Luther at Worms (at 500)

This week marks the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s famous “non-recantation” at the Diet of Worms. His first appearance there, on April 17, 1521, did not go well. Asked if the books on the table before him had been written by him, he answered “yes.” But when he was then asked if he would revoke the ideas they contained, he hesitated and appeared uncertain. He said he needed more time to think about the question. Surprised by this timid reply—after all, could he not have anticipated this move? —the emperor nevertheless granted him a night to further ponder his fate.

The next day, April 18, 1521, Luther was asked the main question a second time: “Will you recant?” 

No longer hesitant or uncertain, he replied at some length in Latin. After stressing that his cause was one “of justice and of truth,” he again took responsibility for the books he had written, but he noted that they were “not all of the same kind.” Some were about basic Christian faith and morals. (What could be wrong with these, he asked.) Other writings did indeed attack the papacy, but to retract these, he argued, would amount to “adding strength” to what he considered to be “the tyranny” of that institution. Still other books attacked individuals. Here, he admitted, he had been “more violent” than either “his religion or his profession” really required. Still, he would not recant these books either, since such a revocation would allow “tyranny and godlessness” to “rule and rage… more violently than before” among the people of God.

Despite his intransigence, Luther confessed that he “was only a man and not God.” He then stressed that if someone, anyone, could teach him his errors, have them exposed and overthrown by the clear statements of the prophets and evangelists (he did not mention Moses or the OT Ketubim), then he would be “quite ready to renounce every error,” and he would “be the first to cast [his] books into the fire….”

After drawing attention to the dissention that God’s own word creates in the world--and after stressing that we all need to fear God--he then concluded: “I do not say these things because there is a need of either my teachings or my warnings for such leaders as you, but because I must not withhold the allegiance which I owe my Germany. With these words I commend myself to your most serene majesty and to your lordships, humbly asking that I not be allowed through the agitation of my enemies, without cause, to be made hateful to you. I have finished.”

But Luther was not finished, for the emperor’s speaker was not satisfied. Luther had not answered the main question: “Will you recant?”

Then came (extempore?) what must be considered among the most famous and consequential words to have been spoken in the history of Western civilization in the past half millennium:

“Since, therefore, your serene majesty and your lordships seek a simple response, I will give it in this way, neither sophistical nor pointed: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures, or by the evidence of reason (for I trust in neither the pope nor councils alone, since it is a settled fact that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the words of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.” (WA 7.838.1-9; LW 32.112-113 [modified]).

These Latin words were followed by a few German ones, perhaps only the final four of them (sotto voce?): “Ich kan nicht anderst, hie stehe ich, Got helff mir, Amen.” [I can (say) nothing else. Here I stand. God help me. Amen.]

Keep in mind that nearly a year earlier some forty-one statements of Luther’s had already been condemned by the pope as “either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds, or against Catholic truth.” It didn’t matter that some of the quotations were inexact, and all had been torn from their original contexts. Luther had 60 days to recant.

Of course, instead of recanting, Luther burned the papal bull (document) on December 10, 1520. (I have stood at that very spot many times, contemplating that bold act of ecclesial defiance.) Luther refused the pope’s demands, he didn’t recant or repent, and, as a result, his excommunication became effective on January 3, 1521, just over two months after Charles had been crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

Rather amazing were the subsequent actions taken by the twenty-one-year-old emperor. Despite the promise he had made on the day of his crowning—to preserve the Catholic faith, to protect the Catholic Church and clergy, and to show proper devotion to the pope and the Roman Church—Charles agreed to give the excommunicated heretic a hearing. While the pope had already made up his own mind, and the pope’s own representatives had opposed Luther’s invitation to the diet, Charles kept the matter open, at least in principle. (He had to know by that point that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. Erasmus had told him as much.) But it didn’t matter. By the end of Luther’s second appearance, on that 18th of April, 1521, Charles was convinced that this lone, renegade monk was in error “in his opinion, which is against what all of Christendom has held for over a thousand years…” “After the impertinent reply that Luther gave yesterday… I declare that I now regret having delayed so long the proceedings against him and his false doctrines. I am resolved that I will never again hear him talk.”

The edict against Luther was formulated on May 8, 1521, and signed by the emperor on May 26, at the end of the diet. Charles’ edict affirmed the execution of the pope’s judgment against Luther, it enjoined all to refuse Luther any “hospitality, lodging, food, or drink,” or any assistance, and it instructed all people to take Luther prisoner so that he could be delivered to the authorities. (It should be noted: no one was authorized to kill Luther. He was simply to be arrested and handed over.) The edict also authorized individuals to proceed against Luther’s friends and followers, to attack them, and to take their property. Of course, Luther’s writings were strictly verboten. Bottom line: Luther and his adherents were not merely heretics, they were outlaws.

At Worms, Luther refused to recant because his conscience was “held captive” by the words of God (notice the plural). “Precisely because his conscience was bound by the words of God, he had to demand freedom, that is, respect for his conscience. But Luther also knew that it was his knowledge of the words of God that bound him, and as a human being he could err. Therefore, he had to be prepared to subject his knowledge to a test. Because no disputation had taken place in Worms, let alone any testing by a group of impartial theologians, no revocation could be expected from Luther. A revocation would have presupposed that Luther had been taught better by scriptural arguments so that he would have been able to correct his previous understanding. This became the standard legal argument of Saxon politics when it later defended Luther’s refusal to recant” (Theodor Dieter, “The Diet and Edict of Worms (1521),” Lutheran Quarterly 35 [Spring 2021], 4). [Other theologians who have been accused of "teaching false doctrines" and have also been expelled from their church bodies might make the same argument. Just saying....]

Perhaps most important in all this, maybe even more important than Luther’s famous testimony in that imperial courtroom, were the actions taken by Luther’s prince, Elector Frederick (the Wise). Not only did Frederick hide Luther at the Wartburg Castle in the wake of Luther's "stand" at Worms, but he made sure that the edict was not published in electoral Saxony, and thus the edict was without effect in the land where Luther lived. The failure to implement the edict in northern, German-speaking territories allowed the Reformation to become more entrenched than might otherwise have been the case. Luther owed much to his local prince. (BTW, the term “Protestant” originated later, in the wake of another diet, that of Speyer [1529], which tried to impose the conditions of Worms upon the estates that had accepted Luther’s reforms. Those estates considered the terms of Worms invalid since they had been passed “against God and his holy word” and were against “the salvation of all our souls and good conscience.”)  And nothing the emperor or the pope did, could put Western Christendom back together again. (Thankfully, ecumenical efforts toward reunification of the Western Church have been afoot for more than a century.)

Luther is not without blame here. In light of his own theology, his denial of conciliar authority presents, at best, an inconsistency. After all, Luther consistently accepted the dogmatic decisions of the first seven ecumenical councils. Luther's attacks on the papacy also seem extreme. (Melanchthon’s position on the Petrine office remains much more ecumenically promising, even if the dogmas of papal  primacy, universality, and infallibility, not to mention the papal promulgations of the recent Marian dogmas, complicate the ecumenical situation further.) A lot of what Luther wrote against the papacy and conciliar authority has to be subjected to sober criticism and viewed in the context of the heat of a most anti-ecumenical moment…. 

Luther’s excommunication and the Edict of Worms remain obstacles to the reunification of the Roman Church and the churches of the Augsburg Confession. If such a reunification remains an ecumenical goal, what are the next steps that need to be taken by both sides (the Roman Church and the LWF) to move closer toward that goal?