Luther's 'Scholastic Phase' Revisited
Grace, Works, and Merit in the Earliest Extant Sermons
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3428496 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Iver Kaufman (0000-0002-6446-1506, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1982 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 280-289 |
| Publication date | 1982-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Church History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-6407 • E-ISSN: 1755-2613 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3167118 |
| OpenAlex | W2146097392 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
By 1516 Luther charged that the Schoolmen had grotesquely inflated the significance of natural virtues. Thereafter, he increasingly was provoked by the suggestion that human effort-touched only lightly, if at all, by grace-could accomplish more healing than harm. But it is commonly supposed that opinions Luther then condemned were opinions he had condoned in his earliest works, in which he is said to have assumed God's willingness to accept the best efforts of sinful persons as virtuous preparation for grace. Certainly Luther's ambitious remarks about partial merit (mentum de congruo), which found their way into his marginal notes on Lombard'sSentences(1509-1510) and into hisDictata super Psalterium(1513-1515), contrast with his later repudiation of the "sufficiencies" of natural powers for moral achievement and of moral achievement for divine acceptance and reward. Luther himself conceded his schoolboy admiration for Ockham, who probably inspired the semipelagianism of much of the late medieval soteriology that Luther came to detest. Understandably, Luther's early apparent endorsements of semipelagian features of scholastic soteriology have attracted considerable scholarly attention. His passage from nominalism to Protestantism, choreographed variously with leaps and stumbles or as an orderly march, has been a topic for debate ever since new fragments of Luther's early theology surfaced and were pieced together in the nineteenth century. Yet two early sermons have generated comparatively little discussion. Copied together from a manuscript in Erfurt and published twice before 1900, they are clearly witnesses from Luther's early career and their contribution to the determination and evaluation of his early semipelagianism ought not to be undervalued
Admiration · Art · Damnation · Extant taxon · Literature · Natural (archaeology) · Soteriology · Theology · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies
Zur Frage der Iustitia Dei beim jungen Luther
The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion
The Significance of Luther's Earliest Extant Sermon
Die religiösen Grundgedanken des jungen Luther und ihr Verhältnis zu dem Ockamismus und der deutschen Mystik
Justification in Late Medieval Preaching
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |