The Search for Authority in Reformation Europe

Elaine Fulton, Helen Parish

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409408543
• eBook ISBN: 9781317016564
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Early Modern History

The 'problem of authority' was not an invention of the Protestant Reformation, but, as the essays contained in this volume demonstrate, its discussion, in ever greater complexity, was one of the ramifications (if not causes) of the deepening divisions within the Christian church in the sixteenth century. Any optimism that the principle of sola scriptura might provide a vehicle for unity and concord in the post-Reformation church was soon to be dented by a growing uncertainty and division, evident even in early evangelical writing and preaching. Representing a new approach to an important subject this volume of essays widens the understanding and interpretation of authority in the debates of the Reformation. The fruits of original and recent research, each essay builds with careful scholarship on solid historiographical foundations, ensuring that the content and ultimate conclusions do much to challenge long-standing assumptions about perceptions of authority in the aftermath of the Reformation. Rather than dealing with individual sources of authority in isolation, the volume examines the juxtapositions of and negotiations between elements of the authoritative synthesis, and thereby throws new light on the nature of authority in early-modern Europe as a whole. This volume is thus an ideal vehicle with which to bring high quality, new, and significant research into the public domain for the first time, whilst adding substantially to the existing corpus of Reformation scholarship.

CHAPTER 1
‘Arguing About Religion’: Luther’s Ongoing Debate with Islam

Adam S. Francisco

The more the late medieval church insisted that Luther recant his alleged false teachings, the more he was convinced of the righteousness of his cause. ‘I am sure that the Word of God is with me and not with them’, he wrote, ‘for I have the Scriptures on my side and they have only their own doctrine. This gives me courage, so that the more they despise and persecute me, the less I fear them’.¹ These words, written in 1521 in response to Pope Leo X’s Exsurge Domini – threatening Luther with excommunication for heresy and subversion – encapsulate the heart of the Wittenberg professor’s views on authority. Theological doctrines had to be supported by Scripture in order to be binding on the church and Christians. Religious assertions that could not ‘be defended in this way’, he told his readers, ‘is no concern of ours and is no business of Christians’.² To further clarify his position he asked his Roman censurers the following rhetorical question:

What would their answer be, or how should we present our case, if a Turk were to ask us to give reasons for our faith? He doesn’t care how long we have believed a certain way or how many or how eminent the people are who have believed this or that. We would have to be silent about all these things and direct him to the holy scriptures as the basis for our faith. It would be absurd and ridiculous if we were to say: look here, so many priests, bishops, kings, princes, lands, and peoples have believed this and that ever so long.³

It seems that Luther has established here a fairly clear principle of authority for religious discourse, not just among Christians but also between Christians and Muslims. At this point in his career, though, he had very little reason to expect that he might ever have to respond to Islam. Circumstance would change, however, in a few short years when ‘the Turk and his religion’ were at his ‘very doorstep’.⁴ When the rival faith of Islam began to cast its long shadow over Europe as the Ottoman Turks began their march up the Danube towards the German Empire, the geopolitical situation coupled with reports of conversions caused Luther to seriously consider just how one could effectively respond to the theological challenge of Islam. And in anticipation of the inevitable contact Christians would make with Muslims he asked the question again, ‘how should we present our case, if a Turk were to ask us to give reasons for our faith?’ Only this time the question was more than hypothetical. It was a matter of immense pastoral and apologetic importance.

Luther, Islam, and Ottoman Imperialism

The expansion of the Ottoman Empire into central Europe was the impetus for Luther’s engagement with Islam. From 1521 until the end of his life the Turks forced their way into Hungary with, as many thought, their sights trained on Germany.⁵ The 1529 siege of Vienna, in particular, frightened everybody, for, as Luther expressed, it placed the Turks and their religion within the reach of the Holy Roman Empire.⁶ Accompanying the annexation of much of Hungary was the Islamisation of eastern Europe. The conversion of the cathedral at Buda (Mátyás templom), many thought, was but a foreshadowing of events to come. After hearing and reading about such accounts Luther was convinced that if the final judgment did not occur soon the world would ‘go Muhammadan’.⁷ This expression should not be seen as complete hyperbole. According to Marshall G.S. Hodgson, if a neutral observer were available at the time – say a Martian – they would have reached similar conclusions.

In the sixteenth century … a visitor from Mars might well have supposed that the human world was on the verge of becoming Muslim. He would have based his judgment partly on the strategic and political advantages of the Muslims, but partly on the vitality of their general culture.⁸

While demographic surveys are in short supply, not only did the Ottoman advance and annexation of eastern and parts of central Europe bring Christians and Muslims into close contact, but Muslim enclaves also began to take root, and many Christians who found themselves subjects of the Turks ‘assumed Islam without having much of a choice in the matter.’⁹ There were even reports of ‘violent efforts to proselytise among the inhabitants of Southern Hungary’.¹⁰ Luther certainly did not doubt that some instances of conversion at the point of the sword occurred, but he knew that this was not always or even normally the case.¹¹ Many Christians embraced Islam. ‘I hear and read that many Christians commit apostasy’, he wrote, ‘and willingly and without force believe the faith of the Turks or Muhammad’.¹²

The expansion of what Luther termed Mahometisch Reich – politically and demographically – made it vital for Christians to be able to respond intelligently to Islam. This, however, posed a fundamental problem for Luther. All the available literature, at least initially, was overtly polemical and written by Rome’s theologians. Their content was therefore suspect. He was convinced that they were fraudulent pieces of propaganda used to fuel hatred in order to inspire support for a crusade, for this was the only way Rome could deal with Islam.¹³ Its theology was built on too weak a foundation. He wrote:

I understand the reason why the Turkish religion is so concealed by the papists, why only base things are told of them. It is because they sense what in fact is true, that, if it should come to the point of arguing about religion, the whole papacy with all its trappings would fall. Nor would they be able to defend their own faith and at the same time refute the faith of Muhammad.¹⁴

Luther cared little for the fate of any of Rome’s clergy even though he was convinced that none of them ‘would be able to remain in their faith if they should spend three days among the Turks’.¹⁵ He was very concerned with the fate of ordinary Christians though, who, finding themselves a subject of the Ottomans, were bound to experience temptation and Anfechtung while living amidst Muslims. Thus, the ever-mindful pastoral theologian from Wittenberg began to respond polemically and apologetically to Islam.

Luther’s first engagement with Islam is found in On War against the Turk. This little book was published on the eve of the siege of Vienna in 1529. Its chief purpose was to explain and encourage a defensive war, led solely by secular officials, against the Turks. Additionally, by evaluating the crisis, he sought to encourage the church to pray for the survival of Christendom. Because many did not understand the magnitude of the threat that the Turks posed to Europe, he included a brief analytical excursus on the nature of Islam in, as he put it, ‘the two estates, spiritual and secular’.¹⁶ It was obviously not intended as a polemic for arguing about religion with a Muslim interlocutor, but, viewed along with his other writings, the standards by which Luther evaluated Islam will help explain the development and complexity of his thought on the subject. The aftermath of the attack on Vienna, where thousands of Christians were either killed or taken back to Istanbul, provided that occasion for Luther’s first real attempt to provide material to help Christians to deal with whatever temptations they might face while living among Muslims. He took the opportunity to do this in the second half of his Muster Sermon against the Turk, wherein he exhorted and offered consolation to ‘Germans already captive in Turkey or those who might still become captive’.¹⁷ The advice he gave, upon careful examination, illustrates the peculiarities of his religious epistemology. Where his principle of authority in the context of inter-religious debates became more complex was his Refutation of the Quran, written in the early 1540s after a period of relative calm on the eastern horizon of Germany. Reversing his earlier judgment on a work he formerly criticised, he abridged, translated, and modified a medieval polemic against the Quran. An analysis of its methodology will elucidate just how flexible Luther was when it came to authority in arguments about religion outside the context of intra-Christian polemics. Despite his flexibility, though, he was still a conservative theologian. When Luther delivered his final word on Islam he tapped into the history of Christian thought and, like apologists of the early church (before the rise of Islam), he ultimately defended the veracity of Christianity based on its historicity.

Luther’s Approach to Islam

From the outset of his engagement with Islam, Luther was – perhaps surprisingly – concerned with achieving as objective and reliable of an understanding of it as possible. He was convinced that much of what was being reported about the Turks was an ‘invented outrageous lie’, and learned polemic texts attacking the precepts of their religion amounted to straw-man arguments.¹⁸ ‘They eagerly take pains to excerpt from the Quran all the most base and absurd things that arouse hatred and can move people to ill-will’, he charged, but they ‘pass over without rebuttal or cover over the good things it contains.’¹⁹ Such polemical methodology was fundamentally problematic.

Those who only censure and condemn the base and absurd characteristics of the enemy but remain silent about matters that are honest and worthy of praise do more harm than good to their cause. What is easier than to condemn things that are manifestly base and dishonest (which in fact refute themselves)? But to refute good and honest things that are hidden from sight, that is to further the cause, that is to lift up and remove the scandal, to despoil the messengers of their counterfeit image of the light and to render them appropriately hateful because of their base plundering of the light.²⁰

While Luther admits here that there may be ‘good things’ in the Quran he really had no idea, for he had yet to read it in its entirety. His accusations were merely meant to criticise the papacy and its theologians, not to defend Islam. Luther’s suspicion of medieval authors thus led him to analyse Islam for himself, relatively speaking, apart from external influences. To do so, however, he knew he had to obtain a copy of a Quran. Until he could get his hands on one, though, he resigned himself to speaking only to the ‘few things’ that he knew from the ‘parts of Muhammad’s Quran’ found in whatever secondary sources were available to him.

There were at least three texts dealing with Islam and the Turks from which Luther culled information for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: The Search for Authority in the Protestant Reformation
• 1 ‘Arguing About Religion’: Luther’s Ongoing Debate with Islam
• 2 The Authority of Scripture and Tradition in Calvin’s Lectures on the Prophets
• 3 Spiritual Authority and Ecclesiastical Practice: John a Lasco and the Forma ac ratio
• 4 History as Authority: Johann Sleidan and his De statu religionis et reipublicae Carolo Quinto Caesare Commentarii
• 5 Touching Theology with Unwashed Hands: The Preservation of Authority in Post-Tridentine Catholicism
• 6 Authority and Method in the Eucharistic Debates of the Early English Reformation
• 7 ‘To conseile with elde dyuynis’: History, Scripture and Interpretation in Reformation England
• 8 The ‘Challenge Controversy’ and the Question of Authority in the early Elizabethan Church
• 9 Augustine ‘falleth into dispute with himself’: The Fathers and Church Music in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
• Conclusion
• Index