Abstract
This chapter traces the literary, grammatical and epistemological complexities of Martin Luther’s use of the term securitas—a term which encompasses both a spiritual attitude and a theological position. Where many interpreters have been tempted to see only the negative aspects of this term—as ‘smugness’ or overweening certainty (as it is often understood by later sixteenth-century English writers)—Luther exploits the possibilities afforded by its contradictory positive and negative valencies. For Luther, it is neither wholly positive nor negative, but a term undermined by its own self-contradiction, a paradoxical simultaneity of security and insecurity. By paying careful attention to Luther’s knotty Latin constructions, which often serve to resist straightforwardly propositional readings, Waller traces the literary qualities of his uses of irony and dense intertextual scriptural allusion, and the poetic syntactical compression of jarring contraries. Waller shows that this coincidence of contrary senses of securitas crystallises the logic of Luther’s theology of the cross, in which grace can only be found sub contrario: here in a single, self-defeating word. In Luther’s Romans Lectures of 1515–1516, securitas (and its opposite) is not so much a concept as a habitus. In its adverbial form, secure, Luther uses it to denote a mode in which other activities—including interpretation—are undertaken. This chapter traces the ways in which Luther’s uses of securitas and its cognates resist straightforward and unitary readings, and thus affect the instability and insecurity of his readers that renders them open to divine, alien grace.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
‘Et nemo securus esse debet in ista vita, quae tota tentatio nominator, utrum qui fieri potuit ex deteriore melior, non fiat etiam ex meliore deterior. Una spes, una fiducia, una firma promissio, misericordia tua.’ ‘Tota tentatio’ is an allusion to Job 7:1.
- 3.
Hamilton, Security, p. 62.
- 4.
For a succinct characterisation of the role of Frömmigskeittheologie and the experience of Anfechtungen in the development of Luther’s early theology, see Hamm, The Early Luther, pp. 26–58.
- 5.
It is especially entangled with questions of the assurance or certainty (certitudo) of salvation: see Stanglin, Arminius, pp. 145ff., and pp. 165–72 on the English context. See also Cummings, Literary Culture, pp. 287–96 on the neuralgic distinctions between certainty, security and assurance in the Lambeth Articles controversy. On debates over assurance and self-knowledge in English Reformed soteriology, see Swann’s discussion of Greenham and Hooker , later, Chap. 9.
- 6.
Ryrie, Being Protestant, pp. 22–27.
- 7.
Ibid., p. 23.
- 8.
Stanglin, Arminius, p. 164, points to Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis, 3.24.7: Paulus non simplicem securitatem Christianis dissuadet, sed supinam ac solutam carnis securitatem, quae fastum, arrogantiam, aliorum contemptum secum trahat, humilitatem extinguat, ac reverentiam Dei, acceptaeque gratiae oblivionem inducat. It is possible that one could discern a similar distinction in Luther’s Romans Lectures. However, this would require a good deal of exegesis around his distinction between the Pauline ‘flesh’ (caro) and ‘spirit’ (spiritus), a distinction that Luther does not, himself, readily apply to securitas. In making a distinction that allows for a more straightforwardly positive notion of spiritual securitas alongside its negative carnal application, Stanglin argues that Calvin, Vermigli and Zanchi are in this respect at odds with the Patristic, medieval and early Reformation construals of securitas, in which its normative meaning was negative. While it is true that, as Stanglin claims, ‘Up to the mid-sixteenth century, Christian theology had generally underscored the harmful securitas especially in the context of assurance of salvation, and had given only passing attention to its positive, acceptable use’ (pp. 164–65), my argument is that Luther’s use of the term often plays one meaning off against the other. It does this, admittedly, in the service of a critique of ‘negative’ securitas.
- 9.
WA56.24, note 8.
- 10.
Schrimm-Heins, ‘Gewissheit und Sicherheit’. Hamilton largely follows Schrimm-Heins’ reading of Luther.
- 11.
In his treatment of Luther, Hamilton assumes a wholly negative understanding of securitas in a spiritual sense, reserving a positive connotation only for its political uses, along the lines of a ‘two kingdoms’ typology (Hamilton, Security, p. 73). There is little sense, for Hamilton, in which this might be a spiritually ambivalent term.
- 12.
WA3.417.10. Several lines earlier, through an intertextual allusion to Isaiah 38:17, ‘behold, in peace my bitterness is most bitter’, Luther cites Bernard of Clairvaux on the progressively greater bitterness to be found in the ages of the tyrants, the heretics and, most surprisingly, in the ‘time of peace and security ’: Ut Bernardus ait: que fuit amara sub tyrannis, amarior sub hereticis, amarissima sub pacificis et securis (WA3.417.6ff). The editor of WA3 notes that the passage from Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs which Luther cites actually runs: [Amaritudo] amara prius in nece martyrum, amarior post in conflictu haereticorum, amarissima nunc in moribus domesticorum. […] Intestina et insanabilis est plaga ecclesiae, et ideo in pace amaritudo eius amarissima (Bernhardi Serm. in cant. Cant. 33 num.13).
- 13.
Luther adduces ‘equity’, ‘justice ’, ‘gain’ ‘prosperity’ and a ‘lack of danger’, but undercuts the worry about ‘carelessness’ by turning them against themselves: Sicut non est maior iniquitas quam summa equitas, non maior iniustitia quam summa iustitia, non maius damnum quam maximum lucrum, sic non maior adversitas quam prosperitas nec maius periculum quam nullum periculum (WA3.424.6–9), ‘Just as there is no greater iniquity than the highest equity, no greater injustice than the highest justice , no greater loss than the greatest gain, so there is no greater adversity than prosperity and no greater danger than no danger at all’ (LW3.361).
- 14.
Oberman, Facientibus, contends that Luther follows the Nominalist position on facere quod in se est until 1515–1516, and that Luther appears to support the doctrine in his Dictata commentary on Psalm 113:1 of 1515 (Oberman, Facientibus p. 338). Oberman perceives a distinction in Luther’s treatment of Romans 14:1 between the doctrine itself, and the ‘Pelagian’ interpretation of the doctrine that leads the church astray (p. 337), noting that ‘this is a strange distinction, since […] this interpretation is the sole intention of this doctrine in the nominalistic tradition’. However, it seems to me that the distinction between the doctrine itself, and the ‘confidence’ in the doctrine that brings about the fall of the church, is not nearly as great for Luther as Oberman contends; rather, the distinction between the statement and the ‘confident belief’ in the statement points to the important quality of the attitude of securitas (believing it ‘confidently’) in which the belief is held.
- 15.
Isa. 44:9ff: All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know. And so they will be put to shame. 10 Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? 11 Look, all its devotees shall be put to shame; the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let them stand up; they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame. 12 The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers, and forging it with his strong arm; he becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and is faint. 13 The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine. 14 He cuts down cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. 15 Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, ‘Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire!’ 17 The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, ‘Save me, for you are my god!’ 18 They do not know, nor do they comprehend; for their eyes are shut, so that they cannot see, and their minds as well, so that they cannot understand. 19 No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, ‘Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted meat and have eaten. Now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?’ 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save himself or say, ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?’
- 16.
Ideo Sancti solliciti sunt pro gratia Dei semper Inuocanda. Non confidunt in bonam intentionem aut uniuersam diligentiam suam, Sed semper adhuc sese malum agere timent. Quo timore humiliate gratiam querunt et gemunt, Qua humilitate et Deum sibi propitium faciunt. Pestilentissimum itaque genus predicantium Est hodie, Quod de signis presentis gratiae predicat, Ut secures homines faciat, Cum hoc sit optimum signum gratiae, timere scil. et tremere, Et presentissimum signum irae Dei securum esse et confidere. Sic enim per timorem gratia Inuenitur Et per gratiam Voluntarius homo efficitur ad opera bona, Sine qua Inuitus est. Qua tamen (Ut ita dixerim) Inuitate fit sine timore, durus et secures, quod externe illa perficit in oculis suis et hominum (WA56.503.13ff).
- 17.
WA3.434.40ff.
- 18.
Substantia in Scriptura metaphorice accipitur tam ex grammaticali quam physicali significatione. Et proprie, non ut philosophi de ea loquuntur, hic accipienda est. Sed pro substaculo seu subsidentia, in qua pedibus stari potest, ut non in profundum labantur et mergantur. Et sic Christus non habuit tale substaculum vite, quin caderet omnino in mortem. Si autem passus solum, non usque in mortem fuisset, substantiam utique habuisset et in quo constitisset (WA3.419.25ff.).
- 19.
WA3.420.6.
- 20.
Homo Spiritualis, see especially pp. 105–21. Ozment is careful to emphasise that the substantiality or de-substantiality of that which relates to God, and that which relates to the world, is ‘soteriological’, rather than ‘ontological’, as Luther’s rather idiosyncratic account of scriptural substantia suggests (p. 119).
- 21.
Ibid., p. 121.
Bibliography and Abbreviations
Abbreviations
LW (Luther Works)—Luther, Martin, Luther’s Works, 55 vols., ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955–86).
WA (Weimar Ausgabe)—Luther, Martin, Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 91 vols. (Weimar: H. Böhlau 1883–2009).
Other Works Cited
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———, Confessions, trans. H. Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Calvin, Jean, Institutio Christianae Religionis (1559 ed.), in Ioannis Calvini Opera, vol. 2.
Cummings, Brian, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Hamilton, John T., Security: Politics, Humanity, and the Philology of Care (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
Hamm, Berndt, The Early Luther: Stages in a Reformation Reorientation, trans. M.J. Lohrmann (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014).
Oberman, Heiko, ‘Facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat Gratiam: Robert Holcot, O.P. and the Beginnings of Luther’s Theology.’ Harvard Theological Review, 55:4 (1962): 317–42.
Ozment, Steven, Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509–16) in the Context of Their Theological Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1969).
Ryrie, Alec, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Schrimm-Heins, Andrea, ‘Gewissheit und Sicherheit: Geschichte und Bedeutungswandel der Begriffe certitudo und securitas’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, 34 (1991): 123–213.
Stanglin, Keith D., Arminius on the Assurance of Salvation: The Context, Roots, and Shape of the Leiden Debate, 1603–1609 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
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Waller, G. (2018). ‘Qui enim securus est, minime securus est’: The Paradox of Securitas in Luther and Beyond. In: Mukherji, S., Stuart-Buttle, T. (eds) Literature, Belief and Knowledge in Early Modern England. Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature, vol 1. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71359-5_6
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