Why do the challenging, paradoxical ideas of Martin Luther remain so seminal around the world?

On April 8, one of the leading lights of the American academy came to Fordham to explore that question. Martin E. Marty, PhD, of the University of Chicago Divinity School, titled his lecture “Wrestling with Luther, Wrestling,” because that’s what the ideas of Martin Luther demand, he said.

“I want to … encourage you to see why people grapple with this strange figure,” said Marty. “He assaults you in such a way that you find yourself having to wrestle.”

Marty delivered the St. Robert Southwell, S.J., Lecture, devoted to the history and theology of the Christian church in the early modern period.

In the nearly 500 years since Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, “the world has changed very drastically,” Marty said, noting the rapid growth of Lutheranism in the developing world and the widespread currency of Luther’s ideas. “There are a lot of places where there aren’t Lutherans but there is Luther,” he said.

The man’s ideas have intersected with others’ ideas in unexpected ways. “Atheists like Luther,” Marty said. “Luther would say shocking things like … ‘Faith is the creator of divinity in you,’” leading some to question whether that divinity exists on its own. “If your faith is creating God in you, then is there God?”

“At the same time, the [Lutheran] tradition welcomes the battle with the atheist, and that’s very much in Luther’s spirit too,” he said. In Luther’s words, he said, “‘God prefers the angry shout of the atheist to the pious prattle’ of the Christians who think they have it all figured out.”

Luther’s paradoxes continue to absorb the faithful. His most famous paradox—that Christians can be sinners while also being justified, or absolved of sin—is reflected in the Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith, a 1999 agreement between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation.

Some complain that the agreement reflects too much of Luther’s “paradoxical formula,” Marty said. But it was also welcomed by many, including intermarried Lutherans and Catholics.

“It didn’t solve everything, and the people who signed this didn’t claim it [did],” he said. “But it’s a vast difference for the husbands and wives and the generations and the hope that everybody else could be in a space where now we begin to understand each other along the way. That’s what was going on in this case.”

He ended with a call for exploring Lutheranism’s relation to the Eastern Orthodox churches as well as the rise of Pentecostalism.

Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is a speaker, columnist, pastor, and a leading authority on religion who has written more than 50 books. He taught religious history for 35 years at the university.

He was also the thesis director for his former student, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, who introduced Marty as “one of the most remarkable scholars in America.”

Wednesday, March 28
6 p.m.
Flom Auditorium, William D. Walsh Family Library
Rose Hill Campus

Peter Marshall, D.Phil., professor of history at the University of Warwick, will present “The Origins of the English Reformation Reconsidered.” Taking a “forward” look at the English Reformation, Marshall will highlight how differently the early years of the reformation look when we keep in mind that the first generation of reformers were not “early Protestants,” but rather late medieval Catholic Christians.

The St. Robert Southwell, S.J., Lecture Series is devoted to exploring the history and theology of the Christian Church in the early modern period. The series targets the scholarship of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation in Europe and the Americas from 1500 to 1750.

The annual lectures are free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Susan Wabuda, associate professor of history.

As the Protestant Reformation swept across Europe, those who rebelled against Catholicism cast their new forms of worship in opposition to the Catholic Mass—including its music.

How sacred music developed as part of the Reformation was explored in a presentation on Sept. 22 by Jane Dawson, Ph.D., the John Laing Professor of Reformation History at Edinburgh University’s School of Divinity.

By the late Middle Ages, Dawson said, the performance of sacred music was relegated mainly to professionals who could understand its polyphonic structure. Protestants, however, feared the power of music to influence and distract, so they stipulated that church music must serve the words—because the words were the word of God.

“They also stipulated that words should be audible and that the language must be comprehensible,” Dawson said. “The final maxim was that singing should ‘profit’ the church.” That meant church music was to be performed by the entire congregation.

This “triumph of the word,” as the Protestant Reformation has been traditionally regarded, marked a decisive shift from a visual and sensual culture to a logocentric and literary one. It was Protestantism that replaced polyphony with the voicings that are still used today—soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

In Scotland, which underwent its Reformation beginning in 1560, a metrical Psalter containing Old Testament psalms that had been transposed from their polyphonic versions helped grow a popular culture.

“More than 1 million copies of the Protestant psalm book were available in 1640 in England and Scotland,” Dawson said.

For the first time, Scots were singing together in church. This practice was vital in enabling the non-literate majority of Scots to cope with a religion of the word.

“In this non-literate society, you are able to create a popular culture through singing which, essentially, is learning by listening,” she said.

The psalms were also used as protest songs in the battle between Catholicism and Protestantism. For example, Scottish Protestants sang from the psalms—“Judge and revenge my cause, Oh Lord, from them that evil be”—at the downfall of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots in 1567.

Singing in church led to the singing of religious songs in the house, which then gave rise to songs sung in private prayers, Dawson said.

“Singing helped Protestants to cope with what Peter Marshall has called the ‘displacement of Purgatory,’” she said. “It was a way to deal with the guilt and awareness of sin.”

Her presentation, “Singing the Reformation,” was held on the Lincoln Center campus and was part of the St. Robert Southwell, S.J., Lecture Series.