For most of post-Reformation history, it has been axiomatic in
theological histories of the controversy to propose Martin Luther as a
devoted follower of the theology St. Augustine of Hippo, the great
opponent of the Manichees. This is not surprising, given that Augustine
is often invoked by the Reformers against Catholic dogma, that heretics
such as Calvin and Cornelius Jansen have made a corrupted Augustinianism
the center of their doctrines, that Augustine's bold stance in favor of
grace against the Pelagians lent itself to a certain degree of use by
Reformers arguing in favor of sola fide and
double-predestination, and that Luther himself was an Augustinian monk.
Contemporary scholarship, however, reveals quite a contrary picture of
Luther. Far from invoking Augustine against Rome, Martin Luther shows
himself disdainful of the great doctor of Hippo, and in fact an advocate
of the dualist theology of the Manichees.
These developments
first came to light in the early 20th century, when thousands of notes
written by the hand of Luther himself were discovered added in the
margins of works by St. Augustine, Peter Lombard and others. These
glosses are taken from two time periods, 1506-1516, and 1535-1545, and
thus represent both the developing and the mature thought of Luther. The
glosses were not systematically studied and compiled, however, until
the mid-century, under the direction of a German priest Theobald Beer,
one of the foremost scholars on Martin Luther whose 35 years of work on
the arch-heresiarch of Protestantism won the esteem of Cardinal
Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar and many others. Beer's painstaking
years of systematizing and publishing these glosses of Luther became
public in 1980 with the publication of Beer's 584 page book Der fröhliche Wechsel und Streit.
The results of Beer's work show a Luther not enamored with St.
Augustine, but extraordinarily hostile to him; in fact, this hostility
takes on a Gnostic tone and sheds light on much of Luther's subsequent
critiques of Aristotelianism and Scholasticism. Of Beer's work, Cardinal
Ratzinger wrote to the author, "The influence of neoplatonism, of
pseudo-hermetical literature and of gnosis which you show was wielded on
Luther, casts a totally new light on his polemics against Greek
philosophy and Scholasticism. In a new, significant way you also
explore, to the depths of the central point, the differences to be found
in Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity." [1]
How could
these important elements of Luther's thought get lost? Theobald Beer
points out that what we now know as "Lutheranism" is really the thinking
of Luther's successor, Philipp Melanchthon, who was Luther's
interpreter and advocate, who nevertheless diverged from Luther on
several important points. Unlike Luther, Melanchthon held the Church
Fathers, especially Augustine, in a certain level or reverence, admitted
the usefulness of philosophy in theological studies, and tended towards
a certain irenicism that Luther found troubling. Melanchthon brought
these characteristics into the Lutheran cause and served to moderate the
Lutheranism of the latter 16th century against some of Luther's more
extreme positions. It has often been noted that no modern day Lutheran
would be caught dead in the water affirming some of the things Luther
said, and Melanchthon, after Luther's death, said that Luther was
paralyzed with a "Manichean delirium" [2]. Thus the Luther we know today
is the Luther as interpreted and modified by Melanchthon.
What
of this "Manichaean delirium" that Melanchthon assigns to Luther? One
example is Luther's theology of the atonement, where he sees an
essential inversion of the divine order. On the cross, "the devil must
be granted an hour of divinity and I must attribute fiendishness to God"
[3]. Of course, Luther is really projecting his own struggle with God
onto Christ, leaving the Son in a truly dualistic relation with God the
Father. Luther's deep-seated hatred for God is placed upon Christ, who
assumes not only the punishment due to sin (Catholic theology), but also
the very guilt of sin itself. Luther writes that Christ did not just
assume a general human condition, but submitted to the devil, in a way
He is in assent with the devil, but also the disposition to sin.
In Luther's glosses, he refers to Christ not as a person, but as a compositum,
a composition; this is necessary, since he asserts that divinity and
the diabolical are co-existing within Him; Christ is a composition of
humanity and divinity. Here Luther is opposing the traditional concept
of a single, personal hypostasis, which he will argue against his entire
life. This was a huge point of divergence between Luther and
Melanchthon; after Luther's death, Melanchthon stated, "The formulas to
be rejected are: 'Christ is composed of two natures' and 'Christ is the
fruit of creation.'" The former is obviously an attempt to move the
Lutheran movement away from Luther's heretical compositum view,
and thus Lutheranism would maintain the the traditional formula of
hypostasis. Here Luther is especially against Augustine, which we will
say more on shortly.
Beer stresses that Luther fixates much more
on the role of Christ rather than on His identity; what Christ does is
more important than who He is. For Luther, Christ has two functions.
"The first," says Theobald Beer, "is the function of shielding us from
divine wrath and the second that of giving us an example. This is
twofold justification." [4] The human nature of Christ, because it
adopts the sinful disposition of fallen man, in fact becomes sin. This
is where a Gnostic-Manichaean dualism enters into Luther's thought.
There could be no reconciliation between sinful flesh and the divine
nature. This is why Christ is compositum but not hypostasis.
This
also goes to the root of the relationship between faith and works.
Works, pertaining to the outer man, the "flesh", can have no bearing or
relevance to the "inner man", the spirit animated by faith. Remember,
even in grace, the flesh is still wicked; Christ has simply shielded the
sinner from punishment. Thus there is a permanent dichotomy between
faith and works. To this statement, the Catholic parties at the Diet of
Augsburg would counter with St. Paul's famous formula, "faith working
through love" (Gal. 5:6), which of course teaches the union of faith and
works and the merit of works done in faith. Luther never had a
satisfactory explanation for these arguments, and in fact retreated to
the work of the Gnostic writings of Hermes Trismegistus to counter them.
At Augusburg, for example, Luther responded to the citation from
Galatians by saying:
"The relationship between God and man is
like a line touched by a sphere; the sphere only ever meets the line at
one point and it is at precisely this point that Christ is sited. We
are always on the same path but the sphere only ever touches us at one
point." [5]
Hermes
Trismegistus
This is taken directly from Hermes
Trismegistus, who wrote, "God is an infinite sphere whose center is
everywhere...God is a sphere with as many circumferences as there are
points." [6] In one of the glosses translated by Beer, on the Gospel of
John, Luther comments on Christ's statement, "Before Abraham was, I am,"
and says, "This is what happens in all names regarding accident, but
not substance. Christ did not say, 'Before Abraham was, I am Christ'; He
said simply, 'I am.'" In other words, He introduces the distinction
between substance and accident into the person of Christ, viewing the
divinity in the compositum as the substance and the humanity as
the accident. Elsewhere Luther says, "That which white represents in
relation to man so is Christ in relation to the Son of God." [7] The
humanity of Christ is not necessary to the person of Christ; it is
merely accidental, which is why it can assume the fundamental
disposition of sin without corrupting His divinity. This is pretty close
to Gnostic dualism.
This means that there is something
fundamentally deeper to Luther's objections to Catholicism besides the
use of indulgences or other petty misunderstandings. Luther contradicted
the very core of traditional Christology, a Christology that is
accepted today by most Protestants as well as the Orthodox. One can only
imagine how the Council of Trent would have reacted had they had these
writings at their disposal. This appalling "Manichaean delirium" is why
Melanchthon tried so hard to reshape Lutheranism in a mold more
consonant with traditional Christology.
He we come to Luther's
disdain for St. Augustine, for it was Augustine, more than any other
Father, who articulated the right understanding of Christ within the
Trinity. In De Trinitate, Augustine writes, "It was said that
the Father invisible, united with the Son invisible with Him, sent that
same son and rendered Him visible" [8]. Writing in 1509, Luther
scribbles sarcastically in the margins, "Look, what a strange
conclusion!" Luther could not accept an inter-trinitarian mission
because of Christ's fundamental function as a shelter from divine wrath.
Christ has two natures, but they are perpetually in opposition.
This
opposition extends even to the Church. Because the human nature as such
does not participate in the divine nature, neither does the Church.
Luther writes, "The Church is an exterior body but does not participate
in the divine nature." Melanchthon counters by dictating, "The person of
Christ was sent to the Church to bring it the Gospel from the heart of
the Eternal Father." There is a true penetration of divinity into
humanity in Melanchthon that Luther's Manichaean outlook can never allow
him to admit. [9] Luther goes so far as to deny the human nature of
Christ had any part in the redemption: "Christ works for our salvation,
but without the cooperation of human nature." [10] Human nature is so
irredeemably corrupt, so distant from divinity, that not even in the
person of Christ can it be put to any good use. Christ's only use for
His humanity is to "become" our own sin.
Luther's Gnosticism is
deep seated; Beer cites many other places where Luther, in commenting on
the Scriptures, cites Hermes Trismegistus, neo-pythagoraean teachings,
and uses Gnostic images, like that of Leviathan or the Titans. He sees
the fundamental division between faith and works as so deep-seated that
there are essentially two of every person. In his 1531 gloss on
Galatians, Luther wrote, "So one is the Abraham who believes, one is the
Abraham who works, one is the Christ who redeems, one is the Christ who
works...distinguish between these two things as between heaven and
earth." [11] The dualism here is profound.
It is for this reason
that Luther particularly scorns Augustine, who wrote so eloquently
against the Manichaeans of his own day. In Confessions, for
example, where Augustine criticizes the concept of two divinities
struggling with each other, Luther writes in the margin, "This is false.
This is the origin of all Augustine's errors." So Luther attacks
Augustine for attacking Manichaeism; this is why Melanchthon in turn
accuses Luther of Manichaean delirium, precisely because the concept of
two gods, of two Christs, emerges in Luther.
Another example: When Augustine attacks the Gnostic Porphyry in De Trinitate
VII, 6, 11, Luther upholds Porphyry's argument against Augustine,
writing in the margin, "[The term] 'person' in God is a term common to
many and signifies the substance of the divinity." This is profoundly
opposed to Augustine, who argued the orthodox position that person
refers not to the substance of God, but to the distinctions within Him.
If person referred to God's substance, He would not be able to have a
Trinitarian personhood, since He is but a single substance. It is
appalling that Luther has been viewed as some sort of Augustinian. He
despised Augustine and thought his work was riddled with errors. Luther
sides with the Manichaeans over Augustine.
True, Luther does not
posit an autonomous evil substance, as the Manichaeans did, but for him,
God is fundamentally bad. When St. Paul writes that in Christ the
fullness of God dwells bodily (Col. 2:9), Luther writes, "It is good
that we have such a man, because God in himself is cruel and bad." [12]
This is reflective of Luther's personal experience with God, which in
turn spills over into his theology.
Theobald Beer's work
compiling Luther's glosses reveal a Luther who from 1509 right into the
1540's is convinced of a particularly heterodox Christological theory,
one which even his own contemporaries were ashamed of and tried to
downplay. His relegating of the human nature of Christ to practical
irrelevance, his Gnostic dualism in the division he posits between man's
material and immaterial components, his reliance on the eremtical works
of Hermes Trismegistus, and his rabid distaste for St. Augustine all
reveal a Luther much more troubled and turned around than previously
imagined. In his questioning of the very natures of Christ and the
structure of the Trinity, Luther is much more problematic than
previously thought, as his attacks on the faith come at a much more
fundamental level than indulgences and purgatory.
And that being
the case, where does this leave Lutheran-Catholic relations? Are
Luther's strange ideas something Catholics can dialogue with? Of course
Luther is not Lutheranism, and most Lutherans today would be ashamed to
profess Luther's ideas as their own. Still, even if modern Lutheranism
has distanced itself from Luther's "Manichaean delirium", it is still
true that the manner in which a thing is started determines its course.
Catholic scholars and all Catholics engaged in evangelical efforts or
"dialogue" with Lutherans would do well to educate themselves on this
hitherto unknown side of Martin Luther.
These developments
first came to light in the early 20th century, when thousands of notes
written by the hand of Luther himself were discovered added in the
margins of works by St. Augustine, Peter Lombard and others. These
glosses are taken from two time periods, 1506-1516, and 1535-1545, and
thus represent both the developing and the mature thought of Luther. The
glosses were not systematically studied and compiled, however, until
the mid-century, under the direction of a German priest Theobald Beer,
one of the foremost scholars on Martin Luther whose 35 years of work on
the arch-heresiarch of Protestantism won the esteem of Cardinal
Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar and many others. Beer's painstaking
years of systematizing and publishing these glosses of Luther became
public in 1980 with the publication of Beer's 584 page book Der fröhliche Wechsel und Streit.
The results of Beer's work show a Luther not enamored with St.
Augustine, but extraordinarily hostile to him; in fact, this hostility
takes on a Gnostic tone and sheds light on much of Luther's subsequent
critiques of Aristotelianism and Scholasticism. Of Beer's work, Cardinal
Ratzinger wrote to the author, "The influence of neoplatonism, of
pseudo-hermetical literature and of gnosis which you show was wielded on
Luther, casts a totally new light on his polemics against Greek
philosophy and Scholasticism. In a new, significant way you also
explore, to the depths of the central point, the differences to be found
in Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity." [1]
How could
these important elements of Luther's thought get lost? Theobald Beer
points out that what we now know as "Lutheranism" is really the thinking
of Luther's successor, Philipp Melanchthon, who was Luther's
interpreter and advocate, who nevertheless diverged from Luther on
several important points. Unlike Luther, Melanchthon held the Church
Fathers, especially Augustine, in a certain level or reverence, admitted
the usefulness of philosophy in theological studies, and tended towards
a certain irenicism that Luther found troubling. Melanchthon brought
these characteristics into the Lutheran cause and served to moderate the
Lutheranism of the latter 16th century against some of Luther's more
extreme positions. It has often been noted that no modern day Lutheran
would be caught dead in the water affirming some of the things Luther
said, and Melanchthon, after Luther's death, said that Luther was
paralyzed with a "Manichean delirium" [2]. Thus the Luther we know today
is the Luther as interpreted and modified by Melanchthon.
In Luther's glosses, he refers to Christ not as a person, but as a compositum,
a composition; this is necessary, since he asserts that divinity and
the diabolical are co-existing within Him; Christ is a composition of
humanity and divinity. Here Luther is opposing the traditional concept
of a single, personal hypostasis, which he will argue against his entire
life. This was a huge point of divergence between Luther and
Melanchthon; after Luther's death, Melanchthon stated, "The formulas to
be rejected are: 'Christ is composed of two natures' and 'Christ is the
fruit of creation.'" The former is obviously an attempt to move the
Lutheran movement away from Luther's heretical compositum view,
and thus Lutheranism would maintain the the traditional formula of
hypostasis. Here Luther is especially against Augustine, which we will
say more on shortly.
This
also goes to the root of the relationship between faith and works.
Works, pertaining to the outer man, the "flesh", can have no bearing or
relevance to the "inner man", the spirit animated by faith. Remember,
even in grace, the flesh is still wicked; Christ has simply shielded the
sinner from punishment. Thus there is a permanent dichotomy between
faith and works. To this statement, the Catholic parties at the Diet of
Augsburg would counter with St. Paul's famous formula, "faith working
through love" (Gal. 5:6), which of course teaches the union of faith and
works and the merit of works done in faith. Luther never had a
satisfactory explanation for these arguments, and in fact retreated to
the work of the Gnostic writings of Hermes Trismegistus to counter them.
At Augusburg, for example, Luther responded to the citation from
Galatians by saying:
He we come to Luther's
disdain for St. Augustine, for it was Augustine, more than any other
Father, who articulated the right understanding of Christ within the
Trinity. In De Trinitate, Augustine writes, "It was said that
the Father invisible, united with the Son invisible with Him, sent that
same son and rendered Him visible" [8]. Writing in 1509, Luther
scribbles sarcastically in the margins, "Look, what a strange
conclusion!" Luther could not accept an inter-trinitarian mission
because of Christ's fundamental function as a shelter from divine wrath.
Christ has two natures, but they are perpetually in opposition. 
Luther's Gnosticism is
deep seated; Beer cites many other places where Luther, in commenting on
the Scriptures, cites Hermes Trismegistus, neo-pythagoraean teachings,
and uses Gnostic images, like that of Leviathan or the Titans. He sees
the fundamental division between faith and works as so deep-seated that
there are essentially two of every person. In his 1531 gloss on
Galatians, Luther wrote, "So one is the Abraham who believes, one is the
Abraham who works, one is the Christ who redeems, one is the Christ who
works...distinguish between these two things as between heaven and
earth." [11] The dualism here is profound.
Another example: When Augustine attacks the Gnostic Porphyry in De Trinitate
VII, 6, 11, Luther upholds Porphyry's argument against Augustine,
writing in the margin, "[The term] 'person' in God is a term common to
many and signifies the substance of the divinity." This is profoundly
opposed to Augustine, who argued the orthodox position that person
refers not to the substance of God, but to the distinctions within Him.
If person referred to God's substance, He would not be able to have a
Trinitarian personhood, since He is but a single substance. It is
appalling that Luther has been viewed as some sort of Augustinian. He
despised Augustine and thought his work was riddled with errors. Luther
sides with the Manichaeans over Augustine.
Theobald Beer's work
compiling Luther's glosses reveal a Luther who from 1509 right into the
1540's is convinced of a particularly heterodox Christological theory,
one which even his own contemporaries were ashamed of and tried to
downplay. His relegating of the human nature of Christ to practical
irrelevance, his Gnostic dualism in the division he posits between man's
material and immaterial components, his reliance on the eremtical works
of Hermes Trismegistus, and his rabid distaste for St. Augustine all
reveal a Luther much more troubled and turned around than previously
imagined. In his questioning of the very natures of Christ and the
structure of the Trinity, Luther is much more problematic than
previously thought, as his attacks on the faith come at a much more
fundamental level than indulgences and purgatory.
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