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53 8 “Concerning the Letter and the Spirit” (1521) From“Answer to the Hyper-Christian,Hyper-Spiritual, and Hyper-Learned Book by Goat Emser in Leipzig— Including Some Thoughts on His Companion the Fool Murner (1521).”1 An early opponent, Hieronymous or Jerome Emser of Leipzig (1478–1527) attacked Luther for his failure to heed papal authority and for what Emser saw as Luther’s simplistic or literal approach to Scripture. Emser took Luther to task using the Pauline distinction from 2 Corinthians 3:6:“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”— suggesting that Luther wanted to solve every complex problem in the church by a direct appeal to the Bible. Luther’s response draws on St. Augustine of Hippo to demonstrate that, at points, the literal sense is best; at other points, the spiritual sense. Luther occasionally lapses into outrageous polemic as he maintains that the Apostle Paul distinguished between the letter of the law, which brings judgment and death,from the life-giving and gracebringing Spirit.The Spirit brings freedom; but the pope, says Luther, opposes the Spirit because he demands that believers follow the law. 1. Luther makes a satirical polemical word play on the names of his opponents. Emser’s family coat of arms, which he proudly displayed on the opening page of his publications, emphasized a goat. For a sixteenth-century German to call another person an animal (“Hund,” “Swine,” “Vogel,” and in this case,“Goat”) was considered a great insult. Secondly, Luther lampoons the Franciscan theologian Thomas Murner by spelling his name Murnarr, which means “fool.” Emser, for his part, called Luther “the bull of Wittenberg.” St. Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 4[3:6], “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” My Emser uses and interprets this to mean that Scripture has a twofold meaning, an external one and a hidden one, and he calls these two meanings “literal” and “spiritual.” The literal meaning is supposed to kill, the spiritual one is supposed to give life. He builds here upon Origen,2 Dionysius,3 and a few others who taught the same thing. He thinks he has hit the mark and need not look at clear Scripture because he has human teaching. He would also like me to follow him, to let Scripture go and take up human teaching. This I refuse to do, even though I too have made the same error. I intend, in precisely this example, to give reasons and to show clearly that Origen, Jerome, Dionysius, and some others have erred and failed in this matter, that Emser builds upon sand, and that it is necessary to compare the fathers’ books with Scripture and to judge them according to its light. First,if their opinion were correct that the spiritual meaning gives life and the literal one kills, we would have to confess that all sinners are holy and all saints are sinners. Indeed, Christ himself, together 2. Origin of Alexandria (ca. 184–253), a Greek church father whose controversial principles of allegorical Biblical interpretation led to a number of conflicts in the early church.Cf.The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), LW 36:30. 3. Dionysius (ca. 500), the “Areopagite” (a pseudonym based on Acts 17:34), is associated with Christian neo-Platonism and mystical ideas about the church. Cf. LW 36:109. 54 Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings with all the angels, would have to be simultaneously alive and dead.We intend to make this so clear that even Emser with all his lying powers cannot fight against it.We shall consider the passage from Paul in Galatians 4[:22],“Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, by two women, Sarah and Hagar.”This is said according to the literal meaning and the letter. Now this is the meaning Christ has. God the Holy Spirit and all angels and saints hold fast to it and insist that it is as the literal meaning and the letter say, and this is truly the way it is.What now, Emser? Where is your Origen? If you are really the man who does not strike with the sheath and wounds only with the blade, you had better say now that the letter and literal meaning kill Christ and the Holy Spirit together with all the angels and saints.What can anyone say more blasphemously than that the truth in all of Scripture is deadly and harmful,as Emser rages here? Again, (as you say) the spiritual...

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