Ekkehard
W. Stegemann,
University
of Basel, Switzerland
I A new Perspective on Luther after a New Perspective on
Paul
Since Krister Stendahls famous essay on The Apostle Paul and the
Introspective Conscience of the West (HTR 56, 1963,199-215) it has become a
truism that our image of Paul has to undergo a kind of de-Lutherization. If we
try to read him in the context of his own culture we have even to be cautious
to follow Luthers main teacher among the fathers, Augustine, too, although he
has been far more part of the culture of Pauls antiquity than Luther. But he
stands at the threshold between the ancient and the medieval worlds[1]
and he is also suspected to have contributed to the shaping of the
introspective conscience and individualism so typical for modern Western mind.
I do not doubt that these constraints have given birth to the formation of a
New Perspective on Paul with a lot of pretty new children of research. But what
about turning the tables? What about rereading Luther as interpreter of Paul in
his times, asking perhaps not so much how Pauline he was but what he made of
Paul and how he could make him so Lutheran. For after all, Luthers key had
opened the lock to Pauls letters and especially to the one to the Romans for
centuries and for millions of protestant readers at least.
To sharpen our eye on Luther Ill compare him to Erasmus and look at
their dispute on free or captive will, on the liberum or servum arbitrium.
Sure, taken at face value this was more a discourse about an already
well established Christian will doctrine and its biblical proofs than
especially on Paul or in fact on Romans 7. Erasmus polemical diatribe
used Paul as one authority among many other scriptures to prove his thesis on
the freedom of will. And Luthers response in De servo arbitrio is
rather restrained on Paul, although he was the Achilles of his case, as he
put it (WA 18,783). But since the
discourse on the doctrine of free or captive will was traditionally and mainly
shaped by Augustine it is originally a matter of interpretation of Paul and not
at least of Romans 7. And Augustine is known to have changed his mind on it
himself. His first interpretation of Romans 7 has been more in the path of
Erasmus, but his later reinterpretation was the basis of Luthers lecture on
Romans 7. So the Wirkungsgeschichte of Paul and especially of Romans 7
is part and parcel of the concept of free or captive will anyway. To read Paul
as a witness of free will or as a witness of captive will depends since
Augustine, exegetically on the decision of reading Romans 7 as spoken by the homo
sub lege or by the homo sub gratia, man under law or under grace.[2]
But this was not Erasmus point against Luther and vice versa. Erasmus and
Luthers readings of Paul were more than exegetical worlds apart. And if all
the signs are believed, Erasmus was not quite wrong to claim Paul for his case
and Luther was right to do so, too. But before you will remind me of the joke
about the rabbi who listens to the complaints of two feuding parties and said
to each of them you are right and gave to the answer a third one who was
listening and asking, Rabbi, they are at odds, how can they both be
right?, You are right, too I will
admit: One of the feuding parties with which we will deal now was more Pauline
than the other.
II Erasmus Christian philosophy
as a reshaping of practical philosophy in the footsteps of Plato and Epictetus
As movements of scholars and erudition the European Humanism and
Reformation had elective affinities. This is especially true for those of the
Humanists like Erasmus who were named by Cornelius Augustijn Bibelhumanisten.
And the reforming movement in Switzerland came almost totally from Humanists of
these kinds.[3]
But there was nonetheless a decisive difference between Erasmus and the
reforming Humanists like Zwingli or Melanchthon, his former disciples. For it
was the firm negation of a free will which made the difference. Zwingli even
responded to Erasmus diatribe earlier than Luther himself. It was of course
also a matter of different readings of scripture. But at the centre of the
dispute stood the conflict about human nature and the different concepts of the
effect on it by education and erudition. The centrepiece of the anthropology of
Humanism is erudition in its original Latin meaning of e-ruditio, which
means de-brutalization or deprivation of roughness by education and the studies
of ancient wisdom (paideia or humanitas). A human being is educable
and has to be educated, morally and intellectually. His educability corresponds
to his responsibility. And thats why humankind has to have a free will. For a
human being without a free will could not be held responsible for his actions.
Of course, Erasmus is a Christian Humanist. He was not unaware of the concept
of grace and the doctrine of sin and the inheritance of a certain weakness
because of the primeordial sin of Adam and Eve. Therefore Erasmus admits that
nothing good could be perfected without Gods support, without the auxilium
divinum (III c.12). And he adds as a proof for it Romans 8, 26: In the
same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness. So without the assistance of
God, of the Spirit, of Gods grace, a free will is without effect. But the
consequence of this is not igitur nulla sunt hominis opera bona
(therefore there are no good actions/works/deeds of a human being), but igitur
omnia opera hominis possunt esse bona (therefore all actions/works/deeds
of a human being could be good). The Christian is able to lead his life
according to the wellknown demands of a good life (bene vivendi praecepta:
De libero arbitrio Ia9 14/15) at the assistance of the sacramental tools of the
church, the remedium paenitaentiae, confession and absolution,
and Gods merciful help, ac domini misericordia (Ia8). Of course he
admits that the faculty of judgement is darkened by sin. Thats why compared to
the mainstream Greek and Roman philosophers of antiquity it is not the logos
or the nous or the faculty of reasonable judgement alone which is able
to choose the path to the good life. Reason needs Gods grace or spirit as a
permanent assistance in the Christians struggle for righteousness (IIa3). And
indeed the struggle is in itself a good action. For when Paul says in Romans
7:18 To will is available for me but
the perfection of the good I do not find (note the translation is from
the Vulgata nam velle adjacet mihi, perficere autem bonum non invenio)
Erasmus reads it as expression of the faculty of free will, for if Paul wrote
the will to do good is adjacent to me he is already doing a good work, since
the opposite, the will to do evil is already a bad work, as the example (which
Erasmus took of the Sermon on the Mount) shows that the will to kill is already
an opus malum (IIb5). Once again: for Erasmus free will needs
support at least sometimes by the spirit or the grace of God. But although
there is flesh and its desires there is reason and its capability to command
them, too. In one passage Erasmus directly hints to Plato and Epictetus and
their concept of self-mastery and
self-control through those part of the soul which is called ratio
or hgemonikon (IIIb4)[4].
Paul, the father of a Christian philosophy, as Erasmus said in his Enchiridion
militis Christiani ? Handbook of a Christian Soldier (or
Fighter) ? speaks about the weakness of the human being, but he shows the
most excellent way (1 Cor 12:31b). The philosophy of Christ is the
restoration of human nature, which is actually good in itself, a rebirth or
renaissance, as Christ said (John 3), or a new creation as Paul put it
(2 Cor 5:17). So for Erasmus the art of living, which Christian philosophy is
teaching, is a better way of self-mastery than the one of Epictetus, but it is
a way of self-mastery with a possible successful outcome. Progress is possible
? not only for the individual Christian but for Christian Europe under guidance
of its elites. And reforms are necessary. But unfortunately there is this
Augustinian barefoot monk.
III Luthers apocalyptic
radicalisation of Paul
For Erasmus a free will is a self-evident and basic principle of human
nature or of being a human being. And because of the certain weakness and
roughness of its nature a human being needs erudition and of course divine
assistance.[5]
These are basic and self-evident principles as well for him. For Luther thats
all ridiculous (WA 18,679.718). There is not such a thing as Erasmus human
being. And there is not such a thing like Erasmus God. For Gods Almightiness
and Providence do away with the doctrine of free will totally (718). Of course
there is such a thing like moral or civil righteousness, a righteousness of
works or by deeds as a reason of human honour. Paul himself admits it, as
Luther says, in his remarks on Abraham in Romans 4. But he adds: not before
God. God rejects all these works even the good ones as evil before him (771f).
Erasmus therefore underestimates for Luther the misery of mankind and its
recognition. By persisting in the illusion of free will he bars the only
possible way out of it: to recognize the misery and to call for salvation. The
misery which is acknowleged, the crying misery, as Luther says alluding to
Romans 7:24 (Wretch that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?)
will find Gods mercy (679). And recognition of humankinds misery is at same
time recognition of Gods majesty and submission to it and to Gods grace. For
Erasmus Luther has a cruel picture of God and a barbaric image of humankind.
For Luther Erasmus has a distorted image
of God and is playing down his terrifying power as judge and his piti- and
merciful power as saviour as well. Erasmus paints for Luther at the same time a
harmless picture of human nature. Humankind is not more or less capable to
being moral and rational and God is not more or less its helper. For Luther a
human being, in his earthly life, and corrupted by the history of the peccatum
radicale, the radical sin, is rather the battlefield of temptations and
dangers, is in distress and despair, beset bythe devil and an army of evil
spirits of whom each individual is stronger than all human beings together, so
that nobody could be saved (783). But since God has taken from humankind the
burden to care for its eternal salvation the agonizing uncertainties and
doubts and gloomy introspective conscience have come to an end. There is only
one certainty, namely that without Gods grace and mercy a human being,
miserable, ill, mortal and sinful as it is, is doomed to eternal decline.
Luther criticizes Erasmus for leaving out of his diatribe a
discussion of Romans 7:14ss. But he himself does only mention Paul as a teacher
who has explained that even those who belong to God and are pious are not able
to do what they want to do, since human nature is so evil, that it is hostile
to the Good even in those who are new born by the spirit (WA 18, 783). Here we
get an impression of the consequences which Luthers exegetical decision have.
But it is not the reading of Romans 7 as a witness of the Ego of Paul and as a
paradigm of a Christians life even under grace, sub gratia, which makes as
such the difference to Erasmus, since Erasmus is not at odds with Luther on
this issue. The area of dispute is rather that Luther followed in later
Augustines footsteps. Therefore it is not by chance that Luther took Romans
7:25b in his lectures on Romans as the most adequate expression of the
description of a Christians life: See, that one and the same human being
serves both the law of God and the law of sin, he is a righteous one and he
sins at the same time.[6]
The simul iustus est et peccat marks the decisive point, since it is
one and the same human being, Paul, who declares both for himself, each time
concerned with different relations: under grace he is spiritual, but under law
he is carnal, and yet he is each time one and the same Paul (WA 8,119)[7].
To sharpen the argument: For Luther Paul has to speak in Romans 7 as the
paradigmatic human being under grace since as a carnal human being sub lege,
under the law, he wouldnt be able to recognize that he does not do, what he
wants to and does do, what he detests (Romans 7:15). Only the spiritual human
being under grace could agree that the law is good and could delight in
Gods law, since he knows of his misery and believes in Gods rescuing him
from his doomed body.
IV The divided Paul
It is of course Luthers own lifestory between God and the devil (H.
A. Oberman) which he transformed to the story of Man between God and the
devil (Oberman 1990). But its really about the devil and its really about
God and his majesty and its really about the human being as the mount
(Reittier), as the animal used for riding either by the devil or by God. Each
individual human being is a battlefield of God and Satan, without free will,
without the capability to choose, without autonomy and self-determination. From
the perspective of Luther Erasmus has deprived God of his power (G. Ebeling),
but he himself has deliberately deprived man of power, totally, and that on the
eve of the greatest scientific discoveries and technical inventions in European
history (H. A. Oberman). The late Heiko A. Oberman has always challenged an
image of Luther which for him was a protestant myth or even an idol of German
nationalism and ideology. Oberman has drawn a picture of Luther as a prophet of
the end, of the end of the world and of the end of the time, as a prophet of a
chaotic apocalyptic drama between God and the devil, between true Christians
and the Antichrist. And he has not left out the delusions of Luther and
especially his idiosyncratic anti-Jewish mania (no less disgusting in this
respect was Erasmus).[8]
Maybe Oberman has made his case a little bit to strong. But what concerns the
interpretation of Paul is that Luther indeed took up an apocalyptic
perspective, which Paul outlines first and foremost in Romans. But Luther
changed Paul at the same time radically.The drama of humankind as Paul has seen
it is not the drama which Luther has seen. And what separates them is precisely
the Lutheran motto: simul iustus est et peccat. This is absolutely not
the password to enter Pauls world. Indeed, for him it would have been an
abomination to claim both at the same time for one person. For Paul you are
either a righteous one or a sinner but not both at the same time. Of course,
Luthers iustus is a righteous one in spe, not in re.
But thats just the result of the inversion of Paul´s concept. In his terms stamped by his
apocalyptic encoded hellenistic-Jewish
culture Christ is the turning point in history, who changed the destiny of all
humankind. Threatened already by the wrath of God as a last and devastating
judgement coming soon from heaven to earth, the Gospel as Gods saving power is
already at work on earth, namely by creating faith and by faithfulness
righteousness and participation in salvation. It is not only a promise of
future saving from the devastating last judgement to come, it is not an
accounting as righteous in the eyes of God, but a making righteous and so a
being righteous. And as manifestation of Gods own uprightness or righteousness
working on earth through revelation in the Gospel it is the righteous made
faithful who lives on the basis of
Jesus faithfulness (Romans 3:26 according for example to Stowers 223;
cf. path-breaking for this interpretation M. D. Hooker, NTS 35,1989,321ff.) and
has achieved reconciliation with God (Romans 5,1-11), which means: Since he is
no longer a sinner, God is no longer his enemy (5:10). So what Luther could not
see was, that the transition of
humankind from the outrage under the power of sin and flesh to liberation from
enslavement to passions and desires and by this to fulfillment of the
demands of the law, has already taken place for those in Christ. If one fails
to understand Pauls anthropology in its setting, in its dramatization of his
present day as the end of the time, that means as a time of co-existence of the
new creation (represented by the believers) and the old humankind you will
either dissolve the dramatic situation like Erasmus or shift it to a drama of
the invidual Christian split into the co-existent simul iustus et peccator,
like Luther did. There is a dramatic difference in all humankinds situation
before and without the gospel. But although the revelation of salvation by
faith has brought a change only to a part of humankind, the believers, who are
already effected by the gospel and its saving power, participate in it. In
other words: for Paul the encounter of the ends (or: turning points) of the
ages (1 Cor 10:11) divided humankind into two parts, namely the ones still
enslaved to passions and desires of the flesh and the other ones already
liberated from it. And this division in humankind is at the same time a division
in their own lifestory. Erasmus has lost Pauls dramatization of the situation
of (the divided) humankind by taking a pretty simple post-eschatological
position of Christian normalcy. But Luthers re-apocalyptization of Paul has renewed the drama of humankind even
for or in fact especially for the
believers.
V The Alienation of
Humankind
One can take the conflict between Luther and Erasmus not only as a
theological disputation on the concept of free or captive will but as an
expression of a clash of civilizations embedded in the cultural and
historical settings of the Occident with its roots in Jerusalem and in
Athens or Rome and revived by the hero of the protestants from Wittenberg and
the prince of the Humanists from Rotterdam. One can perhaps call it a conflict
between those whose experiences lead them to describe humankind and human being
as a strange, frightening, eerie and unpredictable entity, and who have, to
quote Freud, a feeling of uneasiness in culture (Civilization and its
Discontents). That is what I mean with the alienation of Humankind, in
German: Das Befremdliche am Menschlichen. But there are at the same time
those traditions in occidental culture which have confidence in the capability
of man to do good which is mostly linked to reason and its power of self- and
world-mastery. In Athens and Rome you will find both traditions and in
Jerusalem, too. And you can find it in Paul, too. The irony is, that Paul
describes in Romans the alienation of humankind in a biblical and Jewish perspective
and language (of course already mediated with hellenistic culture and rhetoric)
and in the language and perspective of the Greek tragedy, too. The last one is
to be found mainly in Romans chapter 7, the first one is dominating chapters
1:19-3:20, the last or final account (as Krister Stendahl called his last
fine book on Romans) on humankind, Jews and Gentiles alike. Judged according to
the cardinal commandments of Gods law (eusebeia and dikaiosunh) both of them are
an outrage: The whole world may become accountable to God (3:19). This law is
actually discernible for Gentiles by their mind or reason or by their hearts as
the Sitz im Leben of the
reasonable potential (!) of human nature now darkened and made futile. And the
Jews even are in the posession of the written incorporation of the knowledge
and the truth of God in the Torah given to them through Moses by God. But they
failed also, especially in their mission to the Gentiles as teachers of Gods
truth and will. So the judgement is framed by the cardinal commandments with
respect to trespassing: There is no one righteous, not even one (3:10 taking
up the opposite of dikaiosunh mentioned in 1,18:
adikia) and There is no fear of God before their
eyes (3:18 taking up the opposite of eusebeia mentioned in 1:18:
asebeia). Therefore on balance the
conclusion Paul is drawing is: No one, not even one could expect to be proved
to be righteous in Gods Last Judgement. And this last judgement is already
written in the Torah. But Paul coined this result not as the New English
Translation has it: For no one is declared righteous before him by the
works of Law, or as the RSV translates: For no human being[9]
will be justified in his sight by works of the law (saving by the way the unrevised Standard Lutheran
Version on Paul). But: Therefore no flesh is proved righteous before
God. The point is, that Paul does use pasa sarx and not the neutral expression pasa yuch for every person or everybody
(as in Romans 13:1) or ekastoV (each one) or paV
anqrwpoV for every human
being (3:4) or something else. And that is on the
one hand readable in connection with the divine judgement before the Flood
(there are some allusions to it in Romans 3:9ff.): And God said to Noah: I
have determined to make an end of all flesh (pasa sarx in the Septuagint; I cannot go here into
details of Pauls alluding here to the first decline of humankind and its
meaning for the last and definite one, how interesting it would be to do). And
on the other hand the term flesh (sarx) as a metonymy for a human being or humankind in the
first place is remarkable, since it hints at the anthropological side of the
coin. The divine verdict in the Torah names already that, what is responsible
in a human being or in mankind for the enslavement to sin or the dependancy on
or subordination to sin (3:9: For we have already charged that all, Jews and
Greeks alike, are dependant on sin (uf¢
amartian einai). And for the anthropological explanation of this dependancy one has to
switch to chapter 7 and especially to verses 14 to 25. For here Paul takes up the discourse on
self-mastery in Greco-Roman tradition in the rhetoric of speech-in-character so
often recognized in research on it and brilliantly set out last by Stanley K.
Stowers (A Rereading of Romans 260ff.; cf. also Reinhard von Bendemann, ZNW 95,
2004, 35ff.). And it is not the optimistic concept of self-mastery of Plato or
Epictetus and the mainstream but its tragic version across to it starting with
Euripides tragedy Medea, to which Paul is alluding. This
Medea-discourse (a kind of a discourse on free or captive will in antiquity) in
its tragic version, that means in its negation of the possibility of
self-control or self-mastery, makes it possible for Paul to illustrate the
desperate situation of humankind under the constraints of flesh and desire. But
unlike Medea, who killed her children overwhelmed by the storm of emotions or
passions and despite her capacity for clear and reasonable recognition of the evil
she was doing, the egw sarkinoV, the I, which is
out of flesh, sold in bondage to sin like a slave of Romans 7:14s., cannot
accept or approve (perhaps better for ginwskw here than understand: already Augustine, and among
the modern interpreters for example Barrett, Cranfield[10])
that, what the I actually does. That means: Medea really wanted to kill her
children overwhelmed by her desire to take revenge on Jason, although she was
able to see the evil she was about to do. The Ego of flesh, however, wants to
do the good, but instead does the non desired but detested evil (7:19). This
shifting of the discourse is due to the reaction to the Medea-discourse in the
Stoa of the early Roman Principate. For it is Epictetus, who argues: Every amarthma transgression (or: error?)
involves a contradiction. For since he who transgresses does not wish to
transgress (ou qelei amartanein), but to be right;
obviously he is not doing what he wishes (dhlon oti o men qelei ou poiei) (Diss II, 26,1). The
context of this is the conviction, that a human being is able to lead his life
according to the divine laws and his mind (cf. Bendenmann p. 55). Quite
comparable we find in Romans 7:22 the delight in Gods law what the inner
human being is concerned with (cf. H. D. Betz, NTS 46, 2000, 315ff.) and in
7:23 the law of my mind. But nevertheless neither Gods holy law nor the nouV, the human mind in consent with Gods law, are able
to realize the Good and to let the good order of God to become a reality in
humankind. That is the tragic reality, the alienation of humankind. And that is
the reason why the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against every
kind of ungodliness and unrighteousness of human beings (1:18) and why mankind
is doomed to decline except those who are made faithful and righteous by Gods
power of salvation (1:16s.). It is flesh which is responsible for the
enslavement to sin and humankinds being doomed to failure. It is really the
stuff, out of which humankind was made, whose power made him weak. But at the
same time it is the weakness of Gods holy law, its powerlessness (8:3). And
therefore there is for Paul no other way out than a new creation, starting on
earth with a transformation from living according to the flesh to living
according to the spirit and assisted by its power and ending in heaven with a
new body not of flesh and blood. But since Paul is in fact thinking of the new
life (6:4) as a serving of Gods law in the newness of the spirit (7:6)
and by this of the believers as being enabled to fulfill the requirement of
righteousness of the law (8:4) he actually declares self-mastery to be
possible. That is the particula veri of Erasmus. But more important for
the reading of Romans, I believe, was Luthers simul. Pauls simul,
however, is a simul of co-existing worlds or humankinds. Of course this
encounter of two aeon-ages will cease for Paul soon. But there is in this mythical apocalyptic concept
something which tends to dissolve the tendency of mythical concepts, namely
that human nature is eternal and unchangeable. Thats not untypical for hybrid
cultures.[11]
It has obviously always been a discourse of different concepts and it will
presumably always remain such a pluralistic discourse. Perhaps not?
Ekkehard W.
Stegemann, University of Basel, Switzerland
[1] Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans. Justice, Jews and Gentiles, 1994, 1.
[2] Cf. Hermann Lichtenberger, Das Ich Adams und das Ich der Menschheit: Studien zum Menschenbild in Römer 7, 2004
[3] Cf. Gottfried W. Locher, Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschichte, Göttingen and Zürich 1979.
[4] Nec tamen omnis affectus hominis est caro,
sed est, qui dicitur anima, est, qui dicitur spiritus, quo nitimur ad honesta,
quam partem animi rationem vocant aut hgemonikon, id est principalem, nisi forte in
philosophis nullus fuit ad honesta nixus?
[5] Cf. for the following Heinrich Bornkamm, Das Jahrhundert der Reformation. Gestalten und Kräfte, Göttingen 2. Auflage 1961, 36-54; Gerhard Ebeling, Luthers Kampf gegen die Moralisierung des Christlichen, in: G. Ebeling, Lutherstudien III, Tübingen 1985, 44-73.
[6] Hoc omnium expressissimum est. Vide, ut unus et idem homo simul servit legi Dei et legi peccati, simul iustus est et peccat (WA 56,47) .
[7] Unus est homo Paulus, qui utrunque de se confitetur, alio et alio respectu, sub gratia est spiritualis, sed sub lege carnalis, idem idem Paulus utrobique.
[8] Heiko A. Oberman, Luther. Man between God and the Devil, 1990; The Two Reformations. The Journey from the Last Days to the New , 2003.
[9] Even Joseph A. Fitzmyer in his commentary (p. 333); correct translation as nearly always Cranfield (p. 137) and laudable is also J. Dunn (p. 145).
[10] Cf. Ovid, Metam. 7,17ss: video meliora proboque deteriora sequor.
[11] Cf. Homi K. Bhabba, The Location of Culture, London 1994