Abstract
This issue of Studies in Christian Ethics is devoted to engagements with the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. In the wake of the worldwide celebrations of 2017 (marking the 500th anniversary of the ‘Ninety-Five Theses’), the question remains as to whether Luther’s thinking has ongoing relevance for Christian ethics. Five hundred years on, does Luther still have any positive contribution to make for Christian thinking and action? Or has Luther simply bequeathed us with a series of problems that we now need to overcome? This issue of SCE includes engagements by scholars sympathetic to and critical of Luther and his legacy.
Three of the papers in this issue were first given at a conference at the University of Aberdeen in early 2017, ‘Luther and the Political’, sponsored by Aberdeen’s Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society, and the Rule of Law. At this event, scholars from various disciplines came together to consider the relationship between Luther’s core theological programme and contemporary politics. Among other things, the group focused upon Luther’s relationship to political violence and his influence upon modern configurations of church and state. Two additional papers have been solicited for this journal issue to engage other aspects of Luther’s contribution to Christian ethics.
In the first article, ‘Luther’s Biblical Hermeneutic as Ethics’, Lois Malcolm undertakes a rich and wide-ranging reflection on Luther’s Messianic ethics and their relevance for our post-secular age. Among other things, Malcolm reflects upon Luther’s complex account of the relationship between the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘earthly’. Against readings that have placed these in tension with one another, Malcolm locates both as internal to the scriptural and Messianic logic of Luther’s thinking. Moreover, she strengthens this move by drawing parallels with some Jewish readings of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Jakob Taubes and Jon Levenson).
The second article, Michael Laffin’s ‘Babel, Tyranny and Totality: Reading Genesis 11 with Luther’, again prioritises Luther’s scriptural hermeneutics. Laffin undertakes a nuanced and close engagement with Luther’s reading of Genesis 11; he carefully draws out the implications of the Babel story and God’s resultant punishment for contemporary political discourse and language. In addition, Laffin concludes with some reflections on how, following Luther, the Eucharist can provide a concrete place for repentance and reconciliation, for attending to God’s ongoing work in the midst of our fragmented and divided political and linguistic state. (Note that this issue of SCE also contains a substantive review essay by Joan O’Donovan of Laffin’s recent book, The Promise of Martin Luther’s Political Theology).
Martin Wendte’s ‘Mystical Foundations of Politics? Luther on God’s Presence and the Place of Human Beings’ places in dialogue two largely unconnected strands in contemporary Luther research: a strand that has sought to situate Luther in terms of his mystical influences (i.e. Bernd Hamm, Sven Grosse, Volker Leppin) and one that has sought to recover and expand upon Luther’s theology of the estates (i.e. Oswald Bayer, Hans Ulrich, Bernd Wannenwetsch, Brian Brock and Michael Laffin). According to Wendte, this scholarship on the estates can be deepened and enriched by properly locating it in terms of the mystical ‘depth-structures’ of Luther’s theology.
In ‘Sovereignty and Submission: Luther’s Political Theology and the Violence of Christian Metaphysics’, Marius Mjaaland considers whether some of Luther’s core theological commitments may have facilitated his support for apocalyptic and extreme political violence. Building upon his most recent book, The Hidden God (2016), Mjaaland frames a reading of Luther using the classic debate between Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson. He then explores the ways in which Luther’s theology of the hidden and absolute God may inform his totalising political interventions, especially during the Peasants’ Revolt. As Majaaland reflects, ‘the political violence corresponds to the theological-metaphysical violence, and the reference to a hidden God (beyond predication) who belongs to the sacred sphere of divinity at the very least does not prevent this violent excess during the German Revolution of 1525’.
My own paper, ‘The Weakness of the Word and the Reality of God: Luther and Bonhoeffer on the Cross of Discipleship’, explores how Luther’s theologia crucis can and must inform contemporary accounts of Christian discipleship and mission. In particular, I claim that Luther’s early theology can help us better attend to important and neglected themes in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 1937 Discipleship. Read together, Luther and Bonhoeffer provide a compelling vision of Christian discipleship as a kind of suffering. This in turn, I suggest, facilitates an understanding of mission and evangelism that is less triumphalistic and more open to God’s presence in the midst of limitation and failure.
Taken together, these articles are important for at least three reasons: they revise some of the standard ways in which scholars have approached Luther’s contribution to political theology and ethics; they show that any understanding of this contribution must engage the breadth of Luther’s writings (i.e. rather than just focusing on his more explicitly political and ethical texts); and they display the complex and multivalent ways in which different aspects of his theology inform one another.
I am grateful to Susan Parsons, the editor of Studies in Christian Ethics, for the opportunity to put together this special issue on Luther and Christian Ethics, and for her guidance and assistance throughout. It is in no small part due to her commitment and efforts that Studies in Christian Ethics has become such an extraordinary resource and forum for those of us working in this area of theology. Thank you!