LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

STEPHENSON: THE ROOTS OF THE REFORMATION 47
stayed within the parameters of late mediaeval Catholic orthodoxy, and he
certainly had no intention of flinging down the gauntlet before the whole
religious system then presided over by the first Medici Pope.
As a matter of fact, the young professor had already issued a bold and
deliberate challenge to the school of theology in which he had been raised in
a series of theses announced at the beginning of the previous month. On 4
September 1517 Luther posted and sent out his 97 Theses Against Scholastic
Theology. 5 The title of this pungent document is flatly misleading, since the
target of the Reformer’s attack was not the whole tradition of theology
begun back in the 12 th century by Anselm, Abelard, and Peter Lombard, but
rather the anthropology of the school founded by William of Ockham, who
died in 1349, the year of the Black Death. 6 Taking in second place Luther’s
blistering attack of 4 September 1517 on the Pelagian tendencies of the via
moderna, I beg your leave to name the fivefold root system of the second
pattern of 16 th -century reformation before examining the nature of the tree
itself and reflecting on the fruits it continues to bear.
(1) No theologian, however gifted, could have triggered off the events
that so drastically altered the ecclesiastical geography of 16 th -century Europe
if Western Christendom had not at that time been, so to say, a giant keg of
gunpowder awaiting the lighting of a match. Writing before the Second
Vatican Council, Karl Adam admitted that the 16 th century would not have
turned out as it did apart from an infamous document penned by Pope
Gregory VII in 1075. 7 The monk Hildebrand ascended the papal throne in
1073 determined to implement the goals of the so-called Cluniac Reform,
which wanted to clean up the upper echelons of ecclesiastical power, chiefly
by rendering them wholly independent of the secular authorities. The 27
propositions of the Dictatus papae signed by Gregory two years after his
accession were a declaration of war on Emperor Henry IV and all his works
and all his ways. At the cornerstone of Gregory’s programme stood the
veritable deification of the papal office and its holder. All bishops are but his
vicars in the spiritual realm, as are all secular rulers in their own sphere.
Thesis 8 indicates that the pope is the actual emperor, thesis 23 hints at his
impeccability (i.e., his personal sinlessness!), and thesis 22 articulates a
claim which would be brandished against Luther in the early months of
1518: “That the Roman church has never erred and will never err to all
eternity, according to the testimony of the holy scriptures.”
5 AE 34:9-16.
6 The same point can be made about Luther’s remarks in SA III.i:3, to which compare
Melanchthon’s nuanced treatment in Ap II:27-30!
7 For a translation of Gregory’s Dictatus papae, see Donald A. White, Medieval History; A
Source Book (Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press, 1965) 311f.