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PART TWO
LUTHER’S THOUGHT
SCRIPTURE ALONE:
LUTHER’S DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE
In 1450, Johannes Guttenberg invented the first printing press known to Europeans. Five years later, he published the first complete book printed with movable type: a Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible. Ironically, though, his first publication was a papal indulgence issued three years earlier. Little could the ingenious inventor have known that his first two printings would collide sixty two years later, when his presses would be the crucial medium for disseminating a Saxon monk’s Ninety-Five Theses against indulgences and a German Bible that corrected serious errors of the Vulgate. After highlighting some key moments in which Luther’s view of Scripture was formed, this chapter will summarize that view—mostly in his own words.
Luther laid his eyes on a copy of the Bible for the first time in the university library at Erfurt, when he was twenty years old. His family was reasonably devout, but the Mass was chiefly a theatrical event conducted in Latin, of which the priests themselves typically knew only enough to perform the service. In a 1 What little one lot of towns, Luther said, one would only hear a sermon at Lent. learned directly from church consisted of representations of biblical stories and the saints painted on the walls. Luther recalled being fearful as he entered the Gothic doors and was greeted by an ominous relief of Jesus at the last judgment. In contrast to this image, the saints were amiable friends surrounding the most amiable of all: the Virgin Mary, who could be prevailed upon to make her Son more favorably inclined to poor sinners. Holy days involved annual reenactments of the signal events of the gospel, but Jesus’ person and work were buried in a heap of saints’ days and myriad superstitions, relics, and pilgrimages. After taking a general master’s degree at Erfurt, Luther—against his father’s wishes—turned from the study of law to become an Augustinian friar in 1505. In his first year at the monastery, he received, along with the other novitiates, a red leather Bible, but it was taken from him the next year so that he would study physics, the arts, and other subjects. In fact, he recalled that Andreas von Karlstadt, chancellor and chair of the Bible department, did not even own a Bible until many years after he had earned his doctorate. Reflecting on these years in his Table Talk, Luther said:
If I had kept at it, I would have become exceedingly good at locating things in the Bible. At that time no other study pleased me so much as sacred literature. With great loathing I read physics [Aristotle’s Physics], and my heart was aglow when the time came to return to the Bible… I read the Bible diligently. Sometimes one statement occupied all my thoughts for a whole day.
Two years later, Luther was ordained. The abbot of the monastery, Johann von Staupitz, was head of the order in Germany and was a reformer in his own right. He wrote a treatise defending predestination and salvation by grace and encouraging his monks to study the Bible daily.
Luther wore out his psalter. Later, he would call the Psalms “a little Bible,” 3 He began to devour as it testifies to Christ’s death and resurrection for sinners. the Scriptures. Nevertheless, he reports, “I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul.”
Whenever he read of “the righteousness of God,” he could only think of the righteousness that moves God to condemn the unrighteous. Tormented by fear, Luther spent every hour hoping to become acceptable to God, but despite wearing out his confessor and performing penances, he could not find solace.
Staupitz knew just what to do: send the despairing monk to study the Bible at the University of Wittenberg, founded in 1502 by the abbot and Prince Elector Frederick III. There, he studied Scripture and joined the faculty as professor of Bible in 1512. This was an unusual position in a medieval university, and the fact that it existed before Luther reminds us that he did not rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the medieval church but was indebted to godly believers who knew that the church needed pastors who were steeped in God’s Word. In fact, Staupitz was exactly right: the more that Luther wrestled with Scripture, the greater his insight and the satisfaction of his spiritual longing. It did not happen quickly, though. At first, Luther’s profound sense of God’s righteousness and his own unrighteousness became even more haunting. He lectured on the Psalms (1513–15), then on Romans (1515–16), Hebrews (1517), and Galatians (1519), before returning to the Psalms again (1518–21).
During this period, as he pored over Romans 1–3, the truth hit him like a thunderbolt. True, the righteousness of God condemns all, Jew and Gentile, as Paul argues in Romans 1:16–3:20. But, Paul continues:
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift… to be received through faith. (3:21–25a)
The righteousness of God—His attribute—condemns the guilty, but the righteousness from God—His gift of righteousness—justifies the ungodly, through faith alone. “Night and day I pondered until… I grasped the truth,” Luther writes. “Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘righteousness of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage in Paul became for me a gateway to heaven.”
This episode underscores the point that for Luther, sola Scriptura—Scripture alone—was inseparable from justification in Christ alone (solusChristus), through faith alone (sola fide), to the glory of God alone (soli Deogloria). The nature of Scripture depended on its content, and vice versa. The reasoning and experience of the fallen heart yield nothing of this gospel. It is by Scripture alone that the good news is announced to us, and Luther now knew that—experientially—for himself.
After this turning point, Luther says, “The whole Scripture took on a new meaning.” Passages that he had pondered over for years suddenly made sense. He came to see that, despite his confusion, and that of the whole church in his day, God addressed him clearly and unmistakably in His Word. No purported Apostle, not even an angel from heaven, could convince him that he had not found Christ in these passages of Scripture. From this rock, Luther could withstand the controversies that were to follow.
It is important to see that Luther was not a dispassionate biblical scholar or theologian. He certainly was not trying to make a name for himself in the academy. For him, Scripture was not simply an authoritative book, but the well to which he returned again and again for life. His experiential wrestling was inseparable from his deep passion for the Bible. Martin Brecht captures well Luther’s approach to Scripture: “The monk Luther brought the questions which troubled him to the Scriptures, expecting an answer.”
Two years after this discovery, Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses. The theses questioned the whole practice of indulgences, but there was no mention of justification, the sufficiency of Scripture, or other crucial doctrines. (Luther’s 1518 sermon “Two Kinds of Righteousness” reflected a more developed position that reached its most mature expression in his 1535 commentary on Galatians.) As Luther soon learned, though, raising doubts about a lucrative source of revenue was a nasty business; furthermore, it called into question the church’s authority over salvation.
At the Leipzig Disputation in 1519, Luther initially sat on the sidelines while Johann Eck debated Andreas von Karlstadt. Rather than hide behind the chancellor, Luther asked permission to join the debate and Eck happily granted his request. Eck pointed out that Pelagians and Arians appealed to Scripture. How then can Scripture alone be our final authority? After all, it is obscure—especially on such weighty and deep matters as salvation. Stepping forward, Luther pointed out that both popes and councils had erred and even contradicted each other, while Scripture is clear, consistent, and unerring. Eck’s goal was to show that Luther was teaching the same errors as Jan Hus, who had been committed to the flames by the Council of Constance in 1415.
During Luther’s time in hiding in Wartburg Castle, he translated the Bible into German, giving birth to the modern German language. Soon, other translations appeared across Europe, fanning a flame that could not be extinguished. Meanwhile, Luther also wrote treatises on papal power, confession, and the church’s ministry.
However, during his productive captivity, Wittenberg had become a magnet for extremists like the Zwickau prophets, who proclaimed a kingdom of the Spirit. Even Karlstadt had become radicalized, to the point of rejecting infant baptism and turning the priesthood of all believers into spiritual anarchy. No longer chained to the external ministry of a fallen church, such self-proclaimed prophets announced liberation even from the external Word and, according to some such as Thomas Müntzer, from all human government. Was this making Eck’s point that without an infallible interpreter, the infallible Scriptures could not stand? Was Luther in fact opening the door to anarchy in both church and state? In March 1522, Luther had no other choice than to return and to seek to bring evangelical sanity back to a chaotic Wittenberg.
One more debate should be mentioned for understanding how Luther’s view of Scripture evolved out of conflict. Desiderius Erasmus was the great Renaissance humanist whose new Greek New Testament “laid the egg that Luther hatched,” as some of Luther’s contemporaries put it. However, Erasmus eschewed theological controversy. A vocal and even sarcastic critic of external abuses, corruptions, superstitions, and hypocrisy, he nevertheless entered the Reformation debate publicly with The Freedom of the Will. The treatise defended what we would today call a semi-Pelagian doctrine of human ability in salvation after the fall. In any event, he argued, the main point is following Jesus, not fighting over doctrine—especially when there are good men on both sides of the debate. Erasmus thought that doctrines such as justification and predestination are unclear from Scripture, so we should simply focus on the simple life of piety that Jesus taught. Luther thundered back in On the Bondageof the Will, “The Holy Spirit is not a skeptic, nor are what he has written on our hearts doubts or opinions, but assertions more certain, and more firm, than life itself and all human experience.”
Scripture is clear on the most important matters. So if, according to Erasmus, those important matters do not include how God has saved us and how much we should credit and worship Him rather than ourselves, then Luther wondered what Erasmus would put in that category. It was not simply Erasmus’ views but his cavalier attitude toward Scripture that most aroused Luther’s ire.
Through all of these dramatic episodes—and many others besides, Luther did not waver in his conviction regarding Scripture’s truth, authority, clarity, and sufficiency. However, his conviction did mature. He discovered that threats to Scripture came not only from the pope but from radical Protestants who separated the Spirit from His Word. This historical survey provides a context for summarizing Luther’s view of Scripture itself.
Sola Scriptura
There was no controversy between Luther and Rome concerning the inspiration of Scripture. In fact, much of today’s mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic biblical and theological scholarship would have been regarded by the medieval church as apostate with regard to its view of Scripture. The Scriptures, both sides held, are inerrant. The Council of Trent (condemning the Reformation positions) went so far as to say that the Spirit “dictated” the very words to the Apostles.
The real question had to do with the relation of inspired Scripture to tradition. In other words, is Scripture alone God’s inspired and inerrant Word, the source and norm for faith and practice? Could the pope say truly that his words are equal to those of Peter and Paul as we find them in Scripture? Are councils infallible in the same way as Scripture? The Council of Trent argued that Scripture and tradition are two streams that form the one river of God’s Word. This Word consists not only of “the written books” but also of “the unwritten traditions” that, of course, the Roman pontiff has the privilege of determining. Thus, both Scripture and these traditions the church “receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety and reverence,” as both have been 8 Therefore, “preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession.” whatever the pope teaches or commands ex cathedra(from the chair)—even if it is not based on Scripture—is to be believed by all Christians everywhere as 9 Ironically, Luther’s defense of sola Scriptura was necessary for salvation. condemned as schismatic, but the ancient fathers, both in the East and the West, would have regarded the pretensions of the Roman bishop as an act of separation (schism) from the Apostolic faith.
Long before the Reformation, highly esteemed theologians argued that Scripture alone is normative and that councils simply interpret Scripture, and these interpretations (which may be wrong and amended by further reflection) are to be submitted to by the pope himself. Until the Council of Trent’s condemnations of the Reformation teaching, this was an open question. Luther was not the first to argue for Scripture’s unique authority even over the pope. After Trent, though, the door was slammed shut on sola Scriptura within the Roman Catholic faith.
Luther’s problem with the papal church was its corruptions of scriptural faith by addition of myriad doctrines, practices, rituals, sacraments, and ceremonies. Medieval popes increasingly held that they alone were endowed with the Holy Spirit in such a way as to be preserved from error in their judgments. Of course, this idea was not found in Scripture or in the teaching of the ancient fathers. It was an innovation that opened the floodgate to a torrent of novelties, Luther argued: When the teaching of the pope is distinguished from that of the Holy Scriptures, or is compared with them, it becomes apparent that, at its best, the teaching of the pope has been taken from the imperial, pagan laws and is a teaching concerning secular transactions and judgments, as the papal decretals show. In keeping with such teaching, instructions are given concerning the ceremonies of the churches, vestments, food, personnel, and countless other puerilities, fantasies, and follies without so much as a mention of Christ, faith, and God’s commandments.
How do you adjudicate between truth and error? What if a pope errs, as some medieval councils had in fact declared? Indeed, the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries saw the schism between two and eventually three rival popes, each claiming St. Peter’s throne and excommunicating the others along with their followers. The Council of Constance ended this tragicomedy by electing a fourth pope to replace the other three. Philip Melanchthon’s Treatise on thePower and Primacy of the Pope built on Luther’s views by drawing together a battery of refutations from Scripture and also from church history to demonstrate the foundation of sand on which the papacy is built.
For Luther, the first plank of sola Scriptura is Scripture’s nature. As the Holy Spirit’s direct revelation through prophets and Apostles, Scripture is in a class by itself. The character of God is at stake in the character of Scripture. Why is Scripture inerrant? “Because we know that God does not lie. My neighbor and I—in short, all men—may err and deceive, but God’s Word cannot 12 We respect the church fathers and ancient councils as guides, but only err.”
God can establish articles of faith: “It will not do to make articles of faith out of the holy Fathers’ words or works. Otherwise what they ate, how they dressed, and what kind of houses they lived in would have to become articles of faith—as has happened in the case of relics. This means that the Word of God shall establish articles of faith and no one else, not even an angel.”
The second plank is the clarity of Scripture, which was really the heart of the dispute. The Bible is a dark, mysterious, and obscure book, the medieval church taught. No wonder, Luther thought, as he looked back on what he had been taught even as a monk and Bible scholar. But after having studied and translated the Bible for many years, he came to the opposite conclusion. By their own experience, Luther and other Reformers came to see that Scripture is clear on its central teachings. It is the papal church that obscures rather than clarifies. This was what frustrated Luther the most about Erasmus: he seemed to think that Scripture is clear about how we are to live, but obscure about the most central doctrines of the gospel.
In his Freedom of the Will, Erasmus alternates between vehement opposition to Luther’s teaching and a passive assertion that such doctrines as predestination and free will are obscure in Scripture and unimportant for daily living. Erasmus much preferred Origen (a defender of free will) over Augustine. In fact, he went as far as to conclude concerning Augustine’s positions on grace and free will, “What a window to impiety would the public avowal of such an opinion open to 14 “But if [Scripture] is so crystal clear, why have so many countless mortals!” outstanding men in so many centuries been blind, and in a matter of such importance, as those would appear? If there is no obscurity in Scripture, what need of the work of prophecy in the days of the apostles?” But who succeeded the Apostles, he asked, assuming of course that the pope is Peter’s successor.
Luther begins his rejoinder, On the Bondage of the Will, by tackling Erasmus’ denial of Scripture’s clarity in its central teachings. Not everything is equally clear in Scripture, but when it comes to election, free will, and justification, its clarity is obscured only by human (and especially papal) ignorance. Don’t blame the sun for your lack of sight, he rebuked. “Let wretched men cease to impute, with blasphemous perverseness, the darkness and obscurity 15 In short, Luther of their own heart to the all-clear Scriptures of God.” counseled, “If you do not understand this or are not concerned about it, then mind your own affairs and let those understand and be concerned about it on whom God has laid the charge.”
This clarity of Scripture is why Luther wrote the Small Catechism to instruct children and new believers in the Bible’s basic teachings. In fact, the ecumenical creeds and the new Augsburg Confession, as well as Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms, were examples of the fact that the church has been able to arrive at a consensus about the central teachings of Scripture without the pope’s intervention.
But the sufficiency of Scripture was also being attacked by the Protestant radicals, whom Luther dubbed “enthusiasts.” Meaning “God-within-ism,”enthusiasm cut the believer loose from any external authority, including Scripture and preaching. Luther was convinced that the enthusiasts, not unlike the pope, imagined that they were God’s mouthpiece like the prophets and Apostles of old. We will return to this challenge below.
Interpretation of Scripture
Differences over the nature and sufficiency of Scripture were bound up with different views as to how Scripture should be interpreted. It is hardly surprising that Scripture would be a confusing web of mysteries when its straightforward meaning was buried in layers of mystical and fanciful exegesis.
Sensus Literalis Every so often, U.S. pollsters ask, “Do you believe that the Bible is to be taken literally?” Luther and other magisterial Reformers would have asked for clarification before answering. They said that Scripture must be interpreted according to its sensus literalis, but this means the ordinary sense of the words. In other words, if the passage is an obvious allegory, one interprets it as such; otherwise, one interprets historical narrative, poetry, proverb, parable, apocalyptic, exhortatory, or doctrinal passages according to their genre. Consequently, Christian readers do not interpret John’s Apocalypse as if it were a historical narrative or the Hebrew poetry of a psalm as if it were a doctrinal exposition. God works through creaturely means—including the historical, cultural, social, and linguistic background of Scripture’s human authors. In terms of basic literary rules at least, the Bible should be read like any other book and Scripture should be interpreted in the light of Scripture.
The medieval church had followed a “fourfold sense” of interpreting 17 However, the most important distinction was between literal and Scripture. allegorical senses. For example, Numbers 27:12 reports, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go up into this mountain of Abarim and see the land that I have given to the people of Israel.’” The literal sense is straightforward enough: God told Moses to climb the mountain and view the Promised Land. However, “advanced” readers were encouraged to discern the hidden spiritual meaning beneath the ordinary sense. Scores of spiritual manuals appeared that explained how to ascend the spiritual mountain.
This twofold way of interpreting classic texts first appeared when Platonist philosophers were scandalized by portions of Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, where the gods were hardly the sort of characters to inculcate virtue in children. The steamy episodes were allegorized so as to teach higher intellectual truths. A similar approach was taken to the Old Testament by the great first-century Jewish Platonist philosopher Philo of Alexandria. In the third century, Origen of Alexandria followed the same approach to both testaments. According to this view, there is a simple meaning of the passage for the simple believer who merely accepts basic Christian doctrine and the deeper spiritual meaning for the advanced. It was usually from the allegorical meaning that one could learn the “moral to the story.” Not unlike Aesop’s Fables, the story merely served to make a supposedly higher moral, intellectual, or spiritual point. Just as the body is the “prison-house” of the soul, the literal sense is the outer husk one cuts through in order to discover the seed of truth.
It was therefore not surprising that Scripture should seem dark and obscure, capable of being understood only by the advanced. Luther recalled:
When I was a monk I was a master in the use of allegories. I allegorized everything. Afterward through the Epistle to the Romans I came to some knowledge of Christ. I recognized then that allegories are nothing, that it’s not what Christ signifies but what Christ is that counts. Before, I allegorized everything, even a chamber pot; afterward, I reflected on the histories and thought how difficult it must have been for Gideon to fight with his enemies in the manner reported. If I had been there I would have befouled my breeches for fear. It was not allegory, but it was the Spirit and faith that inflicted such havoc on the enemy with only three hundred men. Jerome and Origen contributed to the practice of searching only for allegories. God forgive them. In all of Origen there is not one word about Christ.
Once again, Luther was not inventing a new idea. Thomas Aquinas, Pierre D’Ailly, and John Duns Scotus had all argued that the ordinary meaning (sensusliteralis) was to be given at least pride of place, if not the exclusive key to a passage’s meaning. Their warnings against the proliferation of fanciful allegorizing went unheeded, but these respected theologians were not judged heretical for issuing them. However, in Luther’s case, the papal church was in a reactionary mode.
Ironically, Erasmus and other scholars had recently made the original Greek New Testament accessible, demonstrating the extent to which the Latin Vulgate had mistranslated terms that were crucial to the very doctrines that Luther was defending. This affected terms such as justification (viz., iustificare, “to make righteous,” when the Greek verb is “to declare righteous”) and penance (viz., poenitentiam agite, “Do penance!” vs. the Greek word, “Repent!”). As we have seen, Erasmus had no theological reason to provide textual grounds for Luther’s arguments; he was simply returning to the original meaning of the Greek manuscripts. Anyone could understand the issues at stake, but it was crucial to the papal monopoly on scriptural interpretation to encourage more mystical readings so that its straightforward meaning would remain obscure.
Christ at the Center Christ is the center of the biblical drama, Luther argued, from Genesis to Revelation. Luther repeatedly said that Rome had turned the New Testament into nothing more than a “new law” and Christ into a “new Moses.” To preach the Bible without seeing Christ was to not actually preach it at all. And “where Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Spirit to create, call, and gather the Christian church, and outside it no one can come to the Lord Christ.”
Jesus and the Apostles spoke of Christ as the center of the Scriptures, and they only had the Old Testament. With Christ as the key, the Old Testament 20 “Here you will find the swaddling cloths and the manger in which comes alive.
Christ lies, and to which the angel points the shepherds [Luke 2:12],” Luther said in his preface to the Old Testament. “Simple and lowly are these swaddling 21 There is law and cloths, but dear is the treasure, Christ, who lies in them.” 22 Genesis already begins the promise of the Seed who gospel in both testaments. will crush the serpent’s head, and this evangelical drama unfolds throughout the history of the patriarchs. The Psalter is “a little Bible,” proclaiming “Christ’s 23 With the New Testament, these promises death and resurrection so clearly.” are announced as fulfilled in Christ. “For it is a testament when a dying man bequeaths his property, after his death, to his legally defined heirs…. A poor man, dead in sin and consigned to hell, can hear nothing more comforting than this precious and tender message about Christ; from the bottom of his heart he must laugh and be glad over it, if he believes it is true.”
The German Reformer held that Scripture is God’s Word because it proclaims Christ. Famously (or infamously), the epistle of James fell short of this test in Luther’s evaluation:
Though this epistle of St. James was rejected by the ancients, I praise it and consider it a good book, because it sets up no doctrines of men but vigorously promulgates the law of God. However, to state my own opinion about it, though without prejudice to anyone, I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle; and my reasons follow.
In the first place it is flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works [2:24]…. In the second place its purpose is to teach Christians, but in all this long teaching it does not once mention the Passion, the resurrection, or the Spirit of Christ. He names Christ several times; however he teaches nothing about him, but only speaks of general faith in God…. Whatever does not teach Christ is not yet apostolic, even though St. Peter or St. Paul does the teaching. Again, whatever preaches Christ would be apostolic, even if Judas, Annas, Pilate, and Herod were doing it. But this James does nothing more than drive to the law and to its works. Besides, he throws things together so chaotically that it seems to me he must have been some good, pious man, who took a few sayings from the disciples of the apostles and thus tossed them off on paper.
Since James quotes Peter and Paul several times, he must have come after them. The phrase “damning with faint praise” comes to mind when he adds, “for 26 As part of the Renaissance there are otherwise many good sayings in him.” “back to the sources” movement, Luther’s questioning of the epistle’s canonicity was not shocking. Several apocryphal books that Rome had added to the Jewish canon were called into question, and Luther and other Reformers rejected their canonical status. Luther was correct in saying that James was among the disputed texts in the ancient church (recounted in Eusebius’The EcclesiasticalHistory, 2.23.25). However, it was included in the canon for very good reasons, and none of the other Reformers, including Philip Melanchthon, agreed with Luther on this point. In their view, Paul and James were not speaking of “justification” in the same way; for Paul, the question was how we are justified before God, and for James, the question was how our faith is justified (as saving faith) by its fruit. Where the other Reformers came to Scripture expecting to find Christ there, Luther went a step further by saying that “only that which preaches Christ” is God’s Word. He could not have seen then how this implied idea of a canon-within-a-canon would be employed by liberal scholars three centuries later. If he had, I suspect that he would not have introduced such a dangerous approach.
Illumination by the Spirit John Calvin is famous for his argument in his Institutes of the ChristianReligion that Scripture remains a closed book apart from the inner testimony of the Spirit, illuminating and convincing us of its inherent truth. However, Luther 27 The church is “the mother that begets and argued the same point repeatedly. bears every Christian,” but only “through the Word of God.” “The Holy Spirit reveals and preaches that Word, and by it he illumines and kindles hearts so that 28 In fact: they grasp and accept it, cling to it, and persevere in it.”
Where he does not cause the Word to be preached and does not awaken understanding in the heart, all is lost. This was the case under the papacy, where faith was entirely shoved under the bench and no one recognized Christ as the Lord or the Holy Spirit as the Sanctifier. That is, no one believed that Christ is our Lord in the sense that he won for us this treasure without our works and merits and made us acceptable to the Father. What was lacking here? There was no Holy Spirit present to reveal this truth and have it preached.
Where both Rome and the enthusiasts appealed to the Spirit to legitimize their own teachings apart from Scripture, Luther insisted upon the inseparability of the Word and the Spirit. The Spirit does not add new content to revelation, but illumines our hearts to understand and to embrace the Word that He has communicated to us.
The Preached Word
To be sure, the church preceded the written Scriptures—as a complete canon. Luther never questioned that obvious fact. Yet the Word of God created the church, the body of those who call on the name of the Lord (Gen. 4:26). The written Scriptures are the basis, norm, and source for all subsequent preaching, doctrine, and practice. Yet when Luther (as well as Calvin and other Reformers) spoke of the Word of God, the usual reference was to preaching.
Obviously, Luther believed strongly in the power of the written Scriptures; otherwise, he would not have poured so much of his life into translating the Old and New Testaments and seeing to their wide publication. Not just in the monastery, but in the family, regular, daily prayer and Bible reading became part of Reformation piety. “For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year,” he related. “If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.”
Nevertheless, Luther said, “The church is a mouth-house, not a pen 31 As Paul said, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the house.” word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). This emphasis on the verbum externum(external Word) is simply a correlate of the idea of salvation by God in Christ extra nos(outside of ourselves). We do not descend into our souls or rise up to God, but God comes to us to judge and to save through His speech. Another sinner, in Christ’s name and sent by Him through the church’s ordination, announces God’s Word to us. Luther said, “If you ask a Christian what the work is by which he becomes worthy of the name ‘Christian,’ he will be able to give absolutely no other answer than that it is the hearing of the Word of God, that is, faith. Therefore, the ears alone are the organs of a Christian man, for he is justified and declared to be a Christian, not because of the works of any member but because of faith.”
Therefore, preaching is not an indifferent medium but is deemed by God to be suitable for the delivery of a message that is itself saving news. The importance of preaching is highlighted by the fact that justification comes by faith alone, and that faith itself comes through hearing. “There is nothing I want more than to make His gospel known to the world and to convert many people,” 33 It is only this proclamation of the Word of Christ that keeps the Luther said. church from perishing at any moment—and, in fact, this proclamation keeps the church advancing in the power of the Spirit.
Yet again, Luther saw this confidence tested. The year 1541 saw the siege of Buda in Hungary, after the siege of Vienna and the entrance of the Islamic army (the Turks) into Christendom in 1529. The emperor and pope called for sermons in every church and prayers for the defense of the gates. This was ironic, Luther must have thought, since Pope Paul III and Emperor Ferdinand were persecuting the churches of the Reformation, and King Francis I of France, vicious persecutor of the Reformed churches, even allied himself with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent over Ferdinand. In this context, Luther composed a hymn that was, for understandable reasons, outlawed in Catholic regions. His 1542 hymn “Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Thy Word” pleads that God’s Word would prevail “and curb the Turks’ and papists’ sword.”
As mentioned above, Luther found the opposition forming on two fronts. Besides the pope, there were various self-proclaimed prophets and Apostles who sought to hijack the Reformation for a libertine enthusiasm. His most scathing rebuttal of this movement was his tract Against the Heavenly Prophets(1525). It was directed especially at his erstwhile fellow Reformer Karlstadt, who imagined, Luther says, that he “has devoured the Holy Spirit feathers and all.” He continues:
Out of his great mercy, God has again given us the pure gospel, the noble and precious treasure of our salvation. This gift evokes faith and a good conscience in the inner man, as is promised in Isa. 55:1, that his Word will not go forth in vain, and Rom. 10:17, that “faith comes through preaching.” The devil hates this gospel and will not tolerate it.
Since he has not succeeded hitherto in opposing it with power of sword, he now, as indeed always, seeks victory by deceit and false prophets.
The enthusiasts were fond of contrasting the inner with the outer. Yet, Luther responds, “God has determined to give the inward to no one except through the outward…. The oral gospel ‘is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith’ (Rom. 1:16).” Of course, the external preaching and sacraments by themselves will not accomplish anything, but the Spirit 38 The devil sets about “to reverse this accomplishes His work through them. order”: a person first has an inward experience and then encounters the outward 39 Fanatics like Karlstadt say that if you follow preaching, baptism, and supper. their path, “you will have the same experience.”
A heavenly voice will come, and God himself will speak to you…. With all his mouthing of the words, “Spirit, Spirit, Spirit,” he tears down the bridge, the path, the way, the ladder, and all the means by which the Spirit might come to you. Instead of the outward order of God in the material sign of baptism and the oral proclamation of the Word of God he wants to teach you, not how the Spirit comes to you, but how you come to the Spirit. They would have you learn how to journey on the clouds and ride on the wind. They do not tell you how or when, whither or what, but you are to experience what they do.
Another chief culprit was Thomas Müntzer, an ambitious and intelligent neurotic who imagined that he was ordained to lead Germany into the “third age”: the era of the Spirit, after the eras of the Father (the law) and the Son (the gospel). According to Müntzer, Paul’s counsel to Timothy to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2) referred not to the external Word but to the internal speaking of the Spirit who gives new revelations. Everything external—including Scripture and gospel proclamation, as well as the sacraments and church office—was seen as the grave-clothes of the flesh, part of the false church. Indeed, ordination by the church was unnecessary for those who had apparently become conduits of the Holy Spirit. Fanatics such as Müntzer are as confused about the gospel as the papists, Luther warned, with all of their urgent talk about having an experience that leads finally to a “clean conscience.” “How can they know or feel it, when they come and teach of themselves, without a call?”
Müntzer proclaimed himself a prophet and led the Peasants’ War that left hundreds dead. For a time, he even took over a German city, resulting in a society that one historian describes as “communist, polygamous, and violent.” Müntzer was not alone. Other radical Anabaptist leaders followed similar beliefs, but after Müntzer was toppled, tried, and executed for treason, they decided to take a more pacifist stance.
Of such sects Luther had nothing good to say. When, in his great hymn, he wrote, “That Word above all earthly pow’rs, no thanks to them, abideth; the Spirit and the gifts are ours, through him who with us sideth,” he had not only the pope in mind, but these “fanatics.” In truth, these radicals were infected with the same love of superstition as the papal clergy. There is always something beyond God’s Word that tickles our fancy. But the radical Protestants did not have a corner on “enthusiasm.” In fact, in this they were like the pope:
In these matters, which concern the external, spoken Word, we must hold firmly to the conviction that God gives no one his Spirit or grace except through or with the external Word which comes before. Thus we shall be protected from the enthusiasts—that is, from the spiritualists who boast that they possess the Spirit without and before the Word and therefore judge, interpret, and twist the Scriptures or spoken Word to their pleasure. Müntzer did this and many still do it in our day who wish to distinguish sharply between the letter and the spirit without knowing what they say or teach.
The papacy, too, is nothing but enthusiasm, for the pope boasts that “all laws are in the shrine of his heart,” and he claims that whatever he decides and commands in his churches is spirit and law, even when it is above and contrary to the Scriptures or spoken Word.
All this is the old devil and the old serpent who made enthusiasts of Adam and Eve. He led them from the external Word of God to spiritualizing and to their own imaginations, and he did this through other external words. Even so the enthusiasts of our day condemn the external Word, yet they do not remain silent but fill the world with their chattering and scribbling, as if the Spirit could not come through the Scriptures or the spoken words of the apostles but must come through their own writings and words.
“In short,” he added, “enthusiasm clings to Adam and his descendants from the beginning to the end of the world.” It is “the source, strength, and power of all heresy, including that of the papacy and Mohammedanism. Accordingly, we should and must constantly maintain that God will not deal with us except through his external Word and sacrament. Whatever is attributed to the Spirit apart from such Word and sacrament is of the devil.” The prophets always heard 44 Even baptism is “nothing God’s Word before they exercised their ministry. else than the Word of God in water.”
Because the Word of God—especially the preached Word—is the primary means of grace, it was of utmost concern to Luther to treat the pulpit not as an opportunity for entertainment or pretentious oratory, but for Christ’s working by His Spirit to create faith and sustain it to the end. In Table Talk, a student reports:
Rector Bernard von Dölen, minister in Herzberg, complained bitterly about his arrogant auditors who despised the reading of the catechism.
Dr. Martin was greatly disturbed and fell silent. Then he said, “Cursed be every preacher who aims at lofty topics in the church, looking for his own glory and selfishly desiring to please one individual or another.
What I preach here I adapt to the circumstances of the common people. I don’t look at the doctors and masters, of whom scarcely forty are present, but at the hundred or the thousand young people and children.”
Once more, this approach assumes that Scripture is clear enough that a sound exposition of it will strike home. With so much at stake, and a Word so powerful for salvation and godliness, ministers dare not get in the way.
Just as the book of Acts relates the growth of the church by the phrase, “And the word of God spread,” Luther was convinced that it was God’s Word, not his own cleverness, that was reforming the church.
We should preach the Word, but the results must be left solely to God’s good pleasure…. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.
Once again, this remark emphasizes that the power of God’s Word, read but especially proclaimed, was not simply a theoretical point for Luther, but something that he had experienced himself and witnessed in countless others. Erasmus had hoped for a reform of manners and the outward corruptions of the church, but the radicals ended up being a forest fire that burned itself out. However, Luther knew that the evangelical reform would go forward because its power was God’s own speech.
Luther and Sola Scriptura Today
As it turns out, Luther’s confidence in God’s Word was well placed. Five centuries later, translation of the Bible into myriad languages continues unabated. Many Christians, at least in the United States, have several Bibles at home. Missions around the world and at home have spread God’s Word with remarkable success. And yet, we still struggle with the same challenges to this Word in our day, even in the church.
First, do we really share Luther’s confidence in the power of God’s Word—especially proclaimed—to create the world of which it speaks? Or do we think that it needs our help, through the invention of clever techniques and tricks to be more effective in growing churches and reaching the lost?
Second, nearly two centuries after the Reformation, the Enlightenment brought a critical attitude toward all authority external to the individual. Liberal Protestantism created a new papacy of the biblical scholar. How could the average Christian presume to come to the Bible directly, given its purported obvious errors, contradictions, and variant teachings? The scholars alone, it is said, can tell us what the Bible actually says. Increasingly, the average layperson —and many pastors—came to think that the Bible was too complicated and even the actual texts too contested to imagine that one could understand its basic meaning.
Third, there are also the “enthusiasts” who draw thousands, sometimes millions, of followers into their purported revelations and away from the pure milk of God’s Word. William McLoughlin reminds us that the effect of pietism in American religious experience (especially culminating in the Second Great Awakening) was to shift the emphasis away from “collective belief, adherence to creedal standards and proper observance of traditional forms, to the emphasis on 48 If the Enlightenment shifted “the ultimate individual religious experience.” authority in religion” from the church to “the mind of the individual,” pietism and Romanticism located ultimate authority in the experience of the individual. All of this suggests that for some time now, evangelicalism has been as much the facilitator as the victim of modern secularism.
Writing as a self-professed Jewish Gnostic, Harold Bloom has approvingly characterized American religion generally as Gnostic: an inner word, spirit, and 50 Just as the church set over against an external Word, Spirit, and church.
Spirit’s inward call is often contrasted with outward means, much of evangelicalism today celebrates the charismatic leader who needs no formal training or external ecclesiastical ordination to confirm a spontaneous, direct, inner call to ministry. Historians may debate whether Protestant enthusiasm is more of a consequence than a cause of the distinctively American confidence in intuitive individualism over against external authorities and communal instruction, but the connection seems obvious. In Head and Heart, Catholic historian Garry Wills observes:
The camp meeting set the pattern for credentialing Evangelical ministers. They were validated by the crowd’s response. Organizational credentialing, doctrinal purity, personal education were useless here—in fact, some educated ministers had to make a pretense of ignorance. The minister was ordained from below, by the converts he made. This was an even more democratic procedure than electoral politics, where a candidate stood for office and spent some time campaigning. This was a spontaneous and instant proclamation that the Spirit accomplished. The do-it-yourself religion called for a make-it-yourself ministry.
In the light of this history, Wade Clark Roof ’s findings are hardly surprising when he reports, “The distinction between ‘spirit’ and ‘institution’ is of major 52 “Spirit is the inner, experiential aspect importance” to spiritual seekers today. 53 He adds, of religion; institution is the outer, established form of religion.” “Direct experience is always more trustworthy, if for no other reason than because of its ‘inwardness’ and ‘withinness’—two qualities that have come to be 54 In fact, Roof much appreciated in a highly expressive, narcissistic culture.” comes close to suggesting that evangelicalism works so well in this kind of culture because it helped to create it.
Stanley Grenz defends this inside-out approach. “Although some evangelicals belong to ecclesiological traditions that understand the church as in some sense a dispenser of grace,” he observes, “generally we see our 55 We share our journeys congregations foremost as a fellowship of believers.” 56 Therefore, Grenz celebrates the (our “testimony”) of personal transformation. “fundamental shift… from a creed-based to a spirituality-based identity” that is 57 “Consequently, more like medieval mysticism than Protestant orthodoxy. 58 concerned with combating “the lower spirituality is inward and quietistic,” 59 in “a personal commitment that becomes the ultimate nature and the world,” focus of the believer’s affections.”
Nowhere in this account does Grenz locate the origin of faith in an external gospel; rather, faith arises from an inner experience. “Because spirituality is generated from within the individual, inner motivation is crucial”—more important, in fact, than “grand theological statements.”
All of this is at odds with an emphasis on doctrine and especially, Grenz adds, an emphasis on “a material and a formal principle”—referring to the 62 In spite of the fact that the Reformation slogans sola fide and sola Scriptura.
Scriptures declare that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ,” Grenz says, “faith is by nature immediate.”
Consistent with his emphasis on the priority of inner experience, Grenz 64 Our urges “a revisioned understanding of the nature of the Bible’s authority.” own religious experience today needs to be included in the process of 65 This type of piety offers a surprising and tragic parallel to the inspiration. enthusiasm that the Reformers faced in the sixteenth century.
Following Luther and Calvin, the Westminster divines confessed that the Spirit blesses “the reading but especially the preaching of the Word” as a “means of grace” precisely because through it the Spirit is “calling us out of ourselves” 66 They were asserting that faithful, meditative, and prayerful to cling to Christ. reading of Scripture in private or family devotions was essential but nevertheless subordinate to the public ministry of the Word in the common life of the church. Just as the Word creates the community, it can only be truly heard, received, and followed in the concrete covenantal exchanges within that community.
Fourth, sola Scriptura is often misunderstood in our day in ways that hark back to the sixteenth-century controversy. The slogan does not mean that the Bible is the all-sufficient manual for everything—economics, government, psychological and material well-being, and so forth. The radical Anabaptists scorned all secular learning, but Luther and Calvin sharply rejected the idea that the Bible alone provided everything necessary for our common life in the world. To be sure, what Scripture does reveal changes and informs the way we think about everything, but it does not address every issue or question we have in life. There is an important distinction between God’s common grace in general revelation and His saving grace in special revelation. The purpose and scope of Scripture is to announce the good news that we cannot hear from any other source. Scripture delivers heavenly wisdom concerning God’s law and the way in which we are to live and relate to others. Yet, above all, it tells us how God has made Christ our “wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).
Luther never understood sola Scriptura to mean that the individual believer can understand the Bible by himself without being part of the wider body of Christ, instructed by faithful ministers. Only the enthusiasts cast off all church authority and read the Bible by themselves without accountability to Christ’s body, especially its officers. Luther and the other magisterial Reformers believed that the church is the “mother of the faithful,” but that she only conceives her children by means of the Word. Scripture exercises a magisterial authority, but the church is given by Christ a legitimate ministerial authority.
The church nurtures us, corrects us, and instructs us in the faith. It is never safe to leave her care to wander out on our own. This is why the churches of the Reformation accepted the ecumenical creeds as they summarized the Bible’s central teachings. The creeds are authoritative because they summarize 67 It is why Luther drew up a Scripture, not because of the church’s authority. catechism and Melanchthon penned the Augsburg Confession. We confess God’s Word together, holding each other accountable for our interpretations. Scripture’s clarity will bring consensus and unity, while our hearts’ darkness, obduracy, and love of novelty bring schism.
Fifth, Luther faced opponents like Erasmus who had no trouble submitting to the church’s judgments because they did not really take seriously the issues at stake. Why cause division over doctrine? Erasmus said the Bible is chiefly concerned with training in discipleship, not in doctrinal issues. Of course, there is more to Scripture than propositions, but the gospel is at its heart a set of assertions concerning God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ—His incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return in the flesh. The same challenge of doctrinal indifference is evident on every side. Doctrine divides, service unites, we often hear. Deeds, not creeds. Luther replies to us as he did to Erasmus, 68 Christianity is at its best “Abolish the assertions and you abolish Christianity.” not when it is trying to score points with the academy or win a popularity contest in the culture, but when it is proclaiming the law and the gospel.
Conclusion
Sola Scriptura is not the reason for the divisions in Christendom. Before the rise of the papacy as we know it, Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome, warned that any bishop who claimed the title universal bishop was “in his swaggering a 69 After enduring the schismatic boasts of popes, the precursor of the Antichrist.”
Eastern Orthodox churches excommunicated Rome in the eleventh century.
Luther never left the Roman Catholic communion; he was excommunicated for preaching what had been promised in the prophets, fulfilled in Christ, and held forth by the Apostles.
Tragically, though, even the churches of the Reformation divided soon after the new light had dawned. One looks upon the divisions of Protestantism today with a broken heart. These divisions began in the opening years of the Reformation itself. And yet, the true test of unity is whether we embrace the gospel that Luther and other Reformers recovered in that remarkable epoch.
It is still the case today that God’s Word is obscured and even contradicted by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, which continues to teach that Scripture is not sufficient apart from the treasury of popes and councils and—most importantly of all—still rejects as anathema the central affirmation of the gospel, that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone. However, only a party spirit could see this corruption of the gospel as a merely Roman Catholic problem. In many Protestant churches, even ones that hail historically from Luther and Calvin, there are distortions as great—sometimes even greater—as those that the Reformers encountered in their day. We need a new Reformation—one that might even sweep through Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, and mainline Protestant churches as well as the smaller confessional churches that seek to uphold “that Word above all earthly pow’rs.”
As he grew older, Luther became increasingly aware of his own limitations. Sometimes he wondered, “How can I imagine that I was right and everyone else was wrong?” Yet he kept coming back to the question: Is this what God’s Word clearly teaches? He did not decide that alone, but with fellow pastors as well as parishioners—including his wife—who knew God’s Word as well.
Luther’s view of Scripture was forged on the anvil of life. In a Christmas sermon in 1519, he said that it is not only prayer and meditation, but also suffering that makes a theologian. Those decades not only of reading, preaching, and translating, but of wrestling and suffering with Scripture only deepened Luther’s affection for and dependence on God’s Word. The day before he died, he scribbled this note: Nobody can understand Vergil in his Bucolics and Georgics unless he has first been a shepherd or a farmer for five years. Nobody understands Cicero in his letters unless he has been engaged in public affairs of some consequence for twenty years. Let nobody suppose that he has tasted the Holy Scriptures sufficiently unless he has ruled over the churches with the prophets for a hundred years. Therefore there is something wonderful, first, about John the Baptist; second, about Christ; third, about the apostles. “Lay not your hand on this divine Aeneid, but bow before it, adore its every trace.” We are beggars. That is true.
Notes
Notes
1. Herman Eikerling, Luther and His Century: Seven Lectures(London: Burns and Oates, 1886; repr. Charleston, S.C.: Nabu, 2011), 19–22.
2. LW, 54:14.
3. “Preface to the Psalms,”LW, Vol. 35: Word and Sacrament I, ed. E. Theodore Bachman (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960), 254.
4. Quoted in Kittelson, Luther the Reformer, 79.
5. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 497.
6. Brecht, His Road to the Reformation, 90.
7. “The Bondage of the Will,” in LW, 33:24.
8. The Council of Trent, Fourth Session, trans. J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), 68–69.
9. Papal infallibility became an official dogma in 1868, at the First Vatican Council. Thus, centuries of debate over the status of pope, councils, and Scripture came.
10. Luther, Smalcald Articles, in The Book of Concord(1959), 301.
11. Philip Melanchthon, “Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope,” in The Book of Concord(1959), 320–35.
12. Luther, Large Catechism, in The Book of Concord(1959), 444.
13. Luther, Smalcald Articles II, ii, 15, in The Book of Concord(1959), 295.
14. Luther and Erasmus, 41.
15. Ibid., 44.
16. Ibid., 126.
17. Besides the literal (i.e., ordinary) sense, there were the typological (promise-fulfillment), tropological (moral), and anagogical (eschatological) meanings.
18. LW, 54:46.
19. Luther, Large Catechism, in The Book of Concord(1959), 416.
20. The gospel is clearly promised throughout the Old Testament, Luther argues. “Prefaces to the Old Testament” (1523), in LW, 35:235–333.
21. Ibid., 35:236.
22. Ibid., 35:237.
23. Ibid., 35:254.
24. Ibid., 35:358–59.
25. Ibid., 35:395–97.
26. Ibid., 35:397.
27. For example, see LW, 23:230; 13:17.
28. Luther, Large Catechism, in The Book of Concord(1959), 416.
29. Ibid.
30. LW, 54:165.
31. From a church postil in 1522, WA 10, I, 48, quoted in Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers(Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman, 1988), 91.
32. LW, 29:224, emphasis added.
33. LW, Vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1–4, ed. Walter A. Hansen (St. Louis: Concordia), 379.
34. Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Lutheran Service Book(St. Louis: Concordia, 2006), Hymn 655.
35. “Against the Heavenly Prophets” (1525), in LW, Vol. 40: Church and Ministry II, ed. Conrad Bergendoff (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1958), 79–228.
36. Ibid., 40:83.
37. Ibid., 40:146.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 40:147.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 40:223.
42. Eugene F. Rice Jr. and Anthony Grafton, The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460–1559, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1994), 163–68, 178–83.
43. Luther, Smalcald Articles, in The Book of Concord(1959), 312.
44. Ibid., 313.
45. Ibid., 310.
46. LW, 54:235–36.
47. LW, 51:76–77.
48. William McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 25.
49. Ned C. Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680–1760(New York: Twayne, 1997; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 66.
50. Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993).
51. Garry Wills, Head and Heart: American Christianities(New York: Penguin, 2007), 294.
52. Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), 30.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., 67.
55. Stanley J. Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 32.
56. Ibid., 33.
57. Ibid., 38, 41.
58. Ibid., 41–42.
59. Ibid., 44.
60. Ibid., 45.
61. Ibid., 46. Emphasis added.
62. Ibid., 62.
63. Ibid., 80.
64. Ibid., 88.
65. Ibid., 122.
66. Westminster Shorter Catechism 89.
67. Luther, Large Catechism, in The Book of Concord(1959), 411.
68. LW, 33:21.
69. Gregory the Great, Epistles 7:33. Gregory adds elsewhere, “If then he shunned the subjecting of the members of Christ partially to certain heads, as if besides Christ, though this were to the apostles themselves, what wilt thou say to Christ, who is the head of the universal Church, in the scrutiny of the last judgment, having attempted to put all his members under thyself by the appellation of universal? Who, I ask, is proposed for imitation in this wrongful title but he who, despising the legions of angels constituted socially with himself, attempted to start up to an eminence of singularity, that he might seem to be under none and to be alone above all?”Epistles, 5:18.
70. LW, 54:476.