SIMUL: The Journal of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, Vol. 2, Issue 4 (Summer 2023)

Luther’s Theology of Vocation

SIMUListhejournalofSt.Paul LutheranSeminary.

CoverPhoto: This issue’s cover photo is the “Martin Luther” by Rainer Ehrt.

Disclaimer:

The viewsexpressedinthe articlesreflectthe author(s) opinionsand arenotnecessarilythe viewsofthe publisherand editor.SIMULcannotguaranteeand acceptsnoliabilityforany lossor damageofanykind causedby the errorsandfor theaccuracy ofclaims made by the authors.Allrightsreservedand nothingcan be partiallyor inwholebe reprintedor reproduced withoutwrittenconsentfrom the editor.

SIMUL

Volume 2, Issue 4, Summer2023

Luther’s Theology of Vocation

EDITOR

Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Di Mauro dennisdimauro@yahoo.com

ADMINSTRATOR

Rev. Jon Jensen jjensen@semlc.org

Administrative Address: St. Paul Lutheran Seminary P.O. Box 251 Midland, GA 31820

ACADEMICDEAN

Rev. Julie Smith jjensen@semlc.org

Academics/Student Affairs Address: St. Paul Lutheran Seminary P.O. Box 112 Springfield, MN 56087

BOARD OFDIRECTORS

Chair: Rev. Dr. Erwin Spruth

Rev. Greg Brandvold

Rev. Jon Jensen

Rev. Dr. Mark Menacher

Steve Paula

Rev. Julie Smith

Charles Hunsaker

Rev. Dr. James Cavanah

Rev. Jeff Teeples

TEACHINGFACULTY

Rev. Dr. Marney Fritts

Rev. Dr. Dennis DiMauro

Rev. Julie Smith

Rev. Virgil Thompson

Rev. Dr. Keith Less

Rev. Brad Hales

Rev. Dr. Erwin Spruth

Rev. Steven King

Rev. Dr. Orrey McFarland

Rev. Horacio Castillo (Intl)

Rev. Amanda Olson de Castillo (Intl)

Rev. Dr. Roy Harrisville III

Rev. Dr. Henry Corcoran

Rev. Dr. Mark Menacher

Rev. Randy Freund

Table of Contents

Editor’s Note

Welcome to our eighth issue of SIMUL, the journal of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary. This edition includes a number of insightful articles concerning Luther’s theology of vocation. In this volume, Mark Menacher explains how certain modern alterations to the Book of Concord have changed our original Lutheran understanding of how someone is called to ministry. Mark Ryman explains how one can be called by God to a specialized ministry or any other occupation. Brad Hales urges us to teach church members that their secular occupations are, in fact, spiritual vocations given to them by God. Marney Fritts cautions us on the temptation to use our vocations to earn our own holiness instead of understanding how our baptisms and the forgiveness of sins lead us into holiness. And Kristian Baudler looks at Reformation ordination theology, and how the earliest Lutheran pastors were “called to” their vocations by their congregations, rather than ordained by a bishop to a clerical order. Finally, I close out this issue with a review of Andrew Pettegree’s book, Brand Luther, a portrait of the printing industry that fueled Luther’s Reformation.

What’s Ahead?

Upcoming Issues - We are so excited about this coming year. Our Fall 2023 issue will discuss the Office of the Ministry.

This edition includes a number of insightful articles concerning Luther’s theology of vocation.

SPLS now offers the Th.D. – We are excited to announce that St. Paul Lutheran Seminary is partnering with Kairos University in Sioux Falls, SD to establish an accredited Doctorate in Theology (Th.D.). The Th.D. is a research degree, preparing candidates for deep theological reflection, discussion, writing, leadership in the church and service towards the community. The goal of the program is to develop leaders in the Lutheran church who are qualified to teach in institutions across the globe, to engage in theological and biblical research to further the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to respond with faithfulness to any calling within the church. Those who are accepted into and complete the program will receive all instruction from SPLS professors and will receive an accredited (ATS) degree from Kairos University.

The general area of study of the Th.D. program is in systematic theology. Specializations offered within the degree include, but are not limited to: Reformation studies, evangelical homiletics, and law and gospel dialectics. The sub-disciplines within the areas of specialization are dependent upon the interest of the student provided they have a qualified and approved mentor. Other general areas of study, such as biblical studies, will be forthcoming. For the full description of the program, go to https://semlc.org/academic-programs/ If you are interested in supporting our effort to produce faithful teachers of Christ’s church, contact Jon Jensen jjensen@semlc.org. All prospective student inquiries can be directed to Dr. Marney Fritts mfritts@semlc.org.

Giving - Please consider making a generous contribution to St. Paul Lutheran Seminary at: https://semlc.org/support-st-paul-lutheran-seminary/.

I hope you enjoy this issue of SIMUL! If you have any questions about the journal or about St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, please shoot me an email at dennisdimauro@yahoo.com

Rev. Dr. Dennis Di Mauro is the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Warrenton, VA. He teaches at St. Paul Lutheran Seminary and is the editor of SIMUL.

VOCATIO EX NIHILO: LUTHER’S CONCEPTION OF VOCATION IN HIS GENESIS LECTURES

Mark Menacher Vocation

The term “vocation” is derived from the Latin noun vocatio and from the verb vocare, meaning “to call.” In an article entitled “Choosing a Vocational School or Certificate Program” on the Federal Trade Commission’s website, one finds the following, “Vocational schools and certificate programs train students for skilled jobs, including automotive technicians, medical assistants, hair stylists, certified nursing aids, electronics technicians, paralegals, and truck drivers. Some schools also help students find possible employers and apply for jobs.”1 More traditionally, the 1982 edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “vocation” as “1. divine call to, or sense of fitness for, a career or occupation. 2. employment, trade, profession, ...”2 The notion that “vocation” refers chiefly to learning some sort of trade or skill is commonplace, particularly in the English-speaking world. Today, “vocation”

understood as a “divine call,” except in the usage of religious societies or institutions, would arguably be considered quaint but naively anachronistic.

Even within religious societies and institutions, defining a “divine call” is fraught with difficulties. In many religious circles, it is quite common to hear people say, “God led me to ...,” or “God placed it on my heart to ...,” or “The Spirit moved me to ...” How does one quantify or qualify or criticize such oftentimes deeply held convictions of “divinely inspired” vocation, especially if such persons are conducting their (selfperceived) “callings” in a charitable or at least a benign way? In contrast, having been issued “a proper [public] call,” career clergy often look condescendingly upon such utterances, but should they, and if so, why?

For Lutherans as per Article XIV of the unaltered Confessio Augustana (CA) “no one in the church shall publicly teach or preach or distribute the sacraments without an orderly call” (ordentlichen Beruf in German), or as in the Latin version, “no one in the church ought publicly to teach or to administer the sacraments unless duly called” (rite vocatus).3 So, what is an “orderly call,” and what does it mean to be “duly called”?

Altering the Unaltered

For Lutherans as per Article XIV of the unaltered Confessio Augustana (CA) “no one in the church shall publicly teach or preach or distribute the sacraments without an orderly call.”

Unfortunately in recent years, answering this question has become unnecessarily complicated by some who prefer their own “altered” version of CA Article XIV, which in the first

edition of the Kolb-Wengert Book of Concord states that “no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call” (note the addition of “[public]”).4 In a similar vein but opposite in action, the K-W BoC also alters the reading of CA Article V, as compared with 1998 German version, Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche (BSLK), by deleting note 1 which states, “Luther did not understand the office of preaching in a clerical sense.”5 As one could extrapolate from Tappert’s expanded elucidation of this same note, taken together such additions and deletions to the Lutheran Confessions are misleading,6 and deliberately so. They represent a determined effort to undermine the Reformation’s “system crashing” (systemsprengend) principle inaugurated by the concept of the priesthood of all believers, which abolished “the difference between clerics and the laity” and arguably represents the truly re-forming impetus for the Reformation.7

If Luther sought in his treatise To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate (1520) to attack the first of three walls of the “Romanists,” namely the division between the spiritual and temporal estates,8 i.e., between clergy and laity, then the attempts in modern times by many so-called Lutherans to reerect this first wall have been aptly described by Theodore Tappert already in the 1950s as a “neo-Romantic remythologization” of the church.9 This “neo-Romantic remythologization,” in turn, can be viewed as a reaction to various streams of the historical-critical method of interpreting

Kolb-Wengert Book of Concord

Scripture, especially Rudolf Bultmann’s program of demythologizing the New Testament. For many Christians, such “scholarly” methods seem to have undermined, if not dissolved, the authority of Scripture. All controversies regarding “higher critical” methods of interpreting Scripture aside, the various, old and new humanistic attempts to analyze, rationalize, intellectualize, psychologize, contextualize, moralize, and politicize the Bible, have created a void in global Protestantism which clerics with vested interests have sought to fill with themselves.

If, for Luther, the Bible was once the Reformation’s weapon of papal “mass” destruction, the post-Reformation, humanistic dissection and demythologization of Scripture necessarily brought Luther down with it. With Scripture discredited, Luther dispatched, and one’s fellow priests dumbed and drummed down, adulterating the Lutheran Confessions was a matter of course and would hopefully go either unnoticed or perhaps even be rewarded.10 Despite current impressions and deceptive intentions, the following brief depiction of Luther’s understanding of Christian vocation will show that calling and being called is not the purview of ecclesial institutions and their clergy, but rather that vocare reflects the very life of God.

Luther’s Commentary on Genesis

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth... And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:1, 3), because “In the beginning was the Word, ...” (John 1:1). Within the Triune God, according to Luther, God the Father is the speaker who creates, and God the Son is the uncreated

Word through whom the Father’s speaking creates all things.11 As interpreted through Romans 4:17, “God, in fact, calls (vocat) things which do not exist into being, and he does not speak grammatical terms but true and abiding things.”12 For Luther, God creating everything out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) through the word, and God calling nonexistent things into being, are two sides of the same coin.

After six days of “very good” creating, including making adam both male and female in his own image, God rested, but the serpent tested, and Adam and Eve tasted the tempting fruit salad. Then, the Lord called (vocavit) Adam and inquired where he was. “The phrase, ‘He called (vocavit) him,’ is to be so understood that he called (vocaverit) Adam to judgment [because of the sin for which God declared Adam alone to be responsible]. However, here some raise the question regarding the person through whom Adam has been called (vocatus est).”13 In response to such queries, Luther is happy to accept that God’s call was mediated by angels, in the same way that human magistrates do not speak or act of their own accord but rather in God’s stead. Either way, “what scripture calls (vocat) the judgment of God is to be understood as the judgments which are exercised or administered through human beings.”14 Thus, whether in the spiritual or in the temporal domain, Luther displays here his predilection for God’s call to be mediated interpersonally.

God’s calling of Adam in the garden after the fall should not be viewed simply as a vocal effort to locate humanity’s first

For Luther, God creating everything out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) through the word, and God calling nonexistent things into being, are two sides of the same coin.

parents. “Indeed, [God] wants to show Adam that despite being hidden he was not hidden from God and that while fleeing God he had not flown God. For this happens naturally in all sin, that we stupidly try to escape God’s wrath, and yet we cannot escape it. It is extreme stupidity when we suppose that the more likely remedy [to sin] lies in fleeing from God rather than in returning to God. Unfortunately, our sinful nature cannot return to God.”15 Despite that, [God] “wants humanity to aspire to regain the lost image of God and to begin to hate sin more as the cause of this great evil, and God further wants Adam to admonish his descendants regarding what followed after sin; namely, that after being demented by Satan and having believed that he would be like God, he became like the Satan himself.”16 Whether calling everything into being or calling his creatures out of their self-inflicted selfdestruction, God’s nature is reflected in his calling, his continual calling because only God’s word can create and recreate.

Although they were called before God for judgment, Adam and Eve watched as the serpent was condemned and cursed, and they instead were comforted by God’s promise of the forthcoming “seed of the woman,” namely the Son of God, who in due course would prevail against the serpent and sin. “Thus, remission of sins and full reception in grace are shown here to Adam and Eve as absolution from guilt and redemption from death, as liberation now from hell and from those fears by which they were nearly slain at God’s appearance.”17 The “seed of the woman,” a descendant of Adam and Eve, would not only crush the head of serpent under foot but would also enlist Adam and Eve in this battle against God’s enemies. The

promised victory of the future Christ provided Adam and Eve with consolation in the present and also with the hope that they too would overcome death and be raised to eternal life on the last day.18 Thus, for Luther, the “good news” regarding the faith-creating gospel of Christ was readily in the world before humanity’s first parents could really grasp the gravity of their self-induced sin.19

Being called to this hope by the word of God, Adam and Eve as pious parents, in turn, became preachers (concionatos) who often and much told their children about the will and worship of God, about paradise and their calamitous fall into sin, and about the continual need to guard against such sin. More importantly, they would have also taught their children about the promise of the “seed of the woman” and about the promised future liberation from the calamities of sin.20 Luther concludes, “Adam and Eve are not only parents, nor do they simply rear their children and prepare them for this present life, but in fact they also perform the office of priests (Sacerdotum officio). Because they are filled with the Holy Spirit and because they are illuminated by the knowledge of Christ’s coming, they impart to their children the very hope of a future liberation and encourage them to offer gratitude to such a merciful God.”21 As priestly parents, Adam and Eve were called to preach both law and gospel to their children.

Luther concludes, “Adam and Eve are not only parents, nor do they simply rear their children and prepare them for this present life, but in fact they also perform the office of priests (Sacerdotum officio).”

Such good and pious teaching gains two kinds of hearers

who give rise to a twofold church (gemina ecclesia). The true church is modeled after Abel, and the impious, hypocritical church follows in Cain’s footsteps. Cain’s church imitates the world, does not believe God’s promises, and is, according to Luther, embodied in the papacy. Conversely, despite being powerless, cast down, and even deprived of the name “church,” Abel’s ecclesia is nonetheless pious and believes God’s word. Not surprisingly, Luther considers Abel’s church manifest in the Wittenberg Reformers’ efforts.22

In Luther’s view, the gospel of the promised “seed of the woman” is borne by as many patriarch-priests as God deems necessary to propagate a viable witness to his promise,23 no matter how insignificant such priests appear in the world’s eyes. After Abel’s death, Seth and his son Enos and others became priests.24 Enoch was a chief prophet and priest who had six patriarchs for teachers.25 “Moses” (as the author of Genesis) describes Noah as “a supreme pontiff and priest, whom Peter calls (vocat) a ‘herald of righteousness.’”26 In contrast to the continued ungodliness and idolatry of the world even after the flood, Luther cites Abraham as embracing and honoring Noah’s son, Shem, not only “as the only minister or priest of the true God,”27 but also as a supreme pontiff, greater than the Roman pontiff.28 Foreshadowing the arrival of the “seed of the woman,” Luther maintains that Shem is none other than Melchizedek, the king of Salem. By virtue of holding a twofold office (munus) of king and priest29 and by being interpreted according to Hebrews as existing “without beginning or end,” Shem/Melchizedek serves as “a prototype of our priest, Christ, who is an eternal priest.”30

After the flood, ...Noah with his son Shem and his descendants governed the church. This is to make evident that our article of faith is true, that we believe in one, holy, catholic church in all ages, from the beginning of the world until the end of the world. ... So, the descendants of Shem have been heirs of the promise concerning Christ, whom God wanted preserved and defended in order that persons might exist with whom the church or the word might be found. For these cannot be separated: where the word is, there is the church, there is the Spirit, there is Christ, and everything... The fathers had a carnal succession just like later there was a carnal succession in the priesthood. However, Christ has not begotten sons in a carnal way. Accordingly, the church is hardly bound only to a place or to persons, but is there where the word is. Where the word is not, even if titles and office are there, the church is not there because God is not there.31

The Calling of

Abraham

Perhaps the most theologically concise account in Genesis of what Lutherans cherish as justification by grace alone through faith alone takes place in the calling of Abraham. Like his father, Terah, Abraham served other gods, was thus an idolater, and merited not only reproof but also death and

The Calling of Abraham

eternal damnation. Nonetheless “[God] has called (evocavit) him out of that impious church into another place.”32 “This granting of favor, that is, being liberated from idolatry, is not of one’s own merits or strength but solely of God’s mercy and calling (vocantis).”33 For “the Lord does not cast [Abraham] aside in this misery, but he calls (vocat) [Abraham], and through the call (vocationem) makes everything out of him who is nothing (nihil).34 “Thus, Abraham is ... nothing but material which the divine majesty through the word calls (evocat), grasps, and forms into a new human being and into a patriarch. Such is the universal rule that man of himself is nothing, is capable of nothing, and has nothing except sin, death, and damnation, but almighty God through his mercy makes it so that he is something and is liberated from sin, death, and damnation through Christ, the blessed seed.”35 God, whose word calls everything into being and reenacts the same when he calls sinners to repentance, forgiveness, and the priesthood, also calls redeemed and recreated sinners to particular offices. The term “office” is derived from officium in Latin and refers to a duty, obligation, or service (not to a room in a building). The corresponding term in German is Amt. For Luther, all offices are divinely instituted by God’s word. As indicated above, Adam and Eve perform the office of priests. With the word of God, the Holy Spirit exercises his office (officium) to accuse the world of sin and to recall (recovet) it to repentance and recognition of its fault (vitium).36 As already indicated, the Spirit of God officiates and administers the word of God through his saints. As such, Noah was “a faithful minister of the word (verbi minister) and thus an instrument

(organum) of the Holy Spirit.”37 Consequently, the word of God when proclaimed (pronunciatur) by a human being is truly God’s word.38 As a priest, Noah functioned in the office/duty (munus) of bishop.39 Likewise, Abraham was chosen by God to be a bishop.40 Luther quips, “Here, now, ask our pontiffs and bishops, ‘Who anointed Abraham that he should exercise his pontifical office (Pontificale officium) among his people?’”41

In Luther’s view, exercising the office of God’s word is not primarily patterned after patriarchal “ecclesial” use and practice but is founded familially on Adam and Eve as humanity’s first priestly parents. “[God] has firstly entrusted (commendavit) the word to parents... and afterward to the teachers (doctores) in the church.” For the sake of good order, “the minister should teach in the church; the magistrates should govern the state, and parents should rule the home or the household; for these human ministries have been instituted by God ...”42 “Thus, when a government by virtue of its office calls (convocat) fellow citizens into military service to maintain peace and to avert injustice, obedience is shown to God.”43 Conversely, “disobedience towards parents is a manifest sign of imminent curse and calamity, as is contempt for the office of ministry and of civil government.”44 For Luther, God in his two realms reigns over fallen humanity both in the kingdom of the gospel and in the kingdom of the law by calling sinners through his word, mediated through human instruments in

In Luther’s view, exercising the office of God’s word is not primarily patterned after patriarchal “ecclesial” use and practice but is founded familially on Adam and Eve as humanity’s first priestly parents.

those two realms, to serve his creation both individually and corporately in a common priesthood ordained by Christ. Perhaps the preceding paragraphs will cast new light on a familiar text taught to some of us by our parents, namely Luther’s explanation to the third article of the Apostles’ Creed, which reads,

I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church he daily and abundantly forgives all my sins, and the sins of all believers, and on the last day he will raise me and all the dead and will grant eternal life to me and to all who believe in Christ. This is most certainly true.45

All Christians Are Called

The God who called everything into existence out of nothing (vocatio ex nihilo) is the same God who continually calls his fallen creatures back into fellowship with himself. Fallen humanity’s response to that call gives rise to two churches, one which heeds God’s call and one which does not. Both churches have their priests who serve their God or their god(s), respectively, in the offices either to which they are divinely called or to which they have appointed themselves. Those in

the office of proclamation (Predigtamt) who harbor the urge publicly or privately to denigrate their fellow priests in the pews, because they are not “ordained” in some pseudosacramental sense,46 may wish to contemplate whether they, from Luther’s perspective, are in the right church.

Mark D. Menacher, PhD serves as pastor of St. Luke's Lutheran Church, in La Mesa, California.

Endnotes:

1Federal Trade Commission, “Choosing a Vocational School or Certificate Program,” Accessed 15 Aug. 2023, https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/choosingvocational-school-or-certificateprogram#:~:text=Vocational%20schools%20and%20certificate%20programs%20t rain%20students%20for%20skilled%20jobs,employers%20and%20apply%20for% 20jobs

2J. B. Sykes ed., The Concise Oxford Diction of Current English (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1982), 1202.

3Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 12th edition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 69 (hereafter as BSLK).

4Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord - The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 46 (hereafter K-W, BoC), in which the word “[public]” was not only inserted into Article XIV but was then wrongly cited in note 78 as having been part of the 1580 Book of Concord.

5BSLK, 58 note 1, “Luther verstand das Predigtamt nicht klerical.” The note continues that since his treatise “Sermon on Good Works” (WA VI 250ff), Luther considered the divine ordering of society to be equally constituted between the ecclesial, marital, and statutory estates.

6Theodore G. Tappert, ed. and trans., The Book of Concord - The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 31 note 1 (hereafter Tappert, BoC), “This title [‘The Office of the Ministry’] would be misleading if it were not observed (as the text of the article makes clear) that the Reformers thought of the ‘the office of the ministry’ in other than clerical terms.”

7Volker Leppin, “Wie reformatorisch war die Reformation,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 99.2 (June 2002), 174-175.

8D. Martin Luthers Werke - Kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883), 6:406, 21-23-407, 10-28 [hereafter as WA]. Unless otherwise stated, translations are the author’s. Corresponding references to the same where existent are cited from Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols., J. Pelikan and H. Lehmann, eds. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House and Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955), 44:125-127 [hereafter as LW].

9Theodore Tappert, “Directions in Lutheran Losses to Other Communions,” Lutheran Quarterly 14 (2000): 206-208, especially 208.

10The notable exception to this trend is Kristian Baudler, Martin Luther’s Priesthood of All Believers - In an Age of Modern Myth (New York: Oxen Press, 2016), in which Baudler takes Timothy Wengert to task not only as an editor of the K-W, BoC but also for Wengert’s persistent program of what this author calls “laity bashing,” perhaps most prominently displayed in Timothy J. Wengert, Priesthood, Pastors, and Bishops - Public Ministry for the Reformation & Today (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).

11WA 42:13-14, 15, 17 = LW 1:16-17, 19, 22.

12WA 42:17, 16-17 = LW 1:21.

13WA 42:129, 21-23 = LW 1:173.

14WA 42:129, 25-27 = LW 1:173.

15WA 42:129, 39-130, 5 = LW 1:173-174.

16WA 42:166, 27-31 = LW 1:223.

17WA 42:142, 15-18 = LW 1:190.

18WA 42:143, 5-7 = LW 1:191.

19Cf., WA 42:376, 1-41 = LW 2:162-164.

20WA 42:183, 11-24 = LW 1:246.

21WA 42:183, 34-39 = LW 1:247.

22WA 42:184, 1-185, 22; 186:18-187, 41 = LW 1:247-249, 251-253.

23WA 42:423, 28-34 = LW 2:229.

24WA 42:342, 42-343, 1 = LW 2:114.

25WA 42:253, 5-6 = LW 1:344.

26WA 42:271, 8-9 = LW 2:13.

27WA 42:536, 18-19 = LW 2:382.

28WA 42:537, 8-12 = LW 2:383.

29WA 42:536, 28 = LW 2:382.

30WA 42:535, 32-33 = LW 2:381.

31WA 42:423, 20-24; 423, 35-37-424, 1; 424, 3-8 = LW 2:228-229.

32WA 42:436, 30-31 = LW 2:246.

33WA 42:437, 3-4 = LW 2:246.

34WA 42:437, 14-15 = LW 2:246.

35WA 42:437, 31-36 = LW 2:247.

44WA 42:385, 6-7 = LW 2:175.

45Tappert, BoC, 345.

46James M. Kittelson, “Historical and Systematic Theology in the Mirror of Church History: The Lessons of ‘Ordination’ in Sixteenth-Century Saxony,” Church History 71.4 (December 2002), 743-773.

SPECIALIZED MINISTRY: A THEOLOGY OF VOCATION

Mark Ryman

Several years ago, my denomination issued me a certificate stating that I was called to “specialized ministry.” I was not serving as a pastor, but as an employee of Sola Publishing. There, I designed and wrote worship and devotional material, printed books, and dealt with renters, salespeople, and service technicians—to name a few items in the job description in order to serve the educational needs of the church. I also repaired toilets, renovated office space, and washed windows, all under the certification of a call to specialized ministry. Things I did not do were preach, make calls on the sick and homebound, administer sacraments, and many other things one would associate with being called to the ministry. That is, if one considers a calling to be things that pertain only to ordained ministry.

Vocare

So, what should be considered a calling? Knowing the etymology of that word is a good place to begin. Vocare is

the Latin word for “to call.” It is the root of the English word “vocation,” typically meaning one’s main occupation. One may be a pastor or a printer, a teacher or a nurse, a doctor or a mechanic, or a worker in any number of other jobs. But every one of those jobs may also be a vocation—a calling, not just a job. Early on, the Lutheran Confessions speak of “each one’s vocation or calling...These works include a father raising his children, a mother bearing children, a prince governing the commonwealth…”1 Yet, these vocations, or callings in life, “were without honor.”2 They were regarded as beneath the “spiritual life” and “perfect life” of church vocations. At the time of the Lutheran Reformation, these callings were “far below the glittering observances of the Church.”3

Luther on Vocation

Indeed, they may still be regarded as less than dazzling today. This is the very pith of Martin Luther’s teaching on vocation, what he considered to be a priesthood of all believers. Luther’s theology of vocation insists that “our secular occupations among men are faithfully acknowledged to be part of our religious vocation under God.”4 Treated as such, the calling of pastor would be regarded as one of many vocations which God makes holy. God calls others to civic affairs and commerce, to education, medicine, and to vocations in the home. The pastorate particularly, and the church more generally,

Luther’s theology of vocation insists that “our secular occupations among men are faithfully acknowledged to be part of our religious vocation under God.”

is not to lord itself over affairs to which it is not entitled to rule. For instance, God supplies other offices to care for government and home. A pastor should not meddle in the governor’s office, nor the mayor’s. The church should not interfere with the operation of the police department any more than the Chief of Police should tell the church how to worship or support mission. A pastor ought not to interfere with what a parent cooks for breakfast, or what time he or she sends the children go to bed. Those are the functions of specific callings: the godly calling to be an excellent mother or father, the calling to serve and protect the public through law enforcement, or the calling to govern a city—are as valid as the callings to publish or be a pastor. Though some offices, like being parents and children, are holy in themselves, all vocations are hallowed when done for the Lord, and must therefore be performed especially as though it is the Lord who benefits from our service—even though it is our neighbor who is blessed and assisted.

“Fundamental to Luther’s spirituality or way of living in faith is that God does not need our works, but our neighbor does.”

“The care of the neighbor…is the primary vocation of the Christian in the world. Luther thus cultivated a civic piety.”

5

6

This service to neighbor goes to the heart of Luther’s theology of vocation. Our various callings are not for God’s benefit or blessing; they are for our neighbor, whether that is our next-door neighbor, maybe it should be…whether that is our closest neighbor—our family—or someone across the country. My point is that our neighbors are all of these people: the acquaintance down the street, a family member, or even someone who lives far away. Even the work of pastor or

missionary is not for God’s benefit. They work for the good of the congregation and community, not for God’s advantage. God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”7

Paul’s Epistles

The Apostle Paul speaks to vocation in his letter to the Colossians, referencing many different roles in life: husbands, wives, parents, children, slaves, masters — and here he puts the focus instead on our service to God. No matter the call, we are to respond as ministers or servants, “with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”8 No matter the task, we serve the Lord. Husbands are serving the Lord, as are wives. Parents and children alike are called to godly vocations. Those in authority, as well as those who are to follow their orders may discharge their duties “as unto the Lord.”9

All Christians should do their work as though God were their master, for indeed, he is. And if God is over all we do, how would our work, no matter how menial, be anything but a holy office?

My work at Sola Publishing was every bit as much a holy vocation as is my current call to be a pastor.10 Our parents’ callings to be moms and dads are the first level of authority

St. Paul

under God, and should be treated as hallowed responsibilities unto him. Parents have “the highest office in the creation.”11 Yet, we may easily enough see that even these vocations “work together for good, for those who are called according to [God’s] purpose.”12 This is one reason we are a kingdom of priests13 with various responsibilities.

Woe to the poor priests or pastors who think the church functions because of their office. Let them keep the books, take out the trash, clean the floors and toilets, prepare the letters, emails, newsletters, bulletins, answer the phone, all while playing the organ, singing the anthem, arranging the Lord’s table, and receiving the offering. Then they may begin to see that God has called many to serve. “All Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office.”14 The church is one body and that body…

…does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of

you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?15

The Pastor is Not Called to Do It All

The pastor is not only unable do it all, the pastor is not called to do it all. More importantly, the pastor should not think, in light of Paul’s teaching above, that his calling is a higher calling. From the apostle’s epistle, we see that the opposite should be the attitude of those with so-called greater gifts and graces.16 For “whoever

The pastor is not only unable do it all, the pastor is not called to do it all.

would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”17 “Serving the Lord’s kingdom is a privilege and labor of love, not something undertaken to gain a reward. When we begin to think that God’s kingdom needs or depends on us, we get it completely backward.”18 Even if the reward we expect is to be revered by those we are to be serving, we will eventually find our desire frustrated, as the last will be first, and the first last.”19

The Priesthood of All Believers

Every Christian is called to the priesthood, no matter his or her occupation. “Baptism, gospel, and faith alone make us spiritual and a Christian people… We are all consecrated priests through baptism.”20 Let us put a sharper point on it. Luther teaches: “That is why in cases of necessity anyone can baptize and give absolution. This would be impossible if we were not all priests.”21

He goes on to say: “Since those who exercise secular authority have been baptized with the same baptism, and have the same faith and the same gospel as the rest of us, we must admit that they are priests and bishops and we must regard their office as one which has a proper and useful place in the Christian community. For whoever comes out of the water of baptism can boast that he is already a consecrated priest, bishop, and pope…”22 Yet, not all should regularly practice the office. Though all Christians are priests, God only

gave some to be pastors, as mentioned above. Though all Christians may baptize and absolve and preach and minister when necessity dictates, God has only given “some, apostles, and some, prophets, and some, evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers.”23

“It follows from this argument that there is no true, basic difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, between religious and secular, except for the sake of office and work, but not for the sake of status. They are all of the spiritual estate; all are truly priests, bishops, and popes. But they do not all have the same work to do.”24 There is no fundamental difference of status between a mother and a pastor, a father and a pope, a teacher and a bishop. There is no difference between me being called to the office of ordained ministry or to a publisher’s office. We are all priests; we have only been called to different jobs. “Therefore, just as those who are now called ‘spiritual,’ that is, priests, bishops, or popes, are neither different from other Christians nor superior to them, except that they are charged with the administration of the Word of God and the sacraments, which is their work and office.”25

Regardless of this office of Word and Sacrament, there is not a special priesthood or caste which alone handles the Holy Scriptures. A congregation must have many teachers,26 called to

they

Therefore, just as those who are now called ‘spiritual,’ that is, priests, bishops, or popes, are neither different from other Christians nor superior to them, except that

are charged with the administratio n of the Word of God and the sacraments, which is their work and office.

rightly analyze the word of truth.27 Parents, pedagogues, politicians, publishers, and pastors alike are to “let the word of Christ dwell in [them] richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom”28 for it is clear enough that, like the keys, Scripture too was not given to Peter alone, as some say, but to the whole communion of saints.29 “If we are all priests, as was said above, and all have one faith, one gospel, one sacrament,30 why should we not also have the power to test and judge what is right or wrong in matters of faith?”31

Furthermore, if there is a true student of the scriptures, or perhaps a professor of theology in the pews, why would the church want that person to be silent? Would we not want to hear from one so graced by God? The point is that the priesthood is not for an ordained few; and we are coming to a point in American churches when this will become good news. It seems that pastors are now more difficult to procure than organists. Let the other priests who are able to rightly divide the Word have a go at teaching and preaching. “It is the duty of every Christian to espouse the cause of the faith, to understand and defend it, and to denounce every error.”32

This is what Peter says when he exhorts us about “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”33 This is the job of a priest. Yes, and of schoolteachers, plumbers, parents, engineers, grocers, and those Christians in any other vocation.

No One is Better than Another

No one is better than another, though in Luther’s day, this was

certainly not the case in the church that he prayed would be reformed. Luther insisted to the nobility that…

“the kissing of the pope’s feet should cease. It is an un-Christian, indeed, an anti-Christian thing for a poor sinful man to let his feet be kissed by one who is a hundred times better than himself. If it is done in honor of his authority, why does the pope not do the same to others in honor of their holiness? Compare them with each other—Christ and the pope. Christ washed his disciples’ feet and dried them but the disciples never washed his feet (John 13:4–16). The pope, as though he were higher than Christ, turns that about, and allows his feet to be kissed as a great favor. Though properly, if anyone wanted to do so, the pope ought to use all his power to prevent it, as did St. Paul and Barnabas, who would not let the people of Lystra pay them divine honor, but said, ‘We are men like you’ (Acts 14:15).”34

“We are men like you,” said two of the greatest leaders of the Church of Christ. Would we dare to disagree with them? Would we set ourselves up as higher or better than those whom we are called to serve? This can happen when we allow ourselves to think of vocation as a calling from God separate from the rest of life, above the lives of others. This does not

Jesus Washing His Disciples’ Feet

mean that we think simply of vocation as being one’s occupation. It is, of course that, but it is much more than a job for the Christian. Vocation is doing whatever one’s work may be, but “as unto the Lord.” As such, vocation incorporates the whole of the Christian life, everything from baptism to parousia. 35 Christian vocation comes to pass whenever one takes up his cross and follows Christ. Indeed, Christian vocation is denying oneself and taking up his cross and following Christ Jesus.36 Christian vocation is living Jesus’ call to discipleship. This call is recognized when one reads Luther’s “Table of Duties,”37 included in later editions of Luther’s Small Catechism.38 This may give you some inkling as to the importance Luther gave to the priesthood of all believers in his theology of vocation.

Listed in the table are bishops, pastors, and teachers of the Word. We have no difficulty in naming these as offices, vocations, and callings. Nor did they have any difficulty in doing so in Luther’s day; these were the only holy vocations. This is one reason he delineated his theology of vocation in To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation: all members of the Church of Rome had been indoctrinated with this high view of clergy.

On down the line in the table, come magistrates, perhaps more simply understood as those who have civil power over us. Who gave them that power, a power that even pastors must obey? “There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.”39 If the civil authorities

Luther’s Small Catechism

perform their duties as unto the Lord, theirs is not merely an occupation but a vocation—an institution of God.

What of other laborers? “The Table of Duties” includes them too. “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men; knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. Eph. 6:5–8.”40 The key phrase in these verses is “doing service, as to the Lord.” Whatever your labor may be, do it as though you are doing it for the Lord. How can such work not be considered a holy vocation? Further, God is commanding all workers, through the apostle’s exhortation, to be “servants of Christ.” A more literal translation of “servants” or “bondservants” in Ephesians 6:6 is “slaves.” In other words, all that we do is to be performed with the single-mindedness of a slave. They are only working for their Lord. Sounds like what we would expect of a pastor, a bishop, the pope. Exactly. But Christians are the Lord’s servants or slaves. We are to work as unto him, no matter what specialized occupation we may have. Who you work for is what makes the occupation a vocation—a calling.

As I said at the beginning of this essay, my denomination issued me a certificate that declared I was called to “specialized ministry” at Sola Publishing. Sadly, they do not hand out certificates for other vital Christian ministries: those of parent, child, teacher, nurse, secretary, or farmer, to name

but a few. Each of these vocations has a different function, specific to the work, but they are to be done especially as unto the Lord.

Rev. Mark Ryman is married to Susan. He is pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Salisbury, NC, and is happy to have received the D.Min. from St. Paul Lutheran Seminary.

Endnotes:

1Paul Timothy McCain, editor, Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House), 2005, 51.

2Ibid., 51.

3Ibid., 51.

4Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 44: The Christian in Society I, edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, et al. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999, xv.

5Martin Luther, Luther’s Spirituality, edited by Philip D. W. Krey, et al., translated by Peter D. S. Krey and Philip D. W. Krey, (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007, 34.

6Ibid., 34.

7Ac 17:25, The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Bibles, 2016.

8Ibid., 34; Col 3:22–24. 9Col. 3:23, American Standard Version. Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995..

10I have a church certificate that says so!

11James A Nestingen, Free to Be. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Press,1975), 28.

12Ro 8:28 (ESV).

13Ref, Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:5, 9; Revelation 1:6, 5:10, 20:6

14Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 44: The Christian in Society I, 127.

151 Co 12:14–30 (ESV).

161 Co 12:31 (ESV)

17Mt 20:26–28 (ESV)

18Edward A. Engelbrecht, The Lutheran Study Bible (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009),1625.

19Mt 20:16 (ESV)

20Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 44: The Christian in Society I, 127.

21Ibid., 128.

22Ibid., 29.

23Eph 4:11, The Holy Bible: King James Version. Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009..

24Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 44: The Christian in Society I, 129.

25Ibid.,130.

262 Ti 2:2 (ESV)

272 Ti 2:15 (ESV)

28Col 3:16 (ESV)

29Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 44: The Christian in Society I, 134.

30Here Luther means Holy Baptism, re. Ephesians 4:5-6.

31Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 44: The Christian in Society I, 135.

32Ibid., 136.

331 Pe 3:15 (ESV)

34Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 44: The Christian in Society I, 168.

35Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, translated by Carl C. Rasmussen, (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004),250.

36Mt 16:24 (ESV).

37Martin Luther, Luther’s Small Catechism, with Proof-Texts, Additions and Appendices: For the Use of Church, School and Family (The Lutheran Bookstore, 1882), 28–31.

38Luther’s earliest edition of the Small Catechism did not include the Office of the Keys either.

39Ro 13:1 (ESV)

40Martin Luther, Luther’s Small Catechism, with Proof-Texts, Additions and Appendices: For the Use of Church, School and Family, 30.

A CONGREGATIONAL ACTION PLAN FOR THE DOCTRINE OF VOCATION

Brad Hales

“I just can’t do this job any longer. I’m tired, burnt out, and I don’t want to continue in this work.” These were the words I heard from a middle-aged man a couple of years ago as I visited with him in his home. Because of his frustration with his company’s leadership, work conditions, travel time, and those he had to supervise, work for him was drudgery and had become deflating.

As we sat around his dining room table, I asked him to consider having a different approach toward his career. Instead of thinking of his employment as a way to make “ends meet,” I suggested that he begin to look at it as a “ministry,” an occupation not filled with disappointment, but instead an opportunity to touch lives.

A few months later I received a message from this gentleman, and it was refreshing. As he began to look at his work as ministry, his attitude changed. He was happier with

himself, those whom he worked with, and the customers who entered the store. While our culture may look at work as a way to pay the bills or get ahead, Christians are called to have a different perspective. Because it is in our vocations and the relationships and encounters that we make in those occupations which allow us to live for Jesus, share Jesus, and make disciples for Jesus.

Scriptural References on Vocation

Holy Scripture is filled with references about vocation and about the priesthood of all believers. In I Peter 2:9 it is written, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”1 When the Hebrews were in Sinai, the Lord extolled Moses to share His words with the people, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel” (Exodus 19-5-6). And in Revelation 1:5-6, John tells us that Christ himself has made us God’s priests. It reads, “and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings

It is in our vocations and the relationships and encounters that we make in those occupations, which allow us to live for Jesus, share Jesus, and make disciples for Jesus.

on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.” We are called to be God’s priests in the world to share Jesus with others.

The theme of vocation, or call, was emphasized by Luther during the Reformation. While the Roman Church continued to elevate the significance of “spiritual vocations” as being closer to God, Luther vehemently defended the ordinary stations of daily life in which individuals could gladly serve others in faith. In his book, The Christian’s Calling, Donald Heiges echoes Luther’s sentiments as he writes, “Out of gratitude and love, insisted Luther, Christians will gladly serve others in whatever situation they find themselves, and with absolutely no expectation of reward either from God or humanity. Only a person liberated by Christ can afford to live like that. And such a person can afford it because in Christ he or she has everything needed for time and eternity. Persons liberated by Christ can forget about merit and can concentrate upon others’ needs.”2

Through being justified by faith and not by works, we can freely serve our neighbors in whatever the Lord has called and equipped us to do. In his article, “Martin Luther and the Doctrine of Vocation - A Matter of Discipleship,” Derek Brown writes, “Luther’s redefinition of good works enabled the

believer to see that any work conducted in faith was an opportunity to reflect his Creator and love his neighbor. A mother provides food, clothing, and a well-kept home for her closest neighbors—her children and husband. The cobbler provides quality footwear to his customers and a reasonable living to anyone he might employ. The farmer supplies food for the greater community. The blacksmith forges tools that will enable his neighbor to work efficiently and effectively. The pastor provides spiritual sustenance for the men and women in his congregation. In every case, the Christian is exercising dominion in their specific calling and serving their neighbor. Such work, when conducted ‘in faith, in joy of heart, in obedience and gratitude to God’ is pleasing to the Lord.”3

And the beauty is, we can share our love for Christ with people in all kinds of vocations. Whether it’s with a family member, a person in a specific vocation we are doing business with, or a random encounter with someone in our community, there is always that opportunity to share Jesus with others. I once had a church member who was a lab technician in a hospital. During her lunch break, she would go into the break room and start reading her Bible. The interactions she had by just opening the scriptures were astounding.

The many hours we spend at work provide us with countless contacts where we can then make Christ known to others. In his book God at Work, Gene Veith writes,

Furthermore, it is in vocation that evangelism can most effectively happen. How can non-Christians be reached by the Gospel? By definition, they are unlikely to come to

church. Perhaps, an evangelist might knock on doors, but these days they may never let him in. But in the workplace, non-Christians and Christians work together and get to know each other. Occasions for witnessing and inviting a colleague to church come up in natural ways―over the watercooler or during a coffee break, discussing a disaster or a failing marriage, or in times of joy such as the birth of a child. Christians penetrating their world in vocations have access to more nonbelievers than a pastor does.”4

It is clear that the ministry of Jesus happens through our various calls, as the Holy Spirit is constantly working in us to serve and communicate the Good News. Paul writes in II Thessalonians 1:11-12, “With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

As vocation, the priesthood of all believers is a central aspect of Lutheran theology. How can this construct be implemented at the congregational level? How can the church train and equip the saints for outreach and disciple-making in their relationships and careers? It begins with discerning the call, identifying gifts, equipping for ministry, and focusing on vocational discipleship.

How can the church train and equip the saints for outreach and disciplemaking in their relationships and careers? It begins with discerning the call, identifying gifts, equipping for ministry, and focusing on vocational discipleship.

Discerning The Call

Paul writes in Ephesians 4:1-3, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Not long ago I was meeting with an individual who didn’t know what kind of career he wanted to pursue. He had worked in various jobs, but at present, he was again searching for God’s plan for his life. As we began to talk about potential occupations, he shared his anxiety and concern over what might be the most meaningful employment for him. “How do I know what God wants me to do?”

I believe that one of the roles of the church is to help people to discern what the Holy Spirit is calling them to do in their earthly work lives. We do this by taking the time to visit with someone, we pray for the Lord’s guidance, and then we identify his or her passions and abilities. We discuss the differing career opportunities, knowing that it’s the Savior ultimately calling, and that He is using these vocations to serve Him by serving others. Veith writes, “The doctrine of vocation, though it has to do with human work, is essentially about God’s work and how God works in and through our lives. Finding our vocations is not just ‘finding my lifework,’ nor even ‘finding what God wants me to do.’ Though these things may be part of the vocational cross we have to struggle with, finding our vocation is largely a matter of finding where God is, the God who hides Himself in our neighbors, in ourselves,

and in His world. Once we notice the Hidden God and realize how He is at work in the workplace, families, the community, and the church—and when we realize the part we play in His design—we have found our vocation.”5

Identifying Gifts

I once knew a woman who had been an administrative assistant in her early career. After her children were born, she was a stay-at-home mom. But after they entered school, and looking for something to do, she decided make herself available for substitute teaching. Even though she didn’t believe she did, others saw that this woman had definite gifts for teaching. The administrator of the small Christian school offered her a position to teach kindergarten. Hesitantly, and with a lack of confidence, she decided to move forward with the job. It was the best decision of her life. She loved being an educator so much, that she felt called to finish her undergraduate degree in elementary education, obtain her state teaching license, and now teaches at a public school. It all started with others identifying the gifts that she possessed.

The local church has the unique opportunity to assist believers in identifying their vocational talents for ministry. In I Peter 4:10 it is written, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace.” Whether its I Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, or Romans 12,

Gene Veith

Scripture reveals the various gifts that the Holy Spirit uses for sharing Jesus, and for building up the body of Christ. The congregation can help people to find and understand their giftedness through inventories, personal intakes, by defining their interests, and through preaching/teaching. According to Veith, “Such is the plentitude of God’s creation that no two people―or snowflakes or leaves or anything God has made are exactly alike. Vocations are unique, with no two people taking up exactly the same space in the family, the nation, the church, or the workplace. Finding your vocation, then, has to do, in part, with finding your God-given talents (what you can do) and your God-given personality (what fits the person you are).”

Equipping

Take the example of a typical Thursday afternoon meeting at my church. There are two members of my congregation who meet at the church each week studying the scriptures, reading other theological books, looking at the events of the world, talking about their health, families, and supporting each other in their active, service-driven retirements. I like to call their meetings the “equipping hour.” The Holy Spirit is always using the church to help equip the saints for the ministry of Christ.

In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul writes about the church’s responsibility to equip, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the

body of Christ.” So, how can the local parish equip its members in a tangible way? Well first, we teach them the Word of God. Paul writes in Il Timothy 3:16-17 that, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Whether it’s within a small group, a retreat format, or just when a few people gather together, reading, studying, and memorizing the Holy Scriptures goes a long way in equipping us to live out our vocations.

Second, the church equips us in worship through Word and Sacrament. It’s in worship that the Triune God is praised. It’s in worship where we are offered forgiveness by the spoken and physical Word (Holy Communion). And it’s in worship where we hear the Scriptures read and preached. Hebrews 10:23-25 tells us, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” On many occasions I have referred to the church as a “spiritual refueling station.” During the service, we are filled by the Spirit not to stay confined within the four walls of the worship space, but to go out into the world being Christ(s) to our neighbors.

Whether it’s within a small group, a retreat format, or just when a few people gather together, reading, studying, and memorizing the Holy Scriptures goes a long way in equipping us to live out our vocations.

Third, the Body equips by teaching others how to pray.

Philippians 4:6 states, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” One of the main things that we try to continually teach and model in my congregation is how to pray for people ―not after the fact, but as we encounter them. Whether it be on the phone, in a parking lot, at a business meeting or even in the church building, providing someone with the tools and confidence to pray for another person right then and there not only demonstrates concern, but it is also shares Jesus in an extremely powerful way.

Fourth, the local faith community equips by encouraging fellow believers to serve. In John 13: 13-15, after Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, he tells them, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so am I. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.” We serve, because Christ served. Serving God means serving and loving others. I know it is easy to promote this kind of service solely within the church. But when we encourage service outside of the church walls, it provides members with an opportunity for encounters with non-believers who may never enter a church.

In the community where I pastor, several of the church members serve at the local food closet. Some unload the food off the truck. Others organize cans on the shelves. Some fill the grocery bags and hand them to the clients. But no matter how they serve, their work at the food closet allows them to make connections with people that they might never have come into contact with. And it’s through this care of neighbors that Christ becomes real and tangible.

Fifth, the church equips by helping believers share their

faith. As Acts 1:8 tells us, “ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” This may be one of the hardest things to do. Because of shyness, fear of rejection or thinking that he or she will say the wrong things, the average Christian is sometimes reluctant in proclaiming their belief in the Lord, especially with those who have ambivalent feelings toward God. While there are different ways to teach people how to share the faith, one that has always worked well in my experience is asking individuals at the beginning of the worship service if they have any praise or thanksgiving reports on how Jesus has been involved in their lives. This is what we call the “Praise Report.” We encourage members to share these accounts with the congregation, as this is usually a safe and supportive place where members can speak openly.

Discerning the call, identifying our gifts and then equipping the saints prepares us for true Vocational Discipleship.

Discerning the call, identifying our gifts and then equipping the saints prepares us for true Vocational Discipleship. Through our vocations we strive to live for Christ and make disciples for Jesus. And it is through our careers and relationships that we are able to connect others with the Savior. Active discipleship is not taught in a classroom. It is lived, it is modeled, and it is exemplified in our daily living with those we encounter.

There is an individual in my church who has one of the most difficult jobs. She works as a customer services representative at Walmart. Daily, this woman gets questions, complaints, demands, and even verbal attacks. But as a person

of faith, she perseveres with kindness, a smile, and she has the ability to deescalate. Even in the most tedious of work situations, a disciple is able to emulate the Master by serving others.

In Hebrews 13:20-21 it is written, “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us[that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.” Through our baptisms, we have been ordained by God to be his priests in the world. This is done through our vocations - work, relationships, and encounters.

While the world may see a job as something that swallows up hours and creates misery, just to meet our financial obligations, that is not God’s intention. He blesses us with vocations so we can experience joy in these occupations, but also so that we might gain intentional paths where Jesus is made real in the lives of our co-workers, friends, family members, and acquaintances. If we look at work as a drag, it will be like the words in Ecclesiastes 2:22-23, “What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.” Instead, let us follow Paul’s words in I Corinthians 7:17, “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.”

Today, the church is being provided an exceptional avenue

in encouraging the vocations and calls of the saints. Because it is within these very vocations, on a daily basis, that disciples are made, and neighbors are being served. In all of our vocations, we are indeed Christ’s priests in the world, lifting up the name of Jesus.

Rev. Brad Hales is Pastor of Reformation Lutheran Church in Culpeper, VA and is Director of Church Planting & Aging Ministry for the North American Lutheran Church.

Endnotes:

1Holy Bible, English Standard Version. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Bibles, 2008). The English Standard Version will be used throughout this article.

2Donald Heiges, The Christian’s Calling (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 46.

3Derek J. Brown “Martin Luther and the Doctrine of Vocation: A Matter of Discipleship,” Credo vol. 7 no. 1 (May 8, 2018), Volume 7, Issue 1, accessed at https://credomag.com/article/martin-luther-and-the-doctrine-of-vocation/

4Gene Veith, God at Work (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2011), 67-68.

5Ibid., 59-60.

6Ibid., 52-53.

FORGIVENESS OF SINS MAKES VOCATIONS HOLY

Marney Fritts

The chief doctrine of the church, that “we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28) is summarized in the Augsburg Confession,1 the Apology,2 and Luther’s Smalcald Articles,3 and is based on holy scripture. This chief doctrine then spawned the second most important doctrine of the Reformation, Luther’s teaching on vocation. Not only does the gospel need to go out to all the world for the justification of the ungodly through Christ alone apart from works of the law, but the doctrine of vocation desperately needs to be taught, chiefly among all who are Christians. We need continual reorientation to the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit who make us holy in and for our vocations, rather than by the works of our vocations. With the proper teaching and the subsequent preaching, we are daily raised to new life in Christ, trusting that it is not our particular vocations and what we do in them that make us Christian and holy, but that having first been made Christian and holy through the forgiveness of sins, God makes these vocations holy.

Beruf/Vocatio

The locus classicus for the doctrine of vocation is Gustaf Wingren’s dissertation, Luther on Vocation,4 with its encyclopedic coverage of Luther’s teaching. Modern day scholars, such as James Nestingen, Oswald Bayer, Gene Edward Veith, and Karlfried Froehlich regularly defer to Wingren. In Wingren’s work, he points out that, “Luther does not use Beruf or vocatio in reference to the work of a non-Christian. All have station (Stand) and office; but Beruf is the Christian’s earthly or spiritual work.”5 Luther’s definition comes from his interpretation of the Greek term, klēsis, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 7:20, “Each should remain in the condition in which he was called,” as calling, or Beruf/vocatio. In several other locations, such as Romans 11:29, “the gifts and call (klēsis) of God are irrevocable,” and “Consider your call (klēsis), brothers and sisters; not many of you were wise by human standards” (1 Corinthians 1:26). Luther understands the “call” to be that of the Holy Spirit to faith in Christ, as he summarizes in the third article of the Creed in his Small Catechism. While the term was translated to mean either the call to faith in Christ by the Holy Spirit or the call to Beruf/vocatio, “Luther translated klēsis (1 Corinthians 7:20) here as Beruf,”6 the calling to a vocation.

Down-to Earth Vocations, Not Ascending Monastics

As may be well-known, but bears clear and strong repeating, Luther’s teaching on vocation revolutionized the so-called “religious orders” and the everyday lives of Christians. His interpretation of scripture and its distinction between justification by faith alone apart from deeds of the law and the vocations of everyday life, was a bold attack on the status quo of the “religious vocations” of the monastery and the nunnery. Until Luther’s confrontation with the Church, vocation was solely referencing religious orders of monks and nuns. In the orders, the candidates commonly took vows to poverty, chastity, and obedience.

There are plenty of commendable deeds for which the monks, nuns, and friars were known and praised. One considers their care for the poor and the sick, their prolific writings, copying, and translation of texts, and their preaching and teaching. There is, however, an overt asceticism within monasticism which begs the question of the denial of creation, particularly of the body and it’s needs as well as the earthly relationships into which people are called. Additionally, although Paul observes that the call to chastity comes from God, it is a rare gift (1 Corinthians 7:7), there is no scriptural demand for the ascetic life of the monastery for God to accomplish these good deeds. Quite the opposite, and Luther began to recognize this. Since the Garden of Eden, God established the spiritual orders on earth of Church and marriage, followed later by government, in order to produce the good deeds needed through ordinary people performing

everyday activities in their vocations.7

In monasticism, there was an abandoning of the earthly calling of marriage, family, and the government, with each of their mundane and sometimes offensive minutia, for an artificial, self-chosen righteousness. Commoners, on the other hand, could not take up such vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, because they were beset with the demands of family life and work. Inevitably, there became a two-tiered class system within Christianity: the higher, truly spiritual monastics and the lower, soiled commoners; those who kept the demands of the vows and yellow-bellied sinners; the holy and the worldly; the higher-priestly class and lower-class of peasant Christians. The perception was that monastic life was for those who were serious about being a Christian and the common life was for those who couldn’t keep pace with the spiritual elites.

Ascending the Glorious Escalator of Monastic Discipleship

From the time of Constantine to medieval times and beyond, there was an overt and clear division in society between the religious elite and the vast majority of common folk. Similarly, in our time, there is frequent discussion about the supposed difference between a baptized Christian and a true disciple of Christ—an artificial and dangerous distinction.

In monasticism, there was an abandoning of the earthly calling of marriage, family, and the government, with each of their mundane and sometimes offensive minutia, for an artificial, selfchosen righteousness.

Although we have had five-hundred years of the Reformation teaching which has revolutionized the preaching of the justification of the ungodly apart from their deeds, freeing people into the holy and down-to-earth vocations God calls each of us, there still seems to be the dregs of a monastic hang-over in everyday life of those who call themselves Christian. In monastic discipleship one is tempted to ascend an imaginary, glorious, heaven-bound escalator. Where there is the artificial distinction made between being a Christian and a true disciple of Christ, discipleship begins to sound like a new form of monastic holy orders. Christians are merely baptized, but if you are serious and want to be a true disciple of Christ, there are some spiritual practices for you to engage in, small group programs to participate in, seasonal devotions to consume, and Bible studies, Sunday school, and Vacation Bible School for you to lead. There is an inversion that has occurred because none of these activities makes a disciple, but rather having first been made a disciple through baptism in Christ Jesus, one spontaneously begins to produce all sorts of good works.

These activities are deceptive because for the world and the old Adam and Eve in us they appear to be draped with a Christian veneer. This veneer becomes seductive to the old Adam who, bit by bit, comes to believe that the more she does, the more of a Christian she is than on the day she was baptized. Little by little, she believes she is ascending the glorious escalator up and out of creation, out from under the cross of her vocations to heaven. She dismisses the actual person God places in front of her in her vocation and turns

toward a different, self-chosen “cross,” or perceived higher calling. In fact, she has usurped the office of the Holy Spirit and has called herself and made an idol of her new, self-chosen acts of love. She is a higher class of Christian, a disciple of Christ, by her deeds. Slowly, we come to believe we are not a fully formed Christian until we have done such things. One recalls Jesus’ rebuke to his disciples that once they had done all that was commanded, to say that they were but unworthy servants (Luke 17:10).

So, rather imperceptibly, we fall into the precise theology of Roman Catholicism that Luther ferociously worked to topple: fides charitate formata, faith is formed by love. Luther writes, “The falsification or corruption of the Gospel is this, that we are justified by faith but not without works of the Law.”8 Our vocations are the fruit of justification, but they are not a part of our justification. We do not become more of a Christian by self-chosen acts of love, but by faith clinging to and filled by Christ and his promises alone. Luther offers the correction to the Roman teaching, “Where they speak of love, we speak of faith. And while they say that faith is the mere outline, but love is its living colors and completion, we say in opposition that faith takes hold of Christ and that he is the form that adorns and informs faith as color does the wall. Therefore, Christian faith is not an idle quality or an empty husk in the heart, which may exist in a state of mortal sin until love comes along to make it alive. But if it is a true faith, it is a sure and firm acceptance in the heart.”9

Gerhard Forde

The problem of monastic discipleship is that the sinner, for all her efforts to seek a higher or better form of devotion to God, has managed to turn herself grossly inward. What I have termed monastic discipleship, Gerhard Forde once called this decadent pietism.10 In our present milieu, we have more or less swapped out, “getting right with God,” with, “I’m not just a Christian, I am a true disciple of Christ,” or “a Jesus follower.” Or worse, the false differentiation, “I’m not just a Lutheran, but a Christian.” But it seems that Christ was hung on the cross precisely because no one followed him. No one wanted to be a disciple at that point. Everyone either fled the scene or wanted him dead.

Gene Edward Veith has similarly observed this theological confusion of justification and vocation which ends up in making discipleship a new religious order. Veith writes,

Today even Protestant Christians have often slipped into the assumption that serving God is a matter of ‘Church work’ or spiritual exercises, such as devotions and Bible studies. Churches set up programs that can take up every night of the week. Some Christians are so busy doing church activities, making evangelism calls or going to Bible studies that they neglect their spouses and children. Some Christians are preoccupied with “the Lord’s work” while letting their marriages fall apart, ignoring the needs of their children, and otherwise sinning against the actual responsibilities to which God has called them. But according to the doctrine of

vocation, the church is the place where Christians meet every week to find the forgiveness of Christ, feed on God’s Word, and grown in their faith. Whereupon they are sent out to their vocations—to their spouse, children, jobs, and culture—for that faith to bear fruit in acts of love.11

In these instances, Christians are lured out of the mundane and often messy duties of their God-given vocations and into allegedly “higher callings” which then “churchify” their lives. If they do not do so, the implication is that they are not true disciples and so they remain low-level Christians. This is perhaps not all that surprising given that we are being put to death in our true vocations and would love nothing more than a “savior” to call us into a “higher” calling where there is no actual dying for the sake of the neighbor.

God’s Forgiveness Alone Makes Vocations Holy

The double-barreled Reformation teaching of justification and vocation broke the two-tiered class system within Christianity. If we are justified by faith alone, apart from deeds of the law, then the monastery and nunneries are not a location of higher, more religious, or holier orders of Christians. If we are justified by Jesus Christ alone with his holy and precious blood and his innocent suffering and death, then the law cannot justify. Likewise, if the Holy Spirit has called me

The doublebarreled Reformation teaching of justification and vocation broke the twotiered class system within Christianity.

through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith—an actual disciple! —then my vocation and what I do in it does not. Luther understood, as did Paul, that we are justified and made holy by the forgiveness of our sins, and, in turn, God has established down-to-earth holy orders called vocations for all Christians without a hierarchy ascending heavenward. This means that this constant talk about discipleship is dangerous. It’s dangerous because the language around being a disciple slips very easily into what “I” am doing to be a disciple of Christ. The danger is falling into the false belief that if I am not doing something “churchy,” then I am not a true disciple. This is why Luther’s down-to-earth theology of vocation is vital to all of Christianity where the distraction of the glorious escalator has crept in.

Making a disciple is God’s working upon us, not our working for the Lord. Scripture is clear that a disciple is made by being baptized (Matthew 28:18), whereby we are made an heir to the kingdom of heaven, right then and there! This constant drumbeat of discipleship, or making disciples, overshadows actually baptizing people, or it turns baptism into a step on the journey toward Jesus. But the direction is backwards. In baptism, Jesus Christ journeys all the way to the individual in water and Word and never leaves, “for we have been united with him” (Romans 6:5). In baptism, we receive the benefits of the forgiveness of sins, deliverance from death and the devil, and everlasting life. These are all God’s activities for us: we are the passive recipients who are raised from death to life.

Furthermore, Jesus urges his followers to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him (Matthew 16:28). Again, the matter of self-denial and being crucified is conspicuously absent from current church programs. It may be that we know that dying to self is tough to market. We may deceive ourselves and others by saying, “well, baptism is just a given.” And we further deceive ourselves that when Jesus says, “take up your cross and follow me,” that we have the capacity within to do what he says. Christ knows that we have an aversion to suffering and death. Therefore, as a result of baptism he calls us into specific vocations, rooted in his creation with particular people he places in front of us. In these vocations, we learn through the school of the Holy Spirit what baptism means for daily living. It means that our old sinful self, with all its evil deeds and desires, should be drowned through daily repentance; and that day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever. “The cross is not something to be sought. When the Word is near, the cross is close at hand; you don’t need to find it, the cross finds you. So, the cross characterizes all vocations, but becomes particularly evident in families.”12 Through these vocations, God reverses the central motive of all our sin (a concupiscence as old as Garden of Eden!) which is to ascend the glorious escalator and be like God. And He does this by utilizing our vocations to make us truly human, vocations that are part of his very own creation, trusting our Father in heaven who has sent his Son, Emmanuel

Adam and Eve

to be here among us until the end of the age.

In order for us to live day after day in our various callings, we rely upon the promises given to us in baptism, particularly the forgiveness of sins. Apart from this forgiveness, we are prone, on the one hand, to turn our vocations into immortality projects and the number of those whom we are called to serve as a scoreboard of our progress. On the other hand, when we are not properly reoriented by the life-giving Word, we, to quote the song, are prone to wander from our mundane, earthly calls and other people whom God chooses for us, to serve for a self-chosen “higher calling.” Either way, we remain in our sin and our vocation is violated.

In Luther’s wedding sermons written in January of 1531, we are given the key for, not only marriage, but for all vocations. To be beneficial, “[marriage] requires belief in the forgiveness of sins, because, as with all other estates of life, marriage is not without sin.”13 Vocations of all kinds are messy with sinners tripping over themselves in things done and left undone. Therefore, we are daily called back to the promises given to us in baptism to hear God speak to us his grace in the absolution. In order for God to speak to us, he sends his preachers to give us his external word of grace (Romans 10:1417). In marriage, the closest preacher of the absolution is the spouse. In the family, the preachers of forgiveness are parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or even the children. In the neighborhood, it’s the next-door neighbor or the mailman.

No one denies that [marriage] is without sin. But is there an estate that is without sin? In that case I would never be able to preach any sermon, no

servant or maidservant could serve, the government could not use the sword, and no nobleman would be able to mount his steed! Not yet, dear sir! We will not be so pure in this life that we will ever do any good work without sin. This article, ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins,’ must stand.14

Luther here is explicitly preaching the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed, teaching the betrothed how it is that they as baptized Christians are made holy and how their marriage is made pure. They are made holy by the Holy Spirit who day after day fully forgives their sins.

Luther here is explicitly preaching the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed, teaching the betrothed how it is that they as baptized Christians are made holy and how their marriage is made pure. They are made holy by the Holy Spirit who day after day fully forgives their sins. This is the Word, the forgiveness of sins of the baptized, which make marriage and any other vocation holy. Notably, no work that a spouse does, no amount of counseling a couple seeks makes a marriage holy. Professional counseling, which is an occupation of the law not gospel, may help to support or stabilize a marriage, between Christians or non-Christians alike, in the lefthand kingdom, but that is not to be confused with making the marriage holy. That comes only through the Holy Spirit speaking the forgiveness of sins through the mouth of sinners. Out of that Word, the Holy Spirit produces an array of good fruit. Luther continues, “But now he says here that God wishes to have this estate endowed with grace. . . Thus, He sets to work to purify this estate with

His Word so that consequently it becomes a divine, holy estate. . . He calls it purified in the sense that God declares it pure by grace and does not impute the sin that is in nature.”15 This is a comforting message for those who are burdened by sin in their marriage, whether by one’s own failings or the failings of their spouse. When God opens his mouth and declares through the voice of the betrothed, “I forgive you on account of Christ,” then the union is made holy once again. On the other hand, this removes the presumption of righteousness in the marital union. While the world and our old selves only see the outward form of righteousness, for a righteous marriage, or any other vocation, the source of righteousness comes from the external preaching of the forgiveness of sins.

It is only God’s word of forgiveness that makes a person righteous and makes the vocations they serve pure and holy. It is this Word which makes a disciple and at the same time, returns us to creation to be of benefit to our neighbors whom God has given us.

What I have purified do not make impure (Acts 10:15). Here what

was

otherwise

impure and forbidden became pure and holy by God’s speaking alone. So, here, too, because God purified this estate with His Word and calls it a chaste, holy estate, we, too, should regard it as pure, yet with the knowledge that this purity does not come from nature but from grace alone, which covers and blots out the natural impurity and sin, just as He does with all original sin in those who are baptized and believe that through the Savior Christ they have forgiveness of sins and

have become children of eternal life. For though this original sin always adheres to and is active in the flesh for as long as we live on earth, yet we who are Christians are called pure and holy because He makes the sign of the cross over us and in addition gives us His Holy Spirit, who begins to do away with sin and always keeps doing so until death. Thus, while we are not without sin, we nevertheless have the judgement of heaven spoken by God’s mouth that we are now pure and holy. Because of that, a beautiful heaven of grace, which is Christ with His purity, righteousness, and holiness, has been spread over us, covered us, and surrounded us, so that we are incorporated into Him through baptism and cling to Him by faith.16

Conclusion

The two great teachings of the Reformation, on justification by faith alone apart from works of the law and vocation, work together to foster a proclamation of the gospel of Christ to the ungodly such that they rely on the benefits of their baptism to make them Christians. And when we are tempted to ascend the glorious escalator, may the Holy Spirit come and speak the Word of absolution to justify us by faith alone, once again. By this forgiveness are vocations made holy.

The two great teachings of the Reformation, on justification by faith alone apart from works of the law and vocation, work together to foster a proclamation of the gospel of Christ to the ungodly such that they rely on the benefits of their baptism to make them Christians.

Marney Fritts teaches systematic theology for Saint Paul Lutheran Seminary and is the pastor of Tahoma Lutheran Church. She and her husband live with their two children in Maple Valley, WA.

Endnotes:

1The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert, 3841.

2Ibid., 132-140.

3Ibid., 300-301.

4Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, translated by Carl C. Rasmussen (Evansville, IN: Ballast Press, 1999).

5Ibid., 2.

6Karlfried Froehloch, “Luther on Vocation,” Lutheran Quarterly, 13 no 2 Sum 1999, 197.

7Martin Luther, Lectures on the Galatians (1535), LW 1, 103-115.

8Martin Luther, Lectures on the Galatians (1535), LW 26: 88.

9Ibid., 129.

10Gerhard Forde, “Radical Lutheranism,” in A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism, edited by Mark C. Mattes and Steven D. Paulson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 6.

11Gene Edward Veith, Working for the Neighbor: A Lutheran Primer on Vocation, Economics, and Ordinary Life (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2016), 29.

12James Arne Nestingen, “Luther on Marriage, Vocation, and the Cross,” Word & World, 23 no 1 Winter 2003, 38.

13Martin Luther, Sermons III, LW 56: 358.

14Ibid., 371.

15Luther’s Works 56, 373.

16Ibid., 373.

CONFESSIO AUGUSTANA 14 – WHO’S CALL?

Kristian Baudler

Article 14 of the Augsburg Confession is both the shortest and most misconstrued of all of the articles in the Book of Concord. It consists of only one sentence, “It is taught among us that no one should publicly teach or preach or administer the sacraments in the church without an orderly call.”1 The question raised in recent ecumenical times has been, by whose call? But that wasn’t a question during the Reformation, certainly not from the Evangelical side. Contrary to all modern attempts2 to reframe the article as one desiring “ecclesiastical and canonical polity,” the authoritative German text3 removes all such “desire”4 and pits evangelical ordering (rite vocatus) against Catholic canonical ordination (ordinatione canonica).

Regular “orderly” Lutheran calls were not only illegal, but were perceived as recipes for chaos in the Church, since improperly ordained priests did not possess the “indelible character” (character indelebilis) bestowed by a bishop in apostolic succession and could therefore not function as proper conduits for the transmittal of sacramental grace. In

defense of the article, Ap 14 rejects the Confutatio’s insistence that the phrase “rightly called” (rite vocatus/ recht gebürlich berufen) be understood as the episcopate’s authority superseding that of the local congregation according to canon law (Corpus iuris canonici).5

Confessio Augustana 14’s Beruf is often mistakenly translated as “vocation,” when it is actually from berufen “to call,” and refers to the call to one’s vocation (die Berufung zur Berufung), as is clear from Ap 14’s “to be called in an orderly manner” (gebührlich berufen sein).6 Luther did not regard the “office of preaching” (das Predigtamt),7 as clerical, since the Holy Spirit calls whomever, whenever, and wherever he wishes (wo und wenn er will), as the highest calling in Christendom. Service in this office requires a proper call from the congregation (die Gemeinde), the ecclesia particularis, which is fully church in any given time and place in the unity of the successio fidelium. 8

He regarded ordination as an adiaphoron, a non-essential, an ecclesiastical rite that is neither necessary nor divine, in contrast to baptism. And he never changed his mind on the subject. His concern wasn’t whether the preacher was a cleric or not, but whether they were learned or unlearned (Gelehrte oder Verkehrte) in the gospel,9 as his two catechisms make clear: “In a word, a priest was a man who could say mass, even though he could not preach a word and was an unlearned ass. Such in fact is the spiritual estate even to the present day.”10

Augsburg Confession

Contrary to some modern assumptions, CA 14’s “call” is not a reference to the ordained, Luther not only having elevated the call itself to ordination, but having superseded it three years after Augsburg in Von der Winkelmesse und Pfaffenweihe: “Our consecration shall be called being ordained or called to the office” (Unser Weyhe sol heissen ordinirn odder beruffen zum ampt).11 He further maintained that “ordination... is solely the command (Befehl) to teach God’s word. Whoever has it, him St. Paul regards as a pastor, bishop, and pope, for everything depends on the word of God as the highest office,12 which Christ himself regarded as his own and as the highest office.” As Maurer puts it, “[Ordination] really means nothing more than the choice of a preacher.”13

That the laity could and should choose their preachers is perhaps best exemplified in Luther’s Concerning the Ministry14 which is the basis for CA 5 and precursor to CA 14. He addressed this extraordinary treatise of 1523 to the Senate and people of Prague in Bohemia, who a century after Jan Hus, found themselves in schism with Rome due to their insistence on receiving the sacrament in both kinds. Having been refused an archbishop by Rome, they were at a loss as to how to properly call (rite vocatus) and ordain pastors and appealed to Luther for help. His reply is a summary of the seven “functions,” or “offices” (officium) that belong to all Christians: that of preaching, baptizing, administering holy communion, exercising the keys, offering praise and thanksgiving, praying, and judging all doctrine.

It is both right and necessary for Christians to choose servants in the word “by common vote,” he told them, to lay

hands on them, and so elect one or more as pastors, bishops, and ministers for the community. All of this is “accomplished through no other right than that inherent in baptism and faith, especially in places lacking any other ministers,” all having “no other priesthood than that which the laity possesses.”

He did not regard the Bohemian dilemma as an “emergency,”15 a latter-day term he never applied to a situation that was already more than a hundred years old before he ever addressed it, but an opportunity to spread the evangelical cause further east. An emergency only exists where there is no such community of faith present to exercise its God-given baptismal right to proclamation. But Bohemia, of course, already had such communities. Nor was such a call novel. “It is the most ancient custom,”16 he argued, citing the example of Hus a hundred years before, as well as those of the apostles and patriarchs long before him. And even if his instruction were a novelty, he asks, so what? “Was it not a new thing for the children of Israel to pass through the sea? Will it not be a new thing for me to go through death to life? In all these things it is the word of God, not the novelty that we regard. If we should stop at the novelty of a thing, we would never be able to believe anything in the word of God.”17

Addressing the citizens of Prague he wrote, “Even before [issuing these calls] we have been born and called into such a ministry through baptism. If we ask for an example, there is one in Acts 18, where we read of Apollos who came to

Jan Hus

Ephesus without call or ordination,18 and taught fervently, powerfully confuting the Jews. By what right, I ask, did he exercise the ministry of the word except by the general right common to all Christians?... This man was afterward even made an apostle without any consecration or ordination19 and not only functioned in the ministry of the word, but also proved himself useful in many ways to those who had already come to faith. In the same way any Christian should feel obligated to act if he saw the need and was competent to fill it, even without a call from the community. How much more then should he do so if he is asked and called by the brethren who are his equals, or by the whole community?”20

Contrasting the true spiritual estate with ordinations and consecrations, he wrote: “As far as that goes, we are all consecrated priests through baptism, as St. Peter says in I Peter 2, ‘You are a royal priesthood and a priestly realm’... That is why in cases of necessity anyone can baptize and give absolution. This would be impossible if we were not all priests. Through canon law the Romanists have almost destroyed and made unknown the wondrous grace and authority of baptism and justification.”21

How authoritative baptism was for Luther is seen in his use of not who but “what(ever) has crawled out of the baptismal font, may rest assured, that it is already ordained (gewehet) a priest, bishop, and pope, though it is not seemly for each to exercise such an office.”22 An orderly (ordentlich) process is needed. While every Christian is a priest, and baptism is the true sacrament of ordination, public ministry among God’s people still requires a call.23

“Any congregation,” igliche Kirch, 24 may elect and call one or more of its members to preach and teach whenever there is a need, wherever the divine word is absent (the proverbial “emergency”), “for need is need and has no limits, just as everyone should hurry to the scene of a fire in town and not wait until asked to come.” Indeed, “a simple layman, armed with scripture, is to be believed above a pope or a council without it.”25 Further, “no bishop should institute anyone without the election, will, and call of the congregation. Rather, he should confirm the one whom the congregation chose and called; if he does not do it, he is confirmed anyway by virtue of the congregation’s call.” If there is no bishop to provide evangelical pastors, he adds, the congregation must call one of its own, who may exercise all of the duties of the pastoral office or decide only to preach, leaving baptism “and other lower offices to others, as Christ and all the apostles did, Acts 4.”

He rejected Emser’s26 claim that there is a twofold priesthood, a literal and a metaphorical, the latter being relegated to the laity. “[Peter] names the people and the congregation (Gemyne) very clearly... the name ‘priest’ belongs to all of us (allengemein), with all of its power, rights, and the respect these robbers and thieves of God would like to tear away from us and claim only for themselves... But to exercise such power and to put it to work is not every man’s business. Only he who is called by the common assembly, or the man representing the assembly’s order and will, does this

“A simple layman, armed with scripture, is to be believed above a pope or a council without it.”

work in the stead of and as the representative of the common assembly and power. It is therefore not true that there is more than only one simple (eyn eyniges eynfeltiges) priesthood in the church.”27 Referring to the laity in The Misuse of the Mass, his 1522 rebuttal to Emser he wrote, “It is precisely because they [including ‘holy, pious women and children’]28 all have the right and power to preach that it becomes necessary to keep order...29 Christ has given to everyone the right and power to weigh and decide, to lecture and preach.”30

On April 11, 1542, he declared to the Wittenberg faculty and students, “Ordination is no big deal.”31 It was a conviction that the Lutherans repeatedly put into practice during the Reformation in Saxony and beyond. Examples of orderly Lutheran calls are legion throughout the Reformation, two of which follow pre- and post-Augsburg. In 1523, Luther wrote his famous congregational “civil rights” declaration with its long in your face title, That a Christian Assembly or Congregation Has the Right and Power to Judge All Teaching and to Call, Appoint, and Dismiss All Teachers, Established and Proven by Scripture.32 He wrote it as a succinct defense for the people of the small town of Leisnig in Saxony. They had joined the Reformation, but their episcopos, the Abbot Antoninus of Buch of the nearby Cistercian monastery, remained hostile to it. Oversight by the abbot’s office had been granted the monastery back in 1191 by Emperor Henry VI, and formally recognized by Pope Martin V in 1419. Antoninus appointed one of his monks, Heinrich Kind, to be the Leisnig parish priest, but when Kind embraced the Reformation, the abbot quickly recalled him. He sent the congregation a new priest, but they

refused to accept him, and sent an appeal to Luther instead, asking him to provide them with a written biblical defense for them to call their own pastor and preacher. After he visited them on September 25, 1522, they elected Kind to be their priest, (and Johann Gruner their preacher). A round of negotiations with the abbot followed that included offering him a bribe in the form of an annual “stipend” (which pleased him greatly, but which his monks refused), and the situation remained unresolved until the elector officially recognized the parish’s evangelical status in the visitation of 1529.33

Luther begins his treatise to the Leisnig congregation by making it clear that it is the local congregation (Gemeyne) he is speaking of, “which does not engage in human affairs,” identified as that assembly wherever the gospel is preached, “no matter how few and how sinful and weak they may be,” (language he would also use again a few months later on behalf of the Bohemians in Concerning the Ministry).34 Where it is being preached, no appeals to ecclesiastical hierarchy, old church customs, or traditions are valid. Christ alone is our bishop, he gives oversight (episcope) to all Christians. “In this matter of judging teachings and appointing or dismissing teachers or pastors, one should not at all care about human statutes, law, old precedent, usage, custom, etc., even if they were instituted by pope or emperor, prince, or bishop, if one half or the whole world accepted them, or if they lasted one year or a thousand years. For the

Where [the gospel] is being preached, no appeals to ecclesiastical hierarchy, old church customs, or traditions are valid. Christ alone is our bishop, he gives oversight (episcope) to all Christians.

soul of man is something eternal, and more important than every temporal thing. That is why it must be ruled and seized only by the eternal word; for it is very disgraceful to rule consciences before God with human law and old custom.35

Pointing to the priesthood of all believers he states, “For no one cannot deny that every Christian possesses the word of God and is taught and anointed by God to be a priest, as Christ says, John 6 [:45], ‘They shall all be taught by God,’ and Psalm 45 [:7], ‘God has anointed you with the oil of gladness on account of your fellows.’ These fellows are the Christians, Christ’s brethren, who with him are consecrated priests, as Peter says too, I Peter 2 [:9], ‘You are a royal priesthood so that you may declare the virtue of him who called you into his marvelous light.’”36

Anticipating the question regarding a proper call that would be addressed later in CA 14, he asks rhetorically, “If you say, ‘How can this be if he is not called to do so he may indeed not preach, as you yourself have frequently taught?’” His answer is twofold: First, if a Christian is in a place where there are no Christians, he or she is called by God to proclaim the gospel. Second, if they find themselves in a place with other Christians, they should await a call from their fellows to preach and teach. If there is a lack of teachers in that place, they may teach without a call from men, “provided [they do] it in a decent and becoming manner.”

The decline of episcopal jurisdiction post-Augsburg, and the hastening of it by the Lutherans, played itself out in rather dramatic fashion in many places, but nowhere more so than in Luther's own Saxony, two prominent examples of which

follow. The diocese of Merseburg was one of three governed by the powerful Wettin princes. Centered in Leipzig and founded in 955, it dissolved in 1561 after having a history of 43 bishops. Throughout the centuries until 1544, there are endless lists of the Catholic ordained under the “grades” of “Tonsured, Acolytes, Subdeacons, and Presbyters.” None are listed in terms of a call (Berufung), but rather as “ordained clergy,” (ordinaciones clericorum). But in 1544 the bishop’s seat went to a Lutheran, Superattendent Anton Musa, in office from 1545-1548. During this period, one finds that under the Lutherans the title ordinaciones clericorum was immediately dropped — and replaced with vocatus ad — “called to,” e.g., vocatus ad Parochiam, vocatus ad Diaconatum, etc.

With his archenemy Duke Georg now dead, Luther preached in Merseburg Cathedral on August 2, 1545, and performed several ordinations. Had ecclesiastical discipline in the manner described in the ancient canons, or canonical polity so as not to undermine the authority of the bishops still been the “deep desire” of the Lutherans after Augsburg, Musa, not Luther, would have done the ordinations. Nor would Luther have done any other ordinations for that matter. Yet it is clear that until the end of his life, he did not regard ordination, or the exclusive exercise of it by bishops, to be a big deal or even necessary. After the defeat of the Protestants in 1547, the Catholic Michael

Merseburg Cathedral

Helding, who would be the last bishop of Merseburg, immediately reversed the Lutheran practice, and returned the diocese to the Catholic sacrament of ordinaciones clericorum.

The lack of desire for anything even resembling a so-called “historical episcopacy” is best seen at ground zero of the Reformation itself. If one consults the registry of the Wittenberger Ordiniertenbuch between 1537 (the year of the Smalkald adoption of the CA and Apology as confessional writings) and Luther's death in 1546, one finds that an astonishing total of 738 persons were “ordained.” Every last one of them, however, is registered as vocatus ad. Not a single one is ordinaciones clericorum. 37 And not a single one was ordained by a bishop!

Given these facts, enthusiastic claims that “far from overturning apostolic, historic succession among bishops, Luther sought to uphold it and revive it in the face of papal abuse,”38 appear all the more absurd. If that were even remotely true, why didn’t Luther simply implement it in his own backyard all those years? Why didn’t he counsel the Bohemians to seek a rapprochement with Rome to establish a “regular” canonical system of bishops and archbishops, or send candidates for “proper” ordinations to a bishop in historical succession sympathetic to the Reformation? In fact, the Lutherans did the exact opposite, placing the entire emphasis not on ordinations or calls by a bishop but on theirs and the candidate’s baptism, one’s call from and to the priesthood of all believers, the Gemeinde, the communio sanctorum, ordentlich berufen, rite vocatus. Sadly, following Luther’s death in 1546 and the military defeat of the Lutheran princes and estates the following year, many of Luther’s

evangelical congregational freedoms gave way to a rapidly encroaching episcopalism that continues to the present day.

Rev. Kristian Baudler has a history degree from the City University of New York and a postgraduate education from the University of Tübingen, Germany. A Lutheran pastor for 30 plus years in the LCA, ELCA, FCLC and LCMC he currently shepherds two Lutheran congregations on Long Island, NY. His credits include the 2017 book, Martin Luther’s Priesthood of All Believers in an Age of Modern Myth.

Endnotes:

1ordentlich = “proper,” “orderly;” it does not mean “ordained.”

2Cf. Called to Common Mission §11: “‘Historic succession’ refers to a tradition which goes back to the ancient church in which bishops already in the succession install newly elected bishops with prayer and the laying on of hands... In the Lutheran Confessions, Article 14 of the Apology refers to this episcopal pattern by the phrase, ‘the ecclesiastical and canonical polity’ which it is ‘our deep desire to maintain.’” Historic succession, though, was never on the table in Augsburg, as the Confutatio, the Catholic rebuttal to the Augsburg Confession, clearly shows. The term didn't even exist in 1530 and is not found in any Catholic or evangelical documents until at least a decade later, when it was introduced by the Catholic theologian Johannes Groper (1503-1559) somewhere between 1540-42 as a papal invention to counter “irregular” Lutheran calls and ordinations.

3The German text is historically regarded as “critically superior,” “typographically incomparable,” and “more official” than the Latin, Theodore G. Tappert, The Book of Concord (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 24. Cf. Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch- Lutherischen Kirche, (BSLK) 8. Auflage, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), XXIII, 2 Übersetzung und Drucke. The German CA & Ap were given preeminence by both Lutherans and Catholics at Augsburg and the Council of Trent, Cf. Kristian Baudler, Martin Luther’s Priesthood of All Believers In an Age of Modern Myth (New York: Oxen Press, 2016), 163-173.

4Cf. BSLK, 296. The Tappert and Kolb-Wengert BoCs have mistranslated the Latin

in two critical places. Cupiebamus is past imperfect nos magnopere cupiebamus conservare = “which we earnestly desired to preserve,” [but no longer do], not the present tense (“despite our earnest desire to keep/retain it”). They also mistranslated the reason the Evangelical “desire” was withdrawn, nihil aequi impetrare potuisse, to read because “we could not obtain justice.” The reformers were seeking “equality” aequi, not Tappert/Kolb-Wengert/Triglotta’s “justice.” “For this reason the blame lies with our opponents that our obedience to the bishops is withdrawn.” Cf. BSLK, 297.

5“ . . . it should be understood that ‘those rightly called’ refers to those called according to the laws and ecclesiastical ordinances that have been observed throughout Christendom,” Sources and Contexts of The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb/James A. Nestingen, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 115. Justus Jonas’ German Ap 14 drops all of the Latin text’s subservience to Catholic ecclesiastical and canonical polity.

6Kolb-Wengert added an invented footnote 81: “Rite vocatus means called in a regular manner by a proper public authority,” Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert, The Book of Concord, The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), which Wengert explains elsewhere as referring to the episcopacy. The words “public authority,” however, do not appear anywhere in the Latin or German texts. Maurer warned against putting “a one-sided emphasis on this juridical understanding of publice docere in the exegesis of CA 14. No matter how self-evident the Roman law’s concept of public office was to people like Melanchthon, it was never dominant in the tradition of the church . . . The ecclesiastical ‘public’ context was in worship, and publice docere meant to preach in conformity with the apostolic tradition and in service of the spiritual unity of Christendom.” Luther, Maurer says, derived the public character of the preaching office from his call. Cf. Wilhelm Maurer, Historical Commentary on the Augsburg Confession (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 198ff.

7Article 14’s rejection of ordination being necessary for a call is especially remarkable, given that what the Evangelical side even meant by “ordination” while in Augsburg, and for much of the Reformation, was a “muddled concept” (verworrene Begrifflichkeit), Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen: 1957, RGG IV, 1675. And by all accounts, Luther appears not to have been in any great hurry to clarify it, ignoring all entreaties to do so at the 1537 Wittenberg Theologians Conference. Cf. Urkunden und Aktenstücke von Martin Luthers Schmalkaldischen Artikeln (1536-1574), ed. Dr. Hans Volz, (Berlin: Verlag Walter De Gruyter & Co.,1957), 71-73: 7. Die drei von Luther auf der Wittenberger Theologenkonferenz abgelehnten zusätzlichen

Artikel - Drey artickel, die anhengig bliben, 1537. “The Three Additional Articles

Luther Rejected at the Wittenberg Theologians Conference.”

8D. Martin Luther’s Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Böhlau, 19121921), WA 31, I.211.

9WA 56, 417-418

10WA 30 II.529b, 32f.

11WA 38, 256.

12WA 38, 253.

13Maurer, 82.

14WA 12,169-195, De instituendis ministris ecclesiae: ad Clarissimum Senatum Pragensem Bohemiae.

15A much-touted modern myth. Cf. Carl E. Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2007], 55: “Luther and his followers did not expect to see the emergency situation develop into a state of normalcy.”

Cf. Joseph A. Burgess, Lutheran Forum, “Evangelical Episcopate, Yes

Sacramental Requirement, No,” 1992, Vol. 26, No. 4, 32: “The term ‘emergency situation’ should, to be sure, always be used cum grano salis: To the victor belongs the definition of ‘emergency situation.’”

16es ist eine ganz alte Meinung

17WA 12, 192-193.

18On this basis Luther installed an unordained Georg Röhrer in 1525 as a deacon in the church in Wittenberg. Cf. Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, Band 3, (Calwer Verlag Stuttgart, 1987), 128.

19ohne alle andere Weihe oder Ordination

20Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers sämmtliche Schriften, ed. Johann Georg Walch (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1880-1910), 10, 1592.77-1594.78.

21WA 6.407-408. Ambrose was not even baptized when the people elected him Bishop of Milan.

22WA 6, 408, lines 11-15. Dan was ausz der Tauff krochen ist, das mag sich rumen, das es schon priester, Bischoff und Bapst gewehet sey.

23Arthur Carl Piepkorn erroneously claimed in, The Sacred Ministry and Holy Ordination in the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church, that ordination in the Reformation superseded the call and was a prerequisite for administering the sacrament, which is still a popular myth among some American Lutheran ecclesiasts today.

24BSLK 491, 67.

25Luther’s retort to Eck at the 1519 Leipzig Debate. Cf. Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand A Life of Martin Luther (New York : Cokesbury Press, 1950), 116-117.

26The Catholic theologian Hieronymus (Jerome) Emser (1478-1527) was secretary to Luther’s adversary Duke George of Saxony and Albertine Saxony’s counterpart to Georg Spalatin, secretary to Luther’s protector, Elector Frederick the Wise.

27WA 8, 253.32 “Keyn anderß, denn das eynige gemeyne priesterthum bestehen.”

28WA 8, 489.4-6

29WA 8, 495.31-33

30WA 8, 496.13-14

31WATR 5, Nr. 5428.142 “Die Ordination ist kein groß Ding. ”

32WA 11, 408-416

33Cf. LW 45, 161-168

34Cf. Walch 10, 1599.88 so schon nur zehn oder sechs wären (“even if there are only ten or six”).

35WA 11, 408-409

36WA 1, 309

37Piepkorn used the BSLK (501, n.1) in referencing the Ordination Register, but either missed or ignored the ordinaciones clericorum vs. vocatus ad distinction.

38Timothy J. Wengert, Priesthood, Pastors, Bishops: Public Ministry for the Reformation & Today (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2008), 24.

BOOK REVIEWS

Pettegree, Andrew. Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--and Started the Protestant Reformation. New York: Penguin Books, 2016.

The beat poet Allen Ginsberg once wrote that "Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture." Well, maybe in secular society, but surely this can’t include our life of faith – or can it? Ever wonder how an obscure monk working in a backwater university in rural German became the most famous man in all of Europe and changed the history of Christianity forever?

For those of us on the Protestant side of the Tiber, Luther’s narrative has been colored with hagiography. In Sunday school, we learned that this intrepid man, through the power of his convictions and his dogged adherence to the Word of God, bravely stood up to the injustices of the Church and prevailed. But is this story really that simple? Could Luther have ever prevailed in the Reformation battle of ideas had he not controlled the media? This is the topic of Andrew Pettegree’s important work, Brand Luther. Pettegree once again narrates the Luther saga, but this time he views the Reformation through the lens of the 16th Century contemporary print culture—the major media of the day.

At the time of Luther’s earliest works, the only local

Wittenberg printer was Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, a publisher of limited skills and even more limited typefaces. His work was unimpressive, and he was unwilling to grow in his craft. When Luther’s 95 Theses were printed by various printers around Europe, the contrast between Rhau-Grunenberg’s edition and, for instance, Adam Petri’s of Basel, was stark. Petri indented each individual thesis, and he used larger woodcut initials to start each one. The result was a beautiful eight-page pamphlet, attractively laid out and enticing to the eye. Luther soon became convinced that he must find other, more talented printers, to promote his ideas – and he sets his sights on Leipzig, the center of book production in Germany. He convinces the Leipzig printer, Melchior Lotter, to send his son, Melchior Jr., (armed with a wider array of typefaces) to set up shop in Wittenberg. Soon the younger Lotter was printing large quantities of Flugschriften, or fliers, one or two sheets of paper folded into pamphlets. Pettegree has also included numerous images of these publications throughout his book, giving us a window into the beautiful and innovative Reformation art included in these works. One can imagine the average German buying a flugschrift for a few pennies, taking it home, having a few friends over for dinner, and reading it for the entertainment of his guests as they gazed upon the glorious woodcut art which illustrated its contents.

Undoubtedly the most important figure in Reformation

publishing was Lucas Cranach. Hailing from a family of artists, Cranach became Elector Frederick’s court painter in 1505. In the 1510s he moved his printing workshop from the Elector’s castle to two larger locations in the city, one of which tourists can still visit today near the town market. Cranach also purchased a paper mill so he could control every component of the printing process. His mastery of the woodcut would prove crucial for Wittenberg’s growing print industry, since the wooden engraving could be placed alongside the metal type and then printed on paper in the same impression. Cranach also created a title page made up of a single woodcut which then framed a panel where the title and author text could be inserted – a significant enhancement over previous offerings, vastly improving the attractiveness of contemporary publications. These creative title pages were even used for the cheapest flugschriften. As an example, one of these title page woodcuts, The Law and the Gospel, juxtaposed Moses’s Ten Commandments with Christ’s new covenant of grace, creating a visual image of Luther’s distinction between the two. Perhaps the most lucrative selling point was the marketing of Luther himself, what Pettegree calls “Brand Luther.” Before this time, an author’s name was often left off the title page of his works. But as Luther’s fame grew, printers soon discovered that placing the reformer’s name in bold type on a book’s cover was a surefire way to move the merchandise. And as innovations by Cranach and others made the city’s publishing houses the envy of Germany, the city name “Wittenberg” also was added as an indicator of the highest quality in printing. Pettegree explains that the Wittenberg brand was so lucrative

that another publisher in Augsburg fraudulently marked its books with “Wittenberg” on the title page hoping to improve sales.

But perhaps the most interesting reveal in this book was Luther’s control of the local printing industry his close interactions with all of its printers, and his desire to keep each printer afloat by carefully allocating jobs among them all. Pettegree reveals how hands-on Luther was in this process, closely supervising each publication as it was being produced, offering his advice and sometimes harsh criticism on the quality of the final product. Pettegree retells the story of the publication of Luther’s Sermon on Keeping Children in School, which he had assigned to the publisher Nickel Shirlentz, only to discover that the printer had delayed the planned publication of the sermon until the next spring to coincide with the Frankfurt book fair, the biggest bookselling event in Germany. On travel and enraged upon hearing that his sermon would not be published forthwith, he sent his wife Katharina to the bookshop, where she abruptly retrieved the manuscript, sending it to another publisher.

For me personally, Pettegree supplied the missing puzzle piece in the Luther story: how an obscure professor could become the best-selling author in Europe, igniting a movement which would change the face of Christianity forever. The answer? The media. Luther’s reforming movement was fueled by the 16th century media revolution of the printing press— catapulting his theologies into the popular consciousness. But this media blitz wasn’t an accident. Luther recognized the power of the press, a media revolution as groundbreaking as the mass communications of our digital age. And “Brand

Luther” was the key to it all—selling the Luther name, a name which encapsulated the message effectively alerting the populace to the corruptions of indulgence selling and simony and revealing the biblical truth of salvation by grace for all who believe.

Rev. Dr. Dennis Di Mauro is Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church (NALC) in Warrenton, VA and he teaches at St. Paul Lutheran Seminary and the North American Lutheran Seminary at Trinity School for Ministry. He also serves as editor of SIMUL.

Image Credits

(Pages 1, 3, 85) Rainer Ehrt, “Martin Luther,” Artflakes, accessed 9/25/2023, https://www.artflakes.com/en/products/martin-luther-16?id=martin-luther16&locale=en

(Page 9) “Book of Concord,” Concordia Publishing House, accessed 9/25/2023, https://www.cph.org/p-1065-book-of-concord

(Page 15) Jozsef Molnar, “Abrahams Journey From Ur To Canaan” (1850), The Life and Times of Abraham, accessed 9/25/2023, http://bethelstoneabraham.blogspot.com/2007/10/4-abram-follows-call.html

(Page 15) Etienne Parrocel, “St. Paul” (1850), Pinterist, accessed 9/25/2023, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/56506170335996330/

(Page 31) Albert Edelfelt, “Jesus Washing the Feet of his Disciples,” Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden, Parenting with Pride, Jesus Washes Feet: Holy Week, accessed 9/25/2023,

https://parentingwithpride.net/2013/03/25/jesus-washes-feet-holy-week-2013/

(Page 32) “Luther’s Small Catechism,” accessed 9/25/2023,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther%27s_Small_Catechism#/media/File:Der_klei ne_Catechismus_1535.jpg

(Page 38) “Donald R. Heiges, The Christian’s Calling,” Amazon, accessed 9/25/2023, https://www.amazon.com/Christians-Calling-Donald-RHeiges/dp/0800617959

(Page 42) “Gene Veith,” Come Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest, Patheos, accessed 9/25/2023, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2017/04/prayertable-grace/

(Page 50) “Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation,” Amazon.com, accessed 9/25/2023, https://www.amazon.com/Luther-Vocation-GustafWingren/dp/1592445616

(Page 54) “Gerhard O. Forde” accessed 9/25/23, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/115013.Gerhard_O_Forde

(Page 58) Lucas Cranach the Elder, “Adam and Eve” (1528), Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Wikiart, accessed 9/25/23, https://uploads7.wikiart.org/00142/images/lucas-cranach-the-elder/adam-andeve.jpg

(Page 65) Philip Melanchthon, “Augsburg Confession” (1530), Wikimedia, accessed 9/25/23, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Augsburger_Konfession_1531_Titel.jpg

(Page 67) Unknown Artist, “Jan Hus,” Osobnosti, accessed 9/25/23, https://www.spisovatele.cz/jan-hus

(Page 73) “Merseberg Cathedral,” Deutsch Wikipedia, accessed 9/25/23, https://de-academic.com/dic.nsf/dewiki/945682

(Page 80) Andrew Pettegree, “Brand Luther,” Amazon, accessed 9/25/23, https://www.amazon.com/Brand-Luther-Unheralded-EuropeReformation/dp/0399563237

“For no one cannot deny that every Christian possesses the word of God and is taught and anointed by God to be a priest, as Christ says, John 6 [:45], ‘They shall all be taught by God,’ and Psalm 45 [:7], ‘God has anointed you with the oil of gladness on account of your fellows.’ These fellows are the Christians, Christ’s brethren, who with him are consecrated priests, as Peter says too, I Peter 2 [:9], ‘You are a royal priesthood so that you may declare the virtue of him who called you into his marvelous light.’”

— Martin Luther