The Devil behind the Surplice

Matthias Flacius and John Hooper on Adiaphora

Johnston

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781498242615
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Between 1548 and 1551, controversies over adiaphora, or indifferent matters, erupted in both Germany and England. Matthias Flacius Illyricus in Germany and John Hooper in England both refused to accept, among other things, the same liturgical vestment: the surplice. While Flacius' objections to the imperial liturgical requirements were largely contextual, because the vestments and rites were forced on the church and were part of a recatholicizing agenda, Hooper protested because he was convinced that disputed vestments and rites lacked a biblical basis. The Devil behind the Surplice demonstrates that, while Flacius fought to protect the reformation principle of justification by grace alone through faith alone, Hooper strove to defend the reformation principle that Scripture alone was the source and norm of Christian doctrine and practice. Ultimately, Flacius wanted more Elijahs, prophets to guide a faithful remnant, and Hooper wanted a new Josiah, a young reform king to purify the kingdom and strip it of idolatry.

Part One

Matthias Flacius and the Adiaphoristic Controversy

Chapter 1

The Path to the Adiaphoristic Controversy

1.1. Luther’s Theology of the Two Kingdoms

At the outset, it is important for the reader to understand an important distinction in Luther’s and Lutheran theology, that is, the distinction between righteousness coram mundo and coram Deo, civic righteousness and the righteousness that avails before God. Article XVIII of the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, which the reformer considered a faithful explication of his teaching, helpfully elucidated this distinction. There the Apology conceded such a thing as civic righteousness, or righteousness coram mundo, in the sight of the world. The human will, it made clear, could “to some extent produce civil righteousness or the righteousness of works.” The Apology explained further, “It can talk about God and offer God acts of worship with external works,” for instance, and “it can obey rulers and parents.” This meant that “by choosing an external work it can keep back the hand from murder, adultery, and theft.” This was a whole different rightesousnes than justifying righteousness, however. The Apology stated, “Scripture calls this righteousness of the flesh, which carnal nature (that is, reason) produces by itself apart from the Holy Spirit.”1 Nevertheless, even this righteousness possible for human beings to achieve was rare because of the fallen state of humanity, as “the power of concupiscence is such that people more often obey their evil impulses than sound judgment” and “we see that not even the philosophers, who seemed to have aspired after this righteousness, attained it.”2

According to the Apology, civic righteousness, coram mundo, was a blessing for the stability and benefit of society, but as much as it was to be praised, it also had to be distinguished from—and never esteemed higher than—the righteousness that avails before God, coram Deo. Righteousness coram mundo could do nothing to undo the damage sin had done with its eternal consequences. And so the Apology insisted, “Nevertheless we do not ascribe to free will those spiritual capacities, namely, true fear of God, true faith in God, the conviction and knowledge that God cares for us, hears us, and forgives us, etc. These are the real works of the first table, which the human heart cannot produce without the Holy Spirit, just as Paul says.”3

Comprehension of this difference between the two righteousnesses is crucial to an understanding of Luther’s writings concerning the temporal and spiritual realms. It is what drove him to include the famous allein in his translation of Rom 3:28: “So halten wir nun dafür, daß der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werke, allein durch den Glauben.” In Luther’s view, people were saved through faith alone or they were not saved at all. People were righteous in Christ and with his righteousness or they were not righteous at all in God’s sight (coram Deo), no matter how good a person or citizen they might have been (coram mundo). In fact, hell would be filled with such good people. As Article IV of the Augsburg Confession so succinctly made clear, “human beings cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits, or works.” Rather, it argued, “they are justified as a gift on account of Christ through faith when they believe that they are received into grace and that their sins are forgiven on account of Christ, who by his death made satisfaction for our sins. God reckons this faith as righteousness.”4 In short, as the Apology summarized Luther’s teaching, “It is helpful to distinguish between civil righteousness, which is ascribed to the free will, and spiritual righteousness, which is ascribed to the operation of the Holy Spirit in the regenerate.” This was important because “in this way outward discipline is preserved, because all people alike ought to know that God requires civil righteousness and that to some extent we are able to achieve it.” The two, however, remained distinct, “philosophical teaching and the teaching of the Holy Spirit.”5

In Temporal Authority: To What Extent Should It Be Obeyed, Luther emphasized the importance of Christ’s conversation with Pilate, during which Jesus stated, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”6 He also pointed out that St. John the Baptist said to those soldiers—servants of the sword, the state—who came to him with crises of conscience, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”7 Christ did not overthrow the two kingdoms but placed them within their proper Christian context. St. John the Baptist did not toss out the role of the sword, but affirmed it, even while he at the same time informed the conscience of those who wielded it.

This, however, was not the first place Luther wrote in such a way or made use of these scriptural passages. As Luther was holed up in the Wartburg after Worms, Philip Melanchthon seems to have wrestled with the role and place of the state for Christians, particularly because of the agitation of the Zwickau prophets. Luther dismissed these men as Schwärmern, enthusiasts, who thought that they had swallowed the Holy Spirit “feathers and all,” but they caused Melanchthon much consternation.8 Among other things, the prophets urged the creation of a truly Christian society. In response, Luther wrote to his nervous friend and gifted colleague and reassured him of the divine institution of and will for temporal authority (the sword). Christ had not set forth guidelines and regulations for the use of the sword in the Gospels, but that was because it can “easily be regulated by human beings,” and the accounts of the evangelists nevertheless make clear that Christ “commended it to us and affirmed it as instituted, or rather he clearly asserted that it is divinely ordained.” 9

According to Luther, the Christian was at the same time both a complete citizen of his nation and of heaven. As Christ is God and man in one person, so the Christian was a full member of both kingdoms in one person, and the two were hard to separate. An improper distinction between the two would, in Luther’s mind, only serve to do harm to the Christian’s person as a whole and confuse his work in both kingdoms. The Christian had to live with the tension and without neglecting either realm. Thus, while working in the kingdom of the left (the state) for the good of his neighbor, the Christian’s conscience would rightly be informed by the teachings of Scripture. This would be so even as he argues on the basis of natural reason, the rightful guide for the kingdom of the left. While Luther famously described reason as the devil’s whore (that is, fallen reason and reason misapplied in theology), he also frequently insisted that reason was God’s gift to be used wisely in the temporal realm. Paul Althaus s...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and Translations
• Introduction
• Part One: Matthias Flacius and the Adiaphoristic Controversy
• Part Two: John Hooper and the Vestment Controversy
• Bibliography