The Appeal of the Message: The Dignifying of the Spiritual Status of the Laity
What was it about these treatises that may have appealed to their lay readers and hearers? To this question I must side with the historian Steven Ozment in his argument with Bernd Moeller. There was very little in these treatises that, at least on the face of it, would naturally resonate with late medieval communal ideas in the manner Moeller proposes.[30] On the other hand, there was a great deal that, if put into effect, would "liberate" lay people from a clerical form of piety, as Ozment has argued. Or to put it another way, the major themes of humility and promise provided an explicit rationale for dignifying the spiritual status of the laity at the expense of clerical privilege and authority.[31] Luther repeatedly drew these consequences for his readers and listeners.
Luther particularly stressed the value of ordinary lay activities over clerically prescribed "good works." For example, in his 1519 sermon on marriage Luther insisted that married people could do no better work either for themselves or for Christendom than raise their children well. "There is nothing in pilgrimages to Rome, to Jerusalem, or to Saint James [Compostella], nothing in building churches, endowing masses, or whatever works might be named compared to this one work, [namely] that those who are married bring up their children [well]. That is their straightest road to heaven. Indeed, heaven could not be nearer or better achieved than with this work."[32] This was, moreover, the laity's proper and appointed work. In another early sermon, on meditating on Christ's passion, Luther continued this practice of unfavorably contrasting clerically sponsored works with what he saw as true piety. A person who rightly contemplated Christ's sufferings for a day, an hour, or even a quarter hour did better than to fast a year, pray a psalm daily, or even hear a hundred masses.[33]
Luther also insisted on the essential spiritual equality of laity and clergy. For example, in his sermon on baptism he denied that the vows
of chastity, of the priesthood, or of the clergy were more significant or higher than baptism. "For in baptism we all vow the same thing: to slay sin and to become holy through the work and grace of God, to whom we give and sacrifice ourselves, as clay to the potter, and in this no one is better than another. But to live according to this baptism, so that sin can be slain, there can be no one way or estate. . . . Thus it is true that there is no higher, better, or greater vow than the vow of baptism."[34]
Luther also undercut the sacramental authority exercised by the priesthood. Consider, for example, Luther's sermon on the sacrament of penance.[35] In this treatise he contrasted the forgiveness of punishment and the forgiveness of guilt. The former, under the control of the church and addressed in part by indulgences, was relatively insignificant in comparison to the latter, which was solely God's gift and reconciled the human with God.[36] To those who thought they might obtain forgiveness of guilt and the quieting of their hearts through indulgences and pilgrimages, Luther wrote,
All that is for nought and an error. It makes things much worse because God must himself forgive sin and give the heart peace. Some trouble themselves with many good works, even too much fasting and drudgery, so that some have thereby broken their bodies and ruined their minds, believing that by virtue of their works they could do away with their sins and quiet their hearts.
But both approaches—those who sought indulgences and went on pilgrimages and those who disciplined their bodies with fasting and labor—made the mistake of wanting to do good works before their sins were forgiven, while in fact the contrary was necessary, that "sins must be forgiven before good works can occur."[37] The efficacy of the sacrament depended not on the sacrament itself or any human office or authority but on faith in the promise of God.[38] On this basis Luther concluded that the forgiveness of guilt depended on no human office or earthly power, not even the office and power of pope, bishop, or priest, but solely on the word of Christ and one's own faith in that word.
For he [Christ] did not want our comfort, our salvation, [or] our trust to be based on a human word or deed but rather solely on himself and his word and deed. The priest, bishop, [and] pope are only servants who hold out to your Christ's word on which you should rely with a solid faith as if on a solid rock. In such fashion the word will sustain you and your sins will thereby necessarily be forgiven. For this reason, too, the word is not to be
honored on account of the priest, bishop, [or] pope but rather the priest, bishop, [or] pope [is to be honored] on account of the word, as those who bring you the word and tidings of your God that you are freed from sins.[39]
Luther argued further that in the sacrament of penance and the forgiveness of guilt, a pope or bishop did no more than the lowliest priest, and that when there was no priest, an individual Christian, even a woman or child, could do as much.[40] Luther qualified his pronouncement with the advice that his readers should not despise the established spiritual orders. Nevertheless, the overall thrust of his argument could not but have had the effect of undercutting clerical authority exercised in the sacrament. Subsequent comments reinforced this impression.[41] That priests reserved absolution for some sins did not make the clerical sacrament any greater or better.[42] The keys were not a power but a service.[43] A priest had sufficient grounds for granting absolution when he saw that the penitent desired it. The priest needed to know no more than that. "I say this," Luther explained,
so that people love and cherish the most gracious virtue of the keys and not despise [them] on account of misuses by those who with banning, threatening, and harassing do little more than make a virtual tyranny out of such a lovely and comforting authority, as if Christ had established the keys only for their wishes and lordship [and] had no idea of how one should use them.[44]
Luther explicitly questioned the need for the priest to inquire into the extent of the penitent's contrition,[45] insisted that because there was no dependable rule for distinguishing between venial and mortal sins, penitents should not attempt to confess all sins but only clearly mortal sins that were oppressing the penitent's conscience at the time,[46] and that the best satisfaction was not assigned prayers but simply to sin no more.[47] Both the treatise and the sermon obviously simplified confession for the laity and undercut some of the conventional claims of the priesthood regarding their own authority exercised in the sacrament of penance. His treatise How One Should Confess made similar points.[48]
The sermon on the ban also undercut many clerical claims and thereby elevated the status and power of the laity over their own spiritual destiny.[49] Luther distinguished between inward, spiritual fellowship on the one hand and external communion on the other. No human being, not even a bishop or pope, could give or take away spiritual fellowship. Rather, God through the Holy Spirit poured this spiritual fellowship into the heart of the human being who believed in
the Sacrament.[50] Bishops and popes could, however, cut one off from participation in what Luther termed the "external, bodily, and visible fellowship" of participation in the Sacrament.[51]
For lay people, however, the crucial significance of this distinction rested in Luther's assertion that one could be under the ban and still belong to the spiritual fellowship or communion, and vice versa. In an age when lay people often found themselves under the ban for debt or other reasons that struck them as irrelevant to Christian faith, this assertion was undoubtedly consoling. "It may often happen," Luther remarked,
that a banned individual will be deprived of the holy Sacrament and also of burial [in consecrated ground], and yet still be inwardly certain and holy in the fellowship of Christ and all the saints, as the Sacrament indicates. On the other hand, there are many who freely enjoy the Sacrament without external ban and yet inwardly are completely estranged and banned from the fellowship of Christ even though they might be buried with gold clothes under the high altar with all show, bells, and singing.[52]
At some length through the rest of the treatise, and with occasional heat, Luther criticized clergy who misused the ban.[53]
Several other treatises of a largely devotional or moral character also dealt, at least in passing, with a few issues of clerical authority. Luther's "Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body of Christ," for example, advocated that a general council should mandate that all Christians receive both the bread and the wine in the Sacrament as the priests currently did.[54] In his morally earnest small sermon on usury, Luther attacked the clerical use of "Zinskauf ," a form of purchase of an annuity, "in the service of God." "To serve God," Luther explained with some evident exasperation, "means to keep his commands and not steal, take, charge interest, and the like, but rather to live and lend to the needy. Would you tear down such true service of God in order that you might build churches, endow altars, and have [masses] read and sung, none of which God has commanded you [to do]?"[55]
In sum, these early Strasbourg treatises urged readers to rely neither on their own efforts nor on the mediating power of clerics or clerically sponsored works but to trust solely in God and God's promise. They questioned clerical claims to jurisdiction and to power, and specifically to mediation between the laity and God. The clergy were to preach the word of God, and only to that extent could they be considered intermediaries. The overarching message in these writings was that the religious destiny of lay Christians was in God's hands rather than their
own. It certainly was not in clerical hands. The laity were freed from the standards of clerical piety, freed from such a thoroughgoing reliance on clerical mediation in their relations with God, freed, above all, from concern about their own worthiness and spiritual efforts.