The Righteousness of Faith in the Earliest Luther

Martin Luther was a late medieval theologian, who from the beginning of his career showed a particular interest in matters of faith and righteousness. These theological emphases already appeared in writings we have from him as early as 1509, indicating that Luther was studying late medieval sources to understand faith and righteousness better. This gives us the opportunity to view Luther’s theology as a consistent development within—not a movement away from—certain theological streams of late medieval Catholicism. Such an approach stands in contrast to the more common way of looking for a terminus ad quem: a point (or points) of departure after which Luther’s theology broke from the late medieval traditions around him. Without ignoring the insights that come from looking for distinct moments of discovery, we might more clearly understand the Catholic (with a capital ‘C’) foundations of Luther’s early theology by noticing that “the righteousness of faith” functioned for him as a terminus a quo: a theological starting point that set the path for the developments that followed.

In this vein, Berndt Hamm—professor emeritus from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg—has identified a “reorientation” in Luther’s theology which took place before 1513.¹ In a 1509 letter, for instance, Luther expressed a “desire for a theology that ‘explores the kernel of the nut, the innermost part of the wheat, the marrow of the bone.’ ” Noting this scholarly quest for a theology that gets to the heart of things, Hamm wrote, “With this, Luther found his life’s theme: the sharp contrast between human errors and evils and God’s merciful loving-kindness.”² Early on, Luther was interested in matters of faith and righteousness. Volker Leppin of the University of Tübingen has seconded this view, noting that strong statements of justification by faith in Luther’s Romans lectures of 1515/16 resonate with ideas expressed in the first Psalms lectures of 1513/14, if not earlier.³ These recent studies follow the earlier work of Heiko Oberman, David Steinmetz, and others to identify “forerunners” or “headwaters” of the Reformation.⁴ By aiming to understand Luther’s Reformation theology in light of his late medieval context, such historians have emphasized development rather than discovery.

As refreshing as this emphasis on continuity is, this approach can still leave the effect of differentiating between “before and after” in Luther’s theology, as if a medieval starting point gave way to a new evangelical reorientation. But what happens when we examine the early Luther without reference to a “before and after” moment? To borrow from Luther’s “kernel of the nut” metaphor, what if the righteousness of faith served as the theological nut Luther had been trying to crack the entire time? Although Luther later described one or more moments of profound breakthrough in which he felt as if the gates of heaven had been opened to him in new ways,⁵ these descriptions have the character more of cracking a tough nut than of discovering an entirely new nut altogether. If this is the case, then the “righteousness of faith” might provide a shared starting point for ecumenical conversations about the Reformation.

In addition to the recent work of historians mentioned above, such evidence for the late medieval roots of Luther’s theology of faith and righteousness appears in an account of Luther’s breakthrough described by his contemporary Johannes Bugenhagen. In a commentary on Jonah published in 1550 (shortly after Luther died), Bugenhagen defended justification by faith alone from its recent condemnation in the Council of Trent. To teach the evangelical doctrine of justification to his audience, Bugenhagen recalled the story of Luther’s breakthrough, as Luther had told him. Bugenhagen even slipped into the first person as Luther to tell it, as he wrote:

I [Luther] used to be amazed at Paul’s argument for the justification of the ungodly . . . And therefore this phrase, “the righteousness of God” in the Epistle to the Romans, which Paul wrote to us as a highest consolation against our righteousness . . . was poison to me, and I abhorred it and reluctantly sang...