Luther’s valuation of the visual arts seems to be more tangential and less explicit than his appreciation of music. But if we examine what Luther has to say about the wider category of imaging, either as word or craftsmanship, then we can get a sense for how he configures the relation between theology and the visual arts. For Luther, imaging not only is at the core of what the human heart does, whether concocting idols or honoring God, but it is also how the proclaimed word portrays or pictures Christ primarily as a gift (and secondarily as an example) to believers who thereby receive God’s favor. Hence, imaging not only is a central category for theological anthropology but also is the means by which the gospel is conveyed, precisely as it pictures Jesus Christ as benefit for sinners. Unlike his brief comments on music from which we can discern specific criteria for evaluating the beauty of music, Luther offered no such specificity for judging beauty in the visual arts, other than their ability to convey the liberating Christ in contrast to the self-righteousness generated either by icon veneration or icon smashing. This lack of specificity may simply be due to the fact that Luther “accepted and approved” art while “music he lived and breathed.”1 Even so, unlike the aniconism of both the Anabaptists and the Reformed, Luther asserted his approval of artistic expression in church life. Criticizing iconoclasts, he wrote, “Nor am I of the opinion that the gospel should destroy and blight all the arts [alle Kuenste], as some of the pseudo-religious claim. But I would like to see all the arts, especially music, used in the service of Him who gave and made them.”2 Here “arts” refers not just to the liberal arts, of which music was one, but also to artistic expression in general, because the context is dealing not with the core curriculum of a sound education but with public worship. Together with the Reformed and other Christians, Lutherans applaud art in daily life. But counter to the iconoclasm of either the Reformed (Zwingli) or the enthusiasts (Karlstadt), Luther affirmed a role for the visual arts in public worship.
Luther’s view of the visual arts has been described as “utilitarian,” at best educative, portraying scriptural personalities or events for spiritual edification, but not valuing art for its own sake.3 But this interpretation is too simplistic. Obviously, the modern concept of valuing art for its own sake finds no advocate in Luther. But the Reformer thought that the visual arts have an important role to play in presenting the gospel, which as an image-saturated word regenerates and transforms human imaginations and so alters sinners’ hearts and minds. Such images reorient and govern Christian imaginations, enlighten thought and will, secure one’s identity in Christ, and thus assist one in honoring God above all things and serving neighbors as a Christ to them. For Luther, if any criterion surfaces explicitly for discerning beauty in the visual arts, it is none other than the word itself, which evaluates all human activity. Luther’s failure to itemize more specific criteria for judging beauty in the visual arts, such as those employed in the Lectures on Genesis, where Adam’s traits conform to or even surpass Augustinian proportio, Dionysian color or light, and Thomistic integrity or perfection, in no way diminishes the value of the visual arts for Christian worship. Luther’s friendship with the painter Lucas Cranach the Elder, godparent to his children,4 and his opposition to the iconoclasts who sought to purify Wittenberg of its images indicate his overall appreciation for the visual arts. Naturally woodcuts produced in Cranach’s workshop benefited Luther’s movement in that they helped propagate evangelical faith. But additionally, Luther’s commitment to a “gospel beauty” as described earlier translates into an approval of visual arts in worship.
His perspective, which singles out imaging as inescapable for all human understanding, along with his conviction that God’s revelation comes only as mediated through physical things, reinforces a theological backdrop that nurtures rather than inhibits the visual arts and finds a place for them in public worship and private devotion. Hence, the September Testament (1522), Luther’s translation of the New Testament as a fruit of his sojourn in the Wartburg for his own protection, and his translation of the entire Bible (1534), were illustrated with woodcuts in full color and were crafted in Cranach’s workshop.5 Likewise, the Small Catechism was also often illustrated, along with hymnody, as Robin Leaver has indicated,6 and Luther preached on St. Christopher, using images, and took his staff to be the Word of which we learn.7 While both the Anabaptists and Reformed accorded no place for the visual arts in worship, Luther insisted on their propriety once they have been set free of any aura of works-righteousness or of having divine magical powers. Hence, it is an overstatement to assert that Luther “never went beyond the Gregorian notion of art as educative, which ultimately leaves art with an auxiliary rather than a central role.”8 For Luther, God is always “covered” and the word is always embodied.9 Thus physical things, including human artistic creations, are fit vehicles for God’s address to sinners. While God may work upon humans through human artistry, God chooses only ever to work upon humans through physical means, whether in nature, historical events, sacramental means, or human artifacts.
Luther developed his theology of imaging in debate with two opponents: (1) iconophiles who treasured relics, images, and icons as essential features in normative spirituality and that had had a long precedent in the church,10 and (2) aniconocists, including iconoclasts, whether humanists, such as Erasmus, or other Reformers, such as Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt or Ulrich Zwingli, who saw such practices as idolatrous and superstitious. With respect to the first, Luther claimed that such practices led to a false trust in works, since, in this view, believers received merit in exchange for their veneration of the saint or holy one represented by the icon. The second group, those opposed to icons, assumed that they were in league with Luther’s own agenda of reform, which appealed to the word alone and simplified the Mass. In contrast to Luther, however, aniconocists saw icons or relics as violating the biblical prohibition against graven images because they saw them as inseparable from their traditional, superstitious use. Ultimately this led to a different numbering of the Ten Commandments among the Reformed, who itemized the prohibition against graven images as the second commandment while Luther, following Augustine, enfolded it within the first commandment.11 Hence, the iconoclasts, both those who literally went to the streets to break the images and others who only opposed their use, desired spirituality to be purified of any physical aids offered by icons or even stained glass. For the iconoclasts, God is Spirit and relates to human spirituality only apart from any reference to the body. At a deeper level, iconoclasts denied the ability of finite things to convey infinite truth (finitum non capax infiniti), and this eventually became expressed pointedly in the debate with Luther over the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.12
Countering icon veneration, Luther’s stance was not that of Erasmus, who saw the veneration of images as outright superstition. Instead, Luther’s objection centered on misplaced trust in an icon instead of in Christ alone.13 But with respect to iconoclasts, Luther believed that evangelical liberty was at stake. When images lose saving import, they can be permitted, even welcomed, in worship and spirituality, since they teach, illustrate, and adorn the word. After all, when the word portrays Christ, it imparts Christ to believers through images, thereby regenerating believers and leading them to do the good works appropriate to their vocations. In the tradition following Luther, that such imaging can take a specific and tangible form that enhances worship can be seen in numerous artifacts, one example being Lucas Cranach’s 1547 altarpiece in the city church in Wittenberg, which teaches and proclaims the gospel in its four panels.14 The tangibility of grace is a requisite feature of Luther’s sacramental theology: “But the highest form of worship He [God] requires is your conviction that He is truthful. . . . Nor does He confirm this with spiritual proofs; He confirms it with tangible proofs. For I see the water, I see the bread and the wine, and I see the minister. All this is physical [corporalia], and in these material forms [figures carnalibus] He reveals Himself.”15
Hence, Luther’s debate with the iconoclasts raises a deeper issue about the nature of the gospel. For the Reformer, there is no imageless word: the word actually portrays, pictures, or images Christ as the only way in which it can give Christ. The Reformer acknowledged no distinction set in stone between the word as imaging and artistic creations as imaging. But that raises a much wider question about how God relates to humanity and is part of the larger understanding of the concreteness, and boundedness to time and to stuff, that forms Luther’s definition of being human. For Luther, God relates to humans only and always through physical means. As he noted in his Lectures on Genesis, “In the same way it was necessary that man, as a physical being, also have a physical or external form of worship by means of which he might be trained according to his body in obedience to God.”16
The view that God as Spirit relates to humans only through spirit (like knows like), unencumbered by matter, is as problematic for the Reformer as the self-righteousness that he saw advocated in the school of Gabriel Biel. Such “enthusiasm” can offer no assurance of salvation, since for it the word is tethered neither to the oral word of absolution nor to the physical signs of water in baptism or bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, where God specifically has promised to give grace. Thus the imaginations of anxious consciences are set adrift to seek consolation within their own spiritual ecstasies or practices bereft of God’s tangible promise. Not only can that lead to further despair, but it can also feed further self-righteousness.
As Luther developed his own theology, he became more and more convinced that God comes to humans only as “covered” through physical means because (1) humans are sinful and have no direct access to the holy God, (2) they are intrinsically physical creatures and not “ghosts in machines,” as Gilbert Ryle put it in his description of Descartes’s theory of the relation between mind and body,17 and (3) they have runaway imaginations and thus need their consciences to be tethered to grace, which, as promised, comes to us in a graspable, tangible way. Counter to the “Enthusiasts,” he opposed a vision of spirituality that excludes the material because God’s favor as pro nobis (for us) is always accompanied by physical signs. There is a gnosticism embedded in the aniconism or iconoclasm of Erasmus, Karlstadt, and Gabriel Zwilling (1487–1558), along with their idealistic, even utopian, programs of social and moral reform, which Luther found dangerous to the conscience.18 As self-giving, God attaches himself to earthly things—particularly the sacraments. But, as we shall see, when Luther saw God as “covered,” God is covered not only in all created things but also in human artifacts of craftsmanship and beauty.
The Role of Images in the Early Church
The Jewish faith from which Christianity came was aniconic in the sense that it tolerated no representation of God. This stance is a consequence not only of the biblical prohibition against images (Exod. 20:3–5) but also of the prophetic opposition to idolatry, in tandem with an acknowledgment of divine apophaticism in which God transcends any human characterization.19 Even so, the fact that ancient Israel had an artistically adorned temple and priests clothed in attractively designed vestments bore witness to a God who ever desires to make his covenant promise concrete and embedded tangibly and pleasingly in worship. In Christian perspective, such worship is a type of the promise made incarnate in Jesus Christ. In antiquity, both Jews and Christians adorned their places of worship with themes drawn from the Bible. But because early Christians were a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire, the visual arts did not flourish among them. Since early Christians were subject to discrimination, their art was crafted and exhibited out of the limelight. “It was only in the fifth century that Christian art emerged from the shadowy world of ciphers and cemeteries to become established as a regular part of Christian life.”20
Christian defenders of the visual arts noted that the Scriptures themselves gave examples of artistic representations appropriate for worship. Hence, Moses’s bronze serpent (Num. 21:9), the cherubim over the ark of the covenant (Exod. 25:18–20), and the various decorative furnishings in Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6–7) were used to justify Christian iconography. In his dispute with iconoclasts, Luther too would use this line of reasoning.21 In antiquity, Christian visual arts included images of saints, statues or bas-reliefs of Christ as the Good Shepherd, decorated sarcophagi (with palms, peacocks, vines, or the chi-rho monogram), and statues of leaders such as Hippolytus of Rome or the apostle Peter.22 But early Christians, such as Clement of Alexandria, wanted to make sure that Christian contributions to art would seek a higher ethical standard than that of their pagan neighbors: art should not be pornographic.23 Some variance among Christians must be noted: while icons developed in both East and West, the use of statues developed in the Latin-speaking West but was never accepted in the Greek-speaking East, and this continues to be a characteristic differentiating Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
A standard justification for images that came to prevail among Christians, and which Luther approved, is that of images as offering a “Bible for the laity,” the illiterate and poor (biblia pauperum), which would help them strengthen their memories and stimulate their devotion. Gregory the Great expressed it thusly to Serenus of Marseilles, an iconoclast bishop:
Not without reason has antiquity allowed the stories of saints to be painted in holy places. And we indeed entirely praise thee for not allowing them to be adored, but we blame thee for breaking them. For it is one thing to adore an image, it is quite another thing to learn from the appearance of a picture what we must adore. What books are to those who can read, that is a picture to the ignorant who look at it; in a picture even the unlearned may see what example they should follow; in a picture they who know no letters may yet read. Hence, for barbarians especially a picture takes the place of a book.24
From the tradition of remembering saints and martyrs the practice of venerating images gradually developed. Icons were seen not merely as representations of a saint or Christ but as access to that saint or holy one. In this view, the icon so participates in the reality it represents that it is a window through which the sacred reaches out to the believer. In both East and West, icons were deemed to be “mediating signs by which we reach out to worship God and venerate his saints.”25 Specifically, icons “are channels of prayer and adoration; they mediate between the earth-bound worshiper and the transcendent realities of heaven which ‘stand behind’ the icon. When the believer looks at an icon, it is, as it were, a look through a window into the world of the mysteries of salvation.”26 For Luther, such associations with icons would lead us to something other than Christ as saving and so is to be rejected. But where Luther remains on a similar page with this iconophilism is his conviction that all reality, including humanly crafted artworks, masks and conveys God’s address to sinners, in spite of the fact that icons do not mediate grace or provide a pathway to manipulate the holy.
With its rise in the seventh century, Islam took a stricter aniconic stance than what had developed among either Eastern or Western Christians. Responding to the Islamic critique of icons, a number of Eastern Christian leaders agreed with Muslims that icons violate the biblical prohibition against making graven images. But more was at stake than the mere biblical prohibition. Iconoclasts often assumed that “matter, found in a fallen state and alienated from God, cannot possibly become a means expressive of truth, and especially of saving and divine truth.”27 That is a sentiment wholly foreign not only to the iconophiles but also to Luther. The defenders of icons noted that Christ himself is the “exact icon” of God (Col. 1:15). In their mind, God permits icon making in spite of the prohibition against graven images because icons extend Christ’s incarnation. Since God became human with a physical body in Jesus’s earthly ministry, which, in principle, could have been visually portrayed at the time, then the practice of making icons is justified. That veneration of icons follows suit is guaranteed by the fact that Jesus’s own resurrected body was adored. For the better part of a century, vigorous debate ensued among Eastern Christians, ultimately resulting in the triumph of the pro-icon party at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicaea II (787). The council followed the thinking of theologians such as John of Damascus (ca. 676–749), who defended icon veneration by making a distinction between veneration and worship.28 Hence, John McGuckin notes, “worship was due to God alone, but veneration could be made through the medium of holy icons.”29
Critique of Medieval Veneration of Icons
Contemporary Protestants can hardly imagine the hold that veneration of statues and icons had over late medieval Christians, and the opposition that such practices invoked in humanists and various Protestants. Carlos M. N. Eire notes:
The image and the prototype often became indistinguishable in the mind of the supplicant. Ulrich Zwingli later listed the acts commonly performed before images: People would kneel and bow, remove their hats, burn incense and candles, kiss them, decorate them with gold and jewels, call them merciful and gracious, touch them as if they could really heal or forgive sins. Erasmus complained of people who “bowed the head before them, fell on the ground, crawled on their knees, kissed and fondled the carvings.”30
For Erasmus, such practices were simply superstition through and through. “Superstition meant for Erasmus a misplaced faith in the external forms of religion. He was especially upset by practices in which the sacred was treated as magical, as if divine favors could be obtained by following prescribed formulae.”31
The early Luther found the veneration of images and relics to be unsettling to his conscience, and this became a factor in his challenging these practices. But for the Reformer, the core issue was not primarily the existence of images per se, but the question of idolatry, the attribution of divine power to something, which raises the question: Upon what does the heart ultimately repose?32 The Reformer’s charge against such veneration is less a matter of superstition like Erasmus and more an internal matter about what the heart relies on: Christ alone or something else? More specifically, that something else would be the merit accrued for achieving the good work of veneration. But we are not to trust in good works—specifically veneration of an image. Speaking against contemporary iconoclasts, he highlights this point:
For whoever places an image in a church imagines he has performed a service to God and done a good work, which is downright idolatry. But this, the greatest, foremost, and highest reason for abolishing images, you have passed by, and fastened on the least important reason of all. For I suppose there is nobody, or certainly very few, who do not understand that yonder crucifix is not my God, for my God is in heaven, but that this is simply a sign. But the world is full of that other abuse; for who would place a silver or wooden image in a church unless he thought that by so doing he was rendering God a service? Do you think that Duke Frederick, the bishop of Halle, and the others would have dragged so many silver images into the churches, if they thought it counted for nothing before God? No, they would not bother to do it. But this is not sufficient reason to abolish, destroy, and burn all images. Why? Because we must admit that there are still some people who hold no such wrong opinion of them, but to whom they may well be useful, although they are few. Nevertheless, we cannot and ought not to condemn a thing which may be in any way useful to a person.33
For Luther, Christ was not only necessary but also sufficient in all spiritual matters. The veneration of images, along with the veneration of the saints, takes believers away from Christ, makes them believe they could achieve merit, and so thus undermines God’s goodness and grace. But, as Luther argued, nothing in the image as such necessitates idolatry, and images may be useful for some Christians. The standard for the appropriateness of images in worship is whether they honor Christ. As Gene Veith notes, “Luther rejected only the art that interfered with the message of Christ. Images of Mary and the legendary saints were removed, with all of the attendant devotions and ‘works’ associated with them. Crucifixes, depicting the all-sufficient atonement for sin, and other Biblical paintings and church decorations were retained.”34
Critique of Iconoclasm
While Luther was sequestered in the Wartburg for his own protection following his inquisition at the Diet of Worms (1521), his erstwhile friend and colleague Karlstadt and others such as Gabriel Zwilling sought to implement their versions of reform in Wittenberg. Among other things, that involved destroying images in the churches and breaking stained glass windows. This iconoclasm disturbed Luther both pastorally and politically. Pastorally Luther saw this move as insensitive to illiterate believers who could not follow the theological debates over the merit or demerit of icons, and as holding the possibility of undermining their faith. Politically he saw it as disturbing the peace, leading to rebellion and social upheaval. He left the security of the Wartburg and returned to Wittenberg to stop this approach to reformation. As Carlos Eire puts it, while Luther’s presumed coworkers sought to cast out Roman idols, Luther himself moved to cast the iconoclasts out of Wittenberg.35 Better said, Luther tried to dissuade the iconoclasts and restore evangelical unity. Zwilling eventually became a loyal Lutheran pastor in Altenburg. At stake for Luther was the question of evangelical liberty. Since images have no intrinsic power to save or damn the human soul, they should be permitted—provided they are not worshiped. Luther’s approach was very different from that of Karlstadt or the Swiss Reformers a little later. They “forbad anything not authorised in Scripture, while Luther authorised everything not forbidden in Scripture. There was a world of difference between these two perspectives. The one leads towards Puritanism, the other towards a reformed Catholicism.”36 Hence, in light of Romans 14:23, Luther permitted everything that did not stem from unfaith.
Theologians cut their teeth on those positions with which they profoundly disagree. In Luther’s case, his opponents forced him to specify his view of matter—the physical stuff out of which visual arts are made. Deeply Platonic, Karlstadt’s position sought a pure spirituality devoid of material associations; hence, images were idols pure and simple. He believed that the very presence of images guaranteed that worship would be impure. His appeal to the Spirit as the locus and guide in worship, apart from the trappings of images or any traditional features of the Mass, reminds us of the stance that George Fox (1624–91), the founder of Quakerism, would later take. It finds an echo in René Descartes (1596–1650), whose approach to reason likewise is divested of materiality and history.37 Unlike this modern gnosticism, Luther could conceive of no spirituality apart from material associations. Human beings are not designed to be pure spirits. As noted above, if God is to relate to humanity at all, it will be through physical means.
For Luther, the whole matter raises an important principle about how God works with sinners:
Now when God sends forth his holy gospel he deals with us in a twofold manner, first outwardly, then inwardly. Outwardly he deals with us through the oral word of the gospel and through material signs, that is, baptism and the sacrament of the altar. Inwardly he deals with us through the Holy Spirit, faith, and other gifts. But whatever their measure or order the outward factors should and must precede. The inward experience follows and is effected by the outward. God has determined to give the inward to no one except through the outward. For he wants to give no one the Spirit or faith outside of the outward word and sign instituted by him, as he says in Luke 16[:29], “Let them hear Moses and the Prophets.”38
Obviously, this stance, which places the external prior to the internal, has broad implications for worship and spiritual life. In a word, it is decidedly anti-gnostic and pro-matter. God’s revelation comes ever covered and God’s grace comes ever mediated—through physical means. For Luther, Karlstadt reversed or inverted the whole order of how God deals with sinners:
With all his mouthing of the words, “Spirit, Spirit, Spirit,” he tears down the bridge, the path, the way, the ladder, and all the means by which the Spirit might come to you. Instead of the outward order of God in the material sign of baptism and the oral proclamation of the Word of God he wants to teach you, not how the Spirit comes to you but how you come to the Spirit. They would have you learn how to journey on the clouds and ride on the wind. They do not tell you how or when, whither or what, but you are to experience what they do.39
At stake for Luther is the question of where God has promised to be—most specifically in the worship service.40 God tethers himself to tangible things. Otherwise, the human imagination runs wild and can have no certainty in its relation to God. The results can be disastrous for consciences. Implicit in Luther’s reasoning here is that material, finite things can be fit vessels for God’s mercy. Likewise implicit here is an affirmation of matter—so crucial for a robust theology of the visual arts.
Luther’s response to Karlstadt’s antimatter spirituality bears upon his debate with Zwingli, who shared Karlstadt’s iconoclasm, over Christ’s bodily presence in the Lord’s Supper. The debate is well known and requires no extensive elaboration. But it is important to recognize that Karlstadt’s rejection of images as physical things as deleterious to genuine spirituality parallels Zwingli’s rejection of the real presence of Christ’s glorified body in the Supper. Both perspectives seek a spirituality liberated from physicality. In Zwingli’s perspective, “body and spirit are such essentially different things that whichever one you take it cannot be the other.”41 In this dichotomization, spirit is to be preferred to body. That view devalues the need for a physical sign to accompany the spiritual reality in the sacrament. To summarize, for Zwingli, Christ cannot be bodily present in the Lord’s Supper because the dichotomy that exists between the flesh and the spirit as radically different entities entails that Christ’s bodily presence in the Supper is neither necessary nor beneficial. What counts is a spiritual communion with Christ, so the Lord’s Supper is primarily a memorial.
In response to the Reformed, Luther used the same reasoning as he did with Karlstadt: “The Holy Spirit cannot be present with believers . . . except in material and physical things such as the Word, water, and Christ’s body and in his saints on earth.”42 This is because God promises to be in the earthly elements. Indeed, human salvation is completely and absolutely dependent on matter—as the flesh of Christ:
If the flesh of Christ is not spirit, and therefore is of no avail since only the Spirit is profitable, how can it be profitable when it was given for us? How can it be useful if it is in heaven and we believe in it? If the reasoning is correct and adequate, that because Christ’s flesh is not spirit it must be of no avail, then it can be of no avail on the cross or in heaven either! For it is quite as far from being spirit on the cross and in heaven as in the Supper. But since no spirit was crucified for us, therefore Christ’s flesh was crucified for us to no avail. And since no spirit, but Christ’s flesh ascended into heaven, we believe in an unprofitable flesh in heaven. For wherever Christ’s flesh may be, it is no spirit. If it is no spirit, it is of no avail and does not give life, as Zwingli here concludes.43
The point to be taken here is that Luther’s contention that God’s word is embodied is central to his entire approach to the gospel and not merely a subsidiary claim focused on images.44 For the Reformer, humans are physical creatures who require a tangible sign of God’s grace, such as we receive with the bread and the wine accompanying Christ’s body and blood, if the word is to be secured as the haven in which anxious consciences can rest.
Now, it is important to note that, in spite of the fact that the Reformed were iconoclasts like Karlstadt, such iconoclasm in worship did not translate into a rejection of art in everyday life. Veith notes:
The Reformed churches of Calvin and Zwingli objected to the religious use of art, but not to art as such. “I am not gripped by the superstition of thinking absolutely no images permissible,” writes Calvin, “but because sculpture and paintings are gifts of God, I seek a pure and legitimate use of each.” Zwingli, an extreme iconoclast, even permitted paintings of Christ as long as they were not in churches or offered reverence. According to Zwingli, “Where anyone has a portrait of His humanity, that is just as fitting to have as to have other portraits.”45
For Luther, iconoclasts seek a spirituality out of step with human nature as God has made it. Humans are inescapably and substantively physical beings. God does not ask humans to step outside their skin and to become something other than what they are if they are to fellowship with him. Instead, God comes deeply and wholly within human flesh just so that he might redeem this good creation from the deleterious effects of sin and renew the creation. In light of God’s becoming flesh, as well as creation’s status as good, matter can be a fit medium for divine self-disclosure. Such a perspective can make no distinction between visual art outside of church or inside. Provided that Christ is honored in it, the visual arts are welcome in public worship and private devotion.
Word as Portrayal
Luther’s case for retaining images, provided they are neither worshiped nor yoked to a system of merit, is strongest when he makes his point that the word itself is conveyed through images. That is, the word portrays its truth through pictures. Luther thereby undermines a strict dichotomy between word and image. Instead, he sees a continuum between the two. If the word is saturated with linguistically formed images, even as images can be understood and described only through words, then the visual arts that represent such images cannot and indeed should not be ruled out. Indeed, for Luther, even reason can only do its work of thinking in and through images. Likewise, there can be no genuine spirituality that is image-free. Of course, Luther does not see icons as offering humans an entrance or gaze into a higher world beyond this one. Instead, the true gaze is nothing other than that of God as he interprets humans through the word, whose images both present Christ and disclose humans’ own true identities.
Now there are a great many pictures in those books, both of God, the angels, men and animals, especially in the revelation of John and in Moses and Joshua. So now we would kindly beg them to permit us to do what they themselves do. Pictures contained in these books we would paint on walls for the sake of remembrance and better understanding, since they do no more harm on walls than in books. It is to be sure better to paint pictures on walls of how God created the world, how Noah built the ark, and whatever other good stories there may be, than to paint shameless worldly things. Yes, would to God that I could persuade the rich and the mighty that they would permit the whole Bible to be painted on houses, on the inside and outside, so that all can see it. That would be a Christian work.46
For Luther, imaging is an intrinsic way that the mind works:
But it is impossible for me to hear and bear it in mind without forming mental images of it in my heart. For whether I will or not, when I hear of Christ, an image of a man hanging on a cross takes form in my heart, just as the reflection of my face naturally appears in the water when I look into it. If it is not a sin but good to have the image of Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it in my eyes? This is especially true since the heart is more important than the eyes, and should be less stained by sin because it is the true abode and dwelling place of God.47
Luther’s sketches of biblical events in his narratives present pictures in motion.48 For Luther, a pure spirituality or imageless faith is an illusion. But that is no liability. Instead, the fact that the Scriptures establish mental images in the heart provides the very basis for new life. Such images govern the mind and the will and so establish a new person in Christ. “Therefore we should know that God neither disapproves of nor abolishes the natural affections which he imparted to nature in creation, but that He arouses and fosters them.”49
Looking at a wider context, this gives us some insight into how for Luther the senses, specifically those of hearing and sight, the ear and the eye, are involved in human salvation. Again, Luther wanted to highlight the tangibility of God’s grace and its ability to saturate “ears, eyes, and heart.” As he put it in the Lectures on Genesis:
You have no reason to complain that you have been visited less than Abraham or Isaac. You, too, have appearances, and in a way they are stronger, clearer, and more numerous than those they had, provided that you open your eyes and heart and take hold of them. You have Baptism. You have the Sacrament of the Eucharist, where bread and wine are the species, figures, and forms in which and under which God in person speaks and works into your ears, eyes, and heart. Besides, you have the ministry of the Word and teachers through whom God speaks with you. You have the ministry of the Keys, through which He absolves and comforts you.50
As is well known, hearing (the ear) was the primary sense for Luther since it has the capacity to hear God’s word and it is through such hearing that faith is born. In his Lectures on Hebrews (1517), the early Luther claimed that “the ears alone are the organs of a Christian man, for he is justified and declared to be a Christian, not because of the works of any member but because of faith.”51
Against the grain of Scholastic theology, he ruled out the centrality of sight in theology and often used the metaphor of “darkness,” appropriated from his early studies in mysticism, in order to situate the ear and not the eye as the organ that receives the gospel. For instance, as we saw in chapter 5, he did this in the Commentary on the Magnificat (1521) by appealing to a tripartite anthropology in which the human is composed of spirit, soul, and body. He contrasted the spirit—“the highest, deepest, and noblest part of man” by which “he [humanity] is enabled to lay hold on things incomprehensible, invisible, and eternal . . . in brief, the dwelling place of faith and the Word of God”—with the soul, whose “nature [is] to comprehend not incomprehensible things but such things as the reason can know and understand.”52 He noted that “his Spirit is the holy of holies, where God dwells in the darkness of faith, where no light is; for he believes that which he neither sees nor feels nor comprehends. His soul is the holy place with its seven lamps, that is, all manner of reason, discrimination, knowledge, and understanding of visible and bodily things.”53 That is, in ultimate matters such as human justification coram deo, human sight falters; that God loves unlovable sinners who are most unlike him in thought, word, and deed, is unfathomable to human reason. But Spirit-wrought faith does receive this gospel, which means that, with respect to salvation, faith is not only necessary but is also sufficient.
But as he elaborated much later in the Lectures on Galatians (1535) and the Lectures on Genesis, believers in the face of the accusing law need to grasp, apprehend, or take hold of—metaphors associated with sight—Christ. But Christ can be apprehended—seen or known—only because he is portrayed or imaged in the gospel. Outside the gospel, God is wholly hidden, but within the gospel, the eyes of faith are opened: “So it seems that God is completely forsaking us and casting us away, because He is hidden to us and we are hidden along with Him. But in faith, in the word, and in the sacraments He is revealed and seen [conspicitur].”54 The gospel is received by hearing, but it grants sight—indeed, knowledge. “Thus faith is a sort of knowledge or darkness that nothing can see. Yet the Christ of whom faith takes hold is sitting in this darkness as God sat in the midst of darkness on Sinai and in the temple.”55 The gospel word portraying Christ grants right knowledge of God by joining believers with Christ.
In the context of the Lectures on Galatians, this is because the believer shares in the form of Christ, and in medieval thought, following Aristotle, the form is what is shared between the knower and the known. Baldly put, Luther even said that faith is knowledge, and so he constantly admonished believers to “grasp,” “take hold of,” or “apprehend” Christ, who is the heart and content of faith. The portrait of Christ is received through the ear and thereby is implanted in the heart. That oral portrait of Christ is made available for faith, which then grasps Christ and clings to him and thus sees or knows Christ. Such a view of faith and knowledge differs from not only the premodern Augustinian heritage that valued intellectum over fides but also the modern heritage stemming from Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant sought to establish the limits of knowledge just so he could “make room for faith,”56 but in so doing he cut theology off from any claim to knowledge or reality itself for that matter. But this is exactly the opposite of Luther’s view, for which faith is in fact knowledge.
A Covered God
It is well known that Luther saw that outside the gospel God is always hidden (deus absconditus), often appearing as wrathful or even indifferent to human plight. But a category wider than that of God’s hiddenness that also bears upon the topic of imaging is that of God as “covered,” never nakedly manifest to humans. As the Reformer put it, God is present at all times and places and in all things. Whether or not they are aware of it, humans ever deal with God in all their affairs and transactions. For Luther, unlike for modern people, there truly is no secular space (other than one we fancy): God is masked in all things. So, in a sense, all creation images God, but not in any way that gives clarity apart from the gospel. God communicates himself to people throughout creation, in events, and surprisingly in specific artifacts and human creations. Hence, Luther wrote:
Perhaps God appeared to Adam without a covering, but after the fall into sin He appeared in a gentle breeze as though enveloped in a covering. Similarly he was enveloped later on in the tabernacle by the mercy seat and in the desert by a cloud and fire. Moses, therefore, also calls these objects “faces of God,” through which God manifested Himself. Cain, too, calls the place at which he had previously sacrificed “the face of God” (Gen. 4:14). This nature of ours has become so misshapen through sin, so depraved and utterly corrupted, that it cannot recognize God or comprehend His nature without a covering. It is for this reason that those coverings are necessary.57
Thereby God communicates to people—not always clearly but always certainly—and not merely in the creation but also in human artifacts, such as the mercy seat in the tabernacle. Sometimes God’s message is threat: human impotence in the face of matters over which we have no control. Sometimes it is accusation: human guilt exposed through the rustling of a leaf.58 Sometimes it is protection: the rainbow as a specific promise of God’s commitment not to destroy the earth through a flood.59 In that way, all people know something about God, but apart from Christ people have no certainty about whether God loves them. Clarity about that matter is given only in the gospel: a gift-word of promise that in Jesus Christ, God is for us. Here God reveals his goodness, will, and purpose for humanity, which otherwise is masked in creation or human events, roles, or artifacts. But that God must come to us as wrapped is intrinsic and not accidental to his relation to humans.60 This is for two reasons. First, sinful humans cannot have a direct rapport with God. Second, God gives himself in tangible ways to humans since they are physical and require physical tokens.
It is not quite appropriate to speak of God’s presence in creation and human events and artifacts as “sacramental” since God’s speaking under such masks is not always gracious, but often threatening, disorienting, or seemingly indifferent. But, as mentioned, Luther’s cosmos is no secular place. It is “enchanted”61 even if it violates a Neoplatonic view that advocates an analogy of being in which all things conform to or participate in some way in God as the highest being. Luther undermines this ladder or stairway from the lowest to the highest in creation because it lends itself to a self-righteousness in which nature can be perfected by grace when we mimetically participate to greater degrees in divine glory.
Luther provides us with a model of God’s relation to the world other than that advocated by his Neoplatonic forebears or the more secular, Epicurean approach (which reduces matter to inert, spiritless, atomic machines) that some later Europeans and Americans would advocate.62 As in Neoplatonism, God is present in all things, and all things express God’s purposes. But, unlike it, we have no criterion outside of Christ by which to determine how any given thing participates in God more or less than other things. Thus we have no basis for grading where one’s status would be on some heavenly ladder. Thwarting all such self-righteousness is the fact that believers justified by faith alone are simul iustus et peccator. But unlike the secular perspective, nothing we encounter in the world is devoid of God because everything in the world speaks of God in one way or another. Everything speaks of God and communicates God, not because some analogy is in place that would secure the status of humanity’s mimetic participation in the divine, but because God wants to address his creatures, humanity, ultimately to resituate them to be creatures defined by and grounded in faith.63 The creation indeed bears witness to its Creator. All things participate in God, not through an analogy that grades them on a stairway to the eternal, but instead as masks of God—and by God sending messages that threaten unrepentant sinners or secure the penitent in his mercy. All we ever deal with in creation is, at its deepest level, God. Creation, then, is no stairway to the eternal but instead is an address of God to his people.64
Conclusion
While Luther’s perspective fails to offer specific criteria for beauty in the visual arts, other than that they must witness to Christ, it offers an environment conducive to the making of such artifacts when they are divested of any salvific status. Counter to Augustinian proportio, Dionysian light and color, and Thomistic integrity or perfection, the gospel grants a beauty similar to the delight that a parent sees in a child even if errant and wayward. The impact of the Reformation on the visual arts was to acknowledge that we are not to be led beyond this world in some Neoplatonic scheme; instead, we are to see God’s work in the ordinary, everyday stuff of life. Properly understood, the Reformation does not secularize art so much as sacralize the ordinary and raise its status as the locus where God works. The secular/sacral distinction is an attempt to abstract what must be seen concretely in the relationship of the person of the Creator to both personal and nonpersonal creatures.
In opposition to the imageless spirituality advocated by the “heavenly prophets,” the gospel images. Hearing the gospel as it is given externally to the ear in preaching suggests images of the saving Christ, which hold the imagination in their grasp. An incurvated imagination guarantees the spiritual perversity of “human reason” and “free will even though it may be of the highest quality.”65 It is what leads philosophers and theologians to become lost in the “mazes of the Divine Being” instead of being tethered to the “manger of Christ the Man.”66 Luther constantly admonishes believers to “take hold” of this imaged Christ as they apprehend, gaze upon, and indeed know him. In this way, Christ’s favor is exchanged for our sinful liabilities, and the believer is united with Christ. Hence, such imaging is not merely didactic but also regenerative, even transformative. The preached or scriptural word holds forth images of Christ and God’s action for redemption not just for human imitation but primarily for the believer’s assurance and even identity as a new person in Christ.
1. See John Tonkin, “Word and Image: Luther and the Arts,” Colloq 17 (1985): 52.
2. “Preface to the Wittenberg Hymnal” (1524), in LW 53:316 (WA 35:475.4–5).
3. Carl Christensen, “Luther’s Theology and the Use of Religious Art,” LQ 22 (1970): 147.
4. See Steven Ozment, The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Ozment highlights how Cranach was a mentor for Luther, helping Luther navigate the complex politics of sixteenth-century Europe in a savvy way. Likewise, Cranach’s workshop assisted the Reformation by helping to “market” Luther. See also Christoph Weimer, “Luther and Cranach on Justification in Word and Image,” LQ 18 (2004): 387–405.
5. For a complete full-color facsimile edition of the 1534 Luther Bible, see Biblia, das ist die ganze heilige Schrifft Deudsch, trans. Martin Luther (Wittenberg, 1534; repr., Cologne: Taschen, 2002).
6. See Robin Leaver, “Luther’s Catechism Hymns,” LQ 11 (1997): 397–410; 12 (1998): 78–99, 161–80, 303–23.
7. See Johann Anselm Steiger, “Luther on the Legend of St. Christopher,” LQ 25 (2011): 125–44.
8. Tonkin, “Word and Image,” 48.
9. See Oswald Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way, trans. Jeffrey Silcock and Mark Mattes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 101, 139.
10. Most recently, Caroline Walker Bynum in Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011) has highlighted the power that icon veneration held for late medieval Europeans—icons were virtually alive for many of the devout. In a wider scope, Bynum claims that such icon veneration was a way that European Christians affirmed the significance and value of matter. She writes, “When [icons] insistently display—and even comment on—their own materiality, they show that they are matter. In other words, they show that they are not God. But matter is God’s creation—that through and in which he acts. Matter is powerful. In their insistent materiality, images thus do more than comment on, refer to, provide signs of, or gesture toward the divine. They lift matter toward God and reveal God through matter” (ibid., 35).
11. Question 98 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “But may not images be permitted in churches in place of books for the unlearned?,” and answers, “No, we should not try to be wiser than God. God wants the Christian community instructed by the living preaching of his Word—not by idols that cannot even talk” (http://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/heidelberg-catechism).
12. While wholly rejecting any veneration of icons as if they could supplement the efficacy of Christ, Luther’s and the Lutheran tradition’s affirmation of the finitum capax infiniti echoes the late medieval iconic tradition that material things can disclose “the sacred through material substance” (Bynum, Christian Materiality, 41). Indeed, Bynum notes,
from the perspective of the absolute disproportionality between God and man, the Lutheran tradition has also fiercely defended the incapacity of the finite regarding the infinite. Following Luther in his view that the lost human nature completely non est capax divinitatis, the later Lutheran tradition could simply state: finitum non est capax infiniti. Lutherans, however, also agree with Luther in assuming that nature is full of God’s presence. All things can serve as a mask behind which God is hiding himself. From this perspective, then, the finitum capax infiniti is valid as well. (415–16)
13. “Superstition meant for Erasmus a misplaced faith in the external forms of religion. He was especially upset by practices in which the sacred was treated as magical, as if divine favors could be obtained by following prescribed formulae” (Carlos M. N. Eire, War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], 37).
14. Tonkin, “Word and Image,” 51.
15. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 5:49 (WA 43:462.15–21).
16. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 1:94 (WA 42:72.10–12).
17. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, new ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 22–32.
18. Of Erasmus, Richard Klann notes, “Part of the cultural program of Erasmus was the humanizing of religion—that is, fitting the Christian faith into a general program for the improvement of mankind—not essentially different from the aims of some eighteenth century leaders of the Enlightenment. The chosen means were a process of moral training and the assimilation of the literary and philosophical treasures bequeathed by antiquity” (“Human Claims to Freedom and God’s Judgment,” CTQ 54 [1990]: 247). And this modern philosophical gnosticism is carried on in the philosophy of Kant. See Mark Mattes and Roy A. Harrisville, “Translators’ Epilogue,” in A Contemporary in Dissent: Johann Georg Hamann as a Radical Enlightener, by Oswald Bayer, trans. Roy A. Harrisville and Mark Mattes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 209–23. See also chaps. 7 and 9 of Bayer, Contemporary in Dissent.
19. There is no question that Luther was influenced by apophatic theology. Even so, the preacher in him acknowledged that it was necessary to anthropomorphize when speaking of God. Of anthropomorphism he wrote in the Lectures on Genesis: “Indeed, how could men speak otherwise of God among men? If it is heresy to think of God in this manner, then a verdict has been rendered concerning the salvation of all children, who think and speak of God in this childlike fashion” (LW 1:14; WA 42:12.10–12).
20. John A. McGuckin, “Art,” in The SCM Press A–Z of Patristic Theology (London: SCM, 2005), 32–33.
21. See “Eight Sermons at Wittenberg” (1522), in LW 51:82 (WA 10/3:27.30–28.6):
But let us go further. They say: Did not Noah, Abraham, Jacob build altars? [Gen. 8:20; 12:7; 13:4, 18; 33:20]. And who will deny that? We must admit it. Again, did not Moses erect a bronze serpent, as we read in his fourth book (Num. 22 [21:9])? How then can you say that Moses forbade the making of images when he himself made one? It seems to me that such a serpent is an image, too. How shall we answer that? Again, do we not read also that two birds were erected on the mercy seat [Exod. 37:7–9], the very place where God willed that he should be worshipped? Here we must admit that we may have images and make images, but we must not worship them, and if they are worshipped, they should be put away and destroyed, just as King Hezekiah broke in pieces the bronze serpent erected by Moses [2 Kings 18:4].
22. “The first Christians were accustomed to see statues of emperors, of pagan gods and heroes, as well as pagan wall-paintings. So they made paintings of their religion, and, as soon as they could afford them, statues of their Lord and of their heroes, without the remotest fear or suspicion of idolatry” (Adrian Fortescue, “Veneration of Images,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia [New York: Appleton, 1910], http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm).
23. Clement of Alexandria attacked the licentiousness in Roman art:
And of what kind . . . are your other images? Diminutive Pans, and naked girls, and drunken Satyrs, and phallic tokens, painted naked in pictures disgraceful for filthiness. And more than this: you are not ashamed in the eyes of all to look at representations of all forms of licentiousness which are portrayed in public places, but set them up and guard them with scrupulous care. (Exhortation to the Heathen 4 [ANF 2:189])
Even so, that did not rule out any sense of the possibility of decoration or illustration for Clement:
And let our seals be either a dove, or a fish, or a ship scudding before the wind, or a musical lyre, which Polycrates used, or a ship’s anchor, which Seleucus got engraved as a device; and if there be one fishing, he will remember the apostle, and the children drawn out of the water. For we are not to delineate the faces of idols, we who are prohibited to cleave to them; nor a sword, nor a bow, following as we do, peace; nor drinking cups, being temperate. (The Instructor 3.11 [ANF 2:285–86])
24. Epistle 9.105 (PL 77:1027); quoted in Fortescue, “Veneration of Images.”
25. Lawrence S. Cunningham, The Catholic Heritage (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 132.
26. Ibid., 133.
27. Ambrosios Giakalis, Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 65.
28. See John of Damascus, Apologia against Those Who Decry Holy Images, in St. John Damascene: On Holy Images, trans. Mary H. Allies (London: Thomas Baker, 1898), http://legacy.fordham.edu/Halsall/basis/johndamascus-images.asp.
29. McGuckin, “Art,” 33.
30. Eire, War against the Idols, 21.
31. Ibid., 37.
32. For the early Luther’s concern about idolatry, see his Lectures on Romans (1515–16), in LW 25:158–59, 164 (WA 56:178–79, 183).
33. “Eight Sermons at Wittenberg,” in LW 51:84 (WA 10/3:31.3–32.7).
34. Veith, State of the Arts: From Bezalel to Mapplethorpe (Wheaton: Crossway, 1991), 62.
35. Eire, War against the Idols, 2.
36. Tonkin, “Word and Image,” 47.
37. Hence, Descartes in his “Third Meditation” in Meditations on First Philosophy wrote,
I will now shut my eyes, stop my ears, and withdraw all my senses. I will eliminate from my thoughts all images of bodily things, or rather, since this is hardly possible, I will regard all such images as vacuous, false and worthless. I will converse with myself and scrutinize myself more deeply; and in this way I will attempt to achieve, little by little, a more intimate knowledge of myself. I am a thing that thinks: that is, a thing that doubts, affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions. (Classics of Philosophy, vol. 2, Modern and Contemporary, ed. Louis P. Pojman [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 471)
38. Against the Heavenly Prophets (1524–25), in LW 40:146 (WA 18:136.9–19).
39. Against the Heavenly Prophets, in LW 40:147 (WA 18:137.12–19).
40. Bayer writes, “Divine service (Gottesdienst) is first and last God’s service to us, the sacrifice he made for us in Christ, which he distributes to us in the particular divine service: ‘Take and eat! I am here for you!’ (compare 1 Cor. 11:24 with Gen. 2:16)” (Theology the Lutheran Way, 90).
41. Ulrich Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson and Clarence Nevin Helle (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1981), 214.
42. That These Words of Christ, “This Is My Body,” etc., Still Stand Firm against the Fanatics, in LW 37:95 (WA 23:194).
43. Confession concerning Christ’s Supper (1528), in LW 37:246–47 (WA 26:369.26–370.5).
44. For a helpful discussion of Luther’s view of the sacrament that bears upon the role of images in Lutheranism, see Kurt K. Hendel, “Finitum capax infiniti: Luther’s Radical Incarnational Perspective,” CurTM 35 (2008): 420–33. Hermann Sasse writes:
If the old question is asked how the finite human nature can comprise the infinite divine nature, the answer can only be that, according to John 1:14, the Word became flesh, which cannot mean that part of the Word did not become flesh. The use of the terms “finite” and “infinite” shows that the Incarnation is being understood in terms of quantity. This must not be done; the miracle of the Incarnation is beyond all mathematics and beyond all philosophy. (This Is My Body: Luther’s Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar, rev. Australian ed. [Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1977], 120)
45. Veith, State of the Arts, 59.
46. Against the Heavenly Prophets, in LW 40:99 (WA 18:82.23–83.5).
47. Against the Heavenly Prophets, in LW 40:99–100 (WA 18:83.7–15).
48. See Robert Kolb, Luther and the Stories of God: Biblical Narratives as a Foundation for Christian Living (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012).
49. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 8:20 (WA 44:594.4–9).
50. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 5:21 (WA 43:443.15).
51. LW 29:224 (WA 57:222.7–9).
52. Commentary on the Magnificat, in LW 21:303 (WA 7:538.28–30).
53. Commentary on the Magnificat, in LW 21:304 (WA 7:539.19–24).
54. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 6:148 (WA 44:110.32–33). Luther expands this: “Reason, wisdom, righteousness of the flesh, and this light of the sun God regards as dark and misty, but here the Word comes forward like a little flame shining in the midst of darkness and scattering its rays through its doctrine and the sacraments; these rays God orders to be apprehended. If we embrace them, God is no longer hidden to us in the spirit but only in the flesh” (LW 6:148; WA 44:110.34–38).
55. Lectures on Galatians, in LW 26:129–30 (WA 40/1:229.1–2).
56. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1929), B xxx, p. 29.
57. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 1:11 (WA 42:9.34–10.2).
58. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 3:8 (WA 42:127.26).
59. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 2:148 (WA 42:365.33).
60. “When God reveals Himself to us, it is necessary for Him to do so through some such veil or wrapper and to say: Look! Under this wrapper you will be sure to take hold of me. When we embrace this wrapper, adoring, praying, and sacrificing to God there, we are said to be praying to God and sacrificing to Him properly” (Lectures on Genesis, in LW 1:15 [WA 42:12.21–25]).
61. On “disenchantment,” see Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth (London: Routledge, 2009), 139. For a response, see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 25–27, 29–43, and other places. Of course, Taylor’s point is that Luther was an inadvertent contributor to disenchantment. As will be shown in the next chapter, this conclusion does not hold.
62. See Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic (New York: Norton, 2014).
63. In contrast to Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011).
64. Here John Milbank’s conviction in Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)—i.e., “Between nihilistic univocity and Catholic analogy (which includes the ‘convertibility’ of truth, beauty and goodness) there is no longer any third liberal path” (318)—needs to be challenged. It may be that there is no third liberal path, but there is a theological path, and that is Luther’s.
65. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 2:41 (WA 42:291.26).
66. Lectures on Genesis, in LW 2:45 (WA 42:293.30–31).