Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Few experienced his intolerance to such an extent as Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt, his quondam colleague in the theological faculty of Wittenberg.

  2. Carlstadt

  Carlstadt, the fanatic, failed to obtain any peace from Luther until he passed over to the camp of the Swiss theologians. In 1534 he became preacher at St. Peter’s in Basle, and professor of theology. We may here cast a glance at the troubles brought on him, partly through Luther, partly through his own passionate exaltation, both previous to this date and until his death at Basle, where he was carried off by the plague in 1541.

  Carlstadt’s violent doings at Wittenberg and the iconoclasm which he justified by the Mosaic prohibition of graven images, had miscarried owing to Luther’s warnings. Soon it became clear that there was no longer any room for him at the University town near the leader of the Reformation, more particularly since, in 1522, he had seen fit to deny the presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Luther loudly bewailed Carlstadt’s sudden determination to become a new teacher, and to lay new injunctions on the people to the detriment of his (Luther’s) authority.

  Carlstadt now migrated to Orlamünde in the Saxon Electorate, where the magistrates appointed him pastor. In August, 1524, however, Luther passed through Weimar, Jena, and the other districts where the fanatics had gained a footing, preaching energetically against them. Carlstadt he had met at Jena on August 22, 1523, in the Black Bear Inn. In vain did they seek a friendly settlement, for each overwhelmed the other with reproaches. Finally, in the tap-room of the inn, Luther handed his opponent a goldgulden as a pledge that he was at liberty to write against him without reserve and that he did not mind in the least: “Take it and attack me like a man, don’t fear!” Shortly after, however, he complained of the treatment he had received: “At the inn at Jena ... he turned upon me and abused me, snapped his fingers at me and said: ‘I don’t care that for you.’ But if he does not respect me, whom, then, amongst us does he respect?”

  The struggle continued after they had gone their ways, both seeking to secure the favour of the Court. Luther, through the agency of Prince Johann Frederick, proposed that Carlstadt should be hounded from his place of refuge and from the whole upper valley of the Saale. Ultimately the disturber of the peace was banished from the Electorate; Luther, in his work “Widder die hymelischen Propheten,” approved of his expulsion, roughly declaring that, so far as lay in him, Carlstadt would never again set foot in the country. The homeless man now betook himself to Strasburg, whither he was pursued by a furious letter of Luther’s, directed against him and his teaching, entitled “An die Christen zu Straspurg widder den Schwermer Geyst.”

  Luther became greatly enraged when he perceived that the denial of the Sacrament, already widespread in Switzerland, was also gaining ground at Strasburg and was being adopted by Capito and Bucer. In his excitement, in the hope of checking the falling away from his doctrine, of closing the mouth of that “fiend” Carlstadt — who likewise stood for the denial of the Sacrament — and of preventing “the overthrow of all political and ecclesiastical order,” he penned, in the course of a few weeks, a violent screed entitled, “Widder die hymelischen Propheten.” The knowledge that everywhere revolt “was being associated with the Lutheran doctrines and reforms” roused his terrible eloquence, of which the principal aim was to annihilate Carlstadt. Having completed the first part, comprising seventy pages of print in the Erlangen edition, he rushed this through the press as a preliminary instalment, informing his readers at the end that “the remainder will follow on foot.” As good as his word, three weeks later, he had ready the conclusion, consisting of nearly one hundred pages of print. He asserts that Carlstadt had, “for three years, been making a hash” of his books; he was even anxious to throw them all overboard. Luther’s strongest argument against him was the revolutionary peril which this man represented. Even if he did not actually plot “murder and revolt,” he writes, “yet I must say that he has a murderous and revolutionary spirit.... Because he carries a dagger, I do not trust him; he might well be simply awaiting a good opportunity to do what I apprehend. By the dagger I mean his false interpretation and understanding of the Law of Moses.” “What is the use of admonishing him?” he writes, alluding to Carlstadt’s departure from the Lutheran interpretation of the Bible and his obstinacy in accepting no exegesis but his own; “I believe that he still considers me one of the most learned men at Wittenberg and yet he tells me to my very face, that I am of no account, though all the while he pretends to be quite willing to be instructed.”

  From Strasburg, Carlstadt, the restless wanderer, had gone to Rothenburg-on-the-Tauber, a hotbed of Anabaptists. It was whilst here, that finding himself in dire want, he besought Luther’s aid, at a time when the latter had not yet finished the above writing against him; he, however, frustrated all hopes of any reconciliation by previously penning a defence of his own doctrine of the Sacrament against the Wittenberg professor. The unfortunate termination of the Peasant War exposed him to grave danger, when he broke his promise to keep silence, and again renewed his complaints concerning Luther, and bewailed his own reduced circumstances, dissensions broke out afresh between them. Luther, who was greatly vexed, was very anxious to find some new means of muzzling his opponent. He proposed that he should in no case advocate in the presence of others his own theological opinions or his private interpretation of the Bible, though he might cherish them as his private convictions, for of the heart no man is judge; doctrines which differed from his own, so Luther declared, were not to be defended publicly, else they would come under the cognisance of the authorities. Under these circumstances Carlstadt thought it better to depart. In the beginning of 1529 he escaped, and, in 1530, found a home in Switzerland, where he enjoyed a quieter life and was free to proceed with his theological labours. “Luther, like Carlstadt, never doubted for a moment that his doctrine was really founded on Scripture. Hence Luther and the Elector felt themselves bound in conscience to defend as best they could the Christian faith and their country against any invasion of false doctrine.” Such is the considered judgment of a Protestant historian.

  For the period subsequent to 1534, when Carlstadt at length began to lead a more tranquil life as professor and preacher at Basle, the Table-Talk is the principal source of information concerning Luther’s relations with him.

  Luther, in his conversations, frequently referred to his former friend, particularly in 1538.

  “He, like Bucer, greatly retarded the progress of the Evangel by his arrogance. In other matters pride of intellect is not so dangerous, but in theology it is utterly pestilential to desire to arrogate anything to oneself.... Hence I was greatly troubled when Carlstadt once remarked to me: ‘I am as fond of honour as any other man.’ At Leipzig he refused to concede me the first place at the Disputation lest I should rob him of his part of the praise. And yet I was always glad to do him a favour. But he reaped shame instead of honour at Leipzig, for no worse disputant could be imagined than a man of so dull and wretched a spirit.... At first he, like Peter Lupinus, withstood me, but when I rebutted them with Augustine, they, too, studied Augustine and then insisted upon my doctrine more than I did myself. Carlstadt, however, was deceived by his arrogance.” Indeed, Carlstadt belonged to the category of the “arrogantissimi.”

  Elsewhere Luther again says similar things without noticing, so it would seem, that others might have complained of his “arrogance” just as much as he did of Carlstadt’s. Carlstadt is “full of presumption,” and this “brought about his fall as it did that of Münzer, Zwingli, [Œcolampadius, Stiefel, and Eisleben.” “Such people, weak and untried though they be, are puffed up with self-sufficiency before the victory, whereas I have my daily struggles.” Before this Luther had declared that he was “plagued and vexed by the devil, whose bones are strong until we crack them.”— “It was impossible to make of Carlstadt a humble man because he had been through no real mental temptations.”— “He, like Münzer and Zwingli, was rash when good fortu
ne attended him, but an arrant coward in misfortune”; Luther here was probably recalling how Carlstadt, the unhappy married priest, had been forced to humble himself before him owing to the dire want and danger in which he and his family found themselves.

  “Had not Carlstadt come on the scene with the fanatics, Münzer and the Anabaptists, all would have gone well with my undertaking. But though I alone lifted it out of the gutter, they wished to seize upon the prize and poach upon my preserves, though, owing to the way they went about the business, they were really working for the Pope though all the while anxious to destroy him.”

  Luther afterwards held fast to the opinion concerning his enemy which he had expressed long before in a letter to Spalatin: “Carlstadt has now been delivered over to a reprobate spirit so that I despair of his return. He always was, and probably always will be, unmindful of the glory of Christ; his insensate ambition has brought him to this. To me, nay, to us, he is more troublesome than any foe, so that I believe the unhappy man to be possessed by more than one devil. God have mercy on his sin, so far as it is mortal.”

  In 1541 the news of his rival’s death reached him. It was rumoured that he had died impenitent, that the devil had appeared at his death-bed, had fetched him away, and continued to make a great noise in his house. Luther believed these tales. It was not surprising, so he said, that Carlstadt had at last received his deserts, though he was sorry he should have died impenitent.

  It only remains to glance at the arguments Luther brought forward and at the theoretical attitude he assumed with regard to Carlstadt and his followers. If we take the book “Widder die hymelischen Propheten” and the writing he addressed to the Strasburg Christians against the fanatics, and consider the answers and objections they drew forth, we shall have a strange picture of Luther’s ways of reasoning and of his crooked lines of thought. Not that his ability and eloquence failed him, but, for clearness and coherence, his doctrine and whole conduct leave everything to be desired. In his book he attacks not Carlstadt alone, but, as he says: “Carlstadt and his spirits,” i.e. all those opponents of his whom he was pleased to dub “fanatics.” “Fanaticism” to him means not merely that fanciful interpretation of the Bible based on special illumination, to which his opponents were attached, but more particularly the threefold error for which they stood, viz. their denial of the Sacrament (i.e. of the Real Presence of Christ in the Supper), their iconoclasm, and, thirdly, their repudiation of infant baptism. As for the various elements of good, which, in spite of all their mistakes, were shared by the earlier Anabaptists, Luther refused categorically to see them or to hearken to the fanatics’ well-grounded remonstrances against certain of his propositions.

  To preach, a man must be called by God, so he lays it down. Had your spirit “been the true one, it would have manifested itself by word and sign; but in reality it is a murderous, secret devil.” Luther demands miracles with as much confidence as though he himself could point to them in plenty.

  Those preachers who ventured to differ from him, he invites, at the very least, to point to their ecclesiastical vocation. But what sort of a vocation was this to be, they asked. As Luther recognised no universal Church visible, a call emanating from a congregation of believers had to suffice; Carlstadt, for instance, could appeal to his having been chosen by Orlamünde as its pastor. This Luther would not allow: You must also have the consent of the Elector and of the University of Wittenberg. Carlstadt and those who felt with him were well aware, that, in the final instance, this simply meant Luther’s own consent, for at the University he was all-powerful, whilst the sovereign likewise was wont to be guided by him. Why, Carlstadt might also have asked, should not the degree of Doctor of Divinity suffice in my case, seeing that you yourself have solemnly pleaded your degree as a sufficient justification for assailing the common tradition of Christendom?

  Luther’s final answer to such an appeal was as follows:

  “My devil, I know you well.”

  He was determined to hound out of his last hiding-place his presumptuous rival, many of whose doctrines, it must be admitted, were both mistaken and dangerous. Hence the measure which he induced the Elector to take in 1524, according to which Carlstadt was to be refused shelter throughout the Electorate; this example was also followed by the magistrates of Rothenburg-on-the-Tauber, who, by an edict of January 27, 1525, commanded all burghers by virtue of their oath and fealty “not to house, shelter, or hide, provide with food and drink, or further on his way the said Dr. Carlstadt,” adding, that a similar prohibition had been published in “other lordships and Imperial cities both near and far.”

  When seeking to retain the support of the burghers of Strasburg, Luther had made a display of broadminded forbearance and charity. What he then said is often quoted by his followers as proof of his kindliness and humility. “Take heed that you show brotherly charity towards one another in very deed.” “I am not your preacher. No one is bound to believe me, let each one look to himself. To warn all I am able, but stop any man I cannot.” Yet he continues: “Carlstadt makes a great fuss about outward things as though Christianity consisted in knocking down images, overthrowing the Sacrament, and preventing Baptism; by the dust he raises he seeks to darken the sun, and the brightness of the Evangel, and the main facts of Christian faith and practice, so that the world may forget all that has hitherto been taught by us.” Luther’s own doctrine, in spite of his preliminary assurance, was alone to stand, because, forsooth, it reveals the true sun to the world.

  What, however, had he to oppose to the “knocking down of images” and the “overthrow of the Sacrament”? Did his standpoint afford sufficient resistance, or was it more than a mere subterfuge?

  The pulling down of images and the overthrow of the Sacrament, Luther tells Carlstadt, agreeably with his own feelings at that time, may be introduced little by little, but must not be made into a law. Everyone is free to put away his images, to deny the Sacrament, or to refuse to receive it; let him follow his own conscience as it is the right and duty of every man to do. Luther, however, is forgetful of the restrictions he was in the habit of placing upon Catholic practices, of how he refused to admit the rights of conscience in the matter of the Mass and the religious life, notwithstanding that Catholics could appeal to the age-long practice of the Church in every land, and of his denial of the existence or even of the possibility of good faith amongst any of his opponents, whether within or without his own fold. In his book against the “Heavenly Prophets” he declares it to be “optional to wear a cowl or the tonsure ... in this there is neither commandment nor prohibition,” “to wear the tonsure, to put on albs and chasubles, etc. is a thing God has neither commanded nor forbidden.” “Doctrine, command, and compulsion are not to be tolerated.” Here we see the confused after-effects of his old, pseudo-mystic conception of a religion of freedom, involving no duty of submission to any external authority in the matter of “doctrine or command.” (See ff.)

  Granting that any real tolerance underlay these statements, the fanatics could ask: “Why, then, not include our peculiarities, for instance, our penitential dress, our grey frock, and outward, pious practices?” Luther, however, will hear of no self-chosen works of penance, and condemns indiscriminately those of the fanatics and the more measured ones preferred by Catholics, in spite of mortification being recommended by the example of the saints both of the Old and the New Covenant and of Christ Himself. Of the last Luther says quite openly that Christ’s example taught us nothing; not Christ’s works, but merely His express words were to be our example. “What He wished us to do or leave undone, that He not only did or left undone but also enjoined or forbade in so many words.... Hence we admit no example, not even that of Christ Himself.” Elsewhere he also excludes the Evangelical Counsels of Perfection, although they are not only based on example, but are also expressed in words. Yet here, in a particular instance, he departs from his theory that only Christ’s express injunctions are binding; Carlstadt had done away with the elevati
on of the Sacrament in Divine Worship; this Luther disapproved of; he acknowledges, however, that Christ did not do so at the Last Supper, though we do. — He does not tell us when or how Christ enjoined this by “word.”

  What the motives were which led to his decisions on such usages we see from the following. Speaking to Carlstadt’s party he says: “Although I too had the intention of doing away with the Elevation, yet, now, the better to defy and oppose for a while the fanatical spirit, I shall not do so.” In the same way, “in defiance of the spirit of the mob, he intends to call the Sacrament a Sacrifice, though it is not really one, but simply the reception of what was once a sacrifice.” We cannot wonder if the sectarians looked upon this spirit of defiance and contradiction as something strange. One of them during this controversy complained with some justice that Luther, according to his own admission, had thundered forth many of his theses merely because the Papists “had pressed him so hard,” and not from any inner conviction. Contradiction was to him sufficient reason for narrowing the freedom of others in the matter of doctrine.

  The new Christian freedom Luther vindicates in his book “Widder die hymelischen Propheten,” more particularly in respect of the Old Testament Commandments. At that time, strange to say, the fanatics were set on imposing certain of the Mosaic laws on both public and ecclesiastical life, under the impression that they were precepts divinely ordained for all time. For this Luther’s own violent and one-sided interpretation of the Bible, in defiance of all tradition, was really responsible; indeed, he himself was not disinclined to lay undue stress on Mosaism. (See vol. v., xxix., xxxv. 6.)