The Catholic Reading of Christian Freedom
Emser read Luther's "Christian freedom" as subversive to social order and as encouraging sin. He argued that Luther had condemned the authority of both estates and turned lords into subjects and subjects into lords and made everyone free.[28] Emser objected, for example, that in his translation of I Corinthians 10, Luther glossed a verse concerning freedom from dietary regulation with the comment "Christ is free and so too are all Christians in all things." And Emser added, "Luther promotes the same thing concerning freedom in many places in his Testament."[29] Emser also objected to Luther's rhetorical question in To the German Nobility , why should we become bound by the word of a man since we are all born free in baptism and subject only to the divine word? For Emser, when Luther rejected ordinances or distinctions of rank that limited Christian freedom, when he advocated the freedom to commune in both kinds without all the regulation of the Mass, he was counseling sedition and rejecting legitimate authority.[30]
Johann Cochlaeus agreed. In the 1527 Dresden reprint of his Answer to Luther's Treatise "Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants ," he stated that the Lutherans, "under the sem-
blance of Scripture with cunning and deceitful exegesis have so brought the poor unlearned people around to the false freedom of baptism that they believe that since we are all brothers in Christ through baptism, all things should be equal among us, as happens with true brothers." He then addressed Luther directly and cited from Luther's On the Babylonian Captivity, "'I tell you truly,' you said, 'that no law can justly be imposed on Christians, neither by human beings nor by angels, no matter how much they wish to, since we are free from them all.'"[31]
The man responsible for the Cochlaeus reprint in Dresden, Petrus Sylvius, summed up the controversialists' position in his 1527 A Clear Demonstration . "And in truth had the Christian princes not been so soon awakened against the Lutheran peasants," Sylvius wrote, "then the Lutheran teaching would have turned all lordship and authorities into peasants and there would have not only been no divine service or houses of God but also no castle or noble estate left undestroyed in the German lands." Sylvius was convinced that this contention could be proved from Luther's own writings. One would have had the Lutheran writings and teachings to thank for the overturning of all authority and the destruction of religion, "since Luther has written from the beginning of his publication and especially in the treatise on Christian Freedom and the Babylonian Captivity that each Christian should be and is free as a matter of right and should be himself a lord, prince, king, bishop, and pope since they were all to a man priests and kings. And each should believe, celebrate, and do whatever he wishes, however he wishes, without regard for anyone."[32] Sylvius buttressed his assertion with reference to Emser's Against Luther's 'Abomination' (1525), Cochlaeus's Answer . . . to Martin Luther's Book (1525), and the works of "many others."[33]
Underpinning this freedom, as these Catholic authors saw it, was, in Cochlaeus's words, the "false principle that faith alone justifies and sanctifies."[34] Luther knew, Paul Bachmann wrote sarcastically, "that no believer goes to hell even if he is a murderer, thief, a robber, an adulterer and so on. Because no sin condemns a person, only lack of belief."[35] And Johannes Fabri, later bishop of Vienna, remarked with a touch of Schadenfreude regarding the lament in the Saxon Visitation Articles that too much was being taught about the forgiveness of sin and too little about repentance, "Yes, dear Luther, not only a few but nearly all your disciples have for more than ten years not said or taught anything else but that only by faith, that faith alone justifies,
that mere faith makes one blessed, that one should only believe and that is sufficient. And who, but you, first brought this teaching up?"[36] This indeed was their complaint against Luther and his "disciples" made twelve years ago, "that you forever preached naked faith alone so that the common people, unfortunately, have fallen away from all fear of God, good conscience, love of neighbor, good works, indeed all Christian honesty." Fabri drew a stark conclusion from this: "And who, other than you, is [therefore] responsible for those innocent children who were slain and perished in the Peasants' War?"[37] As he read it, Luther's Christian freedom gave the appearance of teaching improvement and edification but in fact was a "fleshly freedom" that came down to "whatever one wanted to say, one said, and whatever one wished to do, one did."[38]
But the Catholic objection went beyond the reliance on "mere faith." For, as they saw it, Luther said not only that faith without works saved, but that a striving after good works could actually damn. Luther, Sylvius explained in his 1534 The Last Two Books , "rejects and slanders good works, even those done as well as possible, as if they were simply horrible sins, and [he] considers as no sins all the vices and wickedness that one can produce, and [he] wishes to deal before God with mere faith alone without any divine love and Christian works."[39] He and his colleagues read Luther to say that "mere, naked faith" would save, apart from works, and that traditional good works such as the Mass were not only unnecessary but positively harmful. As Johannes Mensing put it, "They have promised the people very many freedoms so that they become, indeed, slaves to their flesh . . . so that they would prefer to outrage virgins than to hold mass."[40] Paul Bachmann read Luther much the same way:
Like the hellish spirits he [Luther] teaches that one should avoid the good and do what is wicked. That is, his teaching is that one should protect oneself from all godly and human laws and commands and from all good works, which God has commanded to do, more than from all sins, and that one should only cling to bare faith, and that he who does all sorts of evil yet relies only on naked faith strengthens faith and is made blessed and holy. But he who does good, what God has commanded to do, has destroyed the faith and is condemned.[41]
Sylvius can be seen to sum up the connection he and his fellow controversialists saw between Christian freedom and equality, "mere" faith, the avoidance of good works, and the Peasants' War. Luther's teachings about Christian freedom and equality made the "Lutheran
common people" unable to tolerate authority or be anyone's subject. The "black Lutheran peasants" and "his" Anabaptists had already dared to practice Luther's teaching that in Christendom there could and should be no authority but rather everyone should be equal to every other. Looking towards the future, Sylvius predicted that the "Lutheran common folk"
will cultivate division, unrest, war, robbery, [and] murder, not only against true Christendom but also against each other. [They will do this] all on account of the many-sided and self-contradictory, wicked Lutheran teaching and their wicked lives, as Luther teaches . . . that one can and may freely practice and commit every vice and wickedness even of the whole world and it would be no sin if one only had mere faith. But one should only protect oneself from good works for although they are done in the best way, they would nevertheless be nothing more than horrible sins.[42]
All the elements of the Catholic view are present in this one summary statement.