Kayahan acar biography of martin luther
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After the Heidelberg meeting in October 1518, Luther was told to recant his positions by the Papal Legate, Thomas Cardinal Cajetan. 334–749.
Secondary texts
- Alfsvåg, Knut, 2015, “Luther on Necessity”, Harvard Theological Review, 108(1): 52–69.
The Majesty that is the creator of all must bow down to one of the dregs of his creation, and the famed Corycian cavern must reverse its role and stand in awe of the spectators!… [W]hat becomes of the potter’s power to make what he likes, if he is subjected to merits and laws and not allowed to make what he likes, but required to make what he ought?
Luther, however, responded a year later to Erasmus’s intentionally measured and urbane effort with what amounts to a diatribe in the modern form, entitled De servo arbitrio, which may be translated “On the bondage [or slavery] of the will [or free choice]”. And while Luther does not mention him explicitly in the Disputation, not surprisingly he elsewhere occasionally but strongly criticizes Aquinas for also falling under the baleful influence of Aristotle on this issue.[22]
It has also been argued by commentators that this radical critique of Aristotle from the perspective of his view of justification and grace also results in a departure not only from Aristotle’s ethics of the virtues, but also some fundamental assumptions of Aristotelian metaphysics, and its commitment to the substance/attribute model.
In 1512 Luther replaced Staupitz at the university in Wittenberg as professor of the Bible (which was the common title for a chair in theology), a position he was to hold until his death.[3] Earlier in the same year, Luther returned from his only excursion beyond German lands, travelling to Rome on behalf of Staupitz; he was later to present this as an experience that began to turn him against the religious rituals and practices he found there, including that of indulgences.
Assurance evaded him however. Luther was haunted by insecurity about his salvation (he describes these insecurities in striking tones and calls them Anfectungen or Afflictions.) A monastery was the perfect place to find assurance. 3–120
- Hockenbery Dragseth, Jennifer (ed), 2011, The Devil’s Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
- Kellerman, James A., 2008, “A Pure Critique of Reason: Reason within the Limits of Sound Theology Alone”, Logia, 17(4): 31–38.
- Kolb, Robert, 2002, “Luther on the Theology of the Cross”, Lutheran Quarterly, 16: 443–466.
- Leppin, Volker, 2017b, “Luther’s Mystical Roots”, in Melloni 2017: 157–171.
These der ‘Heidelberger Disputation’ von 1518”, Lutherjahrbuch, 48: 54–79.
Luther on Free Will
Primary texts
- Luther, Martin, 1525, The Bondage of the Will (WA 18: 600–787/LW 33:3–295).
- Erasmus, Desiderius, 1524 [1969], On the Freedom of the Will, E. Gordon Rupp and A.
N. Marlow (trans.), in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1969, pp. Third, in attributing these capacities to ourselves, there is the danger of a kind of theological pride which will disastrously distort our proper relation to God. Fourth, to take reason to be capable of more than helping us navigate the world is to misunderstand its function in our epistemic economy, an economy which can ultimately be traced back to God’s design.[13] Finally, and perhaps most importantly, reason must struggle to make sense of the sheer gratuitousness of God’s forgiveness of our sins, which transcend its sense of justice and fairness, and will as a result lead us to question and doubt that forgiveness, with disastrous consequences.[14]
For Luther, these limitations of reason can be felt within theology in the kind of puzzlement and perplexity which reason feels when confronted by the scriptures and faith, where such puzzlement combined with an undue estimation of reason can lead to the overthrow of the latter by the former.
Luther first responded with relative moderation in his Admonition to Peace, in which after criticising both the rulers and the peasants, he urged dialogue between the two parties. (WA 18:665/LW 33:109)
Luther then turns to consider Erasmus’s treatment of the effect of the Fall on the human will, in which Erasmus had distinguished three views on where this left free choice once the Pelagian option is set aside: those that hold human beings can choose to strive towards the good but cannot attain it without grace (co-operative grace); those who hold that left to ourselves we only choose to sin, so that grace alone can enable us to attain the good; and those who hold there is no free choice at all, which is thus said to be “an empty” name—where Erasmus calls this view “the hardest of all”, and is of course the one put forward by Luther himself (as well as John Wyclif in his early work, who Erasmus associated with Luther, an association the latter was happy to accept).[29] Luther’s strategy in response is to argue that by conceding that human beings without grace cannot will the good, Erasmus has already ruled out the first option even though he is clearly attracted by it, while Luther argues that the second must collapse into the third, as if free choice in humans is always for sin, it always goes in one direction and so is not really choice at all.
Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 65 vols.
Diet of Worms
Luther came face to face with the power of the Roman Catholic Church and empire at Worms in 1521. Luther’s Doctrine of the Three Estates”, C. Helmer (trans.), Lutheran Quarterly. Luther argues once again, therefore, that Erasmus’s argument overshoots and so undermines itself.
In the fifth part of his text, Luther moves on to discussing Erasmus’s arguments over the scriptural passages which Luther had used to challenge free choice in his Assertio.
In some contexts, this led him to polemicizing against reason and philosophy (most notoriously in his assertion that “reason is the devil’s whore” as it “can do nothing else but slander and dishonour what God does and says” (Against the Heavenly Prophets, 1525, WA 18:164/LW 40:175)); but as many would now argue, it would be wrong to take such remarks in isolation and out of context, and to thereby characterise his position as “irrationalist” in a broad sense.
Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998. In considering this issue, Erasmus had made use of the scholastic distinction between the necessity of the consequence and the necessity of the consequent, arguing that while it may be that if God wills something it happens necessarily (necessity of the consequence), it does not follow that this happening is necessary (necessity of the consequent), thus leaving space for free choice (Erasmus 1524 [1969: 66–8]).
Barring a brief secret visit back to Wittenberg in December 1521, he was based there until he could return openly to the city on 6 March 1522. These years are marred by his vitriolic attacks on both Turks (and thus Islam) and Jews, in a marked change of tone from his earlier more considered and appreciative reflections, which had included That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew (1523)—although his positive remarks are based on hopes of Jewish conversion, while many of his comments in his unpublished lectures on Psalms had been hostile; partly because those hopes did not materialise, by 1538 Luther was writing Against the Sabbatarians, a polemic which he was to continue to the end of his life in further anti-Jewish texts.[8]
The end of that life was to come on 18 February 1546, in the town of Eisleben where he had been born.
Luther’s response is that while these authorities may have said there is free choice, in their actions they have not shown they possess it, while they also have all conceived of it in rather different ways, so it is not clear that there is any consensus here at all—and at the same time, Luther argues that the all-important figure of Augustine is on his side, not Erasmus’s as the latter had claimed.