Apart from their connection of baptism and
salvation, the Reformers adopted many other heresies. Zwingli held that “noble” heathen who had never heard of
Christ would be in heaven, and only maintained the salvation of unbaptized
infants by vitiating the Biblical doctrine of original sin (Romans 5:12-19).[i] Luther either questioned or denied the
canonicity of Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation, as
well as several Old Testament books, providing a basis for the rise of
theological modernism in Germany a century after his death. In Luther’s preface to James, from his
first edition of his German New Testament, he stated that “this epistle of St.
James was rejected by the ancients . . . I do not regard it as the writing of
an apostle; and my reasons follow. In the first place it is flatly against St.
Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works. . . .
This fault, therefore, proves that this epistle is not the work of any apostle.
. . . [T]his James does nothing more than drive to the law and to its works.
Besides, he throws things together so chaotically that it seems to me he must
have been some good, pious man, who took a few sayings from the disciples of
the apostles and thus tossed them off on paper. . . . In a word, he wanted to
guard against those who relied on faith without works, but was unequal to the
task in spirit, thought, and words. He mangles the Scriptures and thereby
opposes Paul and all Scripture . . . Therefore, I will not have him in my Bible
to be numbered among the true chief books.” In a Tabletalk
comment in 1542, Luther affirmed, “We should throw the Epistle of James out of
this school [Wittenberg], for it doesn’t amount to much. It contains not a
syllable about Christ. . . . I maintain that some Jew wrote it who probably
heard about Christian people but never encountered any. Since he heard that Christians place
great weight on faith in Christ, he thought, ‘Wait a moment! I’ll oppose them
and urge works alone.’ This he did. . . . Besides, there’s no order or method
in the epistle. Now he discusses clothing and then he writes about wrath and is
constantly shifting from one to the other. He presents a comparison: ‘As the
body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead’ [Jas.
2:26]. O Mary, mother of God! What a terrible comparison that is! James
compares faith with the body when he should rather have compared faith with the
soul! The ancients recognized this, too, and therefore they didn’t
acknowledge this letter as one of the catholic epistles” (Luther’s
Works (LW) 54:424). He also said, “Some day I will use
James to fire my stove”[ii]
(cf. Jeremiah 36:23-32).
Luther wrote concerning “the epistle of St Jude
. . . he also speaks of the apostles like a disciple who comes long after them
and cites sayings and incidents that are found nowhere else in the Scriptures.
This moved the ancient fathers to exclude this epistle from the main body of
the Scriptures . . . it is an epistle that need not be counted among the chief
books which are supposed to lay the foundations of faith.”[iii] Concerning the book of Hebrews, Luther wrote
that the book “does not lay the foundation of faith . . . Therefore we should
not be deterred if wood, straw, or hay are perhaps mixed with [sound teaching
in the epistle] . . . to be sure, we cannot put it on the same level with the
apostolic epistles.” In certain
places, Hebrews is, “as it stands . . . contrary to all the gospels and to St.
Paul’s epistles” (LW 35:394).
In Luther’s Preface to the Revelation of St.
John (1522), he wrote, “About this book of
the Revelation of John . . . I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in
this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic. .
. . For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras; I can in no
way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it. Moreover he seems to me to be
going much too far when he commends his own book so highly—indeed, more than
any of the other sacred books do, though they are much more important—and
threatens that if anyone takes away anything from it, God will take away from
him, etc.[iv]
Again, they are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book;
and yet no one knows what that is, to say nothing of keeping it. This is just
the same as if we did not have the book at all. And there are many far better
books available for us to keep. Many of the fathers also rejected this book a
long time ago; although St. Jerome, to be sure, refers to it in exalted terms
and says that it is above all praise and that there are as many mysteries in it
as words. Still, Jerome cannot prove this at all, and his praise at numerous
places is too generous. . . . My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this
book.”
In his Preface to the New Testament (1522), Luther stated, “John's Gospel is . . . far,
far to be preferred to the other three and placed high above them. So, too, the Epistles of St. Paul and
St. Peter far surpass the other three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke.”
Luther’s relegation of portions of the New
Testament canon to a secondary status is followed by “conservative” modern
Lutheranism to this day. Lutheran
editions of the Bible in the centuries after the Reformation generally
contained their Reformer’s prefaces to the Scriptures along with the books,
perpetuating his blasphemies among the following generations of Lutherans.[v]
Luther attacked portions of the Old Testament
as well. He said, “Job didn’t
speak the way it is written [in his book]
. . . One doesn’t speak that way under temptation.”[vi]
He affirmed that “The [author of
the] book of Solomon's Proverbs [is like] . . . the author of the book of [the
Apocryphal book of] Ecclesiasticus.
[He] preaches the law well, but he is no prophet. [Ecclesiasticus] is
not the work of Solomon, any more than is the book of Solomon’s Proverbs. They
are both collections made by other people. . . . [Concerning the book of] Esther . . . I wish [it] had
not come to us at all, for [it has] too many heathen unnaturalities. . . .
Daniel and Isaiah are [the] most excellent prophets.”[vii] In Luther’s Preface to Ecclesiastes, he wrote, “Now this book was certainly not written
or set down by King Solomon with his own hand. Instead scholars put together
what others had heard from Solomon’s lips, as they themselves admit at the end
of the book . . . In like manner too, the book of the Proverbs of Solomon has
been put together by others, with the teaching and sayings of some wise men
added at the end. The Song of Solomon too has the appearance of a book compiled
by others out of things received from the lips of Solomon. For this reason
these books have no particular order either, but one thing is mixed with
another. This must be the character of such books, since they did not hear it
all from him at one time but at different times” (LW 35:263). Luther stated concerning “Esther . . .
[that] despite [the Jews] inclusion of it in the canon [it] deserves more than
all the rest in my judgment to be regarded as noncanonical” (LW 33:11). Before Luther attacked inspired books
of the Old and New Testaments, instead of trembling before them (Isaiah 66:2),
he should have considered more carefully that “Whoso despiseth the word shall
be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:13; cf. 2 Timothy 3:16; Proverbs 30:5-6; Deuteronomy
12:32; Revelation 22:18-19).
In 1519, Luther exhorted his congregation to
“call upon the holy angels, particularly his own angel, the Mother of God, and
all the apostles and saints,” although later on he moved away from prayers to
angels, Mary, and other dead people.
Nevertheless, Luther kept a graven image of Mary in his study his entire
life.[viii] Luther also believed his entire life in
Mary’s perpetual virginity. He
taught, “Christ . . . was the only Son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary bore no
children besides Him . . . [when Scripture speaks of the Lord Jesus’]
‘brothers’ [it] really means ‘cousins.’”[ix] Calvin similarly affirmed, “Helvidius
has shown himself too ignorant, in saying that Mary had several sons, because
mention is made in some passages of the brothers of Christ,” arguing that
“brothers” meant merely cousins or relatives.[x] Calvin never denied the perpetual
virginity of Mary. Zwingli
affirmed, “I firmly believe that Mary, according to the words of the gospel as
a pure Virgin brought forth for us the Son of God and in childbirth and after
childbirth forever remained a pure, intact Virgin.” Zwingli used Exodus 4:22 to
defend the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity.[xi]
Luther also taught that Mary was conceived
without sin, as Christ was, preaching that “It is a sweet and pious belief that
the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the
very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned
with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment
she began to live she was free from all sin.”[xii]
The Bible teaches that Mary was a very godly
woman (Luke 1:48), although John the Baptist was greater than she (Matthew
11:11). Mary needed to have Christ
as her “Saviour” (Luke 1:47) because she was a sinner just like every other
descendent of Adam (Romans 3:10, 23; 5:12, 19). The gospels record her bringing a sin offering for her
uncleanness (Luke 2:21-24; Lev 12:1-8).
Jesus was her “firstborn” son (Matthew 1:25; Lu 2:7), after which God
blessed her marriage to Joseph with many other children (Matthew 13:55-56; John
7:5 + Psalm 69:8; Acts 1:14; 1 Corinthians 9:5; Galatiansl 1:19). She does not have special access to the
Lord Jesus (Matthew 12:46-50; Luke 11:27-28) and praying to her, saying she is
the queen of heaven, making her a mediator between God and man, and all other
Catholic or Protestant additions to Biblical teaching about her are abominable
idolatry (Deuteronomy 12:32; 1 Timothy 2:5; Isaiah 48:11). “Idolaters . . . shall have their part
in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Revelation 21:8).
--TDR
[i]
Schaff,
Philip, History of the Christian Church, 7:preface:11; 7:1:7:110; 8:2:9; 8:5:45; 8:3:29.
[ii]
Weimer, “Tischreden” (5) pg. 5854, cited in “Luther and James: Did Luther Use the Historical-Critical
Method?” by Mark F. Bartling; a paper presented to the Pastor-Teacher
Conference, Western Wisconsin District, LaCrosse, WI, April 12, 1983.
[iii]
See
Luther’s preface to Jude in his first edition of the German New Testament.
[iv]
Note that
here Luther explicitly rejects the warning of Revelation 22:18-19! It goes “much too far”! Is the book of Revelation correct, and
Luther in error, when the inspired prophecy warns that for he who add or take
away from it (Is not rejecting its inspiration most certainly taking away from
it?), “God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book . . .
and . . . God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the
holy city, and from the things
which are written in this book”?
Or is Luther correct, and the Word of God in error, so that God goes
“much too far” here?
[v]
“The
German Bible available to homes in the Missouri Synod in the late 1800’s and
early 1900’s, the Altenburger Bibel
(Concordia Publishing House), contained Luther’s introductions to the New
Testament books, giving his views about Hebrews, James, Jude, and
Revelation. The laymen therefore
were acquainted with the view of [the] Scriptures [of Luther, questioning their
inspiration].” The American
Lutheran Synod of 1857 (minutes, pg. 334ff) affirmed, “The Lutheran church must
leave it uncertain whether Revelation, or any of the other books of the New
Testament which were spoken against by a few in the early church, were written
by an Apostle or under Apostolic authority. . . . Consequently, it was an
unwise, unchristian, and provocative act on the part of [a Lutheran minister]
to conceal the actual status of the doubted New Testament books. Thereby he gave rise to rumors which
cast aspersions on those who maintain the distinction between canonical books
of the first and second rank;
whereas in this distinction they were following the earliest church
Luther, and the older orthodox theologians” (Quotations from “Luther and
James: Did Luther Use the
Historical-Critical Method?” by Mark F. Bartling; a paper presented to the
Pastor-Teacher Conference, Western Wisconsin District, LaCrosse, WI, April 12,
1983.).
[vii]
Table-Talk
Of Martin Luther Translated By William Hazlitt, Esq. Philadelphia: The
Lutheran Publication Society. Utterance XXIV. Available at http://www.ccel.org/l/luther/table_talk/table_talk.htm.
[viii] cf.
Reformation Church History, Lecture 5, W. Robert Godfrey, (Grand Rapids, MI:
Institute of Theological Studies);
www.itscourses.org.
[xii]
“On the
Day of the Conception of the Mother of God,” 1527.