LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

36 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW IX
joker, but in great and mighty earnest”. 15 The Reformer now launches into a
description of the evil one’s ongoing mischief by way of bodily and spiritual
possession of the children of Adam. Many are “full of greed, hatred, envy,
and unchastity” and yet suppose the Devil to be more than a hundred
thousand miles away from them. 16 The Devil wreaks untold damage on
souls “with false doctrine, with despair, and with evil desires”, all aimed at
tearing faith from the heart, producing the deadly sin of acedia (i.e., sloth),
and turning Christian sanctification into a wearisome obstacle course. 17
Moreover, the evil one is responsible for specific events in the external
world:
When he has now thus got the soul in his grasp, he reaches for the body
also, sending plague, hunger, distress, war, murder etc. The Devil serves
up all this, that one now breaks a leg, the other drowns, the third commits
a murder. Who stages all this None other than the Devil. 18
On reaching the tenth paragraph of his Michaelmas homily, Luther
abruptly switches gear. The modernist worldview begotten by the
Enlightenment has rendered theistic belief itself an unfounded conviction
held privately by certain eccentrics. Twenty years ago at the height of the
Myth of God Incarnate debate in England, Brian Hebblethwaite swam
against the current by arguing for the Incarnation. Yet Hebblethwaite soon
rescued himself from suspicion of fundamentalism by publicly flaunting his
denial of the existence of the order of angelic being. The Reformer is
thoroughly pre-modern in that he propounds no God of the gaps but
preaches a God of the here and now immanently involved in the nuts and
bolts of this world’s workings. Moreover, Luther presents God as governing
in the kingdoms at His left and right hands through the holy angels against
the machinations of the Devil and his hosts:
15 WA 32:113. 3-17.
16 WA 32:113.31-33: “Darnach sind etlich geistlich oder heimlich besessen, die vol
geitz, hass, neid, unkeusscheit sc. sticken und gehen dennoch so sicher einher, das sie
gedencken, der Teuffel sey uber hundert Tausent meil weg von yhn.”
17 WA 32:114.5-11: “… lasst uns nur vleissig lernen, was der Teufel doch fur ein Geist
sey und wie viel er schadens thue an leibe und an seel, An der seele mit falscher lere, mit
verzweifelung, mit bosen luesten sc. Alles darumb das er den glauben hin weg reisse und zihe
einen ya ynn ein wancken oder ynn einen faulen, schwachen gedancken: Ich fuele den
Teuffel seer wol, kan es aber dennoch nicht so machen, wie ich gern wolt, Ich wolt gern
hefftiger, hitziger und ernster ynn meinem thun sein, Aber ich kan fur dem Teuffel nicht.”
18 WA 32:114.12-15: “Wenn er nu die seele also gefasst hat, so greifft er nach dem leib
auch, da schickt er pestilentz, hunger, kummer, krieg, mord, sc. Das richtet der Teuffel alles
an, das nu einer ein bein bricht, der ander ersaufft, der drit thut ein mord, wer richt solches
alles an Niemand denn der Teuffel.”