Jan. 27

The Reformation I: Medieval Religiosity and the Beginnings of Lutheranism

I. The Nature of Religous Sentiment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds

A. A religion alive with feeling, the deeply felt presences of God, everywhere in life.
B. But alongside the love of God, the fear of hell and damnation, of the devil, alive in the woods, with animals and darkness and the forest´s sounds.
C. For the people of the medieval and early modern periods, these great sentiments--of love and fear, hope and despair--were the texture, the tissue of their daily lives.

II. Of all the people who feared God and despaired of their sinful natures, few have felt and despaired as deeply as Martin Luther. Born in 1483 (d. 1546), the son of a miner in Saxony, he showed a precocious intelligence. He was able to study, became ordained and joined the Augustinian order. However much he prayed, however much he confessed, he could not move beyond his sense of unworthiness.

III. Now for others in Luther´s time, less self-absorbed, perhaps, not as morally and intellectually rigorous as Luther, there was a way to resolve the problem of sin and avoid the perils of damnation: indulgences.

IV. For Luther, however, this could not be right. Luther could not imagine that one could, essentially, do whatever one wanted, day in, day out, indulge the pleasures of the body, drink, whatever, then simply pay some money to Rome, and the sins would be washed away--or, more accurately, one´s time in Purgatory would be reduced.

V. The Great Break

A. So when the Pope, yet again, offered up indulgences for sale, this proved the breaking point for Luther. And he tacked to the door of his church in Wittenberg the "95 Theses," which disputed, theologically, the sale of indulgences.
B. Important to recognize that Luther had no intention whatsoever of sundering the unity of the Christian church. He had no intention of creating what would subsequently be called "Protestantism." He was arguing in the accepted manner of theological disputations--yet, admittedly, in a radical fashion, because Luther could be an intemperate man.
C. Nor did Luther at all anticipate the rapid dissemination of his protest and his ideas.

1. Discontent with papacy.
2. The printing press.

VI. The Lutheran Reformation 1517-1526

A. The result is an intense, roughly ten-year period--in some senses, a three-year burst--in which the new theology is created and a new kind of politics emerges.
B. The key elements of the theology that Luther formulates:

1. The sacred word: the sanctity of Scripture, which is the ultimate, defining source of belief.
2. Justification by faith
3. Justification by faith the underpinnings of the concept of predestination.
4. The priesthood of all believers.

C. Implications:

1. Eliminates so much of the structure of medieval Christianity.
2. Also, if the Word is the key, then a radical paring down of the outer dimensions, the ornate rituals, of religious life.
3. Emphasis on the vernacular in every aspect of worship.
4. A certain levelling, almost democratic impulse, with also profound and unsettling consequences for the understanding of gender in the early modern world. In short, eliminates so much of the structure of medieval Christianity.
5. But there is a real dilemma to justification by faith. How is one to know whether God has chosen one for salvation or not?

VII. For next time: the dilemma of rebellion and authority in the Christian world.