9 Nikolaus Von Amsdorf (1483–1565): Set for the Defense of the Gospel

The Role Of A religious conservative is rarely a popular one, especially when this conservatism is combined with an intolerance of all theological innovation. There is something pinched and one‐sided about the mentality that holds that a decisive theological breakthrough has taken place in the past but denies (or is at least distrustful of) the possibility of new and original insights in the present. That the church has been led into truth in the past does not exclude the possibility of the discovery of new truth in the present, even if the new insight is only a deepened participation in the meaning of the old.

The conservative, however, while often unpopular, is nevertheless a necessary fellow. The natural tendency of any parish is toward heresy. Unless the church is willing to lose its treasure without a struggle, there is a need for watchmen to sound the alarm and remind the church that the gospel it is preaching is not the gospel it has preached. It may well be that the church may decide that its new understanding represents a growth in insight rather than a relapse. But it needs to be reminded in any case that it has changed its course, so that it may consult its charts and compass and come to a conscious decision concerning the advisability of its new direction.

Amsdorf was the conservative gadfly of the Lutheran reformation. He was born on December 3, 1483, at Torgau, the second among six brothers.¹Close He began his university studies at Leipzig in 1500 but quickly transferred to Wittenberg in 1502, where his uncle, Johannes von Staupitz, was professor of Bible and dean of the theological faculty. Nikolaus was a good, though not brilliant, student and received his licentiate in theology in 1511. Three years earlier, in 1508, he had been made a canon of All Saints, the university church. He was a skilled debater and an uncompromising opponent in theological disputations.

When Luther challenged the medieval theology of penance in the Ninety‐five Theses, Amsdorf became an immediate convert to his cause. He accompanied Luther to the Leipzig Disputation with Eck in 1519 and did everything in his power to assist Luther in the reform of the theological curriculum at Wittenberg. Luther was appreciative of the loyalty of Amsdorf and dedicated his Appeal to the Ruling Class of 1520 to his friend and coworker. Indeed, Amsdorf was such a close friend and trusted adviser of Luther that he was one of the very few men who knew that the elector was hiding Luther in the Wartburg Castle following the Diet of Worms. And it was Amsdorf and Melanchthon who dealt in Luther's absence with the challenge of the Zwickau prophets.

In 1524 Amsdorf moved to Magdeburg, where he became the pastor of Saint Ulrich's and the first Protestant superintendent. In Magdeburg he opposed the teaching of a Catholic preacher by the name of Cubito at the cathedral and carried through the work of the Lutheran reformation, modeling the Magdeburg liturgy on the liturgy used in Wittenberg. He also founded a Protestant Latin school at Saint John's, to which Caspar Cruciger and later George Major were called as rectors.

His work in Magdeburg was so well regarded that he was called to assist in the work of establishing the Reformation in several cities in Lower Saxony, especially Goslar (1528, 1531) and Einbeck (1534). He also gained a reputation as a defender of the faith through his determined opposition not only to Radical reformers like Melchior Hoffman but to all attempts on the part of fellow Lutherans to dilute or weaken the theological position of the Lutheran movement. Accordingly he opposed the Wittenberg Concord, which attempted to draw together the positions of the Lutherans and the Reformed on the Eucharist, and the Colloquy of Regensburg, which attempted to heal the divisions between Protestants and Catholics. If the truth had come to light in the teaching of Dr. Luther, as Amsdorf believed it had, then no purpose could be served in arriving at a compromise except the re‐obscuring of the truth.

When the bishop of Naumburg/Zeitz died on January 6, 1541, the chapter of the cathedral in Naumburg elected Julius von Pflug, a distinguished Catholic cleric, to be his successor.²Close However, the elector, Johann Friedrich, who regarded the approval of a successor as his feudal right, rejected the candidate chosen by the chapter and named Amsdorf, the Lutheran superintendent in Magdeburg, to the post instead. This highhanded action flew in the face of custom and of canon law and left Amsdorf to rule a diocese unreconciled to his presence and only barely civil. Nevertheless, he was installed as bishop of Naumburg by Luther, who broke with Catholic custom by laying on of hands without the use of chrism.

Scarcely in the history of the world was there ever chosen a more reluctant and unhappy prelate. Caught between the prince on the one hand, who regarded the bishop as his servant in no way distinct from the men employed in his civil service, and a chapter headed by the unlucky candidate von Pflug, who resisted his every wish and tried to fight his reform efforts to a standstill, Amsdorf felt himself hemmed in by the unreasonable demands of an impossible job. He found it difficult to write, and what he did compose was marked by a certain bitterness.

Though Amsdorf was able to make some progress in his attempts to reform Naumburg, it was almost with a sense of relief that he saw the forces gather that compelled him to flee. The outbreak of the Schmalkaldic War and the success of Moritz of Saxony against the Protestants drove Amsdorf out of Naumburg and into Weimar. In his absence, von Pflug claimed and was granted the diocese of Naumburg. The Lutheran hold on the bishopric of Naumburg was brought to an end, and Amsdorf entered a period of exile from his diocese.

During the years that followed, Amsdorf served as the adviser of elector Johann Friedrich and then, at the elector's death, of his sons. He helped to found the new University of Jena in opposition to Wittenberg, where the teaching of Melanchthon was in vogue, and was instrumental in having Flacius called to its faculty. He assisted in the production of the so‐called Jena edition of Luther's works, which was designed to correct the errors in the Wittenberg edition. He opposed the Leipzig Interim from his headquarters in Magdeburg and flayed in the press the Adiaphorists Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, who were prepared to abide by its terms. He stopped his quarrel with Melanchthon only long enough to join forces with the Philippists in opposing the teaching of Osiander.

When Magdeburg was relinquished to Duke Moritz of Saxony, Amsdorf, breathing fire and threats against the duke, left Magdeburg for Eisenach, where he became in fact, though not in title, the leader of the Lutheran reformation there. In 1554 he became embroiled in a conflict with the superintendent in Gotha, Justus Menius, who refused to reject the teaching of Major that good works are necessary to salvation. In opposing the teaching of Menius and Major, Amsdorf defended the often misunderstood thesis that good works are harmful to salvation. He meant by this to exclude good works from the order of salvation, where they automatically become merits, but not from the Christian life, where they are the fruits of faith.

Though Amsdorf had taken the side of Flacius in the controversies that swirled around him, he was not in total agreement with his ally. He rejected, for example, the teaching of Flacius that original sin is the substance of fallen man and could not understand why Flacius refused to accept his teaching that good works are harmful to salvation. Because there were differences between Flacius and Amsdorf and because Amsdorf had rendered service to the Lutheran reformation from the very earliest days, he was spared when Flacius and his followers were expelled from the city of Jena.

Amsdorf may have hoped to be restored to the diocese of Naumburg at the death of von Pflug in 1564, though he made no mention of that fact in his Testament. Since he had remained celibate all his life, even after his conversion to Protestantism, he could not be disqualified on the grounds of a clerical marriage. At any rate, whether he entertained such hopes or not, they did not have time to come to fruition. He died in Eisenach on May 14, 1565, and was buried before the altar in Saint George's Church.

Amsdorf's theology must be regarded as a clumsy approximation of Luther's.³Close He did not, of course, intend to be original. Originality that deviated from the norm of Luther's theology was in fact what he intended at all costs to avoid. But he was less apt at expressing himself than the circumstances warranted. Certainly he had none of the precision of definition that characterized Melanchthon's thought. As a result he confused his enemies when he wanted to confound them. Even the thesis that alienated his friends—namely, that good works are harmful to salvation—is a perfectly acceptable idea from Luther, expressed in Amsdorf's own bumbling Pickwickian way.

Luther had rejected the doctrine of merit by stressing the difference between the relationship of human beings before God (coram deo) and toward their neighbors. Luther's teaching resulted in a radical secularization of good works. Good works are taken out of the order of salvation and are offered to human beings in their need rather than to God. As God in his overflowing bounty has perfectly justified and accepted sinners because of Christ, so Christians, in gratitude for all that they have received from God, do works of love for their neighbors. In their relationship to God (coram deo), Christians bring nothing but open hands to receive whatever God has to give them. Faith is what counts in the relationship to God, not works. Christians commit themselves in trust to God and receive all that they have and are sola gratia from the hand of God.

If works are removed from the order of salvation, they are not removed from the Christian life. In the relationship to the neighbor (coram hominibus), it is not faith but works of love that count. To refuse to give to one's neighbors what they need, when one has something to give them, and to say that instead of responding to such need one will pray that God will meet their need from some other source, is false piety. In the relationship between God and human beings (coram deo), Christians are recipients, never givers. In the relationship between one human being and another (coram hominibus), Christians give gladly to their neighbors what they have received from God. All doctrines of human merit are excluded from this framework of thought.

By affirming that good works are harmful to salvation, all Amsdorf wanted to do was to reaffirm the main lines of Luther's teaching concerning merit.⁴Close He did not mean to preach antinomianism, the idea that Christians may do whatever immoral acts they please since they are not justified by the law. He believed, fully as much as his opponents, that faith would issue in works of love toward the neighbor. But when Major and Menius argued that good works are necessary to salvation, that meant to Amsdorf that they were reintroducing good works into the order of salvation. Works become the partial ground on which men and women are accepted by God. It is not necessary to call these works merits, but that is what in fact they are. Such works are harmful to faith because they delude people into believing that they can gain salvation by means of them. To say that works are necessary to salvation is to say that they are necessary coram deo. To admit that is to renounce the Reformation on the key issue of justification by faith.

Amsdorf agreed with Melanchthon that the church of Jesus Christ must be a church of pure doctrine. But he understood pure doctrine somewhat differently from Melanchthon. For Melanchthon philosophy is a schoolmaster to lead sinners to Christ, an essential tool for the clarifying of doctrine so that it may be pure. Philosophy clarifies belief so that faith may be certain of what it believes. The purity Melanchthon envisions is a conceptual purity.

Not so for Amsdorf. There are for him three enemies of pure doctrine: logic, mysticism, and speculation. Philosophy does not help to ground faith but rather introduces the worldly wisdom that unsettles it.⁵Close Pure faith is obedient recognition of the Word of God;⁶Close it is a wholehearted embracing of the gospel against the objections of reason. Reality is, finally, not rational; it does not neatly conform to the categories of Aristotle. The gospel has the irregular and unexpected shape of things that are true. Pure doctrine is doctrine that clings to the revelation of God in Scripture against the witness of reason and conscience.

Furthermore, the Word of God and Scripture are to be identified.⁷Close Amsdorf applies to Scripture a principle derived from Luther's doctrine of the Eucharist. The elements do not symbolize (signiWcat) the body and blood of Christ; they are (est) the body and blood of Christ. Amsdorf applies the eucharistic est to Scripture. The word of God is not symbolized by Scripture or contained in Scripture. The est of identity excludes the spiritualistic understanding of the Bible of people like Caspar Schwenckfeld or Sebastian Franck just as it excludes the eucharistic theology of Zwingli or Melanchthon.⁸Close

This Scripture contains both law and gospel. The law does not offer the road to justification; only the gospel does. The humanists and the mystics want to see the law as the expression of the possibilities of the human situation, as the summary of the ideals that humans are summoned to emulate. However, the Bible makes clear that no keeping of the law except a perfect one will suffice for salvation.⁹Close This means, of course, to anyone who is honest with himself or herself that the law uncovers the impossibility of the human situation, not its unfulfilled possibility. The law belongs to the order of salvation only in the sense that it has been perfectly fulfilled in Jesus and, as such, belongs to the gospel.¹⁰Close The law drives men and women to Christ. Only in Christ is the law salvific.

The human will is bound and cannot turn to Christ. Amsdorf rejects Melanchthon's thesis that the will is a third factor in conversion along with the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. He argues, rather, that human beings are like stones and as incapable of response to God as a stone would be.¹¹Close He hastily adds, of course, that the analogy is imperfect. Sinners are not passive like a stone but resist God with every resource at their command.¹²Close But the activity is all negative. The will is free to resist but not to respond, which means that the only freedom fallen human nature knows is bondage. Faith is not a human possibility¹³Close and cannot be cultivated or brought into existence by employing the right method of speaking or hearing. Faith is not a matter of method. Faith is an event for which the Holy Spirit alone is responsible in conjunction with the Word.¹⁴Close

Amsdorf's writings are almost all tracts for the times. There are no biblical commentaries, no leisurely treatises on systematic theology in the corpus of writings he composed. This means, of course, that his essays were for the most part short, journalistic editorials, written in the heat of anger and with the sense of shocked outrage still fresh in their pages. The polemical nature of these essays and their uncompromising character tend to obscure the fact that Amsdorf was fighting to defend some important insights that were in danger of being obscured.

That is not to say that Amsdorf was simply a repristination of Luther. It is clear that Luther's thought was fragmented in his hands as well as in the hands of Osiander or Melanchthon. But there were important issues at stake that Amsdorf was correct to defend. His intolerance, so distressing to the modern mind yet so commonplace in the sixteenth century, grew out of his and his contemporaries' conviction of the seriousness of the matters that were being considered. If Christianity were for them only one worldview among others, one possible option among many equally attractive options, then, of course, intolerance would be unforgivable. They were convinced, however, they were dealing with truth as such, with the narrow way that leads to salvation. One does not call a doctor intolerant who insists on submitting an inflamed appendix to surgery and who is rigorous in the surgical procedures he or she follows. In their view a physician of souls cannot afford to be less rigorous. Commenting on the tepid religious convictions of the early twentieth century, G. K. Chesterton once observed that tolerance can be the easy virtue of people who do not believe anything in particular. Still it is preferable to the uncharitable and suspicion‐laden atmosphere of the sixteenth century.

The distressing thing about Amsdorf is not the sharpness of his invective—even the irenic Erasmus could be far more inventive in composing a studied insult than the direct and plain‐spoken Amsdorf—but the clumsiness of his exposition. His treatment of his opponents is often superficial and his formulation of his own opinions imprecise. Nevertheless, he did manage to stimulate the Lutheran church to examine its teaching on justification and to formulate its own position on the question of the place of good works. Forced to a decision between ecumenical openness and confessional purity, Amsdorf chose confessional purity. One can only regret that he saw as antithetical what ought to be regarded as complementary. By making this choice, Amsdorf became one of the principal fathers of confessional Lutheranism.