More on Luther, Augustine, Jerome, and Paul's Epistles

Sometimes one sets out to write a long series, and then doesn't follow through. Sometimes, however, one falls into a series without really realizing it. That's what's happened in this case, where I have started a series on Luther and Augustine's commentary's on Paul's epistles. In this series the guiding principle is one I enunciated quite a while ago: "I would like to suggest that one's interpretation of a relatively small number of Biblical passages will determine one's theology."

As I've looked through Luther's commentaries on Paul's epistles, I am repeatedly struck by how aware Luther was of the important changes in approach brought in by Augustine, and how important those actual changes were in making Luther's own approach possible. I gave an example below, with circumcision, where Augustine challenged Jerome and Origen's dominant interpretation (you might also want to check out this more recent post where I discuss a passage I should have discussed earlier). I'd like to give a few more examples with the issue of calendrical festivals and the "man of Romans 7."

For calendrical festivals the difficult passage was Galatians 4:10: Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.

For Augustine and Jerome, the problem here was that the church year seemed to be a similar form of observing days, months, times, and years (this passage is, of course, pay-dirt for Puritan exegetes defending the regulative principle). Augustine seems to have had some sense that since it is OK for us to observe our church year, then it should have been OK for the Jewish Christians to continue to observe their Mosaic church year. Hence he tended to think that can't be what Paul is prohibiting here. In meeting this problem, his early exposition was more ingenious than plausible. In his 1519 lectures on Genesis, Luther noted that:

St. Augustine wavers in his exposition of this passage. Yet he explains it in the light of the religious ceremonies of the Gentiles rather than in the light of those of the Jews. For he says that it is a very common error of the Gentiles that, as they conduct their affairs or look aheard to the outcomes of life and of their business concerns, they observe the days, months, seasons, and years designated by the astrologers and Chaldeans.

But as Luther notes, even Augustine couldn't really believe in this opinion, since it seems so obvious that the "times" in question should be Jewish. By contrast,

St. Jerome understands this passage simply and correctly as referring only to the Jews. "Days," he says, as Sabbaths and new moons; "months," however, as the first and seventh month; "seasons," as those in which they came to Jerusalem three times each year; "years," however, as the seventh, the year of release, and the fiftieth, which they called the year of jubilee.

Jerome also asks whether we, too, are in the clutches of the same fault, because we observe the fourth day of the week (Wednesday), the day of preparation (Friday), the Lord's Day, the forty-day fast season (Lent), Easter and Pentecost, and various seasons appointed in honor of the martyrs and differing from land to land. In answer he says, in the first place, that we do not observe the days of the Jews but observe other days.

Or, as the Didache (8:1) inimitably says:

Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, but do you fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.

("Well that explains it; fasting on Thursday is different -- totally -- from fasting on Friday.")

Here we see the idea that after the Resurrection, Jewish ceremonies are in some inherent sense fatal for the Christian.

But as Luther adds, Jerome has other explanations too:

Secondly that the days have been appointed, not to give greater distinction to the day on which we assemble but in order that faith in Christ may not be diminished by a disorderly assembly of the people.

Thirdly, Jerome says that actually now every day is a Lord's Day, a resurrection Sunday, a day of celebration, and the real change has been that by concession certain days have been disallowed, "for the sake of those who have more time for the world than for God." In other words, every day should be a monk's day, but as a concession to human weakness, laymen are allowed to spend non-feast days in worldly occupations.

Luther adds that in his time, there are far too many feast days. Not until the end of his commentary on this passage, though, does he hit the crucial issue of justification:

Circumcision as well as feast days contributed nothing at all to righteousness. Nor did the other things which [Paul] recounts in greater detail in Col. 2:16. Accordingly, they were not to be observed as necessary, certainly no more than our feast days confer righteousness on us when we observe them or other burdensome traditions. But our righteousness comes from faith in Christ, which is not produced by ceremonies but freely makes use of ceremonies out of love for God and one's neighbor . . .

In his 1535 Lectures, however, he puts this point right up front. After discussing the controversy of what days exactly were the Galatians observing, he writes:

But Paul is instructing the conscience. Therefore he is speaking, not about the Gentile practice of observing days, etc. [as Augustine might think], something that pertains only to the body, but about the Law of God and the observance of days, months, etc., according to the Law of Moses. In other words, he is speaking [as Jerome realized] about religious days, months, and seasons, which the Galatians were observing, on the basis of instruction by the false apostles, as a means of obtaining justification.

He then answers the question which Jerome had asked:

Here someone may say: "If the Galatians sinned in observing days and seasons, why is it not sinful for you to do the same?" I reply: We observe the Lord's Day, Christmas, Easter, and similar holidays in a way that is completely free. We do not burden consciences with these observances; nor do we teach, as did the false apostles, and as do the papists, that they are necessary for justification or that we can make satisfaction for our sins through them.

He then refers to a famous incident in church history, when the second-century bishop of Rome, Victor, excommunicated the Anatolian Christians for observing Easter on a different day. This debate and St. Irenaeus's remonstance against Pope Victor's actions, were important for the Augsburg Confession's discussion of church traditions in Article 26 (scroll down to lines 44-45). Luther comments:

It was the utmost madness to hand the churches of the East over to the devil on account of such a trifle [i.e. the date of Easter]. Therefore this knowledge about the observance of days and seasons was rare, even among great men. Jerome did not have it, and Augustine would not have understood it if he had not been troubled and provoked by the Pelagians.

I wonder what particular passages from Augustine Luther is referring to here. Perhaps he means the texts from Augustine's letters and On Christian Doctrine, which he and the Augsburg Confession liked to cite. In the Confession (again in article 26, lines 16-17), Melanchthon writes:

Thirdly, traditions brought great danger to consciences; for it was impossible to keep all traditions, and yet men judged these observances to be necessary acts of worship. . . . [But] Augustine also forbids that men's consciences should be burdened with such observances, and prudently advises [in his letter to] Januarius that he must know that they are to be observed as things indifferent; for such are his words.

Luther liked to cite Augustine's On Christian Doctrine III.9. In a discussion of signs and what they signified, Augustine wrote:

In these times, since there has been revealed to us a clear sign of our liberty in the Resurrection of the Lord, we are not heavily burdened with the use of certain signs whose meaning we understand; rather we have a few in place of many, which the teaching of the Lord and the Apostles has transmitted to us, and these are very easy to perform, very sublime in implication, and most upright in observance. Such are the sacrament of Baptism and the celebration of the Body and Blood of the Lord.

But even in the late Enchiridion (chapter 81), Augustine still referred to his old astrological interpretation of Galatians 4:10:

Certain things we may suppose to be trifling if the view of Scripture did not show them to be more serious. Who would think that the observation of days and months and years and seasons may be a grave sin -- as those people observe them, who are willing or unwilling to begin anything on certain days or months or years because according to worthless human teachings they reckon such times lucky or unlucky -- unless we weighed the seriousness of this evil from the anxiety of the Apostle, who tells such people, I am anxious about you, that my work for you may have been wasted (Gal. 4:11) .

So how did Luther read Galatians 4:10? He had to accept Jerome's insight that it is exactly Jewish dates which are in question, thus rejecting Augustine's astrology fixation. But he then had to find a proper explanation (in place of Jerome's patently inadequate ones) for why observing Jewish dates were bad without invalidating the Christian observance of the church year. Here Augustine's writings on circumcision, that focused on the intent of the observance, were crucial. But on the dating issue, Luther had to travel most of the distance himself.

Next up: "The Man of Romans 7"

Jerome and Augustine Again

If there is one thing I try to emphasize with my students, it is that information in literary sources needs to be read and understood in context. If some Chinese historian writes about the Huns (Xiongnu), for example, you need to understand that in the light of his whole historical argument. And that will usually involve reading the whole book, not just strip-mining it for useful quotations. And sometimes as you read the whole book, you come across interesting passages that you otherwise would have missed.

I came across an example of this recently as well. While finally getting around to actually reading Bede's florilegium of Augustine passages commenting on the epistles of Paul (I'd bogged down in Romans for a while), I came across this passage from one of his letters to Jerome that is the best expression of some of the points I've been trying to make in my on-going posts on Biblical interpretation.

It occurs on pp. 222-23 of Excerpts from the Works of St. Augustine on the Letters of the Blessed Apostle Paul, and is on Gal. 5:18:

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are no longer under the law.
What is being under the law in the way the Apostle finds faulty may be seems to me an important question. I do not believe [here he contrasts his view with that of Jerome, to whom he was writing] that he said this on account of circumcision, or the sacrifices once made by our ancestors, but not now made by Christians, or other things of this kind, but on account of this saying of the law, 'You shall not covet.' This I grant Christians definitely must observe, and must preach with all the light the gospel sheds on it.

In other words, the law that Paul is saying doesn't justify is precisely the law that Christians must observe, not some other, obsolete, law.

The words of the law, 'You shall not covet,' bind a guilty person under it, and, if human weakness is not aided by God's grace, rather condemn a transgressor than set a sinner free. How much less, then, could those things commanded because of what they pointed to -- circumcision and the rest, which had to be abolished while the revelation of grace was becoming more widely known -- justify anyone?

Once law is redefined in this way, then circumcision is seen as not something bad in itself. It's not a question of good laws versus bad ones, but of the general problem with law as a category. Even so, Augustine does not envision a church with permanent religious-cultural* diversity:

And yet they [i.e. Mosaic rituals] were not for this reason to be shunned, as if they were the diabolical sacrileges of the nations, even while the grace that such signs foreshadowed was beginning to be revealed. They were to be allowed for a while, especially to those who had come from that nation [of the Jews]. Later on, however, they were to be honorably buried, so to speak, by all Christians, and given up without blame.

So eventually, mature Christianity will lead to ritual conformity and the "honorable burial" of all religious culture that diverges from the mainstream. As I have said before, this is part of the way, but still considerably short of where Luther and the Evangelical Reformation put the question of liturgical/ritual diversity.

*On this term, which I prefer to the nihilistic-sounding adiaphora, see here.

Is Circumcision Sinful in Itself for a Christian?

I have been focusing on the issue of Luther's interpretation of Paul in a number of recent posts. One reason is that I don't think philosophy, world views, or deep structures of thought have much to do with the history of Christian doctrine. Instead, as I said here, "I would like to suggest that one's interpretation of a relatively small number of [Biblical] passages will determine one's theology." For example, is Romans 7 about Paul before he believed in Christ, or after? That, not nominalism, or any other philosophical idea, is going to shape your view of sanctification of the believer.

Another question no one has asked is: how come the Catholic monk William of Rubruck had such a different view of fermented mare's milk from the Eastern Orthodox? To put it differently, what was Latin theology doing right in its understanding of culture, that Greek theology was doing wrong? (Background for this question here).

The answer lies in Augustine and Jerome's debate over circumcision and the interpretation of the passages on circumcision in Galatians. Paul says in Galatians 2:3, that he did not have Titus circumcised, but in Acts 16:3 he did have Timothy circumcised. Jerome and Augustine had a great debate over this question. Jerome contended that just as Paul's conflict with Peter in Galatians 2:11 must have been a kind of play-acting, because for Jerome (and following him Erasmus) Peter as an apostle could not sin and was beyond attack, just so, Paul's circumcision in Acts 16:3 must have been a pretence, and "deceitfully" should have been added into the text there. That is, Paul fooled the Jews into thinking he had circumcised Timothy, because once Christ had come circumcision was fatal. (Luther sums up Jerome and Origen's view point with the adage, "But after Christ the ceremonial laws were fatal"; see Luther's Works, vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, p. 123.)

By contrast in the Galatians 2:11 passage, Augustine wrote, "It is intolerable to suppose that there was pretense in Paul, for he confirms with an oath that he is speaking the truth" (cited in Lectures on Galatians, pp. 107-08, from Augustine, Expositio epistolae ad Galatas, 15). Similarly he argued that circumcision was "not to be withdrawn from Jewish practice as if abominable and reprehensible" (Bede the Venerable: Excerpts from the Works of Saint Augustine on the Letters of the Blessed Apostle Paul, p. 219). As the place of my citation shows, the series of letters between Jerome and Augustine debating this this issue was well known in the Middle Ages, and was referred to by Luther as early as his Lecture on Romans.

Here is Augustine arguing against Jerome:

It is I, Paul, telling you that if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. (Gal. 5:2)
Di he deceive Timothy, then, and make Christ of no benefit to him [Acts 16:3]? Or, if it was done deceitfully, was it then no hindrance? But [Paul] did not specify, and say either if you have yourselves circumcised truly, or deceitfully, but without limiting it he said, if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

As you want to make room for your interpretation, so that want us to supply the words 'deceitfully' [to Acts 16:3], so I am not demanding unreasonably that you also allow me to intepret the words if you have yourselves circumcised as being addressed to people who wanted to have themselves circumcised because they supposed that they could not be saved by Christ otherwise. [Or as Luther would say, they made it part of justification.] To those circumcised in this state of mind, with this desire and intention, Christ was of no benefit, as [Paul] clearly states elsewhere: 'If righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.' He also makes this declaration which you yourself have quoted: 'You who are seeking to be justified by the law have been cut off from Christ; you have falled from grace.' Surely he was rebuking those who were trusting in themselves, not those who were legitimately observing the [commandments] out of respect for the One who commanded them, not those who understood both why they were commanded -- to foreshadow the truth -- and how long they should endure [i.e. only until the Christ came].

. . .

I say, then, that circumcision of the foresking, and other things of this kind, were divinely given to the earlier people through the covenant that we call 'old', to represent the future things that were to be fulfilled through Christ. When [the future things] had come, these were left for Christians to read solely for the purpose of understanding the prophecies that had gone before. They did not necessarily have to be carried out so that the revelation of faith, which was represented here as to come in the future, may come, as if it was still being awaited.

But although these things were not to be imposed on the Gentiles, they were not to be withdrawn from Jewish practice as if abominable and reprehensible. Slowly and gradually, then, all this observance of prefigurations was to be ended by the passionate preaching of the grace of Christ, the only means believers have of knowing that they are justified and saved -- not by those prefigurations of things once future, but then already coming and present, as at the calling of those Jews whom the Lord's physical presence and the period of the apostles found in this state [i.e. circumcised]. This was enough to suggest that [this observance] was not to be avoided as abominable and similar to idolatry, but that it had no further use, lest it be supposed necessary -- as though salvation came from it and could not exist without it -- as heretics supposed. [The heretics, Judaizers in this case], while wishing to be both Jews and Christians, could be neither Jews nor Christians (Hurst, trans., pp. 218-19).

And here is Luther writing about their debate:

But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek (Gal. 2:3)
. . .
Thus Paul did not reject circumcision as something damnable; nor did he by any word or deed compel the Jews to give it up For in 1 Cor 7:18 he says: Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. But he did rejected circumcision in the sense of something necessary for righteousness . . . Nevertheless when Jews who were believers but were still weak and zealous for the Law heard the statement that circumcision was not necessary for righteousness, they could not take it to mean anything else than that for this reason circumcision was altogether useless and damnable. . . In the same way we today do not reject fasting and other pious practices as something damnable, but we do teach that by these practices we do not obtain the forgiveness of sins. When the common people hear this, they immediately conclude that we are condeming good works. And the papists abet this impression of the people through their sermons and books . . .

. . .

Jerome and Augustine engage in a bitter controversy over this passage. The term "was not compelled" supports Augustine's case. But Jerome did not understand the issue. The issue here is not, as Jerome supposes, what Peter or Paul did about circumcising or not circumcising. Therefore Jerome is amazed that Paul had the authority to denounce in Peter what he had himself done [i.e. observe on occasion the Jewish law]; for, he says, Paul circumcised Timothy and lived as a Gentile among Gentiles but as a Jew among Jews. Jerome imagines that what is at issue here is not very important; therefore he concludes that neither Peter nor Paul had sinned, but he imagines that both had covered things up with a "white lie." As a matter of fact, however, this entire controversy of theirs was, and is, serious business; it deals with the gravest of issues. Therefore it was not a matter of covering things up.

The basic issue was this: Is the Law necessary for justification, or is it not? Paul and Peter are in controversy here over this particular hteme, on which the whole of Christian doctrine depends. Paul was too responsible a person to launch such a public attack on Peter in the presence of the entire church of Antioch on account of some trivial issue. He is attacking him on account of the basic doctrine of Christianity. For when there were no Jews present, Peter ate with Gentiles; but when the Jews arrived, he withdrew. Paul rebukes him because by his pretense he was compelling the Gentiles to do as the Jews did. The whole emphasis lies on the phrase "you are compelling." But Jerome did not see this.

Therefore Paul did not require that anyone who wanted to be circumcised should remain uncircumcised, but he did want to know that circumcision was not necessary for salvation. Paul wanted to remvoe this compulsion. Therefore he allowed the Jews to observe the Law as an obligation; but he always taught both Jews and Gentiles that in their conscience they should be free from the Law and circumcision, just as the patriarchs and all the Old Testament saints were free in their conscience and were justified by faith, not by circumcision or the Law

In fact, Paul might have permitted Titus to be circumcised; but when he saw that they wanted to compel him, Paul refused . . . (Lectures on Galatians, p. 84-85)

As one can thus see, Augustine had already gotten the debate on circumcision to a point pretty close to where Luther took it. One may presume, therefore, that readers in the medieval church had the chance to assimilate the Augustianian view of circumcision and hence religious culture (as I've termed adiaphora here). In this view, the issue is not such rituals in themselves, but whether they are done for salvation or not. This laid part (not all, but part) of the groundwork for Luther's reading of Jerome, and moreover, accustomed Luther to thinking that great figures in the church like Jerome could go badly wrong.

Luther and Allegorical Interpretation

Back in the Middle Ages, everyone used allegory for interpretation. They used it to avoid the plain meaning of Scripture. Luther realized that allegory was used for that purpose and called on all to avoid allegory. Since then, all good Christians have used the historico-grammatical method of Bible interpretation. Allegory is just bad.

This fairy-tale version of Lutheran Bible interterpretation is wide-spread, like many other fairy-tales of the Reformation. And like many fairy-tales, it does have some grains of truth. Luther's attitude to allegory is best described as ambivalent. The key fact, however, is that his Scriptural interpretation was governed by the rule of faith, not by a reified historico-grammatical method.

After finishing his discussion of the Flood in his Lectures on Genesis, Luther pulls back and discusses allegory:

I have often asserted that I take no delight in allegories. Nevertheless, I was so enchanted by them in my youth that under the influence of the examples of Origen and Jerome, whom I admired as the greater theologians, I thought that everything had to be turned into allegories. Augustine, too, makes frequent use of allegories.

But while I was following their examples, I finally realized that to my own great harm I had followed an empty shadow and had left unconsidered the heart and core of the Scriptures. Later on, therefore, I began to have a dislike for allegories. They do indeed give pleasure, particularly when they have some delightful allusions. Therefore I usually compare them to pretty pictures. But to the same extent that the natural color of bodies surpasses the picture . . . the historical narrative surpasses the allegory (p. 150)

After noting that the Anabaptists also used allegories and preferred the obscure books (the Revelation and the book 4 Esdras found in the Apocrypha), he writes: he who either fabricates allegories without discrimination or follows such as are fabricated by others is not only deceived but also most seriously harmed, as these examples show. Hence allegories either must be avoided entirely or must be attempted with the utmost discrimination and brought into harmony with the rule in use by the apostles . . . (pp. 150-51).

He then adds:

Yet these remarks must not be understood to mean that we condemn all allegories indiscriminately , for we observe that both Christ and the apostles occasionally employ them. But they are such as are conformable to the faith, in accordance with the rule of Paul, who enjoins in Rom. 12:6 that prophecy or doctrine should be conformable to the faith.

When we condemn allegories, we are speaking of those that are fabricated by one's own intellect and ingenuity, without the authority of Scripture. The others, which are made to agree with the analogy of the faith, not only embellish doctrine but also gives comfort to consciences (p. 151).

Luther then notes that what is objectionable about the allegories in Augustine, Origen, and Jerome, is that the meaning of the allegories is not about the faith, but about "philosophical ideas," and are hence useless for faith or morals. For example Augustine compares the creation of man and woman to reason and emotion, with the idea that reason should control emotion. Luther asks "what is the value of this fabrication?" because the idea that sin adheres only in the "lower functions" and not in man's reason was an idea he combatted all his life. The allegory was bad not because it was an allegory, but because it had the wrong point.

Citing the 1198 bull of Pope Innocent III, which in language from Gen. 1:16 compared the sun to the Pope and the moon to all temporal authorities, he exclaims "Oh such audacious insolence and such villainous desire for power!" (p. 151). But after citing the New Testament's allegorical use of the old, he writes:

Thus if someone should state that Christ is the sun and the church the moon, illuminated by the grace of Christ, he might be in error; nevertheless, his error is such that it rests, not on an incorrect basis but on a solid one. But where the pople declares that the sun is the papal office and the moon is the emperor, then not only is the application silly and foolish, but even the basis is evil and wicked. Such allegories are thought out and devised, not by the Holy Spirit but by the devil, the spirit of lies (p. 156).

Note that Luther was similarly contemptuous of bad theology drawn from careful attention to grammatical points. Earlier he noted that the Latin translation of For the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth (Gen. 8:21) has "inclined to evil" (in malum prona) not simply evil. The scholastics then built on this a large discussion of how certain faculties remain impaired by the fall. Luther comments: If the sophists [i.e. scholastics] were as friendly toward the sacred teaching handed down through the apostolic and prophetic writings as they are to their own teachers, who maintain the free will and the merit of works, they surely would not have permitted something so slight as one little word to lead them from the truth (p. 122).

And in discussing Hebrew meanings he frequently notes that the letter of the text must be interpreted according to the analogy of faith, not the other way around. After discussing Rabbinical interpretations of "continually judge" in Genesis 6:3, which based on the verb forms treat it as "sheath" (thus "My Spirit will not be confined as in a sheath"), he writes: But the Jews make fools of these modern [Christian] Hebraists by convincing them that Holy Scripture cannot be understood except by means of grammatical rules and their minute system of pointing. Therefore no meaning is so preposterous that they would not defend and garnish it with their fusty rules of grammar.

But tell me, what language has there ever been that men have successfully learned to speak as a result of grammatical rules? Are not rather [even] those language that adhere most closely to rules, such Greek and Latin, nevertheless learned by using them [in speech]? Therefore how great a folly it is in the instance of the sacred language, where theological and spiritual matters are treated, to disregard the particular character of the subject matter and to arrive at the sense on the basis of grammatical rules! (pp. 14-15)

. . . Prime consideration ought to be give to usage, for from it the grammarian derives his knowledge.

I dwell on these matters at such great length in order to warn you not to follow such silly intepreters when you come across them and not to admire their ideas as some sort of extraordinary wisdom. Luther then compares the distortions of the words of institution advanced by Zwinglian grammarians (and today we could undoubtedly advance the distortions of Scripture advanced to defend women's ordination), asking: No one in his right mind would put up with this inclination to distort the meaning in the case of the stories of Terence or the eclogues of Vergil. Are we going to tolerate it in the church? (p. 15)

To understand the meaning of Scripture the Spirit of Christ is needed. But we know that until the end of the world this is the same Spirit who was before all things. Through God's mercy we boast of having this Spirit; and through Him we have faith, a modest understanding of the Scriptures, and a knowledge of other things that are necessary for godliness. And so we do not invent any new understanding, but we adhere to the analogy both of the Holy Scriptures and of the faith (pp. 15-16).

Back to allegory:

Luther accepts the allegory, first advanced by Philo, that compares the proportions of the ark (300x50x30) in Gen. 6:15 to the human body lying on the ground:

These facts are later applied to the body of Christ, that is, to the church, which has an entrance, namely Baptism, through which the clean and the unclean enter without distinction. Even though the church is small, it is nevertheless the ruler of the world; and the world is preseved on its account, in the same way as the unclean animals were preserved in the ark. Others have applied [the dimensions] also to the body of Christ, which had a wound in its side, just as the ark had a window. These allegories, if not actually scholarly, are nevertheless harmless, inasmuch as they contain no error; and one may use them -- except in debates -- for the sake of embellishment (p. 68).

Elsewhere he writes of this allegory:

This thought is not unscholarly. Nor is it unattractive. I am most pleased that it is conformable to the faith . . . If one devises allegories in this manner, therefore, they are nevertheless not ungodly or offensive, even though they may be somewhat inappropriate (p. 156).

What about the raven and the dove which Noah releases? Luther first notes that scholars have allegorized the raven as a carrion eating bird who thus symbolizes fleshly, Epicurean characters who indulge in carnal sins. He then comments: The thought is indeed good, but it is not fully satisfactory; for the allegory is merely moral and philosophical, the sort that Erasmus has been accustomed to fabricate, somewhat after the pattern of Origen.

We for our part should look for a theological allegory (p. 158).

He then proposes at great length (pp. 157-164) this allegory: the raven is the ministry of the Law. Ravens are black, with an unpleasant voice, and so is the preaching of the Law grim and sad. Nor does it return with anything in its mouth; the Law by itself cannot make Christians. Yet still God sends out the Law to the world, just as Noah sent out the raven. And just as "papists, priests, and monks" feed on purgatory and memorial masses for the dead, so too, Luther argues, do raven feed on corpses.

By contrast the dove is the ministry of the Gospel, which is a clean and harmless bird. The first dove is the prophets of Israel who spoke of the Christ to come. The seven days are the time of the Law, before Christ. The dove being sent out the second time is the New Testament apostles bearing the word of God, symbolized by the olive branch. This dove's returning in the evening shows the Gospel being proclaimed in the last days, with no new doctrine to be expected. The dove being sent the third time, and not returning likewise means that once the Gospel is proclaimed, "there is nothing left to do, and no new doctrine is expected."

Luther closes his section on allegory with this admonition:

I urge you with all possible earnestness to be careful to pay attention to the historical accounts. But wherever you want to make use of allegories, do this: follow closely the analogy of the faith, that is, adapt them to Christ, the church, faith, and the ministry of the Word. In this way it will come to pass that even though the allegories be not altogether fitting, they nevertheless do not depart from the faith. Let this foundation stand firm, but let the stubble perish (1 Cor. 3:12-15).

Not altogether a ringing endorsement, but not a blanket condemnation either.

More Monkery

I am going to cite a few precepts from Jerome’s letters here in the space below, but before I do I would like to clarify why I am doing this. It is important for those who honor celibacy and virginity to understand what it was the repulsed Luther about monasticism. How can you refute the charge if you don’t know what it is? Likewise, fairness to Luther means demonstrating what the problems he had with it were.

From Jerome’s letter XXII to a young virgin:Instructing her avoid the company of married women, he writes, Why should you, who are God’s bride, hasten to visit the wife of a mortal man? In this regard you must learn a holy pride (superbiam sanctam); know that you are better than they (p. 85).

Rejecting the charge that he disparages wedlock, he writes It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil. Let married women take pride in coming next after virgins (p. 91).

I praise wedlock, I praise marriage; but it is because they produce me virgins. I gather the rose from the thorn, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the oyster (p. 95).

Letter XIV is addressed to a young Italian man who had pledged virginity and was now the sole support of his family and would not come out to the desert of Palestine with Jerome:

But, you will say, the Scripture bids us to obey our parents. Nay, whosoever loves his parents more than Christ loses his own soul. . . . Shall I desert from my army because of my father, to whom in Christ’s cause I owe no rites of burial, although in Christ’s cause I owe them to all men? . . . The battering-ram of affection must be beaten back by the wall of the Gospel: 'My mother and my brethren are these, whosoever do the will of my father which is in heaven' (pp. 33-35).

Jerome pictures the temptations Heliodorus will have to face in selling his property and leaving for Palestine, assuring him he had gone through the same:

Your widowed sister clings to you today with loving arms; the house slaves in whose company you grew to manhood, cry 'To what master are you leaving us?' [Who knew ‘selling all your property’ could include putting all your slaves on the auction block?] Your old nurse and her husband, who have the next claim to your affection after your own father, exclaim, 'Wait for a few months till we die and then give us burial.' . . . The love of Christ and the fear of hell easily break such bonds as these (p. 33).

Why are you such a timid Christian? Consider him who left his father and his nets, and how the publican rising from the receipt of custom became at once an apostle. 'The Son of man hath not where to lay his head,' and are you planning wide colonnades and spacious halls? Are you looking for an inheritance in this world, you who are joint-heir with Christ? (p. 39).

Addressing his feeling that he can serve the Lord just as well in Italy, Jerome rhetorically concedes, Perhaps you can do so in your own country, although the Lord could do no signs in His. He then explains that in your own country you will be despised which will create bad feelings in you that will be a distraction. Zeal will be lessened and when a thing is lessened it cannot be made perfect. We may sum up our account by saying that a monk cannot be perfect in his own country; and not to wish to be perfect is a sin (p. 43).

And this obsession with discipline influenced his whole understanding of Christian life. As an example, in letter CVII (as elsewhere), he demands teetotaling and vegetarianism for adult monks in this way: What Jewish superstition does in part, solemnly rejecting certain animals and certain products as food, what the Brahmans in India and the Gymnosophists in Egypt observe on their diet of only porridge, rice, and fruit, why should not Christ’s virgin do altogether? If a glass bead is worth so much, surely a pearl must have a higher value (p. 357). In other words, Jews and Hindus have food laws, so perfect Christian should have more and stricter food laws! If this is not what Paul denounces in Colossians 2-3 and 1 Timothy 4, then what is?

Why do people become monks and why do people admire monasticism? My overwhelming impression is that protest against Constantinianism or worldliness in the church, or even differing gifts of different people is not the core issue. Rather people (certainly Jerome, certainly Theodosius) become monks to literally fulfill the words of the Gospel as they understand them and so (they think) save their souls from hell:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

. . . every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

But if these commands are taken literally, as the monastic writers do, then they establish monasticism as an ideal for everyone, not a gift for a few. Those who give up all they have, those who abandon father and mother, are thus clearly more truly Christ’s disciples than those who don’t. And while modern defenders of monasticism may demur, the claim that monasticism is better is the natural result of this "monastic hermeneutic."

Jerome is reputed the third great Latin father, after Augustine and Ambrose, and one most closely associated with monasticism. When Luther decided monasticism was rotten to the core, this was the point of view he meant. If you think Jerome’s views are correct, then do not say monasticism is simply "another path" but go ahead and say it is the only perfect Christian path. On the other hand, if you believe monasticism is indeed simply another path, then admit that many of the most respected fathers would vehemently oppose that view, and their whole legacy needs to be looked at anew, and that part of that "looking anew" will involve paying serious attention to the Protestant, Lutheran critique.

Originally posted at Here We Stand