Ad Fontes Lutheri

A Reflection on Humanism and Esotericism in Luther’s Genesis Commentary

A while ago, I was reading Luther’s Genesis Commentary (LW 1), on the creation of the world. And I provocatively titled the resulting paper De Hominis Dignitate, a call-back to Pico della Mirandola’s Oratio by the same name. The point I was making at the time was that Luther was a deeply humanist thinker, even to the extent of being implicated in the tradition of western esotericism. His mature anthropology is anything but ‘low’, pace the place that Bondage of the Will occupies in the usual canon for American Lutheran theologians. Luther is instead full of speculations concerning the ‘connectedness’—I would even say sophianicity—of creation, because of creation’s fundamental reliance on God. Far from shying from the abstract, the Genesis Commentary is full of speculative theology, in which Luther reads the entire creation as a signum of the divine life. Birds die in the winter and rise again in the spring time, as a natural prefiguration of the mystery of death and resurrection; astrology makes an appearance as a useful (though unpredictable) Christian science; field mice and dung beetles spring up without any reproductive life, from the decay of their ancestors, to affirm Aristotle’s theories about generation; Copernicus is rejected as foolish for departing from classical models of the universe. These are odd things to bump up against, if Luther is indeed the quintessentially modern figure he is often assumed to be by our modern scholarship.

Probably even more interesting is the way that Luther utilizes his humanist heritage to contextualize these speculations. Luther, in this sense, is not like Thomas Aquinas; he is more like Gregory of Nyssa. By this I mean that he is interested in the rhetorical value of these speculations. Take, for example, Luther’s discussion of western cosmological accounts of the heavens. Luther narrates that whereas the Hebrews considered the heavens to be made up of three levels, the waters below and above with the firmament in between, classical culture taught that the heavens were made up of eight spheres. Our sphere, the earth, is made up of a hierarchy of increasingly finer elements: earth, water, air, fire, and ether. Then, above the earth were the seven spheres, which meander in rational circles (hence: “planets”). These spheres are “uncompounded substances endowed with coeternal light and an essential quality which came into existence with them,” Luther says, adopting an Aristotelian explanation (LW 1:27). During the scholastic period, two more realms were added to this cosmological explanation, the watery and empyrean heavens. But Luther opts for the more traditional explanation, because it is more pedagogically useful for proper communication and instruction in the arts. Luther puts speculation in service to communication, dialectic in service of rhetoric: It is this system’s pedagogical and not scientific value that Luther is most interested in. He demonstrates this by also considering Melanchthon’s 12-sphered modified cosmology, which he says could also be used for teaching purposes.

Luther is also very concerned with the modus loquendi of Scripture, its way of speaking. This can be seen just after the section we just looked at. After affirming the ancient cosmology and rejecting some Scholastic innovations, Luther considers the more Neoplatonic vision of the Muslim Philosopher, Ibn Rushd, latinized as Averroes. Averroes opined, because of his antique heritage, that the stars are living beings, external forms, which are responsible for terrestrial motion. Luther says that this opinion is “stupid,” demonstrating “the utmost ignorance of God”—but don’t let the rhetoric fool you (LW 1:29). This is not a dismissal of philosophy or speculation per se—rather, Luther is engaging with an antique tradition with a fine humanist comb. For the humanists, speculation must always be curtailed by rhetorical analysis, and here Luther is identifying an area where the tradition of speculation has (in his opinion) gone against the grain of the text. It is not that Averroes (or Aristotle, for that matter) was wrong for thinking about how motion is possible. Rather, Luther thinks that they both got the answer wrong. The entire Genesis account compels us to speculate about motion in a different way. God’s Word, Luther says, must be what moves us from potency to act. And once we grasp this truth, we will be affected all the more, brought near to God in wonder and thanksgiving.

Because the movement from potency to act is predicated on God’s Word, we can be sure that all of creation is ordered and rational–even if it does not immediately appear that way to our weak human reason. Luther marvels at God’s ingenuity. God keeps the upper waters icy, in order to keep the lower spheres moist and cool despite the heat generated by their constant motion. God’s word holds back the sea, to stop the dry land from being swallowed up by the lower waters. He places the earth at the center of the spheres, holding it in place by the other seven, and stabilizing the seven by its position. And yet, the trained theologian can see that it is not the position of the spheres alone that grants the cosmos its stability: it is the Word of God.

One perhaps would not be remiss to see a bit of the humanist and Kabbalist Johannes Reuchlin in this text. Luther has a distinctly humanist understanding of the role of texts and their rhetorical force; but he also has a deeply humanist word-mysticism or word-piety. Whereas his successor Martin Chemnitz joined in the Reuchlin-inspired speculations about the original language of paradise (spoiler: he thought it was the Hebrew language), Luther takes from Reuchlin an understanding of the spiritual potency of language, as it is taken up into the Holy Trinity generally, and the second person particularly. Luther’s cosmology is set upon the Word of God, which he sees as dominating the Genesis account of the creation of the world. And he sees this same word as effective in the regeneration of the world: in both the atonement and in the baptismal purification of the liturgical community (the second of which I am writing my STM thesis on).

Luther’s commentary has even more in common with Pico della Mirandola. Luther presents mankind as the pinnacle of creation. Man is “the last, most beautiful work of God” (LW 1:56). There is an “outstanding difference between man and all other creatures” (LW 1:56). Whereas in his animal life, there is a certain commanality between beasts and man, mankind was nevertheless created by the special plan and providence of God. He not only has a physical life, but also a spiritual life: that is, man is “created for a better life in the future than the physical life would have been, even if our nature had remained unimpaired” (LW 1:56). This physical life, once it had reached its fullness, would have come to an end; Adam and his descendants would then be “translated” to a spiritual and eternal life. In a move that at once seems to anticipate Jacob Boehme and Henri de Lubac, Luther speculates that man was created for divine union. That is, the incarnation and divinization go together; God travels downward and man travels upward and Christ is the meeting in the middle, the center of love.

But Luther is not completely content with how the tradition has talked about this passive potential for man’s divinization, this image of God. And so he enters into a conversation with his tradition and revises it once again with humanist tools. Whereas Augustine describes this image as the ‘powers of the soul’ in an Aristotelian sense, and the scholastics add to these natural gifts supernatural graces, these speculations can distract from the real dignity and glory of man that Luther sees as obvious from the Genesis text. And even worse, they can inspire some to assume that man’s freedom and God’s freedom are on the same ontological plane, that man is free in the same way as God is free (voluntarism).

No, the image of God is something more. The image is what makes man a unique work of God. Adam was created with pure inner and outer sensations, a clear intellect, the best memory, and a straightforward will. He had a beautiful tranquility of mind, unmolested by the fear of death or any other anxiety. He had the most beautiful and superb qualities of the body, with sharp and clear eyes and strength to rival lions and bears. And Adam and Eve engaged in unembarrassed and God-pleasing sexuality, free from the oppression of lusty passions. Ultimately, though, what is important is that Adam was created in “supreme bliss and freedom from fear,” of God and the creation around him (LW 1:62).

Luther systematically lays out five ways in which Adam was made in the image of God, if one allows oneself to go with the grain of the text, its modus loquendi. The first three are as follows: man is the image because he had an enlightened reason, true knowledge of God, and a most sincere desire to love God and his neighbor. The last two ways are that man had perfect knowledge of the nature of the animals, the herbs, the fruits, the trees, and the remaining creatures, as well as dominion over the creatures and the creation. “Who could adequately describe this glory in words?” Luther asks (LW 1:64).

But all of this could be summarized in two statements, one negative and the other positive. The image of God in natural man was, on the one hand, to be without fear. And then, on the other hand, the image of God in natural man was “to be fitted for eternal life” For his animal life was always intended to give way to his spiritual life, which would adorn “the most beautiful creature” (LW 1:66).

It is on the basis of this spiritual life that Luther calls Adam and Eve “outstanding philosophers” (LW 1:66). On the basis of the image of God, which Luther here calls their “similitude” with their Creator, they had the most perfect knowledge of God. They knew their Creator, their origin, and their end. They knew out of what they were created. They had the most dependable knowledge of the stars and the whole of astrology. And this perfect philosophical knowledge was common to both Adam and Eve, it was shared by both of them.

Luther argues that when Moses repeats “in the image of God” in verse 27, he is making this point:

This repetition is “the Creator’s rejoicing and exulting over the most beautiful work He had made, so that Moses intends to indicate that God was not so delighted at the other creatures as at man, whom He had created according to his own similitude. The rest of the animals are designated as footprints of God; but man alone is God’s image” (LW 1:68).

And so, Luther declares that the entire creation is nothing but a theophany, but its highest concentration, its omega point (to borrow from de Chardin), is man. Creation and man share a common bond not only in their animal life (for man comes “from the earth”), but also in their spiritual life, how they theologically reflect the divine life. Man is “a world in miniature” exactly because he is a condensed theophany, the pinnacle locus of revelation, the place where God is most known and the logic of creation is made explicit. The natural and the supernatural here embrace for a kiss in Luther. All things are brought together in a single focus. And this “gives God pleasure,” and those of us reading the Genesis account should contemplate it in “wonder” and “longing” (LW 1:67-68)—that is, it has rhetorical force not only for man, but also for God!

Luther’s account of man is surprisingly humanistic. Mankind is the most beautiful creation of God, made with absolute knowledge of him and his world. Mankind is the purpose and goal of God’s creation, the point around which all of creation circles. Dominion over the creation has been given to man because he is the most beautiful, most sublime, and most powerful of all the creatures. He has absolute wisdom, absolute knowledge, absolute justice, making him the chief philosopher and magistrate of all things.

Interestingly enough, this is a correlation between Luther and the Humanist/Esoteric traditions. Late antiquity especially was full of the image of the Philosopher Sage, the font of esoteric wisdom, as Pierre Hadot tells us. Moses, Pythagoras, Plato, Hermes Trismegistus: all of these foundational figures were said to have special communion with the gods which made them the font of traditions of philosophical ways of life that were divinely pleasing. This was in a large part behind the arguments between first century Christians and Greek Philosophers: did Moses learn his doctrines from Plato, or did Plato learn his doctrines from Moses? That is, who had closer communion with the gods—the prophet king of Israel or the philosopher king of Athens?

Luther opts for what he sees as a more antique answer to the question of the font of wisdom, following, once again, Johannes Reuchlin. In Reuchlin’s kabbalistic Christianity, it is not Plato or Moses who is the font of esoteric wisdom; rather, it is Adam himself, the first man. He it is who is born “of God” and was the prime philosopher, who knew the secrets of all things and named created substances according to their essences. Luther follows suit in his Genesis Commentary, arguing that Adam and Eve are the first philosophers, with all natural and supernatural knowledge. In the 20^th c., Bulgakov among others picks up this theme and makes it dominant in his own speculations on Genesis 1-3.

Another surprising part of Luther’s examination of Genesis 1 is his dynamic anthropology throughout. That is, man seems to be “on the move” for Luther. Ultimately, human beings are created to be supernatural. That is, mankind has been endowed with a heavenly knowledge that reveals mankind’s heavenly destination. The physical creation was designed as a place for Adam and Eve to come into fullness, that is, to multiply and rule: but ultimately, they were destined to be translated to the heavenly spheres, where they would eternally live in a more spiritual way, knowing and ruling as ultimate pictures of divinity, theophanies of God’s unlimited cosmic reign. This feels so much like Gregory of Nyssa and those in his Origenist tradition that one cannot help but take more seriously what Luther says at the beginning of the treatise, that Plato is “closer to the truth” than Aristotle.

This logic of analogy or theophany is of utmost significance. And here is a place where we might connect Luther and someone like the nonphilosophers: Hamann, Jacobi, and Eschenmayer. Because of his humanist theology of the word, Luther believes that reality speaks. That is, the cosmos declares the glory of God. Though he is not a metaphysician, it seems (perhaps because of his sacramental piety?) that Luther has been thoroughly inculcated with the traditional Christian discourse that connects signs and realities, that connects the entire cosmos to God by way of participation. And this participation is ultimately connected with Luther’s understanding of language: everything is held together by the word, everything in that sense is verbal, revelatory, and in some sense, rhetorical. This is basic to an understanding of Hamann’s critique against the German Idealists and the Romantic reaction he inspires. It is also the basic philosophical position of Bulgakov in his sophiological critique of modern philosophy. Far from leaving Luther as an anti-metaphysical thinker, his rhetorical theology and his critical sifting of medieval theology could perhaps be what made these metaphysical projects possible, and therefore still have something to say to contemporary theology today.

This is, of course, only some scattered reflections on a very dense text. But I hope that some of my reflections have shown that Luther defies some of our expectations of him and subverts some of the ways that we’ve been taught to read him. Luther is a man of his time: and this makes him even stranger than we often think him to be. And this is true of the Early Modern period in general. Early Modernity is a weird and wacky place, where institutions are crumbling, orthodoxies are fractioning, but interesting and insightful theology, literature, poetry, and philosophy are being done in the face of it all. Placing Luther in this odd and sometimes contradictory world is necessary for us today, because it could help us glean overlooked insights from his writings that may inspire us toward creative solutions to the problems we encounter today.