LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

More documents

Recommendations

Info

48 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII Gregory VII died a failure in exile in Salerno in 1085, boasting that, “I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity.” For a brief season his vision of absolute papal power was realized in the early 13 th century by Innocent III (1198-1216), but the hubris of many pontiffs was brought low when Boniface VIII took on Philip V of France and precipitated the papacy’s 70year “Babylonian captivity” in Avignon. Innocent’s ostensible triumph was bought at a heavy price, for the existing legislation used by Henry VIII to prise the Church of England out of Europe had been enacted by English kings of the high Middle Ages in their attempts to rein back papal power. Only against the background of what he lambasted as the “imperial papacy” of the Cluniac reform can Luther’s denunciation of the papal office be rightly understood. For the first of the “three walls” of the Romanists to be demolished in the Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation of 1520 is the papal claim of superiority over and immunity from the civil authorities. It is one of the choicest and bitterest ironies of history that Luther’s assault on the totalitarian claims of the mediaeval papacy permitted the pendulum to swing to the very opposite extreme. Despairing of meaningful reform at the hands of the established bishops, the Reformer begged the ruling princes to step into the vacuum. As is well known, in both Germany and the united kingdom of Denmark and Norway the territorial sovereigns soon progressed from the temporary status of “emergency bishops” (Notbischöfe) to become the “supreme bishops” (summi episcopi) of the churches in their realms. The Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555 allowed for ruling princes to choose between two confessions, the Roman and the Lutheran, granting these sovereigns the right to determine the religion of their subjects according to the principle summarized in the phrase cuius regio eius religio. Shortly after the promulgation of the Book of Concord the Elector Palatine defected to the Reformed Faith, taking his subjects with him to Geneva. In 1613 Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg likewise repudiated the Lutheran confession. The Pennsylvania historian Bodo Nischan provides a wealth of valuable detail as he approvingly describes the endeavours of John Sigismund to uproot Lutheran faith and practice from his realm. Readers of Prince, People, and Confession cannot take seriously Karl Barth’s much publicized and widely accepted charge that cringing servility to the secular authorities pertains to the essence of Lutheranism. For in the years immediately following John Sigismund’s apostasy, leading clergy bravely denounced their ruler’s attack on the Church, some of them being forced into exile in neighbouring Saxony. A generation before princely absolutism was set in place by the woefully misnamed “Great Elector”, the estates of Brandenburg and Prussia resisted John Sigismund’s church policies. And the common people demonstrated by the force of their opposition that they were by now well catechized in the Lutheran Faith to
STEPHENSON: THE ROOTS OF THE REFORMATION 49 which they remained firmly and courageously loyal. 8 In the long run, however, all three groups were subjugated as the Lutheran Faith was almost wholly wiped out from Bandenburg-Prussia by the Reformed House of Hohenzollern, that dynasty from hell. A line of usurping summi episcopi backed up by the imperially sanctioned cuius regio eius religio were able to hack down a tree rooted in deep revulsion against the imperial papacy of the Cluniac reform. (2) If Luther had entered the Dominican Order and been schooled in the basically Augustinian anthropology and soteriology of Thomas Aquinas, his theological development would not have taken the shape it did. The sole satisfactory explanation of Martin’s decision to enter the Order of Augustinian Eremites is that it alone among the monastic houses of the city of Erfurt offered its inmates a theological education in the spirit of the via moderna. The followers of Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), Bonaventura (1217-1274), and Duns Scotus (ca. 1265-1308) were lumped together among the advocates of the ancient way, the via antiqua, while theologians who took their cue from William of Ockham were the avant-garde modernists of the day, the divines of the via moderna. Throughout his life Luther would acknowledge an ongoing epistemological debt to Ockham, gladly labelling himself a modernist, a terminist, or a nominalist. Heiko Oberman is disposed to see in nominalism well nigh the chief root of the Lutheran Reformation. But if Luther followed his nominalist teachers in their philosophical epistemology, he radically repudiated the leading theologians of the via moderna where their anthropology and soteriology were concerned. William of Ockham rejoiced that God graciously provided salvation to fallen mankind through His potentia ordinata realized in the Incarnation and the Church, but he considered that, if push came to shove, men could earn salvation through loving God above all things by their natural powers. And the Tübingen divine Gabriel Biel (†1495) taught that “facienti quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam”, which being interpreted is roughly the encouragement, “If you do your very best, Almighty God will do the rest.” The via moderna was the most Pelagian school of late mediaeval theology, and its teaching was geared to exacerbate Luther’s scruples and plunge him into the depths of despair. The new Wittenberg theology developed as Dr Martin expounded Romans and Galatians, and strong attacks were mounted on the Pelagian tendencies of the via moderna, supremely but not exclusively in the 97 Theses of 4 September 1517. At this stage of his career Luther steps onto the stage clad in the mantle of St Augustine. The bottom line here is his conviction of the servum arbitrium, the enslaved will which can do nothing to promote its reconciliation with God. Within a decade 8 Bodo Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession; The Second Reformation in Brandenburg (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994) 161-203.
Page 1: LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW publish
Page 4 and 5: 4 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII S
Page 6 and 7: LTR XII (Academic Year 1999-2000):
Page 8 and 9: 8 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII W
Page 10 and 11: 10 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII
Page 98 and 99:
98 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
LTR XII (Academic Year 1999-2000):
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
LTR XII (Academic Year 1999-2000):
Page 110:
show all

LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?