Martin Luther

The human will is bound by sin; only God has free will. His famous image: “Thus the human will is, as it were, a beast between the two. If God sit thereon, it wills and goes where God will … If Satan sit thereon, it wills and goes as Satan will. Nor is it in the power of its own will to choose, to which rider it will run, nor which it will seek.” ⭐⭐ But what matters most is why he held this, and Olson records it very clearly: Luther firmly believed that the human will is in bondage because of the fall of our first parents and original sin, but he believed this because of the cross, not as a conclusion reached by metaphysical reasoning. In Luther's words, as Olson gives them: predestination is very strong wine and real food for the strong; and predestination, like the nature of God, can be known only through the cross. On justification he taught an alien, imputed righteousness. As Olson gives his words: just as bride and groom exchange all their possessions at the wedding, so the sinner receives justification from Christ, and Christ takes on all the sins of this Christian. The normal state of the Christian's whole life is to be at the same time righteous and a sinner (simul justus et peccator). He also taught double predestination, and said plainly that it has to do with the hidden God; ⚠ he made no attempt at all to smooth over the obvious contradictions in this doctrine.

⭐⭐Ecclesiology and Authority — the priesthood of all believers is a claim about authority, not just a word of comfort. He drew it from justification. As Olson puts it, because Christians are justified by grace alone through faith, all Christians are priests of God. He called the whole church the communion of saints and the priestly kingdom of the gospel. In his own image, as Olson gives it: we are not only the freest of kings but also priests forever, which is far better than being kings, because priests are fit to appear before God to pray for others and to teach one another the things of God; and so we may come before God full of confidence and without fear, and cry, Abba, Father!

⭐ Olson lists clearly its two consequences for authority: first, all true believers in Jesus Christ may come directly before God to pray for others and for themselves; second, pastors are not above the rest of God's people, nor do they hold any special spiritual rank that gives them rule over them. And there were two concrete consequences for church order. Pastors, Olson notes, should be called and chosen by God's people, not imposed on God's people by officials of the church hierarchy; and any ordinary Christian may, in an emergency, administer the two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and preach and teach God's word to the congregation.

⚠ But he did not abolish the pastoral office, and this must be stated clearly, or he will be read as an anarchist: as Olson puts it, he affirmed the pastor as a teaching office, trained to interpret and teach the word of God.

⭐⭐ Look back to where this thread began — Cyprian in the third century. In his system, as Olson sums it up, no one but a true bishop's authority could carry out a valid act of salvation. Luther's sentence is the direct denial of that one, 1,250 years later. ⚠ And the record on Cyprian noted that in the early 3rd century lay people could baptize, take the Lord's Supper, prophesy and even sing songs they had written themselves — it was during that half century that these things quietly stopped being mentioned. Luther did not invent anything; he took back what had disappeared then.

⭐⭐Scripture and Tradition — sola scriptura, and its difficulties. ⚠ Here Olson's language is unusually blunt, and we record it without smoothing it over for him: Luther's view of Scripture, he says, was rather unclear, even somewhat self-contradictory, and some critics say that, if not a contradiction, it is the best example of his tendency to be inconsistent.

On the one hand, he raised Scripture as high as it could go. No person or church, he held, has the right to judge Scripture. He called Scripture the queen. As Olson gives his words: this queen must hold all power, and all people should obey her and bow to her; the pope, Luther, Augustine, Paul, even an angel from heaven may not serve as teacher, judge or ruler, but only as witnesses, disciples and confessors of Scripture. ⭐ Notice that he lists himself too.

⚠ And this was not mere bold talk; it had concrete practices and consequences:
First, he set Scripture on a level higher than tradition, as Olson puts it, as the judge of all beliefs and customs — only those elements of tradition that agree with Scripture may be kept.
Second, on this ground he opposed the Catholic practice, in Olson's words, of raising tradition to a place equal to Scripture, with equal authority, and he condemned all criticism of Scripture and every attempt to put Scripture under the authority of the church.
Third, ⭐ he grounded the authority of Scripture on something that does not rest on reason. As Olson puts it, the only proof of the truth and authority of Scripture is the witness the Holy Spirit gives through it; Luther thought this more than enough, and that no rational argument could add anything to it.
Fourth, ⚠ so he also opposed the people at the other extreme — the mystics and spiritualists of his day: the teaching of the Holy Spirit, as Olson puts it, is bound to the outward word and to Scripture, and the Spirit never teaches anything beyond what Scripture contains.
⭐ That is, he blocked both sides: he would not let the church stand above Scripture, nor let the Spirit speak by going around Scripture.

On the other hand, he ranked the books within Scripture. Olson writes that not everything in Scripture has equal value, and that Luther did not hesitate to belittle certain books of the Bible, thinking they had little or no value for the soul. Luther's own verdict, as Olson gives it: in a word, John's Gospel and First John, Paul's letters, especially Romans, Galatians and Ephesians, and First Peter are what show you Christ; and so, compared with these, the Letter of James is truly a letter of straw, for there is nothing of the nature of the gospel in it.

⚠⚠ A common misreport has to be stopped, and Olson himself stops it first: contrary to some mistaken ideas, he writes, Luther did not remove James from the New Testament. But he did discourage the church from using James in worship and teaching, and he forbade Lutheran pastors in training to preach from James or from Revelation, which he thought unclear. ⚠ He also removed the Apocrypha, the books between the two Testaments, from the Protestant Bible.

⭐What his measuring rod was. Olson writes that the test for deciding the ranking, and the touchstone for interpreting all of Scripture, was whether something preaches (or promotes) Christ — that is, the canon within the canon is the gospel, not a table of contents. He was also clear about how Scripture relates to the word of God. As Olson gives his words: Scripture is the cradle that holds Christ; but Scripture is not God, not Christ, not even the gospel.

⚠ And this leaves a question still unresolved today. We keep Olson's verdict as it stands: there is no doubt, he says, that Luther was passionately loyal to Scripture as the authoritative word of God; but it is equally beyond doubt that his doctrine of Scripture was very vague, and raised as many problems as it solved. ⭐ We think this is the one thing most worth taking away from this thread: the next question sola scriptura must answer is — if there are tensions within Scripture, by what do we judge? Luther's answer was the part that preaches Christ; but where does that judgment itself come from?

⚠ The other side must also be recorded, or he will be read as arbitrary: he firmly opposed the mystics and spiritualists of his day. As Olson puts it, he firmly bound the teaching of the Holy Spirit to the outward word and to Scripture, holding that the Spirit never teaches anything beyond what Scripture contains — word and Spirit not only work together but form one inseparable whole.