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.

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"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