Luther's Charismatic Authority
To understand Capito's labored attempt to depict Luther as just another human being (while still admitting that he was "greater in the exegesis of Scripture that anyone we have had in many hundreds of years"), it is necessary to recall the authority that Luther had acquired
over the last several years and the role it was playing in this dispute over the Supper. For some years the Evangelical press had been portraying him as anything but just another human being.
Chapter 4 explored the public persona that Luther had acquired by 1521–1522. In visual terms, woodcuts such the one that graced two editions of Luther's speech at the Diet of Worms presented Luther as a monk (monastic habit), doctor (doctoral beret), and man of the Bible (held in his hands) who was inspired by God (the dove of the Holy Spirit and the nimbus of a saint).[26] The Strasbourg publicists had given additional content to these signs, describing Luther as everything from a "preacher of truth"[27] to a "light of Christendom," whom God had chosen and sent into the world "to tell us your divine word,"[28] or even a "Christian Angel" sent "to us by God, ordained and raised up in the fervor of the spirit of Elisha."[29] He had been cheered for his attack on the papacy, an attack that for many had apocalyptic overtones, and warmly seconded for his insistence on Scripture alone. His anger and abusiveness had given some people pause, but most of his supporters thought it justified by the enormity of the papal tyranny that he was fighting. His defiant speech at Worms had only confirmed the laudatory picture of him propagated by his supporters.
By the beginnings of the Sacramentarian controversy in 1524–1525 Luther's authority, if anything, had grown. For the past five years his publications had flooded the German-speaking lands in an ever rising tide. In Strasbourg itself well over 150 printings of works by Luther had appeared by the end of 1523.[30] People were purchasing Luther, reading Luther, and purchasing him again. No other author came within publishing even a tenth of Luther's volume. This by itself conveyed massive authority, or rather manifested the authority that alone could account for the demand that such massive printings and reprintings reflected.
To be sure, Luther himself and his fellow publicists pointed insistently to Scripture alone as the sole authority for deciding questions of Christian truth. But Luther had convinced large numbers of people—or at least crucial numbers of significant people, namely, other Evangelical publicists—that his interpretation of Scripture was the "right, true, and godly" reading. As if to bolster this authority as an exegete, Luther had issued his own translation of Scripture along with incisive prefaces and glosses, a translation, as we have seen, that quickly swept the field, coming by 1524 to be cited by almost three-quarters of the other publicists who were explicating Scripture.[31] Even
in an argument about the right understanding of "Scripture alone," Martin Luther enjoyed unparalleled authority.
Once Luther's special authority was established, it was only a matter of time before it itself would become an issue even within the Evangelical ranks. With the outbreak of the inter-Evangelical controversy over the presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, Luther faced novel tactical challenges to the propagation of his understanding of the Gospel. As I have argued at length,[32] it had not been difficult in controversies with Catholics to get the public to see that there were fundamental differences between the Catholic and Evangelical understanding of the Christian message. Since each side based its arguments on different authorities, the reasons for the disagreements were apparent, and each was certain that he was right and his opponent wrong. The various members of the Reformation movement, however, were generally in agreement on the central principles that differentiated their beliefs from Catholicism, and most of them accepted the Scripture as the only authority and source of doctrine. Yet despite their common use of Scripture as the sole basis for their position, each side was, ultimately, unable to convince the other of its error. As we saw in the last chapter, whatever the cogency of the theological principle that Scripture interprets itself, in practice at least among sinful human beings, the "right" understanding of Scripture was not always easily determined. Luther faced the difficult task of convincing people that in this appeal to a common authority, Scripture, his reading was correct. To complicate this task, Luther had to convince his readers that the disagreement was of such significance that it outweighed the widespread perceived agreement on most of the rest of the Evangelical agenda.
Given the confusion that the debate engendered within the Evangelical ranks, Luther had to find a way to help those who were bewildered to see that the disagreement was significant and real, and to make it as likely as possible that they would choose to support his side of the controversy. He could of course rely on whatever force his scriptural and theological arguments carried, and the great bulk of his treatises are devoted to the exegesis of Scripture and debate over theology. But in the confusing context of so internecine a quarrel, this alone was not enough. Luther also needed to sharpen the differences between himself and his Evangelical opponents to make the choice even clearer. He did this by maligning his opponents and thus raising doubts about the validity of doctrine espoused by such evil men. He
also delicately claimed special authority for himself, and on this basis attempted to get those who were unsure or who did not fully understand the disagreement or its significance to accept his position.
Before the "reconciliation" announced in Karlstadt's Explanation , Luther had issued three blistering attacks on Karlstadt: Letter to the Christians at Strasbourg Regarding the Fanatic Spirit , and parts one and two of Against the Heavenly Prophets . These attacks drew heavily on biblical images and models that would be widely recognized by Luther's readers. For example, in his Letter , he began with a warning that the true gospel was always attacked, persecuted, and tested "from both sides": "Christ must have not only Caiaphas among his enemies, but also Judas among his friends."[33] In this case it was clear that the Judas was Dr. Karlstadt. In his opening lines to the first part of Against the Heavenly Prophets , Luther wrote, "Doctor Karlstadt has fallen away from us, [and] has in addition become our worst enemy." And he quickly added, "May Christ grant that we be not afraid and may he give us his mind and courage, that we may not err or despair before the Satan who here purports to rectify the Sacrament but has something quite different in mind, namely, with cunning interpretation of the Scripture to spoil the whole teaching of the gospel, which he has thus far been unable to silence with force."[34] This identification of Karlstadt with Satan runs throughout the treatise, allowing Luther to attack not only Karlstadt's argument but Karlstadt himself.
In fact, the treatise was directed, as its title suggests, at all fanatics and "heavenly prophets," not just Karlstadt. Although much of the treatise dealt directly with Karlstadt, it was actually Karlstadt's spirit , which Luther maintained was the same spirit driving Thomas Müntzer, the Zwickau prophets (three men who had visited Luther in 1522, claiming direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit), and the other "heavenly prophets," that bore the brunt of Luther's attack. And Karlstadt was faulted not only for what he had allegedly done but also for what his spirit was allegedly capable of doing, given the opportunity. This "tactic" entailed among other things Luther's charge that Karlstadt was impelled by the "Allstedt spirit," that is, by the same "rebellious, murderous, seditious" spirit that drove Thomas Müntzer and had led to violence in Allstedt and elsewhere. Karlstadt was subsumed under the biblical image of the false prophet. Luther went on at some length to explain and justify this accusation.[35]
Not only did Luther attempt to discredit Karlstadt by identifying him with the biblical false prophets, motivated by the spirit of Satan,
he also attempted in a careful way to bolster his own authority as a trustworthy exegete of Scripture and even instrument of God. In his Letter to the Christians at Strasbourg , he prefaced his discussion of Karlstadt's contentions with a caveat and an appeal to his personal authority:
Now my most dear friends, I am not your preacher. No one is obliged to believe me. Each one is responsible for himself. I can warn everyone, I can restrain no one. I hope, too, that you have come thus far to know me through my writings to be one who has dealt so clearly and assuredly with the gospel, the grace of Christ, the law, faith, love, the cross, human law, [and] what one should think of the pope, the monastic estate, and masses, and all the chief matters that a Christian needs to know, so that I am beyond reproach in this regard. And [I hope that it] cannot indeed be denied that I have been an unworthy instrument of God, through whom He has helped many souls.[36]
He advised the Strasbourgeois to hold to the single question: what made a person a Christian? All else was of minor importance, concerned with mere external matters. Those who were unable to take this advice should go slowly and wait for what Luther or others would have to say. "I have thus far dealt rightly and properly with the main points [of faith]," he contended, adding that anyone who claimed otherwise could not be a good spirit. "I hope," he said, "[that] I would not spoil even the external matters on which these prophets devote all their energy."[37]
Luther carefully qualified this appeal to authority with an admonition that accorded fully with his public persona as a "man of the Bible." But all this trading of accusations, Luther maintained, was the devil's trick, diverting men from the proper study of the gospel. They should ask their "Evangelists" to point them "away from Luther and Karlstadt" and towards Christ but not, as Karlstadt did, only to his work, where Christ was an example, which was the least important aspect of Christ and made him comparable to other saints. Rather they should ask to be pointed towards Christ as God's gift or, as Paul said, as "the power, wisdom, righteousness, redemption, and sanctification of God, given to us."[38] Luther had offered similar advice in the past. So long as the debate was with Catholics, this humble appeal to Scriptures served him well. But in this internecine debate over the Supper, Scripture alone proved insufficient to settle the dispute. Other participants would point to such comments in an attempt to minimize Luther's authority in the dispute. And Luther himself would find it
necessary to supplement his scriptural arguments with increasing appeals to his own special authority.