Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Juli/August/2024 |
Spalte: | 663-666 |
Kategorie: | Kirchengeschichte: Reformationszeit |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Karimies, Ilmari |
Titel/Untertitel: | Martin Luther’s Understanding of Faith and Reality (1513–1521). The Influence of Augustinian Platonism and Illumination in Luther’s Thought. |
Verlag: | Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2022. XII, 383 S. = Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation, 130. Lw. EUR 129,00. ISBN 9783161565311. |
Rezensent: | Anna Vind |
The present book written by Ilmari Karimies is a re-worked edition of his doctoral dissertation, defended at Helsinki University in 2017. It was written in the environment of Finnish Luther-research, supervised by Risto Saarinen, professor of Ecumenics at Systematic Theology.
The oeuvres roughly consists of two different, but connected parts: after an introduction about rationale, aim, method and sources (1–17), the author first puts »Luther’s Understanding of Reality« (18–174) under scrutiny and thereafter »Luther’s Understanding of Faith« (175–319). This is then followed by a 20-pages long conclusion (320–340), a bibliography and indexes of names, sources and subjects.
In the introduction K. situates himself within the Finnish tradition. His aim is to address the question about Christ’s »real-ontic« presence in faith, which has been put forward and held in esteem among Finnish Luther-interpreters, ever since the former professor of ecumenics Tuomo Mannermaa formulated the thought some 35 years ago. With his book K. wishes to take the previous Finnish studies even further and explain in more detail what the content of the »real-ontology« of Christ in the believer is. This is carried out as a reading of Luther’s works through an Augustinian Christian Platonist lense, which the author finds – and rightly so – to be overlooked within existing Luther-research, despite the fact that it was a highly influential strand of thought in the medieval and reformation times.
K. promotes diligent textual analysis within the relevant framework of intellectual history as the core of his investigation. His main sources are Luther’s biblical lectures held between 1513 and 1521, supplied with other relevant Luther texts. The surrounding textual material is composed of selected antique, patristic and medieval sources as well as a body of secondary literature.
The first large chapter on »Luther’s Understanding of Reality« begins with a state of the art concerning the thesis Luther and Augustinian Christian Platonism. The author describes previous research well and makes a good argument for the thesis that »Luther’s theology of faith can be understood best, even understood fully only with these ontological preconditions as its background« (18). In the following subchapters about God, the universe and the human being (28–174), K. treats the concept of the triune God's substantial and relational being, the concept of summum bonum in Luther both in a negative (understood as the end or top of everything as in Aristotelian-Thomistic version) and a positive version (as the source of everything in Augustinian-Platonic version), and the metaphor of God as light, which is central in the book and recurs later. The author goes on to lay out God’s incomprehensibility as something inherent to Luther’s thought and also God's hiddenness sub contrario is accounted for, both of which are in many ways equally dependent upon the Platonist traditions. The reader nevertheless also gets an idea of the differences between Luther and the mystical and Platonist tradition, since Luther does not seem to speak of a possible access to God from the top of the mountain, as do the mystics (65). And he does not have an idea of a conceptual reality of God, which makes a contemplation of God possible through speculation via neither affirmative nor negative concepts, as do the Platonists (69, footnote 163).
In the additional analysis of Luther's thought about »the Universe« K. explains how Luther sees creation as a sign, God’s works analyzed as acta and facta, and carefully considers the relationship between the visible and the invisible world. Here we find a fantastic quote from Luther's first lectures on the Psalms (79, footnote 191) describing how God's creation is an act of figurative speech with reference to Psalm 148,5 about the word that creates what it says.
The following subchapter about »The Human Being« forms a natural transition to the second part of the book. K. goes through all the relevant anthropological texts ending with Luther's Magnificat 1521. The tripartite division between body, soul and spirit and the bipartite between flesh and spirit and finally the holistic view Luther also applies in the concept of persona, are carefully brought out. K. indicates how Luther draws on traditional anthropologies (Bonaventure and especially the Victorines), but also how he differs from them. In Luther the active contemplating highest capacity is replaced with the passively received faith. Thus, the author can conclude that »there remains no natural ability in the human being for turning to God, only a passive receptive capacity actualized in the infusion of faith through the means of grace« (133). In the description of »the Christian« addressing the conflict between spirit and flesh K. operates with two conflicting opposed entitites, spirit and flesh, as well as with a partim-partim. He concludes that »faith and love, when incarnated into works, can never be totally pure in this life and the Christian remains at the time sinner and righteous« (164) – and here we understand that he talks about the Christian being partly sinner, partly righteous. But after that then comes another view of the conflict, this time marked by totality. Here, K. underlines the paradoxical presence of opposites which the old and the new man, the flesh and the spirit hold in the same human being. He emphasizes how they experience the opposite respectively (167; 172) and goes on to quote a passage from the lecture on the Romans (168, footnote 419): in this Luther compares the simul iustus et peccator/the old and the new man/the flesh and the spirit with the two natures of Christ and their mutual relation within the one and same person. The reader is brought to understand that the concept of »person« functions well as a kind of hat, so to speak, under which the double presence or two whole natures in one whole person is a fact (170).
In the second part of the book about the »Luther's Understanding of faith« the development of the theory of divine illumination from Augustine to the nominalists is described in order to prepare the way for concrete interpretations of Psalm 4,7 within the medieval tradition and in Luther. K. sees a continued line of thought from Bonaventure over Gerson to Luther. The readings of psalm 4,7 about the lumen vultus Dei, the light from God’s face, shows how Bonaventure and Gerson describe a hierarchy of three ascending divine lights towards immediate contemplation of God with no ruptures. Luther, in his interpretation of the same psalm (212ff) emphasizes the infusion of the light of faith directly from God through word and sacraments. Not like in the Thomist tradition, where the light becomes a part of the human being, a habitus. In Luther the divine light stays divine – just as in Bonaventure and Gerson. In Luther, though, this light exercises a specific cross-theological function: it shows the things that do not appear, the invisible good things hidden under visible bad things. Thus the light of faith beams from God and illuminates the believer, but not perfectly, since the hiddenness sub contrario is kept until the end of times. Also, Luther rejects the ascend which the Augustinians promote. In Luther’s thought of illumination there is first and foremost descend; God is the only actor and only thereafter the ascend of humans is possible.
In a subchapter on »Faith as Moral Direction« the Platonist inspired definition about the bonum as bonum diffusivum comes strongly to the fore (279). When we heard of it first time we heard of God who cannot but distribute himself, the summum bonum. Here the reader understands that this is exactly what Luther talks about, when he mentions the deeds of love floating from the divine faith in the human being. – In conclusion, the author repeats the diverse findings, and ponders upon their consequences, ecumenical (338) as well as inner-Lutheran (339). The latter occur, because the emphasis upon the ontological character of Christ’s presence in faith in Luther seems to lead to a kind of theologia irregenitorum, where only the believers understand the truth, a viewpoint which is complicated to defend in public. Another result of the work is, that the reader is brought to see how deeply embedded Luther is in the medieval theological tradition (335 f.).
The book is a storehouse of materials and reflections for the one who wants to delve into the early Luther's world of thought. The treatments of sources and literature are nuanced and thorough and testifiy to the profundity and hard work of the author. As a Luther researcher I learned a huge amount of things as I read, and collected a variety of inspirations and references, and thus I give the book my unreserved recommendations. The outward appearance when it comes to language and style is generally fine, though somewhat annoying printer's errors occasionally occur.