The Two Governments and the Two Kingdoms in Luther's Thought

John R. Stephenson

doi:10.1017/S0036930600015453

The Two Governments and the Two Kingdoms in Luther's Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009

John R. Stephenson

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John R. Stephenson: Affiliation:
Westfield House, 28 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0HH

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The facet of his thought commonly referred to as the doctrine of the two kingdoms has provoked some of the most intractable confusion and bitter controversy in post-war continental Luther scholarship, and the ripples of this debate which reached these shores have all too often amounted to a litany of sweeping statements which have done nothing to enhance the Reformer's reputation in England. Yet even before Hitler's war Luther had endured a century of disfavour among the leading academic and ecclesiastical circles on this side of the Channel. So marked was British — more particularly, English — distaste for Luther in the opening years of this century that the American church historian Preserved Smith devoted an article to the subject in 1917, listing Anglo-Catholicism, rationalism, socialism and — since 1914 — visceral hostility to all things German as four factors which had conspired to tarnish the Reformer's image in the minds of the English of that time. Fifteen years later the celebrated Modernist H. D. A. Major was to lament that, ‘Today Martin Luther, the greatest protagonist of the Reformation, is viewed as a vulgar, violent and mistaken man as hostile to humanist culture as he was to social democracy.’ The European conflict of the next decade provided the cue for the most damaging slur of all on the Reformer's memory, so that when in 1945 a third-rate pamphleteer denigrated Luther as ‘Hitler's spiritual ancestor’ his thesis had already been expressed by Archbishop William Temple, who had died the previous year.

Type: Research Article
Information: Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , August 1981 , pp. 321 - 337

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930600015453 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1981

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References

^{page 321 note 1} ‘English Opinion of Luther’, Harvard Theological Review (1917), p. 157.

^{page 321 note 2} ‘Editorial Preface’, The Modern Churchman (1932), p. 225.

^{page 321 note 3} Wiener, P.: Martin Luther. Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor. (London, 1945)Google Scholar; cf. the spirited reply by Rupp, E. G.: Martin Luther — Hitler's Cause or Cure? (London, 1945).Google Scholar

^{page 322 note 4} Marius, Richard: Luther (London, 1975), p. 203.Google Scholar

^{page 323 note 5} WA 11. 247, 21–30.

^{page 323 note 6} WA 11. 249, 24–25.

^{page 324 note 7} WA 11. 249, 36–250, 9.

^{page 324 note 8} WA 11. 251, 1–8.

^{page 324 note 9} WA 11. 251, 15–18.

^{page 325 note 10} WA 11. 252, 3–11.

^{page 325 note 11} WA 18. 81, 14–17 (Wider die himmlischen Propheten, 1525).

^{page 325 note 12} WA 11. 279, 19–20.

^{page 325 note 13} WA 51. 242, 6–8.

^{page 326 note 14} WA 51. 242, 36–243, 3.

^{page 326 note 15} WA 27. 418, 4.

^{page 326 note 16} WA 11. 258, 1–3.

^{page 326 note 17} WA 51. 240, 7–10.

^{page 326 note 18} WA 11. 278, 17–23.

^{page 326 note 19} WA 11. 280, 16–17; 272, 16–17.

^{page 327 note 20} WA 11. 252, 14.

^{page 327 note 21} WA 51. 241, 39–40.

^{page 327 note 22} WA 51. 238, 38–239, 1.

^{page 327 note 23} See Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica 11–11, qu. 183, 184, 186.

^{page 328 note 24} WA 11. 245, 23–25; 259, 17–19.

^{page 328 note 25} cf. WA 7. 97, 20–23.

^{page 328 note 26} WA 11. 255, 9–15.

^{page 328 note 27} WA 11. 258, 1–3.

^{page 329 note 28} WA 39 11. 81, 16–18.

^{page 329 note 29} WA 1. 692, 8–11.

^{page 329 note 30} WA 36. 385, 6–9.

^{page 330 note 31} cf. Althaus, Paul: The Ethics of Martin Luther (Philadelphia, 1972), p. 49.Google Scholar

^{page 330 note 32} Denzinger-Schönmetzer: Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 347.

^{page 330 note 33} Denzinger-Schönmetzer: op. cit., no. 362.

^{page 330 note 34} Denzinger-Schönmetzer: op. cit., no. 468.

^{page 331 note 35} WA 11. 265, 7–19.

^{page 331 note 36} WA 51. 239, 22–25.

^{page 331 note 37} WA 11. 261, 30–31.

^{page 331 note 38} WA 11.262,7–9.

^{page 332 note 39} WA 6. 265, 15–19.

^{page 332 note 40} WA 6. 265, 21–26.

^{page 332 note 41} WA 11. 277, 28–31.

^{page 332 note 42} WA 19. 656, 22–25.

^{page 332 note 43} WABR 10. 36, 157–158.

^{page 332 note 44} WA 11. 262, 9–10.

^{page 332 note 45} WA 18. 136, 9–18.

^{page 333 note 46} WATR 3. 672–674; WA 50. 245, 1–20; 246, 20–29, cf. also Confessio Augustana, art. 5.

^{page 333 note 47} WA 11. 264, 16–20.

^{page 333 note 48} WA 7. 645, 36.

^{page 333 note 49} WA 15. 218, 19–219, 6.

^{page 333 note 50} Martin Luther in der Mitte seines Lebens (Göttingen, 1979), p. 146.Google Scholar

^{page 334 note 51} Eine Schweizer Stimme (Zürich, 1945), p. 113.Google Scholar

^{page 335 note 52} WA 50. 652.

^{page 335 note 53} Forell, G. W.: Faith Active in Love. An Investigation of the Principles Underlying Luther's Social Ethics (New York, 1954), pp. 18, 22–25.Google Scholar

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