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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
It is important for the historian that he should exercise a salutary scepticism towards his materials and his sources, but even more important that he should adopt this detachment towards himself, and when confronted by apparent confusion and contradiction in some great figure of the past, to ask whether perhaps he himself as historian may be asking the wrong questions, and evaluating another century in the themes and categories of a later age. This is particularly true about Luther's doctrines of the Church. For while there is no doctrine of the Church which does not somewhere blur its edges (by reason of the eternal and eschatological dimension intersecting the empirical and historical plane) and Luther's is no exception, there is I think a demonstrably consistent core to his teaching, from the beginning to the end of his career.
page 384 note 2 Boehmer, H., Der Junge Luther (ed. Bornkamm, , 1939), 362.Google Scholar
page 385 note 1 Here one must differ from the exclusively religious interpretation of Luther put forward by Professor Le Febvre and perhaps underlying the remark of Professor E. J. Léonard (Relazioni, 4. 80. ‘La notion et le fait de l'église dans la reforme Protestante’). Luther's ecclesiology bears permanently the trace of this ‘inutilityé de l'église’ to use too strong a term in his determining religious experience.
page 385 note 2 Gesammelte Aufsätze, Luther, 292ff.
page 385 note 3 Diet. Théol. cath., Tome 4, Partie 2, col. 2109.
page 386 note 1 Holl, 296ff. Rupp, The Righteousness of God, 317ff.
page 386 note 2 W.A. 7. 683.9.
page 386 note 3 Just as, if we ignore Luther's theology and concentrate only on his religious experience, the ecclesiology becomes an alien and disparate element.
page 387 note 1 I have given references in The Righteousness of God, 320ff. See W.A. 45.522.7: ‘For we cannot suffer yet the clear sight and showing forth of His majesty and so it must be covered and veiled and behind a thick cloud. So it is decided that he who would grasp them both, the Father and the Son, must do so through the Word.’ WML. 5. 292–3 (Philadelphia edn.): ‘They are called Word, Baptism, Sacrament and Forgiveness… of God Himself: for it is His will to act for the comfort and good of us poor feeble men through them and not through his unveiled, evident bright majesty, for who could bear that for an instant in this sinful poor flesh? ’
page 387 note 2 W.A. Br.9. 608.
page 387 note 3 W.A. 51.507.9. In this tract, and in ‘Of Councils and Churches’ (1539) Luther extends these visible manifestations to include a called and ordained ministry, public worship, the Keys, and to be ‘under the Cross’ of persecution.
page 388 note 1 Werke (Munich ed.) 3.94. ‘For the soul of man is an eternal thing: above all things which are temporal: therefore it may only be ruled and embraced by the eternal Word… so that it is invidious to try to rule the conscience before God in terms of human law and custom’ WML. 4.359. ‘What is altered according to God's Word is no innovation, for all customs must give way to God's Word as your own law says. For God and His Word are older than you: they will also be younger than you and we, for they are eternal’ W.A. 12.192.34. ‘For what is not new that Faith does? Was it not a new thing when the apostles instituted their ministry? Was it not a new thing when Abraham offered his son? Was it not a new thing when Isracl crossed the sea? Will it not be a new thing when I shall pass from death to life? But in all these things it is the Word of God and not the novelty which matters. ’
page 389 note 1 Wider Hans Worst.
page 389 note 2 W.A. 6. 329.
page 389 note 3 WML. 1. 357.
page 389 note 4 WML. 2. 109.
page 389 note 5 In ‘Councils and Churches’ (1539) and Wider Hans Worst.
page 389 note 6 We cannot here discuss the alleged evanescent congregationalism of Luther and the question of the autonomy of the Gemeinde.
page 390 note 1 W.A. 40. 1. 178.
page 390 note 2 W.A. 50.5. On the doctrine of the Pope as Anti-Christ, W.A. Br. 1.359.29, W.A. Br.2. 48.26.
page 391 note 1 Ecclesia Historica integram ecclesiae ideam… completions, congesta per aliquot studiosos et pios viros in urbe Magdeburgica. Bas. 1559.
page 392 note 1 W.A. 43.418.6. On this doctrine see Congar, P.. Vraie et fausse Réforme dans L'église, Paris, 1950; and for a critique, Rupp, op. cit. 328ff.Google Scholar