Martin Luther's Theology of Beauty

A Reappraisal

Mark C. Mattes

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780801098376
• eBook ISBN: 9781493410309
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Many contemporary theologians seek to retrieve the concept of beauty as a way for people to encounter God. This groundbreaking book argues that while Martin Luther's view of beauty has often been ignored or underappreciated, it has much to contribute to that quest. Mark Mattes, one of today's leading Lutheran theologians, analyzes Luther's theological aesthetics and discusses its implications for music, art, and the contemplative life. Mattes shows that for Luther, the cross is the lens through which the beauty of God is refracted into the world.

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Introduction

In modern Luther research there has been a steady stream of articles and books devoted to Luther’s appreciation for music and his defense of icons and the visual arts in the face of the iconoclastic protests of other Reformers. Likewise, there have been numerous studies devoted to Luther’s view of worship and the liturgy. But the topic of beauty in Luther has rarely been examined.1 This study seeks to cover new ground on a theme that was important for Luther but that we would not anticipate. After all, how can a thinker who struggled so much with God, who distinguished a “hidden” or an “absconded” God from a revealed God, and who differentiated a “theology of the cross” from that of “glory” possibly have anything to contribute to a theology of beauty? Beauty conveys a tranquility that hardly seems to square with the Reformer’s spirituality, marked so often by chronic conflict with God, which he actually understood as assault (tentatio) from God. Among all the major Reformers, Luther would seem the least likely source for finding anything of significance for beauty. Indeed, prima facie we might think of Luther as the enemy of beauty. After all, the medieval Catholic system was apt to see union with beauty itself in the beatific vision as a reward for cultivating the habits of faith, hope, and love, provided that grace initiated this cultivation. In his quest to challenge and abolish the tradition of interpreting grace through the lens of merit, it would seem that Luther is the great foe of beauty. This study indicates otherwise. In many respects, the gospel as Luther understood it opens a horizon that gives sinners access to beauty and a message that is itself so beautiful that desperate, repentant sinners crave it. The God who is like the waiting father in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32) or who stands with Jesus as he defends the woman caught in adultery (John 8:2–11) is exactly the one whom sinners can identify as beauty itself, because nothing is quite as wondrous or joyful as the full and free forgiveness given through Jesus Christ and the new life it imparts. This study aims to present a different image of Luther—one in which the Reformer has not only “existentialist” depth but also cosmic and eschatological breadth.2

Insofar as it accomplishes that goal, it is indebted to newer Luther research that refuses to limit the Reformer’s insights solely to an “existentialist” interpretation of the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone. I put “existentialist” in quotation marks because it is anachronistic to peg Luther as an existentialist.3 The intent behind that label is to acknowledge that Luther’s theology is highly experiential but without experience serving as a criterion of truth. Justification by grace alone through faith alone, so central for Luther, also bears on how we are to understand creation (since creation exists after all apart from human worthiness or merit), and eschatology, how God is bringing about a new creation. Increasingly, Luther scholars have been dissatisfied with a “thin” description of Luther that reduces the Reformer’s teachings to the doctrine of justification interpreted in existentialist terms. Instead, they have brought to the fore a “thick” description4 that shows how the doctrine articulates a social dimension such as the “three estates” (the church, the household, and the civil government),5 as well as an acknowledgment of the Word of God as embodied, administered in the sacraments or in preaching. This latter teaching—the embodiment of the Word—is rich in significance for our work since it acknowledges that faith at its core is markedly aesthetic, awakening the senses, opening receptivity, kindling wonder, and evoking gratitude. Such an aesthetic core to the faith is expressed in worship that is sensitive not only to ecstatic joy but also to complaint or accusation against God when life seems terribly unfair, seen for instance in the laments in the Psalter, and even spiritual attack or Anfechtung when God appears to be against us. The latter is an inevitable result of Luther’s threefold spirituality of prayer, meditation, and attack (oratio, meditatio, tentatio).6 Current Luther research is attuned to the fact that it cannot be reductionistic; it must acknowledge that justification bears on all the articles of faith and, just as importantly, on daily life. It also seeks to situate Luther within his late medieval context.7 Luther was not primarily the herald of the modern era as much as a medieval thinker seeking truth. His work inexorably changed the future—whether through intended or unintended consequences. But it is deeply embedded within the mystical piety of the monastery, the nominalist approaches to logic he learned at the university, humanism’s call to return to primary sources, and his deep engagement with the Scriptures through teaching, prayer, and study.8 He reworked all these and other matters and made them conform to evangelical faith.

In a word, what we learn from Luther about beauty is that while God’s alien work (wrath) is indeed terrifying, not beautiful, God’s proper work (mercy) is most beautiful indeed. And that proper work of granting Jesus Christ as gift9 or sacrament to all who believe regenerates believers such that their senses are renewed and they experience the world more aware of the beauty that God has worked into it. As wasted by sinners, Jesus Christ had “no form nor comeliness” (Isa. 53:2 KJV), but the ugliness that sinners imprint upon him is the basis on which God works to remake such sinners as beautiful in his eyes. God does not find sinners to be attractive. Instead, in the gospel, God makes these sinners to be attractive and beautiful for Jesus’s sake. As an “innocent delight,”10 music by nature points to this joy. Icons or visual imagery can be an acceptable aid in worship since the Word of God is itself already embodied. Idolatry in any case is a matter of the heart, not the eye. Hence, for Luther, through the gospel the creation can be a place of innocent delight, things that can be enjoyed. As Oswald Bayer describes one of Luther’s sermons:

The ungrateful nature of the human being is depicted in a multifaceted repetition—drastically, distinctly, concretely: if we had our eyes and ears open, then the flowers would speak to us, as would our possessions and money: “even the grain would talk to us: ‘Be joyful in God, eat, drink, use me and serve your neighbor with me.’” But what comes instead of this: ingratitude and covetousness. “Thus we ruin the joy for ourselves with cares and coveting, so that we shame our Lord, God.” “Your cares and coveting” do not run their full course because of God’s long-suffering nature and patience, because of “his profound goodness,” not because of us. “We are not worthy [that even] a bird should sing and that we should hear a sow grunt.”11

If humans were attuned to God’s generosity, they could quite innocently enjoy creation for what it is and from that enjoyment be empowered to serve others in need. While beauty might not be the first of Luther’s priorities, it is important, and it provides access to a new perspective on Luther, one that gives cosmic, historical, and social breadth as a counterweight or balance to the “existential” depth that earlier generations of scholars have so ably described. Beauty is one way that those alive in Christ appreciate the world. Believers undergo not only dying with Christ but also rising with Christ (Rom. 6:1–11). Appreciating beauty is one way that sinners have it confirmed for them that God’s creation is good, that they can be at home in the world, that the world or life is not only or even primarily task, but also and especially gift. Now it is obviously not the case that only believers appreciate beauty. But it is not clear that, in the long run, nonbelievers’ appreciation for beauty leads to their salvation. Rather, just as not honoring God’s goodness condemns, so likewise not appreciating beauty.

Luther lived in a time of transition for aesthetic sensibilities, in which Europeans increasingly looked away from the tradition stemming from Augustine (354–430), which tended to intellectualize beauty, seeing it as a way to ascend beyond the senses, and instead looked toward sense experience itself as pleasing the affects, and the mind as acknowledging such with appreciation. Luther himself contributed to this trend. Likewise, Luther shared important convictions of German humanists that also shaped his aesthetics. Concerned with educating civil servants, early Italian Renaissance humanists perceived the medieval model of learning (the trivium and the quadrivium) as inadequate to prepare courtiers and diplomats. As an alternative, they focused on the ars dictaminis (elegant writing), Latin grammar, and classical Greek to cultivate persuasive leaders.12 This milieu influenced northern Europe and provided a context for Erasmus to develop his critical edition of the New Testament (1516), a move crucial for Luther’s translation of the New Testament (1521).

The early Luther was fond of associating his work with the likes of Lorenzo Valla and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.13 Renaissance humanism, emphasizing formal Latin rhetoric and elegance in style by means of mastering linguistic skills and textual criticism, and critiquing Scholastic method, influenced Luther’s approach to composing treatises, devotional literature, letters, and his translation of the Bible. Humanists employed erudition and ornament in their writings precisely in order to evoke an affective and ethical response in readers. This was not beauty for its own sake, but instead attractiveness as a means to persuade. It is noteworthy that Renaissance humanists, like their medieval predecessors, did not associate beauty with the arts per se but instead based their views of beauty on ancient or classical models.14

But in order to properly situate him, it is valuable to understand the continuities and discontinuities between Luther and the previous medieval tradition on beauty, which, as identified by Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), included proportion, clarity, and integrity as criteria for beauty. As we shall see, Luther’s understanding of the gospel significantly altered that tradition. Likewise, in a sense, those three standards fall short of God’s creativity, which is much more wondrous and delightful than even these three standards could ever fully assess.

Luther’s own great artistic achievement, even more than his beautiful hymns, was his translation of both the Old and New Testaments into German.15 His translation had a profound and lasting impact on the German language, providing not only a standard language, in contrast to the many dialects, but also turns of phrase without which it would be impossible to imagine German today. Through such verbal artistry, Luther has shaped almost a half millennium of German spirituality, not only in Protestant churches but among Roman Catholics as well. This achievement, in turn, has influenced Protestant musicians, artists, poets, and architects not only in Germany but also throughout the world—and again, not only self-identified Lutherans but also Roman Catholics, Reformed, and even fairly secular people. Minimally such a list would include musicians such as Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47), F. Melius Christianson (1871–1955), Hugo Distler (1908–42), and Heinz Werner Zimmermann (born 1930);16 painters such as Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and his pupil Hans Balding (1484–1545), Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), and F...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Luther’s Use of Philosophy
• 3. Luther on Goodness
• 4. The Early Luther on Beauty
• 5. The Mature Luther on Beauty
• 6. Luther on the Theology and Beauty of Music
• 7. Luther on Visual Imaging
• 8. Luther and Nouvelle Théologie
• 9. Luther for a Contemporary Theology of Beauty
• Works Cited
• Index of Names
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Subjects
• Back Cover