Birth and Origin of the Pope; art (one of a series of eight) commissioned by Martin Luther to the artist Lucas Cranach, for his work Against the Papacy at Rome, Founded by the Devil (March 1545). Luther told him what to depict, and wrote a rhyming verse for each plate. Mark Edwards, from whose book I found this "art" (see Part Two) wrote: "A third cartoon shows the Pope and three cardinals being expelled from the anus of a female devil while three furies are nursing and caring for three infant popes . . . a graphic echo of Luther's assertion in his treatise that the pope had been born from the devil's behind."
Reformed apologist Tim Enloe wrote on the Catholic Convert Message Board: February 04, 2001 at 13:58:32:
Luther never intended to leave the Church, and did everything in his power to respect proper authority. The Church (and especially that inveterate heathen Pope Leo X) overreacted to him and kicked him out. He did not "withdraw". He was callously removed in total defiance of all reason, precedent, and even the previous two and a half centuries of theological development.
Rome brought the Reformation on herself because of her blindness and stupidity, and the sooner she quits hiding behind her "charisms" (and her meaningless distinctions between "dogma" and "discipline") and paying lip service to the "grievances" of the modern descendants of her mass medieval screwups and simply owns up to her own central and historically verifiable role in the
visible fracturing of the Church, the better the cause of true ecumenism and restoration will be.
. . . Luther did not believe himself to be overthrowing valid authority, but rather conserving it against several centuries of innovation . . .
We have long and often admitted that the corruptions of the Middle Ages (as opposed to false doctrines, which we, of course, deny) were a precipitating cause for the Protestant Revolt. But the above assertions about Martin Luther are historically questionable.
Tim Enloe wrote on February 05, 2001 at 01:10:36:
The main error of what you posted lies in your tired use of your old rhetorical device of "Anti-Catholicism". You speak of Luther's "ferocious anti-Catholic polemics of 1520", but you are dead wrong. Luther was never any sort of "Anti-Catholic", period. He was obviously increasingly "Anti-Papal", but as hard as it is for your Roman "Catholic" mind to understand, being against the Papacy is not the same thing as being against the Catholic Church. Luther regularly distinguished between these two things, and your apparent lack of understanding of this crucial point (as evidenced by your total failure to mention it) makes your criticism of Luther dangerously flawed.
I suggest you get hold of Luther's Works and read his tracts from the period 1518 to 1521 (I believe these are in Volume 39, . . . Time and time again Luther exhorts Christians to submit to the unjust government of the Papacy as far as is allowable by conscience, and forbids outright and anarchistic rebellion against the governmental structures in place in the Church. For instance, in his A Sermon on the Ban, he writes:
...our age is extraordinarily perilous, and we must act very wisely and see to it that we hold government and power in the highest honor, just as Christ honored the power of Pilate, of Herod, of Annas, of Caiphas, and even of secular princes. We must not let such grave misuse and childish governing of the prelates move us to despise authority. Otherwise, we despise not only unworthy persons who rule but their power itself. Rather, we should joyfully bear everything it imposes, or humbly and respectfully refuse to bear it. For God neither likes nor tolerates blasphemous and wanton resistance to authority, as long as it does not drive us to act against God or against his commandment--although it [authority] itself may act as much against God as it wants to, or hurt us as much as it wants to. He himself is to judge and to condemn those who are great and powerful tyrants, as well as to help those who are oppressed sufferers. That is why we should yield to his will and let the tyrants fall under his sword and judgment...These same prelates should be humbly told--especially the preachers should rebuke them, but only in such a way that they show them with the word of God how they are acting against God and what he expects of them. Furthermore, there should be diligent and serious intercession for them before God, just as Jeremiah wrote to the children of Israel in Babylon [Bar. 1:11; Jer. 29:7] that they should diligently pray for the king of Babylon, who had imprisoned them, destroyed them, strangled them, and done all kinds of evil things to them, as well as for his son and his kingdom.
Time and time again he speaks fondly of Mother Church and urges obedience to her. For instance, in the same sermon just quoted:
Therefore let us understand what is to be recognized as the most significant aspect of the ban, namely, that one should bear it without fear or impatience for two reasons: first, the power of the ban is given by Christ to the holy mother, the Christian church, that is, to the congregation of all Christians. Therefore, we should honor and endure our dear mother the church and Christ in this matter. For we should certainly accept, love, and fear in a childlike way whatever Christ and the church do.And:
For if it is our duty to make friends with our adversary, according to the
commandment of Christ in Matthew 5 [:25], how much more should we make friends with the power of the Christian church, be it exercised over us justly or unjustly, through worthy or unworthy authorities! Just as an innocent child is not really harmed by an unjust scourging from his mother, even though he is undeservedly punished and in fact becomes even dearer to and more accepted by his mother, so we will become much more dear to God if we endure the undeserved punishment of our spiritual mother, the church, through its evil government. For she remains the mother as long as Christ remains, and she does not change into a stepmother because of evil government.
. . . it is more than clear that Luther was simply and violently pushed out of the Church without any real attempt at a fair hearing.
. . . Another error of your posted piece is your assumption that the institutional structure which existed in Luther's day was ipso facto and undeniably the lawful form of the Church and that her doctrines were ipso facto and undeniably all Apostolic in origin. In other words, you beg the very questions that were at issue in the Reformation era, but expect me to think that you've demonstrated something profound. Thus you speak of your belief that "the honest thing for Luther to have done would have been to leave the Catholic Church, since he no longer accepted its doctrines", ignoring the facts that are truly undeniable: that (1) Luther was not attempting to leave or destroy Mother Church, but rather reform her, and (2) that the doctrines he was protesting were ones he believed he had ample biblical and historical precedent for questioning. He believed that Mother Church had come to teach much error and needed to be reformed, not that she had ceased to exist or had totally forfeited all her authority to his own "de facto infallibility".
Posted by Dave Armstrong on February 05, 2001 at 02:28:59:
Tim pretty much ignores the very essence of my argument, which was:
How can any Christian institution be expected to revolutionize its doctrinal framework based on the critique of one man?Luther ditched five of the seven Catholic sacraments (in 1520). Now, if Tim could imagine himself in the position of the Catholic Church, facing this rebel, what would he do?
Maybe by applying this scenario to his own Reformed church, he could comprehend the dilemma, and see the force of my objection. Suppose I go up to Westminster Seminary or the R.C. Sproul headquarters and start preaching that TULIP [Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints] is all wrong; that the Calvinists ought to adopt Arminius's five points in the Remonstrance of 1610. Now, would this be accepted cheerfully, causing the Reformeds to repent en masse, tear their shirts (robes?) open and pour dust on their heads, acknowledging their gross errors and corruptions and the historically and biblically obvious? I think not. I have a sneaking suspicion that I would be thrown out on my Arminian, Molinist ear, and that I would be extended infinitely less patience than Luther was accorded by the Catholic Church.
Yet this is what Tim expects the Catholic Church to have done in 1517-1520, due to the pleadings and jeremiads of a lone maverick monk with tendencies to morbidity, filthy language, severe mood swings, frequent contradiction, and overscrupulosity (psychological characteristics documented by many historians of all persuasions). I stated that Luther's beliefs before he ever got into direct conflict with the Church (as early as 1515) made him implicitly desire to split off, if not explicitly (or, more concisely, the inner logic of his radical position inexorably led to a split, whether or not Luther desired that end). That is, unless he was stupid and naive enough to think that the Church would simply bow to his superior wisdom, as if he were some sort of angel from heaven or prophet ushered in by flaming chariots, a la Elijah. We have reason to believe that he thought of himself in this way, but why should others, pray tell?
Luther's thought on ecclesiology and the (Roman) Catholic Church (the "papists") grew progressively more hardened, and underwent an evolution. Reformed apologist Tim Enloe, in his three citations, stuck to the 1518-1521 period, but I have gone to (mainly) 1539 and 1541 (Luther died in 1546). Of course, if Tim or other defenders of Luther want to maintain that he was too much of a nut-case or bitter old fool by then to be trusted any longer, they are free to take that approach (many historians indeed have done just that).
I've dealt with Luther's moral shortcomings (and their implications for his grandiose claims for himself, as the restorer of the "Gospel," etc.) elsewhere. Here I was concerned solely with his view of the Catholic Church, and whether he was "anti-Catholic" in my definition (one who denies that the Catholic Church is a Christian institution: the latter term meaning that a "good, faithful" Catholic is just as worthy a Christian - on a basic level of definition - as anyone else, and not only potentially, provided that they reject all in Catholicism which runs counter to Lutheranism or some other brand of Protestantism).
What I suspected is confirmed spectacularly above. In fact, the situation with regard to Luther is far worse than I had thought (and hoped) it was, with Luther even rejecting Catholic baptism for an adult Catholic who follows his Church's teaching obediently and without arbitrary selectivity.
Luther's view comes out loud and clear in the above citations (as they always do). Obviously, there is a distinction to be made (as Tim Enloe pointed out), in that the ("Roman" Catholic) Church and the papacy are two different entities, but that is evident. There is no distinction, however, in Luther's mind in terms of whether the ("Roman" Catholic) Catholic Church is Christian. He says it is not, in a million different colorful, sometimes vulgar, ways.
Tim, and most Protestants, ultimately adopt a different definition of "Catholic Church," in the sense of the universal church (which boils down to a "mystical" or "invisible" church, with disputed visible components), considered apart from the institutional Church we "papists" call the Catholic Church, headed by the papacy. Obviously, in my research, I was highlighting what Luther thought about my Church, the Catholic Church (often called "Roman Catholic," and headed by the pope, which entity and religious body had councils such as that at Trent, etc.).
Everyone on both sides knows what Luther is talking about above: what he thought about that institution which calls itself the Catholic Church, or Roman Catholic Church (used mostly by its detractors), which is historically traceable and which is headquartered at Rome and headed by the pope. That is my concern in all this not a dispute over the meaning of a word (Church). . . Whether one calls my Church the Catholic Church or not is a different matter than what Luther thought of my Church, whatever he or anyone else might call it. In other words, this is an historical and sociological (as opposed to theological /philosophical) question.
Furthermore, Tim Enloe showed clear indications in the original debate itself (now greatly edited, for several reasons) that indeed he did know I was concerned about the institutional, historical, sociological question, not an abstract ecclesiological or philosophical one. He used the word Church in my sense on several occasions:
Luther never intended to leave the Church, and did everything in his power to respect proper authority. The Church (and especially that inveterate heathen Pope Leo X) overreacted to him and kicked him out.What does "The Church" here mean, if not the (Roman) Catholic Church, in my definition: that Church which I am a member of?
Time and time again Luther exhorts Christians to submit to the unjust government of the Papacy as far as is allowable by conscience, and forbids outright and anarchistic rebellion against the governmental structures in place in the Church.Ditto. Even one of Tim's three Luther citations reiterates this same point:
. . . the power of the Christian church, be it exercised over us justly or unjustly, through worthy or unworthy authorities! . . . we will become much more dear to God if we endure the undeserved punishment of our spiritual mother, the church, through its evil government. For she remains the mother as long as Christ remains, and she does not change into a stepmother because of evil government.Clearly, Luther hardened his position as time went on, from what I would call contra-Catholic (more like Tim's present position and my former one before I converted) to anti-Catholic. The early Luther was willing to recognize the institutional (Roman) Catholic Church reluctantly, and with radically mixed feelings, as in the above words. Later, he no longer held this view (by the time of 1539-1541, the period of most of my quotes) - in direct contradiction to his earlier views (note particularly his very last sentence above).
I simply acknowledge what the man taught at different periods of his life. I have no stake in either of his positions; it has no effect on my own. So there is no conceivable or plausible reason for me to be deliberately biased in my Luther research, as some (including Tim) have charged. Tim, for his part, changed his terms (switching horses in mid-stream) and contradicted himself (which tendency flows from the standard Protestant confusion and double standard as to the word Church, especially historically speaking):
. . . how the Church, or rather, the insufferably obtuse Papacy of the time, reacted to Luther . . . it is more than clear that Luther was simply and violently pushed out of the Church . . .So here Tim refers to the Church, then switches over to the papacy, then back to the Church again. So, as far as I can tell, the first use of Church is in the Protestant mystical definition, as it is immediately contrasted with the papacy, whereas the second usage is again the institutional, visible sense, else Luther could not have been "violently pushed out of" it - as Tim characterizes it.
. . . Another error of your posted piece is your assumption that the institutional structure which existed in Luther's day was ipso facto and undeniably the lawful form of the Church . . .This is what Luther himself believed before 1521, as shown in the Luther citation, cited in part above). But again, Luther's views evolved over time to true anti-Catholicism (and even beyond that, to outright hatred - he mentions "hate" twice in my citations).
Luther was not attempting to leave or destroy Mother Church, but rather reform her.Another instance of Tim's use of Church in my sense.
He believed that Mother Church had come to teach much error and needed to be reformed, not that she had ceased to exist . . .Precisely; this is true of Luther before 1521, and possibly for some time after (I'm not sure). But by 1539 it was definitely no longer true, as I have shown beyond any conceivable doubt. By then he thought that (Roman) Catholics were utter, damned apostates, idolaters, and conscious servants of Satan. The early Luther attacked what he agreed was the "Catholic Church," and wished to "reform" it (i.e., have it adopt all of his views, as they are so patently obvious and a new sort of quasi-revelation). The later Luther thought that same institution was the devil's whore-church, born from the devil's rear end, etc. And I would venture to guess that his excommunication (and de facto heresy by Catholic criteria prior to 1521 - as early as 1515) had a little-bitty, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy something to do with that . . . .
This sort of "historical tunnel vision" is part and parcel of the standard Protestant myth about Luther, I often observe. It is always "here I stand" - the great and noble rebel and Restorer of the Gospel against the Babylonian whore-church, not the "compassionate and tolerant" Luther who ordered the peasants slain in 1525 (after he himself had played a key role in stirring them up), or the autocratic "State-Church" Luther, who sanctioned capital punishment for all sorts of "heresy," or the hateful "crabby and disenchanted old man" Luther, railing against Jew and Catholic and Anabaptist alike, consigning all to hell, beyond all hope or prayer. Myths and true history don't very well coincide. Tim wrote:
Luther did not hate or attack "the Catholic Church" as he saw it.He is correct; he had redefined the word after 1521 to the classic Protestant invisible church concept (though he and the Reformed and the Anglicans all set up State-Churches to varying degrees). I don't think that Luther "hated the Church" and wished to "destroy" it. That is far too simplistic. My view is that he was already a heretic by Catholic standards by 1515 at the latest, and that he was incredibly naive and arrogant, to believe that the Church would accept all his novel innovations. In other words, his view was exactly like that of both Protestant and Catholic liberals today. Rather than acknowledge established doctrinal standards, they wish to stay in a group and "remake" it to their own ends and purposes.
That's why I have argued that Luther should have called a spade a spade, and acknowledged that he was no longer a Catholic (which was patently obvious, certainly by 1520), and left, in honest disagreement. But the liberal, heterodox mindset never works that way. They always want to stay and "reform" the institution after their own liking and designs. No Christian group can put up with such self-anointed arrogance and folly.
Tim doesn't like my definitions of Catholic Church and anti-Catholic, and usage of them in dialogue with Protestants. But, unfortunately, Protestants and Catholics disagree on many definitions of words such as Church and faith. Protestants also disagree amongst themselves on a host of words and issues, e.g., sacrament, or baptism, or bishop, or Christian. So definitional controversy (as a corrolary of doctrinal controversy) simply can't be avoided. If there is to be any discourse whatever, both sides will have to be a bit more flexible in this vein.
But whatever one wishes to call what I call the Catholic Church, it is clear that Luther was utterly opposed to it by 1539 at the latest, and considered it as an institution no part of the Christian Church. He could scarcely have said anything else to make his views any more explicit than they were! I haven't studied the views on this issue of the Lutherans subsequent to Luther (recent agreements with the Catholic Church would seem to suggest a great difference). Here I am concerned with Martin Luther alone, as the founder of Protestantism, and greatly influential person on its later course, including that sad sub-strata of it which we describe as the anti-Catholic wing.
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See the revised version of the paper for my copious documentation of Luther's anti-Catholicism.
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