Deanna A

Deanna A. Thompson

Hamline University

September 2006

Letting the Word Run Free:

Luther�s Lectures on Romans and Popular Reception

Here the door is thrown open wide for the understanding of Holy Scriptures, that is, that everything must be understood in relation to Christ . . . .[1] Martin Luther spoke these words to his students in Wittenberg when lecturing on the opening verses of Pauls epistle to the Romans in 1515. Within a few years, this devout, secluded monk came to ignite a reformation that swept through Europe and radically altered religious thought and practice. Luthers reforming instinct has to do, in part, with the way in which he reimagined Christian existence. Luther came to reject much of the worldview of late-medieval Christianity, pursuing instead an intensely personal understanding of religion. Toward the end of his life, Luther explained it this way: Not reading and speculation, but living, dying, and being condemned make a real theologian (p.4). One of the key influences for Luther on becoming a real theologian lay in his fascination with the one he considered the first real theologian, the apostle Paul, most particularly in the words he wrote to the church in Rome.

In fact, Luther himself attributes his breakthrough to a new way of seeing to Pauls words in Romans 1.17, The righteous shall live by faith.[2] This paper will trace Luthers training, immersion in the biblical text, and new approach to understanding scripture. Then we will examine how Luther uses Pauls letter to the Romans as one of the essential underpinnings of his new theological vision. Finally, we will investigate how this approach was received by those around him.

The Stirring of Luthers Theological Imagination

At twenty-one years old, Luther entered the order of Augustinian monks. Luther devoted himself whole-heartedly to both serious academic study and the severe aesthetic practices for which the Augustinians were known. While scholastic texts were required reading, Luther was drawn to the biblical text. While inside the text, he wrestled with images of an angry God and a judgmental Christ. As a monk he tried desperately to live a godly life, but his conscience refused to let him believe that placating this God was actually possible. It also troubled him that the adherents to scholasticism seemed unaware of the terror he called Anfechtung that pervaded his own encounters with God.

While he failed to find comfort in the scholastic texts, Luther did embrace other aspects of late medieval thought. For instance, Luther followed humanists in their insistence upon returning to scripture itselfin its original languagesrather than relying solely on the scholia (commentaries written by medieval theologians). While Luther could not have become the biblical scholar he did without building on the scholastic tradition, he also followed humanism as he grew to rely more on personal impressions and their intersections with the biblical text rather than on the scholia as his primary source for reflection.[3]

Luther also shared with humanists a wariness of the scholastic appetite for Aristotle and what he came to regard as an overly formulaic approach to theology. While many humanists preferred Cicero and other Latin writers to Aristotle, Luther favored the Bible above all other sources. In his inaugural lectures on the Psalms (1513-1515), Luther relied predominantly on the quadriga, the accepted fourfold scholastic method of interpretation. In his lectures on Romans, the reliance is less apparent. And by the time he entered the national stage with his public protests of the Church, Luther had abandoned the quadriga and many of scholasticisms fundamental assumptions.

Finally, one can argue that the humanist fascination with rhetorical eloquence influenced Luthers own exegetical and theological expression. While at times humanists regarded eloquence as an end in itself, Luther always intended for his rhetorical creativity to serve the preaching and proclaiming of Gods Word.[4] Moreover, Luther captured the imaginations not only of his students but of average folk throughout Germany by speaking with an eloquence accessible to any and all Christians. You must ask the mother at home, the children in the street, and the common man in the marketplaces, and see on their own lips how they speak, and translate [the biblical text] accordingly, so that they understand it and realize that you are speaking German to them.[5] For Luther, writes Peter Matheson, human speech itself was a sacrament.[6]

In his earliest days of writing and lecturing, Luthers exegesis and theology was both grounded in the tradition he inherited as well as reflective of movements such as humanism, which did not go unnoticed by humanists themselves. In the early days of Reformation activity, humanists such as Erasmus provided Luther critical support for his vision, thus bolstering his influence both within and outside the church.

The Totally Other Face

Luther received his doctorate in theology and joined the faculty at the university in Wittenberg. It was there, in his post as professor of biblical theology, that Luther would begin to envision a theological universe quite different from the one in which he had been raised. His early lectures on Psalms, Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews propelled him more deeply into Scripture, where he began to glimpse something other than the God of the medieval portraits surrounding him. While steeped in the lament and praise of the Psalms, Luther encountered a poet whose writings bespoke the Anfechtung he knew so well. The Psalmists words not only spoke to his besieged conscience; Luther also heard them bear witness to the Anfechtung of Christ. Luthers own terrified conscience inspired him to embrace a new theological vision, one that originated at the foot of the cross.

In his early interpretations of Psalms, Luther employed the fourfold meaning of scripture, but he altered the scholastic conventions. Infusing the process with his existential emphasis, Luther instead revived the Pauline distinction of the letter versus the spirit of the text, which, as Gerhard Ebeling suggests, had come to be used very differently within medieval biblical interpretation. Luther, writes Ebeling,

did not regard the literal meaning as such as the letter that kills, and the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical interpretations [elements of the fourfold method of interpretation] imposed upon it as the life-giving Spirit. Instead, he based the fundamental distinction between the letter that kills and the life-giving Spirit on the substance of what was expressed in the whole fourfold meaning of scripture. The whole can be the letter that kills, or the whole can be the life-giving Spirit, depending upon whether the understanding is oriented toward Moses or towards Christ.[7]

Luthers insistence that an entire Psalm can preach letter or spirit signaled his first significant break with medieval biblical interpretation. This letter/spirit distinction later gives way in Luther to the law/gospel dialectic, and it is here that Luther begins to grasp at a new imaginative universe. In his lectures on the Psalms, we see a Luther striving to understand the Psalms as communicating more than mere letter. Immersed in the Psalters laments, Luther discovers a text concerned with Christ himself, finding in the Psalms details of Christs suffering, all the way to his experience of abandonment by God. It is through this immersion, writes Ebeling, that Luther prepares the way for his new theological vision.

Lecturing on Romans, Luther worked to inculcate in his students this process of becoming immersed in the biblical text itself. Twice weekly for two years Luther moved through this epistle. For his lectures, he required his students to have their own copies of the Bible in class, so that the experience of the Word could be lived and felt.[8] Even though Luther began with the glosses and moved on to the scholia, Luther continued to push up against the boundaries of the traditional fourfold method. As Walter von Lowenich asserts, Luthers theology was more than academic, it was a confession of faith.[9]

In these early lectures, we see Luther repeatedly grappling with an understanding of Gods righteousness that seemed to counter prevailing views of the role of righteousness in ones relationship with God. For Luther, a crucial error for scholastic theologians was their appropriation of Aristotelian categories within the realm of grace. The problem was not that scholastics claimed that persons could become righteous before God without grace; for Luther the error involved the use of Aristotles concept of habitus, or formation of an inner disposition, to claim that grace was imparted as an inner quality[10] which then was made manifest by the believer externally. Why exactly did Luther believe it necessary to reject such an approach? Luthers own struggles with his conscience convinced him that a focus on human cooperation with Gods righteousness only left one in a state of fear. Have I done enough? Luther would ask, petrified that he had not satisfied Gods daunting expectations. Toward the end of his life, Luther recalled these early days as a time not of loving God but of despising the one who would demand the impossible of sinners:

[U]ntil [his lectures on Romans] it was not the cold blood about the heart, but a single word in chapter 1 [.17], In it the righteousness of God is revealed, that had stood in my way. . . . As if, indeed, it is not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath.[11]

In Luthers mind, to speak of grace as something within is to assert that a person is justified only to the extent to which that grace is realized externally, within works.[12] To direct our gaze inward, toward the quality of the believers inner life, left Luther with a God of whom he was terrified; he could do nothing other than hate the God he longed to love and serve.

The saving vision that struck Luther came through the very same verse in Romans that had initially caused him terror: The righteous will live by faith (1.17). Luthers mentor Johann von Staupitz, then dean of the faculty at Wittenberg, encouraged him to see that scripture ultimately testified to a more encompassing view of righteousness than he encountered in scholasticism.[13] Thus Luther came to hear anew these words in Romanswords that carved a path for him through Gods terrifying wrath. It is from this word of grace that Luther reenvisioned the churchs doctrine of justification. No longer would he embrace the scholastic approach: that humans must do what is in them (quod in se est) to achieve a state of worthiness before God. Instead Luther discovers through Paul a God whose righteousness comes to humanity not in humanly expected form of punishment or reward, but as an undeserved gift given to sinners by grace. Luther writes, in response to Pauls self reference as a servant of Jesus Christ in Romans 1.1: God does not want to redeem us through our own, but through external righteousness and wisdom, not through one that comes from us and grows in us, but through the one that comes to us from the outside. (LW 25:136) God justifies humanity not as a reward for humble living, as Luther initially feared, but rather through grace alone.

This gift of Gods righteousness places the sinner as one who stands before God is now clothed in divine righteousness. The magnitude of this realization for Luther cannot be underestimated: I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire scripture showed itself to me.[14] This totally other face is neither remote nor even external; this face of scripture dynamically engages the hearer, placing the believer coram Deo. Set free by this new insight, Luther is liberated from the problem of human attempts at justification before God. He embraces the vision he finds in Paul: that the gospel reveals Gods righteousness as rendering sinners righteous through the death and resurrection of Christ.

Transformed by this new vision, Luthers views emerge as pointedly in opposition to both his predecessors and his contemporaries. Late-medieval scholastic theologians interpreted the righteousness of Christ as ushering in a new law for Christians. For them, Christ replaced Moses as lawgiver, and although Christ initiates the process of justification in the believer, the law still needs to be fulfilled. In this vision, Gods righteousness remains distant, conferred upon sinners only after fulfillment of the new law. Luthers new vision of justification, however, offered a radical alternative. As Luther says when commenting on Romans 1.17, For the righteousness of God is the cause of salvation. . . . [This is] the righteousness by which we are made righteous by God.[15] Grace does not equip human beings to become righteous; rather, the gift of grace fundamentally alters the situation for humanity coram Deo. Luther reasserts Christs redemptive role, for Christ himself is the righteousness of God. Christs life, death, and resurrection, Luther writes, guarantees our own spiritual resurrection and life.[16] Here he uses the term spiritual to indicate the category of true understanding, wherein living in the Spirit means to live in faith.[17] Consequently, our spiritual relationship to Gods work in Christ is one of radical receptivity, where righteousness is received by us through the gift of grace. Luther states: The righteousness of God is completely from faith, but in such a way that through its development it does not make its appearance but becomes a clearer faith according to that expression in 2 Cor. 3:18: We are being changed . . . from one degree of glory to another. . . .[18] Therefore Luther counsels sinners to believe at least your own experience, for by the law you deserve Gods wrath, but by grace you have been saved through faith.[19] This totally other face of scripture seen first in Romans caught Luther in its gaze and never let him go.

Letting the Word Run Free

It was only a matter of time before Luthers new vision pushed him to publicly oppose the prevailing views of his day. Luther declares, I have learned nothing [from the scholastics] but the ignorance of sin, righteousness, baptism, and the whole of Christian life. I certainly didnt learn there what the power of God is . . . Indeed, I lost Christ there, but I have found him again in Paul.[20] Equipped with this new understanding of Gods Word, Luther spoke out, calling the church and the academy away from Aristotle and back to the encounter with God through the Word. Therefore, Luther repeatedly claims he is duty bound to speak out publicly against the church hierarchy. Early on he contradicts the claim, voiced repeatedly by his opponents, that only the pope can interpret scripture. Luther intentionally subverts that mandate throughout his treatises, claiming himself a fool on the order of Pauls playing the fool, and insists that the Word cannot be held captive by the papacy, but rather must be allowed to run free.

In his 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, with help from Pauls words in Romans, Luther develops further the link between righteousness and the freedom it affords all who receive it. In thesis 25, Luther refers again to Romans 1.17, using it to explain that the righteous person understands works do not make him [sic] righteous, rather his righteousness creates works.[21] Luther reinforces the point that our righteousness is God-given when he states in thesis 26 that through faith Christ is in us, indeed, one with us.[22] This portrait of what a justified life looks like leads Luther to quote Paul in Romans 13.8: Owe no one anything, except to love one another. This belief that righteousness leads to freedom from rules and regulations allowed Luther to realize that Rome had no real jurisdiction over him. Thus the church could discipline him, but they could not rob him of his freedom to preach Christ.

It is also important to stress, however, that for all Luthers talk of Christian freedom, he repeatedly invokes Romans 13.1-7 and Pauls discussion of obedience to earthly rulers, claiming that Christian freedom coram Deo does nothing to alter ones necessary obedience to temporal authorities. Going even further, Luther insists that Christians are to be subject not just to rulers, but to all others. To experience the death of our outer, sinful self with Christ is to experience a shattering of all pretense. Living coram hominibus, where self-absorption has been broken, gives Christians what Otto Pesch calls freedom of conscience: Christians are freed to serve others without being forced to trust in the works themselves.[23] Being subject to all, then, offers its own version of freedomthe freedom of keeping track of ones deeds toward others. Any scorekeeping ultimately coaxes one back to a preoccupation of self over others. It is important to acknowledge, however, that we only begin to make some progress in that which shall be perfect in the future life.[24]

In the face of ecclesial opposition, Luther repeatedly refused to recant. In 1521 he was summoned to the Diet of Worms, where he was given one last chance to change his position. He declared, I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Then he added, Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen.[25] Here Luther makes it clear that he stands accountable not first to spiritual authorities, but ultimately to the Word of God.

Luthers understanding of faith given by God freed him to follow his conscience rather than the external commands he believed contradicted Gods Word. Walther von Lowenich frames the significance of these words for Christian history: For the first time, the principle of freedom of conscience was exposed publicly before the highest ranking representative of the church and the world. One could make demands of everything else, but not of faith, for faith was a matter of conscience, [and conscience was] bound to Gods Word.[26] This bold claim highlights the heroic significance of Luthers early career. As Matheson suggests, Luthers career began with works of rare lyrical quality that broke through the fortress and led the march back to faith.[27] Indeed, for most Christians of his day, Luthers vision of freedom was more aspiration than reality; yet it is difficult to overestimate the force with which these visions of freedom permeated the imaginations of the disenfranchised, the voiceless.[28] They were captured by the image of freedom, understanding its relevance to their lives in ways that would shock even the reformer himself.

As quickly became clear, not everyone embraced the sharp distinction Luther did between the spiritual and temporal realms. Authorities rightly feared that Luthers ecclesiastical disobedience could spawn civil disobedience, unrest, and even outright rebellion throughout society. While Luther was forced into seclusion after the Diet of Worms, it was not long before his vitriolic calls for ecclesiastical reform fanned flames of unrest among Wittenberg students, professors, and parishioners.[29] Protestors destroyed icons, altars, and relics in area churches, prompting authorities to close city schools for fear the violence would spread. When Luther heard of the rioting and upheaval, he quickly returned to Wittenberg. While he likely prevented the Reformation from becoming an insurrection in Wittenberg, the reverberations of unrest extended far beyond his city. Heiko Oberman places the situation in context, noting that the roots of unrest had long been present in European history as a non-violent impulse for reform . . . . The new foment of the reformation proved to imply political radicalization by a biblical-spiritual opposition to the secular power of the church.[30] Using his interpretation of Paul as a guide, Luther declares that the Word is set free, and counsels bold action in the spiritual realm. It is clear Luther was single-mindedly focused on exposing and changing abuses in the ecclesial realm. Meanwhile, setting the Word free also was interpreted by many who heard or read his words as heralding a civic or temporal freedom as well.

While Luthers defiant words and actions alone did not stir German peasants to action, it can be argued that Luther functioned as a symbol, a beacon, a sign of the times for the peasants,[31] and that his theological vision equipped them with a lens through which they could interpret and protest their experience of oppression. Although Luther repeatedly invoked Pauls words in Romans 13, preaching patience and endurance of trials inflicted by unjust rulers, his noisy disobedience in response to papal injustices fueled the imaginations and religious zeal of the peasants set on ushering in the reign of God on earth. Buoyed by Luther, the peasants demanded better treatment by the rulers, only to witness Luther raging against them, accusing them of misinterpreting Christian freedom. Luther even reached the point of calling the rulers unjust if they didnt use their God-given authority to harshly punish the evil-doers.

Where did this come from? Peter Matheson helps set the stage for a response, suggesting that when a great shattering takes place and an enchanted world is lost, it can free us up to step out in new directions but can also toss us into the abyss. Dreams and nightmares frequently interweave. There is a nightmarish dimension to the Reformation, too.[32] Indeed, Luthers stance against the peasants qualifies as one of the nightmarish aspects of his life. It appears that Luther himself underestimated the potential fruitfulness of how Gods righteousness leads to a radically altered existence in the world.[33] A key insight of the Reformation undeniably lies in Luthers vision that the reformation of life necessarily follows from the reformation of faith. Despite his continued insistence that Gods righteousness transforms the sinful self, altering the way the believer acts in the world, in the context of the Peasants uprising this sheltered monk narrowed his vision too far.

It is true that Luther opened wide the door to understanding a new way of interpreting the biblical textindeed, a new way of being in the worldbut in letting the Word run free it quickly ran away from his control. One of Luthers most enduring contributions to the history of Christian thought is his telling, again and again, the story that he found in Paul: that the gospel message gives us grace and mercy and the gospel, as Luther discovered through Romans, is full of claims about how great this is for us.[34] While Luther himself resisted the full implications of his understanding of Christian freedom, his insight into the freedom preached in the gospel remains an innovative aspect of Christian history.