Hans J. Hillerbrand - "Anniversary Toast to a Heretic" (October 29, 1967)

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-	We pray together saying,	0:03
	Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.	0:06
	Thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth	0:12
	as it is in heaven.	0:17
	Give us this day our daily bread,	0:18
	and forgive us our trespasses	0:21
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	0:24
	And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.	0:27
	For Thine is the kingdom and the power	0:32
	and the glory forever.	0:35
	Amen.	0:39
-	You have walked past him many times	0:58
	at the portal of this chapel.	1:02
	It is easy enough to overlook him.	1:05
	Despite his bead like hair and the Bible in his hand.	1:08
	I suspect that he is a bit uncomfortable there	1:13
	with John Wesley looking down at him from the left,	1:16
	and Robert E. Lee facing him.	1:20
	The one as alien to him as the other.	1:22
	But if uncomfortable with his place	1:27
	in this charming expression of Dukean ecumenicity,	1:30
	then surely even more so with our	1:34
	sermonic exercise this morning.	1:36
	For of anything characterized this man,	1:39
	then it was a blunt disregard of his own person.	1:42
	"I am but a stinking bag of worms,"	1:47
	he said of himself at one time,	1:50
	with that graphic flare of language that annoyed his enemies	1:52
	and delighted his friends.	1:56
	And at another occasion, he insisted that after his death,	1:59
	his books should be buried in perpetual oblivion	2:02
	so that better ones, as he put it, might take their place.	2:06
	Fortunately, or unfortunately, his word was not heeded.	2:11
	If it had been, Western Christendom would be a few insights	2:17
	and countless dissertations poorer.	2:22
	And the sermon this morning	2:25
	would be on a more routine topic,	2:26
	such as the Bible, Vietnam, or marches on city halls.	2:29
	Any anniversary reflection accordingly takes place	2:35
	without what might be called proper approval.	2:38
	But the calendar of the modern church	2:42
	has placed a Reformation Sunday	2:46
	alongside Sundays devoted to motherhood,	2:49
	citizenship, and temperance,	2:52
	and so something must be said about the man.	2:54
	And this all the more so since Protestantism	2:58
	celebrates its 450th birthday the day after tomorrow.	3:00
	On October 31st of this year,	3:07
	450 years will have passed	3:10
	since that unknown professor of biblical studies	3:13
	at a second or even third grade university, Martin Luther,	3:17
	nailed 95 theses to the door	3:22
	of the Castle Church of Wittenberg	3:24
	and thereby precipitated the Reformation.	3:26
	Though 450 years are admittedly not quite so impressive	3:30
	as round hundreds, we celebrate an important anniversary.	3:35
	For no other reason than we shall have to wait 50 years	3:40
	before the next one comes around.	3:44
	So people all over Western Christendom	3:47
	will be exposed to Reformation sermons this morning.	3:49
	And indeed. those who desire a more permanent memento	3:54
	can obtain from an otherwise reputable publisher,	3:59
	and I quote, "For $2.50 plus tax,	4:02
	a beautiful reformation anniversary plaque	4:05
	hand screen printed on imported tile."	4:09
	A plaque, which depicts at least in my opinion,	4:15
	a painfully romantic view of Warkworth Castle.	4:19
	The kind of thing as two generations ago	4:23
	graced the walls of middle class drawing rooms.	4:27
	In short, a sermon on Luther is very much in this morning.	4:31
	But your servant must admit to being singularly unqualified	4:37
	for his assignment.	4:42
	For he is neither a man of the cloth by ordination,	4:43
	nor a reformer by inclination.	4:48
	He's a historian.	4:51
	And since over 30, part of the older	4:53
	and conservative generation.	4:55
	And there are additional problems.	4:58
	Not the least of which the fact	5:01
	that anniversary reflections, rather like funeral sermons,	5:02
	cannot avoid being a bit awkward.	5:07
	Speakers on such occasions can hardly say anything	5:10
	but kind and positive words.	5:14
	Hopefully as eloquently as possible	5:17
	so that they may be remembered	5:20
	as a success and achievement.	5:22
	And I fear that this is what	5:26
	you will be exposed to this morning.	5:28
	But this again is not the only problem.	5:32
	There is also the bothersome, and to me,	5:35
	convincing news of recent research	5:37
	that Luther never posted his thesis.	5:40
	I presume that the plans	5:43
	for the anniversary celebration had been made already	5:44
	when this insight of scholarship came out.	5:47
	Still, strictly speaking,	5:51
	we have no real event to commemorate	5:53
	and find ourselves rather like in that position	5:56
	of having to celebrate the birthday of a friend	5:59
	born on February the 29th.	6:02
	Might we perhaps be celebrating the anniversary	6:05
	of Martin Luther on the wrong occasion?	6:08
	And the question is important and pertinent	6:11
	far beyond the trifle of what happened or did not happen	6:14
	on October 31st, 1517.	6:18
	Luther and the Reformation	6:24
	marked the split of Western Christendom.	6:25
	And the rather penetrating question	6:29
	certainly in 1967 is this,	6:31
	should one celebrate such an event?	6:33
	Now to be sure, in earlier years,	6:36
	this question was answered by Protestants	6:38
	with a resounding yes.	6:41
	They lustily sang "A Mighty Fortress,"	6:43
	and proudly enumerated the achievements	6:46
	of Luther and the Reformers.	6:49
	All the way from the restoration of the gospel	6:51
	to the advocacy of democracy and women's suffrage.	6:54
	Catholics, on the other hand,	6:59
	traditionally have had understandable misgivings.	7:01
	Speaking about Luther in uncomplimentary manner,	7:04
	labeling him an immoral man and a bad theologian.	7:09
	A style of speech perhaps inaugurated	7:13
	by none other than the otherwise rather gentle Thomas Moore,	7:17
	from whom I would like to quote these words.	7:22
	"There is not a spot," he said about Luther,	7:26
	"In which he does not impudently err,	7:29
	or purposely lie, or senselessly pretend,	7:32
	or wretchedly mock, or madly rage, or shamelessly lie,	7:37
	or basely wrangle, or impiously blaspheme,	7:41
	or insanely crackle, or snarl in passion."	7:44
	But all this is different now.	7:48
	Catholics speak very positively	7:50
	about Luther's religious genius,	7:53
	and frankly admit the historical necessity	7:55
	of the Reformation.	7:58
	Thus to speak proudly and exuberantly about this man	8:00
	and about the event in such an atmosphere	8:05
	of Catholic self assessment and self appraisal	8:08
	might be a bit embarrassing.	8:13
	Might we be celebrating perhaps the anniversary	8:17
	of Luther on the wrong occasion?	8:20
	The plain fact, moreover, is that most of us	8:24
	do not get overly excited about the 16th century.	8:26
	It is an age long past.	8:31
	And even if we do adhere to the Protestant tradition,	8:34
	we tend to consider the contributions	8:38
	of the Reformers outdated, and their theologies	8:41
	a bit antiquarian.	8:45
	Ours is not a historically minded age.	8:47
	If we want to get with it, as the saying now goes,	8:51
	we are to read the iconoclasts	8:54
	and the reformers of our own day.	8:57
	With Martin Luther King, why read Martin Luther?	9:00
	To make matters worse, the problem is not only	9:06
	that we might be celebrating the wrong occasion,	9:08
	but also that it might be the wrong man.	9:11
	And I say this because that there is not	9:15
	only one Martin Luther, but there are many.	9:17
	Different people have seen him differently	9:21
	both during the past 450 years and also today.	9:24
	Some of you here may know him as the proponent	9:29
	of New Testament Christianity,	9:32
	others as a plain and simple heretic.	9:34
	Some of you may know him as a social reactionary,	9:39
	as the man who played such an ignominious role	9:43
	in the German peasants uprising	9:46
	in which he exhorted the rulers to slay, and stab,	9:48
	and kill the peasants.	9:52
	William Shirer knows him as one of forerunners of Nazism,	9:56
	And Eric Erickson's book on the young man Luther	10:00
	as a psycho-analytic problem.	10:03
	And according to this morning's paper,	10:06
	East Germans hail him as a revolutionary,	10:09
	a forerunner of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.	10:13
	We are thus confronted with a somewhat bothersome	10:20
	diversity of views of Luther,	10:23
	which makes it difficult to say which one is authentic	10:25
	and which makes us almost beg	10:29
	to ask the real Luther, please stand up.	10:31
	The history of Luther's historiography shows	10:35
	that men have tended to put their own desires and goals	10:38
	back into the 16th century.	10:42
	And accordingly, they have often talked about a phantom	10:44
	rather than a true historical figure.	10:48
	So what shall we say?	10:55
	Now the first word to be said is that Martin Luther	10:58
	surely did not mean to be a reformer.	11:01
	No one was more astounded about the fame	11:04
	of the 95 thesis than he was.	11:06
	Indeed, if he did not publish the thesis	11:09
	as now seems certain, the conclusion is inevitable	11:12
	that he never meant to step into the public limelight.	11:17
	What he meant to do was to express a pastoral concern	11:20
	rather than rouse the people to reformatory action.	11:24
	Accordingly, his writings are not manifestos for reform,	11:29
	but simple biblical exhortations.	11:33
	At Worms in 1521, he might very well have become	11:37
	the spokesman for the aspirations of the German people,	11:41
	but he disappeared from the scene	11:45
	without grasping the opportunity.	11:47
	Luther did not mean to be a Reformer	11:51
	because he was persuaded that whatever he might do	11:53
	was, in the final analysis, quite insignificant.	11:57
	Thus the rather frank self appraisal which I quoted earlier.	12:01
	Thus he could say at another occasion that, and I quote,	12:06
	"While he was drinking beer	12:09
	with his friend, Philip Melanchthon,	12:10
	the word of God moved powerfully among the people."	12:12
	And thus he could remark when the first negotiations	12:16
	were held concerning a political alliance	12:19
	among the German Protestants,	12:22
	that such diplomatic activity was foolish.	12:24
	If God protected the Protestants,	12:28
	Luther suggested they did not need an alliance.	12:30
	And if he did not, an alliance would not help them either.	12:33
	Secondly, Luther did not mean to be a heretic.	12:39
	He thought to be a loyal son of the Catholic Church.	12:42
	And during the first phase of the Reformation at least,	12:46
	he outdid himself with expressions	12:49
	of filial devotion to his church.	12:51
	But still his church charged him	12:55
	that he had deviated from the consensus of centuries,	12:57
	that he had arrogantly set his own opinions	13:03
	over the doctrines of the church,	13:06
	that he had introduced novel teachings.	13:08
	Now Luther, it must be said,	13:14
	was not impressed by these charges.	13:15
	In fact, he returned with a compliment	13:18
	and accused the Catholic Church	13:20
	precisely of what had been said against him.	13:21
	At one place in his writings, he put it quite simply.	13:25
	I quote, "Well, they say, we papists	13:29
	have remained in the ancient and original church	13:33
	ever since the time of the Apostles.	13:37
	Therefore, we are the true church.	13:39
	For we have come from the ancient church	13:43
	and have remained in it.	13:45
	But you have fallen away from us	13:47
	and have become a new church opposed to us.	13:49
	Answer, but what if I prove that we have remained	13:53
	faithful to the true ancient church?	13:57
	Indeed, that we are the true ancient church	14:00
	and that you have fallen away from us	14:03
	that is from the ancient church,	14:05
	and have set up a new church against the ancient one?"	14:07
	Then Luther went on to prove this argument	14:13
	to his own satisfaction.	14:16
	As far as he was concerned,	14:18
	the teaching of the Catholic Church,	14:20
	as he knew it in the early 16th century, was indeed new.	14:22
	The Catholics, he charged, were the innovators.	14:26
	They were the ones who had fallen away from the true church.	14:30
	The heretics, in short, were on the other side of the fence.	14:33
	Now the irony of the matter is,	14:39
	that even though Luther did not mean to be a Reformer,	14:41
	he became one.	14:45
	And even though he did not mean to be a heretic,	14:47
	he was so labeled by his church.	14:49
	The reasons for this are complex,	14:54
	as are all human events.	14:58
	There was fumbling and fault on both sides.	15:00
	For in history, rather like in a divorce case,	15:05
	the notion of the innocent party belongs	15:09
	to the realm of fiction.	15:11
	Luther did his share in this tragic spectacle	15:13
	both by his temperament, but especially by his religion.	15:16
	Thus, I must speak about his religion,	15:20
	which could be done in a variety of ways.	15:23
	We could follow Luther's own example	15:27
	and use the categories which he himself liked to employ.	15:28
	Notably, the distinction between law and gospel.	15:32
	We could talk about justification by faith.	15:36
	And still another possibility	15:40
	would be to talk about the biblical	15:41
	or Christo-centric character of Luther's faith.	15:43
	And all this surely would be correct and proper.	15:47
	All the same, I should like to use two terms	15:51
	to describe his religion, that may at first glance,	15:54
	appear rather strange.	15:58
	Though to me, they capture the essence of Luther's faith.	16:01
	Luther's religion was imminently personal and creative.	16:08
	It was personal because Luther insisted	16:15
	that the Christian faith consisted	16:18
	in more than the affirmation of propositional truth.	16:20
	Man is called upon to trust, to believe, to accept,	16:24
	and do so in an intensely personal manner.	16:27
	Luther called for a religion of personal involvement.	16:32
	Thus, he rejected the Catholic understanding	16:37
	of the Sacraments where they seem to convey benefits	16:40
	without such personal involvement.	16:43
	Thus, faith was important for him	16:46
	because no one can believe for another.	16:49
	Listen to these words from a sermon,	16:54
	opening words from a sermon he preached in 1522.	16:57
	"We are all called upon to die," he said.	17:03
	"And no one can die for the other.	17:07
	Everyone must fight his own battle	17:10
	with death by himself alone.	17:13
	We can well shout into one another's ears,	17:16
	but everyone must be prepared to meet death finally alone.	17:19
	For I will not be with you then, nor will you be with me."	17:25
	And the point that Luther tried to make here,	17:31
	is that even as man dies alone,	17:33
	so must he face his religion alone.	17:36
	Or as he put it on another occasion,	17:39
	"Your neck is at stake, and you yourself must believe."	17:42
	Secondly, Luther's religion was creative.	17:49
	Now perhaps the point is redundant.	17:53
	Because after all, a Reformer's hallmark is his willingness	17:56
	and his commitment to change.	17:59
	And about Luther, it must be said that he changed	18:02
	the Christian religion as he knew it.	18:05
	And he was prompted and persuaded to do so	18:09
	because it had ceased to be meaningful for him.	18:11
	In many ways, he remained close and tied	18:16
	to the medieval theological tradition.	18:19
	But no matter how close he remained,	18:23
	he was the great destroyer,	18:25
	the bull in the China shop of medieval theology.	18:27
	He asked of his contemporaries	18:31
	nothing less than the radical repudiation	18:33
	of their religious background.	18:35
	A radical reorientation.	18:38
	The significance and full bearing of which	18:41
	we in the 20th century find difficult to understand.	18:44
	'Cause more was involved there	18:49
	than Methodists turning Presbyterians or vice versa.	18:51
	People had to admit	18:56
	that their previous religious understanding	18:57
	had been erroneous, and that they had to unlearn	18:59
	what they had affirmed from the days of their youth.	19:04
	Those who had given money for pilgrimages, for relics,	19:06
	for masses had to confess that it had been a foolish cause	19:10
	to which they had given.	19:16
	Those who had spent	19:19
	the greater part of their lives in the monastery	19:19
	had to admit that such had been an error.	19:22
	But this is what Luther demanded,	19:28
	and this is what people responded.	19:30
	They responded because he not only	19:34
	was creative in a negative way, but also in a positive one.	19:36
	Luther creatively molded the Christian tradition	19:42
	so that something new took the place of the old.	19:45
	He offered a new understanding of the Christian faith.	19:49
	A new way of looking at the world, and at man,	19:52
	and at the church.	19:55
	And even where he did not change the substance	19:57
	of traditional doctrine, he creatively altered the form.	20:00
	For example, he was very little interested	20:06
	in the Orthodox doctrine	20:09
	of the divine and human nature of Christ	20:11
	though he affirmed it.	20:13
	But he was concerned to show how this Orthodox doctrine	20:15
	had bearing for him personally.	20:19
	I quote him, "That Christ has two natures.	20:21
	What is that to me?	20:25
	That he is true man and true God as the fathers affirmed	20:28
	is part of his inherent quality.	20:30
	But that he used this, his office, for a purpose.	20:33
	Namely, that he poured out his love for me	20:39
	that took place for my comfort."	20:41
	Luther in other words was not merely a preacher	20:48
	who eloquently proclaimed	20:53
	the theological consensus of his time,	20:55
	some sort of 16th century Billy Graham if you please.	20:59
	But he was the preacher of a new message,	21:03
	of a creatively new message.	21:05
	So that Protestants, say in 1550,	21:08
	understood the Christian religion quite differently	21:10
	than Catholics had in 1500.	21:13
	Personal and creative religion.	21:17
	These two characteristics aptly take us	21:21
	to the conclusion of the whole matter.	21:24
	For after all, the pertinent point in all this is,	21:27
	how shall we commemorate the Reformation and Martin Luther?	21:31
	What shall we do with this man, and with his event in 1967?	21:36
	Shall we echo Luther's famous words, "Here I stand,"	21:44
	and believe exactly as he did?	21:48
	Or shall we take note of our own ecumenical era?	21:52
	Let bygones be bygones and consider	21:57
	the disagreements of that age?	22:00
	A big misunderstanding or perhaps even a big joke?	22:02
	It seems to me that both answers are incorrect.	22:08
	On the one hand, it seems certain enough	22:12
	that the world has not stood still	22:15
	during the past 450 years.	22:17
	And the issues of the 16th century	22:20
	are not necessarily the ones we face today.	22:22
	All of our issues may not be new,	22:27
	but certainly not all of them are old.	22:32
	On the other hand, we need to remember	22:36
	that the Protestant tradition	22:38
	has made a significant contribution	22:39
	to the understanding of the Christian faith.	22:41
	Contribution that seems well worth preserving.	22:44
	And thus we're caught between the acceptance	22:49
	of the insights of the 16th century and their repudiation.	22:51
	Between the affirmation	22:55
	of the relevance of Luther and his rejection.	22:57
	We can either echo Luther's sentiment	23:02
	than declare the Roman Pontiff to be the antichrist.	23:05
	Or as he also did it more than one occasion,	23:09
	to attribute that beard to the devil.	23:13
	Nor can we turn Duke Chapel	23:15
	into the Catholic parish church of Durham, North Carolina.	23:17
	Either would be startling and quite dramatic,	23:21
	and all the same, would be incorrect.	23:24
	Rather, ours must be a personal	23:28
	and creative appropriation of Luther.	23:31
	An appropriation that retains and rejects,	23:34
	that affirms and condemns.	23:39
	And if we do this, we shall find	23:42
	that we are doing with Luther	23:44
	what he in turn had done with his own tradition	23:45
	and with his own spiritual ancestors.	23:48
	Approach them creatively	23:52
	in order to make religion personally meaningful.	23:55
	And then we shall find, I believe,	23:59
	that even though we have not slavishly duplicated	24:01
	Luther's thought in the 20th century,	24:04
	which he never wanted to be done anyhow,	24:07
	that we are indeed his true followers	24:11
	and have authentically appropriated his religious genius.	24:13
	The anniversary toast to Martin Luther.	24:18
	Heretic and reformer, destroyer and builder, accordingly,	24:21
	is simple enough.	24:25
	May we all be like he was.	24:28
	And in so doing, emulate not only his religion,	24:34
	but also his temperament.	24:39
	His temperament, which in his very last piece of writing,	24:42
	he put into these following words.	24:46
	For last time characteristically mixing	24:49
	his German and Latin.	24:52
	(preacher speaks foreign language)	24:54
	We are beggars.	24:58
	That is true.	25:00
	Amen.	25:03
	And may God grant this unto us all.	25:06
	Amen.	25:12
	(solemn instrumental music)	25:49

Item Info

Title:

Hans J. Hillerbrand - "Anniversary Toast to a Heretic" (October 29, 1967)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r48c9w52q

Date:

October 29, 1967

Speaker:

Hillerbrand, Hans J.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0404
ref6011_01h
uachapelsermaud
duke:628064
dcrau002396
ark:/87924/r48c9w52q
d120f3f1-a2c0-4a0d-b3c0-43f797a517c6

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Hans J. Hillerbrand - "Anniversary Toast to a Heretic" (October 29, 1967)

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1. Hans J. Hillerbrand - "Anniversary Toast to a Heretic" (October 29, 1967)

Duke University Archives

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Hans J. Hillerbrand - "Anniversary Toast to a Heretic" (October 29, 1967)

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