Printed Aids to the "Right" Understanding of Scripture
In the very first paragraph of his preface, Luther identified his central concern, namely, that the readers of the new Testament be instructed so that they could rightly distinguish "laws and commandments" from the "Gospel and promises of God." This was no simple matter. As the last chapter showed, a majority of those authors publishing in Strasbourg in defense of Luther in 1521–1522 failed to distinguish law and gospel in a manner consistent with Luther's own concerns. While Luther believed that Scripture testified to the inability of human beings to fulfill any law, human or divine, many of the Strasbourg publicists appealed to Scripture alone to invalidate human laws, but went on to insist that Scripture demanded the fulfillment of divine law. To rectify such confusion Luther deployed a range of arguments.
After maintaining that there was but one gospel found in both Old and New Testaments,[6] Luther turned to his central concern that the reader "not make a Moses out of Christ, or a book of law or teachings out of the gospel." For the gospel, Luther insisted, "does not in fact demand our works so that we become pious and holy through them." In fact, it condemned such works. Rather it demanded only faith in Christ, faith "that he has overcome sin, death, and hell for us and thus made us righteous, alive, and saved not through our own works but through his own work, death, and suffering so that we may take on his death and victory as if we had done it ourselves."[7] To be sure, Christ, Peter, and Paul issued commandments and expounded doctrines. But to know Christ's works and his history was not the same as knowing
the true Gospel that Christ had overcome sin, death, and the devil, and hearing the voice that says, "Christ is your own with his life, teaching, works, death, resurrection, and all that which he is, has, does, and can do."[8]
The gospel was not a law book "but only a sermon on the benefits of Christ as shown to us and given to be our own as we believe."[9] No law was given to a believer because he was "justified, alive, and saved through faith." Nothing more was necessary for him except that he should prove this faith. Without explicitly mentioning the Catholic accusation that his teaching undercut good works and promoted antinomianism, Luther offered a retort. Believers who were saved by faith could not in fact restrain themselves from doing good works and showing love towards their neighbors, following Christ's example. In this way one could recognize who Christ's disciples and true believers were, "for where works and love do not break forth, there faith is not right, there the Gospel has not yet taken hold, and Christ is not properly recognized." "Take note," Luther admonished in closing, "apply yourself to the books of the New Testament in this fashion so that you read and understand them in this way."[10]
Drawing on the distinction between law and gospel that he had laid down in his preface, Luther placed in his German New Testament a fascinating one-page excursus entitled "Which Are the True and Most Noble Books of the New Testament." In effect Luther was telling his readers that not all Scripture was of equal value, since not all taught equally well the proper distinction between law and gospel. The Gospel of John, Paul's epistles (especially the one to the Romans), and Peter's first epistle, he argued, were "the true kernel and marrow among all the books." Every Christian should be advised to read them first and most often, and through daily reading to make them as common as one's daily bread. "For in these you do not find much described about the many works and miracles of Christ, but you do find masterfully depicted how faith in Christ overcomes sin, death, and hell and gives life, righteousness, and salvation, which is the true nature of the Gospel."[11] If he had to choose, Luther wrote, he would rather do without knowledge of the works of Christ than do without his preaching. "For the works do not help me at all but his words give life." The Gospel of John wrote little about Christ's works but very much about his preaching, while the other three Gospels described a great deal about his works but little about his words. Accordingly, the Gospel of John "is the one, tender, true, chief gospel" to be greatly
preferred over the other three. Similarly, the letters of Paul and Peter surpassed the other three Gospels. John and the letters of Paul and Peter "are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and salvific for you to know even if you never saw nor heard another book or teaching." In contrast to these, the letter of James was "a true letter of straw for it has nothing of a gospel nature about it."[12]
Luther reinforced this contrast in his table of contents, indicating visually and verbally which books of the New Testament should be seen as authoritative (see plate 3). Twenty-three books were numbered and identified as being written by a saint. Set off from this numbered list by a large blank space, four more books were listed but not numbered: "The Letter to the Hebrews," "The Letter of James," "The Letter of Jude," "The Revelation of John." The visual separation, the lack of numbering, and the omission of the designation "saint" made clear to the reader the secondary status of these works. Luther explained this special category in his preface to Hebrews, where he remarked that these four books had a reputation different from the preceding "true, certain, chief books of the New Testament." In challenging the apostolic provenance of the Epistle of James, Luther observed that it "contradicted Paul and all the rest of Scripture in attributing justification to works" and that it failed to mention the suffering, resurrection, and spirit of Christ. "The true touchstone for judging all books is to see whether they promote Christ or not." But all James did was to promote the law and its works.[13] Luther also spoke dismissively of the Book of Revelation because "Christ is neither taught nor known in it, which is the prime responsibility of an apostle to do." He summed up his point of view with the flat observation, "I stick with those books that give me Christ pure and simply."[14]
Luther let his general foreword suffice for an introduction to the Gospels, including John, but in accordance with his judgment of the central importance of Paul's letter to the Romans, he provided an additional eleven-folio-page foreword to this letter. By contrast, his other forewords were quite short, never more than a folio page and often less. He wrote forewords to each of the rest of Paul's letters and to each of Peter's letters, one short foreword to the three letters of John, a foreword to Hebrews, one foreword to James and Judas, and one to Revelation.
Luther began his lengthy preface to Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans with a ringing declaration: "This epistle is the true, chief part of the New Testament and the purest gospel. It would be right and
Plate 3.
Die Bucher des newen testaments. Table of contents to the first edition ("September
Testament") of Luther's German New Testament (Wittenberg, 1522).
proper not only for a Christian to know it word for word by heart but also to live it daily as the daily bread of the soul, for it can never be read or thought about too much or too well."[15] Accordingly, Luther explained, he would do his best with God's help "to prepare an entrance into it [Romans] with this preface . . . so that everyone can understand it better, for heretofore it has been wickedly obscured by glosses and all sorts of twaddle, although it itself is a bright light nearly sufficient to illuminate all of Scripture."[16]
Luther's assertion is worth pondering for a moment. Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans is for Luther the "purest gospel," because it taught more clearly than any other book the right understanding of law and gospel. Together with the Gospel of John and the other letters of Saint Paul and Saint Peter, it formed in effect a canon within the canon. A proper understanding of these "preeminent" books allowed the reader rightly to interpret the rest of Scripture. Scripture interpreted itself, yet as Luther himself remarked, Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans had been "wickedly obscured by glosses and all sorts of twaddle." Before Scripture could interpret itself, the obscurity had to be lifted from the key to the self-interpretation of Scripture. Printing provided the means, with prefaces and marginalia (not to mention a theologically inspired translation) that opened the "true, chief part of the New Testament" to do its duty. In fact, it was the printed text of Scripture that interpreted itself.
In his preface Luther laid out what he understood St. Paul to mean in Romans by terms such as "law," "sin," "grace," "faith," "righteousness," "flesh," "spirit," and the like. In so doing, of course, he was telling his readers how they should understand these words as they read not only the epistle but Scripture generally. He began, for example, with his central concern: the relation between law, works, and grace. "The little word 'law,'" he explained, "you must not understand here in a human fashion as if it were a teaching about what works are to be done or to be omitted as is the case with human laws where one satisfies the law with works even if the heart is not in it."[17] Rather, law was spiritual and could be fulfilled only if God's Spirit fashioned the human heart to desire after it willingly. "So accustom yourself to this way of speaking," Luther directed his readers, "that it is two quite different things to do the works of the law and to fulfill the law."[18] To fulfill the law was to do its works with pleasure and love and without the compulsion of the law. This was only possible as a gift of the Holy Spirit, and the gift of the Holy Spirit came only through faith,
and, finally, faith only came through God's Word or Gospel, which preached Christ. "So it happens that only faith justifies and fulfills the law, for it, through Christ's merit, brings the Spirit, which makes the heart happy and free, as the law demands. Thus good works proceed from faith itself."[19] In similar fashion Luther defined the other key terms in the epistle, emphasizing in each case the right and wrong way to understand these crucial concepts.
Although his preface to Romans represented Luther's most elaborate attempt to influence how Scriptures were read, most of the remaining, much shorter prefaces, continued to sound the central themes concerning law and gospel. Specifically, issues of law and gospel are dealt with in the prefaces to 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Peter, and the three epistles of Saint John (all regarding the first epistle), and in the dismissive preface to Revelation. In the prefaces to Galatians, Philippians, 1 Timothy, Titus, and 2 Peter, Luther equated the "false apostles" or "false teachers" with those who taught that one could be saved through works of the law. For example, in the preface to Galatians, Luther remarked that Paul brought the Galatians "to the true Christian faith, from the law to the Gospel. . . . But after his departure false apostles came, who were disciples of the true apostles and who returned the Galatians to the belief that they must be saved through works of the law and that they sinned when they did not keep the works of the law."[20] But Paul taught that everyone must be justified through Christ alone and without merit, works, or law. Paul, Luther explained, showed that "the law brings more sin and curse than justification, which is promised solely through God's grace and fulfilled by Christ without the law and given to us." Works of love should follow faith.[21]
The contemporary situation was very much in Luther's mind as he wrote these prefaces. In the prefaces to 1 Timothy and Titus, Luther explained that Paul directed bishops to maintain true faith and love and resist the "false preachers of the law" who wished, alongside Christ and the Gospel, to promote the works of the law.[22] Paul taught that a true bishop or pastor should be "one who is pious and learned in preaching the Gospel and in refuting the false teachers of works and human law, who are always fighting against faith and seducing consciences from Christian freedom into the captivity of their own human works, which are in fact useless."[23] Luther clearly did not think that contemporary bishops and pastors were following Paul's
teaching. In fact, in the prefaces to 2 Timothy and 2 Peter, Luther insisted that Paul's prophecies regarding the Endtime and Peter's criticism of "avarice, pride, sacrilege, whoring, and hypocrisy" applied to the clergy of his own day.[24]
Readers could, of course, skip the foreword and prefaces. It was more difficult, however, to ignore the glosses that ran down the margins on many of the pages. With this visually unavoidable commentary, Luther further directed readers in their reading of the New Testament. Even a simple cross tabulation can orient us to the overall effort.
What were the issues about which Luther most wanted to influence interpretation? Table 10 offers a tabulation of glosses in the first edi-
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tion (known as the "September Testament" from its September 1522 printing date) sorted by frequency of glosses per page.[25] Although the Gospel According to Saint Matthew has the largest total number of glosses with eighty-eight, three letters of Saint Paul—Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Ephesians—were most heavily glossed, and Romans led with an average of two and a half glosses per page. Of those books that have an average of at least one gloss per page, five of the six are letters of Saint Paul. The Gospel According to Saint Matthew is the only non-Pauline letter to receive comparable attention. Luther devoted more effort—measured at least by glosses per page—to directing the reading of a major part of the Pauline corpus than to any other part of the New Testament.
When examined for content, these glosses reveal even more clearly Luther's central concerns. Table 10 also lists the number of glosses in each book that either dealt with the issues of faith, law, and gospel as defined in our discussion of Luther's prefaces or criticized by name the papacy or monasticism.[26] Just as Luther gave Romans the largest individual preface of any book and devoted to Romans the greatest number of glosses per page, he also devoted over half (58 percent) of his glosses to the issues of law and gospel. Of the six books with more than one gloss per page, only Galatians had a higher percentage with 75 percent. Given the central importance of these two books for Luther's understanding of the gospel, these statistics are hardly surprising, and they illustrate the care with which Luther attempted to direct the reading of these crucial books. Over one-third (38 percent) of the glosses on the one non-Pauline book in this company—the Gospel According to Saint Matthew—also dealt with issues of law and gospel.
Overall, 42 percent of the glosses in the German New Testament dealt with issues of law and gospel, faith and works, Christian freedom and promise. Of those glosses that dealt with theological issues generally (as opposed to simple identifications of places, persons, or terms), fully half (50 percent) of the glosses dealt with these issues. These statistics are a stark indication of the effort Luther put into helping his readers understand the New Testament as he himself did.
With the aid of one of the Catholic critics of Luther's translation, we can see in a few examples how both Luther's translation and the accompanying glosses encouraged a reading of the text that differed sharply from a Catholic reading. The critic is Hieronymus Emser, who at the encouragement of his prince, Duke Georg of Albertine Saxony,
issued an apology for the duke's recent order to his subjects to turn over copies of Luther's German New Testament .[27] In late September 1523, the press of Wolfgang Stöckel at Leipzig issued this lengthy apology, entitled On What Grounds and for What Reason Luther's Translation of the New Testament Should Properly Be Forbidden to the Common Man . The treatise's subtitle announced to the reader Emser's intention to explain how and where Luther distorted the text and how he employed glosses and prefaces to mislead readers "from the ancient Christian way."[28]
Emser methodically criticized the whole German New Testament . The thrust of his concern can best be illustrated by looking at the crucial book from Luther's perspective, Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans, specifically at the book's crucial chapter 3, in which Paul argued that all were under the power of sin and all were justified by God's free grace through Christ's sacrificial death (see plate 4). In these examples Emser sought to show that the interpretation that seemed to Luther natural and proper was in fact forced and contrived. Without Luther's glosses and particular translation, Emser maintained, the text yielded a quite different meaning.
Emser objected first to the initial gloss,[29] in which Luther asserted that we should acknowledge our sin. Here is an excerpt from Luther's gloss:
But the 'works-saints' [werckheylige[*] ] quarrel with God over this acknowledgment, and do not wish to allow their works to be sin and so God must be their liar and condemned in his words. For they look at only the crude sinful deeds [wercksund ] and not the deep, chief original sin, in which nature is conceived, born, and lives, about which, however, David speaks in the verse. This is what Paul means, that sin does not glorify God (otherwise it would be better to sin than to do good) but rather the confession of sin glorifies God and his grace.[30]
Emser found this gloss highly tendentious. "He wishes to convince us," Emser wrote, "to recognize that all our works are sins, since sin also remains in us after baptism, according to his opinion." But that was false and a lie in two respects, for Paul testified in Romans 8 that "all our sin is taken away through faith and baptism." Paul also said that there was "nothing damning" [nichtzit vordamlichs ] in those who were in Christ Jesus and did not live according to the flesh. "Just as no one may say that he is without sin, thus no one may truly say that all works are sin, for if fasting, giving of alms, praying, doing penance, etc., were sins, then God would have commanded sin and Christ him-
Plate 4.
A Page of Text and Marginalia from the Third Chapter of Romans.
From the first edition ("September Testament") of Luther's
German New Testament (Wittenberg, 1522).
self would have sinned, for he himself also fasted, prayed, preached, and did good works."[31]
Emser also disputed Luther's translation of verses 23–24[32] and their accompanying gloss. Luther's translation reads, "For there is here no distinction: they are all indeed sinners and lack the glory which God should have regarding them, and [they] are justified without merit, out of his grace, through the redemption that has occurred through Christ, which God has put forward as a mercy-seat through faith in his blood."[33] In his gloss to this verse Luther advised the reader that this
is the main issue and center of this epistle and of the whole Scripture. Namely, that everything is sin that is not redeemed through the blood of Christ and justified through faith. Therefore understand [grasp] this text well, for here all merit of works [werck verdienst ] and boasting is laid low.[34]
Emser first objected to the translation itself. "Now of course you dear lords and friends note that Luther wishes to lead and seduce the poor ignorant [people] to his place of lies, for, in the first place, he mistranslates the words of Paul, who does not say, 'they are all sinners,' but rather 'they have all sinned and lack the glory of God.'" It was two different things, Emser insisted, to have committed sin and to be a sinner.[35] It was for this reason, he went on, that Paul said that in this respect there was no distinction between Jews and pagans, for we have all sinned. Paul did not say, however, that all our works were sin or that we all were sinners and remained sinners. In that case, Emser asked, "what use to us would be baptism, confession, and the other sacraments through which our sins are taken away and forgiven?"[36]
Turning to the gloss, Emser stated that it was also not true, as Luther contended, that in this passage all "merit of works" [werck vordinst ] was laid low. Rather, the only works that were "laid low" were those which occurred outside of grace and faith. And even these works, Emser contended, were not completely without merit.[37]
There was one more gloss in chapter three in Luther's German New Testament , and Emser did not leave it unremarked upon. To the last phrase of the last verse of the chapter ("Are we rescinding the law through faith? That is far from our intention. Rather we are setting the law up [on its proper footing]"),[38] Luther glossed that "faith fulfills all the law; works fulfill not a tittle of the law."[39] Emser replied, "if Luther had even a faith to topple mountains [but was] with-
out works and love, then his faith would not be worth a tittle, for neither faith nor works nor works without faith fulfill the law but only the two together with divine grace united with each other." For Emser the bottom line was clear. "There must be doing with believing; otherwise nothing comes of it."[40]
Although Emser did not single it out for criticism in this treatise, there was one other verse in the third chapter to which other Catholic critics were to take strong exception. In The New English Bible this crucial verse 28 is translated, "For our argument is that a man is justified by faith quite apart from success in keeping the law." In Luther's translation, the choice of words and word order drove home his understanding of "faith alone apart from works of the law." "Thus we maintain that the human being is made righteous not through doing the work of the law, [but] solely through faith [So halten wyrs nu, das der mensch gerechtfertiget werde, on zuthun der werck des gesetzs, alleyn durch de[*]glawben ]."[41] To make his theological point emphatic, Luther had added a word not in the Greek or Latin texts, the word "solely" or "alleyn ": "solely through faith [alleyn durch de[*] glawben ]." In his 1530 Open Letter on Translating and Petitioning the Saints[42] he replied to his critics that this addition was necessary to translate the Greek into good German.[43] Of course, it also reinforced his theological concerns and assisted readers in reading the text as Luther thought they should.
All of these examples illustrate ways in which Luther attempted to lead the reader into what he believed to be the correct understanding of the New Testament. For our purposes it is beside the point to ask whether Luther or Emser had a better case, either in these few examples or in all the disputed passages and glosses of the whole German New Testament . It suffices to note that Luther chose to translate crucial passages in a way not only consistent with his theological program but in a way that tended to reinforce the points he wanted the reader to take away from the text. The two examples from this chapter—to translate "they are all sinners" rather than "they have all sinned," and to add the emphatic "alleyn " to verse 28—amply document this point. The glosses made explicit how the text was to be understood and thereby offered additional guidance to the reader. Even the physical layout of the text assisted Luther in making his points. Luther chose to begin new paragraphs with two of the crucial verses we have been considering, 23 and 28, although the conventional paragraphing (that is, the paragraph breaks in the Vulgate edition) came at verses 21 and
31. Even visually, for Luther, these crucial verses stand out on the page. The new paragraphing was but one part of a concerted attempt to direct the reader, but Catholics such as Hieronymus Emser would not go along.
Luther also reinforced the antipapal message of several of his prefaces and glosses in three of the twenty-one large full-page woodcuts depicting matters discussed in the Revelation of John.[44] These three woodcuts provoked considerable outcry since they showed the dragon and the whore of Babylon wearing triple crowns like the papal tiara (see plates 5 and 6). It took little imagination to read the message in this contemporary allusion. The other New Testament books went unillustrated except for woodcut initial letters.