THE REFORMATION IN PERIL The term authority as a description of Luther's understanding of the Bible could be misleading if—as happened before and after him—the Scriptures were taken for a collection of objective truths that had to be compared and rearranged in ever new systems, depending on the issue in question. The principle Luther dictated to his students in his first lecture series on the Psalms already leads beyond this "scholastic" use of Scripture. The exegete should treat a difficult scriptural passage no differently than Moses did the rock in the desert, which he smote with his rod until water gushed out for his thirsty people (Exod. 17.1-7). The rod is faith, under which Scripture unfolds, and faith is the confident hope of hearing the voice of God from the pages of this book and of being addressed directly. But for a biblical text to be really penetrated by it, the rod of faith must be wielded with the help of scholarly aids, particularly of linguistic research. Conceptual and grammatical clarity are and remain the basis and the regulating mechanism of theological exegesis.
The development of young man Luther's theology can indeed be traced by the way he spurns the centuries-old symbolic interpretation of Scripture in his own works, for otherwise the text threatens to become intellectually inflated and the spirit of God is put at the mercy of the ingenious exegete.*
Once Scripture has been dealt with down to its language and grammar, what does it reveal to man in his yearning for knowledge of himself and the world? The diagnosis is frightening: man cannot redeem himself; he is only a heartbeat away from death and on the way to nothingness. Where it is a question of salvation, decisions lie not with the free will but with God alone, on whom man is dependent from his first sigh to his final breath. Man must be driven forward by the Word and grace of God and held fast in his faith to the very last moment; without divine mercy he collapses into himself and back into nothingness.
But where it is a matter of shaping the world, man, even the wicked, godless man, has the duty and the ability to use his reason and good judgment to act freely and steer the course he chooses. This distinction between man and world, between person and achievement, is undoubtedly less than what
"Erasmians" and "fundamentalists" expect from the Scriptures. What they are seeking there—whether in the laws of the Old Testament or the Sermon on the Mount—are specific instructions that enable the new man to enforce
God's supremacy on earth.
""GOD AND the Scriptures are two different things" —Luther's distinction sounds as alien and bold to the medieval man as to his descendants in the age of the Renaissance and Reformation. Reform and renewal, the best any
LIFE BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL age has to offer, was always—whether for Bernard of Clairvaux, Desiderius Erasmus, or John Calvin—inspired by the Holy Scriptures and directed toward enforcing God's law in Church and society, in monastery, study, and town hall. Luther, on the other hand, dared to stress the distance: two different things—like creator and creature. The clarity of the Scriptures leads to the recognition of man and his indestructible dependence either on God the Redeemer or Satan the corrupter. There is no third alternative. But the Scriptures do not lead to a disclosure of the majesty of God's dominion, and they do not reveal His plan for the history of the world, in which the new man can simply take his place as the vanguard of freedom and progress.
The Bondage of the Will of the year 1525 is directed against the most important representatives of the Renaissance north of the Alps—but not only against them and their followers then and now. It is aimed equally at the fundamentalists, who have taken up the cause of the Reformation and promoted it under the motto of sola scriptura.
It is a very narrow path Luther is walking. Following him means being initiated into life between God and the Devil, the vital problem of his theology, where Scripture, grace, and faith—the three basic Reformation concepts—interpret and clarify one another.
Discord in the Reformation The Sacrament of the "Ignorant" nce the "time for silence" had drawn to a close in early 1520, the new study of the Bible began generating a host of problems which now had to be solved in accordance with Scripture but without recourse to canon law. Baptism, the Eucharist, penance, marriage, and authority were the central topics Luther would be dealing with in the coming years. The construction of a new Christian worldview would call out not only old adversaries but opponents from Luther's own ranks, who had learned to use the Old and New Testaments as a basis for theological debate—and dispute.
In what Luther later came to see as the darkest days of his life, he gave us the best example of what the crucial term Anfechtung means and described his way of coping with it: "The Prince of Demons himself has taken up combat against me; so powerfully and adeptly does he handle the Scriptures that my scriptural knowledge does not suffice if I do not rely on the alien Word."
The "alien Word"—this alienating concept goes to the root of the conflict.
The "alien Word" is the Gospel, which is not "my own," but which I must hear spoken "to me." The Christian can be justified in the sight of God only through trust in the extraneous righteousness of Christ and not through his own righteousness. Likewise, a Christian can only be promised absolution, the Word of forgiveness, "from outside." He cannot trust his own conscience, and the confusion will only increase in view of the fast-approaching end.
"My scriptural knowledge would not suffice if I did not rely on the alien Word." What an odd statement from a professor of theology, especially one who can refer to himself as Evangelist and insist on the authority of Scripture with such conviction that no other authorities, no matter how respected or hallowed, can compete. It is at this point that we encounter the crucial difference between confidence and certainty, between truth and the assimilation of truth. Luther describes the distinction in terms not of a theory but DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION of the existential dimension of the Reformation doctrine of justification: "I have saved others; I cannot save myself,"? because I cannot free myself from my despair, because my own visible righteousness vanishes before my very eyes, and my own conscience forsakes me. That, Luther feels, is why I need the other, why I am dependent on the intercession and community of the Trust in the alien Word determined the way Luther experienced, interpreted, and defended the sacraments of baptism and holy communion. The Devil, that master of subjectivity, lurks in the heart and the conscience, but he is powerless in the face of the alien Word. Baptism and communion are the pledge that God is present in the turmoil of the fight for survival against the Devil. These two sacraments constitute the visible, tangible prop that makes it possible to resist the Devil in God's name. Thus baptism and holy communion are the solid ground on which the certainty of a Christian's faith rests. It is therefore clear that there can be no greater danger than the undermining of these two sacraments. Making baptism and communion into the work of man destroys the foundation of Christian life because it makes
God's truth and reality dependent on the powers of persuasion of the individual, subjective conscience.
Of this very thing Luther repeatedly accused both the papacy and also those Reformation groups he liked to call Anabaptists and Sacramentarians.
Baptism already had become a central theme in the major Reformation writings of 1520. For Luther it was the visible sign of unmerited justification through God's grace. Baptism performs the "joyful exchange" through which a sinner receives the righteousness of Christ and Christ takes over his sins; and all this is not simply "cheap," it is free. The gulf between Luther and the Church of Rome becomes obvious when Luther, criticizing the commercialization of the Church, makes an easily comprehensible comparison between God's free "baptismal grace" and the pope's expensive "indulgence grace."* Precisely because baptism is "democratic," granting everyone the justification of Christ, it also gives all believers sacerdotal status, for everyone "who comes crawling out of baptism has thus been consecrated a priest, bishop, and pope." *
In late 1521, when Luther had already been in hiding at Wartburg Castle for nine months, Philipp Melanchthon reported the first signs of a movement that was soon to spread everywhere the Reformation succeeded in gaining a foothold. Today this movement is usually designated the "left wing of the Reformation" or "radical Reformation," a collective term used to subsume a variety of groups. From Luther's point of view these Baptists and social
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther as Junker Jorg, 1521. This is the disguise Luther adopted while he was in hiding at Wartburg Castle.
DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION revolutionaries, antitrinitarians and spiritualists had one thing in common: they were "fanatics." * Restless, roaming spirits, separatists with no sense or feeling of responsibility for Church and society, disobedient to the temporal authorities and the Holy Scriptures—that is how Luther saw them.
His first encounter with Anabaptist currents in 1521-22 influenced his attitude toward all reformers who were not Wittenberg-oriented: peasant leaders and Sacramentarians, Zwinglians, urban reformers, Schwenckfeldians, and whatever else they might be called, they threatened the Reformation cause because together they formed a common front repudiating Church and society. The case was clear: a simultaneous threat to the Church and the world was proof that the Devil himself was at work here; the fanatics were his henchmen, so there was little to distinguish them from the "papists."
As productive as Luther's "medieval" battle against the Devil was, its limitations now become evident as well. The vision of a world pervaded by the Devil has appalling effects if it leads to collective judgments. When papists, Jews, and so-called fanatics are condemned as groups, individual differentiation becomes impossible. The individual human being disappears behind a uniform foisted upon him.
In the tumult of the Last Days individual qualities are lost in collective judgments and "all who are not with us are against us." Yet herein lies the paradox, for there is a genuine grain of truth in these collective condemnations, which is easy to overlook in our time. It is for the sake of this timeless truth that Luther's voice must be heard—however reluctantly. To comprehend this, we must look at his understanding of infant baptism.
From Luther's point of view the command to administer baptism found at the end of the Gospel of St. Matthew puts an end to any debate about the sense or nonsense of baptizing children. The task is clear: "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28.19).
Baptism only becomes a sacrament, a visible pledge of God's fidelity instituted by Christ, through the promise He made (for Luther always one of the central pillars and unmistakable "clear places" of the Scriptures): "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16.16).
When Melanchthon wrote to Luther from Wittenberg that the Zwickau Prophets were citing precisely this text to challenge infant baptism, Luther answered on January 13, 1522, with a detailed exposition of his opinion on the subject that closed with the words: "I have been waiting for Satan to attack this sensitive spot—but he decided not to make use of the papists.
THE REFORMATION IN PERIL Now he is making efforts in and among us Evangelicals to produce the worst conceivable schism. May Christ quickly trample him under His feet." °
Why this dramatic talk of the Devil and of the Church breaking asunder?
Baptism was not being called into question, only infant baptism rejected!
The reason is that for Luther this constituted a denial of a decisive point.
Infant baptism revealed the meaning of baptism. From Luther's standpoint one could not genuinely preserve baptism while repudiating infant baptism, for it was in the child to be baptized that the meaning of Evangelical faith became visible: trusting only in the "alien" justification granted by God; acting out of the "alien," the new conscience; and living on the intercession of others. Where one's own faith begins to waver, the alien faith appears on the scene. And this is the exact situation of the "infant," for whom the Church, godparents, and parents believe vicariously. The baptismal font is the reservoir of alien righteousness surrounded by alien belief.
For enlightened Protestantism, which has developed faith into a rational system and eliminated the Devil from it, this belief is not alien, but alienating and peculiar. Luther, however, insists on this very alienation when faced with the menace of an intellectualization of faith: if the Devil is to be withstood, intercession is indispensable; "loners" are defenseless against his threat and subject to his tyranny. A good Christian is always an infant in his dependence on God and in the way he is bound up with Christ and His
In the Grosser Katechismus (Large Catechism, 1529), Luther summarizes the meticulous theological reply he gave Melanchthon to produce a more widely comprehensible survey of his theology as a whole. He plots a course bypassing medieval sacramental faith and modern subjectivist beliefs: baptism was instituted and ordained by God—proof enough that it is "no trivial matter .
. like putting on a new red dress." God's own work is performed by man, for baptism is conferred in God's name, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. To be baptized is to receive an "inexpressible treasure," deliverance from "sin, death, and devil." We have run all over to acquire an indulgence; shall we now not know how to appreciate this true and great gift?
The Baptists call baptism with water an "outward thing" and ask: how should a handful of water help the soul? But the external is not empty, because God "attached" his Word to the baptismal water. Through this corporeal gift, God provides a powerful mainstay that can be perceived by the senses.* A Christian does nothing but receive; he must, however, spend a lifetime dealing with this treasure. Man's "ignorant" nature cannot grasp it.
DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION But on the basis of baptism, it can contradict tribulation and reason: I shall be saved body and soul.'
Baptism thus functions as both redemption and certainty of redemption.
The argument against infant baptism, that infants cannot believe because they do not have the rational faculties to grasp the Christian message, distorts the sacrament, transforming it from the work of God into the work of man. The "ignorant" child is not baptized because of its faith but because of God's promise. "We bring this child here in the belief and hope that it will have faith and pray to God for faith. But not for this do we baptize it, only because God has commanded it. . .. His Word can neither err nor lie." "
Penance is closely linked with baptism and is thus not a separate sacrament. It does not reestablish baptismal grace that has been lost; it is a return to baptism, a return to the beginning that God made there! Baptism grabs the Devil by the throat and the old Adam by the collar; wherever we turn, baptism marks us throughout our lives.
Protestants have often pointed with glee to the obscure, magical interpretation of the sacraments in the Middle Ages. Luther indeed opposes magic and superstition when he consciously and pointedly speaks of "ordinary water" that can only become operative when combined with God's promise. But criticism of magical superstition is not a specifically Reformation trait; its origins are pre-Reformation. Luther could fall back on his scholastic training for it.'' What he here attacks so vehemently is not the superstitious overestimation of baptism, but its faithless undervaluation in Christian life in favor of penance and penitential good works. This made it perfectly reasonable to call entering a monastery, when nevices dedicate their lives to penance, "second baptism." " Rejecting infant baptism and demanding adult baptism of the converted and of penitents is thus not "radical
Reformation" but "radical Middle Ages."
The widespread influence of the Anabaptist movement in the face of bloody persecution fits the tenor of the time: the new layman is the old monk.
MODERN RESEARCH is once again directing its attention to Anabaptist criticism. It knows that early Christendom was silent on the subject of infant baptism and has recognized that Luther's central biblical passage, the baptismal commandment, was added to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St.
Mark only later. The baptismal commandment is a teaching of the early Christian community.'' But if it is—rightly—not baptism "in itself" that is called into question but only infant baptism, Luther's inquiry remains valid: shifting the emphasis to an adult's conscious decision to be baptized conTHE REFORMATION IN PERIL fuses God's gift with a human act. The problem is not adult baptism but the arguments against infant baptism.
An age that thrives on concepts like self-determination and credibility demands adult baptism. "Self-determination" is genuinely necessary to a profession of faith, especially in a post-Christian world. To withstand the test of self-analysis and the ensuing diabolical accusation, however, infant baptism is the rich sacrament for the empty-handed. The statement "We are beggars, that is true" does not suddenly become valid when a person is on his deathbed. It marks the way life begins.
Divided over the Sacrament of Unity "Before I would have mere wine with the fanatics, I would rather receive sheer blood with the pope." * In 1520 Luther had already objected that the medieval doctrine according to which the eucharistic elements, bread and wine, were transformed into the body and blood of Christ was arbitrarily based on Aristotelian tenets. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) had affirmed that the substance was converted while the accidents, the outer appearances of bread and wine, remained. But the Holy Ghost, according to Luther, knows even more than Aristotle. At Christmas human nature was not "transformed," for in Christ both natures, the nature of God and of man, were fully retained. This might outstrip the philosopher's understanding; the believer can grasp it.'
Despite his criticism of the medieval doctrine of transubstantiation, Luther remained faithful to tradition in leaving untouched the concept of the real presence of Christ in the sacramental elements. Not even his sharp attack on the focus of the mass, the sacrifice the priest offers to an angry God, changed anything about that. The "Sacramentarians" or "sacramental fanatics," on the other hand, repudiated the doctrine of Christ's corporeal presence in the bread and wine. Instead of letting themselves be invited to the "Lord's Supper," they invited the Lord—so Luther suspected—to a commemorative meal of bread and wine.
Why did the controversy arise? What was so embittering as to make Luther's university colleague Andreas Carlstadt into his opponent and to set a series of important southern German and Swiss reformers—Zwingli in Zurich, Oecolampadius in Basel, and Bucer in Strasbourg—against him?
Only a few simple words were at issue, Christ's words instituting the Eucharist: "This is my body." (Matt. 21.21; 1 Cor. 11.24). Plainly the statement is
DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION essential to the faith and piety of the Church, and Carlstadt, Zwingli, and Luther each read the sentence with different eyes, finding the key to its interpretation in a different word.
Carlstadt was of the opinion that Jesus had referred to himself at his last meal: he says "this" and means his own body. Thus the words do not denote bread and wine, but Jesus the man, and the words of institution become a prediction of the Passion: I am the body which will be sacrificed on the cross for you. Holy communion should remind the congregation of this body.
In October 1524 Luther reported with surprise that this interpretation was already "running rampant far and wide."
Carlstadt's view did not convince Zwingli, and it disappeared from the discussion soon after the Zurich reformer proposed his own variant in the summer of 1525: all previous theories had misconstrued the function of the word "is." The words of institution are an interpretation, not an equation.
Jesus says "is" (est) and means "signifies" (significat): the bread signifies my body. The congregation that assembles around the bread and wine is thus referred to Christ in Heaven, who has been sitting at God's right hand since
Luther was concerned with preserving the corporeality of Christ's presence, and thus stressed the last part of the controversial sentence, "my body." As God was truly incarnated and came into the world bodily, so real is
His corporeal presence in the eucharistic elements of bread and wine.
IT HAS been said that Luther held a more comprehensive position, one which integrated "faith in salvation," while Zwingli thought in more rational, realistic, and thus practical categories.
Regarding Zwingli as the more practical, rationally oriented reformer is based on an accurate observation. It is the same social critique that erupted among the iconoclasts and accompanied the anticlericalism of the cities. A citizen, say, of Zurich, like Zwingli, saw the difference between the Middle
Ages and the Reformation above all in the contrariety of the sacramental, sacerdotal Church and a spiritually unified, true community of faith. It was in the urban Reformation that long-harbored social resentment against privileged clerics made real inroads;"' here is the anticlerical tendency one searches for vainly in Luther.
This is not to challenge the earnestness of Zwingli's search for the correct eucharistic doctrine.'* But the congruence of theological solution and sociopolitical concerns makes two things clear: first of all, it explains why the eucharistic controversy raised such waves. For what historians today allow a The Zurich reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. By Hans Asper, 1531.
DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION paragraph of Reformation history was in the sixteenth century a pivotal issue and touchstone for pending decisions. The presentation of one's position on the Eucharist showed where one stood: on the side of the privileged clerics and ruling elite, or in the ranks of the citizens unified in true faith.
It also becomes clear that Zwingli started from the conviction that, properly understood, the Word of God described the "common good" and promoted its realization. Hence it was perfectly legitimate to take sociopolitical considerations into account in the course of scriptural exegesis. Zwingli's eucharistic theology was thus oriented toward city and society. For Luther the common weal belonged to the realm of human freedom and was to be shaped according to reason and experience. The Eucharist, on the other hand, was a way not of shaping the world but of keeping faith, rendering comfort where there was doubt and lending strength in the battle against the Devil. But in the city the Devil had been shackled and appeared only as a lawbreaker. We sense optimism in the view: it was not an expectation of the Last Days but a hope for modern times.
The contrast between the community-oriented urban reformers and Luther, minister to a godless world, is sharp. Luther focuses on the individual Christian, not because the "individual soul" is more important "before God" than a responsible forging of political life, but because service to the world demands a stout heart. For it is not a question of honor and dignity, but—whether in city or country, townhouse or farmhouse—of resistance to the destructive power of the Devil. Political affairs make enormous demands on Christians, and that is why they must be fortified in their faith.
Here lies the element of truth in the claim that Luther's position always links faith with salvation. Yet this applies to most of the reformers. In his tract On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, written in the summer of 1520, Luther formulates this faith in a way that Zwingli could easily have accepted: "The mass as we know it is a promise of the forgiveness of sins made to us by God and confirmed by the death of His Son. .
. Where the promise is given to us by God, there the faith of the man who is eager for its fulfilment is necessary, so that it is clear that faith is at the very basis of our salvation, the faith that is dependent on His promise." '' Not the emphasis on faith but the "dependence on the Word" separates Luther from Zwingli.
This dependence became the essential feature of Luther's thoughts about the Lord's Supper, both in his debate with the pontifical Church and in his dispute with Zwingli and the other opponents Luther vilified as "fanatics."
Luther never really did justice to Zwingli. Nonetheless, it must be noted that in his dispute with the Zurich reformer, his conception of the Eucharist
THE REFORMATION IN PERIL attained a profundity of thought for which the groundwork had been laid,"° but which was now formulated in detail and made viable as a powerful tradition. A high price had to be paid for this profundity, and we must point out both the theological gain and the political loss.
First the loss: shortly after he made his decision for the Reformation in 1524, Landgrave Philip of Hesse recognized that the Evangelical movement would have to fight for survival on two fronts, not only theologically against the pope but politically against the Hapsburgs. It would be wrong to attribute a pan-European approach to Philip. But he had a feeling for the regional constellations of political power. Although he himself was a unique mixture of late medieval sovereign and enlightened ruler, he never considered the isolated territorial interests of Hesse, always seeking to secure them in the larger framework of the empire and the Hapsburg world imperium.
He perceived the limits to his own rule more distinctly than any of the princes who dreamt of their own sovereignty and ultimately achieved it—but, apart from the Hohenzollerns in Prussia, only as rulers of politically and economically insignificant states.
Philip does not seem to have chosen the side of the Reformation for selfish or political motives. But shortly after his inner conversion, he began drawing political consequences from his profession of faith. First he strove to make a defensive pact with Electoral Saxony. His wish was realized in 1526 with the Gotha-Torgau treaty, but he could consider this treaty no more than the beginning of a larger pact system that would place the Evangelical estates in a position to hold their ground against pope and emperor.
He wanted all the Evangelical territories and cities to unite. His ambitious plans were, however, foiled by the eucharistic controversy between Luther and Zwingli, which took on increasingly violent forms in the years 1525 to 1528. The Hessian landgrave was anxious to draft a treaty that allied northern and southern Germany and also included Evangelical Switzerland. Electoral Saxony, however, insisted that a unified profession of faith must precede the conclusion of any treaty to serve as the basis of the political alliance.
For two years Philip had been trying in vain to win Luther for his plans, when the imperial diet in Speyer (1529) made a move that could not be ignored: the imperial estates, overruling the minority of Evangelical estates, decided it was finally time to wipe out the Reformation, in keeping with the instructions of the Edict of Worms. The Evangelical estates lodged protests against the decision on April 19 and 20, thus gaining themselves the name
"Protestants." The Protestants objected to the diet's transgression of auDISCORD IN THE REFORMATION thority "as in matters of God's honor and the salvation of our souls, each
[estate] must stand for itself before God. . ."?!
But Philip wanted more than just a protest against domination by the majority followers of the Church of Rome; he wanted tangible protection for the minority. Unlike his in-laws and cousins in Electoral Saxony, he was a prince who knew how to act promptly. He was still in Speyer when he invited
Huldrych Zwingli to a religious colloquy. After a great deal of back-andforth negotiating, it really did take place, in Marburg from October 1 to 4,
1529, and was attended by leaders of the Reformation from all over Germany, including the two opposing "heads," Zwingli and Luther. The discussion was substantive, the tone only rarely acerbic, but the agreement Philip had hoped for was not achieved.
Various transcripts show that the personal rancor between the two reformers had subsided, but both Zwingli and Luther stood their ground on doctrine. The Wittenberger cites the "clear words" of Scripture; they are unequivocal and overwhelming—so "submit"! The confession of Worms echoes in a different form: I am a captive of the Word, even if one cannot explain how the presence of Christ in bread and wine is to be imagined. The virgin birth and the forgiveness of sins are beyond our understanding in the very same way. Thus Christ instituted the Eucharist; "the Devil cannot get around that." Occasionally voices become shrill. Zwingli bases his view on Jesus' statement, "The flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6.63)—which must also apply to the Eucharist: "This passage breaks your neck." "Don't be too proud;" Luther retorts, "German necks don't break that easily. This is
Hesse, not Switzerland." "
When the Marburg conference was over Luther wrote to his wife, we are "of one opinion in almost everything." But he added, "at the Lord's Supper, however, they will allow bread to be only physically and Christ to be only spiritually present. .
. | suppose that God has blinded them." "
The eucharistic controversy had for the time being thwarted Philip's attempt to construct a unified, anti-Hapsburg coalition. At the Diet of Augsburg the following year, the sad consequences became evident to everyone, for the Evangelicals were not in a position to work out a confession of faith acceptable to all. Apart from the Confession of Augsburg, the confession of the Lutheran estates, two further confessional documents were presented: Zwingli sent an account of his religious doctrines to Augsburg, and four southern German cities under the leadership of Strasbourg handed in their Tetrapolitan Confession to the diet. Only when the leader of StrasTHE REFORMATION IN PERIL bourg's Reformation, Martin Bucer, years later accepted the Wittenberg view could the alliance Philip strove for finally be concluded—though without the Swiss.
Zwingli died soon thereafter. His death at the Battle of Kappel against the Catholic "Five Cantons" in October 1531 fully confirmed Luther's negative attitude toward the Zurich reformer. The prophecy of Marburg that he,
Luther, would break his neck, had turned full force on the prophet himself.
Zurich's defeat also convinced Philip to fall in line with the Saxons. His hoped-for alliance "for hasty rescue and defense" remained restricted to the empire.
In the sixteen years of its existence the Schmalkaldic League, the alliance formed by the Protestants in 1531, proved a successful defensive force: in July 1532 the Peace of Nuremberg, an important pledge of temporary toleration, was signed. For the first time the Protestant estates could negotiate as an independent, united party. The emperor was promised the help he needed to resist the Turks, and in return he and the Catholic estates had to accept the "Peace." The Nuremberg treaty was in reality little more than an uneasy cease-fire, but it foreshadowed the legal solution of the religious struggle in the empire as it was to be negotiated in Augsburg in 1555 and in Minster and Osnabriick in 1648.
Luther had welcomed the imperial pledge of tolerance as a divine gift; his assessment of the Hesse-Wiirttemberg campaign against the house of Hapsburg in the summer of 1534 was altogether different. In a surprise attack Philip of Hesse succeeded in reconquering the hereditary land of Duke
Ulrich of Wirttemberg, who had been expelled as a tyrant in 1519. Only since about 1530 had Luther reluctantly accepted the idea of a defensive military alliance and sanctioned the princes' right to resist the emperor should he violate the commitments made upon his election.2* The Wiirttemberg campaign could not purport to be defensive; it could appear only as an attempt to impose the Reformation by force of arms.
The Hessian expedition in Swabia proved that the defense pact also had offensive potential. The golden age of the Schmalkaldic League ensued:
Pomerania and the cities of Augsburg, Kempten, Frankfurt, Hannover, and Hamburg joined. King Francis I of France and King Henry VIII of England established diplomatic contact with the league to exploit the division within the empire and the weakened position of the emperor. All Scandinavia became Lutheran in 1537 when Denmark (Sweden had already defected from Rome in 1523) elected a Protestant king, Christian III. This meant that the DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION
Luther and Hus administering Holy Communion in both kinds, bread and wine, to the elector and his family.
Reformation could also be carried out in Christian's other states, Norway and Schleswig-Holstein.
Prominent circles in France evinced pronounced sympathies for the Reformation. In 1534 a Church of England independent from Rome was created by the king's sovereign decree. The Reformation was plainly on the advance. Once King Christian of Denmark joined the Schmalkaldic League in 1538, Landgrave Philip seemed to be very close to his objective of an antiHapsburg coalition, though not in the form originally intended. Philip's plan to unite all the parties to the Reformation in an alliance was not to be realized.
Supported by an insistent Luther, Electoral Saxony implemented the Confession of Augsburg, and especially the article on the Eucharist, as the charter of the league. This measure virtually forced Wittenberg's opponents to rethink their theological position. In 1536 a settlement on the issue of the THE REFORMATION IN PERIL
Eucharist was finally reached between Wittenberg and southern Germany.
Even the four south German cities—Strasbourg, Constance, Lindau, and Memmingen—that had presented a separate confession in Augsburg in 1530 signed the eucharistic settlement. Nonetheless, Luther could not overcome his suspicion that political expediency had outweighed religious convictions and theological clarity. The Gospel can only be spread by the Word and not by politics, and even weapons cannot protect the Word.
The failure of the Schmalkaldic League one year after his death would not have surprised Luther. It was his firm conviction that there could be no blessings on offensive war and that wars waged for the sake of the Gospel were the work of the Devil. Because of this basic attitude Luther has been called apolitical, unrealistic, and even fanatic. But his concern was to distinguish faith and politics in such a way that pursuance of a policy of peace became all the more realistic the more consistently the cause of the Reformation was left to God. The Marburg colloquy of 1529 attests to the fact that the reformers, Luther and Zwingli alike, were steadfast in their refusal to subordinate their convictions to the demands of political calculation. That an alliance of all Protestants could not be achieved was the political price of the eucharistic controversy.
In determining the theological gains, we must first realize that agreement was reached in Marburg on decisive principles of Evangelical faith. But why could the eucharistic controversy not be marginalized enough to enable
Luther to extend his hand to Zwingli in Christian fraternity? The gesture would have been so small and the political profit so great! To answer this question, the decisive underlying motives must be disentangled.
In a sermon he gave on Maundy Thursday 1518 about the proper preparation for holy communion, Luther uttered a much noted principle: "You will receive as much as you believe you receive.
. Belief alone is the best and only condition, because it builds not on our works or powers but on the absolutely pure, enduring Word of Christ: 'Come to me, all who are weary and heavily laden.'"
There is no way of telling whether Zwingli knew this sermon, though it immediately appeared in several Latin and German editions and was also printed in Basel a year later. He could certainly have accepted it completely and, as with other of Luther's writings, have seen to its dissemination. The passage from St. Matthew which Luther quotes in the sermon became
Zwingli's motto as: "Come to me those who work(!) and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11.28)."° Luther had formulated the fundamental religious questions not only for a Zwingli in Zurich but for the whole
DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION on Pious: Ore lasrrpadusy [prs lores ad ihe pws MA lanch rho N In Marburg the leaders of the Reformation in Germany signed the "Fifteen Articles," representing the fundamental principles of Evangelical doctrine. One problem remained unsolved: they did not agree at this time on "whether the true body and the true blood of Christ were really present in bread and wine." Marburg, October 1-4, 1529: Johannes
Occolampadius, Hyldrychus Zwinglius, Martinus Bucerus, Caspar Hedio, Martinus Lutherus, Justus Jonas, Philippus Melanchthon, Andreas Osiander, Stephanus Bis era, and he had answered them as well: belief liberates us from the insupportable burden of inner and outer compulsions.
To his sermon Luther appends a statement with a sieeve touch to it, an important and revealing "appendix"; that it has received little attention can best be ascribed to the significance of what goes before. Luther: If you lack faith, then clutch the last anchor. Have yourself carried to church like a child a THE REFORMATION IN PERIL and then speak without fear to Christ the Lord: "I am undeserving, but I rely on the faith of the Church—or of another believer. Whatever my situation,
O Lord, I must be obedient to Your Church, which bids me to go to Communion. If I bring you nothing else, at least I bring you this obedience." And then, Luther continues, only believe firmly that you are not going to the Lord's Supper undeservingly. Christ will credit the obedience you have shown to the Church as the obedience of faith. The faith of the Church will as little abandon you, the adult, "as the infant that is baptized and saved by virtue of alien faith." "'
This "alien faith" is the bridge between infant baptism and the real presence of Christ in bread and wine. The sacraments are beneficial and useful only if one has faith, but even without faith they are true.
This "alien faith" separates Luther not only from Zwingli and his followers but also from his own heirs. Modern Protestantism sees faith as individual fulfillment, and the idea of an "alien faith" outside the individual is foreign to it.
To comprehend Luther's distance from modern Protestantism, it must first be remembered that his treatment of the sacraments did not deviate in the least from the principle of "by faith alone." But he had to do battle on two fronts at the same time. On the one hand he wanted to teach Christians that they were not allowed to run to the Sacrament "like pigs to the trough, without fear and humility." * Because of this Luther had, since 1523, demanded an annual auricular confession (within the precincts of the church but not necessarily in the confessional) to prepare the faithful for holy communion." There was no doubt that the words of the apostle Paul were true:
"He that does not discern the body of the Lord eats and drinks himself to damnation" (1 Cor. 11.29). But Luther gave the passage a new interpretation: the apostle was not demanding "worthiness," for no one, not even a saint, is worthy before God. St. Paul was asking not for worthiness but for faith and confidence in Christ's promise of salvation: "Given for you." In dealing with careless "pigs," insistence must be on faith.
The case is somewhat different for repentant sinners and those suffering temptation, for whom the Sacrament had been "especially" instituted. This was the second front Luther faced, and it only really became clear in the course of the eucharistic controversy with the Swiss. The Swiss insisted on the rational question: what is the profit of the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, what is the use of "flesh-eating"? The flesh is, according to Jesus himself, of no profit! How can insufficient faith ever be replaced by obedience? The Reformer from Wittenberg was unmasked as a "neo-Papist" and captive to the Middle Ages.
DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION Luther's answer must be given careful attention: the profit of the eucharistic body lies in the fact that through faith in the bodily presence of Christ the tempted communicant need not rely on himself and his soul, for he is led out of himself and directed toward Christ. The unequivocal, "clear" words of the institution of the sacrament breach the narrow bounds of the psyche, pointing outward to the God who promises: "Here you shall find me." *°
God is present everywhere, but there is a world of difference between "God being here" and "God being here for you." The Devil knows the former, but he will never experience the latter. The whole Gospel is concentrated in that little word "here," without which one would have to search the whole of creation, looking here and asking there. But then no one could be sure he had found the eternal God in His multifarious creation "for himself." When you eat your bread at home, Luther says, God is near too. But if you accept it "here," then you eat His body—God becomes yours. God thus defines a "here" where he can be found with certainty so that he need not be
"fanatically" sought "everywhere." But what does one find "here" in the Lord's Supper? The bodily Christ, the one everyone needs because we are more than mind and soul: "The mouth, the throat, the body which eats
Christ's body should also profit from it so it will live eternally and be resurrected on the Last Day. .
. That is the heavenly power and the profit of Christ's body going into our body during the Lord's Supper." *!
The benefit of the eucharistic controversy cannot be overlooked. Faith in the Word of God is essential for overcoming the spiritual-psychological focus on the inwardness of pious communion. What makes this so significant is that the Enemy, an expert on the single soul, loves individualism. He can penetrate the psyche and control it. He can twist and cripple even the believing Christian so that, lost in introspection, he despairs of God and the world.
But there is one thing the Devil cannot do: he cannot become really present flesh. The call of the words of institution liberates the Christian from the clutches of self-analysis.
THE TRAGEDY of the eucharistic controversy was multi-faceted. In 1529 the dispute prevented the formation of a unified Evangelical front. The Schmalkaldic League could prepare only a "small German" religious peace, one that gradually enabled the confessions in the empire to coexist but left hundreds of thousands of Protestants outside the empire defenseless against persecution. In the era of the Thirty Years' War, even the "small German" religious settlement threatened to be dashed by the great powers. Scandinavian Lutheranism and militant Calvinism just managed to prevent the worst.
But the tragedy was even farther-reaching. Not only did the controversy a THE REFORMATION IN PERIL ee ee ee ree re thwart unity, it actually made it impossible for the various parties to listen to one another. The general vilification of opponents made it inconceivable for them to take each other's positions seriously. Luther was roundly attacked and ridiculed as a "flesheater." He was termed a "neo-Papist"—could anything have been more offensive to him? For Luther, on the other hand, the "perversion of the clear words of institution" proved that the Devil himself was at work. He was the master of a thousand arts and expert at twisting
Scripture: "No matter how one looks at it, he is the prince of the world.
Whoever does not know it should open his eyes and look around! .
It is this very Devil who now subjects us to temptation through the fanatics." * The personal confrontation in Marburg helped to objectify the dispute, enabling Luther to reduce the disagreement to the formula: "We are not of one mind. ... We commend you to the judgment of God." * The Devil seemed to have been put at arms' length, but at a price: God's judgment had been invoked. The eucharistic controversy gave rise to fundamental questions that were insoluble at the time. Thus Marburg marked a profound, painful turning point in Reformation history, as the joy of having discovered the Bible to be the conclusive foundation of Evangelical faith could not remain undiminished when the reformers came to disagree over the "clear" text of the Scriptures.
The report which Andreas Osiander wrote to the council of the imperial city of Nuremberg is the most vivid account of the dramatic events at Marburg. It shows that Zwingli assessed the consequences the controversy would have on the progress of the Reformation "realistically" and was thus—from Osiander's Lutheran point of view—better at interpreting politics than Christ's words of institution: "Tears sprang to Zwingli's eyes so that many noticed it." ** When Philip's chancellor urged the parties to come to an agreement, he received the reply: "I [Luther] know no other means than that they honor the Word of God and believe with us. To which the others answered: They could neither understand nor believe that the body of Christ was present." *
The disputants remained implacable; the division within the Reformation was complete." Zwingli was not prepared to diverge from the reasoning behind his interpretation, and Luther absolutely refused to furnish cogent, rational arguments for God's instructions concerning the Eucharist. It is the corporal food we are obediently to take in, not its meaning: "I would eat dung if God demanded it."*" The will of the Lord is not to be questioned; either one trusts in it or not. One "should close one's eyes;" Luther says.°*
The miracle of the Eucharist can be expressed and pondered but not fathDISCORD IN THE REFORMATION omed. This is a stance not very much in demand in our day, as it is suspected of being "blind obedience." Nor is Luther's way the way of European intellectual history, including Evangelical theology.
But where the perspective broadens and the myth of progress gives way to a recognition of the superhuman and supratemporal power of evil, Luther's adherence to the "incarnate" Word, the reality of God outside the human person, becomes an effective and powerful aid for bewildered Christians.
The infant in its nonage at the baptismal font and the dying man receiving his last communion are not marginal figures in the Church of Christ. They stand for man at his weakest—whether at the beginning, the height of his powers, or the end of his strength. The idea that God is genuinely "there," outside the person, and can be found beyond the individual powers of thought and strength of faith is what the controversy of that time bestowed on posterity.
It is not only modern man who can make little sense of infant baptism and the real presence of Christ. But they are meaningful to man in conflict, to man between God and the Devil, who does not ignore Luther's words: We are beggars, that is true.
Christianity between God and the Devil We may not deviate from the cause of truth, even if many, yes all are against it. For it is not only the case today that the great mass, with all the great lords, err and defend injustice. And though it is hard and difficult to bear such loneliness ..
. we know God, who will be our judge, lives.' his appeal, penned by Luther in the autumn of 1519, was not intended solely for the ears of his students or spoken cautiously within the protective confines of the lecture hall during one of his lectures on the Psalms. He had already made a similar statement in the summer of 1519, during his debate with Johannes Eck, his first German opponent. In the course of the Leipzig disputation, which received a great deal of attention (as the proceedings were recorded by four different people, the documentation is abundant), he had dared to challenge the divinely ordained supremacy of the pope as well as to reject the infallibility of councils.
Certainly the pope was to be respected—as bishop of Rome; and the papacy was to be held in high regard—as an institution rooted in history and created in accordance with human law, "de iure humano." But the only standard of obedience was the Gospel, not an institution, be it called papacy or council. Luther's colleague and debate partner Andreas Carlstadt had urgently warned him that it would be courting disaster to provoke a dispute over the authority of the pope. It is not surprising that Johannes Eck did not let the opportunity escape to inform Luther's sovereign personally of the outrage in Leipzig: "Your Electoral Highness will certainly know how to judge whether spreading such views is permitted in Christendom."
Luther was not long in rendering account, as had been demanded of him:
St. Peter undoubtedly had honorary primacy among the apostles, but this CHRISTIANITY BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL gave him no legal authority or supremacy, for "he does not have the power to make, send, govern, or ordain the apostles."*
This recognition of honorary primacy was forfeited when Rome balked at a thoroughgoing reformation, and preferred ruling by force to serving in love.'
Councils were something else again. Luther's assessment of their authority remained differentiated to the very last: it was not fundamentally the case that all councils had erred; it was the medieval Church assemblies that had proven themselves to be fallible. Had not the Fifth Lateran Council
(1512-17) in 1516 openly overturned the Council of Constance and even declared the Council of Basel invalid? "And so the councils contradict each other so that we, who build on them, ultimately no longer know where pope, council, Church, Christ, or we must stand.
. Thus we are forced to say, whether we like it or not: the council has erred."* Only the four "main councils" of the early Church, from Nicea (325) to Chalcedon (451), had adhered to Scripture, explicated the Gospel adequately, and unswervingly defended it against heresy. These councils, which continued to speak for the whole of Christendom east and west, had still been free to make decisions—free of the pope. But since the Church of Rome had acquired power over Christendom, it was no longer possible or permissible to build on a council.
The loneliness of the truth seemed to be the consequence, but that would also mean the end of Church and congregation, the teachings of the Church and the bonds of the congregation. Was this the beginning of the "heroic" but anguished loneliness of Protestantism and the starting point for the multiplicity of sects, the confusion of opinions and counteropinions? The problem deserves careful analysis if we are to get to the bottom of the suspicion that the beginning of the Reformation of the Church already initiated its end.
The interpretation of Luther's actions as a breaking away from the Church is firmly anchored in confessional historiography. On the Protestant side the individualism of the nineteenth century and the personalism of the twentieth celebrated the Reformer as a fearless outsider and presented him as a prototype of modern man. Relying only on himself, he could assume and dared assume the responsibility to act before God and for the world in accordance with his own conscience and the dictates of the hour. That Luther's "basic theological views" did not include a doctrine of the Church is a nineteenthcentury conviction that has persisted into our own time. Theodosius Harnack, the great nineteenth-century authority on Luther, implied this point of THE REFORMATION IN PERIL view in the title of his comprehensive introduction to Luther's theology:
"with special reference to his doctrine of reconciliation and redemption."* Whereas the real Luther never lost sight of the Church, the Protestant
The motto Harnack chose was a statement that seemed to document plainly Luther's special relationship to the two concepts mentioned in the title. It was, in fact, a central statement, and Luther had impressed it upon his students shortly before leaving for the disputation in Leipzig: only through the cross of Christ is God's Word revealed; the cross constitutes the only genuine theology—'"Crux Christi unica est eruditio verborum dei, theologia sincerissima."° If this motto means that the way an individual conscience experiences the cross in tribulation and trust becomes the key to the Holy
Scriptures, not only has the pope lost his position, but the Church has lost its place.
Catholic scholarship in its own way has long held this "separatist" view.
One hears of a solitary monk who, in his quest for his own gracious God, was able to forge ahead to profound experiences and lofty discoveries. But unfortunately—thus Hubert Jedin's qualification—Luther showed no interest in the Church. Only later, when he encountered resistance, did he develop a doctrine of the people of God, as an emergency measure to justify his discoveries. Joseph Lortz, the "old master of modern Catholic Luther scholarship," ventured a far-reaching historical explanation of this sort in his muchquoted book, The Reformation in Germany: in the wake—or, should one say more pointedly, in the prison?—of the late medieval decline to subjectivism, the Church as a redemptive institution was outside Luther's field of vision.
He came upon it only when it could no longer do anything but condemn him, and he was no longer ready to bow in obedience in order to preserve its unity.'
This would allow Luther's theology of the cross to be acknowledged as biblical and genuinely Catholic, provided it was integrated into a "true" appreciation of the Church, which can remain Church only under the leadership of the vicar of Christ and successor to St. Peter.
Luther himself would not have hesitated to reply: "emergency measure" —indeed, for what greater emergency is there than disclosing the captivity of the Church under the domination of the pope?
Luther's insistence on the unwavering theology of the cross supports neither the Protestant-individualist nor the Catholic-subjectivist interpretation.
True theology does not attend to the superior achievements of its own CHRISTIANITY BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL wisdom, nor does it build on the moral strivings directed toward credibility and one's own righteousness. That, Luther concludes, is why it rejects the urge for power and thus avoids the competition among patriarchs, bishops, and monks. The theology of the cross consistently furthers the unity of the Church in the preaching of the Gospel and the heeding of God's commandments. But the Church of his day— it was an accumulation of schisms .
Oh, dark, pitch-black blindness: "Quid est ecclesia hodie nisi quaedam schismatum confusio? .
. Caecitas, caecitas, caecitas."* When Luther wrote these lines in 1519 his ties to Rome were still intact.
Negotiations for a settlement were underway, and a nonpartisan judge seemed to have been found in Germany: Archbishop Richard Greiffenklau, elector of Trier. It was not until Rome broke with Luther that he felt forced to confirm this break himself. The heresy trial in Rome had by then ended in a bull threatening excommunication, Exsurge Domine; and when Luther's last letter to the pope did not bring about any rapprochement, he burned the pope's bull and his canon law outside the walls of Wittenberg near the Elster
Was this merely the final act of the heretical revolt against the Church Luther had started on October 31, 1517? Johannes Eck thought so from the outset. Ever since the posting of the ninety-five theses, Eck had been seeking to mobilize resistance in Germany. His weapons were effective: Luther was endangering the Church; he was a Bohemian schismatic, a heretic and an agitator, in short a Hussite. The Hussites' savagery in the wars against the Catholic empire had not yet been forgotten. Eck did everything to construct the image of Luther as a dangerous heretic and father of heretics. This agitation against him might be thought sufficient to explain Luther's violent reaction. But there was more at stake than his personal honor. What was the sense of reproaching him with Hussite arson when the burning concern was the plight of the Church?
Luther's "doctrine of the Church"—an inadequate, overly abstract concept for his view of the communion of saints—was not appended to his socalled subjectivism as an afterthought. Modern Luther interpretations, including enlightened Catholic ones, must be clearly contradicted on this point. Luther would have countered vigorously the ostensibly straightforward description found there of the sixteenth century as an "age of religious schism." Schism is not the result of the Reformation, it is its genesis and point of departure.
There is a Protestant Luther tradition that must be repudiated just as cate-