs a hazardous occupation.  Always the outsider and dependent on the goodwill of his patron, the court Jew was easy game for a discontented prince and a visible target for his subjects."  (p. 84)

 -- Ok, that's it for today.  (Since Luther's time the emperor had required the Jews to wear distinctive clothing featuring a yellow ring as an unmistakable sign of identification--or rather stigmatization.  Another result was the creation of  ghettos.)

I am also reading Heiko Oberman's "The Dawn of the Reformation:  Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought".  This one has many untranslated sections in German, French and Latin, which I am very happy to report I can read, since I spent my entire childhood, so it seemed at the time, memorizing vocabulary in all those languages.  Now I know what all this torture was for ("aha" moment)--so one can read books such as this one. (Between my mother and the nuns it was language study and more language study. --  It's just I've never read a book like this, spiked through and through with not so short quotes in various languages.)

These essays are very precise.