Did Luther’s Excommunication Misrepresent Him?

I’m going to explain why you’re not alone if you’re not sure what was going on in the Ninety Five Theses or what exactly Luther was saying at the time that so infuriated Rome. It appears Rome wasn’t sure either what exactly Luther was saying in some instances. The Roman Church issued a document explaining why they rejected Luther’s teaching: Exsurge Domine, . . .

Despite being a papal document, I would argue Exsurge Domine isn’t really any sort of help. . . . I would also point out that Rome’s sharpest minds didn’t quite know what was going on either when they put Exsurge Domine together.

Swan then refers to

Hans Hillerbrand, “Martin Luther and the Bull Exsurge Domine” (Theological Studies 30:108-112). . . . a fascinating short article, documenting how imprecisely Rome’s theologians quoted and understood Luther’s writings . . . Hillerbrand lists a number of mistakes made in Exsurge Domine when it attempted to document Luther’s errors.

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His link to this is no longer valid (it didn’t even work on the Wayback Machine; drats!), but Swan cited a good chunk of it, with which I will interact:

Proposition 25, which pertains to the primacy of the Roman pontiff, cannot be located in any of Luther’s writings prior to 1520.

25. The Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter, is not the vicar of Christ over all the churches of the entire world, instituted by Christ Himself in blessed Peter.

Exsurge Domine didn’t claim to be making direct quotations from Luther’s writings. Rather, it stated, “Some of these errors we have decided to include in the present document; their substance is as follows:”. Is Proposition 25 present in Luther’s writings before 1520? Well, whether it was written down by this time or not, Luther’s words in the Leipzig Disputation with Johann Eck, from July 1519, certainly express this notion:

I grant by all means that there is a monarchy in the church militant, and that its head is not a man but Christ himself, and this on divine authority in 1 Corinthians 15 [25]: “He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” And a little earlier: “Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every earthly power.” St. Augustine in the last chapter of his first book on the Trinity speaks about the reign of Christ in the present: “So it is clear that Christ, the head of the church, will transform us, who are his kingdom, to his image.”

So Matthew says in his final chapter: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” Likewise in Acts 9 [4], where Paul heard a voice from heaven – “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” – Augustine says again that the head is speaking for its members. Therefore one must not listen to those who drive Christ out of the church militant into the church triumphant, that is, the kingdom of faith. The point is this, that we do not see our head, yet we have him. Psalm 122 says, “He sits in judgment over the House of David.” Surely there are many seats on which Christ alone sits. We see the seats, not the occupant, or the king.

Coming then to the authorities of the gentleman, where he asserts that in the church militant there is one head, established by divine law and by Christ, he speaks for himself, but he proves nothing. For, in my opinion, he contradicts himself by his first authority, that of Paul in Ephesians 4 [15], since Paul speaks there most certainly about the church militant and he calls Christ its head. The same idea, contradictory to him, is to be found in 1 Corinthians 3 [5, together with 1:13]: “Who then is Apollos? Who is Cephas? Who is Paul? Is Christ divided?” and so on. Here he clearly forbids any other head than Christ. (“Leipzig Disputation between Martin Luther and Johann Eck (1519),” in German History Intersections, November 28, 2023)

Proposition 4…took two of the 95 Theses (Thesis 14, “Imperfecta … magnum timorem,” and Thesis 15, “Hie timor et horror satis est se solo… faceré poenam purgatorii”), and added, as a final clause, a passage from the Resolutions which read “horror ipse mortis… etiam se solo impedit introitum regni.” It would seem that the “new” sentence does not precisely agree with Luther’s own formulations.

4. To one on the point of death imperfect charity necessarily brings with it great fear, which in itself alone is enough to produce the punishment of purgatory, and impedes entrance into the kingdom.