“To where should he who hopes in God come, unless into his own nothingness?”

This chapter analyzes vernacular pamphlets published by Luther and Karlstadt between 1519 and 1521. It argues that both reformers developed Eckhartian motifs in their writings, while advancing the Wittenberg movement as a summons to true suffering over and against self-willed doctrine and life. That said, Luther described the annihilation of self-trust and union with Christ through faith, while Karlstadt underlined the need to judge the self and “sink” into the divine will. Both recognized the incompleteness of annihilation and union. By undergoing the mortification of their own reason and will, Christians were promised new capacity to see God at work underneath suffering and through the lowly. Analysis of Luther’s Wartburg Postil shows that teachings about the reduction of the sinner unto nothingness (humiliation) and the need for despair of the self were prominent in Luther’s program for evangelical preaching and found enduring place in the Lutheran preaching tradition.

“I will choose what they ridicule”

After discussing the interaction of concepts of humility and faith in Luther’s theological development up to 1517, this chapter analyzes Luther’s critique of indulgences and scholastic theology in 1517 and 1518 as a two-front struggle against cross-shirking. Luther taught that suffering, as punishment for sin, should be endured willingly by the contrite; he thus worried on the one hand that Christians were taught to appropriate the benefit of others’ suffering—through indulgences and relics—rather than suffering themselves. On the other hand, Luther criticized those whose vigorous self-mortification and apparently patient suffering merely concealed an unwillingness to endure the humiliation and reduction of their own moral and intellectual resources for earning salvation. Luther criticized scholastic theology and theologians for using reason to construct a theology that reflected and buttressed self-assertion and distrust of God, and he offered suffering as a crucible that would separate true and false theologians and doctrines.

“Bring about . . . that I may become to myself like a bitter boil”

Chapter 4 examines how Karlstadt unfolded a unique theology and reform program following his public break with Luther. Continuing to engage the Eckhartian tradition, Karlstadt found his center in the goal of “sinking into God’s will,” and he saw earthly life as growth toward the postmortem attainment of this goal, revising the doctrine of purgatory. According to Karlstadt, God exercised divine pedagogy through inward illumination, scripture, and eternally ordained suffering; in turn, Christians were to engage in individual and communal study, self-examination, self-accusation, and improvement. Karlstadt depicted Luther and his Wittenberg allies as enemies of the cross, who refused to sink into God’s will by accusing and denying their own will, and who consequently preferred a practical reform program that did not arouse opposition. This verdict mirrored the verdict against scholastic theology and so-called papists that Luther and Karlstadt shared.

Introduction

Sixteenth-century church reformers needed not only to define the content and sources of truth, but also to teach Christians how to discern between truth and falsehood and how to shape their lives accordingly. This study of Martin Luther and his first intra-Reformation critics, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Thomas Müntzer, shows that each connected suffering and truth, drawing upon teachings about annihilation of the self and union with God found in the Eckhartian mystical tradition. At the same time, Luther, Karlstadt, and Muntzer understood the concepts of annihilation and union differently, and each worked to form Christians into distinct kinds of ecclesial-political actors. The reformers not only democratized mysticism, as some scholars have recognized, but they used mysticism in the service of division—to define true versus false faith and doctrine, and to teach discernment of true versus false teaching and teachers. Such arguments required a sophisticated conception of false suffering that dismissed opponents’ suffering as a mere show or as suffering in the service of falsehood. This book seeks to bridge a gap between classical Reformation scholarship and more recent studies of discipline, asking how reformers wanted to equip Christians for discernment and self-discipline. Suffering especially threatened to unmoor self-discipline and cloud discernment.

“No one comes to the living truth except through the way of his nothingness”

This chapter describes teachings about suffering and union in late-medieval Eckhartian mysticism and illuminates the reformers’ reception of this mysticism through analysis of Luther’s and Karlstadt’s handwritten annotations to Tauler’s Sermons and of printed marginalia in the 1520 Rhau-Grunenberg edition of the German Theology. The chapter shows reformers’ shared interest in Eckhartian teachings about annihilation of the self and union with God, and in related motifs including the critique of self-chosen suffering, the ideal of resignatio ad infernum, the possibility of “suffering without suffering” in union with God, and the status of the “yielded” as vessels or instruments for God’s work. The chapter also argues that the German Theology was useful to reformers particularly in its preoccupation with truth and falsehood. The printed 1520 marginalia focus on sin as Annehmlichkeit and on Gelassenheit as the solution—themes that align with the central motifs of Karlstadt’s teaching of c. 1523–1525.

“The Cross and the Impossibility of Faith”

This chapter analyzes the exchange between Luther, Karlstadt, and Müntzer during the Peasants’ War. Each counseled a different response to persecution, rooted in their respective paradigms of annihilation and union. Personal invective around cross-shirking intended to expose opponents’ inability to receive and teach truth. Luther defended the doctrine of salvation extra nos and the stance of waiting for God to reform hearts as true suffering of God’s condemnation of human ideas and inner resources for salvation. Karlstadt and Müntzer continued to trace Luther’s teaching to self-will, while breaking with one another over the legitimacy of violent rebellion. Müntzer saw the Anfechtungen at the birth of faith as a passing trial, after which illumined Christians could execute God’s will against the ungodly. Karlstadt rejected rebellion as contrary to God’s will. Unlike Müntzer, Karlstadt and Luther constrained the revolutionary implications of democratized mysticism—Karlstadt by delaying union, Luther by redefining it.

The “Bitter Side of Faith”

Chapter 5 follows the development of Müntzer’s theological views and reform aspirations from his early self-alignment with Wittenberg to his decisive rejection of Wittenberg teachings. Müntzer attacked the Wittenberg dicta of Christ, faith, and scripture alone for offering an easy, outward faith that taught Christians to avoid necessary inward trials. For Müntzer, God moved elect souls through inner Verwunderung, and they needed to yield to God’s work by confronting their unbelief and rejecting creaturely attachments in order to return to the created order, becoming God’s possession and instrument for ecclesial-political action. This chapter contends that Müntzer’s core theological loci were promise and faith, but he gave these terms distinct content reflecting his Eckhartian inheritance. The promise related to God’s possession of souls and to a Spirit-led church; faith was courage to execute God’s will without fear of creaturely opposition. Unbelief was doubt about the truth of Christianity vis-à-vis other religions.

Epilogue

Recent scholarship has often focused on the failure of sixteenth-century reform aspirations; scholars have also questioned the coherence and historical significance of the Reformation. The present study brings into relief a yet-unresolved question underlying these debates: what did reformers want to achieve? Scholars have highlighted numerous goals (relief from the social and psychological burdens of late-medieval religion, Christianization, consolation, certitude); this book views the reformers’ central concern as truth and the alignment of Christian life around truth. Luther, Karlstadt, and Müntzer agreed that human self-assertion in thinking and willing was the root of religious deception; thus, they agreed in seeing suffering both as key to the reception and perception of truth and as an inevitable consequence of life according to truth in a fallen world. Eckhartian mysticism inspired and aided their work to teach discernment and self-discipline. Such pedagogical efforts continued through the preaching, printed sermons and postils, and devotional literature of the early modern era, and it is inappropriate to pass judgment on the success or failure of the Reformation without attending to that literature.