The younger generation, as has been said, always thinks that it has invented sex. And those who “don’t know much about history” seem to think that sex and sexual issues are contemporary phenomena. So the editors at Salon are giddy to learn what Martin Luther wrote about sex.
Reading from a new book about Luther that discusses the reformer’s critique of mandatory celibacy for those in religious orders, his criticism of canon laws restricting and regulating marriage, and his defense of marriage as a vocation–which has to include a defense of its defining action–Salon reprints an excerpt under the headline “Martin Luther’s pro-sex shocker” and the deck “Centuries ago, Martin Luther’s ideas were way ahead of their time.”
Well, Luther was advocating marriage and criticizing the sex outside of marriage that was rampant in his time, particularly among those forced into celibacy who lacked that gift. (Some priests rationalized their use of prostitutes by thinking “at least I’m not married,” so I am merely fornicating and not forsaking my vow.)
True, Luther believed that regulating marriage was the business of the state, not the church, which would put him against those who think we should just leave marriage to the church and keep the state out of it. And he was rethinking what the parameters about divorce, etc., should be in the absence of canon law. But his frank talk about sex is not “ahead of his time,” as anyone who reads old books can attest. People weren’t squeamish about talking about the subject until the Victorian era of the 19th century.
Anyway, his views are interesting, so I link to and quote from Salon’s sampling from James Reston’s new book.
From Martin Luther’s pro-sex shocker: “Does the pope set up laws? Let him set them up for himself and keep hands off my liberty” – Salon.com, an excerpt from James Reston, Jr., Luther’s Fortress: Martin Luther and His Reformation Under Siege
On May 19, he touched on the subject of physical love in a letter to Nicolas Gerbel, a jurist, doctor of canon law, and humanist from Strasbourg who would become an important supporter in subsequent battles and was deeply interested in Luther’s literary life. It is not clear just how the two had first established their friendship or when Luther had met Gerbel and his wife. But from this letter it’s evident that in Gerbel’s marriage the Reformer perceived a romantic model. “Kiss and rekiss your wife,” Luther wrote. “Let her love and be loved. You are fortunate in having overcome, by an honorable marriage, that celibacy in which one is a prey to devouring fires and to unclean ideas. That unhappy state of a single person, male or female, reveals to me each hour of the day so many horrors, that nothing sounds in my ear as bad as the name of monk or nun or priest. A married life is a paradise, even where all else is wanting.”
Inevitably, he found biblical validation for the sporting that goes on between husband and wife. “We are permitted to laugh and have fun with and embrace our wives, whether they are naked or clothed,” just as Isaac fondled his wife in Genesis 26:8. (Later he would refer to sex between spouses as precious and beneficial.) And female companionship was an excellent antidote to a man’s melancholy. “When you are assailed by gloom, despair or a trouble conscience, you should eat, drink, and talk with others. If you can find help for yourself by thinking of a girl, do so.” . . .
Most of all, he denied that this or any other pope had any standing whatever to legislate human sexuality. “Does the pope set up laws?” he had asked in his essay on the church’s Babylonian captivity. “Let him set them up for himself and keep hands off my liberty.” If a priest was supposed to be celibate, what standing did he have to set up rules about sex for the laity?
But Luther did not stop there. He ventured unhesitatingly into areas where even a layperson much less a priest feared to tread: into questions of adultery, impotence, fornication, and masturbation. What was a wife to do when she found herself married to an impotent husband? Luther’s answer: she should seek a divorce and marry one more suitable and satisfying. But what if the impotent husband should not agree? Luther’s answer: then with the sufferance of her husband—he was not really a husband anyway, but merely the man dwelling with her under the same roof—she should have intercourse with another, perhaps the husband’s brother, and the children from such a union should be regarded as rightful heirs.
And should a spouse wish to obtain a divorce, what about the Catholic law against remarriage? Luther answered that he or she should be permitted to remarry: “Yet it is still a greater wonder to me why they compel a man to remain unmarried after being separated from his wife by divorce, and why they will not permit him to remarry. For if Christ permits divorce on the ground of fornication (Matthew 5:32) and compels no one to remain unmarried . . . then he certainly seems to permit a man to marry another woman in the place of the one who has been put away.” But what about the Catholic Church’s prohibition of divorce, all divorce? “The tyranny of the laws permits no divorce,” Luther wrote. “But the woman is free through the divine law and cannot be compelled to suppress her carnal desires. Therefore the man ought to concede her right and give up to somebody else the wife who is his only in outward appearance.” Still he detested divorce, he insisted, and preferred bigamy, considering it the lesser of evils and validated by multiple stories in the Old Testament. And annulment? Well, that process was far too complicated and time-consuming, not to mention the toll it took on all the parties.
But then came the Roman See, fumed Luther, and forbade priests to marry with no just foundation, and this had increased “division, sin, shame, and scandal to be increased without end.” It had led priests into irresistible temptation. The ban, therefore, was the work of the Devil, and to demand a vow of celibacy at the consecration of a priest was “the Devil’s own tyranny.”
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In