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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Leopold von Ranke is probably best known for his dictum that written history must mirror the past wie es eigentlich gewesen. Practicing historians nonetheless know that even the greatest masters of their craft inevitably bring their own histories with them to their work. As a case in point, two decades ago Robert M. Kingdon observed in his address as incoming President of the American Society of Church History that students of the Catholic Reformation tend to focus their attention on institutions and practices, while Protestants and Lutherans in particular give center stage to the history of doctrine. Both, faithful to their own traditions, therefore produce a church history manqué that would benefit from combining the methods, presuppositions, and findings of the two approaches.
1. Kingdon, Robert M., “The Church: Ideology or Institution,” Church History 50 (1981): 81–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. See Kittelson, James M., “Enough is Enough! The Confusion Surrounding Article VII of the Augsburg Confession and its Satis Est, Lutheran Quarterly 12 (1998): 249–70Google Scholar and the literature cited there. For another survey from a different point of view, consult Braaten, Carl E. “The Special Ministry of the Ordained,” Marks of the Body of Christ, ed. by Braaten, and Jenson, Robert W. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), 126 ffGoogle Scholar. For the longer-range background, consult the very helpful articles by Todd, Nichol and Walter, Sundberg in Marc, Kolden and Todd, Nichol, eds., Called and Ordained. Lutheran Perspectives on the Office of Ministry (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 77–113.Google Scholar
3. Robert, Kolb and Timothy, Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord. The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2000), 43.Google Scholar
4. Ibid., 40–41.
5. Braaten, Carl E., Mother Church. Ecclesiology and Ecumenism. (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 26Google Scholar, for the amazing judgment, “I will have to state again and again what seems banal: Luther never intended to emigrate out of the Roman Catholic Church and to found a new church of his very own.” For a corrective, see Wendebourg, Dorothea, “‘Staat und Kirche’ Referate und Tagungsbericht: Das Amt und die Ämter,” Zeitschrift für evangelisches Kirchenrecht 45 (2000): esp. 15–16.Google Scholar
6. Braaten, , Marks, 126.Google Scholar
7. The most recent discussion from the negative side is equally limited to strictly theological analysis. See Westhelle, Vitor, “Augsburg Confession VII and the Historic Episcopate,” dialog: A Journal of Theology 39 (2000): 222–28Google Scholar, who comes close to accusing his opponents of being a gnostic. The one slight exception to the rule is Kittelson, “Enough is Enough!” For an example of how liturgical theologians treat the matter, see the late Smith, Ralph F., Luther, Ministry, and Ordination Rites in the Early Reformation Church (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), esp. 50 ff.Google Scholar for a spirited defense on the “efficacy” of ordination “as a liturgical act,” and n. 20 for an utter misreading of Melanchthon's Apology to article XIII of the Augustana. See n. 48 below and the attendant text, which the author chose not to discuss.
8. Aarts, Jan, Die Lehre Martin Luthers über das Amt in der Kirche. Eine genetisch-systematische Untersuchung seiner Scriften von 1512 bis 1525. Schriften der Luther-Agricola Gesellschaft, A 15 (Helsinki: Hämeenlinna, 1972); TRE 235, 347–56Google Scholar; Hendrix, Scott, Ecclesia in Via; Ecclesiological Developments in the Medieval Psalms Exegesis and the Dictata Super Psalterium (1513–1515) of Martin Luther (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974)Google Scholar. Aurelius, Carl Axel, Verborgene Kirche: Luthers Kirchenverständnis in Streitschriften und Exegese 1519–1521 (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1983)Google Scholar The older church historical work remains Ritschel, Georg, Luther und die Ordination (Wittenberg: R. Herrose, 1889)Google Scholar, now updated by Goertz, Harald, Allgemeines Priestertum und ordinierte Amt bei Martin Luther. Marburger theologische Studien 46 (Marburg: N. G. Elwart, 1997)Google Scholar. For a very recent contribution that focuses more on the unitary ministry of word and sacrament and the lack of any distinction between episcopal and pastoral office, but without discussing ordination as such, see Wendebourg, ‘Staat und Kirche’. The one partial exception to the rule comes from Pauck's, Wilhelm chapter on “The Ministry at the Time of the Reformation” in The Heritage of the Reformation (Glencoe, Ill: Glencoe, 1973)Google Scholar. He treated for the most part the relationship between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities on the way to the “state church,” rather than the clergy and its ordination. For a modest corrective, see Kittelson, James M., “Strasbourg, the Landesherrlichekirchenregiment, and the Relative Autonomy of Lutheran Churches in Germany,” Locus. An Historical Journal of Regional Perspectives 2 (1990): 131–43Google Scholar, and Toward an Established Church. Strasbourg from 1500 to the Dawn of the Seventeenth Century. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte, 182 (Wiesbaden: Philip von Zabern Verlag, 2000)Google Scholar. For brief summaries of developments in and bibliography about other locales, see Hillerbrand, Hans J. et al. , eds., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
9. This essay by no means affords the space to digress into the literary-critical discussions that swirl around deconstructionist and postmodern approaches to texts. If there is a theoretical base to the recent effort to treat the relationship between a text and its context, it is to be found in an extension of Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Anchor, 1967).Google Scholar
10. See the defense of theological approaches addressed to historians in Hendrix, Scott, “Rerooting the Faith: The Reformation as Rechristianization,” Church History 69 (2000): 658–77, which is, in one sense, the other side of the coin to this study by virtue of its attempt to promote historical reflections on the part of theologians generally and historical theologians in particular.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11. Among studies of particular areas, Vogler, Bernhard, Le clergé protestant rhenan au siècle de la réforme (1555–1619) (Paris: Editions Ophrys, 1976)Google Scholar, and Tolley, Bruce, Pastors and Parishioners in Württemberg during the late Reformation, 1581–1621 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995) are useful, but also representative in their failure to consider ordination as such.Google Scholar
12. Emil, Sehling, ed., Die evangelische Kirchenordnungen des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts, 11 vols. (Leipzig: O. R. Riceland, 1903– ).Google Scholar
13. Ordinatio-Lutherhalle will be the usually cited text. The copies in WA 38: 423–33 have no title at all or one of “ordinatio ad ministerium” or “ordinatio ministrorum.” Smith, Luther, Ministry, and Ordination, 100 ff., offers somewhat altered translations from the published versions, which he terms “the major manuscripts.” They were taken, instead, from published orders, and the only completed manuscript (which Smith did not use) is likely Ordinatio-Lutherhalle. As a consequence, on page 107, he makes a major blunder in reporting that “The Latin version does not include any of the rubrics.” Since the writing of this essay, the author has discovered another, likely earlier, version of the text with numerous handwritten alterations.
14. In general, consult the essays in Leif, Grane and Kai, Hørby, eds., The Danish Reformation Against its International Background (Göttingen: Van den Hoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), esp. 149–63.Google Scholar
15. Ozment, Steven, The Reformation in Southwestern German Cities (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974), 164Google Scholar. As another illustration, Eric Gritsch concludes his introduction to the translation of Luther's That a Christian Congregation Has the Right and power to Judge all Teachings and to Call and Dismiss Teachers, Proved from the Scriptures, with the judgment that “In the later development of the Reformation, congregationalism, so strongly emphasized by Luther here, had to give way to the state church,” AE 39: 304. This view of course owes much to Pauck, as in n. 6 above.
16. WA 38: 408–10.
17. Friesen, Abraham, Reformation and Utopia: The Marxist Interpretation of the Reformation and Its Antecedents (Wiesbaden: Fritz Steiner Verlag, 1974)Google Scholar remains the standard interpretation, but for a more sympathetic assessment, see the prolegomenon to Brady, Thomas A. Jr., Ruling Class, Regime, and Reformation in Strasbourg, 1520–1555 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978).Google Scholar
18. Blickle, Peter, The Revolution of 1525. The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective, trans, by Brady, Thomas A. Jr., and Erik Midelfort, H. C. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), esp. 183–193Google Scholar. For an excellent survey of the literature and a fine bibliography, consult Schmidt, Heinrich Richard, Konfessionalisierung im 16. Jahrhundert, 12. Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. For example, Strauss, Gerald, Luther's House of Learning. Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978)Google Scholar and Schilling's, “Die Konfessionalisierung im Reich. Religiöser und Gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland zwischen 1555 und 1620,” Historische Zeitschrift, 246 (1988): 1–45Google Scholar and Schmidt, Heinrich Richard, “Sozialdisciplinierung? Ein Plädoyer für das Ende des Etatismus in der Konfessionalisierungsforschung,” Historische Zeitschrift, 265 (1997): 639–82 for a telling critique of Schilling's effort to tie the Reformation to Germany's Sonderweg.Google Scholar
20. Thus, for example, although on opposite sides of the question of Luther's responsibility, Pauck, Heritage, and Braaten, Marks of Christ, ignore this possibility. So, too, does Ritschel, Ordination, who wants to find from Luther a somewhat higher notion of ordination in the formula itself, much to the disdain of Clemen, WA 38: 409.
21. See, for example, the thorough misreading of Maurer, Wilhelm, Historical Commentary on the Augsburg Confession, trans, by Anderson, H. George (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986)Google Scholar, by Root, Michael J., “The Augsburg Confession as Ecumenical Proposal: Episcopacy, Luther, and Wilhelm Maurer,” dialog: A Journal of Theology 28 (1989): 223–32Google Scholar. Far more persuasive is Grane, Leif, The Augsburg Confession. A Commentary, trans, by Rasmussen, John H. (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg, 1987), esp. 248–49.Google Scholar
22. See n. 6, above.
23. See Kittelson, , “Relative Autonomy,” 131 ff.Google Scholar
24. WA 41: 454–59, with a report, quoted here, at 762–63: “Scitis ordinationem ecclesiae cum suis ritibus necessariam esse. Sed quiam papa non promovet, sed impedit cursum euangelii, nobis vigiliandum et orandum est. Noster elector necessario ordinavit, ut eligantur et ordinentur hie docti viri it pii ministri verbi dei, et ne quis ingnorantibus nobis surgat et doceat…. Illius publici ritus vos depetis esse testes, eum ardentissime orare…. Sed minus est periculi in vita mala quam in doctrinam qua predicator 1000 animas seducere potest, sicut videmus Munsteri pravam doctrinam.”
25. Stadtarchiv 17 (Bc5), fol. 203: “Item, das auch nimands verstattet solt werden, ausserhalb den ordentlichen Pfarherrn, Predigern vnd Caplanen, denen jedes orts die seelsorg und predigampt beuohlen, jnn heusern noch andern orten zu predigen noch verammlung zuhalten … alles bey straff vnd verlust, Leibs und guts, vnnachleslich gegen denen, die solchs anders hielten oder vberfunden wurden furzuwenden.” Pauck's position and the views of those who repeat it is therefore a case of overrationalizing events that more or less tumbled over one another.
26. Compare Article 5 in BC, 40–41. For Luther's judgment, WA 38: 401. Smith, , Luther, Ministry, and Ordination, 66–67, esp. nn. 73–74Google Scholar, where the author concludes, “The Elector carried out the examination process through the authority granted to the theological faculty at Wittenberg,” but declares that “No extant copy of the decree itself exists.” In fact, the electoral decree does exist and says precisely nothing about ordination or the examination. The one cited here does, however, exist, and it is purely negative in character. Thus, Luther and his colleagues had a free hand with respect to how they would certify fitness for office.
27. Ordinatio-Lutherhalle and the texts at WA 38: 423–33 are identical in their ordering of the events and virtually so in terms of what was actually said and done.
28. For the Latin text, see n. 24 and observe that there are copies of what likely was the same sermon.
29. Archiv der Evangelischen Stadtkirche “St. Maria” Wittenberg (Hereafter Stadtkirchenarchiv), A I 6: lv–2. Because this procedure included a superintendent, it continued, “Ihme desz Pfarrambt zu befhelen, lassen Zwayer Churf. Geregenwertig in schriben, beweilligung, unnd beschehlich an die Universitet vnnd Rates, handen am das Chrfustliche Consistorium alhie.”
30. This mode of argumentation, called “thick analysis,” owes much to Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973) and leads to a deeper understanding of public rituals in particular than does a simple reading of any associated texts. It also brooks fewer misunderstandings of “official” texts that are heavily marked by intentionality and a certain self-consciousness.Google Scholar
31. Evangelische Kirchenordnungen, 1: 376. “Und damit der berueffene diener sin ampt aus verleihung göttlicher gnaden und durch hilfe des Heiligen Geistes nutzlich verwalten könne, soll der superintendens mit der gantzen gemeine ohne hend uflegen und bitt auf die vermahnung Gott anrueffen und also betten: Vater unser, etc.”
32. From article five of the Augsburg Confession in BC, 40–41.
33. See Braaten, , Mother Church, 26, who developed a fuller argument for sacramental ordination in The Apostolic Imperative. Nature and Aims of the Church's Mission and Ministry (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg, 1985), 138–63, esp. 141 for a burlesque of what he dismisses as the “functionalist” view of ministry.Google Scholar
34. Thus Gritsch, for example, is guilty of thoroughgoing anachronisms in his remarks about the “state church” and “Congregationalism.” AE 39: 304. The “state” did not exist nor did even the notion of “Congregationalism” as presently held. Those enfranchised in particular congregations were most commonly the descendants of the original donors of property to establish and maintain it, in accord with the late medieval German legal doctrine of Grundherrschaft. This fact played an enormous role in cases as different as the calling of Amsdorf to become bishop of Naumburg and the difficulties of Hausmann with his position as preacher in Zwickau a few years earlier. Thus, Luther was a “congregationalist” in this sixteenth-century sense that each post and each congregation were different, although the legal relationships had a certain general commonality.
35. The evidence for the crush of ordinands is to be found at Stadtarchiv 17 (Bc5), fol. 400v – 401v, which spelled out the procedures to be followed when someone presented himself for ordination. The first step was to conduct a background check. For the general picture, Georg, Buchwald, ed., Die Wittenberger Ordiniertenbuch, 1537–1560 (Leipzig: Wigand, 1894–1895), 2 vols., is a little disappointingGoogle Scholar. The names indicate only those who legitimately acquired positions with but scattered and incomplete references to actual ordinations.
36. That the “historic episcopate” and discussions of episcopal succession could not have been at issue in Article 28 on the grounds that even the idea of such things did not exist in 1530, see the forthcoming Menacher, Mark D., “Called to Common Mission: A Lutheran Proposal,” Logia (Epiphany, 2002).Google Scholar
37. See n. 6 regarding Pauck.
38. Ordinatio-Lutherhalle, fol. [1–2v]: “Primum, Examinatione facta, praecedente die, si fuerint donei oretur ab Ecclesia per concionem admonita, pro eis et universo ministerio.” For the marginal addition in one of the printed versions, WA 38: 423.
39. Stadtarchiv, 17 (Bc5), fol. 400v – 401v: “Endlich, auch fleissig Examinirt werden in der Christlicher lahr auch ein mal odder ofter offentlich predigen.” A superintendent should be “Erbare, wolbetagte, erfarne, gelerte, wol geübte, Gottfürchtige Menner jnn hohen schulen vnd an daswo mit rath der Theologen” before being presented for ratifaction. The work in which these instructions appeared is General Articul und gemeinen bricht wie es in den Kirchen mit den Pfarheren, Kirchendienern … zu Sachsen … verordnete vnd beshehen Visitation gehalten werden soil (Dresden, 1557).
40. Corpus Reformatorum. Philippi Melanthonis Opera quae Supersunt Omnia, 23 (Halle/Braunschweig: C. A. Schwetschke et filium, 1855): cll. Xxl–cX, [l]–88, here [XXXV], [1] ff. (Hereafter cited as CR) That Melanchthon had students in mind is evident at the beginning of one German edition, “Hunc librum auctur primum vernaculam linguam scripsit, deinde eum la tine retexuit, quaproper utraque lingua hoc loco recudendus est,” which is reminiscent of the introductory remark to the Latin version of the ordination rite. CR, cl. [XX].Google Scholar
41. Stadtarchiv 17 (Bc5), fol. 133v: “Und nachdem Wittenberg sonst die Hauptstadt in der Chur zu Sachsen, und ehe u. dasz eine eheliche Hohe Schul ist, darumb durch Gottes gnaden das Heil. Evangelium in dieser letzhie Zeit revelirt, so soil die Kiche im Lande zu Sachsen ein Metropolis, und der pfarrern derselbst die Ober-Superattendent haben, nach dem sich alle andere Kirchen zurichten … auff allwider Superattendenten in Churfurstenthumb.” See also fol. 400v – 401v.
42. Ibid. Specifically, Buchwald, Ordiniertenbuch, the published version of the ms. volumes held in the Stadtkirchenarchiv.
43. Ibid., fol. 399. For the exact referent of the terms, see n. 33 above. In the case of an urban, and therefore public, foundation, these people would amount to representatives of the government.
44. CR 23, cl. LVVV: “Hie merck, das wir nicht fon der Kirchen, als fon einer Idea Platonica, reden, da nimand wisse wo sie zu funden sey …. Darnach sollen wir uns auch vmbsehen, wo dieselbige ist. Nemlich wo dise Zeichen gefunden werden, di dicht verborgen sein können, Sondern mit ohren vnd augen zu mercken sind. Nemlich reine lere des Euangelij, rechter brauch der Sacrament, vnd der gehorsam gegen dem Ministerio, in göttlichen geboten.”
45. Ibid., “So offt wir nu diesen Artikel im Symbolo sprechen, Ich gleube das eine heilige Kirche sey, das ist, Eine versamlung, die das Euangelium in rechten gleichten verstand hielt, darin viel auserwelte sind zu ewiger Seligkeit.” The comparison with Augsburg VII is obvious.
46. AE 46: 231–232. (WA 3011).
47. For evidence, contra Strauss, Luther's House, that suggests the fruits of this enormous educational effort, see Kittelson, James M., “Successes and Failures in the German Reformation: The Report from Strasbourg,” Archive for Reformation History 73 (1982): 153–75Google Scholar. Most recently, and again contra Strauss, see also Jane Haemig, Mary, “The Living Voice of the Catechism: German Lutheran Catechetical Preaching, 1530–1580,” (Th.D. diss, Harvard University, 1996)Google Scholar. That the effort was made to teach the catechism and that it was by and large successful therefore cannot be denied, despite the attempts of Karant-Nunn, Susan C., “The Reality of Early Lutheran Education: The Electoral District of Saxony,” Lutherjahrbuch 57 (1990): 128–46. See also Kittelson in Danish Reformation.Google Scholar
48. AE 51: 303–12.
49. The Ministry in the Church (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1982), 15, as repeated by Smith, Luther, Ministry, and Ordination, 50 n. 20, who ignores the totality of the master rhetorician's treatment and offers the notion that he and Luther may have been “willing to accept the office as a sacrament,” a move that would seem to invent the idea of a “sacramental office.”Google Scholar
50. For Melanchthon's full text, BC, 220–21.
51. Ministry, 16–17. See Stadtarchiv 17 (Bc5), fol. 399–401v, which deals with two cases of receiving a pastor who is new to a particular calling. In one, the superintendent was responsible for calling together “selected laymen” first to examine the person and then to ordain him publicly. In the other a person who was already serving and therefore ordained (likely in a different jurisdiction of which there were plenty), the first step was to conduct a background check, then, “das er dann zu der Examination jnn die Universiteten gen Wittemberg oder Leiptzig geschickt. Unnd warm er vor genugsam gelert und tuglich befunden zusolchem seinem Ambte, dazu er beruffen auffgenomen eingeweiset und jnuestirt werde.” No attention whatsoever should be paid to any claims that he had been ordained or installed anywhere else earlier. “Die Ordination der Priester sol zu Leiptzig vnnd Wittemberg vorgenommen auch allermas gescheen vnnnd gehalten werden. … Endlich, auch fleissig Examinirt werden in der Christlichar Lahr auch ein mal odder ofter offentlich predigen vnnd so befunden das derselbe an Lahr vnnd Wandel vngeschickt were,” those who had sent him should be warned.
52. LW 34: 226–227, where he also declares that an historian must “have the heart of a lion” in order to tell the absolute, unvarnished truth, no matter who becomes annoyed by it.