FROM THE EDITOR WHAT HAS ERFURT TO DO WITH ROME? Sarah Hinlicky Wilson hat has Erfurt to do with Rome? Or, less figuratively, another is that, before any sixteenth-century conversation Wwhat has the Lutheran church to do with the Roman about these issues could reach fruition, their growth was Catholic church? I had ample time to ponder this ques- cut short. Political factors intervened, forcing a fast onset tion during the seventy days I spent walking from Erfurt to of tribalism, and genuine dialogue ground to a halt. What Rome last fall with my husband Andrew, retracing Luther’s we now call “Lutheran” theology and “Catholic” theology steps five hundred years later.1 Those of us who have been were determined early on by these circumstances. well-trained in the standard tribal polemic in our churches Let’s review some dates. In late 1510 Luther made his for the past five centuries will have no trouble coming up pilgrimage to Rome, arriving in January 1511. Though with a long list of all the things that divide Lutherans and the trip has often been touted as the first time Luther “saw Catholics from one another: indulgences, purgatory, the the light,” that’s not really true. It was common knowl- papacy, the saints, Mary, edge that Roman priests transubstantiation, the Those of us who have been well-trained were often corrupt and bla- canon of the mass, clerical tant unbelievers (they were celibacy vs. clerical mar- in the standard tribal polemic in our even known to whisper to riage, Scripture and liturgy the consecrated elements, in the vernacular, justifica- churches for the past five centuries will “Bread art thou and bread tion by faith, goods works, thou wilt remain, and wine salvation itself. have no trouble coming up with a long list art thou and wine thou wilt To an extent, this assess- remain”2). There’s no rea- ment is correct. It’s also of all the things that divide Lutherans and son to think this would have obvious almost to the point scandalized Luther more of meaninglessness. But it Catholics from one another. than any other pious priest makes an assumption that visiting the eternal city. ought to be called into question: that the development of There is, at most, one tiny seed of the eventual reformer to the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches, with their be found at this period. Luther prayed his way up the Scala own theologies and orders of ministry, is self-evidently Santa on his knees in order to gain a plenary indulgence legitimate. It has been a necessary part of ecumenical for his grandfather Heine, and when he got to the top, he diplomacy to act on this assumption. Such an assumption couldn’t suppress the question in his mind, “Who knows allowed the dialogues of the past fifty years to discover the whether it is true?”3 And that’s all. It’s further worth not- vast commonality on matters central to the Christian faith ing that Luther and his companion (probably a friar from that both Lutherans and Catholics share. the Nuremberg priory) made their trip to Rome primarily But it has also tacitly accepted the logic of division. Only to appeal the forced merger of more- and less-observant gradually has the logic of division itself started to come houses, in order to preserve their right to practice the strict- into question. The problem with any contemporary assess- est form of the Augustinian rule—but when their appeal ment of what separates Lutherans and Catholics from one was denied, Luther accepted the judgment and made no 2 SPRING 2011 more fuss about it. We do not have in 1523, with the burning of the first ries it became increasingly important here a rabble-rouser whose sole aim Lutheran martyrs in Antwerp. Of to distance Luther from his Catho- was to defy authority. course, it was only a matter of time lic roots. The story about Luther the Seven years later, in 1517, Luther before Lutherans and other Protes- wrote and circulated his famous tants started returning the favor and Once these churches Ninety-Five Theses. Again, history executing Catholics. dispels the myth. Likely he didn’t even So the fate of our two churches vis- divided, they were post them on the door of the castle à-vis one another was sealed within church. Even if he did, his goal was four years at most, in a politically stuck with the logic to use the conventional pattern of explosive environment, and at a time university debate to discuss a trou- when both sides could invoke violent of division. bling issue of church practice, not to secular authorities to back up their bring the whole church edifice crum- religious cause—secular authorities individual against the institution came bling down. Luther was certainly not that were eager to exploit the religious to take a life of his own, divorced the first to call church practice into ferment for their own purposes. We from the gospel, as a kind of fable of question; it’s a venerable occupation. rarely take sufficient notice of how individualism and conscience. The And according to the contemporary much this reality influenced the course Catholic church was always described Luther scholar Oswald Bayer, Luther’s of events. Once the lines are drawn, with reference to the worst abuses of substantial theological breakthrough any hope of fair or charitable inquiry sixteenth-century Germany and the didn’t come until 1518, in his little- evaporates. corrupt Borgia popes; it became part known theses on the nature of absolu- Consider the case of one Johannes of the training of each new genera- tion.4 In other words, the Ninety-Five Cochlaeus. This energetic priest was tion to learn just how far Rome had Theses still represent a Western Chris- a contemporary of Luther’s and his strayed from the truth. tian friar working within the traditional first “heresiographer,” the opposite The point is that once these Western Christian thought-world, of a hagiographer, one who demon- churches divided, they were stuck with exercising the time-honored office of izes a supposedly wicked and impious the logic of division. Their hands were prophet when something ecclesiastical enemy of the church.5 Cochlaeus’s forced. They could no longer consider had gone awry. 1548 biography, “The deeds and writ- any theological issue in peace, at ease, Then consider: it was only two ings of Dr. Martin Luther from the over time, or—significantly—without years later—two years!—before year of the Lord 1517 to the year 1546 reference to the other, and always a Luther was excommunicated with the related chronologically to all posterity negative one at that. papal bull Exsurge Domine, and the by Johannes Cochlaeus,” was but one In the twentieth century, this stale- following year, in 1521, the Edict of of a vast number of pieces written by mate slowly began to change. Catho- Worms placed Luther under imperial this tireless character to debunk Luther lic scholars like Joseph Lortz,6 Erwin ban, essentially permitting anyone in and all the other reformers, and also, Iserloh,7 Otto Hermann Pesch,8 and the Holy Roman Empire to murder notably, to demonstrate the necessity Jared Wicks9 began to read Luther of a violent political suppression of afresh and were surprised by what The fate of our two their followers. Cochlaeus was not only they found. They found a theologian prolific but also ferociously polemical. who, far from tossing out the church’s churches vis-à-vis Objective inquiry was hardly his goal: past wholesale and inventing some- wiping out Luther and everything he thing new to take its place, could not one another was sealed stood for was Cochlaeus’s sole wish. He have come to his Reformation insights failed in that particular quest, but for without the whole long history of within four years the next four hundred years, Catholic Christian thought behind him: the scholarship repeated what Cochlaeus doctrines of the Trinity and the two at most. had said with no further investigation. natures of Christ, the theologians like It was self-evident that Luther was Athanasius and Augustine, the liturgy him without punishment or reprisal. bad, so what was the need to know and hymnody of the Western tradi- So we have, at most, a two-year period more about what he had said? tion. These Catholic scholars found in which Luther’s theological propos- Lutherans, for their part, could not that Luther’s teaching on justification als could have been discussed before think of the Roman Catholic church by faith was not so far off from that he was formally pronounced a heretic, in any other way than as the “papists,” of the angelic doctor himself, Thomas and only three years before defending the ones who had excommunicated Aquinas; that in fact Luther was closer Luther could cost people their lives. Luther and allowed him to be placed to Thomas Aquinas than many of It did actually cost people their lives under imperial ban. Over the centu- the leading Catholic theologians in LUTHERAN FORUM 3 Luther’s own time. They found that ever, Luther was often regarded ity for social and political life. Luther’s emphasis on the news about as the founder of a new church. (IV.18–19) Christ as good news, for me, was an The judgment of Luther was emphasis that the Catholic Church closely connected with each Whew! That is something for Luther- itself had finally come to share as well. church’s view of the other: they ans to ponder with humility.