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Adiaphora, Luther and the Material Culture of Worship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2020

Andrew Spicer
Andrew Spicer*
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University
*
*School of History, Philosophy and Culture, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford. OX3 0BP. E-mail: aspicer@brookes.ac.uk.
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Abstract

The celebration of the late medieval mass and other religious ceremonies was carefully delineated through the ecclesiastical regulations of the Catholic Church. This legalistic approach to worship was strongly criticized by both Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther before 1517. With the subsequent Reformation, Luther reacted against Catholic legalism which, he argued, ensnared the faithful and threatened Christian freedom. He was therefore particularly reluctant to specify what he considered to be the appropriate form, place and setting for his German mass. Luther utilized the concept of adiaphora to argue that such issues were matters of indifference as they were not fundamental for salvation. However, this stance was tempered by his realization that such Christian freedom actually did require direction to ensure that the Reformation message was not confused or lost.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 56: THE CHURCH AND THE LAW , June 2020 , pp. 246 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2020

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this article was delivered in September 2017 at ‘Indifferent Things? Material and Ceremonial Church Practices in the 16th and 17th Centuries in the Baltic Region’, at the Niguliste Museum: Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn. I am grateful to the audiences at this conference and the Ecclesiastical History Society's Winter Meeting, as well as the anonymous peer reviewers, for their comments and feedback.

References

1 Spicer, Andrew, ‘Lutheran Churches and Confessional Identity’, in idem, ed., Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe (Farnham, 2012), 1–15Google Scholar, at 3–5; Margaret Aston, Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2016), 994.

2 Heal, Bridget, ‘Sacred Image and Sacred Space in Lutheran Germany’, in Coster, Will and Spicer, Andrew, eds, Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2005), 39–59Google Scholar; eadem, ‘“Better Papist than Calvinist”: Art and Identity in Later Lutheran Germany’, German History 29 (2011), 584–609, at 588–90; eadem, A Magnificent Faith: Art and Identity in Lutheran Germany (Oxford, 2017), 45–50; Bynum, Caroline, ‘Are things “Indifferent”? How Objects change our Understanding of Religious History’, German History 34 (2016), 88–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin Luther: Treasures of the Reformation. Catalogue (Dresden, 2016), 360–3. See also Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, Ritual and Art across the Danish Reformation: Changing Interiors of Village Churches, 1450–1600 (Turnhout, 2018); Evelin Wetter, ‘“On Sundays for the laity … we allow mass vestments, altars and candles to remain”: The Role of Pre-Reformation Ecclesiastical Vestments in the Formation of Confessional and Corporate National Identities’, in Spicer, ed., Lutheran Churches, 165–95.

3 Martin Luther: Treasures of the Reformation, 199; Crăciun, Maria, ‘Iconoclasm and Theology in Reformation Transylvania: The Iconography of the Polyptych of the Church at Biertan’, ARG 95 (2004), 61–97Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Marian Imagery and its Function in the Lutheran Churches of Early Modern Transylvania’, in Spicer, ed., Lutheran Churches, 133–64. See also Spicer, Andrew, ‘The Material Culture of Early Modern Churches’, in Richardson, Catherine, Hamling, Tara and Gaimster, David, eds, The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (Abingdon, 2017), 82–97Google Scholar.

4 Bynum, ‘Are things “Indifferent”?’

5 Ibid. 91–2; Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (London, 2004), 157–8.

6 For aspects of this subject, see Fite, Jason A., ‘Adiaphora: Theological War in Elizabethan England’, Puritan Reformed Journal 9 (2017), 113–140Google Scholar; Hyde, Daniel R., ‘Lutheran Puritanism?: Adiaphora in Lutheran Orthodoxy and Possible Commonalities in Reformed Orthodoxy’, American Theological Inquiry 2 (2009), 61–83Google Scholar; Irwin, Joyce, ‘Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora in Orthodox Lutheran Theology’, SCJ 14 (1983), 157–72Google Scholar; Johnston, Wade, The Devil behind the Surplice: Matthias Flacius and John Hooper on Adiaphora (Eugene, OR, 2018)Google Scholar; John T. Pless, ‘The Relationship of Adiaphora and Liturgy in the Lutheran Confessions’, in Gerald S. Krispin and Jon D. Vieker, eds, And every Tongue confess: Essays in Honor of Norman Nagel on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Dearborn, MI, 1990), 195–210; Bryan D. Spinks, ‘Adiaphora: Marriage and Funeral Liturgies’, Concordia Theological Quarterly 62 (1998), 7–23; Bernard J. Verkamp, ‘The Limits upon Adiaphoristic Freedom: Luther and Melanchthon’, Theological Studies 36 (1975), 52–76; idem, The Indifferent Mean: Adiaphorism in the English Reformation to 1554 (Athens, OH, 1977).

7 Verkamp, Indifferent Mean, 10–11.

8 Erasmus to John Colet, December 1504, in Collected Works of Erasmus: The Correspondence of Erasmus, ed. R. A. B. Mynors et al. (Toronto, ON, 1974– ), 2: 85–9, at 87.

9 Collected Works of Erasmus: Spiritualia, ed. John O'Malley, 3 vols (Toronto, ON, 1988–99), 1: 74.

10 Ibid, 79.

11 Ibid. 79–83; Verkamp, Indifferent Mean, 36–7.

12 Verkamp, ‘Limits upon Adiaphoristic Freedom’.

13 See John Witte Jr, Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge, 2002); Harold Berman, Law and Revolution, 2: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Law (Cambridge, 2004); Virpi Mäkinen, ed., Lutheran Reformation and the Law (Leiden, 2006).

14 Volker Leppin, ‘Kirchenausstattungen in territorialen Kirchenordnungen bis 1548’, in Sabine Arend and Gerald Dörner, eds, Ordnungen für die Kirche – Wirkungen auf die Welt. Evangelische Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts, Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation 84 (Tübingen, 2015), 137–55.

15 Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 157–61; Sergiusz Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe (London, 1993), 14–15, 191; Reimond B. Sdzuj, Adiaphorie und Kunst. Studien zur Genealogie ästhetischen Denkens, Frühe Neuzeit 107 (Tübingen, 2005); Bridget Heal, ‘Kirchenordnungen und das Weiterbestehen religiöser Kunstwerke in lutherischen Kirchen’, in Arend and Dörner, eds, Ordnungen – Wirkungen, 157–74.

16 WA, 56: 493–4; LW, 25: 487.

17 WA, 56: 494; LW, 25: 487–8.

18 WA, 7: 37, 68; LW, 31: 370.

19 The Rationale divinorum officiorum of William Durand of Mende, ed. Timothy M. Thibodeau, Records of Western Civilization (New York, 2007); M. Albaric, ‘Les Éditions imprimées du Rationale Divinorum Officiorum de Guillaume Durand de Mende’, in P.-M. Gy, ed., Guillaume Durand, Evêque de Mende (v.1230–1296). Canoniste, Liturgiste et homme politique (Paris, 1992), 183–205.

20 Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. Thibodeau, 46.

21 Ibid. 98.

22 William Durand, Rationale IV. On the Mass and each Action pertaining to it, ed. Timothy M. Thibodeau, CCT 14, 241.

23 Ibid. 243.

24 WA, 6: 562; LW, 36: 110.

25 WA, 6: 563; LW, 36: 111.

26 WA, 8: 511; LW, 36: 168.

27 WA, 40/2: 301, 303; LW, 12: 85, 86.

28 WA, 40/2: 305; LW, 12: 88.

29 WA, 50: 650; LW, 41: 174.

30 WA, 50: 651; LW, 41: 175.

31 WA, 33: 434–5; LW, 23: 273.

32 WA 6: 566; LW, 36: 115–16.

33 WA 10/3: 21–2; LW, 51: 79.

34 WA, 10/2: 29; LW, 36: 254.

35 Die Wittenberger und Leisniger Kastenordnung, 1522, 1523, ed. Hans Lietzmann (Bonn, 1907), 4–6; Leppin, ‘Kirchenausstattungen in territorialen Kirchenordnungen’, 138–43; Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, 2: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521–1532 (Minneapolis, MN, 1990), 38–40; Amy Nelson Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy: A Study in the Circulation of Ideas (New York, 2011), 29; Thomas H. Schattauer, ‘From Sacrifice to Supper: Eucharistic Practice in the Lutheran Reformation’, in Lee Palmer Wandel, ed., A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation, Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 46 (Leiden, 2013), 205–30, at 212–13.

36 Burnett, Karlstadt, 27, 29.

37 Irmgard Pahl, ed., Coena Domini, 1: Die Abendmahlsliturgie der Reformationskirchen im 16. / 17. Jahrhundert (Freiburg, 1983), 7–8, 13; Burnett, Karlstadt, 15, 26–9; Schattauer, ‘Sacrifice to Supper’, 212–13; Natalie Krentz, ‘The Making of the Reformation: The Early Urban Reformation between Continuity and Change’, Reformation & Renaissance Review 19 (2017), 30–49, at 41–2.

38 Die Wittenberger und Leisniger Kastenordnung, 4–6; Andreas Karlstadt, Von abtuhung der bilder und das Keyn bedtler vnther den Christen seyn sollen, 1522, und die Wittenberger beutelordnung, ed. Hans Lietzmann (Bonn, 1911); Andreas Karlstadt, ‘On the Removal of Images and that there should be no more Beggars among Christians’, in The Essential Carlstadt: Fifteen Tracts by Andreas Bodenstein (Carlstadt) from Karlstadt, transl. and ed. E. J. Furcha (Waterloo, ON, 1995), 100–28; Leroux, Neil R., ‘“In the Christian City of Wittenberg”: Karlstadt's Tract on Images and Begging’, SCJ 34 (2003), 73–105Google Scholar; Michalski, Reformation and the Visual Arts, 9–11.

39 Burnett, Karlstadt, 27, 29–30.

40 Michalski, Reformation and the Visual Arts, 13.

41 WA, 10/3: 24; LW, 51: 81.

42 Burnett, Karlstadt, 30; Bryan Spinks, Luther's Liturgical Criteria and his Reform of the Canon of the Mass, Grove Liturgical Study 30 (Bramcote, 1982), 13.

43 WA, 10/3: 21; LW, 51: 79.

44 WA, 10/3: 22; LW, 51: 79.

45 WA, 10/3: 21; LW, 51: 79.

46 WA, 10/3: 26; LW, 51: 81.

47 WA, 10/3, 35; LW, 51: 86.

48 WA, 10/3: 27; LW, 51: 82.

49 WA, 10/3: 30–1; LW, 51: 84.

50 WA, 10/3: 29; LW, 51: 83.

51 WA, 18: 67; LW, 40: 84.

52 WA, 18: 73; LW, 40: 90.

53 WA, 18: 68; LW, 40: 85–6.

54 WA, 18: 68, 73; LW, 40: 85, 90–1.

55 WA, 18:73–4; LW, 40: 91.

56 Ibid.

57 Burnett, Karlstadt, 15, 18–19, 29, 31, 33.

58 WA, 54: 164; LW, 38: 315.

59 WA, 54: 165; LW, 38: 316.

60 Ibid.

61 WA, 23: 419–21; LW, 43: 159.

62 WA, 30/2: 608; LW, 38: 114.

63 WA, 10/3: 38; LW, 51: 87.

64 WA.Br 2: 474; LW, 48: 401.

65 WA.Br 2: 489–90; LW, 49: 3–4.

66 WA, 12: 205; LW, 53: 19.

67 WA, 12: 206; LW, 53: 20.

68 WA, 12: 208; LW, 53: 22.

69 WA, 12: 214–15; LW, 53: 31.

70 WA, 19: 80; LW, 53: 69.

71 WA, 2: 451; LW, 27: 161–2.

72 WA, 2: 478; LW, 27: 202.

73 WA, 40/1: 211; LW, 26: 118.

74 WA, 12: 206; LW, 53: 20.

75 WA.Br 3: 184; LW, 49: 55–6.

76 WA, 12: 37; LW, 53: 13–14.

77 Robin A. Leaver, Luther's Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids, MI, 2007), 69–70; Irwin, ‘Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora’, 158–9; Joyce Irwin, Neither Voice nor Heart alone: German Lutheran Theology of Music in the Age of the Baroque (New York, 1993), 11–12.

78 WA, 12: 218; LW, 53: 36.

79 WA.Br 3: 373; LW, 49: 90.

80 Joseph Herl, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Conflict (Oxford, 2004), 14–15; see also Robin A. Leaver, The Whole Church Sings: Congregational Singing in Luther's Wittenberg (Grand Rapids, MI, 2017).

81 WA, 12: 219–20; LW, 53: 39.

82 WA.Br 3: 373–4; LW, 49: 90–1.

83 WA, 19: 72; LW, 53: 61.

84 WA, 19: 73; LW, 53: 62.

85 WA, 7: 69; LW, 31: 372.

86 See above, 255–6; WA.Br 3: 254; LW, 49: 72–3.

87 WA, 19: 72; LW, 53: 61.

88 Witte, Law and Protestantism, 65.

89 WA.Br 3: 373–4; LW, 49: 90–1. See above, 254.

90 WA, 18: 417–18; LW, 53: 46.

91 WA, 18: 419; LW, 53: 47.

92 WA, 2: 478; LW, 27: 202.

93 WA, 19: 74; LW, 53: 63.

94 WA, 19: 73; LW, 53: 62.

95 WA, 54: 165; LW, 38: 316–17.

96 WA, 54: 166; LW, 38: 319.

97 WA, 49: 591–2; LW, 51: 335–6.

98 WA, 49: 592; LW, 51: 336.

99 WA, 50: 649; LW, 41: 173.

100 WA, 50: 649–50; LW, 41: 173–4.

101 WA, 50: 650; LW, 41: 174.

102 See Heal, Magnificent Faith, 50–2; Irene Dingel, ‘The Culture of Conflict in the Controversies leading to the Formula of Concord (1548–1580)’, in Robert Kolb, ed., Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550–1675, Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 11 (Leiden, 2008), 15–64, at 34–9; eadem, Jan Martin Lies and Hans-Otto Schneider, eds, Der Adiaphoristische Streit (1548–1560), Controversia et Confessio 2 (Göttingen, 2012); Friedrich, Markus, ‘Orthodoxy and Variation: The Role of Adiaphorism in Early Modern Protestantism’, in Head, Randolph C. and Christenssen, Daniel, eds, Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Early Modern German Culture: Order and Creativity, 1550–1750, Studies in Central European Histories 42 (Leiden, 2007), 45–68Google Scholar; Sdzuji, Adiaphorie und Kunst, 127–71.

103 Heal, Magnificent Faith, 52, 55–7.

104 Heal, ‘“Better Papist than Calvinist”’; Wetter, ‘“On Sundays for the laity”’, 165–95.