Luther: On Love of the Bible- Or, How a Theologian is Made

Once when he was a young man he [Martin Luther] happened upon a Bible. In it he read by chance the story about Samuel’s mother in the Books of the Kings. The book pleased him immensely, and he thought that he would be happy if he could ever possess such a book. Shortly thereafter he bought a postil; it also pleased him greatly, for it contained more Gospels than it was customary to preach on in the course of a year.

When he became a monk he gave up all his books. Shortly before this he had bought a copy of the Corpus iuris and I do not know what else. He returned these to the bookseller. Besides Plautus and Vergil he took nothing with him into the monastery. There the monks gave him a Bible bound in red leather. He made himself so familiar with it that he knew what was on every page, and when some passage was mentioned he knew at once just where it was to be found.

“If I had kept at it,” he said, “I would have become exceedingly good at locating things in the Bible. At that time no other study pleased me so much as sacred literature. With great loathing I read physics, and my heart was aglow when the time came to return to the Bible. I made use of the glossa ordinaria. I despised Lyra, although I recognized later on that he had a contribution to make to history. I read the Bible diligently. Sometimes one important statement occupied all my thoughts for a whole day. Such statements appeared especially in the weightier prophets, and (although I could not grasp their meaning) they have stuck in my memory to this day. Such is the assertion in Ezekiel, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,’ etc. [Ezek. 33:11].”  [Luther’s Table Talk].

And that, good reader, is how a theologian is made. If your theology is empty and soulless (or Emergent and Seeker Sensitive) or your Pastor’s preaching more fluff than substance (or cute stories than the development of exegetical themes), the reason lies in unfamiliarity from and disinterest in the Bible.

Luther was the theologian he was (and the same can be said of Calvin and Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Melancthon, Bullinger and Bucer) because he (and they too) was (were) biblical scholar(s) in the truest sense of the phrase.

Opinions and Viewpoints

Following you’ll find a list of people whose opinions matter to me and whose viewpoints I value (though not in such a way that I’m willing to slavishly follow them).  I offer said listing in response to a question I was sent on Facebook (itself responding to a posting from earlier today) .  To be precise the question was

If you don’t care about McGrath’s opinion, whose do you care about?

An excellent question.  I answer- the opinions of these:

God, my wife and daughter, my father-in-law and mother in-law, Bob Cargill, Chris Tilling, Israel Finkelstein, Antonio Lombatti, Giovanni Garbini, Niels Peter Lemche, Thomas Thompson, James Crossley, Maurice Casey, Steph Fisher, Philip Davies, and Keith Whitelam.  And that’s pretty much it.

The persons whose viewpoints I value (aside from the above who are all alive whilst these are dead) :

Rudolf Bultmann, Gerhard von Rad, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Huldrych Zwingli.

To be sure, I value the opinions and viewpoints of others, but when it comes right down to it and everything is boiled to the essentials, these are the core group.  If you didn’t make the list don’t feel too bad.  First, you probably don’t care about my opinion anyway (so you can’t really be too hurt).  And second, you’re in the majority if your opinion isn’t all that important to me.  So there’s that.

Opinions and viewpoints.  If we’re all honest (a virtue virtually abandoned these days) we would all admit that some people mean more to us than others.

I’ve Thought About it for 16 Minutes and I’ve Come to Some Interesting Conclusions…

I’ve decided to abandon my self effacing ways and in future when a volume of mine comes out i’m going to mention it.   After all, at least my stuff is affordable and accessible (unlike lots of the Dreck published these days- stuff that’s neither interesting nor edifying).

And if my academic colleagues don’t like my stuff I can only admonish them with these words:  you aren’t my intended audience.  Anyway, since I sent a copy of my book on Zwingli to the exceptionally learned Giovanni Garbini and he wrote a note back thanking me for it and expressing admiration for it, I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and become just like all the other bibliobloggers who push their books.  I’ll just have more to push, that’s all.  (They’d be more productive themselves if they’d stop playing world of warcraft and eating crumpets).

I’ve thought about it for 16 minutes and I’ve come to the interesting conclusion that false humility is as wrong as false pride. 😉

Some of the Most Interesting and Informative Correspondence of the Swiss Reformation…

Is found in the letters which Oecolampadius and Zwingli passed back and forth (and there’s a lot of them!).  Of Oecolampadius, John Scott writes

The early part of the life of John Hauschein, or Œcolampadius, was subject to several remarkable changes. He was born in the year 1482, at Winsperg, in Franconia, of a respectable family which had come from Basle. His father originally destined him to business: but his mother, a woman celebrated for her sanctity of life, her beneficence, and her talents, who watched over him with all the anxiety that Augustine’s mother had manifested for her son, prevailed with her husband to give him a learned education. He was sent to Heidelberg, and thence to Bologna, to study for the legal profession: but he soon quitted the latter place, returned to Heidelberg, and devoted himself to the study of divinity.

From early life his proficiency in learning had been distinguished; and, joined to his amiable and excellent character, it recommended him to the notice of Philip, elector Palatine, who appointed him tutor of his sons. But the life of a courtier did not suit Œcolampadius, and in a few years he quitted that situation, and proposed to return to Heidelberg. But his parents, having now no other child, and seeing him devoted to the church, invested as much of their property as they could spare in founding an ecclesiastical benefice, which their son might hold, at his native town of Winsperg. This post however he for the present retained only six weeks! his too sensitive mind and tender conscience persuading him that he was not qualified for such a charge.

He visited Tübingen, and then Stutgard, to avail himself, in the latter place, of the assistance of the learned Reuchlin, in his Hebrew studies. He then returned to Heidelberg: and after some time ventured to resume his situation at Winsperg, and thus, says his friend Capito, “preached Christ to his countrymen, about the year 1514.” In that or the following year, however, Capito, who was now stationed at Basle, persuaded the bishop to invite Œcolampadius thither also. At Basle, besides his labours as a minister, he rendered important service to Erasmus (as that learned man acknowledges in the preface to his work,) in editing, in 1516, the first edition that ever was printed of the Greek New Testament; the publication of which materially contributed to advance the reformation.

From Basle, Œcolampadius was ere long called by the canons of Augsburg, to discharge the office of a preacher in that city. But here again his timidity and scrupulosity of mind pursued him, and induced him to resign his situation, as thinking himself quite unequal to contend with the prevailing corruption of manners, and boldly to proclaim the truth to those who felt galled and irritated by it. “I confess,” he afterwards writes to a friend, “that I was weak and timid. I ought to have trusted in God, who had called me, and not to have despaired of his giving me ‘a mouth and wisdom.’ ” These traces of fickleness and weakness, in the earlier history of this great man, may teach us the more to admire the power of divine grace, which made him, in after life, so steady, determined, and every way valuable a character.

On his retiring from Augsburg, the step he took was much to be regretted, and was strongly deprecated by his friends. He threw himself into a monastery—proposing to spend his future days in retirement and study. He had the precaution, however, to stipulate with the society into which he entered for the liberty of his faith, and of pursuing his studies according to his own pleasure; and also, it would seem, for that of quitting the convent to exercise his ministry, if he should see his way clear to do it: “for,” said he, with the con scientiousness which marked his character, “if I should bind myself by five hundred oaths, I should not be able to keep them, if at any future time I should think myself qualified to be useful as a minister.” And all this liberty the Bridgetine monks in the neighbourhood of Augsburg, anxious to gain one who would do so much credit to their order, readily promised him. His friends, and particularly Capito, spared no pains to draw him from this retreat: and, in the course of God’s providence, he was even driven into compliance with their wishes: for, as he scrupled not to express his sentiments on the controversies which then began to excite universal attention, and on the prevailing errors and abuses of the church, he found that, notwithstanding all his stipulations on entering the place, he was exposed to no small danger from his associates in the monastery, and from other devoted papists, who began even to form plots against his life.

Glapio, in particular, the confessor of the emperor Charles V, at the period of the diet of Worms, himself manifested, and excited in others, determined hostility against him. He in consequence quitted his monastery, and betook himself to the castle of the celebrated Francis Sickengen, then the resort of many learned men; and after Sickengen’s death, which soon followed, returned to Basle, where he spent the remainder of his days, and where we shall see him becoming “the reformer of that city, and, in conjunction with Zwingli, of Switzerland at large.” Grynæus speaks of him as being esteemed “the first man of the age in which he lived for skill in the learned languages, for sound theological erudition, and for exact acquaintance with ecclesiastical antiquity.”

The Marburg Colloquy: 1-3 October, 1529

Walter Koehler wrote a fine essay for Zwingliana in 1930 on the colloquy which took place in Marburg at the behest of Philip.

It commences

„Um den Glauben wird der Streit gehen und um das Geheimnis des göttlichen Wirkens in uns” —• de fide erit contentio et de mysterio divinae operationis in nobis —, so schrieb im Frühjahr 1527, als das schon längst zusammengeballte Gewitter des Abendmahlsstreites zwischen Luther und Zwingli unmittelbar vor der Entladung zu stehen schien, der Süddeutsche Theobald Billikan nach Basel an Johannes Oekolampad.

The conclusion of the matter was agreement between the parties on 15 counts (though on the 15th they would continue to see things differently the moment the conference ended). They put their names on that agreement on 3 October, went home, and wrote very uncharitable things about each other.

If you’d like to read all about it, go here.