Luther’s Assault on Church Authority
Yesterday I began a series of posts on Martin Luther and the Reformation in commemoration of Reformation Day. I have been looking for video clips that help to illustrate various elements of Luther’s life and theology. The challenge is that there are very few complete videos, at least that are both pretty good and relatively brief. So instead I will share a couple of clips that illustrate various elements of Luther’s life and, when possible, direct you via hyperlink to larger segments.
The clip we watched yesterday, from Biography.com, illustrated the early part of Luther’s life, tracing his journey from a planned career in law to the monastery, and from the monastery to an unintended career as a Reformer.
Today’s segment, a part of PBS’s wonderful The Reluctant Revolutionary, deals with Luther’s attack on the sacramental system of the church in his 1520 treatise, “On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” As Mark Edwards, former President of St. Olaf College, says in the video, the sacramental system functioned something like the water works, as the church controlled access to grace with a series of sacraments that started with baptism and ran through last rites. Luther’s Reformation, to keep with the analogy, was like giving people permission to drill their own wells.
The video then touches briefly on the “priesthood of all believers,” the assertion that any Christian can speak a word of forgiveness and grace to another. This was, as Edwards says, like eliminating the middleman between God and humanity. It was, in other words, an outright attack on the power of the Roman Church and ensured that he would be excommunicated, that is, excluded from the sacramental system that was supposed to make possible one’s eternal salvation. Though Luther stared out trying to reform the church he loved and served, with his burning of the papal bull of excommunication, he’d moved from reformer to revolutionary.
I’ll see what I can find for the rest of the week, but – as with, I’m afraid, most of my posts – I don’t have a plan, so stay tuned to see what emerges or suggest some of the resources you’ve found most helpful in the comments below.
Notes: 1) If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the video.
2) For those interested, you can find an online copy of Luther’s treatise “On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church” here.
I decided to read up on Luther on Wikipedia and was shocked to learn that he was a vicious anti-semite. Disappointing. Passage from Wikipedia:
On the Jews and Their Lies
Main article: On the Jews and Their Lies
In 1543 Luther published On the Jews and Their Lies in which he says that the Jews are a “base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.”[13] They are full of the “devil’s feces … which they wallow in like swine.”[14] The synagogue was a “defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut …”[15] He argues that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness,[16] afforded no legal protection,[17] and these “poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.[18] He also seems to advocate their murder, writing “[w]e are at fault in not slaying them”.[19]
I was vaguely aware of this Julie, and I thank you for finding the quotes. I think the church ought to do more to acknowledge its past (and present) anti-Semitism, and make amends where possible, and at least name the shadow sides of its history.
Luther did not write, live or think beyond the time in which he lived. I.e. find the commentaries of his era on the Gospel of John and absorb the nature of the well from which Luther drank. There are no excuses, no blinders, no support offered. First a mortal man, then a believer, then a leader than the Reformer. Feet of clay, saved by grace. An embarassment to many, rightly so. A leader in the reformation of the Church of Jesus Christ, rightly so.
Actually, this is far from a secret and the ELCA has addressed this embarrassing end to Luther’s career as a reformer. His last years he became increasingly anti-Semitic, most unfortunate! Take a look here for some of the ongoing steps to make clear the ELCA’s perspective and the work to address this sad situation:
Stephen Nichols; W. Robert Godfrey discussed “whether Martin Luther was guilty of anti-Semitism.” Nichols says “in 1523, Luther reached out with kindness and humility to the Jewish people, denouncing how the Church had treated them up to now with the hope that many would become Christians. Twenty years later, when that did not happen, and when Luther, now old and sick, had been exposed to some blasphemous, anti-Jesus writings penned by Jews in past generations, he wrote his infamous document Concerning the Jews and Their Lies.” Again, this does not justify, diminish or excuse this document. It contextualizes it.