Rose, Ernst. “The Reformation.” In A History of German Literature, pp. 95-104. New York: New York University Press, 1969.

[In the following excerpt from his history of German literature, originally published in 1960, Rose discusses the historical context of Martin Luther's work as translator of the Bible, asserting that Luther was the first German translator to work with the complete text of the Bible. According to Rose, Luther successfully rendered the Bible into an idiom which all speakers of German could understand.]

The Church as an actual institution is merely the external organization of the invisible community of believers united by their faith in Christ. It is a human institution established to strengthen and spread this faith. Though at best it may represent eternal values, it possesses no ultimate, transcendental validity. But in the Middle Ages the Church had assumed such an ultimate character. The popes had continued the universalism of the Roman Empire, and had claimed supreme rule over the world. In their struggles with the German emperors they had nearly realized their claims, and had become the rulers of the world in fact as well as theory. At the end of the Middle Ages the popes were predominantly interested in presenting and extending their political, legal, economic, and financial powers.

Of course, such a Church which served the world instead of serving Christ became ever more repugnant to loyal Christians believing in the religious revelations of the Gospels. They began to demand a reform of the existing Church in keeping with its original meaning. The idea was not the destruction of ecclesiastical institutions or the establishment of a new Church. It was an honest reformation which was discussed by all the great Church councils of the fifteenth century which were called together for this purpose. The most important of them was the Church Council of Constance which took place from 1414-1418. The demand for a reformation was by no means an exclusively German demand; the British theologian John Wyclif and his Czech disciple Jan Huss gave expression to the same feeling as their German contemporaries. Huss became a martyr to the new views when in 1415 he was burned as a heretic by the Council of Constance.

In Germany the religious passions of the masses were mounting during the entire fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They found their first outlet in the mystical movement which we have discussed. Laymen wanted to understand Christianity more deeply and wanted to live it more boldly. They began to object to the passive role which had been assigned to them during the previous centuries. The Roman Church had inherited the well-organized bureaucracy of the Roman Empire, and had kept it strictly apart from the laity by special rites and consecrations. It had consolidated this by using Latin as the official Church language. Yet to the laymen Latin was a strange idiom, and little was done by the privileged priesthood to acquaint the masses with the inner spirit of Christianity.

Several non-German nations had already taken issue with the clergy serving a foreign ruler residing in Rome. The French and Spanish churches had early become independent, and the English Church had become rebellious prior to Henry VIII. During the fifteenth century the Church in Germany also was exposed to more and more attacks from the national point of view.

Independent of the religious and national demands for a reform of the Church was the social movement that grew up during the same period. The farmers and lower urban classes were no longer satisfied with their economic and social status, and became more and more restless; they demanded consideration, if not equality, and their agitation reached an ever higher degree. They became prey to social delusions and utopian prophecies, some of which had a communistic tinge derived from early Christian ideas of communal living. From 1400 numerous pamphlets gave vent to these emotions, and local revolutions broke out in several areas. Finally in 1524-1525 there arose the great German peasant revolt which could only be put down by the most brutal measures of the princes. This peasant revolt established a certain connection with the religious movement, although Luther himself, after initial indecision, turned against it and condemned the peasants' excesses. The later uprising of the Anabaptists led to similar excesses and assumed an exclusively religious character, although it was socially motivated at least in part.

Social unrest could also be found among the lesser nobility which felt its economic and social bases circumscribed. In 1522-1523 Franz von Sickingen made a daring attempt to re-establish the broken power of the ordinary knights. Yet his uprising succeeded as little as the revolt of the peasants.

Thus Germany around the turn of that century was loaded with high tension which needed but a spark to erupt into action. This spark was provided by the ninety-five theses which Martin Luther affixed to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church on October 10, 1517. Within a few weeks the German masses were moving, and hailed him enthusiastically as the embodiment of their dreams.

Luther was born in 1483 of Mansfield peasant stock, and was considered one of the people. Although he had become a priest and, in addition, a professor of theology, he was inspired by the same religious instinct as the masses. He was motivated by it almost to the exclusion of all else. Out of the strength of personal emotion he opposed the objective and material power of the Church, and demanded the reduction of its institutions to their original subservient function.

Of themselves Luther's protests against ecclesiastical abuses were nothing new, but they were uttered from the purity and depth of a great religious heart. It was this that captured the attention of the Germans. Luther originally just wanted to reform the old Church, and had no desire to found a new one. However, the Church paid no heed to his demands and excommunicated him, so that he was forced to act alone. With a heavy heart he decided upon founding a new Christian organization. As this was to be a worldly institution serving the interests of the spirit, it needed worldly supervision. Such supervision in Luther's age could only be exercised by the territorial princes. For Charles V, Maximilian's successor as emperor, had decided against the reformatory cause. Thus Luther had to ask the German princes to act as “emergency bishops” (Notbischöfe). By this decision Luther gave support to forces undermining the Empire. The intermediary powers had increased in power since the end of the Hohenstaufen period, and had bargained with the emperor for more and more rights and privileges. Now their selfish designs received a moral justification and a religious halo. The Reformation made it possible for them to oppose the emperor with a clear conscience.

Luther did not intend to weaken the Empire, but he had to rely on the territorial princes for support. After his death the destructive tendencies increased still further. The emperor finally tried to subjugate the Protestant rebels by the force of arms, but was unsuccessful. He therefore had to compromise with their demands in the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555. This treaty gave to the German territorial powers the right either to introduce the Reformation, or not to introduce it. The principle was formulated as cujus regio, ejus religio—“whoever owns the territory will also determine its creed.” This formula made the territorial princes independent factors in German history, and further decreased the power of the central administration.

Religious developments determined German civilization from Luther's first appearance in 1517 until the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555. Aesthetic interests became of such little importance that some scholars speak of the “Lutheran Pause.” Literature between 1517 and 1555 represented an extreme example of that didactic tendency which characterized the whole epoch. Luther's appearance gave a new stress and also a peculiar twist to this didacticism, but did not initiate it. The Reformation was one of the characteristic expressions of the culture of the rising middle classes, but not its chief or only cause.

The Humanist scholars had initially greeted Luther with some enthusiasm as an ally. Yet they soon discovered the abyss that separated his religious irrationalism from their own classical and logical spirit, and turned away from him in ill-disguised anger. An aristocratic, conciliatory scholar like Erasmus of Rotterdam could muster little understanding for Luther's religious obsession and for the excited masses committed to him. Other Humanists found themselves isolated. Those Humanists who decided in favor of the Reformation became primarily interested in the solution of religious problems. Many found it easier to side with the Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli who had initiated his own independent reform movement. It continued to grow after his death in battle in 1531, and soon found a new leader in his great French disciple, John Calvin (d. 1564).

Zwingli and Luther did not remain the only reformers. Their protest against ecclesiastical abuses was followed by those of other deeply moved individuals who claimed an equal right in interpreting religious truths according to their personal experience. These so-called Schwärmer und Täufer (“Visionaries and Anabaptists”) were critical not only of the old Church, but of every kind of institutionalized religion. They relied on their personal inspiration and revelation, and they interpreted the Bible subjectively without considering the time-hallowed traditions of theology. They were exclusively concerned with their personal salvation, and paid no attention to worldly aspects and to political powers; many of these independents believed that the day of judgment was closely approaching. There were even a few radicals who made extreme communistic demands and began to practice promiscuity.

For a while there existed the danger that the reformatory movement would be drowned in the subjectivity of such sects and conventicles. When Luther realized this danger, he began to consolidate his position and to refer increasingly to the objective divine revelation laid down in the Bible. The followers of Luther and Zwingli did not accept the Schwärmer und Täufer as allies, and persecuted them just as ruthlessly as the Catholics; yet their sects and conventicles presented a significant sideline of the Reformation.

The Bible became the exclusive foundation of Luther's new evangelical creed. The Bible therefore had to be translated into the idiom of the common man, and Luther undertook this necessary task. He was by no means the first German to translate either single books or the complete canon of the Bible. We know of fourteen High German and three Low German Bibles extant before Luther, but all these were translations from a translation, from the Latin Vulgate employed by the Roman Church. None of them went back to the Hebrew and Greek texts of the original. And even their rendering of the Latin text was frequently incorrect. Many were also dialectal versions, and could only be understood by readers of certain regions.

Luther was the first translator to base his German version on the original text of the whole Bible, and to employ a form of German that could be understood by people everywhere. He worked at his translation for over a decade and even then continued to correct and improve it in many details. He began his work at Wartburg Castle in December 1521. In September 1522 he completed the translation of the New Testament and put it into print. The Books of the Old Testament were issued individually, until in 1534 the entire Bible could be printed as Die Bibel oder die Heilige Schrift (“The Bible or the Holy Writ”). But Luther did not yet consider his translation perfect, and went carefully through it in consultation with Philipp Melanchthon and other philologists and theologians. It was only in 1546, shortly before Luther's death, that his Bible translation appeared in its final form.

It was through Luther's Bible translation that the German people received a unified language, although Luther himself was not the first to write this language. A movement had already started toward a standard written language. Especially was the imperial chancery interested in establishing general rules which could apply to its far-flung correspondence. Charles IV had stimulated this tendency; his chancery employed a Bohemian dialect which was closely related to Middle German. The printers, whose importance was increasing, were also aiming at a general German. Luther, according to his own words, took over what already existed: “I am not using my own peculiar brand of German, but employ the German standard language of the Saxon chancery which is the model for all German kings and princes.” This Saxon chancery on the whole followed the imperial chancery, although to a certain extent it kept its Meissen peculiarities. Even so it was no literary language as yet. It served administrative, legal and political ends, but not those of poets or philosophers. Only when Luther utilized this chancery dialect did it become a vehicle for spiritual concerns. Luther's New High German was the first written standard language that could express the views and feelings of the common people as well as the poets and philosophers. He enriched the German vocabulary from the treasure house of the dialects, and adapted it to all the needs that he encountered in his Bible translation.

Luther was a model translator. He wanted to be as correct and as exact as possible, but avoid mere transliteration. The German version should be readable and also beautiful. He discussed his principles in his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen (“Treatise on Translating,” 1530). Others before him had transliterated the beautiful Latin Ave Maria, gratia plena into Gegrüsset seist Du, Maria voll Gnaden (“Greetings to you, Maria, full of grace”). This Luther rejected as un-German and changed it into: Gegrüsset seist Du, Holdselige (“Greetings to you, gracious Maria,” cf. “Hail thou that art highly favored” in the King James version) which was more poetic and still correct. He endeavored to render the spirit of the Biblical passages in good, worthy German, and he succeeded to such a degree that his German Bible became a best seller and a constituent part of German literature. It was not only the common man who turned to the Bible for consolation and spiritual guidance. Luther's Bible also set the standard for the leading German poets and philosophers down to Goethe and Nietzsche. It can almost be said to have created the New High German literature.

The chancery language had been limited in its geographical spread. It was only through Luther's Bible translation that it became the standard for every part of Germany. One should of course not imagine that after 1534 all German writers were dropping their dialects. The Netherlands preserved their own written standard which had developed in the thirteenth century, and also in Germany proper Luther did not succeed completely or immediately. The Swiss territories spoke dialects of a peculiar character, and could therefore adopt Luther's standard only hesitantly and after attempts to alter it somewhat. And the Low Germans also accepted it only with reservations. One can even say that the German of Luther's Bible was changing in the process. Still, on the whole it determined the further development of the German language. Luther's opponents had to employ the new Wittenberg German if they wanted to address themselves to the mass of readers. And neither are the Catholic writers of today writing Catholic German nor the Protestant writers Protestant German.

A discussion of the Bible translation does not exhaust the subject of Luther's importance for German literature. His Catechism was of at least equal significance. For here he explained the doctrines of his reformed Christianity in simple terms for common people. The Catechism was far less expensive than the Bible, and in Luther's time was read by far more people.

Of a more temporary effect were Luther's pamphlets which electrified his contemporaries. The earliest ones were the most inspired. In the pamphlet An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation: Von des christlichen Standes Besserung (“To the Christian Noblemen of the German Nation: On the Improvement of Christian Practices,” 1520) Luther gave the general program of his reformation. In the treatise Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (“On Christian Liberty,” 1520) he discussed his essential dogma of human charity, which was morally valuable but would not lead to salvation without the addition of Christian faith. Many of these pamphlets equal in excellence the style of the Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen. Luther was an admirable stylist. And he could write in more than one vein. If necessary, he used coarse language and shouted from the rooftops. He could also be gentle and delicate. None of his numerous aides and disciples could write an equally forceful German, and his opponents were far less able and appealing. Most of them fought with the ancient weapons of scholastic scholarship. The only exception was the agile and sincere Thomas Murner. His most popular pamphlet appeared in 1522, and was entitled Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren (“About the Great Lutheran Fool”). It employed the style of Murner's early fools' stories in the discussion of problems of faith which were of the deepest concern to the honest Strasbourg Franciscan and the Christian community for which he spoke.

In the pursuit of his religious mission, Luther also found it necessary to compose his own hymns. In the old Church the congregation had participated little in the service, and the few hymns that were actually sung were mostly in Latin. Luther wanted the congregation to take an active part in the service, and his preferred means for accomplishing this was the singing of hymns. These naturally had to be German hymns that could be understood and memorized by the average parishioner. There existed some Meisterlieder and a few spiritual folk songs which could be taken as models, but they could hardly be used as a part of the liturgy. Thus Luther had to write his own hymns. He did not intend to express his personal feelings in original poetry. His object was to lend voice to the religious feelings of the congregation, and he wrote poetry with a purpose which nevertheless often was good poetry. The hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A mighty fortress is our God”) bears the unmistakable stamp of Luther's religious genius, of his depth of feeling and his steadfastness of purpose, although it was inspired by the 46th Psalm; the song became a veritable battle hymn of the Reformation. Luther's personal note can also be detected in the penitential hymn Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu Dir! (“From heartfelt need I cry to Thee!”). In other songs he was less personal, especially when he took Latin songs such as Te Deum laudamus (Grosser Gott wir loben Dich, “To Thee, O God, we sing our praise”) and translated them into German. Luther also took over popular texts and adapted them to his own purposes; an example is provided by the Christmas carol Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her (“From Heaven on high I come to you”) which stands out as one of Luther's most intimate hymns and has become very popular. As a matter of course all of these hymns were provided with melodies which were often devised by Luther himself. The services adorned by these hymns appealed to the ear in the same sense as the service of the traditional Church had appealed to the eye. With them started the true Protestant art of playing down the visual factors and emphasizing the aural; it held more appeal for introvert Nordics.

Luther's hymns stimulated many of his followers to write similar poetry. Other Protestant groups also produced hymns of their own, and finally even Catholic poets busied themselves with such writing. Luther's example had started an important literary trend.

The literary genres not actually cultivated by Luther himself were cultivated by some of his co-religionists. Although Luther objected to the traditional Passion plays as blasphemous and pagan, he had no quarrel with religious and pious drama as such. Thus the dramatic tradition was not entirely broken. While on the Catholic side the old popular presentations still continued to some degree, some Humanists wrote their Latin scenes for the edification of their learned colleagues, and others who had joined the Reformation tried to employ the classical rules in German plays with a propagandist slant. One presented Judith chopping off the head of Holofernes who symbolized the Roman pope. Another treated the New Testament parable of the prodigal son in order to spread the new Protestant concept of morality founded in faith; this became one of the favorite Biblical themes of the time.

The strongest pro-Protestant play was written in Latin by Thomas Naogeorgus. In his Pammachius (1538) he presented the pope as the Antichrist who concluded a pact with the Devil, while Luther was changed into Theophilus, a fighter for God. Burkard Waldis wrote a Low German Shrovetide play Vom Verlorenen Sohn (“The Prodigal Son,” 1527), and Paul Rebhun treated the apocryphal tale of Susanna (1536) in order to exhort his audience to Christian morality and to faith in God.

Thus the literature of the Lutherans between 1517 and 1555 presented an interesting though necessarily one-sided picture. The Catholics on the whole contributed little that was worthy of note; their dramatic efforts were few, and even these merely followed tradition. Besides the Lutherans only the writers of other Protestant sects can claim some attention.

Numerous hymns of Anabaptist origin have come down to us; they can often claim a certain freshness and originality. The prose writings of the Protestant independents sometimes anticipated later developments; in reading Kaspar Schwenkfeld one is reminded of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Pietism. An even more interesting writer was Sebastian Franck (d. 1542 or 1543) who renewed the old ideas of German mysticism in his own original way. More than Luther he was aware of the human character of the Biblical documents; they were not written by angels but by divinely inspired men, and were also collected and transmitted by men. Religious doctrines could therefore not be established on a safe historical foundation, but had to be examined against the personal experience of the pious individual. “I would prefer a self-denying quiet heart in which God could find himself reflected gloriously.” Naturally, personal experience was also removed from absolute certainty and could claim no authority. It was for this reason that Franck advocated tolerance toward other Christian sects and also toward the Jews; anti-Semitic persecutions he condemned outright. In more than one respect this independent anticipated the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.

Heiko A. Oberman

Oberman, Heiko A. “The Reformation Breakthrough: ‘Today you have the Bible’,” and “The Man and His Deeds: Luther and the Art of Language.” In Luther: Man between God and Devil, translated by Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart, pp. 168-74; 304-09. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989.

[In the following excerpts from the English translation of a work which originally appeared in 1982, Oberman provides the philosophical background of Luther's work as a translator of the Bible. Oberman relates Luther's extraordinary attentiveness to language to his philosophical rejection of traditional Scholasticism, in which linguistic intelligibility was often subordinated to purely abstract intellectual construction.]

“TODAY YOU HAVE THE BIBLE”

The objection has been raised that as an exegete Luther was not scholarly enough and that his erudition could not compare with that of an Erasmus or a Melanchthon. The Reformer's biblical exegeses are accused of being “overrun by dogmatism and edification.”¹ Luther would have protested vehemently against being compared with Erasmus: scriptural exegesis is far more than philology and historico-critical method. He would, however, have acknowledged Melanchthon's erudition, and in fact did: apart from the Holy Scriptures, Melanchthon's textbook of theology, his famous Loci communes, was the most important work for a Christian to read. “I can find no book under the sun in which the whole of theology is so excellently arranged.”²

Luther was extremely critical when it came to judging the value of his own books. The commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1531-35), the exposition of the Book of Deuteronomy (1523), and his sermons on four chapters of the Gospel of John (1528-29) he thought worth preserving because they were his only works really to contain theological teachings. He found the rest of his writings interesting solely from a historical point of view; they enabled a reconstruction of his laborious quest and the course of the whole conflict. The person who wants to become a theologian today, he wrote, has “a major advantage: he has the Bible.”³

Luther did not simply mean the books of the Old and New Testaments; they had, after all, long been familiar and—at least to theologians—freely accessible. Luther was pointing out that laymen now demanded that theologians furnish biblical grounds for their statements. They had to be experienced in Scripture-based argumentation and to have acquired criteria to assess the relative significance of various biblical passages. The conversance with the Bible that Luther had attained and exercised was what he wanted to pass on to posterity.

Luther laid his exegetical foundations in his first lectures on the Psalms and continued to perfect his interpretations throughout his life. As a good nominalist he first concentrated on the manner of expression characteristic of Scriptures; this enabled him to acquire a grasp of their particular subject matter on the basis of linguistic usage⁴ and obviated the alien mediation of Greek philosophy. His criticism of scholasticism did not culminate in the common reproach that its line of argument was too formal, logical, or dialectical. What made his own tradition suspect to him was its belief that Aristotle's philosophy offered a timeless, comprehensive system of interpretation that even provided a key to the Scriptures. But the Holy Ghost has His own language; one must become His student, learn to spell, and then, going out from the individual word, gradually acquire the whole vocabulary. A single misconstrued word can distort the sense completely. The concept of the “righteousness of God” is a striking example and not an exception; Luther had to toil away at other passages with equal intensity before he could penetrate the meaning of the words.

Luther knew that a good translator had to be bilingual. “Spelling” did not imply a slavishly literal, word-for-word rendering; it was the thorough comprehension of the linguistic usage of the Scriptures. That is the secret of the originality and power of the Luther Bible. Command of one's own language and the ability to use it to its best effect presupposes listening to the way the common people speak: “One must ask the mother at home, the children in the street, the man at the market, and listen to how they speak, and translate accordingly. That way they will understand and notice that one is speaking German to them.”⁵

One of the Saxon princes once asked Luther to explain what the well-known scholastic “ways” or schools and the “school conflict” were actually about. Luther provided him with a very lucid answer, not missing the opportunity to interpret the “way” of Wittenberg as a reformed “via moderna.” What linked the “terminists,” the old and new nominalists, was attentiveness to linguistic usage.

“Terminists” was the name of one sect of the university to which I, too, belonged. They take a stand against the Thomists, Scotists, and Albertists, and were also called Occamists after Occam, their founder. They are the very latest sect and the most powerful in Paris, too. The dispute was over whether “humanitas” [humanity] and words like it meant a common humanity, which was in all human beings, as Thomas and the others believe. Well, say the Occamists or terminists, there is no such thing as a common humanity, there is only the term “homo” [the concept “human being”] or humanity meaning all human beings individually, the same way a painted picture of a human being refers to all human beings.

But your Princely Highness must [know]: in these matters those men are called terminists who speak of a thing in terminis propriis [appropriate terms] and do not interpret words in an alien and wild way; and in this way it is called reality speaking of the thing. When I speak to a carpenter, I must use his terms, namely angle bar and not crooked bar, axe and not hatchet. So one should also leave the words of Christ alone and speak of the sacrament in suis terminis [his terms], ut “hoc facite” [as “that does”] should not mean “sacrificate” [sacrifice], item “corpus” [likewise, “body”] cannot mean “of both kinds,” as they now torment the words and want to stray from the clear text.⁶

But becoming a “modern” terminist is only one side of translating. First one must become a student of the Holy Spirit and listen with care to His language. Despite all the differences between the Old and New Testaments, between the Evangelists Luke and John, between Paul and Peter, the Holy Scriptures are homogeneous in that they testify to the God who is unknown to philosophers. What kind of a God can it be who has to do battle against the Devil, who suffers and is crucified?

The reproach is plainly directed at far more than just “Aristotle” or “scholasticism.” Since the Fall every man has been a philosopher, for he has taken his experience of the world and his knowledge of reality—which he has succeeded in describing scientifically—as a standard by which to measure God. But the intellect does not suffice to grasp the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He must be apprehended through the Scriptures. The “God” created by man is a false god of his own making.

Even before Luther mastered Greek he took pains to determine the sense of certain key words like “spirit,” “strength,” or “repentance” in Greek. As laborious as the work was, the only way he could get to the core of the New Testament was by cutting through the historico-philosophical and -legal tradition that had for centuries been linked with the Latin “spiritus,” “virtus,” or “poenitentia.” He discovered the verbal structure typical of the Hebrew language: when the Old Testament speaks of “the Word of the Lord,” an action, namely the action accomplished by the Word, is implied at the same time.

The great linguistic event of his time, the rediscovery of the original biblical languages, provided the means to probe the Vulgate and take the first steps toward modern Bible scholarship. Luther seized the opportunity as soon as it arose: the moment Erasmus' edition of the Greek New Testament became available in Wittenberg in the middle of the summer semester of 1516, he immediately set about familiarizing himself with this new tool, so shocking for Latin-oriented Christians. While he was engaged in the exegesis of chapter nine of the Epistle to the Romans, he drew—the word “write” would be inappropriate—Greek letters in his lecture manuscript for the first time to point out a translating error in the Latin Bible.

Scholars may, and must, argue about whether humanistic or nominalistic impulses were at work here. But Luther's conviction that the Scriptures contained something radically new and contradictory to man's expectations indisputably went far beyond either of the two movements. Luther the Reformer could still recall an incident far back in his days as a university student. Either at the Erfurt university library or his college library he had chanced upon a Bible chained to a lectern, as valuable folios generally were. He opened the unfamiliar volume to the First Book of Samuel and elatedly read the story of Hannah and how her son Samuel was chosen to be a “man of God.” At that time he had already wished that he could possess and study such a Bible one day.⁷

During those early years everything was still taking its preestablished course according to the plans of the father and the son, yet the student's “curiosity” about the Scriptures had already been awakened. Why this curiosity, this formative factor in Luther's future development, arose defies scholarly explanation.

“Today you have the Bible,” source of life, God's original testimony, and thus both foundation and standard of all ecclesiastical authorities, be they Church Fathers, councils, popes, or learned doctors. Scripture and Church belong together, but not as though the Scriptures were the letter and the teaching Church the spirit that breathes life into it. The Church is the creation of the Word, but the Word can never be the creation of the Church.

The Scriptures reveal the Word. But that is precisely why they are not the book of truths that might constitute a complete, irrefutable textbook of theology, and why they do not need any further truths added, for example, in the form of new dogmas. The Bible contains only one truth, but it is the decisive one: “that Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for the sake of our sins, and was resurrected for the sake of our righteousness.”⁸

Whether from a medieval or a modern perspective, this is a revolutionary reduction and concentration of faith. Comprehensive medieval systems and remarkable speculative models of the modern age seem to know far more and have far more to say about God than the Scriptures. Luther's reply to Erasmus applies to both: “Through the Crucified One, the Christian knows everything he has to know, but he now also knows what he cannot know.”⁹

Concentrating on Christ crucified was directed against the tangle of medieval theology and was at the same time an attempt to reunite what the foundation of the theological faculties at the universities had divided. The flourishing monastery schools of the twelfth century, with their combination of scholarship and piety, had not been able to hold their own in the face of the new competition. But for Luther this model of theological study in the liturgical context of prayer and meditation was the ideal and remained so even after he had renounced his monastic vows (November 1521). Everything the new disciplines required in the way of linguistic and historical scholarship needed to be incorporated into this system of studies. The repeated reforms at the University of Wittenberg were endeavors to recreate the monastery school model, but—complained Luther—they never succeeded. His repeated appeal to use monastic endowments to found schools for boys and girls of all classes are well known. The Reformer reminds us again and again that the old monasteries, with their combination of piety and scholarship, “have now been caused by the Devil to fall into a deplorable state, so that they are dens of iniquity … to the detriment of Christendom.”¹⁰

The reproach that Luther was a scholar without true erudition who jeopardized the objective exegesis of the Scriptures as a result of his “edifying interests” is justified only—if at all—from the standpoint of a complete separation of faith and scholarship. But where the Holy Ghost affects the reader's rational faculties and seeks to win his will, where the Scriptures are holy because they are life-giving, “edification” and “biblical exegesis” cannot be played off against one another without ruining both. Yet that is exactly what happened.

A further factor must be taken into account to understand Luther as an interpreter of the Word and defender of the “scriptural principle.” The Bible is not a book, it is a whole library of writings extending across two millennia. Despite its variety, however, there is a center from which and toward which it must be interpreted. Luther's definition of this center was soon very popular among Evangelical theologians: “What proclaims Christ” is the point of reference for exegesis. Luther himself clarified this eloquent formula: what impels you to Christ crucified is at the heart of the Scriptures—the apostle Paul's principle in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Cor. 1.23).

Since a number of Luther scholars have begun dating the Reformation breakthrough relatively late, in the vicinity of spring 1518, the first Psalm lectures (1513-15) have stopped being of central interest. This is warranted insofar as nothing of The Freedom of a Christian as a consequence of justification by faith can yet be felt in these lectures. Luther apologizes in his 1545 Rückblick: the gates of Paradise were opened to him much later. But the early lectures on the Psalms are irrefutable proof that Luther expected to see the Word of God crystallize out of the words of the Scriptures, a concept that goes far beyond the establishment of a scriptural principle. The precept that the Scriptures alone formed the foundation of theology was already familiar to medieval scholastics, who provided it with a methodological basis and argued about the consequences the principle would have for ecclesiastical tradition. But the scriptural principle could become scriptural practice only once the Bible was discovered to be more than a collection of various kinds of truths and proofs, when it was recognized as having its own message, one which decided about life and death, and thus had to be interpreted out of itself, out of its center.

The risks involved in paying careful heed to the Scriptures, in finding the thin line between using and abusing, were described unmistakably by Luther in a sermon he preached in 1515 on the anniversary of his baptism:

Whoever wants to read the Bible must make sure he is not wrong, for the Scriptures can easily be stretched and guided, but no one should guide them according to his emotions; he should lead them to the well, that is to the cross of Christ, then he will certainly be right and cannot fail.¹¹

Designating the cross of Christ as the standard of exegesis is evidence of Reformation decisions made prior to the turning point.

In the first ten years, he recounts, he read the Bible through twice a year. His growing understanding of the Scriptures led to differences over correct interpretations, then to the theologians' and prelates' dispute, and finally to the conflict in the Church. The clash of opinions had not been provoked by the printed pages alone. The Reformation reached the people because of a surprising conclusion Luther drew from the scriptural principle he had known for so long: the Scriptures must be preached! Because heresies threatened the living apostolic message, it had to be recorded in a book to protect it from falsification. Preaching reverses this process of conservation again, allowing the Scriptures of the past to become the tidings of the present.

So the Bible is a necessary evil! It is necessary because without it man's spirit will claim to be holy and there will be no way of proving him wrong. Scripture becomes “evil” when, as a hollow pontifical document, it petrifies in holiness instead of being publicly proclaimed in the Church as the living Word. The Gospel has been committed to lifeless paper; fresh words can transform it into glad tidings again.¹²

.....

LUTHER AND THE ART OF LANGUAGE

Luther and his friends could often be found at the table in Luther's home, the former Augustinian monastery, discussing the events of the day and exchanging reminiscences. Many of these conversations “at table” were recorded and later published. The Luther of these conversations likes to speak as an experienced elder statesman in the service of God, but always in such a way as to disclose his weaknesses and errors of judgment as well. His table talk is living proof that it was never his intention to make his public persona as an Evangelist into a monument for posterity.

On the contrary, the Evangelist was sure of himself when it came to the Word of God, but Professor Luther knew his limits—and thus his strengths as well, as we see from his ridicule of certain colleagues' clumsy attempts at biblical exegesis. During his sojourn at Wartburg Castle he devoted himself to a task that began by demonstrating his shortcomings to him but that was to guarantee his fame in centuries to come: the translation of the New Testament into German. When Luther returned to Wittenberg in March 1522, after almost ten months of solitude at Wartburg, he brought with him a draft of the translation.¹³ Before it was printed he went through the manuscript with Melanchton, who was a fine scholar of Greek, and they consulted specialists to clarify problematic points. The New Testament appeared in German in September 1522—hence the common designation “September Testament.” Though the translation was Luther's, he realized it could not have been completed without his colleagues' help. In January he had written to Wittenberg from Wartburg Castle: “In the meantime I have begun the Bible translation although the task by far exceeds my powers. Only now am I discovering what translating really means and why no one has thus far dared to associate his name with an undertaking of this kind. I would not be able to cope with the Old Testament at all without your proximity and help. … The task is so large and important that we should all work on it, as it is a public work and serves the common good.”¹⁴

It took another twelve years for this goal to be reached and the last book of the Old Testament to be translated. In September 1534 the first complete Wittenberg Bible appeared. The translation played a major role in shaping the modern German language, yet it became a genuine folk Bible, carrying the cause of the Reformation into every house, because Luther made use of living, colloquial German in his translation. He had truly listened to the common people—the language of the common man was not too lowly to be the language of God.

Luther's language in the mirror of tradition, Psalm 51.3,6-8:

O Got erbarm dich mein: nach deiner micheln
          erbermbd …
Dir allein hab ich gesündet und tet das ubel vor dir:
das du werdest gerechthaftigt in deinen worten
und uberwindest so du urteylst.
Wann sich ich bin entphangen in den ungangkeyten:
und in den sünden entphieng mich mein mutter.
Wann sich du hast liebgehabt die wahrheit:
du hast mir eroffent die ungewissen
und die verborgen ding deiner weisheit.

(Mentelin-Bibel, 1466; after the Vulgate)

Erbarm dich iber mich, o got, nach deiner grossen
          barmhertzikayt …
Dir hab ich allein gesündet / und vor deinem
          angesicht übel gethon /
das du gerecht seyest in deinen worten /
und überwindest, so man dich urtaylet.
Dann ich bin wie du sichst in sünde empfangen
          worden /
und meyn mutter ward meyn in übelthaten schwanger.
Jedoch hast du die warhayt liebgehebt / und ungewisse
verborgne ding deiner weyßhayt mir geoffenbaret.

(Ottmar Nachtgal [Luscinius], 1524; after the Vulgate)

Erbarm dich mein, o got, nach deiner barmhertzigkait
          …
Dir / allein dir hab ich gesündet / und das böß in
          deinen augen hab ich gethan /
darumb wirst du gerecht sein so du röden wirst /
und wirst rain scheinen so du richtten wirst.
Nym war in der sünd bin ich zu der geburt berait /
und in der sünd hat mich empfangen mein muter.
Nym war die warhait hast du begert in der mauren /
und in verborgenhait hast du mir zuwissen thon die
          weißhait.

(Caspar Amman, 1523; after the Hebrew original)

Gott sey myr gnedig nach deyner guete / …
An dyr alleyne hab ich gesundigt / und ubel fur dyr
          gethan.
Darumb wirstu recht bleyben ynn deynen worten /
und reyn erfunden wenn du gerichtet wirst.
Sihe ich byn ynn untugent gemacht /
und meyne mutter hat mich ynn sunden empfangen.
Sihe du hast lust zur warheyt /
Du lessest mich wissen die weysheyt heymlich
          verborgen.

(Martin Luther, 1524; after the Hebrew original)

The King James version of the same passage reads:

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving
          kindness …
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this
          evil in thy sight:
that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest,
          and be clear when thou judgest.
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my
          mother conceive me.
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the
          hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

Luther's translation of the Bible is justly celebrated as a major achievement. Its acclaim is merited because the German Bible did not remain a linguistic work of art; it became a book of the people.¹⁵

His work on the Bible translation makes plain that Luther was more than an unshakably certain Reformer. His claim to being the first called to the office of preacher of the Gospel was something he never allowed to be challenged; he saw his experience as the Christian experience, and his long search led him to a truth that inspired his contemporaries with new goals. Luther lived at a time when truth was still indivisible, and the “Evangelist” was firmly convinced that he alone represented that truth. The claim brought him the reputation of being a loner. He had championed the cause of the weak and the laymen, but among theologians he tolerated only listeners and disciples.

The history of the Luther Bible shows us a completely different Luther, one who knew his limits and was well aware that the translation could only be accomplished cooperatively. He never considered the task to have been mastered. Before dinner every Wednesday and Thursday from the summer of 1539 to the beginning of 1541, he assembled his council of experts, his “Sanhedrin” as he called them, at his home so that a further, thorough revision of the translation could be made among competent colleagues. “We are beggars.” The sentence Luther wrote on a scrap of paper shortly before his death mirrors worldly wisdom, not dying resignation, and stems from experience with his work on the Bible, its translation into common speech. His earliest biographer allows us a glimpse into the laboratory:

When the whole German Bible had gone out for the first time and one day of tribulation taught the next, the Doctor began work on the Bible from the beginning again with great seriousness, industry, and prayer; and because the Son of God himself had promised He would be present where people gathered in His name and prayed for His spirit, Doctor Luther immediately organized a Sanhedrin of his own, made up of the best people available at the time. Each week they came to the Doctor's monastery for several hours before dinner. … After the Doctor had first looked through the earlier published Bibles and in addition consulted Jews and experts in foreign languages and asked old Germans for proper terms (once he had several sheep cut up so a German butcher could tell him what every [organ] of the sheep was called). He used to come to the consistory with his old Latin and new German Bible, always bringing the Hebrew text as well. Master Philippus [Melanchthon] always brought the Greek text along. … Everyone had already prepared himself for the text that was to be discussed and had looked through Greek and Latin, as well as Jewish exegetes. Then, as president, he proposed a version and let everyone speak and listened to what everyone had to say with reference to the quality of the language or the exegesis of the old doctors.¹⁶

The open-ended and thus necessarily common search for the right translation does not preclude certainty of faith, nor does trust in the Word of God make critical study of the text superfluous. The Scriptures do not reveal themselves to everyone in the same way, and many a man gets lost in them, as Luther explains in the vivid words of Pope Gregory: “An elephant drowns in this sea [of Scripture]; a lamb that is looking for Christ and perseveres, stands on firm ground and reaches the other side.”¹⁷ It is not he who knows everything but he who allows himself to be guided that finds solid footing in the Bible.

St. Augustine's distinction between knowledge and wisdom, cognition and faith, is central here. The fact that apart from schooling his intellect, man needs training as a human being between God and the world has been repressed again and again in Western tradition. The magic word scholarship has led to a reverent acceptance of scholarly systems or marginalized “great masters” from the Middle Ages to our day, in an often curious oscillation between over-confidence and tired skepticism.

The “elephant” Luther sees “drowning” in the Scriptures finds credulous successors until, swept away by the spirit of the age, it must yield to a new giant, which unmasks its predecessor as unsuited for swimming and exposes it to ridicule. The ever-new “masters” of philosophical innovation ride high for a time with their Plato or Aristotle, Hegel or Heidegger, each one promising to be a reliable guide to the safe shore. Luther does not deny the importance of his philosophical training. But, in contrast to scholastic tradition, he does not construct a scholarly system. Nor does he offer “dogmatics” that purport to provide security but for their credibility actually depend on the reliability of the philosophical underpinnings.

The confession “We are beggars” does not merely define a position before God, it is an admission of Luther's fallibility before his fellow man. Luther's earliest biographer concludes the history of the Reformer's life with the statement: “God guard all theologians to keep them from becoming masters in or over Scripture.”¹⁸

Notes

1. Thus K. A. Meissinger, Luthers Exegese in der Frühzeit (Leipzig, 1911), 36f. The same reproach, formulated more cautiously, is repeated forty years later: Meissinger, Der katholische Luther (Munich, 1952), 83.

2. WAT 5. no. 5511; 204, 24f.; winter 1542.

3. WAT 5.204, 17.

4. E.g., WA 3.81, 24f.

5. WA 30 II. 637, 19-22; 1530.

6. WAT 5. no. 6419; 653, 1-18.

7. WAT 1. no. 116; 44, 16-20; Nov. 1531.

8. WA 50.198, 25-29; Schmalkaldic Articles, 1538.

9. WA 18.689, 24f.; 1525.

10. WA 30 II. 535, 37-536, 2; 1530.

11. WA 1.52, 15-18.

12. WA 5.537, 16-22; Ps. 17.45.

13. Cf. K. H. zur Mühlen, “Luthers deutsche Bibelübersetzung als Gemeinschaftswerk,” in Eine Bibel—viele Übersetzungen: Not oder Notwendigkeit, ed. S. Meurer (Die Bibel in der Welt 18) (Stuttgart, 1978), 90-97; with further bibliography.

14. WABr 2.423, 48-56; to Amsdorf, 13 Jan. 1522.

15. Die Luther-Bibel: Entstehung und Weg eines Volksbuches, ed. G. Hammer et al. (Stuttgart, 1980), 13.

16. Mathesius' Predigten über Luthers Leben, ed. G. Buchwald (Stuttgart, 1904), 186f.; and Johannes Mathesius, Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 3: Luthers Leben in Predigten, ed. G. Loesche, 2d ed. (Prague, 1906), 315f.; cf. WADB 4. xxixf.

17. Mathesius' Predigten, 189; Ausgewählte Werke, 319; WAT 5. no. 5468; 169, 6f.; 1542.

18. Mathesius' Predigten, 189; Ausgewählte Werke, 319.

Abbreviations

Following is a list of abbreviations used in these notes:

EA lat.var.arg.: D. Martini Lutheri Opera latina varii argumenti, vols. 1-7 (Frankfurt, Erlangen, 1865-73).

WA: D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Abteilung Werke, vols. 1- (Weimar, 1883-).

WABr: D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefwechsel [Correspondence], vols. 1-18 (Weimar, 1930-85).

WAT: D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Tischreden [Table Talk], vols. 1-6 (Weimar, 1912-21).

WADB: D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Die Deutsche Bibel [The German Bible], vols. 1-12 (Weimar, 1906-61).

AWA: Archiv zur Weimarer Lutherausgabe, vol. 2: D. Martin Luther Operationes in psalmos 1519-1521, part II: Psalm 1-10 (Cologne, Vienna, 1981).

H. Bornkamm, Martin Luther: Heinrich Bornkamm, Martin Luther in der Mitte seines Lebens: Das Jahrzehnt zwischen dem Wormser und dem Augsburger Reichstag, ed. K. Bornkamm (Göttingen, 1979).

M. Brecht, Martin Luther: Martin Brecht, Martin Luther. Sein Weg zur Reformation 1483-1521, 2d ed. (Stuttgart, 1983).

Th. Kolde, Augustiner-Congregation: Theodor Kolde, Die deutsche Augustiner-Congregation und Johann von Staupitz: Ein Beitrag zur Ordens- und Reformationsgeschichte nach meistens ungedruckten Quellen (Gotha, 1879).

Köstlin-Kawerau, Martin Luther: Julius Köstlin, Martin Luther: Sein Leben und seine Schriften, 5th ed., ed. G. Kawerau, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1903).

Reichstagsakten [Proceedings of the Imperial Diet]: Deutsche Reichstagsakten, Jüngere Reihe. Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V., vols. 1-, ed. Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Gotha, 1893-; 2d ed. [reprint] Göttingen, 1962-).