I was taught by people who were taught by people who were taught by Heiko Oberman, so regardless of which way the scholarly pendulum is swinging at the moment, I'm always going to understand Luther's emergence as a matter of continuity with the spirituality of the late middle ages. But October 31, 1517 was still a big, fat day for the western church so maybe it's worth talking about.

So, you can take a kind of functional view and point out that Wycliffe pulled off a Luther prior to Luther in England in the 14h century - he opposed the authority of church tradition, transubstantiation, pretty much every facet of the monastic life, and constructed a pretty accurate anticipation of the Reformer's "invisible church" of the elect. And maybe more importantly that all of that - nobody killed him. He lived a nice, long life (by 14th century standards) with the protection of the influential John of Gaunt. Hilariously, his body was dug up in the early 15th century after the Council of Constance and burnt - but he'd been dead for almost 30 years so that's a solid "W" for the proto-Reformer.

His work was translated and read by the bohemian theologian Jan Huss, who held a lot of the same positions but notably was executed after being condemned by the very same Council of Constance. Huss, however, was read by Luther. So you can establish a pretty instrumental "who's on who's bookshelf" that way and see Luther's emergence as a matter of theological continuity that made it through the other end with the help of some political realities.

But Oberman did more than that- joining Luther to a much fuller theological wave instead of simply playing Protestant bingo like I just did with Wycliffe and Hus. He joins Luther with a growing lay desire for interior, experiential spirituality - starting with the Devotio Moderna movement in the 14th century - with the nominalist distinction between God's absolute power and God's ordained power, a divide that Luther expressed in terms of the hidden God.

Some later closer profiles of Luther (including a really cool one by Oberman himself, called "Luther: Between God and the Devil" - which is really one of the best treatments of Luther for people who don't have an academic background in this) added Luther's own psychological unease with the prospect of salvation - turning his revolt against the church into an issue of certainty. The Catholic side urging certainty in the authority of Church teaching, and Luther on the simple-but-radical notion of the certainty of Christ's sacrifice as solely and exhaustively sufficient for salvation.

Annnnnnnyhow, I like this reading because it demonstrates how extraordinary a thinker Luther was while still settling him in a real, thick intellectual context.

The first articles that came up in honor of the day were about whether Luther actually nailed the 95 Theses to a wall - a question which is incredibly uninteresting. I assume there'll be some meditations later in the day on Luther battling the hierarchy over church corruption. That also trivializes his thought. The 95 Theses deal pretty angrily with the sale of indulgences, but it is grounded in the larger issue of faith in Christ's sacrifice at the despair of our own works. The resulting construction isn't the sort of thing that a 16th century church could have resolved by simply cleaning up its act. Luther's doctrine, that God sees you for the low, disgusting sinner that you are and through Christ's sacrifice saves you anyhow isn't reconcilable with the Catholic Church, corrupt or otherwise.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

probably more than any of the news articles that are/will be out.

Been a long time since I studied any of that stuff (undergrad history major w/focus on early modern Europe, but obviously some medieval history in there) and I have no idea who Oberman was (just looked him up). So I was kinda lost on most other than the basics, but it's given a lot of food for further research/refreshers on stuff I am interested in, so thanks.

-------
so I'm in a band now:
album ---> http://greenwoodburns.bandcamp.com/releases
Soundcloud ---> http://soundcloud.com/greenwood-burns

my own stuff -->http://soundcloud.com/lonesomedstringband

avy by buckshot_defunct

He's not always a friendly writer for folks who aren't deeply, deeply in the weeds with this sort of history of thought. But Luther: Man Between God and the Devil might be the only thing he wrote that's accessible to smart lay readers without compromising Oberman's whole shtick.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

One thing that I always find funny about Reformation thinkers is that they actually - successfully - carved their own ground for ignoring Augustine. In challenging Rome, they made space for an opposing understanding of church authority. Instead of Rome's view, of finding authority for its teaching in Scripture *and* clarified by the Church's custody of the deposit of faith, the Protestants simplified it: scripture is the sole authority.

There are obvious Catholic objections to this, and they were mostly made at the time by Luther's able opponents (Thomas More and Johan Eck are the two that leap immediately to mind), revolving around ridiculing the idea that there could be a clear and obvious meaning of Scripture once you put it in the hands of any old asshole to interpret. But the growing democratization of spirituality (again, dating back at least to the Devotio Moderna in the 14th century) in the later middle ages was a kind of can't-stuff-the-toothpaste-back-in-the-tube situation. Paired with a lively publishing industry and people were getting their hands on vernacular bibles, coming to their own understanding of the meaning of those texts, and then spreading those interpretations around.

Of course, this meant that at least one Catholic criticism of Protestant authority came true - that as soon as there was one group in schism there would be hundreds. And, notably, very quickly these emerging Protestant groups were just as antagonistic to Luther as Luther was to Rome (for some big fun, read Thomas Muntzer's "Sermon to the Princes"). But the principle of "read this and interpret with you own brain" was too appealing in a number of areas.

What this means, relative to Augustine, is that the early Reformers had a built-in excuse if somebody wanted to throw the authority of Augustine at them (my understanding is that Aquinas' thought remained kind of controversial outside the Dominican Order until the 17th century, so he hadn't caught on as the definitive theological authority in the church yet) which is to say "Who cares about Augustine? He's not the bible."

And yet, they felt compelled at every possible opportunity to square their thought with Augustine. That's an almost unfathomable level of influence, and it's not unreasonable to view the early thought of the Reformation and Catholic response as a struggle over ownership of Augustine. Summing up Augustine's relevant work here is difficult because there's so much of it, so maybe it's best to stick to the most accessible. "Confessions" is so, so early in his theology, but it's useful here (not least because it's so, so good) less as a genealogy of grace (which is how it's usually connected to Luther) and maybe more as a genealogy of sin.

Luther's issue was the Catholic church of the late middle ages was almost one of psychological paralysis: the web of rites that were meant to make him holy and suitable to God instead convicted him. Augustine puts himself in Paul's place in Confessions, unable to *be good* by his own effort and despairing of that outcome entirely and Luther makes precisely the same move in the 16th century. The idea that you can make yourself holy by participation in the ritual life of the church is pharisaical: the law condemns. He cops Augustine's genealogy of sin (again, described in achingly personal terms in Confessions) to describe this despair: no matter what he does, he can NEVER be suitable to God. If you want a shorter, more detached philosophical perspective on this, see Augustine's Reply to Simplicianus, which is a *very* detailed unpacking of Romans 7 and the idea of bondage to sin.

This bondage, where every action - even ones which can be coded as "good" - reinforce and even heighten the sin of the moral actor, was extremely striking to Augustine as he struggled, unsuccessfully, to live chastely. And it was a profound relief to Luther, suffering from scruples and never feeling genuinely freed from sin in the sacrament of confession. The depth of this bondage, where nothing good can ever belong to our own action, led to Luther's despair - until he decided to lean into the despair and find freedom there.

This freedom is the simul doctrine. The idea that God sees us for precisely the sinner that we are and saves us anyhow. In this case, the Fall and Christ's sacrifice on the cross are the only two events in salvation history that truly matter. Our works, presented to God to affirm our okay-ness, become idolatry - because what does it mean to believe that we can please God by our sad little actions? It means that Christ's death on the cross wasn't actually sufficient, and that what was needed for me to be saved was Christ to die, selflessly and gruesomely on the cross *and* for me to tell a priest that I looked at a barista's tits for a beat too long. In Luther's mind, this was obviously absurd, and Augustine's skillful unpacking of the depth of sin and our consequent state of depravity drove this home for him.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

I wish my knowledge of the Reformation were up to having a conversation about it because what little I know is fascinating. Not only did Luther's proclamation allow lay people direct access to God but the fact that Luther went up against the Church and lost his life for doing so.

The level of faith it took Luther to follow his instincts, even to his death is remarkable. As semi-functioning Protestant, it's affecting that his actions gave so many others a sense of personal Salvation that would have escaped them.

He died early, but most accounts of his life don't really describe a person who took very good care of himself (even by 16th century standards - I'm working off of his own description of how much time he spent on the toilet). Though he did pretty much live the last three decades of his life under tremendous stress, which he internalized to a large degree.

>The level of faith it took Luther to follow his instincts,
>even to his death is remarkable. As semi-functioning
>Protestant, it's affecting that his actions gave so many
>others a sense of personal Salvation that would have escaped
>them.

Death aside, this is extremely well put. This struggle was tremendously personal for Luther. My academic advisor framed his struggle in terms of a search for "certainty" that he pursued intensely and, for a long time, at the detriment of his own spiritual state. The Catholic model for salvation did not (and does not, I just want to speak historically here and keep to past tense) allow for subjective knowledge of salvation, except in the case of special revelation. What this means, effectively, is that you have no way of knowing if are holy and if you will be saved.

As I mentioned above, Luther suffered from scruples (so did his near-contemporary, Ignatius of Loyola) which was more or less the 16th century version of a psychological disorder. For a faithful Catholic, which is how Luther understood himself, this meant that he was unable to accept the efficacy of the sacrament of confession. That you enter the confessional after careful reflection and with a contrite heart, confess your sins, are forgiven, and your penance relieves you of temporal punishment. Luther was unable to accept God's forgiveness through the mediator of the confessor, and was therefore in a spiritual state of OCD - he couldn't get clean.

In the Catholic vision for salvation, this forgiveness and penance and participation in the life of the church through the sacraments were grace from God that we could participate in, gaining merit and approaching holiness. This didn't offer the certainty of salvation that Luther wanted, but your average Catholic would argue that (due to the teaching authority of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit) you *could* be certain of Church teaching that held:

Through these works, you could be made holy and, on your death, seen as holy by God and saved.

All this hinged on your state a death, which explains the widespread medieval horror at the possibility of sudden death. It was a dangerous world and nothing good happened if you got sick, so the last thing you wanted was to die spiritually unprepared.

For Luther, the certainty of Church teaching crumbled here: confession and penance did not make him holy. As you mention above, a PERSONAL salvation requires a relationship with God based on your own subjective experience. That Luther didn't *feel* holy was absolutely essential to his theology, and to its acceptance among thousands of people who sought a similarly interior, experiential relationship with God.

What he did experience is commonly called "Anfechtung" because between theologians absolutely needed to preserve tiny, subtle distinctions and Germans piling ideas into one word, there was no way this was ever going to be translated. It basically refers to the constant and overwhelming presence of sin and the devil driving one to doubt and despair.

Luther's system then, sought to radically enhance the personal aspect of salvation by not fighting Anfechtung - which he had done due to scruples, visiting confession over and over and over and over again - but by embracing it. The despair in the face of sin and the devil is utterly reasonable to Luther because sin is that powerful, it binds us and every decision we make, tainting even our attempts to do good and act rightly in the world. This despair, though, heightens our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. To return to Augustine in Confessions briefly, it's actually fascinating how little reference there is to Christ's suffering and death in there. God as a figure immanent but confoundingly transcendent is everywhere, but God-as-son is comparatively spare. There's a couple reasons that this might be the case, but since this isn't a thread on Augustine I'll ignore both of them for the larger scope of Church history. Louis Dupre's wonderful "Passage to Modernity" talks about the importance of St. Francis in the 13th century in insisting on a Christian's personal, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ in his fully human-ness, suffering for our salvation. This is part of the continuity of Luther's work with his medieval roots, because embracing this vision of the self as:

-observable
-mutable by our will

would animate his work, even if part of that mutability would not include the inherent righteousness preached by the church. Instead, we embrace despair in the face of sin as a reasonable outcome due to our self-examination. We are then certain of our salvation when we, again experientially and interiorly, understand ourselves as helpless to sin. Christ's sacrifice is then wholly effective, and any attempt to fill that gap with our works is a blasphemy and misunderstanding of that relationship.

Interestingly, this personal relationship with Christ may be the challenge of Luther which was most thoroughly addressed by the Catholic reformation. Thinkers like Ignatius of Loyola, Francisco de Osuna, Teresa of Avila, etc. sought to heighten the intimacy of the Christian believer with Christ, but to do so while still believing in the possibility of inherent righteousness - that you can be holy.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

In ancient times, tech and thinking moved so slowly that people's lives in any given place looked alot like they had for their ancestors 500 years earlier.

Now, that time seems like it's from another planet.

>In ancient times, tech and thinking moved so slowly that
>people's lives in any given place looked alot like they had
>for their ancestors 500 years earlier.
>
>Now, that time seems like it's from another planet.

And taken in this framework, it seems almost arbitrary that Luther's thought occurred after the invention and popularization of the printing press. As I outlined above, his thought isn't all THAT different from Wycliffe and Hus, but he had the ability to spread his thought widely - largely through innovative and exhaustive use of the pamphlet genre - and they didn't.

But as per your observation, it's not like his world was really that different than early 15th century Bohemia when Hus lived or late fourteenth century England with Wycliffe lived. He just had a tool they didn't.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

In a historical sense, the span of time from 1492 to 1517 is practically overnight.

From Columbus, suddenly, there was a whole new continent, with new people and new animals not mentioned in the Bible.

Do you think there is/was a relationship between the trove of questions that Columbus' voyage created and the newfound questioning of religious doctrine?

Any good books on the topic?

*Jews you*

"this is okp tho, reading is completely optional" (c) desus

Proceed with caution. I am overtly racist.

<-- In Pigpen we trust

Eyeballing it, the divide between countries that largely stayed loyal to the Roman church and countries that didn't sort of mirrors the countries that participated in translatlantic exploration's early stages and those that didn't. Additionally, it might be important (I actually don't know, as this isn't the type of history I do) to preserve continuity in Columbus' exploration with prior Venetian/Spanish/Portugese exploration that pre-dated the Reformation by a lot. In short: the desire for more efficient trade routes extends earlier and through Columbus - which makes me less inclined to mark him as a point of rupture in other areas like theology.

If that makes sense? Political history isn't my thing at all, so I'm happy to be corrected.

I guess a longer answer might be that transatlantic exploration contributed to the consolidation of some of these early modern nation states in a way that was mutually reinforcing with the spread of Protestant thought. Or, both phenomenon were part of the active decay of an old order and the active construction of a new one wherein the ways European people marked themselves off from each other got both stronger and broader.

As a last stab at this (and again, these are just stabs - I'm much more comfortable with theology) it might be reasonable to say that Columbus' journey wasn't even the most important event of 1492 with respect to the oncoming shifts in 16th century Christianity. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain led to a series of events that I'm way more comfortable contributed to the marking-off of European society along religious lines. The re-establishment of the Inquisition, requested by Ferdinand and Isabella about a half-decade earlier, combined with the expulsion of the Jews was absolutely instrumental in Spain's sixteenth century self-identification as CATHOLIC. Initially, that meant being opposed to the (apparently non-existent) phenomenon of Spanish crypto-jews, but when Luther arrived on the scene in Northern Europe in 1517, the Inquisition pivoted pretty clearly towards eradicating Protestant heresy within Spain. Though, because it was still the late middle ages, the Venn Diagram of "people accused of heresy in sixteenth century Spain" and "people whose ancestors were converted Jews" featured a ... pretty thick overlap.

Anyhow, I wouldn't hate an argument that Spain's intractability on its definitely-Christian-and-not-Jewish-and-then-definitely-Catholic-and-not-Protestant identity helped push different (again, emerging as proto nation-states) countries into their separate corners, ironically enabling the spread of Protestantism.

As for books on the Columbus issue, there was a series of books, each named after a year for 1491, 1492, and 1493 (with 1492 being the most well-regarded) that seek to make as much sausage out of Columbus' big year as possible. I haven't read them, but the people I know who have really like them.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

I also read The Columbian Exchange, which dealt with the transfer of food, ideas, and diseases between continents.

It was actually A People's History of the United States that first broached the Columbus/Luther connection.

*Jews you*

"this is okp tho, reading is completely optional" (c) desus

Proceed with caution. I am overtly racist.

<-- In Pigpen we trust

That is, the way 50 Shades of Grey took off because it was one of the first hits of e-readers, the the 95 Theses took off as one of the first major hits of the printing press?

I made that one up all by myself. Feel free to use. Your welcome.


No, in all seriousness. I learned more about Martin Luther this week then I did my whole life. And I am a Protestant. Thanks for the additional reading.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

I actually really like that analogy, and it works on two levels if you include the popular pamphlets surrounding the debate because they were often pretty dirty. Though not sexy dirty. Luther and his earliest supporters were big into poop and fart jokes. He went to that well quite often in his polemical works (so, not the theses themselves) and talented supporters would occasionally take that cue to ... illustrate his shit jokes.

The most famous example, I think, ios Cranach's image of the Devil shitting out the pope and the cardinals.

It's not cool, in my field, to treat "the people" as crass weirdos. But the populrity of this kind of rhetoric makes it really tough. Luther's reading of Peter's status as Christ's rock may be compelling to his colleagues. But a hilarious print of the devil crapping out Pope Leo X may have been just as important for garnering popular support.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

Luther's doctrine, that God sees you for the low,
>disgusting sinner that you are and through Christ's sacrifice
>saves you anyhow isn't reconcilable with the Catholic Church,
>corrupt or otherwise.

It's a debate I have with my born again christian friends who I find have a weird, 'Im awesome and Jesus is magic' view as opposed to the idea of old school Irish catholic original sin I grew up with.

>It's a debate I have with my born again christian friends who
>I find have a weird, 'Im awesome and Jesus is magic' view as
>opposed to the idea of old school Irish catholic original sin
>I grew up with.

That's extremely on-brand for Irish Catholic education, but as nasty and harsh as it is - it presupposes something hopeful that isn't present in Luther's thought: that in spite of our awfulness, we ARE capable of holiness which is brought about by grace but which we cooperate in and:

a)is our own
b)is pleasing to God

In short very short: we can BE good in the Catholic position. This is because sin is not natural to us (this can be a confusing difference because we are still born into sin in this construction, but "natural" refers to our creation in the image of God) we can, by cooperating with God's grace, be holy and please God. So, we can be saved by God's justice.

For Luther, justice was absolutely something you didn't want. We were born into sin (regardless of whether it was natural to us) and sin was our legacy. Asking God for justice means asking to be judged based on what we were - which is an objectively terrible idea in his system. Since there is no righteousness which can be properly *ours* being judged fairly means hell. Hell for me. Hell for you. Hell for everybody.

Instead, Luther sought only God's mercy. Mercy means God sees you for what you are and saves you anyhow. From his initial "simul doctrine" came a WHOLE bunch of different types of righteousness, all with the same basic thrust: that any way in which you are good is not truly yours but rather comes from Christ's sacrifice.

1. Inherent righteousness is righteousness which is internal to you. Luther said that we don't possess this in any way that effects our salvation.

2. Imputed righteousness is righteousness which is alien to us (from Christ's suffering and death on the cross) but which is given to us (freely, without merit) and we are saved based on it. Luther advocated this view. I like to think of it as a coat made of holiness. It's Jesus' coat, but he loans it to you.

3. Infused righteousness is righteousness freely given, unearned, and which we don't really cooperate with (which would be the Catholic view) but rather which becomes ours as we perform it. It's got the foundation of imputed righteousness but still doesn't want to get as fully radical as Luther did with respect to the idea that salvation is a judgement of our own action.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad