LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

STEPHENSON: LET YOUR HOLY ANGEL BE WITH ME 35
know their office and essence and also what is to be held concerning
them. 10
Yet angelology is not contemplated abstractly for a moment. The angels
enter the Reformer’s field of vision only as they are locked in combat with
the devils; so that from the third paragraph of our sermon until at least the
beginning of the tenth Luther gives his hearers a short course in
demonology. His opening definition includes an understanding of St
Michael which the Reformer contradicts in other writings, where he equates
the figure of Michael with our Lord Himself:
A Christian should have no doubt that the Devil is by nature a created
angel, as St Michael is a created angel. 11
Many Christians suffer from the illusion that the Devil is lounging at a safe
hundred mile distance from themselves. Such souls “lose knowledge of the
benefit which God does us by His angels”: 12
Thus when someone thrusts the Devil so far away, he does not esteem the
dear angels. But a Christian ought to know that he sits among devils and
that the Devil is closer to him than his coat or shirt, yea nearer than his
own skin, that he is all about us and we are therefore at daggers drawn
with him and must come to blows with him. … This is then the first
point, that we consider as certain that there is a Devil and he so near to us
that he is much closer to us than the shirt on our back. 13
Our post-modernist world can relate to Luther’s proclamation “that we
do not sit in a safe garden”. 14 His drastic pulpit imagery rests on a proof text
long familiar to him from the office of Compline, I Pet. 5:8. A whole
paragraph is devoted to unpacking this verse spoken “not by a drunkard or a
10 WA 32:111.14-17: “Denn es sol und mus bey den Christen der verstand oder die
erkentnis der lieben Engeln bleiben und ist uns seer nutz und trostlich, das wir yhr ampt und
wesen, auch was von yhn zu halten ist, wissen.”
11 WA 32:112.14-16: “Aber ein Christ sol kein Zweiffel dar an haben, das der Teufel
sey von natur ein geschaffener Engel, wie S. Michel ein geschaffener Engel ist.”
12 WA 32:112.21-24: “Sondern wenn sie vom Teuffel hoeren reden, meinen sie, er sey
uber hundert meil hin weg. Wenn man aber das nicht weis, das uns der Teuffel so nahend ist,
so verleuret man die erkentnis der wolthat, die uns Gott mit seinen Engeln thut.”
13 WA 32:112.26-113.2: “Darumb wenn einer den Teuffel so weit hin weg wirfft, der
achtet der lieben Engeln nicht. Aber ein Christ der sol das wissen, Das er mitten unter den
Teuffeln sitze und das yhm der Teuffel neher sey denn sein rock oder hembd, Ja neher denn
sein eigene haud, das er rings umb uns her sey und wir also stets mit yhm zu har liegen und
uns mit yhm schlahen mussen … Das ist denn das Erste, das wir gewislich da fur hallten, das
ein Teufel sey und so nahend sey bey uns, das er uns viel neher sey denn uns das hembd am
leibe.”
14 WA 32:114.24-25.