Dr. Martin Luther
21st January 2005, 06:51 PM
The Pagan Servitude of the Church, more commonly known as The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, belongs to the series of pivotal writings of 1520. Chief among the background factors precipitating Luther's writing are undoubtedly the withholding of the cup in the Mass from the laity and the fact that he had been excommunicated. In that setting, Luther addresses himself to the total sacramental understanding of the Roman Church and, in contrast, develops a Biblical and Reformation conception of the sacraments and of the Church. In reading this document, it is well to remember that it was written on the eve of developments which led to the organization of Reformation churches. It represents a theological viewpoint which made the Reformation necessary.
Martin Luther on Marriage
Marriage
There is no Scriptural warrant whatsoever for regarding marriage as a sacrament; and indeed the Romanists have used the same traditions, both to extol it as a sacrament, and to make it naught but a mockery. Let us look into this matter.
We have maintained that a word of divine promise is associated with every sacrament, and anyone who receives the sacrament must also believe in that word of promise, for it is impossible that the sign should in itself be the sacrament. But nowhere in Scripture do we read anyone would receive the grace of God by getting married; nor does the rite of matrimony contain any hint that the ceremony is of divine institution. Nowhere do we read that it was instituted by god in order to symbolize something, although we grant that all things done in the sight of men can be understood as metaphors and allegories of things invisible. Yet metaphors and allegories are not sacraments, and it is of sacraments that we are speaking.
There has been such a thing as marriage itself ever since the beginning of the world, and also exists amongst unbelievers to the present day. Therefore no grounds exist on which the Romanists can validly call it a sacrament of the new law, and a function solely of the church. The marriages of our ancestors were no less sacred than our own, nor less real among unbelievers than believers. Yet no one calls marriage of unbelievers a sacrament. Also, there are irreligious marriages even amongst believers , worse than among any pagans. Why then should it be called a sacrament in such a case, and yet not among pagans? Or are we talking the same sort of nonsense about marriage as about baptism and the church, and saying it is only a sacrament within the church? Is it the case that some people speak as if they were demented, and declare that temporal power exists only in the church? Yet this is so childish and laughable as to expose our ignorance and foolhardiness to the ridicule of unbelievers.
The Romanists will reply that the apostle says in Ephesians 5 (:32f), "The twain shall become one flesh; this is a great sacrament." Do you mean to contradict this plain statement of the apostle? My reply would be to put forth this argument shows great negligence, and very careless and thoughtless reading. Nowhere in Holy Scripture does the noun, "sacrament" bear the meaning which is customary in the church, but rather the opposite. In every instance, it means, not "a sign of something sacred", but the sacred secret, and recondite thing itself. Thus in I Corinthians 4 (:1), Paul says: "Let a man so account of us, as of ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of god", that is the sacraments. Where the Vulgate uses sacramentum, the Greek text reads mysterion, a word which the translator sometimes translates, and sometimes transliterates. Thus in the present case, the Greek says: "The twain shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery." That explains how it came about that they understood it as a sacrament of the new dispensation, and this they would have been far from doing if they had read mysterion, as it is in Greek.
So also in I Timothy 3 (:16), Paul calls Christ Himself a sacrament, when he says: He was evidently a great sacrament (i.e. mysterion), for He was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory. Why have the Romanists not made an eighth sacrament out of this, when Paul's authority is so plainly there? Although they restrained themselves in this instance, when they had abundant opportunity to contrive sacraments, why are they so extravagant in the others? Plainly, they have been betrayed by their ignorance both of the facts and of the vocabulary; going simply by the sound of the words, they have founded their own opinions on them. Once they had arbitrarily taken "sacrament" to mean "sign", they immediately, and without further criticism or closer examination, set down the word "sign" every time they read "sacrament" in Holy Scripture. In this manner also, they have brought verbal meanings, human customs and such like, into the sacred writings, transforming the proper meaning into what they themselves have fabricated, turning anything into anything else. thus it comes about that they are always making a vague use of terms like "good works", "sin", "grace", "justification", "virtue", and almost all the main terms and subjects. For they employ the whole of these arbitrarily, on the basis of writings which are merely human, to the detriment of God's truth and our salvation.
According to Paul, sacrament, or mystery, is the very wisdom of the Spirit, and this is hidden in the mystery, as he says in I Corinthians 2 (:7ff.). "This wisdom is Christ, and for the reason just given, He is unknown to the rulers of this world; and therefore they crucified Him. To them, He is still foolishness, a scandal, a stumbling-block, and a sign to be controverted. "Stewards of the mysteries" is the name given by Paul to those preachers who preach Christ and proclaim Him as the power and the wisdom of God, and this in such a way that, unless you believe, you will not understand (I Cor. 4:1). Thus a sacrament is a mysterion, a secret thing described by words, but seized by faith in the heart. That is what is said in the passage under discussion: "The twain shall be one flesh, this is a great sacrament" (Greek-mysterion). The Romanists think this was said of matrimony, whereas Paul himself is using these words about Christ and the church, as he himself goes on to explain clearly when he says: "But I speak of Christ and of the church" (Eph. 5:32). You see, then, the nature of the agreement between the Romanists and Paul? Paul says that he is speaking of the great sacrament in Christ and the church; they, however, preach it in terms of male and female. If it were permissible to handle Scripture in this unbridled fashion, there would be no room for surprise whatever sacrament they found in it, nor even if they found a hundred.
We conclude that Christ and the church are a "mystery", or something at once hidden and of great importance, a thing which can, and should, be spoken of metaphorically, and of which matrimony is a sort of material allegory; but matrimony ought not to be called a sacrament on this account. The heavens are meant to represent the apostles in Psalm 19 (:2ff.) and the sun is metaphorically Christ, and the seas the people; but this does not mean that they are sacraments. There is no mention of either a divine institution, or a promise, which together would constitute a sacrament. Therefore Paul, in Ephesians 5 (:23ff.), either quotes Genesis 2 (:24) for the words about marriage, and applies them on his own initiative to Christ; or else, according to prevailing opinion, he teaches that the spiritual marriage of Christ is contained here, when he says: "Even as Christ cherisheth the church, because we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church" (Eph. 5:29ff). You see that Paul means this whole passage to have been spoken by him about Christ, and he takes pains to warn the reader to understand that the sacrament is not in the marriage but in Christ and the Church.
Granted, therefore, that matrimony is a figure for Christ and the church, therefore, yet it is not a sacrament of divine institution; it was introduced into the church by men who were misled by their ignorance both of the subject and the record. But, if this fact is not a hindrance of faith, it ought to be borne with in a charitable spirit, just as many other human devices due to weakness and ignorance in the church are to be tolerated so long as they do not stand in the way of faith and the Holy Scriptures. But at the present moment we are arguing on behalf of the certainty and purity of faith and the Scriptures.
(Break...con't.)
Our faith would be exposed to scoffing if we affirmed that something was contained in the Holy Scriptures or in the articles of our faith, which was later proved not to be there. Then we should be found unversed in our own special province, causing difficulties to our enemies and to the weak; but most of all we should detract from the authority of the Holy Scriptures. For there is a very great difference between what has been handed down about God in the Holy Scriptures, on the one hand; and, on the other, that which has been introduced into the church by men of no matter what sanctity or learning. Thus far about matrimony as a rite.
What then shall we say about those impious, man-made laws in which this divinely instituted way of life has become enmeshed, and which have sometimes exalted, and, at others, debased it? Merciful God! what a dreadful thing it is to examine the temerity of the Romanizing oppressors who divorce couples, or enforce marriages, just according to their own sweet will. I ask in all earnestness: Has the human race been handed over to the good pleasure of these men to be made sport of, to be subjected to any sort of misuse, and for the sake of whatever filthy lucre they can make out of it?
A greatly esteemed book entitled the Summa Angelica enjoys a wide circulation, but it consists of a jumbled collection, a kind of bilge-water, of the offscourings of all that men have handed down. It would more appropriately be called the Summa worse than Diabolical. It contains numberless horrible things by which confessors think they receive instruction, whereas they are led into most pernicious confusion. It enumerates eighteen impediments to marriage; but if you will examine them with the unbiased mind and the uncensored view given by faith, you will see that a number of them are foretold by the apostle when he said: "They shall give heed to the spirits of devils, who shall speak lies in hypocrisy, forbidding to marry" (I Tim. 4:1ff.). Is not the invention of so many impediments, and the setting of so many traps, the reason that people do not marry; or if they are married, the reason why the marriage is annulled? Who gave this power to man? It may be that they were religious men, zealous and devout, yet by what right does another man's saintliness put limits on my own liberty? Let any one who is so minded be a saint and a zealot to any extent he likes, but let him not harm any one else in doing it, or steal my freedom.
Yet I rejoice that these men have go their due in these disgraceful regulations. By their means the Romanists of today have become market-stall holders. What is it they sell? It is male and female pudenda, goods most worthy of these merchants whose avarice and irreligion are worse than the most sordid obscenity imaginable. For there is no impediment to marriage nowadays which they cannot legitimize for money. These man-made regulations seem come into existence for no other reason than raking in money and netting in souls, to serve these greedy and rapacious hunters. It is all done in order that the "Abomination" might stand in the church of God, and publicly sell t men the pudenda of both sexes; or in Scriptural language, their "shame and nakedness" (Lev. 18:6 ff.), of which they had already robbed them by the effect of these laws. O traffic worthy of our pontiffs who, being given up unto a reprobate mind, carry on that traffic with extreme baseness and utter lack of decency, instead of exercising the ministry of the gospel, which their greed and ambition make them despise!
You will probably ask me what I can say or do. If I were to enter into detail, I should go on without end. Everything is in such confusion that you do not know where to begin, in which direction to turn, or where to stop. But this I know, that the body politic cannot be felicitously governed merely by rules and regulations. If the administrator be sagacious, he will conduct the government more happily when guided by circumstances rather than by legal decrees. If he be not so wise, his legal methods will only result in harm, since he will not know how to use them, nor how to temper them to the case in hand. Hence, in public affairs, it is more important to make sure that good and wise men are in control than that certain laws are promulgated. Men of this kind will themselves be the best of laws, will be alert to every kind of problem, and will resolve them equitably. If knowledge of the divine laws accompanies native sagacity, it is obvious that written law will be superfluous and noxious. Above all else, remember that Christian love has no need of any laws at all.
To be continued....
Martin Luther on Marriage
Marriage
There is no Scriptural warrant whatsoever for regarding marriage as a sacrament; and indeed the Romanists have used the same traditions, both to extol it as a sacrament, and to make it naught but a mockery. Let us look into this matter.
We have maintained that a word of divine promise is associated with every sacrament, and anyone who receives the sacrament must also believe in that word of promise, for it is impossible that the sign should in itself be the sacrament. But nowhere in Scripture do we read anyone would receive the grace of God by getting married; nor does the rite of matrimony contain any hint that the ceremony is of divine institution. Nowhere do we read that it was instituted by god in order to symbolize something, although we grant that all things done in the sight of men can be understood as metaphors and allegories of things invisible. Yet metaphors and allegories are not sacraments, and it is of sacraments that we are speaking.
There has been such a thing as marriage itself ever since the beginning of the world, and also exists amongst unbelievers to the present day. Therefore no grounds exist on which the Romanists can validly call it a sacrament of the new law, and a function solely of the church. The marriages of our ancestors were no less sacred than our own, nor less real among unbelievers than believers. Yet no one calls marriage of unbelievers a sacrament. Also, there are irreligious marriages even amongst believers , worse than among any pagans. Why then should it be called a sacrament in such a case, and yet not among pagans? Or are we talking the same sort of nonsense about marriage as about baptism and the church, and saying it is only a sacrament within the church? Is it the case that some people speak as if they were demented, and declare that temporal power exists only in the church? Yet this is so childish and laughable as to expose our ignorance and foolhardiness to the ridicule of unbelievers.
The Romanists will reply that the apostle says in Ephesians 5 (:32f), "The twain shall become one flesh; this is a great sacrament." Do you mean to contradict this plain statement of the apostle? My reply would be to put forth this argument shows great negligence, and very careless and thoughtless reading. Nowhere in Holy Scripture does the noun, "sacrament" bear the meaning which is customary in the church, but rather the opposite. In every instance, it means, not "a sign of something sacred", but the sacred secret, and recondite thing itself. Thus in I Corinthians 4 (:1), Paul says: "Let a man so account of us, as of ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of god", that is the sacraments. Where the Vulgate uses sacramentum, the Greek text reads mysterion, a word which the translator sometimes translates, and sometimes transliterates. Thus in the present case, the Greek says: "The twain shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery." That explains how it came about that they understood it as a sacrament of the new dispensation, and this they would have been far from doing if they had read mysterion, as it is in Greek.
So also in I Timothy 3 (:16), Paul calls Christ Himself a sacrament, when he says: He was evidently a great sacrament (i.e. mysterion), for He was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory. Why have the Romanists not made an eighth sacrament out of this, when Paul's authority is so plainly there? Although they restrained themselves in this instance, when they had abundant opportunity to contrive sacraments, why are they so extravagant in the others? Plainly, they have been betrayed by their ignorance both of the facts and of the vocabulary; going simply by the sound of the words, they have founded their own opinions on them. Once they had arbitrarily taken "sacrament" to mean "sign", they immediately, and without further criticism or closer examination, set down the word "sign" every time they read "sacrament" in Holy Scripture. In this manner also, they have brought verbal meanings, human customs and such like, into the sacred writings, transforming the proper meaning into what they themselves have fabricated, turning anything into anything else. thus it comes about that they are always making a vague use of terms like "good works", "sin", "grace", "justification", "virtue", and almost all the main terms and subjects. For they employ the whole of these arbitrarily, on the basis of writings which are merely human, to the detriment of God's truth and our salvation.
According to Paul, sacrament, or mystery, is the very wisdom of the Spirit, and this is hidden in the mystery, as he says in I Corinthians 2 (:7ff.). "This wisdom is Christ, and for the reason just given, He is unknown to the rulers of this world; and therefore they crucified Him. To them, He is still foolishness, a scandal, a stumbling-block, and a sign to be controverted. "Stewards of the mysteries" is the name given by Paul to those preachers who preach Christ and proclaim Him as the power and the wisdom of God, and this in such a way that, unless you believe, you will not understand (I Cor. 4:1). Thus a sacrament is a mysterion, a secret thing described by words, but seized by faith in the heart. That is what is said in the passage under discussion: "The twain shall be one flesh, this is a great sacrament" (Greek-mysterion). The Romanists think this was said of matrimony, whereas Paul himself is using these words about Christ and the church, as he himself goes on to explain clearly when he says: "But I speak of Christ and of the church" (Eph. 5:32). You see, then, the nature of the agreement between the Romanists and Paul? Paul says that he is speaking of the great sacrament in Christ and the church; they, however, preach it in terms of male and female. If it were permissible to handle Scripture in this unbridled fashion, there would be no room for surprise whatever sacrament they found in it, nor even if they found a hundred.
We conclude that Christ and the church are a "mystery", or something at once hidden and of great importance, a thing which can, and should, be spoken of metaphorically, and of which matrimony is a sort of material allegory; but matrimony ought not to be called a sacrament on this account. The heavens are meant to represent the apostles in Psalm 19 (:2ff.) and the sun is metaphorically Christ, and the seas the people; but this does not mean that they are sacraments. There is no mention of either a divine institution, or a promise, which together would constitute a sacrament. Therefore Paul, in Ephesians 5 (:23ff.), either quotes Genesis 2 (:24) for the words about marriage, and applies them on his own initiative to Christ; or else, according to prevailing opinion, he teaches that the spiritual marriage of Christ is contained here, when he says: "Even as Christ cherisheth the church, because we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church" (Eph. 5:29ff). You see that Paul means this whole passage to have been spoken by him about Christ, and he takes pains to warn the reader to understand that the sacrament is not in the marriage but in Christ and the Church.
Granted, therefore, that matrimony is a figure for Christ and the church, therefore, yet it is not a sacrament of divine institution; it was introduced into the church by men who were misled by their ignorance both of the subject and the record. But, if this fact is not a hindrance of faith, it ought to be borne with in a charitable spirit, just as many other human devices due to weakness and ignorance in the church are to be tolerated so long as they do not stand in the way of faith and the Holy Scriptures. But at the present moment we are arguing on behalf of the certainty and purity of faith and the Scriptures.
(Break...con't.)
Our faith would be exposed to scoffing if we affirmed that something was contained in the Holy Scriptures or in the articles of our faith, which was later proved not to be there. Then we should be found unversed in our own special province, causing difficulties to our enemies and to the weak; but most of all we should detract from the authority of the Holy Scriptures. For there is a very great difference between what has been handed down about God in the Holy Scriptures, on the one hand; and, on the other, that which has been introduced into the church by men of no matter what sanctity or learning. Thus far about matrimony as a rite.
What then shall we say about those impious, man-made laws in which this divinely instituted way of life has become enmeshed, and which have sometimes exalted, and, at others, debased it? Merciful God! what a dreadful thing it is to examine the temerity of the Romanizing oppressors who divorce couples, or enforce marriages, just according to their own sweet will. I ask in all earnestness: Has the human race been handed over to the good pleasure of these men to be made sport of, to be subjected to any sort of misuse, and for the sake of whatever filthy lucre they can make out of it?
A greatly esteemed book entitled the Summa Angelica enjoys a wide circulation, but it consists of a jumbled collection, a kind of bilge-water, of the offscourings of all that men have handed down. It would more appropriately be called the Summa worse than Diabolical. It contains numberless horrible things by which confessors think they receive instruction, whereas they are led into most pernicious confusion. It enumerates eighteen impediments to marriage; but if you will examine them with the unbiased mind and the uncensored view given by faith, you will see that a number of them are foretold by the apostle when he said: "They shall give heed to the spirits of devils, who shall speak lies in hypocrisy, forbidding to marry" (I Tim. 4:1ff.). Is not the invention of so many impediments, and the setting of so many traps, the reason that people do not marry; or if they are married, the reason why the marriage is annulled? Who gave this power to man? It may be that they were religious men, zealous and devout, yet by what right does another man's saintliness put limits on my own liberty? Let any one who is so minded be a saint and a zealot to any extent he likes, but let him not harm any one else in doing it, or steal my freedom.
Yet I rejoice that these men have go their due in these disgraceful regulations. By their means the Romanists of today have become market-stall holders. What is it they sell? It is male and female pudenda, goods most worthy of these merchants whose avarice and irreligion are worse than the most sordid obscenity imaginable. For there is no impediment to marriage nowadays which they cannot legitimize for money. These man-made regulations seem come into existence for no other reason than raking in money and netting in souls, to serve these greedy and rapacious hunters. It is all done in order that the "Abomination" might stand in the church of God, and publicly sell t men the pudenda of both sexes; or in Scriptural language, their "shame and nakedness" (Lev. 18:6 ff.), of which they had already robbed them by the effect of these laws. O traffic worthy of our pontiffs who, being given up unto a reprobate mind, carry on that traffic with extreme baseness and utter lack of decency, instead of exercising the ministry of the gospel, which their greed and ambition make them despise!
You will probably ask me what I can say or do. If I were to enter into detail, I should go on without end. Everything is in such confusion that you do not know where to begin, in which direction to turn, or where to stop. But this I know, that the body politic cannot be felicitously governed merely by rules and regulations. If the administrator be sagacious, he will conduct the government more happily when guided by circumstances rather than by legal decrees. If he be not so wise, his legal methods will only result in harm, since he will not know how to use them, nor how to temper them to the case in hand. Hence, in public affairs, it is more important to make sure that good and wise men are in control than that certain laws are promulgated. Men of this kind will themselves be the best of laws, will be alert to every kind of problem, and will resolve them equitably. If knowledge of the divine laws accompanies native sagacity, it is obvious that written law will be superfluous and noxious. Above all else, remember that Christian love has no need of any laws at all.
To be continued....