It may seem odd to call Luther a “humanist.” “Biblical scholar,” “professor,” “pastor,” “theologian,” “reformer,” and “critic” may all seem easier titles to justify, but a basis for calling him a “humanist” is less obvious.
The term is used, of course, in many different senses. It can refer to one who specializes in the humanities (literature, the arts, philosophy, history), but that is not the sense in which it is used here. Here it means one who helped open Western thought to new possibilities after the more structured, authoritarian, and limiting approaches of the medieval period. With this greater openness, there was a celebration of what “humanity” and individual humans could accomplish. Also central to it was a new love for and appreciation of the classical worlds of the Greeks and Romans.
Clearly, Luther lived in an age of this new “humanism.” His contemporary, Erasmus, was called a humanist—as was Luther’s close colleague, Melanchthon. They were Greek scholars, and they helped bring to light the works of the great Greek playwrights, poets, and philosophers in the original language. (Luther made use of their linguistic developments in his study of the New Testament.)
This new humanism meant far more, however, than the reintroduction of the Greek and Roman classics. It also included an attack upon the thought structure and presuppositions that dominated academia at the time. The term that is most often associated with that thought structure is “scholasticism.” Literally, the term only means the approach to knowledge and learning used at that time in the “schools,” i.e., the universities, but it signifies a particular approach to knowledge in general.
There were, to be sure, a variety of intellectual influences and paradigms in those schools—Aquinas was very different from Scotus, and both were very different from Ockham, for example. But there were some general features:
1. Philosophy and theology were considered to be complementary or even to be wedded together.
2. It was deemed quite appropriate to bring references to God into non-theological areas of thought.
3. The universities had very strong ties to the Church, and the Church guarded against teachings that seemed to go against Church doctrine—in any field of study.
4. The primary method for establishing and maintaining truth was through authority with a significant emphasis on deductive logic.
Luther’s attack on the use of philosophy in theology was central to the reclamation of the Gospel. In his judgment, tying Christianity and Christian theology to any particular philosophical system would only compromise biblical teachings. He affirmed, using Paul’s claims in I Corinthians 1, that the cross of Christ is “foolishness” to the Greeks and to the wise of this world. For Luther there was no tie between philosophy and theology, and he judged the use Aquinas made of Aristotle in realms touching on theology to be little short of scandalous.
Through Aquinas (1225–1274), Aristotle had become extremely important in scholastic thought. Indeed, he used Aristotle as the ultimate authority in the natural realm (God being the authority in the supernatural realm); he even referred to Aristotle as “the Philosopher.” But in 1517, a couple of months before the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses, Luther lashed out against Aristotle in the strongest of terms.
The document was his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, a set of ninety-seven theses. Here are a few of the theses in which he attacked Aristotle—and thus Thomas Aquinas and scholasticism, in general—head-on:
41. Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace.
43. It is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle.
44. Indeed, no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle.
45. To state that a theologian who is not a logician is a monstrous heretic—this is a monstrous and heretical statement.
47. No syllogistic form is valid when applied to divine terms.
50. Briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light.1
In these theses, Luther also specifically attacked John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and the lesser-known Gabriel Biel—a scholastic professor of theology at Tübingen in the late 15th century.
The attack on the uncritical use of philosophy by Christians continued in the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518. There he emphasized that the ways of God, the theology of the cross, appears foolish to humans. “No person philosophizes well unless he is a fool, that is, a Christian,” he claimed in Thesis 30.2 Thesis 29: “He who wishes to philosophize by using Aristotle without danger to his soul must first become thoroughly foolish in Christ.”3
In his exposition of Romans and in other writings in those early years, Luther used Augustine rather than such scholastic theological/philosophical scholars as Scotus, Aquinas, and Biel. He saw Augustine not as a theologian making use of a philosophical system but as a theologian adhering to the Gospel and the teachings of Scripture. His use of Augustine was based on a theology of sin and grace. Agreeing with Augustine, Luther claimed that we have no natural ability to avoid sin, do the right, and win God’s favor. Every effort to claim that man has a natural ability to do God’s will and to cooperate with God in becoming worthy of God’s blessing is a form of Pelagianism and is heretical.
In scholasticism, theology was often considered to be the “Queen of the Sciences.” That meant that theology was at the apex of the structure of the various disciplines at the time and that the others were “logically dependent” upon her. Thus, the other disciplines were to conform to her highest principles regarding the place of God and God’s creative work on all aspects of the natural order. University structure in and after the High Middle Ages reflected this. “Theology ruled.”
Luther never followed in this vein. For him the issue of the place of theology vis-a-vis other disciplines was of no importance. Rather, the issue was the place of sin and grace in a person’s life. Thus, Luther’s Disputation Against Scholastic Theology begins with a defense of Augustine’s position on free will—that “man, being a bad tree, can only will and do evil”4 and that he is entirely dependent upon God’s grace.
Luther, to be sure, was willing to speak out on a variety of issues outside theology. Examples include political authority, social structure, and economics, but he did so by way of drawing out the implications of the Gospel, i.e., how society would either enable or hinder a person to live out life as a Christian.
Of importance here is Luther’s position on “vocation.” Every person has a divine calling to serve God and other people in love and in Christian humility. The homemaker or the farmer or the blacksmith has a God-given vocation just as does the pastor or any other worker in the Church.
While Luther was ready to speak out on social and other issues from a theological perspective, it was not from a position of the superiority of theology as the “queen of the sciences.” He did not continue that scholastic emphasis.
Luther was important for freeing the university at Wittenberg (and through this, other universities) from the clutches of the Church. Wittenberg was a new university established by Frederick the Wise in 1502,5 and it very early became widely known through the work of Luther and Melanchthon. While Frederick wished to be a faithful servant of the Church, he denied the Roman Church’s efforts to control his faculty, thereby initiating a degree of independence that would eventually be adopted by many universities throughout northern Europe. This independence at Wittenberg and elsewhere was greatly enhanced, of course, by the success of the Reformation and the formation of church bodies completely separate from the Roman Church.
While Luther (and Melanchthon) certainly played important roles in the separation of the university from the Church’s control, an even greater part was played by Frederick the Wise and his brother and successor, John the Steadfast, both of whom defied the Roman Church and refused to allow it to control their young and important university.
Luther was committed, it is true, to the use of authority in theology, but it was the authority of Scripture—not of the Church.
In 1877, the American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, wrote an essay entitled The Fixation of Belief in which he described four ways of establishing and maintaining a claim. The four are tenacity, authority, a priori, and scientific. “Tenacity” is maintaining a position without reasons or evidence; “authority” cites a figure or source as a basis for knowledge; “a priori” uses rational insight and deduction to establish a system of knowledge; and “scientific” uses empirical evidence and experiments.
Scholasticism was firmly grounded in the way of authority. The a priori way would be developed extensively later by Descartes and others; the scientific way was just beginning in the sixteenth century and would grow through the efforts of Galileo, Francis Bacon, and many others. But for scholasticism a heavy emphasis was placed on authority. The scholastics were expert logicians, to be sure, and they dealt carefully with physical evidence, but authority played a major role.
Scholastic thinkers relied heavily on accepted philosophers, especially Aristotle, and they quoted “Church Fathers” and prominent theologians as well as Scripture. Over all hovered the voice of the Church—particularly in the papacy and the decrees of the Church Councils. The Church was the final interpreter of Scripture and the Church was the final arbiter of disputes—especially, but not exclusively, in the domain of theology.
Luther, as we have seen, had no place for the quotation of philosophers in the area of faith and theology. He was willing to question the views of Church Fathers, and he disputed the final authority of the Roman Church—particularly in the papacy. But he still relied on authority. The absolute authority for Luther was Scripture, and he would quote Church Fathers (particularly Augustine) if they based their views on Scripture.6
Luther’s disagreement with scholasticism on this point was not so much on the use of authority but rather on which authority/authorities one should use. For Luther, as stated above, the authority was Scripture, and it was the only authority. “Sola Scriptura” was, to be sure, a primary emphasis of the Lutheran Reformation.
Luther never modified his severe criticism of scholasticism and the universities of his day; if anything, his views were only solidified. The following quotation from a sermon postil (postils offered for preachers suggestions and guides on particular texts), written in 1521/1522 while Luther was at the Wartburg, is revealing:
There is no need of Christ and of Scripture if the teachings of the pope and the universities are valid. For this reason I have said that the pope, the bishops, and the institutions of higher learning are not good enough to be heretical. No, they surpass all heretics and they are the bilge-water pool of all heresies, errors, and idolatries which have existed from the beginning of the world. With them they push Christ and the word of God completely to the side, and they only keep their names as a cover-up…. If it is true that before the birth of Christ the pagans were without Christ and Scripture, nevertheless, they did not act against Scripture and Christ as do these. For this reason the pagans assuredly are better than the papists.7
Luther maintained that his critique of scholasticism and of the universities was done for the sake of Scripture’s teachings about Christ and the Gospel. He held further that the uncritical use of Aristotle and other philosophers has run counter to the “foolishness” of God. The authority of the Church, he also argued, has harmed the universities and stands in the way of the true authority of Scripture. Sola Scriptura trumped all other avenues to truth on any issue related to man’s salvation.
Was Luther a “humanist”? His reliance on authority for truth, his emphasis on Scripture as the only ultimate authority, and his emphasis on matters of faith and religion separated him from many other humanists of that period such as Pico or Erasmus. Luther knew some of the Greek classics, but he didn’t value them as highly (though he relied on the Greek for his New Testament translation). And Luther placed no great emphasis on human accomplishments.
Nevertheless, he helped open the door to the freshness of the new humanism and the Renaissance by standing up to the authority of the Church and defending the rights of the individual to know and proclaim the truth. Luther was only one of many (Reuchlin, Erasmus, Montaigne, Pascal, Francis Bacon, Descartes, et al.) who put to an end the dominance of scholasticism—especially in Northern Europe—but he does need to be included in that list.