Luther Favored Execution of Heretics (vs. Jordan Cooper)

+ Good & Bad Protestant & Catholic Apologetics & Historical Revisionism & “Twisting”

Rev. Dr. Jordan B. Cooper is a Lutheran pastor, adjunct professor of Systematic Theology, Executive Director of the popular Just & Sinner YouTube channel, and the President of the American Lutheran Theological Seminary (which holds to a doctrinally traditional Lutheranism, similar to the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod). He has authored several books, as well as theological articles in a variety of publications. All my Bible citations are from RSV, unless otherwise indicated. Jordan’s words will be in blue.

This is my 14th reply to Jordan (many more to come, because I want to interact with the best, most informed Protestant opponents). All of these respectful critiques can be found in the “Replies to Jordan Cooper” section at the top of my Lutheranism web page.

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This is a response to a portion of Jordan’s YouTube video, “A Further Critique of Offering Prayers to the Saints” (10-5-20).

5:02 It’s something I’m asked about a lot. A lot of people seem to want me to divert my entire course of study to Roman Catholic polemics or something, which I’m not going to do, but nonetheless I do think it’s important to delve into Roman Catholic issues.

I think it’s important to delve into Lutheran and larger Protestant issues, and to show that Catholic beliefs can be thoroughly defended from the Bible, history, and reason. Where we agree, I rejoice in that, too. I’m ecumenical as well as apologetic, and I’m not “anti-Protestant.” I am ” ‘pro-Catholic’ with great respect for, and respectful disagreement with, our Protestant brethren in Christ.”

5:49 I actually have done quite a bit [on] Roman Catholicism, too, if you go back into the podcast archives. Before I was doing all of these things on YouTube there are a number of programs I’ve done [on] Roman Catholicism. I’ve done programs on purgatory; I’ve interacted with a number of lecturers . . . on various issues . . . More recently there was a YouTuber who responded to a couple of my recent programs and a lot of people really wanted me to interact with those videos. I personally didn’t see it that worthwhile interacting with those videos. I didn’t find the argumentation very compelling, and some of you may have, but to some extent I have to limit what I respond to and what I don’t. I don’t want to have. . . just continual back and forth with different people . . . I have to choose certain things to do and certain things not to do.

Understood. I hope to engage in cordial, constructive dialogue with Jordan and explain about our views and how we defend them from Scripture, tradition, and reason, and learn more about his views. I believe that I offer plenty of substance and food for thought — agree or disagree — and that it’s done in a respectful, cordial manner. Inter-Christian dialogue is especially good for the purpose of simply understanding each other better. Christian unity, as much as we can achieve, is a wonderful thing and worthy goal. The following gracious comments about me came from three prominent Lutherans, with whom I have dialogued quite a bit (all from the Missouri Synod):

Dave Armstrong is a former Protestant Catholic who is in fact blessedly free of the kind of ‘any enemy of Protestantism is a friend of mine’ coalition-building . . . he’s pro-Catholic (naturally) without being anti-Protestant (or anti-Orthodox, for that matter). [“CPA”: professor of history]

Whether one agrees with Dave’s take on everything or not, everyone should take it quite seriously, because he presents his arguments formidably. Dave is one of the best Catholic apologists. [pastor and professor Ken Howes, who also wrote a glowing review of my recent book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: 2023), very kindly noting that “this book is worthy company to the books of Lutheran John Warwick Montgomery and Anglican C.S. Lewis, and it has my endorsement.”]

You are a very friendly adversary who really does try to do all things with gentleness and respect. For this I praise God. [Nathan Rinne, apologist]

10:18 This is the kind of twisting of the very clear historical evidences that you find in a lot of pop apologetics and Roman Catholicism. It’s the same kind of things you find in Mormonism. I find a major parallel in some of these this historical revisionism and trying to explain away statements that are really obvious historically, in context. What’s going on is very similar to what I find in Mormon apologists, when they’re trying to deal with and reckon with what are the problems of early Mormonism and things like polygamy.

It’s obvious that there are good and bad apologists for any given viewpoint. The problem is compounded by the nature of social media. Anyone who talks a good game these days, and has a DJ voice and appealing personal demeanor (being good-looking doesn’t hurt, either), can start a YouTube channel and reach many many thousands of people. All the “action” today is in videos (more power to them, but I keep writing because that is my skill and what I was called to do; and I think it’s far more substantive). And so with that comes — on all sides — a lot of underqualified people, who spread a great deal of misinformation and disinformation: both in videos and written material. We have many unsavory folks of that type within Catholicism (in charity, I won’t name them), and I have written hundreds of articles critiquing them. It’s a huge problem.

But as for historical revisionism and rationalizing, again, people who do that are found on all sides. “Pop” Catholic apologists have far from a monopoly with regard to that shortcoming. Jordan has, predictably, found several Catholics doing that because he’s defending Lutheranism and critiquing Catholicism. I’ve found several Protestants doing that because I’m defending Catholicism and critiquing Protestantism. I could tell a hundred stories about the ridiculous positions I have seen people try to defend (my absolute favorite is that “68 million” people supposedly were killed in the Inquisition). The thing to do is not to equate the whole of a viewpoint with those of its (usually amateur and quite unqualified) defenders who leave a lot to be desired. We don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the old saying goes.

And by the way, I have material addressing Mormonism on my blog, and my first large apologetics project was studying Jehovah’s Witnesses in great depth as an evangelical Protestant apologist in the early 80s: possibly before Jordan was born. I came out of the evangelical cult-watching community (Walter Martin et al), and I was on the largest Christian radio station in metro Detroit discussing the JWs in 1989, when I was still a Protestant. So it gave me a bit of a chuckle to see the Mormon comparison above. I used to compare JWs to Catholicism, myself, back when I had a dim understanding of Catholicism. We all live and learn. But I agree that some people do argue that badly. I just don’t think that they are only — or even predominantly — Catholic.

10:00 Luther was opposed to the killing of heretics

In fact, Martin Luther favored the death penalty for Anabaptists in the 1530s, which I documented in one of my articles over twenty years ago. Lest it be thought that I am engaging in revisionism, myself, as a biased Catholic apologist (and everyone naturally has biases), I need only cite by far the most famous Protestant biographer of Luther, Roland Bainton (who can’t possibly be accused of anti-Luther bias), from his famous book, Here I Stand:

In 1530 Luther advanced the view that two offences should be penalized even with death, namely sedition and blasphemy. The emphasis was thus shifted from incorrect belief to its public manifestation by word and deed. This was, however, no great gain for liberty, because Luther construed mere abstention from public office and military service as sedition and a rejection of an article of the Apostles’ Creed as blasphemy.

In a memorandum of 1531, composed by Melanchthon and signed by Luther, a rejection of the ministerial office was described as insufferable blasphemy, and the disintegration of the Church as sedition against the ecclesiastical order. In a memorandum of 1536, again composed by Melanchthon and signed by Luther, the distinction between the peaceful and the revolutionary Anabaptists was obliterated . . .

Melanchthon this time argued that even the passive action of the Anabaptists in rejecting government, oaths, private property, and marriages outside the faith was itself disruptive of the civil order and therefore seditious. The Anabaptist protest against the punishment of blasphemy was itself blasphemy. The discontinuance of infant baptism would produce a heathen society and separation from the Church, and the formation of sects was an offense against God.

Luther may not have been too happy about signing these memoranda. At any rate he appended postscripts to each. To the first he said,

I assent. Although it seems cruel to punish them with the sword, it is crueler that they condemn the ministry of the Word and have no well-grounded doctrine and suppress the true and in this way seek to subvert the civil order.

. . . In 1540 he is reported in his Table Talk to have returned to the position of Philip of Hesse that only seditious Anabaptists should be executed; the others should be merely banished. But Luther passed by many an opportunity to speak a word for those who with joy gave themselves as sheep for the slaughter.

. . . For the understanding of Luther’s position one must bear in mind that Anabaptism was not in every instance socially innocuous. The year in which Luther signed the memorandum counseling death even for the peaceful Anabaptists was the year in which a group of them ceases to be peaceful . . . By forcible measures they took over the city of Munster in Westphalia . . .

Yet when all these attenuating considerations are adduced, one cannot forget that Melanchthon’s memorandum justified the eradication of the peaceful, not because they were incipient and clandestine revolutionaries, but on the ground that even a peaceful renunciation of the state itself constituted sedition. (Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, New York: Mentor, 1950, 295-296)

I remember reading this very book in October 1984, as we drove down to our honeymoon in Tennessee. Luther was a huge hero of mine then (I still admire him in some ways). The 1536 memorandum by Melanchthon (referred to above), that Luther signed, read in part:

That seditious articles of doctrine should be punished with the sword needed no further proof. For the rest, the Anabaptists hold tenets relating to infant baptism, original sin, and inspiration which have no connection with the Word of God, and are indeed opposed to it. . . . Concerning such tenets, this is our answer : As the secular authorities are bound to control and punish open blasphemy, so they are also bound to restrain and punish avowedly false doctrine, irregular Church services and heresies in their own dominions; . . .

Also when it is a case of only upholding some spiritual tenet, such as infant baptism, original sin, and unnecessary separation, then, because these articles are also important. . .  we conclude that in these cases also the stubborn sectaries must be put to death. (cited in Johannes Janssen, History of the German People from the Close of the Middle Ages, 16 volumes, translated by A.M. Christie, St. Louis: B. Herder, 1910 [orig. 1891]; Vol. X, 222-223; compare Bainton’s translation in the article mentioned in the next paragraph below)

Bainton also wrote a very informative and thorough 26-page chapter entitled, “Luther’s Attitudes On Religious Liberty,” for the book, Studies on the Reformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963). I abridged it and made a blog article of it. Here is an excerpt (see the documentation there):

The Protestant Reformation itself has at times been credited with the rise of religious liberty but such a statement can be made only with distinct reserve . . . The outstanding reformers of the sixteenth century were in no sense tolerant. Luther in 1530 acquiesced in the death penalty for Anabaptists and Calvin instigated the execution of Servetus, while Melanchthon applauded. The reformers can be ranged on the side of liberty only if the younger Luther be pitted against the older or the left wing of the Reformation against the right . . . The opinion of the dominant group was expressed with pithy brutality by Theodore Beza when he stigmatized religious liberty as a most diabolical dogma because it means that everyone should be left to go to hell in his own way. . . .

My first study of Luther was a paper dealing with his attitude to religious liberty in 1929. It was written at a time when I felt intense resentment against him because he spoke so magnificently for liberty in the early 1520s and condoned the death penalty for Anabaptists a decade later. Having worked eight years on a biography of Luther in the 1940s, anger changed to sadness through the discovery that in this case, as often elsewhere, it is the saints who burn the saints.

Under Martin Luther’s and his best friend and successor Philip Melanchthon’s policies in the 1530s, I could have been killed if I had the view that I held as an evangelical, when I believed in adult, believer’s baptism (from 1980-1990). But if I had been a Catholic in Luther’s Saxony in the 1530s, I would have been safe from the Lutherans’ sword, because they generally favored censorship and sometimes banishment of Catholics, but not the death penalty. Melanchthon also favored execution for denying the Real Presence in the Eucharist (a thing he later denied, himself!). I could have been killed under that policy, too.

12:19 You can point out inconsistencies in the Lutheran tradition as well, and I don’t have to then go back and and try to defend that or make those words not mean what they really said. I can just say, “yeah that’s an inconsistency.”

Then here is an opportunity for Jordan to do just that, by declaring that he has now discovered that Luther advocated the death penalty for heresy against fellow Protestants, not even Catholics. Virtually all Christians have executed for heresy at one point or another, and the early Lutherans and Calvinists were no exceptions.

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Photo credit: Portrait of Martin Luther (1528), by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553). This was three years before Luther advocated the death penalty for peaceful Anabaptists [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

Summary: Jordan Cooper complained about historical revisionism by “pop” Catholic apologists, but then incorrectly denied Luther’s advocacy of execution of Anabaptists.