Luther’s Visual Theology The Lectures on Galatians and Cranach’s Law and Gospel Paintings
Matthew Rosebrock
Introduction Luther had an intensely visual vocabulary and imagination that reveals what latemedieval scholars have called the “mind’s eye.”1 By far, the central image for Luther was the sight of Christ by faith. Through prayer and meditation on Scripture, this image came into focus. And yet, in the midst of Anfechtung, Luther recognized that seeing Christ as gracious was at times very difficult. It required a special skill—“a high art (ein hohe kunst)”—in rightly distinguishing between God’s two words (i.e., law and gospel) and between humanity’s two relationships (i.e., active and passive righteousness).2 This art is never an end in itself, but a way of clearing obstacles for the gaze upon the forgiving Lord of the Scriptures in faith. To aid Luther was his approach to the study of theology and, hence, the Scriptures themselves in what he called Oratio, Meditatio, Tentatio. Martin Nicol and Oswald Bayer have suggested that Oratio, Meditatio, Tentatio plays a pivotal role in all of the reformer’s theology and approach to the Scriptures.3 Indeed, the trio of prayer, meditation on the external word, and temptation (Anfechtung) do appear over and over again in his theology. As I will suggest in this paper, Luther’s vision of Christ from Scripture is closely tied to this trio. Specifically, Luther sees certain key statements of Paul playing a central role shaping his view of Christ. To demonstrate this, I will draw on Luther’s 1531/1535 Lectures on Galatians. I will then close with some observations of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s paintings of law and gospel as a manifestation of Luther’s visual theology.
Lectures on Galatians Luther names oratio, meditatio, tentatio in the 1539 preface to his German theological works as his three rules for studying theology.4 Very briefly stated, prayer involves asking the Holy Spirit to teach through the word, meditation focuses on the external word of Scripture itself as the means of the Holy Spirit’s teaching, and temptation teaches the enduring value of Scripture.5 Though not explicit as three rules, Luther’s earlier theology does evince this triad, namely, for my purposes, the Lectures on Matthew Rosebrock (matthew.rosebrock@gmail.com) is a PhD candidate in theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and pastor of Risen Savior Lutheran Church in Byron, Illinois. This article is adapted from a paper originally presented at the 2016 Midwest Regional Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and represents the area of his doctoral research. 332