The Work of Faith. Justin Nickel
solely on the law, and how Luther preaches it. Such objections betray a tendency in Lutheran moral theology wherein “the law” and Lutheran ethics are nearly synonymous terms. Why not focus on just this topic? There are two reasons. First, much admirable work has already been done on the Luther and the law. I, in fact, make ample use of this work in chapter 4. Second, debates over the law are often an ideological battleground where familiar conclusions are drawn in familiar ways. Because of that, a book devoted entirely to the topic would likely result in a predictable retreat to previously held commitments. Focusing on divine and human agency, and how their relationship bears on other topics in Lutheran moral theology, is a more promising tack. It is a more expansive way to look at Lutheran moral theology, and thus one of the virtues of my approach. The law is certainly included in the topics I cover, but others matter, too. These include: preaching/language use, virtuous and vicious preachers, how to think of faith, how to respond to God’s apparent silence, and others. My focus on divine and human agencies allows a fresh look at Luther’s moral
theology.
Even if Luther’s sermons are underused by moral theologians, the problem of selection remains open. Any reading of Luther’s sermons risks arbitrariness. Luther was, if nothing else, a preacher, with the Stadtkirche in Wittenberg serving as his primary homiletic setting.[16] Take the years 1528 and 1529 as examples. In the former, he preached nearly 200 times,[17] while in the latter he preached “no fewer than 121 times, on forty days twice each day.”[18] This preaching activity included sermons on the appointed Gospel during the main Sunday service and a second sermon, on a different text, for Sunday afternoons. As a result of this constant preaching activity, Fred Meuser estimates that Luther preached around 4,000 sermons in his life. Of these 4,000 or so, we have roughly 2,000 in written form.[19] Further, these numbers assume a genre division between Luther’s homiletic activity and the rest of his scholarly output.[20] Even a cursory familiarity with Luther’s biblical lectures or theological treatises suggests the difficulty of this division. As Richard Lischer rightly puts it, “Everything we have from Luther ‘preaches.’”[21] Given the sheer volume of Luther’s sermons and the homiletic nature of Luther’s work in general, an exhaustive reading is impossible, and I make no claims to that effect.
All the same, there are good reasons to focus on sections of a specific text: the Church Postil (hereafter CP). Because this is a perhaps unfamiliar genre, a brief description is required, along with a description of the CP’s textual history. A common medieval genre, a postil was simply a collection of sermons or sermon outlines.[22] Beginning in 1544, Luther’s Summer and Winter Postils were gathered together as the Church Postil. This distinguished them from another collection of Luther’s sermons, the House Postil. The 1544 Church Postil includes the 1540 version of the Winter Postil, written and revised by Luther, and the 1544 version of the Summer Postil, whose authorship is a more complicated story. Casper Cruciger edited and revised this version of the Summer Postil from a different and previous version, edited and compiled by Stephan Roth. For the Summer Postil, Benjamin Mayes notes that the sermons “were actually preached by Luther, recorded by a stenographer, and revised by an editor to a lesser . . . or greater extent.”[23] Roth’s version held most closely to the original stenographer’s notes. Additionally, Cruciger exercised considerable editorial freedom, often changing words while yet “communicating (Luther’s) thought faithfully.”[24] This process raises questions about authenticity of the Summer Postil and whether we should treat it as Luther’s work, particularly given my interest in Luther’s language use.
However valid this concern, there are still ample reasons to consider the Summer Postil as Luther’s work (if not his alone). No doubt, Cruciger is an important figure for the Postil, but he worked under Luther’s aegis and with Luther’s material. Luther himself commissioned Cruciger for the editorial task, and Luther wrote a preface to the volume. Further, Mayes claims that Luther “acknowledged (Cruciger’s) work as his own,”[25] even with Cruciger’s editorial freedom outlined above. Though Cruciger changed Luther’s language from the original sermons, he did so in a way that Luther himself approved. Presumably, this means that Cruciger did not transgress Luther’s own rhetorical habits and commitments. The texts themselves certainly bear this out. Additionally, the Summer Postil’s editorial process underscores the collaborative nature of the Reformation. Mayes quotes Robert Kolb to this effect: “’The Wittenberg Reformation certainly revolved around . . . Martin Luther, but Luther would not have been able to change the face and heart of the church in Germany and beyond without his team.’”[26] Such comments suggest that our own standards for authentic authorship should be applied with care to other times and places. Further still, the editors and translators of the CP are to be applauded and thanked for their detailed footnoting of the sermons. In these footnotes, they track any changes in the text that would alter the theological meaning. When necessary, I will make use of these footnotes. Additionally, I will note serious discrepancies between the Roth and Cruciger versions should they arise. I draw the relevant Roth texts[27] and the accompanying versions in WA. As will become clear, most of the passages I exegete are common to these varied translations. When minor discrepancies arise, I will follow Luther’s own judgment on this question and primarily use Cruciger’s version.[28]
The CP, then, “includes the various homiletical writings of Luther that developed in different ways and at various times during his career.”[29] By Luther’s time, these postils focused on the Gospel and Epistle lessons appointed for Sundays throughout the year. Historian John Frymire claims that the postils “were the most important genre for the dissemination of ideas in early modern Germany.”[30] Accordingly, the first reason for choosing the CP concerns its influence during Luther’s life. Frymire provides the blunt assessment: Luther’s “postils . . . without question were among his most influential writings.”[31] Mayes offers some statistics to support this claim. “From 1525–1529, some twenty-five editions of Luther’s postils were published, while in the next half decade, the number rose to more than fifty.”[32] This popularity remained long after Luther’s death in 1546.[33] Frymire claims that, even among clergy with modest libraries, they likely owned at least one volume of the postil, if not the whole set.[34]
Absent an official preaching manual from Luther (which, strangely, he never wrote), the postils were also a primer in the basics of Reformation theology and preaching. So Frymire: “[w]ith Luther’s postils in hand, clerics had regular exposure to his theology of preaching, models of sermon compilation and frequent discussions regarding the roles and duties of pastors.”[35] Luther intended that the postils serve as a model for capable sermon writers. For the less skilled, its sermons could be read verbatim from the pulpit. Just so, Luther imagined that the father of the household could use them for domestic religious services.[36] Many of Luther’s German contemporaries would have encountered his theological program through the postils. This is a quite different situation from our own, in which Luther’s most well-known and frequently taught texts tend to be his theological treatises and biblical commentaries. We are well acquainted with the “Freedom of a Christian,” less so Luther’s “Gospel for Easter Monday” sermon from the CP. The postil’s practical importance provides a warrant to take these writings seriously. Luther appears to have trusted the postil as a key means of spreading the Reformation theology. Given this influence, it makes good sense to bring the CP into contemporary Lutheran reflection.
There are further reasons that the CP’s genre is important.[37] Luther’s biblical lectures and theological treatises do indeed “preach,” in the sense that, in them, Luther often proclaims God’s mercy in Christ and exhorts faithful obedience to that same Christ. Nonetheless, these were delivered in the lecture hall or written to fellow academic theologians. The CP, though, has a different audience, one that is made up of Luther’s fellow preachers and the townspeople of Wittenberg. It is not important that we know the details of life details of everyone who heard Luther’s preaching. Instead, it is enough to know that his preaching is aimed toward clergy and non-professional theologians whom he nevertheless expects to hold Christian