Posted by xprotestant on August 12, 2008 at 18:26:32:
Deification
In recent years, a number of scholarly papers have discussed Martin Luther's belief in theosis, the concept that humans are destined to become gods through Christ.28 Lutheran Bishop Michael McDaniel, in a paper read at a dialogue with eastern Orthodox clergy, wrote that "Luther can write that 'the one who has faith is a completely divine man, a son of God, the inheritor of the universe. He is the victor over the world, sin, death, and the devil'; and, in a clear and unqualified affirmation of theosis: 'Faith makes a man God.'"29
Franz Posset quotes Luther that "'to be born of God is to acquire the nature of God;' 'God's grace makes man deiform and deifies him;' '/Christ/ becomes totally man and we become totally deified;' 'The person who is in the Father becomes deified. We are made 'gods.'" He concludes: "Deification was for Luther the synonym for justification and sanctification."30
Summary
It would be wrong to conclude that Martin Luther was a "Mormon" or that he saw everything the same way Joseph Smith did, but it is equally wrong to think that Luther's beliefs and teachings were identical to those found among modern Evangelical Christians. Frequently called the "father of the Reformation," Luther retained many Catholic views that other Protestants rejected. For example, in 1545 he described the Eucharist as the "adorable Sacrament," prompting Calvin to accuse him of "raising up an idol in God's temple," and of being "half-papist." In a letter addressed to Melanchthon, he wrote that "It was very dangerous to assume that the Church which had existed for so many centuries . . . should not have taught the true doctrine of the Sacraments." Luther considered Reformers such as Zwingli and Oecolampadius to be "damned . . . out of the Church . . . offspring of hell . . . heretics," because they acknowledged the Eucharist to be merely symbolic rather than literally becoming the flesh and blood of Christ. Were the real Martin Luther to stand up today, he would not recognize some of the dogmatic issues imposed on the Reformation by some later adherents of Protestantism.
About the Author
John Tvedtnes retired in 2007 as senior resident scholar at BYU's Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He had previously taught at the University of Utah and the BYU Jerusalem and Salt Lake centers. He earned a BA in anthropology, a graduate certificate in Middle East area studies, an MA in linguistics (specializing in generative-transformational grammars and Semitic languages, with minor in Arabic), and an MA in Middle East studies (Hebrew), with minor in archaeology and anthropology, all at the University of Utah. He also studied Arabic and linguistics at the University of California (Berkeley) and spent many years in doctoral studies in Egyptian and Semitic languages at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. To date, he has published ten books and over 300 articles.
Notes
1 The Chroniclers, who are generally thought to have lived after the Babylonian captivity of the sixth century B.C., revised the accounts in the books of Samuel and Kings, changing some facts and adding other material whose origin is unknown.
2 Tischedren, I (Weimar Edition, 1912), 208.
3 Jude is known to quote the pseudepigraphic 1 Enoch.
4 All cited in Holma's Edition of Luther's Works, Vol. VI, "Preface," translations by Dr. C. M. Jacobs, and this in turn by William Harrison Bruce Carney, "Luther and the Bible, Its Origin and Content," chap. 2 in O. M. Norlie, ed., The Translated Bible 1534-1934, Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Translation of the Bible by Martin Luther (Philadelphia: The United Lutheran Publication House, 1934). For Luther's disparaging remarks concerning Esther and other Old Testament books, see Floyd V. Filson, Which Books Belong in the Bible (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1957), 10. His feelings about Esther may have resulted from the fact that the book doesn't mention God, which is probably why it is the only Old Testament book not found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
5 Cited in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 7:37.
6 Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch scholar, published his first critical edition of the Greek Bible in 1516, followed in subsequent years by other editions that incorporated materials from manuscripts not previously available to him. Luther and other early Protestant translators of the Bible relied heavily on Erasmus's text.
7 Of the epistle to the Hebrews, Luther declared, "it cannot in all respects be compared to the Apostolic Epistles."
8 C. M. Jacobs, Holman's Edition of Luther's Works, 6:444, also cited in William Harrison Bruce Carney, "Luther and the Bible, Its Origin and Content," 21. All citations are found in Holman's Edition of Luther's Works, Vol. VI, "Preface," translations by Dr. C. M. Jacobs, and this in turn by William Harrison Bruce Carney, "Luther and the Bible, Its Origin and Content," chapter 2 in O. M. Norlie, ed., The Translated Bible 1534-1934, Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Translation of the Bible by Martin Luther (Philadelphia: The United Lutheran Publication House, 1934). Luther's statement regarding the relative value of the New Testament books (calling James "straw") appeared in the first (September 1522) and second (December 1522) editions, the third edition (1524), and the small octavo edition of 1530. In his Vorrhede to the epistles of James and Jude, Luther gave a further evaluation. In his Vorrhede to Hebrews, he again compared Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelations with the books that preceded them. Luther's statement is also noted by Floyd V. Filson, Which Books Belong in the Bible? (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1957), 34.
9 All quotes are from C. M. Jacobs, Holman's Edition of Luther's Works, preface, cited by William Harrison Bruce Carney, "Luther and the Bible, Its Origin and Content," chapter 2 in O. M. Norlie, ed., The Translated Bible 1534-1934, Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Translation of the Bible by Martin Luther (Philadelphia: The United Lutheran Publication House, 1934).
10 Preserved Smith, "The Methods of Reformation Interpreters of the Bible," Biblical World 38/4 (October 1911): 242.
11 Jaroslav J. Pelikan (ed.) and George V. Schick (transl.), Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Fortress and Concordia, 1960), 35:398-400. See also C. W. Jacobs, Holman's Edition of Luther's Works, 6:488-489.
12 Luther's Roman Catholic opponent, Cajetan, agreed with him that the Apocrypha were not on a par with the books of the Hebrew canon. St. Jerome was the first to consider them of lesser value and coined the term Apocrypha at the time he translated the Bible into the Latin Vulgate.
13 One may still purchase indulgences from the Vatican. During my mission, I saw one of the official documents issued to a woman in France, pardoning her of all sins.
14 For a brief discussion by a non-Latter-day Saint Bible scholar, see Dillenberger, John. "Grace and Works in Martin Luther and Joseph Smith," in Truman G. Madsen, Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center and Bookcraft, 1978).
15 The reference is to Mark 16:15-16, where Jesus tells his apostles "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."
16 Though modern critics of the Book of Mormon and the restored Church find fault with the concept that the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets (including the Book of Mormon prophets) were Christians, it was taught by a number of the early Church Fathers of the second through the fifth centuries A.D. Luther, who studied these early writings as a Catholic priest/monk, undoubtedly was aware of this.
17 Paul G. Hansen, Oscar E. Feucht, Fred Kramer, and Erwin L. Lueker, Engagement and Marriage (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959), 71. Luther delivered the sermon at Wittenberg.
18 Melanchthon was born Philip Schwarzerd (meaning "black earth" in German) and adopted the Greek form of his surname.
19 Polygyny was practiced among Irish Christians and by the Merovingian kings of France. As early as A.D. 726, Pope Gregory II decreed that when a man has a sick wife who cannot discharge her marital responsibilities, he could take a second wife on condition that he continue to care for the first. The Catholic Emperor (of the Holy Roman Empire) at the time of the Reformation fathered children all over Europe and had the Pope legitimize them.
20 Eugene Hillman, Polygamy Reconsidered, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1975, pp. 221.
21 While studying for the priesthood, Cranmer had married a woman named Joan, who died in childbirth.
22 De Wette-Seidemann, Luther's Letters (Berlin, 1828), 6:255-265.
23 Robert Stupperich-Melanchthon, Bauhr (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1960). See also Robert Halst, "Polygamy and the Bible," International Review of Mission, April 1967, 205-213 (esp. p. 212 No. 2).
24 Brigham Young discussed Luther's involvement in the Hessian affair in a discourse delivered 18 June 1865 (Journal of Discourses 11:127).
25 Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville and New York: Aliengton Press, 1950).
26 Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). See also the entry for "Spiritual Wifery" in E. Royston Pike, The Encyclopedia of Religion and Religions (New York: Meridian, 1958), 360.
27 See Leo Miller, John Milton among the Polygamophiles (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 180-82. Milton's defense of polygamy was published in the Latter-day Saint Millennial Star 16 (27 May, 3 June 1854): 321-24, 342-45. For a discussion, see John S. Tanner, "Making a Mormon of Milton," Brigham Young University Studies 24/2 (Spring 1984), 202. Tanner draws attention to David J. Whittaker, "Early Mormon Pamphleteering," Ph.D. dissertation (Brigham Young University, 1982), 363-64, 383-84, 391-92.
28 See, for example, Kurt E. Marquart, "Luther and Theosis," Concordia Theological Quarterly 64/3 (July 2000); and Simo Peura and Antti Raunio, "Luther und Theosis: Vergottlichung als Thema der abendlandischen Theologie," Church History 63/3 (September 1994). A series of articles on Luther and theosis was published in Luther Digest 3 (1995).
29 Michael C.D. McDaniel, "Salvation as Justification and Theosis," in John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias, eds., Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue (Minneapolis 1992): 67-83, at page 82, citing Luther, Lectures on Galatians; the translation cited is Luther's Works, edited Jaroslav Pelikan (1955-87), volume 26: 100, 247. McDaniel's paper was abridged in Luther Digest 3 (1995): 142-4. See also the reviews of two works by Ulrich Asendorf, in Luther Digest 3 (1995): 108-32; 4 (1996): 198; 5 (1997): 94. I am indebted to Ted Jones for providing some of the references in this section.
30 Franz Posset, "'Deification' in the German Spirituality of the Late Middle Ages and in Luther: An Ecumenical Historical Perspective," Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 84 (1993): 103-25, at page 125; abridged in Luther Digest 3 (1995): 135-141.