Hi Spina,
Thanks for your response.
I agree and thanks for the chuckle. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase “It was never Luther’s intention to………” Of course this phrase is always followed by something that Luther did that didn’t turn out all that well. Turning over the Church to the princes is a classic example. Just as important, and in fact the very first two paragraphs of Lutheran Theologian Paul Althaus’s book “The Theology of Martin Luther” are as follows:
**“Intensive study of Luther’s theology is particularly rewarding because of his originality. ** The voice with which Luther speaks to us is unmistakably his own. **Luther however, did not intend to say anything particularly original. ** **He felt he was commissioned only to explicate rightly the truth contained in the Holy Scriptures and the dogma of the orthodox church. ** All of his theological work presupposes the authority of Scripture and the derived authority of the genuine tradition of the Church.
We shall begin at this point: All Luther’s theological thinking presupposes the authority of Scripture. His theology is nothing more than an attempt to interpret Scripture. Its form is basically exegeses. He is no ‘systematician’ in the scholastic sense and he is no dogmatician – either in the sense of the great medieval systems or in the sense of modern theology. He wrote neither a dogmatics, not an ethics, nor a Summa: he never produced anything like Melanchthon’s analyses of individual doctrines or Calvin’s ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion.” Althaus, “…Theology…” pg. 3
Here Althaus comments that Luther never really intended to teach anything ‘particularly original’. But of course that is exactly what he ended up doing. What is just as important is that even though so many (better) Theologians warned him that his teachings were new and radical, he held, originally, that he was the one who was correctly representing the teachings of the Church and that ALL of them were wrong.
This Althaus quote also addresses one of the most important aspects of Luther’s Revolt, which is as follows:
By what authority, specifically and exactly, did Luther justify his radical teachings in opposition to those of the Church?
Althaus seems to answer this question by explaining that Luther’s ‘authority’ was simply that of a Christian Exegete. In my opinion, this is extremely simplistic, and in fact, is not at all the whole of Luther’s self-proclaimed authority. But, if we pursue this avenue, there is an excellent lesson to be learned.
If Luther’s ‘authority’ was simply that of an Exegete, one among tens of thousands in Christian history, then there should be ample evidence of his ‘superiority’ as an Exegete when compared to all of those other ‘lesser’ Exegetes. Where is that evidence? Do we find it in his extraordinary exegeses on the matter of the Jews, in which he quotes more than 150 passages of Scripture to justify his horrific recommendations? Do we find it in his recommendations on the peasants? What about his recommendation that peaceful Anabaptists be executed by the state? What of ‘reluctant’ wives? What about his call to loot the Catholic Churches? Are these (and many other things) evidence that Luther was an amazing Christian Exegete? Not at all. In fact, these issues, and many others, are evidence of a poor Christian Exegete, to say the very least.
Interestingly, Althaus also mentions that Luther was no ‘systematician’, and in fact, not even a ‘dogmatician’, and yet, he thought enough of his ‘abilities’ to challenge many existing doctrines. The issue of Luther as a ‘Systematic Theologian’ though is one that is very revealing and it seems that we might profit from determining exactly how good a Theologian Luther actually was.
God Bless You Spina, Topper
