Luther, Martin (1483–1546)
Though Luther was honored among the Reformed for his contributions to the theology and reformation of the church generally, the Reformed thought he did not go far or deep enough in his changes. The attack on indulgences and papal power, the assertion of justification through faith alone, and the authority of sola Scriptura have been applauded and affirmed by all Protestants. Equally supported by Calvinists was Luther’s controversy with Erasmus over bondage of the will where Luther asserted a position not far from Calvin’s double predestination (though grounded differently for Luther in the “hidden God”).
The initial point of dissension came with a dispute over the Lord’s Supper—first with Luther’s colleague Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and then with Huldrych Zwingli and John Oecolampadius. Disagreements focused on the bodily presence of Christ (whether in the bread and wine or in heaven) and the sacramental benefits (forgiveness, life and salvation—according to Luther). Attempts to heal the split began with the Marburg Colloquy (1529), the Wittenberg Concord (1536), and the Zurich–Geneva Consensus Tigurinus (1549).
Philipp Melanchthon’s Augsburg Confession, to which Calvin subscribed while in Strassburg, was described as the only “confession” written in the sixteenth century: all the rest were church “constitutions” (G. Hendry). The growing ecumenical role of Melanchthon, Luther’s colleague at the University of Wittenberg, brought him—with Luther’s initial encouragement—into dialogue with Martin Bucer, eventuating in the Wittenberg Concord and the Cologne Book (1543), the latter producing serious tension with Luther. Melanchthon’s revision of the Augsburg Confession (1540; the Variata) and his work with Calvin at the Regensburg (Ratisbon) Colloquy (1541–42) brought Melanchthon to a more open position on the Lord’s Supper. But Calvin was troubled by Melanchthon’s more synergistic position on human bondage, his rejection of double predestination, and even Melanchthon’s own “deterministic” position which he had affirmed in his Loci communes (1521; a book that Luther had suggested, with characteristic exaggeration, should be in the canon).
Differences over baptismal regeneration (never a major controversy), Pre–destination, the real presence and benefits of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, along with certain christological implications (bringing charges from Lutherans of Nestorianism and against Lutherans of Monophysitism), and the related issue of whether unbelievers receive Christ’s body in the sacrament (manducatio impiorum) became hardened. In the formula of Concord (1577) the Lutherans tried to settle their internal theological controversies and establish their own theological identity, in part by differentiating their positions over against the Reformed. Thus double predestination was rejected and single predestination affirmed. The “crypto–Calvinism”; with which Melanchthon was charged was met with the Formula’s eucharistic Christology and the Lutheran shibboleth of Christ’s body and blood “in, with, and under” the bread and wine. Ironically, John Williamson Nevin’s interpretation of Calvin’s view of the real presence (The Mystical Presence [1846]) was characterized by a contemporary Princeton theologian as “crypto–Lutheran” ! The publication of collected Lutheran confessional writings as The Book of Concord (1580) tended to reinforce the Lutheran Reformed barriers as they shaped Lutheran identity.
Some Lutherans and Reformed were driven farther apart, even emigrating, because of their forced merger in the Prussian Union Church (1817). The experience of World War II, the fellowship of protest and suffering in the Confessing Church and its Barmen Declaration, led after the war to the Arnoldshain Theses and the Leuenberg Agreement which has established intercommunion between most European Lutherans and Reformed Dialogues in the United States since the 1960’s are working toward such fellowship.
P. Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (1966); H. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (1989); H. Sasse, This Is My Body (1959); L. W. Spitz and W. Lohff, eds., Discord, Dialogue, and Concord (1977).
Ralph W. Quere
Professor of the History of Doctrine
Wartburg Theological Seminary
Dubuque, Iowa
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