In this course we will discuss the history of some ideas that have been hugely influential in the modern west and that were taken out to the rest of the world. The discussion centers on an extraordinary and historically important figure, a sixteenth century German man named Martin Luther. Luther is recognized today as the originator of many of the most significant ideas that continue to affect and shape who we as modern people are and how we see the world and ourselves for better and for worse. In the first section, we will explore why Luther thought the Bible was the most important volume for everyone to have and read. Included here will be a careful consideration of Luther's anti-Judaism, which contributed to western antisemitism and some of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century. In the second section, we will talk about the idea of freedom and how Luther's understanding of freedom in Christ affected the way modern thinkers understood what it means to be human in community. Important in this section is the consequential contradiction between freedom and slavery in western thought and their co-existence in western societies. The third section will be all about the many complicated relations between religion and politics. NOTE: Students wishing to sign up for free access to all instructional course content should click on the "Sign-In" button in the upper right hand corner. Those who wish to take the course and complete a certificate that requires payment, please click the Enroll button on the left side of this page.
Luther’s Reform of Sex
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來自 Northwestern University 的課程
Luther and the West
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Christine HelmerArthur E. Andersen Teaching and Research Professor, Professor of Religious Studies and German
Department of Religious Studies
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“I came to Carthage and all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves.
To me it was sweet to love and to be loved.
The more so if I could also enjoy the body of the beloved.
I therefore polluted the spring water of friendship with a filth of concupiscence.”
The brilliant Latin rhetorician Aurelius Augustinus
wrote these words in 395 in Book 3 of his Confessions,
looking back on what he had come to see as the unbridled lust of of his youth.
Saint Augustine became one of the greatest figures in the history of Christianity,
and for centuries,
his autobiography set the dominant tone in Christianity toward sexuality.
Augustine believed that after the fall of Adam and Eve, sex and
sin were inextricably joined.
Everyone is born with a sinful desire, which Augustine called concupiscence.
In this lecture, we will see how Luther's more positive view of sexuality
represents a major turning point in Western history.
Taking up the Christian tradition’s attitudes toward sex as worldly,
Augustine believed that human sexuality is a dangerous and
irrational force that must be controlled.
Although reason governed sexual relations in the Garden of Eden,
it was corrupted by the fall, so
that sexuality became subject to irrational impulses and disordered desire.
Augustine also taught that the sex
act was the means by which sin passed from one generation to the next.
He cited a passage from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 7,
verse 9, “It is better to marry than to burn,” presenting marriage as a device for
containing sexuality.
The fire of human sexuality must be controlled by the fire extinguisher of
a busy married life with children at hand.
In the wake of Augustine, the Church developed an intricate web of regulations
that left very few occasions for illicit sexual relations, even within marriage.
The only legitimate purpose for sexual relations within marriage was procreation,
in obedience to the divine command in Genesis chapter 2,
to “be fruitful and multiply.”
Even so, married sex was forbidden before the Eucharist,
and on special days set aside for fasting and worship.
Masturbation was condemned.
To further complicate matters,
having sex was considered equivalent to getting married
so that in effect, a sexual encounter—however fleeting or
however young the partners— meant the couple was married.
As pastor, Luther directly encountered the great spiritual suffering caused by
the guilt sex engendered.
He directed his wrath against the canon lawyers who had created such strict rules.
The theological issue at stake for Luther was the very nature of human sexuality.
He maintained that sex was natural.
It was a God-given gift to human partners for loving each other in an intimate and
embodied way, that was also opened to the possibility of creating new life.
Luther's view of sex after the fall was never as pessimistic as Augustine's.
In fact, the ex-friar displays a remarkably earthy
attitude towards sexual attraction and pleasure.
Luther knows that embodied humans are naturally and
inevitably attracted to one another
and he once wrote that God winks at sex.
Luther was especially vehement on the subject of clerical celibacy.
Because he knew Church history, Luther was aware that the church had gone back and
forth on this question from the fifth century to the Second Lateran Council
in 1139, when celibacy was officially imposed as a requirement for
the ordination of priests, in large part to put an end to clerical abuses.
Clerical celibacy was the Western Church's response to
the Orthodox Church's tradition of favoring clerical marriage.
For his arguments against celibacy, Luther drew on the New Testament Epistles,
written at a time when it was common for leaders of the early church to marry.
1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 2, for
example, explicitly stipulates that a church leader be “faithful to his wife.”
Luther also acknowledged the biblical evidence for celibacy, the admonition
in Matthew chapter 19, verse 12, to “live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,” but
argued that it could not be imposed on priests.
If sexuality is a natural dimension of human experience,
then celibacy is unnatural and
susceptible to the sins of inordinate desire and disregard for another person.
Luther railed against the sexual hypocrisy he saw in the Church such as the brothels
specially intended for priests he discovered on his 1511 pilgrimage to Rome,
and he excoriated the shameful way
allegedly celibate priests treated the women with whom they had affairs.
Human sexuality remains a subject of anxious discussion and uncertainty,
and clerical celibacy continues to be the rule for Catholic priests.
But Luther's belief that God regards sex as an important and
natural feature of embodied existence, gives an
inherent ethical dimension to loving, serving, and honoring one's partner.
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