Luther’s Mentor

Was Staupitz successful?  The rest of Luther’s story proves his mentor did succeed.  For this reason, Staupitz may have saved the Reformation before it started.  Perhaps there is justification for labeling Staupitz a forerunner after all.

The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, by Matthew Barrett

The backstory of this opening quote will become clear through this post.  First, an examination of the journey and struggles that brought Luther to a point where his name would be remembered beyond trivial academic circles.

Martin Luther’s father sent him to university in Erfurt to study law.  His education there was dedicated to Aristotelian realism, with a focus on logic, ethics, and metaphysics.  Psychology and physics were studied as well.  These were considered the bedrock necessary to understand Catholic theology.

Much of the theology was grounded in the work of Gabriel Biel: to summarize, and, no doubt, not do it justice: if one does his best, God will accept him into heaven.  God infuses an assisting grace to those who try hard (hence, in Biel’s mind at least, he was not Pelagian).  This, in contrast to an Augustinian (and, in many ways, a Thomistic) view, in which God’s grace was required as the first mover.

Luther’s journey toward a law career was interrupted, famously, by his own (not exactly a) road to Damascus moment – not via an encounter with Christ, but an encounter with the fear of death.  He went to a monastery; he would lecture at Wittenberg.  By 1511, John Staupitz, of the university, was determined to bring Luther on as a permanent member of the faculty.  With Frederick’s support, Staupitz was determined to turn Wittenberg into a world-class university.

A side note: a young Thomas was swayed by Peter Lombard, but by the time he got to his two Summas, his views had changed meaningfully, placing grace in the first position.  Not a side note: Luther followed this same trajectory; when lecturing on the Psalms (1513 – 1515), he would write:

“The doctors rightly say that, when people do their best, God infallibly gives grace.”

Such a view could not help but contribute to Luther’s well-documented anxieties in those years.  No matter how hard Luther tried, he never was convinced that it was his best. 

“I almost fasted myself to death, for again and again I went for three days without taking a drop of water or a morsel of food.  I was very serious about it.  I really crucified the Lord Christ.”

“This is the truth: the most pious monk is the worst scoundrel.  He denies that Christ is the mediator and high priest and turns him into a judge.”

Luther attempted many ways to win favor with God. 

“If ever a monk came to heaven through monkery, it should have been I.”

Luther would never turn from his admission that he owed everything to Staupitz.  Staupitz, in addition to bringing Luther into the university, would hear Luther’s confession, offering relief, reminding him that God’s love came first.

The type of pastoral counsel Staupitz provided Luther was so priceless that historians have praised Staupitz as the unwitting father of the Reformation.

After completing his lectures on the Psalms, Luther would lecture through Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews in the years 1515 – 1518.  Through this time, his debt to Augustine would grow ever more visible.  Wrestling with Romans 1:17 really impacted him:

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Still, Luther remained within the fold.  He did not consider a right-reading of Scripture antithetical to a right-understanding of tradition.  Scholars remain divided on when, precisely, Luther’s turn occurred.  It is fair enough to consider that (and quoting Barrett), just as “Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither was the Reformation.”

Whenever this tower experience occurred, for the first time Luther could say that he no longer hated God.  Christ was no longer the judge that he could never appease.  Christ was his savior, offering righteousness as a gift received by faith alone.

Having turned on Biel, the word got out.  Those in Erfurt were not please, including Karlstadt, who would later come around after consulting Augustine.  The catholic heritage had to be considered without the filters of the via moderna. 

Luther felt he found something new, but in reality, he was somewhat ignorant of the full Scholastic tradition.  The thing is, Luther protested the Scholastics, but he was really only protesting a certain strand of Scholastics – those in the path of Gabriel Biel….and Lombard.  Luther would write:

“Our theology and St. Augustine proceed apace and are dominant in our university by the grace of God. …All object to hearing lectures on the textbook of [Lombard’s] Sentences, and no one can expect an audience who does not advance this theology – that is, the Bible, or St. Augustine, or some other doctor with ecclesiastical authority.”

This was written, not well into the Reformation, but six months before the 95 theses were produced and published.

Barrett then goes into an examination of Luther’s views on grace and law and justification.  The parameters of this conversation, both then and now, are reasonably well-known and also not what I like getting into at this blog.  To summarize: Christ’s righteousness is not infused; it is imputed at the moment of faith in Christ.

The more Luther lectured, the more his view of justification rose to the surface.  What was breaking through in 1517 was fully formed and hardened by 1535: a “passive righteousness”; we work nothing, God works everything. 

There was also the issue of penance and indulgences.  By the late medieval church, the structure of salvation was two-fold: the guilt from sin could be absolved by the priest; the penalty for sin, though, remained and demanded payment.  Penance was the means by which the penalty could be paid.  After death but before entering heaven, and with any remaining penalty to be paid, there still remained punishment for all but the saints. 

Indulgences could reduce this penalty.  The treasury of merit offered an excess from which the Church could grant reductions in purgatory.  Initially, the indulgences were offered to the living – a plenary indulgence was granted to all who would go fight in the Crusade.  Later, the same would be offered to any who would make a pilgrimage to Rome.

Then we come to the desired building of St. Peter’s Basilica.  A marriage between the pope’s desires and Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg, the former requiring funds for the Basilica, and the latter having significant debts to replay due to the purchase of multiple offices.  Pope Leo agreed that Albert could keep up to half the proceeds from the sale of indulgences.

John Tetzel was the man on the ground; Frederick didn’t like the idea of him coming into Saxony, as he despised indulgences – not necessarily for theological reasons, but financial; he had his own massive collection of relics, hence he didn’t want the competition.

But Tetzel had a large offer: a complete remission of all sins:

“Don’t you hear the voices of your wailing dead parents and others who say. ‘Have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me, because we are in severe punishment and pain.  From this you could redeem us with small alms and yet you do not want to do so.’”

Conclusion

Indulgences – or, to be more accurate, their abuse – galvanized Luther, motivating him to write ninety-five theses that questioned the motives of the authorities who encouraged them.

Which will be the story for next time.

Epilogue

Frederick’s collection of relics was extensive.  A few of the claimed items: a piece of the stone where Jesus stood while weeping over Jerusalem; one piece of the bread from the Last Supper; one piece of the cloth with which Jesus wiped the disciples’ feet; one piece of Jesus’s beard.

He had over 5,000 such pieces.