Luther on Heresy

August 25, 2023 By Gene Veith

This is the 500th anniversary of the publication of Luther’s treatise, Secular Authority [aka Temporal Authority]: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed, which is a landmark in the history of freedom. By showing that there is an “extent” to earthly authority, it put limits on the scope of the state. And by showing that beliefs cannot and so should not be coerced by force, it carved out a space for intellectual and religious liberty.

In honor of that anniversary, we have been posting and discussing excerpts from that work. Here Luther answers the question of whether the temporal authorities should punish heresies:

Heresy can never be prevented by force. That must be taken hold of in a different way, and must be opposed and dealt with otherwise than with the sword. Here God’s Word must strive; if that does not accomplish the end it will remain unaccomplished through secular power, though it fill the world with blood. Heresy is a spiritual matter, which no iron can strike, no fire burn, no water drown. God’s Word alone avails here. . . .

Moreover, faith and heresy are never so strong as when men oppose them by sheer force, without God’s Word. For men count it certain that such force is for a wrong cause and is directed against the right, since it proceeds without God’s Word, and does not know how to further its cause except by force, just as the brute beasts do. For even in secular affairs force can be used only after the wrong has been legally condemned. How much less possible is it to act with force, without justice and God’s Word, in these high, spiritual matters! . . .

Friend, would you drive out heresy, then you must find a plan to tear it first of all from the heart and altogether to turn men’s wills away from it; force will not accomplish this, but only strengthen the heresy. What avails it to strengthen heresy in the heart and to weaken only its outward expression, and to force the tongue to lie? God’s Word, however, enlightens the hearts; and so all heresies and errors perish of themselves from the heart. (257)

From Luther’s treatise, “Secular Authority: To What Extent Should It Be Obeyed,” from Works of Martin Luther, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman and Castle Press, 1930). Via Concordia Theological Seminary, Media Resources: https://media.ctsfw.edu/Text/ViewDetails/14900

Notice that he says that both faith and heresy are strengthened when they are opposed by force. “For men count it certain that such force is for a wrong cause and is directed against the right, since it. . . does not know how to further its cause except by force.”

At any rate, using force to punish wrong beliefs and to compel people to hold the right beliefs never works. As Luther discusses throughout the treatise, external pressure cannot touch the inner sanctum of an individual’s mind. At most, external force can create external compliance and external words of agreement. But such conformity is mere lies and hypocrisy if in the privacy of one’s heart, the person believes something else. Luther says of rulers dealing with heretics, “lt were far better, if their subjects erred, simply to let them err, than that they should constrain them to lie and to say what is not in their hearts.”

The only way to deal with heresy is to change the heart of the heretic. That can only be done by proclaiming the Word of God, by means of which the Holy Spirit can create a true faith in Jesus Christ.

I am told that later in his life, Luther conceded that the temporal authorities could and should put external constraints on heretics–not letting them preach in churches, forbidding the publication of their books, etc. Luther was not advocating religious liberty in our sense. But even then, the state was limited to external actions and could not compel what the heretic had to believe.

This was a major step forward from the medieval inquisitions, in which the church scrutinized the inner convictions of suspected heretics, and if those were not acceptable, demanded that the accused change what they believed, and, if they were unwilling to do so, delivered them over to the “secular arm” for execution.

Luther’s position helped establish the principle of the freedom of conscience, which would later bear fruit in a broader freedom of religion.

Meanwhile, 500 years later, some governments and other jurisdictions are still trying to compel people towards various kinds of belief and unbelief.

Illustration: Templars Being Burned [for heresy] by Anonymous – Bibliothèque Municipale, Besançon, France. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=454292

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Luther on NOT Obeying Rulers

July 19, 2023 By Gene Veith

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Last week we blogged about Luther’s view of earthly rulers, saying that they are mostly knaves and fools whom God uses as His jailers and hangmen, dressing up these lowly functionaries in fine robes and high social status as a kind of joke. Then he got into the duties of this vocation, saying that the highest lords must indeed be servants, exercising their authority in love and service to their people.

Luther says some other things about earthly rulers that deserve our attention, as well as the attention of modern-day officials and politicians. This year is the 500th anniversary of his quite brilliant treatise Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (also known as “On Secular Authority” or “On Worldly Authority”).

What he says directly contradicts the wide-spread notion that Luther taught total submission to earthly rulers and that the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms contributed to German authoritarianism by insisting that whatever the rulers dictate is to be accepted as God’s will. But this is what Luther actually says about rulers:

They actually think they have the power to do and command their subjects to do, whatever they please. And the subjects are led astray and believe they are bound to obey them in everything. It has gone so far that the rulers have ordered the people to put away books, and to believe and keep what they prescribe. In this way they presumptuously set themselves in God’s place, lord it over men’s conscience and faith, and put the Holy Spirit to school according to their mad brains. (p. 230)

But when a prince is in the wrong, are his people bound to follow him then too? I answer, No, for it is no one’s duty to do wrong; we ought to obey God Who desires the right, rather than men. (270)

Luther is alluding to the practice of some of the princes who outlawed possession of Reformation writings, including his translation of the New Testament, requiring their subjects to turn them over to be burned. They also required their subjects to confess their belief in the teachings of the pope.

If then your prince or temporal lord commands you to hold with the pope, to believe this or that, or commands you to give up certain books, you should say, . . .

Dear Lord, I owe you obedience with life and goods; command me within the limits of your power on earth, and I will obey. But if you command me to believe, and to put away books, I will not obey; for in this case you are a tyrant and overreach yourself, and command where you have neither right nor power, etc.

To be sure, Luther did not counsel rebellion in these cases. Like his namesake in the American civil rights movement, he counseled non-violent resistance, including accepting your punishment for doing the right thing.

Should he take your property for this, and punish such disobedience blessed are you. Thank God that you are worthy to suffer for the sake of the Word, and let him rave, fool that he is. He will meet his judge.

This may be where Luther got his reputation for quietism in the face of unjust rulers, but that is far from Luther’s point. He believed that God would judge the evil rulers and vindicate those who suffered for standing up against them.

There is a great power in being willing to undergo suffering for what is right. Sometimes, it even wins over one’s persecutors. Martin Luther may well have agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, paraphrasing Gandhi,

“We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children; send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities and drag us out on some wayside road, beating us and leaving us half dead, and we will still love you. But we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.”

Not that Luther was a pacifist as King was. The charge that Luther and Lutherans were political quietists is absurd, given that Luther defied the major temporal authorities of his day, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, as did his followers in the Smalcald War and in the Thirty Years War. Under the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, earthly kings are subject to the laws of God, who reigns over them as their King.

Illustration: Emperor Charles V (1533) by Lucas Cranach, via Picryl, Public Domain

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Luther vs. Christian Nationalism

July 7, 2023 By Gene Veith

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As I mentioned earlier this week, this is the 500th anniversary of Luther’s treatise on Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed, published in 1523. I observed that this treatment of the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms has much that ties in to today’s controversies and that we would be blogging about some of those in the weeks ahead.

Temporal Authority–in some translations rendered “Secular Authority,” which uses the term we use today–has much to say, for example, about “Christian nationalism.” Can there be a Christian nation? If so, what would it take to create one? Can that be achieved with the force of law? Could a Christian ruler enforce laws to make his citizens righteous and devout?

Here is what Luther says:

lt is indeed true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject to neither law nor sword and need neither; but first take heed and fill the world with real Christians before ruling it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, although they are all baptised and are nominally Christian. Christians, however, are few and far between, as the saying is. Therefore it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, nay even over one land or company of people, since the wicked always out- number the good. (p. 237)

Temporal authority, he explains, is a matter of law. And law cannot make Christians. To be sure, temporal authority can enforce the first use of the law, to restrain evil. Indeed, this is its purpose. And Christian citizens and rulers should work towards that end. But making everyone be moral by force cannot make a Christian nation.

Christians are made such by the gospel, through which the Holy Spirit creates faith in Christ, through whose atonement we receive forgiveness of our violations of God’s law. But faith in the gospel cannot be created by political power.

“No one can be compelled to be a Christian” (248), wrote Luther. “For faith is a free work, to which no one can be forced. Nay, it is a divine work, done in the Spirit, certainly not a matter which outward authority should compel or create” (253-254).

All of this is to say that to have a Christian nation, the Christianity, from the gospel and faith, must come first. But if everyone in the country were a true, faith-filled, spirit-filled Christian, they wouldn’t even need a government. They would do what is right as the fruit of their faith, loving their neighbors with no need of legal coercion. The fact is, even Christians must still struggle against sin, so they still need to be governed by the law and by secular authorities, by whose vocation God limits the destructive power of sin.

The state, which rules by the law, cannot make anyone devout. And the church, which conveys the gospel, cannot rule politically.

For this reason these two kingdoms must be sharply distinguished, and both be permitted to remain; the one to produce piety, the other to bring about external peace and prevent evil deeds; neither is sufficient in the world without the other. For no one can become pious before God by means of the secular government, without Christ’s spiritual rule. Hence Christ’s rule does not extend over all, but Christians are always in the minority and are in the midst of non-Christians. (237)

This is not dualism. God is the King of both kingdoms.

Interestingly, contrary to the common assumptions, Luther says that morality is the business of the state, not the church, whose business is to bring forgiveness to those who have failed to be moral (that is, all of us).

So Christians are right to press for morality in the public square, for justice and righteousness. And yet the most that the state can do in this regard is to restrain external immorality, which is an important accomplishment. Though the state can never achieve this perfectly because it can never change the hearts of sinners, which bear fruit in overt evils. The church, though, can change the hearts of sinners through the gospel.

Most Christian nationalists today are thinking of morality when they think of creating a Christian nation. So they might not be completely wrong. But they would do well to work through Luther’s Temporal Authority.

Illustration via Pxfuel

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Luther on Compelled Speech

July 5, 2023 By Gene Veith

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Not being allowed to say what you believe is a violation of your freedom of speech. But another kind of violation of your freedom of speech is compelled speech, being forced to say something that you do not believe.

Today speech is being compelled in the mandates to support the LGBTQ+ cause, as enforced by anti-discrimination laws and by social pressure to celebrate “Pride Month.”

But the law cannot force you to say or express something that goes against your beliefs. That was the Supreme Court’s ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis, which upheld the right of a website designer to refuse to build websites celebrating same-sex weddings.

Comments The Federalist‘s Jordan Boyd, quoting Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion:

Activists have tried for years to weaponize Colorado’s sweeping “antidiscrimination” laws to punish people like [website designer Lorie] Smith and Masterpiece Cakeshop cake artist Jack Phillips for wrongthink.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, however, affirmed in the court’s majority opinion that the government can’t force Smith to make wedding websites celebrating same-sex couples because it would violate her constitutional right to exercise her Christian belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.

“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Because Colorado seeks to deny that promise, the judgment is reversed,” Gorsuch wrote.

Read Gorsuch’s opinion, including his devastating refutation of Justice Sonia Sotomayer’s dissent.

The ruling applies also to Jack Phillips’ refusal to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. It may have little effect on compelled speech in the private sector, as when a corporation requires its employees to express support for the Pride agenda. And it will do nothing for speech compelled not by the government but by peer pressure. Our problem is that we now lack a cultural ethos of free speech.

Interestingly, Luther also addresses the issue of compelled speech. In Temporal Authority: The Extent to Which It Should Be Obeyed, Luther discusses the futility of rulers presuming to require their citizens to confess one religion or another. He makes the important–and historically influential to the cause of liberty–point that thoughts cannot be coerced:

Besides, the blind, wretched folk do not see how utterly hopeless and impossible a thing they are attempting. For no matter how much they fret and fume, they cannot do more than make the people obey them by word and deed; the heart they cannot constrain, though they wear themselves out trying. For the proverb is true, “Thoughts are free.” Why then would they constrain people to believe from the heart, when they see that it is impossible? In this way they compel weak consciences to lie, to deny, and to say what they do not believe in their hearts, and they load themselves down with dreadful alien sins. For all the lies and false confessions which such weak consciences utter fall back upon him who compels them. lt were far better, if their subjects erred, simply to let them err, than that they should constrain them to lie and to say what is not in their hearts; neither is it right to defend evil with what is worse. (p. 254)

This happens to be the 500th anniversary of Luther’s Temporal Authority, a treatise in which he develops his theology of the Two Kingdoms. I’ve been reading it for a project I am working on, and I have been astonished at the way it addresses contemporary topics. I’ll be blogging about that in the weeks ahead.

Photo: Justice Neil Gorsuch by Franz Jantzen, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States – https://www.oyez.org/justices/neil_gorsuch, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60210393

Teaching Lutheran Identity

November 18, 2022 By Gene Veith

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Yesterday we blogged about how Christians have their identity in Christ, through their baptism. Supporting that, traditionally, has been the secondary identities we have in our families and in the church.

At our congregation I am teaching a post-confirmation class. The youth attending it have been confirmed, so they have been well instructed in the Catechism and in the Bible, knowing the Law and the Gospel, the Word and the Sacraments. At their confirmation, they were asked a series of questions about their faith, culminating in this:

Pastor: Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it?

Response: I do, by the grace of God.

Despite making this commitment, many confirmands have been abandoning this confession and Church as soon as the rite is over. I have better hopes for the members of my class. But it has occurred to me that many Lutherans are oblivious to their forebears who did suffer death rather than fall away from this confession. And many Lutherans, not just young people but adults as well, do not know all that much about their Church and why it is worth suffering for.

In the class I am teaching these young folks the history of the church in general and their Lutheran church in particular. I am trying to help them learn and appreciate their spiritual heritage and realize their place in it. My goal is to build up their Christian identity by helping them cultivate a Lutheran identity.

Denominations are out of vogue in contemporary Christianity, both because of the “ecumenical movement” in mainline liberal Protestantism and the “non-denominational movement” among evangelicals. To the point that even congregations that belong to specific denominations often play down their distinctives and make themselves appear as non-denominational as possible.

But this has led to a generic Christianity, with minimal doctrine and little theology. Conversely, the great theological traditions that the denominations used to exemplify are on the verge of being forgotten, even though their insights could help Christians navigate the issues they face today. As a result, contemporary Christianity is weakened in the face of militant secularism.

The word “denomination” derives from a word meaning “naming.” There is nothing wrong with a church body having a name; that is, having an identity. And the members of that church–inasmuch as they belong to a common community, with a common history, and common beliefs–share in that identity. This should reinforce their primary identity that they have in Christ.

In the class, we started by studying the early church, which was cruelly persecuted until it converted the persecutors. We talked about the heresies that arose and how the Creeds that we recite every Sunday were composed to counter them. We discussed the fall of Rome to the barbarians, how the church preserved literature and learning and eventually converted the barbarians.

We studied the Middle Ages, its great accomplishments but also how, at the pinnacle of the church’s power, the authority of the Scriptures was eclipsed by the human authority of the pope and how the gospel of salvation through Christ was obscured by salvation through good works. We talked about the popular notion that a soul must spend three years in the fires of Purgatory for every sin–a “temporal penalty” even for sins that had been confessed and absolved–and how ordinary Christians faced the prospect of experiencing punishment for thousands of years until they could merit Heaven. And how the church fell into corruption by monetizing such beliefs through the sale of indulgences.

Which led to the Reformation. My class had heard quite a bit about Luther. But, in addition to the Lutheran martyrs, we also talked about other Reformers who thought Luther did not go far enough. Luther wanted to “reform” the church by recentering it around the gospel of Christ and the Scriptures, eliminating only those elements that pointed in other directions. But much in the medieval church did point to Christ, and so were retained. Other Protestants, though, would try to start the church over, more or less from scratch, accusing the Lutheran liturgy, the church year, and its artistic representations as being “too Catholic.” I wanted my students to understand why Lutherans do what they do and why they are different from other Protestants.

My students knew little about what happened after Luther’s death, how the Emperor decided to eradicate Lutheranism and the Reformation once and for all. How the Lutheran princes united in the Smalcald League and were defeated by the Emperor, thanks to their betrayal by Duke Moritz of Saxony, a Lutheran who was tempted to treachery by the Emperor’s offer of land and the title of “Elector,” taking it from the line of Frederick the Wise so he could be one of the seven voters who elected the next Emperor. Catholicism was re-imposed and Lutheranism was forced underground. Until Moritz, having betrayed his fellow Lutherans next betrayed the Emperor and defeated him in battle, leading to the Peace of Augsburg and the legalization of Lutheranism!

We studied the Age of Lutheran Orthodoxy, with its accomplishments (such as its music, such as Bach, plus some of the hymns we sing every Sunday), and its problems, such as the “Lutheran” heresies. The students held in their hands the Book of Concord, assembled to be the definitive statement of Lutheran theology, and we talked about each of the confessions and what it’s for. (The Augsburg Confession, showing how Lutheranism is continuous with historic Christianity; the Smalcald Articles, showing how it is different from Catholicism; the Formula of Concord, showing how it’s different from Protestantism, etc.). We also talked about the challenges of Pietism and the Enlightenment.

We studied Lutheranism in America. We talked about Samuel Schmucker, who argued to the early German and Scandinavian immigrants that they should compromise their theology so that it would be in accord with the Christianity of their new homeland. “No!” said my students. But he exemplified the perennial temptation of American Lutheranism, which has lurched at various times towards revivalism, liberal theology, the charismatic movement, evangelicalism, and the church growth movement, only to lurch back to Lutheran orthodoxy in the nick of time.

We then talked about how, back in Germany, King Friedrich Wilhelm III, in addition to cultivating Prussian militarism and replacing the classical university with the new science-based “research institutions,” got it into his mind to combine all of the Protestant churches into one generic state church, in which his subjects could be enlightened with sermons on topics such as “Modern Agricultural Techniques.” Some Lutherans who resisted this “Prussian Union” were arrested, and more resolved to leave behind their extended families, their livelihoods, and their homeland in order to find religious liberty. So they emigrated to Canada, Australia, and, especially, the United States. Here they settled in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas, and Missouri, often building log cabins and facing the hardships of pioneers. I stressed how this heritage is why Missouri Synod Lutherans don’t buy into “ecumenical” movements or “unionism” of any kind.

I knew for a fact that the young people in my class were descended from some of these religious refugees. They were Wends who left their homeland so they could worship with the Lutheran liturgy and hold to the doctrines in the Book of Concord. They were willing to “suffer all” because “this confession and Church” were worth everything. I stressed to my class that this is why you live here, in America, because your great-great-however-many- great grandparents valued their faith that much.

These settlers would join together, under the leadership of pastors like C. F. W. Walther, into the Missouri Synod. We talked about its growth as it evangelized other immigrants, its suffering under the anti-German mobs during World War I, its tremendous growth after World War II, its creative use of media in The Lutheran Hour radio show, and then the Seminex schism.

We did other things, such as walk through the Divine Service, along the lines of my recent post about what visitors need to know about it.

And the students ate it all up. They liked to hear about the battles. The martyrs. The commitment. They picked up on the themes–the Schmuckerite temptation of cultural conformity, the patterns of failure followed by rebirth, the trust in the Word and Sacraments, the “Here I Stand” integrity. They felt a part of all of this. This is their church. They were embracing their Lutheran identity.

Churches of all stripes are trying to figure out how to keep their young people in church. All denominations and theological traditions –and the non-denominational congregations have a theological tradition of their own–have their own stories and their own identities. To continue those stories, churches need to transmit their identities to the next generation. At a time when young people are searching–sometimes in all the wrong places–for an identity, they can find an identity in the church, which, in turn, can give them an identity in Christ.

Illustration: The Luther Seal (Luther’s Rose) [see this for the meaning] by Daniel Csörföly (from Budapest, Hungary), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3111920

Luther’s Cultural Influence

November 14, 2022 By Gene Veith

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Following up on our post about the Reformation’s political influence, I offer today a reflection on the Reformation’s cultural influence.

The conservative Methodist Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, has written an article for World entitled Our great debt to the Reformation. Though he speaks of the Reformation generally, he specifically references Martin Luther. Here is Tooley’s take:

Arguably, Protestantism created modernity. That’s either a blessing or a curse, depending whom you might ask. Catholic and Eastern Orthodox critics fault Protestantism for modernity’s failures, including radical autonomous individualism, rabid secularism, ideological extremisms, and hedonism. Humanity would be more in sync with its Creator if Christianity had remained moored to the authority and continuity of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, they say.

These Catholic and Orthodox arguments have some traction, but they are far from the whole story. By stressing humanity’s direct access to God and the Bible, stressing salvation through faith alone, and also uplifting non-ecclesial vocations and marital life, Protestantism ennobled and liberated much of humanity. Modern literacy, modern science, modern markets and capitalism, constitutional democracy and human rights were all advanced by the Reformation, and in a decisive way. . . .

Luther’s insistence on human direct access to God through Christ dethroned the medieval church’s grasping after inordinate spiritual and temporal power. His stress on direct reading of the Bible by laity in their own language facilitated mass literacy, in order that the Bible might be read. His translation of the Bible into German, amid endless pamphleteering, helped launch modern publishing. His departure from the celibate priesthood, and his wife’s departure from the convent, into a happy marital union, elevated marriage, and family, into godly estates no less than celibacy.

His stress on scholarship and translation from original sources, accompanied by rational discernment apart from direct ecclesial control, contributed to a broadening of scientific analysis and discovery, with free inquiry. His affirmations of professions outside the church dignified labor, trade, and finance, further enabling modern markets. His stress on private conscience and rejection of unquestioned ecclesial authority undermined political and ecclesial authoritarianism. After the Reformation, there was increasing expectation that governance was no longer the exclusive preserve of a favored few but now was a project involving all God’s creatures.

And yet, I wonder if Protestantism created modernity, for better or worse. Certainly, Luther was hearkening back to a more ancient way of thinking when he took his stand on the Bible as the source and norm of the Christian life. In the same way, the Renaissance was seeking a cultural rebirth by recovering the insights of the ancient Greeks and Roman. The move was backwards in time, not forward. Both Luther and Erasmus considered the Medieval scholasticism of their time to be “modern” and sought to recover something older.

Tooley is certainly right about Luther’s emphasis on faith, education, family, and vocation. But when he extrapolates Luther’s translation from the original sources in the Biblical languages–a principle of Renaissance scholarship–into the rise of science and technology, and when he credits Luther for the rise of capitalism, I am not convinced. Calvin is usually credited, or blamed, for the rise of trade, finance, modern markets, and, hence, capitalism. Luther believed countries should stick to their own resources and not trade for things they didn’t need, and he discouraged the pursuit of wealth. He may have been naive about that, but he wasn’t “modern.” There is a huge difference between Luther and Calvin, which other Protestants (as well as Catholics) seem oblivious to.

Tooley’s Reformation sounds more like the Enlightenment, plus evangelicalism. The missing link is Pietism, whose emphasis on human experience led naturally to an emphasis on the human mind.

Moravian Pietists converted John Wesley, who gave us Methodism, which is Tooley’s tradition. And though some Pietists held on to Luther’s theology, others went in other directions, opposing Lutheran orthodoxy in favor of a more individualistic and later more “enlightened” faith. That is to say, they became more “modern.”

But just as we don’t have to accept the progressive paradigm of human society getting better and better, we don’t have to accept the Procrustean bed of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern. Those categories are far too broad to capture the nuances of history. Surely there was a huge difference between the classical and the medieval–are both “pre-modern”? And what about the differences between ancient Greece and ancient Rome? And where does Romanticism fit in? Is it “modern” like Enlightenment rationalism is modern?

Suffice it to say that reforming the church around the Gospel of Christ and the Word of God, as inaugurated by Luther, was much needed. And it did a great deal of good, not only for European culture but for the world. And that in our broken culture today we would do well to draw on that influence again.

Illustration: “Luther Making Music in the Circle of His family” by Gustav Spangenberg (ca. 1875), Museum der bildenden Künste, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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