Luther: “There are as many sects and creeds as there are heads." A Simple Response

 Here's a blast from my past. One of Rome's defenders posted the following:

“There are as many sects and creeds as there are heads. One denies baptism, another rejects the sacrament, another invents a world between this and the Last Day… No peasant is so rude as to boast that he knows more about the Scriptures than all the ministers.”

Even Martin Luther knew sola scriptura was a mess. You people are going to be confused and divided forever until the protestant movement finally goes extinct.

This was one of the first obscure Luther quotes that interacted with when this blog was still a toddler. There are a number of detailed Beggars All entries on this quote. However, I see that I've never provided a simple clutter-free explanation of this quote. Here's how to respond:

1. Ask For a Reference: Kudos to any defender of Rome that provides a meaningful reference on this quote (it rarely happens). This text is from Sendschreiben an die Christen zu Antwerpen, "The Letter of Doctor Martin to the Christians of Antwerp" (April, [25?] 1525). It is scheduled to for a fresh English translation in an upcoming volume of Luther's Works. As of the writing of this entry, this letter can be found beginning at WA 18:547 (with the quote in the second paragraph on the same page). A partial old English translation can be found here. 

2. Put the Quote in Context: The letter written to warn Antwerp of radical leaders and groups during the peasant uprising. The peasants had sporadic outbursts of violence previous to their great uprising in the spring of 1525. Luther was very aware of the peasant situation. He had personally visited some of the peasants and was almost killed by them. Charismatic leaders spurred them on, using religion as part of the motivation to violently revolt against the establishment. Luther was aware of these charismatic peasant leaders, and wrote against them, and also to warn Antwerp. Is this letter Luther admitting "sola scriptura is a mess"? Absolutely not. It's describing Luther's lament over radical leaders misusing the Scriptures and misleading the people. In fact, he says these radicals were sent by the Devil to torment him. He describes the devastating effect of the Devil, who, Luther says, was at peace in his papal fortress, but now with the Gospel being loudly proclaimed, must find a different way to keep men enslaved to sin and darkness.

Why Defend the Reformers?

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Why defend the Reformers? Here are some wise words from William Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation:

Protestants, of course, do not regard the Reformers as either infallible or impeccable. They believe that most of them held views, upon some points, more or less erroneous, and that all of them gave abundant evidence that they were stained with the common infirmities of humanity. But they regard them as men who were specially qualified and raised up by God for the advancement of His own cause, for bringing out the buried truth and reforming the corrupted church, who were guided by God's word and Spirit to views, in the main accurate, of the leading principles of Christian doctrine, and who, in the habitual tenor of their lives, furnished satisfactory evidence of acting under the influence of real religion and genuine piety.

Believing this concerning the Reformers, Protestants feel it to be both their duty and their privilege to defend them from the assaults of adversaries, and especially to refute anything that may seem to militate against the truth of the statement now given, of what they believe as to the general character and position of these illustrious men. The great general position which Romanists are anxious to establish by all they can collect against the Reformers, from their writings or their lives, from their sayings or their doings, is this, that it is very unlikely that God would employ such men in the accomplishment of any special work for the advancement of His gracious purposes. In dealing with this favorite allegation of Romanists, Protestants assert and undertake to prove the following positions:

1st, That the allegation is irrelevant to the real merits of the controversy between us and the Church of Rome, which can be determined only by the standard of the written word;

2d, That the allegation is untrue,—in other words, that there is nothing about the character of the Reformers as a whole which renders it in the least unlikely that God employed them in His own special gracious work; and,

3d, That the general principle on which the allegation is based can be applied in the way of retort, with far greater effect, to the Church of Rome. Protestants, by establishing these three positions, effectually dispose of the Romish allegation. [source]

Bogus Roman Catholic Memes #10

This entry will look at the first teddy bear: "We do not deny that the Papacy is the true Church of God." -Martin Luther, 1545. If you know anything about Luther's view of the papacy in 1545, this Roman Catholic teddy bear appears to be suffering from severe stupidity.

Go ahead and Google search ""We do not deny that the Papacy is the true Church of God." You'll probably get what I did: "No results found for "We do not deny that the Papacy is the true Church of God." If you add the word "Luther" along with the quote, Google's A.I. states, 

That statement, "We do not deny that the Papacy is the true Church of God," is not something Martin Luther would have said, as he famously identified the papacy as the seat of the Antichrist, a force opposing Christ and hindering salvation through works rather than faith alone, though he acknowledged true Christians existed within the Catholic structure. Luther's core belief was that the Pope, by claiming supreme authority, usurped Christ's role, making the papacy the very opposite of God's true church, which he saw centered on Scripture and faith in Christ.

That Google's A.I. says something like this doesn't necessarily mean it's correct. This time though it's nailing it. It's not hard to do for Luther's view of the papacy in 1545. This was the year he published Against the Roman Papacy an Institution of the Devil. This was not an ecumenical treatise. Luther was thoroughly convinced that the Papacy was an institution of the Devil. This is diametrically opposed to Luther believing the Papacy was "the true church of God" as the cute little teddy bear in the picture posits. Whatever book that teddy bear is reading, it isn't anything presenting correct historical information. 

Luther begins the treatise by saying, "The Most Hellish Father, St. Paul III, in his supposed capacity as the bishop of the Roman church..." (LW 41:263). It gets more increasingly more invective as the treatise goes on. He refers to pope and cardinals as "devilish scum in Rome" (LW 41:264).

No man can believe what an abomination the papacy is. A Christian does not have to be of low intelligence, either, to recognize it. God himself must deride him in the hellish fire, and our Lord Christ, St. Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2 [:8], “will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his glorious coming.” I only deride, with my weak derision, so that those who now live and those who will come after us should know what I have thought of the pope, the damned Antichrist, and so that whoever wishes to be a Christian may be warned against such an abomination (LW 41:273-274).

Until now we had to believe that the pope was the head of the church, the most holy, the savior of all Christendom. Now we see that he, with his Roman cardinals, is nothing but a desperate scoundrel, the enemy of God and man, the destroyer of Christendom, and Satan’s bodily dwelling, who, through him, only harms both church and state, like a werewolf, and mocks and laughs up his sleeve when he hears that such hurts God or man—more of this later (LW 41:277-278).

...[I]t would be best for the emperor and estates of the empire to let the blasphemous, abominable rascals and damned scum of Satan in Rome just go to the devil (LW 41:279).

And such accursed villains want to convince the world that they are head of the church, the mother of all churches, and masters of the faith. Why even if we were stones and wooden blocks, we could see by their works throughout all the world that they are lost, desperate children of the devil and also mad, crude asses in Scripture. Someone probably would like to curse them so that they might be struck down by lightning and thunder, burned by hellish fire, have the plague, syphilis, epilepsy the plague of St. Anthony, leprosy, carbuncles, and all the plagues—but these are all caresses, and God has long ago punished them with greater plagues, just like God’s despisers and blasphemers should be punished, Romans 1 [:26–27], namely, that in sanity they have become so obviously mad and raving that they do not know whether they are or want to be male or female; they are not ashamed in the presence of women, and their mothers, sisters, and grandmothers are among those forced to see and hear such things of them, to their great distress. Shame on you, popes, cardinals, and whatever you are at the curia, that you are not afraid of the cobblestones upon which you ride, which would like to swallow you! (LW 41:288-289).

The quotes above were only taken from Luther's introduction to this treatise! Quotes like these from the entire 1545's Against the Roman Papacy an Institution of the Devil could fill this blog entry to the point of absurd overkill. A great overview of this treatise is found in Mark U. Edwards, Luther's Last Battles, 182-200. I would agree with Edwards when he states, "This treatise is the most violent and vulgar to issue from Luther’s pen" (185). For those of Luther's detractors that think Luther's most derogatory polemical writing was On the Jews and Their Lies, I would argue Against the Roman Papacy an Institution of the Devil surpasses it. Was he being so severe because of biological hatred towards the papacy? No. Edwards explains:

There can be little doubt that the violence and the vulgarity was intentional and well-considered on Luther’s part. He was utterly convinced that the papacy, as the antichrist, the devil’s foremost minion, deserved every word of it — and worse. He was contending not against men but against powers and principalities of darkness. To fail to see this dimension of the struggle would be to misunderstand completely Luther’s intention behind the treatise (189).

I think the worst of this treatise is that it was published including eight cartoons depicting Luther's abhorrence of the Papacy as well its symbiotic relationship to the devil. He didn't draw the cartoons, but commissioned Lucas Cranach to do them. One could try and place the blame for the severe depictions on Cranach, but they were published with Luther's approval. These cartoons contained visual presentations of his arguments:

Then we should take him—the pope, the cardinals, and whatever riffraff belongs to His Idolatrous and Papal Holiness—and (as blasphemers) tear out their tongues from the back, and nail them on the gallows in the order in which they hang their seals on the bulls, even though all this is mild compared to their blasphemy and idolatry. Then one could allow them to hold a council, or as many as they wanted, on the gallows, or in hell among all the devils (LW 41:308).

Edwards includes all of the commissioned woodcut cartoons and says this is the visual presentation that Luther intended (p.191):

Luther did not apologize for this violent invective against the papacy, but doubled down on it when criticized (Edwards, 199).

Conclusion
It never ceases to amaze me how some of Rome's defenders are so clueless about the Reformation and Luther particularly. One of them took the time to make this cutesy meme with a fake quote said to be from 1545, the very year Luther published his most extreme treatise on the papacy! Clueless, utterly clueless!

Addendum: Luther's Violent Rhetoric
But what of Luther's violent rhetoric? I've never sought to downplay this or cover it up. As far back as the beginning of this blog, one of my first posts was Martin Luther's Volatile Language. As I stated there:

For Luther, his use of scatological language exposes the Devil, who has hidden himself in the papacy, behind the Turks, and in the theology of Judaism. Since it is the Last Days, Satan must be resisted with all one’s might: with as much energy and all the vehemence possible. By exposing Satan in these systems, Satan becomes enraged and fights harder against God. By fighting harder, the Last Day approaches quicker.

Luther also felt he was following the example of Christ. Luther asks rhetorically if the Lord used abusive language against his enemies: “Was he abusive when he called the Jews an adulterous and perverse generation, an offspring of vipers, hypocrites, and children of the Devil?… The truth, which one is conscious of possessing, cannot be patient against its obstinate and intractable enemies.”1 In similar fashion, Luther responded to his opponent Latomus:

“He [Latomus] says that I lack the evangelical modesty which I enjoin, and that this is especially true of the book in which I replied to the sophists of Louvain when they condemned my teachings.  Now I have never insisted that anyone consider me modest or holy, but only that everyone recognize what the gospel is. If they do this, I give anyone freedom to attack my life to his heart’s content. My boast is that I have injured no one’s life or reputation, but only sharply reproached, as godless and sacrilegious, those assertions, inventions, and doctrines which are against the Word of God. I do not apologize for this, for I have good precedents. John the Baptist [Luke 3:7] and Christ after him [Matt. 23:33] called the Pharisees the “offspring of vipers.” So excessive and outrageous was this abuse of such learned, holy, powerful, and honored men that they said in reply that He had a demon [John 7:20]. If in this instance Latomus had been judge, I wonder what the verdict would have been! Elsewhere Christ calls them “blind” [Matt. 23:16], “crooked,” “liars,” “sons of the devil” [John 8:44, 55]. Good God, even Paul lacked evangelical modesty when he anathematized the teachers of the Galatians [Gal. 1:8] who were, I suppose, great men. Others he calls “dogs” [Phil. 3:2], “empty talkers” [Tit. 1:10], “deceivers” [Col. 2:4, 8]. Further, he accused to his face the magician Elymas with being a “son of the devil, full of all deceit and villainy [Acts 13:10].” (LW 32:141-142].

1. Martin Luther as cited by Eric Gritsch, “The Unrefined Reformer” Christian History, 39 (vol. XII, No. 3), 36.

I can understand Luther's eschatological underpinnings and actually appreciate how seriously he took living in the last days. I realize this was a key factor in the way he wrote about those he perceived to be enemies of the Gospel. While I do not condone how he expressed himself, I do admire him for taking his convictions seriously. This seriousness is generally lacking now. I can also understand Luther as a person of his time period: violent rhetoric was more acceptable then (and abhorred now). Was Luther serious in his violent language? I don't think so, but if any of the authorities acted on Luther's comments, I'm not sure how much he would've protested that in 1545.

I do not condone Luther's violent rhetoric and see it as an area that demonstrates he was a fallible and sinful human being. This violent rhetoric is only an aspect though of who he was. After reading Luther now for over twenty-five years, the violent rhetoric aspect isn't pronounced or his fixation. To characterize the man on a small percentage of his writing isn't fair. 

Nod do I live in the sixteenth century, so I ascribe to the language sentiment of my time period in the part of the world I live in. I live in a world in which calling for violence on those I disagree with is not acceptable. I'd rather live in this time period and write than in the sixteenth century and write. I do not call for my perceived enemies to be physically persecuted, nor do I want them to call for my physical persecution. I will not though back down from challenging their ideas. If I think someone is wrong, eternally wrong, I will not hide that fact and agree all roads lead to God. or "we're all Christians" even if we disagree on the very meaning of the Gospel. Over the years, I've also sought to tone down the personal attack rhetoric that's very characteristic of online debating, particularly the Protestant vs. Roman Catholic online debating. Yes, I was caught up in that early on, and it took time to shed off that way of online interaction. Some of the nastiest people I've interacted with online over the years have been Rome's defenders. As much as possible, I try to avoid them now or at least try to not get caught up in the heat of the moment.