Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 49 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The imperial side sought to prevent at all costs a theological dispute that Luther might win, so they offered the evangelicals sight of the text only on condition that they promised neither to print it nor copy it, an offer they wisely refused. Judging by what they heard, it did not seem too threatening: Jonas was scornful of the “farrago,” and the Wittenberg party were convinced they had not been bested in argument. 44 When negotiations between the Lutherans and the Catholics began to explore the possibility of some kind of religious settlement, Luther received letters from Melanchthon pleading for advice, for the Wittenbergers needed urgently to know where they might compromise. Everything had been discussed in advance at the meeting of Luther and his companions at Torgau, Melanchthon conceded, but real-life encounters were always unpredictable. What was essential, and what could be negotiated? Luther, incensed by feeling that he had been ignored for several weeks, now took the opportunity to sulk. He sent word that he was furious with the Wittenberg delegation, but otherwise refused to respond. 45 Melanchthon, seriously alarmed, fired off letter after letter. 46 How could Luther desert them at such a crucial time? They needed his advice. Melanchthon portrayed the dire situation the evangelicals faced, outnumbered by the Catholics. “Sophists and monks are constantly running to the emperor and inciting him against us….Those who were on our side before are not there now, and we hang in great danger and in contempt….Read our letters and help,” he pleaded. “We spend most of the time weeping, therefore I beg you for the glory of the gospel or for the public good to reply to us, because it seems that unless you are in charge [the ship] will go under in these terrible storms.” 47 Letters from Jonas told the same story: Melanchthon was doing well, but was suffering from “sadness.” 48 Luther never responded well to attempts to make him feel guilty: Being a martyr was his role. When, after an earlier gap in communication, mail had finally arrived on June 29, he dashed off a letter while the messenger waited, pouring out his bile: “In these letters you remind me of your work, danger, and tears in such a way that it appears that I, in an unfair way, add insult to injury by my silence, as if I did not know of these things, or sat here among roses and cared nothing. I wish my cause were such as to permit the flow of tears!” 49 Melanchthon, he wrote, should trust in the Lord and should not worry.

• From Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

  Hatred, in the mind and spirit of the disinherited, is born out of great bitterness—a bitterness that is made possible by sustained resentment which is bottled up until it distills an essence of vitality, giving to the individual in whom this is happening a radical and fundamental basis for self-realization. Let me illustrate this. Suppose you are one of five children in a family and it happened, again and again, that if there was just enough for four children in any given circumstance, you were the child who had to do without. If there was money for four pairs of shoes and five pairs were needed, it was you who did without shoes. If there were five pieces of cake on the plate, four healthy slices and one small piece, you were given the small slice. At first, when this happened, you overlooked it, because you thought that your sisters and brothers, each in his turn, would have the same experience; but they did not. Then you complained quietly to the brother who was closest to you in understanding, and he thought that you were being disloyal to your mother and father to say such a thing. In a moment of self-righteousness you spoke to your father about it. Your father put you on the carpet so severely that you decided not to mention it again, but you kept on watching. The discrimination continued. At night, when the lights were out and you were safely tucked away in bed, you reached down into the quiet places of your little heart and lifted out your bundle of hates and resentments growing out of the family situation, and you fingered them gently, one by one. In the darkness you muttered to yourself, “They can keep me from talking about it to them, but they can’t keep me from resenting it. I hate them for what they are doing to me. No one can prevent me there.” Hatred becomes for you a source of validation for your personality. As you consider the family and their attitude toward you, your hatred gives you a sense of significance which you fling defiantly into the teeth of their estimate of you. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick there is an expression of this attitude. You will doubtless recall the story. Ahab has had his leg bitten off in an encounter with the white whale. He collects a motley crew, and they sail into the northern seas to find and conquer the whale. A storm comes up at sea, and Ahab stands on deck with his ivory leg fastened to the floor. He leans against the railing in utter defiance of the storm. His hair is disheveled, his face is furrowed, and there is a fever in his blood that only the conquest of the white whale can cure.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Conceding that the vision was indeed diabolic, he still placed it within a wider divine plan: It was one of the Devil’s attacks on Luther that proved that he was one of the elect. Satan, he wrote, “has raged against me with incredible contrivings to destroy or hinder me, so that I have often wondered whether I was the only man in the whole world whom he was seeking.” All this, he realized, was part of God’s purpose that he should get to know monasticism and the universities from the inside, so he could write against them with real knowledge. This was why he became a monk, and still was a monk. “What do you think now?” he asked his father. “Will you still take me out of the monastery?” 30 But his father could not boast that he freed his son from monasticism. That was God’s doing, and God’s rights over him were greater than those of any earthly father, just as his Word was greater than any human wisdom: “God, who has taken me out of the monastery, has an authority over me that is greater than yours. You see that he has placed me now not in a pretended monastic service but in the true service of God.” Luther insisted that the real miracle was not his rescue from the storm but his deliverance from monasticism through Christ. Far from confirming his obedience to his father, therefore, the letter marks his full independence. “Therefore—so I am now absolutely persuaded—I could not have refused to obey you without endangering my conscience unless [Christ] had added the ministry of the Word to my monastic profession,” Luther concluded. This was what gave him “liberty,” a word ambiguous between Christian freedom and the “liberty” from paternal power that is realized when one comes of age. He concluded by reminding his father of the danger in which his son now found himself. While the Devil might try to wring his neck, it was the Pope who might truly burn or strangle him, should God consider him worthy of martyrdom. 31 Luther was frank about the rage and anger on both sides—his own “hardened heart” that will not permit the “flow” so important to the body; his father “implacable,” full of “wrath” and “indignation against me.” His father had planned to tie him down in marriage but Luther managed to evade this destiny by becoming a monk. But now his conscience was freed, and “[t]herefore I am still a monk and yet not a monk.” Now that he is a “free” monk, however, he is also free not to marry. Luther concludes his “letter” not by asking for a paternal blessing but by blessing his father himself. It seems that he had won the Oedipal struggle and achieved manhood, while simultaneously managing to refuse to become a married man and father himself. He had also secured the last word. This was a letter to which his father could literally not respond.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  38 Luther was expected to answer the questions with a simple yes or no, and the procedure was not designed to allow him to make a speech. He took his time to reply, and his voice, so onlookers said, was barely audible in the large room. Yes, the books were indeed his and he would never deny them, but he could not say immediately whether he would defend them or recant, “because this is a question of faith and the salvation of souls, and because it concerns the divine Word, which we are all bound to reverence, for there is nothing greater in heaven or on earth.” He went on that it would therefore “be rash and at the same time dangerous for me to put forth anything without proper consideration,” and so he requested an adjournment. 39 This must have been a huge anticlimax for those gathered in the crowded hall. It was also an inspired tactic, because it defused the tension and slowed matters down, giving Luther a second opportunity to speak. Luther never reacted well to being silenced. 40 His fury at being muzzled was still evident afterward, when he wrote to Cranach (slightly twisting the truth) that he had expected a proper hearing and at least one, perhaps fifty doctors of theology, all ready to refute his views. But instead all that was said was: “Are these your books? Yes. Do you want to renounce them or not? No. Then go away!” 41 Luther got his adjournment and was ordered to return the next day. According to the account of events written by his supporters, they admonished him to “act manfully, and not to fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” One reminded him, “When you shall stand before kings, do not think about what you are saying, for it will be given to you in that hour,” and a bystander shouted, “Blessed is the womb that bore you”—all quotations from the Gospels that once more likened Luther’s appearance at Worms to Christ’s Passion. 42 Luther’s strategy was to insist that the arguments be heard, and he succeeded in subverting the imperial side’s attempts to force him either to retract or be silent. In summoning him before the Diet, they had given Luther the best possible stage to voice his ideas. The papal nuncio himself, Aleander, had warned of this danger from the outset. 43 The Diet was occupied with other business, too, and Luther was not called until the late afternoon of April 18, and then had to wait another two hours before he was heard.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther was deeply hurt by what he saw as a personal betrayal and retaliated with anger. On the other hand, the passionate support he received in Nuremberg contributed to the rapid spread of the theses among Germany’s educated elite. Although Nuremberg had no university itself, it was a center of trade, learning, and political power, located on the trade routes from Italy to northern Germany. When Johannes Cochlaeus penned his Brief Description of Germany in 1512, he put Nuremberg literally at the center, connecting all the different regions of the country. Luther’s Nuremberg connections—humanists, patricians, and politicians—now made his cause their own. There was even a coterie of “Augustinian diners,” including some of the most powerful men in town: “Almost the whole talk over the table was about the one Martin: they celebrate him, adore him, defend him, are prepared to endure everything for him; they recite his work…they kiss his pamphlets…eagerly they read every word of them.” 61 Originally these men had been devoted to pursuing the spirituality of Luther’s mentor and confessor Staupitz; now they gave his brilliant protégé shrewd advice and support, and created an audience for him in southern Germany. Scheurl acted as the conduit, and he and others translated the theses into German. When Luther had begun corresponding with the lawyer in January 1517, his slightly florid and obsequious tone revealed how important the relationship was to him: “I do not want you to become my friend, because this friendship will not redound to your fame, but to your harm, if the proverb be true: ‘Friends have everything in common.’ If then through this friendship everything of mine becomes yours, then you will become richer in nothing but sins, folly and disgrace.” 62 People were not just reading the theses, but acting on them. By March 1518, Luther was already writing preemptively to Lang in Erfurt in case rumors reached him that Tetzel’s Positiones (his defense of indulgences) had been publicly burned by students in Wittenberg’s market square. He himself, Luther claimed, had nothing to do with this, and he deeply regretted the offense caused to the poor salesman, whose works had in part been bought, in part simply seized and then thrown on the flames. All of which would have been more persuasive had not Luther enclosed with the letter a copy of Tetzel’s work, “seized from the flames,” so that Lang could see how the papists were raging against him. 63 The first book burnings, which were to become such a feature of the Reformation, were thus instigated not by the Roman Church but by Luther’s supporters, and it was clear where they might lead. Tetzel was already threatening that Luther himself would be burned and that he “would go to heaven in his bath shirt” within two weeks. — I T is not difficult to understand why the Ninety-five Theses caused such uproar.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  His ally Martin Reinhard was the preacher at Jena, where the local printing press had also been publishing Karlstadt’s work. In fact, Karlstadt himself was among the congregation at Jena that morning, disguised as a peasant under a felt hat. He was convinced that Luther’s tirade against the “crazies” was directed against him. After the sermon, he dashed off a letter to Luther proposing a meeting. Luther replied that he had no objections. A few hours later, Karlstadt—accompanied by Reinhard and Karlstadt’s brother-in-law and fellow preacher Dr. Gerhard Westerburg—arrived at the Black Bear Inn, where Luther was staying with his retinue of Saxon court officials. 2 When the visitors entered the parlor, Luther motioned Karlstadt to a chair opposite him, insisting that their exchange take place in public. 42. In this hostile pamphlet from 1524, Luther, identified by his initials above him on the wall, is shown in league with the Devil, who is handing him a booklet. The Devil’s claw foot makes him instantly recognizable, and his felt hat is marked “S” for Satan. The Devil is dressed in peasant garb and the image insinuates that Luther is part of an unholy alliance with peasants. Karlstadt, facing the crowd of assembled dignitaries, began by objecting that Luther had attacked him in the same breath as the “riotous murdering spirits” who were followers of Thomas Müntzer. Müntzer, whom we will meet again later, had originally been inspired by Luther’s ideas, but developed a radical theology that called for social as well as religious change; he was starting to worry the Saxon authorities and had recently been forced to leave the town of Allstedt. Luther’s charge, Karlstadt insisted, was unjust, for although he held different views on the sacrament from Luther, he did not agree with Müntzer. “He who wants to…put me in the same pot with such murdering spirits ascribes that to me without truth and not as an honest man,” Karlstadt declared. This was a stinging rebuke, for in a society that depended on people giving their word, to insult someone as dishonest was to attack their manhood and respectability. Karlstadt also accused Luther of stopping him from preaching and publishing. In words that evoked Christ’s flagellation, he said: “Was I not bound and struck when you alone wrote, printed and preached against me and arranged that my books were taken from the press and that I was forbidden to write and preach?” 3 The two men argued for a long time, sometimes falling silent. They knew each other well, and their jibes hit home.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Insisting that he would not return evil with evil, Luther left it to Eck to decide whether to respond to the “Asterisks” in private, or in print—and in the latter case Luther would do likewise, and in force. Only toward the end did the mask slip, as he accused Eck of acting like an irritated prostitute, who “vomits up exactly the kind of curses and oaths that you have inflicted on me.” 22 But while Luther was in Heidelberg, Karlstadt had obtained a copy of Eck’s “Obelisks” and composed and printed a reply, consisting of 406 theses. Thus the matter had already been made public and Luther’s insistence that he had kept it private was disingenuous. It would have been surprising, too, if he had not discussed the affair with other members of the order at Heidelberg. In June he also wrote to Scheurl, who, aghast at the rift that had developed between Luther and Eck, was attempting to mediate. Luther was willing to compromise by not going public, and wrote ingratiatingly of his admiration for Eck’s learning. It would have been foolish indeed to risk alienating Scheurl and his humanist network in Nuremberg, so far the only real support outside the order and Wittenberg. Luther insisted, however, that Eck should not be too bitter in his response to Karlstadt, a proviso that would have infuriated Karlstadt had he known of it, as he was only too eager to take Eck on. 23 It was a wise precaution, however, for Eck would soon be trying to get the matter of Luther’s assertions heard at Rome rather than on German soil; had he succeeded, Karlstadt might have been in danger, too. — M ATTERS had rumbled on slowly in the Curia. Albrecht of Mainz had sent the Ninety-five Theses to the University of Mainz for judgment, before passing them on to Rome in December 1517. There, the Dominican Sylvester Prierias produced a refutation on behalf of the Pope, and published his Dialogue Against the Arrogant Theses of Martin Luther Concerning the Power of the Pope the following summer. Luther considered it so bad that he simply had it reprinted, and then produced a withering retort. Other responses also began to appear. In January 1518, the indulgence-seller Tetzel, a Dominican who was also Inquisitor for Saxony and thus charged with fighting heresy, defended a set of 106 theses attacking Luther composed by the theology professor Conrad Wimpina; he also published a refutation of Luther’s Sermon on Indulgences and Grace . 24 Luther soon had to deal with what became a long line of attacks on his work, many intemperate, and some malicious.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Leipzig was a defeat for Luther, as he bitterly recognized when he told Lang that Eck was boasting of victory. 31 His supporters tried to put a positive gloss on the affair; Mosellanus proclaimed that “Eck triumphed with all who either follow like donkeys and understood nothing of the whole matter…or who wished the Wittenbergers ill for some other reason,” while Amsdorf wrote to a friend that comparing Eck with Luther would be likening “stone or rather dung” with “the most beautiful and finest gold.” But even Amsdorf had to admit that Eck “screamed” better than Luther, and that to every one of Luther’s arguments, Eck had responded with eight or nine of his own, making sure always to have the last word. 32 Popular opinion also gave Eck the laurels. He had taken on two opponents all by himself, producing “Herculean and Samsonite arguments” that were delivered in a voice “like thunder and lightning.” Luther and Karlstadt had been accompanied by a whole posse of assistants: Lang, Melanchthon, three jurists, and a host of graduates who all pored over the protocol of the debate by night and who helped Luther during the day. 33 Yet all their scholarly learning combined had not managed to get the better of the bluff Eck. Luther was particularly irked by the fact that the Leipzigers had presented Eck with a robe and a beautiful chamois coat. 34 No such honor had been shown the Wittenbergers, who moreover had been given only an obligatory welcome drink on their arrival, while Eck was feted all over town. Luther thought that Eck was motivated solely by self-glory and envy, an allegation that became a leitmotif of every account of the debate he gave for the rest of his life, most strongly in his brief autobiographical reflections that prefaced the collected edition of his Latin works in 1545. 35 Eck’s supporters accused Luther of the same self-interest. The recriminations, the insults, and the obsession with “envy” on both sides suggest that the debate raised disturbing emotions in all the participants. Reflecting on the events in 1538 shortly before he died, Eck wondered why it had all been so unpleasant: His later debates with the Swiss and south German evangelicals had been nowhere near as hostile. 36 Johannes Cochlaeus, writing about the disputation years later, repeatedly drew attention to Luther’s anger. When he did not get his way over who was to judge the disputation, Luther’s face was “wrathful,” and he was “overcome by anger”; and when Eck accused him of being a supporter of Hus, Luther “exclaimed angrily, in German, that this was a lie.” 37 To slip into German during an academic debate was bad form.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Ibid., 1224–32. 30. Ibid., 1122, 1123, July 15, 1519. 31. WB 1, 196, Sept. 3, 1519. 32. Walch, XV, 1200, Dec. 6, 1519 (Mosellanus to Pflug); 1186–87, Aug. 1, 1519 (Amsdorf to Spalatin). 33. Rummel, Confessionalization of Humanism, 20; Walch, XV, 1226, July 24, 1519 (Eck to Hoogstraten). One of the assistants, he noted, was the famed Reuchlin’s nephew (referring to Melanchthon). 34. WB 1, 187, July 20, 1519, 423:107; though Luther apparently cared nothing for clothing, cloth and its procurement recurs in the correspondence. So, for example, Luther thanked the Elector’s confessor for procuring cloth for him from the Elector, WB 1, 30, Dec. 14, 1516; and thanked the Elector again for cloth, WB 1, 55, Dec. 20, 1517. He noticed the arrival of cloth at Cranach’s establishment, WB 2, 287, May 13, 1520. But he also liked to reminisce that his old cassock was so full of holes that Dr. Hieronymus Schurf used to offer him money for a new one. He found it difficult to finally give up his monastic habit. When Frederick read his On Monastic Vows, Luther recalled, he sent him fine cloth on condition that he use it for a new cowl or gown, and joked that he should have it made in Spanish style, that is, in the latest fashion. WT 5, 6430; WT 4, 4414; WT 4, 5034. 35. Eck wanted, he wrote in 1545, to gain glory and favor with the Pope, and “to ruin me with hate and envy.” LW 34, 333; WS 54, 179–87, 183:16. 36. Eck, Epistola . 37. Vandiver, Keen, and Frazel, eds. and trans., Luther’s Lives, 68–69. 38. Rubius also wrote a longer pamphlet, the Solutiones, intended as a report on the debate for the bishop of Würzburg: Rummel, Confessionalization of Humanism, 20. 39. WS 59, 429; Brecht, Luther, I, 337–38: Luther wrote a threatening letter to Erfurt when he heard a rumor that the decision would go against him; Lang apparently also worked to get the university to refuse to judge. 40. WS 2, 241–49; 246:17–18; 244:29–30. 41. WS 2, 253; 388–435: “Resolutiones Lutherianae super propositionibus suis Lipsiae disputatis.” 42. Rummel, Confessionalization of Humanism, 19–22, for an account of this part of the debate. 43. Eck, Doctor Martin ludders . 44. Best, ed., Eccius dedolatus, 40–50. The scene of Candida the witch riding to Leipzig on her goat is reminiscent of Dürer’s Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat, of 1500. 45. Eck is shaved, like a witch about to undergo torture, to remove the “sophisms, syllogisms, major and minor propositions, corollaries, porisms and so on,” that is, all the techniques of scholastic argument that swarm like lice in his hair, and he “vomits up” the commentaries on Aristotle’s works that he had written.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  40 The dispute dragged on for several years, with passionate reconciliations followed by equally passionate denunciations. At one point, Agricola even sought Luther out in the church, begging for forgiveness. To his friends at table, Luther confided how he felt: “As God is my witness, I loved you and still loved you,” while Agricola insisted that he “had always considered [Luther] as my father in God’s place, through whom I too became a Christian and a child of God.” But for the past three years, Luther had walked all over him, “and I crawled after him like a poor little dog.” 41 Agricola’s difficulty was that he continued to depend on Luther—without his goodwill, he stood no chance of an ongoing job or even of getting his salary paid by the Elector. 42 In 1538, Luther revoked Agricola’s permission to lecture at the university, telling him that he had only been allowed to lecture so he would stop wasting time and annoying people. 43 Then Luther reversed direction and made peace with him, persuaded the Elector to permit him to preach again, and publicly declared his honor to the university. That reconciliation only lasted a short while, however, and Agricola then formally appealed to the university and to Bugenhagen, next to the clergy of Mansfeld, the town of Eisleben and all its inhabitants, and finally to the Elector himself, threatening to publicize how unfairly he had been treated. In return, by 1540 Luther was denouncing Agricola to the university chancellor, Gregor Brück, as someone who had sought to found a new sect: “In sum, Eisleben is our enemy, and he has insulted our teaching and shamed our theologians.” Even worse, he was personally disloyal: “he pretended we were friends, he laughed, ate with us, and hid his enmity against us so dishonestly and shamefully”—this was a rerun of the anger and hurt he had felt when Eck had first sought his friendship and then turned against him. 44 Whether Agricola was ever really an “antinomian,” someone who believed that saved Christians were “perfect” and were freed from the law, is unclear, but he certainly did not found a new “sect,” and he remained faithfully Lutheran all his life. Finally, in 1540, Agricola fled to Berlin, where he took a position as court preacher. 45 There he remained a powerful and respected evangelical theologian, but later that year, in a compromise mediated by Melanchthon, he was compelled to withdraw his complaint and write a humiliating apology. 46 — S UCH disputes were widely known to friend and foe. One of the most vicious pieces of propaganda against Luther was a farce Cochlaeus wrote in 1538 and in which he satirized a play by Agricola about the martyrdom of Jan Hus, which had been performed at the electoral Saxon court. Agricola’s ingratiating preface had lauded Luther as the “snow-white swan,” the reincarnation of Hus.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther, however, was implacable; when at last the Swiss wrote him a conciliatory letter in January 1537, he waited until December before replying and was decidedly offhand when he did. His sickness, he explained, had held him up, and the fact “that there is so much business in my head, not to speak of thoughts, that I can’t speak and deal with each individual as though I had nothing but one or two things to do.” 27 He went on to insist on a clear acceptance of his position, the result being that by autumn 1538, the clergy of Zurich, Basle, and Bern had all concluded that the project of gaining union with the Wittenbergers had failed. Other cities fell away as well: In Augsburg, whose adherence to the concord was crucial, Johann Forster was appointed on Luther’s recommendation, but overplayed his hand by vehemently accusing the former Zwinglian preacher Michael Keller and others of deviating from the concord, to such an extent that he alienated the council and was eventually forced to leave; the council then appointed Ambrosius Blaurer, a sacramentarian. 28 Even in his own Strasbourg, Bucer was not able to hold the line. Matthäus Zell, one of the most important of the Strasbourg reformers, continued to preach the sacramentarian doctrine, and there were deep divisions among the city clergy. For Luther, since the Wittenberg concord was not a reconciliation or a compromise, but rather to establish that the beliefs of the sacramentarians were heretical, it was imperative to assert the truth against the forces of Satan. Although both sides had undertaken not to attack one another in print, in 1539 he issued his On the Councils and the Churches, a long tract that argued that any future Church council must be bound by the Word of God and finally marked the founding of his own church. In it, he also accused Zwingli of being guilty of the Nestorian heresy. 29 This was a caricature of Zwingli’s actual beliefs, and not surprisingly, the Swiss were furious. The Zurich pastors wrote emphatically rejecting the slur. 30 The Nestorians insisted on the absolute separation of divine and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Others found transcendence in drug-induced trips, transcendental meditation, or personal transformation in such techniques as the Erhard Seminars Training (est). There was a hunger for mythos and a rejection of the scientific rationalism that had become the new Western orthodoxy. This was not a rejection of rationality per se, but of its more extreme forms. Twentieth- century science itself was cautious, sober, and highly conscious in a disciplined, principled way of its limitations and areas of competence. But the prevailing mood of modernity had made science ideological and had refused to countenance any other method of arriving at truth. During the sixties, the youth revolution was in part a protest against the illegitimate domination of rational language and the suppression of mythos by logos. But because the understanding of such disciplined ways of arriving at a more intuitive knowledge had been neglected in the West since the advent of modernity, the sixties quest for spirituality was often wild, self-indulgent, and unbalanced. There were flaws too in the visions and policies of the religious radicals, who were beginning to organize their own offensive against the secularization and rationalism of modern society. The fundamentalists were beginning to mobilize. They had often experienced modernity as an aggressive onslaught. The modern spirit had demanded freedom from the outmoded thought patterns of the past; the modern ideal of progress had entailed the elimination of those beliefs, practices, and institutions that were deemed to be irrational and, therefore, retarding. Religious establishments and doctrines had often been key targets. Sometimes, as in the case of the liberals at the time of the Scopes trial, the weapon had been ridicule. In the Middle East, where modernization was more problematic, the methods had been more brutal, involving massacre, despoliation, and the concentration camp. By the 1960s and 1970s, many religious people were angry and were determined to fight the liberals and secularists who had, they believed, oppressed and marginalized them. But these religious radicals were men of their time. They would have to fight with modern weapons and devise a modern ideology. Ever since the American and French revolutions, Western politics had been ideological; people had engaged in mighty battles for the Enlightenment ideals of the Age of Reason: liberty, equality, fraternity, human happiness, and social justice. The Western liberal consensus believed that with education, society and politics would become more rational and united. The secular ideology, a way of mobilizing people for the battle, was a modern belief system which justified the political and social struggle and gave it a rationale.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  American aid to Iran benefited only a few people, he protested, and did not reach a hundredth of what the United States took from Iran in petrodollars. “For the hundreds of millions of dollars that the American colonialist imperialists will gain in oil,” he predicted, “the oppressed nation will lose all hope of liberty and will have a negative opinion about all the Western world.” 107 In this, at least, Kashani was a true prophet. When Iranians looked back on Operation Ajax, they would forget the defection of their own people from Musaddiq, and believe implicitly that the United States had single-handedly imposed the shah’s dictatorship upon them, for its own interests. Bitterness increased in the early 1960s, when the shah’s rule became more autocratic and cruel. There seemed to be a double standard. America proudly proclaimed its belief in freedom and democracy, but warmly supported a shah who permitted no opposition to his rule, and denied Iranians fundamental human rights. After 1953, Iran became a privileged American ally. As a major oil-producing country, Iran was a prime market for the sale of American services and technology. Americans looked upon Iran as an economic goldmine, and, over the years, the United States repeated the old political patterns used by the British: strong-arm tactics in the oil market, undue influence over the monarch, demands for diplomatic immunity, business and trade concessions, and a condescending attitude toward the Iranians themselves. American businessmen and consultants poured into the country and made a great deal of money. There was a glaring discrepancy between their lifestyle and that of most Iranians; they lived isolated from the people, and since most worked under contracts associated with the throne, they became fatally associated with the regime. It was a shortsighted, self-interested policy that would eventually cast the United States in a demonic light. Iran was becoming a polarized country: a few benefited from the American boom, but the vast majority were being left behind. And Iran was not unique. By the middle of the twentieth century, the societies of all the countries we are considering were being divided into two camps. Some saw the modern age as liberating and empowering; others experienced it as an evil assault. There was fear, hatred, and a barely suppressed rage. It would not be long before fundamentalists, who felt this anger acutely, would decide that it was no longer sufficient to hold aloof from society and build a counterculture. They must mobilize and fight back. 8.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Students and townspeople themselves began to take direct action to bring about religious change, and their targets reveal what they understood by Luther’s Reformation. These were not what one might expect. Top of their agenda was the rejection of begging, which was itself an expression of their anticlericalism. During the summer there were sporadic attacks on priests’ houses, and in October, when “St. Anthony’s messenger” would traditionally walk around town ringing a bell and requesting alms, the hapless man was mocked and students pelted him with dung, some of it mixed with stones. “How well you ring that bell,” the students taunted him, “but you’d have to ring a long time before I’d give you so much as a penny.” 45 Again, these attacks seem to have had much in common with the students’ own rituals, which they had used to such effect with the burning of the bull. They were picking up on the idea, however, expressed very early by Luther, that begging was wrong and should be stopped. “Nobody ought to go begging among Christians,” he had written in To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation; “every city should support its own poor.” Mendicant monks who asked for alms were not performing pious works but diverting money away from those who truly needed it. 46 Luther, writing to Spalatin, did not exactly approve of the students’ behavior, but then, he asked, “who can hold everyone in check everywhere and at all times?” 47 The next targets of the Wittenberg reformers were Marianism—veneration of the Virgin—and the Mass. On December 3 and 4, a group of evangelicals prevented priests in the parish church from saying the Marian office. Invading the parish church, they drove the priests from the altars, took their Mass books, and threw stones at them. 48 The town council’s report to the Elector claimed that they carried knives and weapons, and concluded that several citizens had been about to stage a riot. In the Franciscan monastery, students smashed a wooden altar and posted threatening letters on the monastery door. Some suggested that next Maundy Thursday they should get the “bath maids”—that is, prostitutes—to wash down the idolatrous altars with strong lye. It would be better, they had allegedly said, to turn the altar stones into gallows and execution blocks, where they would do more for Gerechtigkeit, the word meaning both salvation and justice: “the hangman’s office was not as dangerous to souls as the idolatrous monks.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther thundered from the sidelines, warning that “man is justified by faith apart from works of law….Let the Devil, Eck, Mainz, Heinz and anyone else rage against this. We shall see what they win.” 60 His lack of interest in the proceedings at Regensburg reflected his increasingly parochial understanding of the Church. At the meetings that resulted in the Wittenberg concord, Luther had acted out his role as “the father” of the movement, the title even the sacramentarians accorded him. 61 In reality, however, much of the leadership of the Reformation had long since been ceded to Melanchthon. When the English representatives of Henry VIII wanted to reach an accord with the Saxons, and when the French envoys of Francis I embarked on negotiations, it was to Melanchthon they wanted to speak, not Luther. 62 His ill health held the movement hostage, since negotiations had to be broken off or rescheduled because of his infirmities. Anger had always been allied to his greatest spurts of creativity, but now his irascibility made him a liability as a leader. Archives and Libraries Consulted Stadtarchiv Wittenberg Lutherhalle Wittenberg Evangelisches Predigerseminar Wittenberg Bibliothek Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt Abteilung Magdeburg, Standort Magdeburg Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Standort Wernigerode Stadtarchiv Eisenach Stadtarchiv Eisleben Landesdenkmalamt Halle Marienbibliothek Halle Landesbibliothek Coburg Forschungsbibliothek Gotha Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel Primary Literature Acta et res gestae, D Martini Lvtheri [VD 16 ZV 61]. Adam, Melchior. The life and death of Dr. Martin Luther the passages whereof have bin taken out of his owne and other Godly and most learned, mens writings, who lived in his time. London, 1643. Agricola, Georg. De re metallica Libri XII. Basle, 1556 (repr. Wiesbaden, 2006). Ain löbliche ordnung der fürstlichen stat Wittemberg: Jm tausent fünf hundert vnd zway vnd zwaintzigsten jar auffgericht. Augsburg, 1522 [VD 16 W 3697]. Auerswald, Fabian von. Ringer kunst. Wittenberg, 1539 [VD 16 A 4051]. Aurifaber, Johannes, ed. Epistolae: continens scriptas ab anno Millesimo quingentesimo vigesimo usq[ue] ad annum vigesimum octauum. Vol. 2, 1594. Bavarus, Valentin. “Rapsodiae et Dicta quedam ex ore Doctoris Martini Lutheri.” Vol. 2, 1549. In Otto Scheel, ed., Dokumente zu Luthers Entwicklung. Vol. 1, Tübingen, 1929. Baylor, Michael, ed. and trans. Revelation and Revolution: Basic Writings of Thomas Müntzer. Bethlehem, PA, 1993. Best, Thomas W., ed. Eccius dedolatus: A Reformation Satire. Lexington, KY, 1971. Biering, Johann. Historische Beschreibung Des sehr alten und löblichen Mannßfeldischen Berg-Wercks Nach seinen Anfang, Fortgang, Fatis, Berg-Grentzen, Lehn-Briefen, Privilegiis, Zusammens. Leipzig and Eisleben, 1734. Bullinger, Heinrich. Warhaffte Bekanntnuß der Dieneren der Kirchen zuo Zürych, was sy uss Gottes Wort mit der heiligen allgemeinen christenlichen Kirchen gloubind und leerind, in Sonderheit aber von dem Nachtmal unsers Herren Jesu Christi: …mit zuogethoner kurtzer Bekenntniß D. Mart. Luthers vom heiligen Sacrament. Zurich, 1545 [VD 16 B 9770]. Büsser, Fritz, ed. Beschreibung des Abendmahlsstreites von Johann Stumpf. Auf Grund einer unbekannt gebliebenen Handschrift. Zurich, 1960. Capito, Wolfgang. Frohlockung eines christlichen Bruders von wegen der Vereinigung zwischen D.M.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Both sides had shown willingness to compromise and in the end the differences between them scarcely seemed big enough to justify the schism that resulted from the failure. But what finally kept the two sides apart was the absence of trust—on marriage, the sacraments, and other issues, the evangelicals simply did not believe that the Catholics meant what they said, or that they would keep their word. They feared that concessions would lead to their being crushed at a Church council that would be held outside Germany and set up to defeat them. 81 The result was not inevitable, but rather a narrowly missed opportunity to prevent the splitting of the Catholic Church. This was why negotiations continued for so long, with one committee succeeding another, and why Charles had been willing to countenance ever more attempts to reach agreement. Had it been left to Melanchthon—who was an irenicist, not a conservative like Luther—a deal might have been done. In early October 1530, Luther finally arrived back in Wittenberg, having spent half a year in the “desert” of Coburg, surrounded by the cawing of the jackdaws. He longed to see his companions: “Just come home!” he had written to the Augsburg delegation in mid-July. 82 He brushed off rumors of illness, and to prove his point he upbraided Katharina: “you can see for yourself the books that I’m writing.” 83 55. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, 1543. Luther had indeed been remarkably creative during his exile among the birds; he had finished the translation of the Old Testament, on which he had worked for twelve long years. But much of his creativity was powered by anger and hate. As Melanchthon sought to pacify, Luther poured out A Revocation of Purgatory— ironic, of course—the Letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Mainz, and the Propositions Against the Whole School of Satan and All the Gates of Hell— all attacking Catholic theology and, when sold in Augsburg, giving him a voice at the Diet. 84 In Warning to His Dear Germans (written in October but not printed until 1531), he laid into “the shameless mouth and bloodthirsty sophist,” his old enemy Dr. Eck, and excoriated the extravagance and splendor of the Diet “that would have shamed even Lord Envy and Mr. Liar.” 85 But the very fluency of Luther’s pen sprang from the ease with which he articulated familiar rhetoric. He repeated arguments he had first developed ten years before, now clothed in bitter polemic. He was increasingly speaking to the converted, not to those wrestling with doubt.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The phrase echoed Luther’s insistence before Worms that he had not been given a hearing, and that he had not been proved wrong by Scripture. 40. WB 3, 785, Oct. 27, 1524, 361:13–14. 41. Burnett, Karlstadt, 68, 143–47; Martin Reinhart had Karlstadt’s work published in Nuremberg but was exiled from there, getting the Dialogue finally finished in Bamberg. 42. Barge, Karlstadt, II, 18; Gerhard Westerburg, Vom Fegefewer vnd Standt der verscheyden selen eyn Christliche Meynung, Cologne 1523 [VD 16 W2215]. It opens with a dedication letter to the mayor and council of Cologne. Publication in Cologne was very important because it was the gateway to the Netherlands, and three thousand copies were reportedly sent on there. It was published in Augsburg as well. On the preaching visit, Barge, Karlstadt, II, 20–21. 43. WB 3 887, June 11, 1525, 527:2, Paul Speratus to Luther, describing the arrival of Martin Cellarius in Königsberg. See also WB 3, 756, July 4, 1524. Cornelius Hoen in the Netherlands and Franz Kolb at Wertheim had already written to Luther arguing similar sacramental positions (WS 15, 384); Luther wrote complaining of the number of people taking Karlstadt’s position in late 1524; WB 3, 793, Nov. 17, 1524 and WB 3, 802, Dec. 2, 1524; 817, Jan. 13, 1525. See Barge, Karlstadt, II, 144–296. 44. WB 3, 796, Nov. 22, 1524; 797, Nov. 23, 1524; and Gerbel reported that in Strasbourg Karlstadt was blaming Luther for his expulsion, complaining that he had been neither heard nor warned. 45. WB 3, 858, Strasbourg, April(?) 1525, 477:29–31. 46. Valentin Ickelsamer, Clag ettlicher Brieder, an alle Christen, von der großen Ungerechtigkeyt und Tyranney, so Endressen Bodenstein…vom Luther…gechicht [Augsburg] [1525] [VD 16 I 32]. Ickelsamer was a supporter of Karlstadt. 47. LW 40, 204; WS 18, 194. Luther also accuses Karlstadt of “envy and vain ambition,” and “envious hatred,” in Against the Heavenly Prophets, and, in an extended passage, accuses him of being subservient to “Frau Hulda,” or Reason, a capricious elfin figure of folklore. Natural reason, Luther argues, is “the Devil’s prostitute,” and he condemns Karlstadt as a clever sophist who cannot see the plain meaning of Scripture, “This is my body.” For his part, Karlstadt would accuse Luther of delighting in trying to make him feel “gramschaft/neyd/hass/vngnad” (anxiety, envy, hatred, and disgrace), Anzeyg, fo. E [iv] (v). 48. WS 15, 391–97, Dec. 14–15, 1525. 49. WS 15, 384, Dec. 31, 1524 (Capito to Zwingli). 50. WS 15, 394:12–17; 24; in typical fashion, Luther argued that the more Karlstadt “schwermet” (enthused) about the idea that there was no Real Presence, the stronger Luther’s conviction that he was wrong. 51. WB 3, 779, Oct. 3, 1524, 354:15. A year later, writing about Duke Georg, and echoing his earlier language, Luther compared him to Karlstadt, who along with the sacramentarians were “the sons of my womb”; WB 4, 973, Jan. 20, 1526, 18:7. This was powerful language indeed. 52. WS 18, 66:19–20. 53.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  They did not see why that should make them less modern, though they tacitly recognized that this would mean a break with some of the old conservative aspects of premodern religion. The fundamentalist reformation of the faith meant that an activism that had hitherto been seen as irreligious was now presented as crucial. Religious Zionists and fundamentalist Christians and Muslims all insisted on the need for dynamism and revolutionary transformation in keeping with the forward thrust and pragmatic drive of modern society. This battle for God was an attempt to fill the void at the heart of a society based on scientific rationalism. Instead of reviling fundamentalists, the secularist establishment could sometimes have benefited from a long, hard look at some of their countercultures. Shukri Mustafa’s communes were a reverse image of Sadat’s Open Door policy; the charitable empires created by the Muslim Brothers and the practical measures taken by the members of the jamaat al-islamiyyah threw into harsh relief the current government’s lack of concern for the poor, a crucial value in Islam. The popularity and power of these movements showed that the people of Egypt still wanted to be religious, despite the secularist trend. So did the cult of Khomeini in Iran: as the confrontation with the regime accelerated, Khomeini took on more and more of the characteristics of the Imams, providing in his own person a Shii alternative to the despotic persona of the shah which was clearly attractive to many of the Iranians. Similarly, the Jewish yeshivot provided a contrast to the pragmatic nature of secularist education; in a society which seemed to have cast God and his Law aside, yeshiva students studied in order to have an encounter with the divine, not simply to acquire useful information, and made the study of the Torah more central to their lives than ever before. When they created these alternative societies, fundamentalists were demonstrating their disillusion with a culture which could not easily accommodate the spiritual. Because it was so embattled, this campaign to re-sacralize society became aggressive and distorted. It lacked the compassion which all faiths have insisted is essential to the religious life and to any experience of the numinous. Instead, it preached an ideology of exclusion, hatred, and even violence. But the fundamentalists did not have a monopoly on anger. Their movements had often evolved in a dialectical relationship with an aggressive secularism which showed scant respect for religion and its adherents. Secularists and fundamentalists sometimes seem trapped in an escalating spiral of hostility and recrimination.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  An earthly reality could become a symbol of the divine, but was never itself holy; it pointed beyond itself to where reason could not go. But Kook had overridden these distinctions and created what some might call idolatry. Can an army be “holy” when it is often obliged to do terrible things, such as killing the innocent with the guilty? Traditionally, messianism had inspired people to criticize the status quo, but Kook would use it to give absolute sanction to Israeli policy. Such a vision could lead to a nihilism that denies crucial values. In making the State of Israel holy and its territorial integrity supreme, Kook had succumbed to the very temptation responsible for some of the worst nationalist atrocities of the twentieth century. Rabbi Kook the Elder’s inclusive vision, which had reached out to other faiths and to the secular world, had been lost. Kook the Younger was filled with burning hatred of Christians, of the goyim who interfered with Israeli ambitions, and of the Arabs. 87 There had been wisdom in the older vision, which had seen reason and myth as complementary though separate. There was great danger in Kook the Younger’s yoking of the two together. The Gahelet did not take this view, however. Rabbi Kook’s holistic ideology made Zionism a religion, and was just what they had been looking for. They became full-time students at Merkaz Harav, and put this obscure yeshiva on the map of Israel. They also made Kook a sort of Jewish pope, whose decrees were binding and infallible. These young men became Kook’s cadre and would become the leaders of the new fundamentalist Zionism: Moshe Levinger, Yaakov Ariel, Shlomo Aviner, Haim Drukman, Dov Lior, Zalman Melamed, Avraham Shapira, and Eliezar Waldman. In Merkaz Harav during the 1960s, they planned an offensive designed to win the nation back to God and to make the secular state realize its religious potential. Instead of the dialectical synthesis of secular and religious envisaged by Kook the Elder, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda expected an imminent takeover of the secular by the divine. For all their enthusiasm, however, the Gahelet could do no more than plan. There was nothing they could effectively do to settle the whole land or to change the heart of the nation. But in 1967, history took a hand.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  70 Melanchthon immediately set off to find Luther, while the Elector arranged for Luther’s personal physician, Matthäus Ratzeberger, to plead with him. 71 The university also became involved, and the Elector wrote personally to both Luther and Amsdorf, pressing the latter to persuade the old man to come back. In the end, Melanchthon thought better of confronting Luther and returned home. Luther’s old sparring partner the Saxon chancellor Gregor Brück had the measure of the two men: If Luther just wants to “sit on his head,” that is, turn his life’s work upside down, then he was sure that Philip would leave Wittenberg, too. He predicted that Luther would stay because he would not find it easy to sell all that property: There was the huge monastery in Wittenberg, several gardens, and other houses, too. 72 What worried the Elector and the university was that Melanchthon would leave with Luther, and that would be the end of the university. Whatever it was that made Luther decide so late in life to throw everything over, risking not only the future of the university but the entire Reformation, probably had something to do with tensions in his relationship with Melanchthon. It seems that despite all their achievements, and everything the two men had gone through together, Luther was prepared to jeopardize it all in a moment of melancholic bitterness. It is part of the appeal of the old Luther that he grouchily refused to play the tame patriarch, meekly handing on power to the next generation—and it was the tragedy of the Reformation that Luther had destroyed relations with so many of those who might have stepped into his shoes. A LTHOUGH L UTHER SPENT much time in his last years attacking friends and allies, he never forgot his true enemies, the first and greatest of whom remained the Pope. In 1538 he published a leaked memorial of advice from some cardinals about what should be discussed at the future Church council, with a biting commentary. The woodcut on the cover showed two cardinals cleaning out a church with foxtails, while the altarpiece was an image of the Pope. Foxtails stood for flattery and deceit, so the message was clear: The proposed council was nothing but a trick, and the Church really worshipped not Christ but the Pope. 1 Next, Luther personally commissioned a mock coat of arms of the papacy, remarking that the Pope “banned me and burnt me and stuck me in the behind of the Devil, so I will hang him on his own keys.” 2 As preparations began for another attempt to reconcile Catholics and Protestants at the Diet of Regensburg, Luther abandoned any residual willingness to compromise, and his polemic lost all restraint. In 1545 he produced the virulent, rambling Against the Roman Papacy an Institution of the Devil.