Anxiety

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 102 of 501 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  During the trip both a loss of consciousness and that illness which you usually call humor ventriculi [heart palpitations] caught me. For I went on foot, but this was beyond my strength, so that I perspired. Afterwards in the carriage when my shirt also had gotten cold from the sweat, the cold grabbed a muscle in my left arm. From this came that tightness of the heart and something like shortness of breath. It is my own stupid fault. But now I am quite well again, how long—well that of course I do not know, since one cannot trust old age. It seems that he fell unconscious and was ultimately revived with warm towels. In the same letter, he told Melanchthon of his progress in the negotiations thus far: “With God’s help we have slain today the most bristly of all the porcupines . . . though not without a fight.”2 But in his letter to Kathie the same day, he mentioned only the dizziness. He knew she was worried about him, and with good reasons. During this time, Luther’s leg abscess healed, but according to his personal physician, Matthias Ratzenberger, this abscess was in fact a “fontanelle”—meaning it was a place where the bodily humors may escape, which was thought a good thing, and so Ratzenberger advised Luther to keep it perpetually open. But he hadn’t brought along the medicine he used for this, and so it began to heal closed, something he was convinced was bad for his overall health. Luther did tell Kathie that he was enjoying the Naumburg beer, which he volunteered afforded him about three excellent bowel movements each morning. He also mentioned in the letter that the dizziness that struck him before entering Eisleben might well have been caused by “the Jews” because just before it happened he had passed through a town in which many Jews were said to live. Luther believed in “spiritual warfare” and demonic attacks, as we have well established, and seemed to think that this might have been an attack of witchcraft on the part of the Jews, who had cursed him, or perhaps a general satanic attack that the Jews’ presence might have exacerbated. According to those who had been in the carriage with him at the time of the health issues, he said, “The devil does this to me every time I intend and ought to undertake something important. He . . . attacks me with such a tentatio [trial].”3 Luther knew that spiritually speaking, he was a marked man and that the devil often harassed him. He said as much in his February 3 letter to Melanchthon, citing the difficulty of the negotiations and then a bizarre event:

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In late January and early February 1522, meetings were held at Eilenburg, not far from Torgau, between the Elector’s representative, Hugo von Einsiedeln, and Christian Beyer.42 Something of the nature of this tiny social elite can be gauged from the fact that Beyer, who entered his mayoral term of office in February, had been acting on the Elector’s behalf; now he found himself defending the actions of the council he had earlier been seeking to rein in. Meanwhile Christian Döring and Lucas Cranach, members of the council since 1519 and very close to the Elector’s court—the Elector was Cranach’s main patron—were likely to see things the Elector’s way. Eventually a meeting of representatives of the university, the foundation of All Saints, the mayor, and the Elector’s advisors managed to reach an agreement on the reforms to be introduced in Wittenberg. It stipulated that the words of consecration of the sacrament would be said in German; part of the canon of the Mass would be omitted; the elevation would be reintroduced as a sign, but it would be explained that the Mass was not a sacrifice; the priest should give the sacrament to the communicant “according to their wish”; and the poor-law provisions would remain in place. There was no mention of whether Communion should be given in one kind or two, and the images that had been destroyed were not ordered to be replaced.43 Karlstadt volunteered to stop preaching so as to broker a compromise, safeguarding the provisions of the ordinance. It looked as if the Reformation in Wittenberg would be secure.44 However, the Catholic side had not been idle, either. Duke Georg, alarmed at what was happening in electoral Saxony, successfully campaigned for strong action at the Imperial Council, which was sitting at Nuremberg. On January 20, 1522, an imperial mandate was issued giving the conservative Catholic bishops with jurisdiction in Saxon areas—those of Mainz, Naumburg, and Merseburg—authority to carry out “Visitations” and punish all those guilty of innovations. The Elector was deeply alarmed and now unilaterally rejected the Eilenburg compromise since he knew that if he were to disobey the mandate, he would find his rule imperiled.45 It would be easy for his dukedom and electoral honors to be transferred to his cousin Duke Georg—and indeed, this is exactly what happened after the Schmalkaldic War of 1546–47.46

• From A History of God (1993)

  The Gnostics showed that many of the new converts to Christianity were not satisfied with the traditional idea of God which they had inherited from Judaism. They did not experience the world as “good,” the work of a benevolent deity. A similar dualism and dislocation marked the doctrine of Marcion (100–165), who founded his own rival church in Rome and attracted a huge following. Jesus had said that a sound tree produced good fruit:37 how could the world have been created by a good God when it was manifestly full of evil and pain? Marcion was also appalled by the Jewish scriptures, which seemed to describe a harsh, cruel God who exterminated whole populations in his passion for justice. He decided that it was this Jewish God, who was “lustful for war, inconstant in his attitudes and self-contradictory,”38 who had created the world. But Jesus had revealed that another God existed, who had never been mentioned by the Jewish scriptures. This second God was “placid, mild and simply good and excellent.”39 He was entirely different from the cruel “juridical” Creator of the world. We should, therefore, turn away from the world, which, since it was not his doing, could tell us nothing about this benevolent deity and should also reject the “Old” Testament, concentrating simply upon those New Testament books which had preserved the spirit of Jesus. The popularity of Marcion’s teachings showed that he had voiced a common anxiety. At one time it seemed as though he were about to found a separate Church. He had put his finger on something important in the Christian experience; generations of Christians have found it difficult to relate positively to the material world, and there are still a significant number who do not know what to make of the Hebrew God.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther was not at all interested in going, however, knowing that what Zwingli had written on the subject of the Sacrament said everything that needed to be said, and there was no conceivable way that Luther would be willing to compromise with any of it. Luther also felt that Zwingli was the one pushing for this meeting, hoping that seeming to desire peace between them would give him an advantage with Landgrave Philip, who would himself push Luther to make some theological accommodation he knew he could never make. Melanchthon didn’t want to attend either. For his part, he somewhat amazingly believed it would still be possible to find some compromise with the Catholics and to be reunited with them. So if the Lutherans went a step further toward Zwingli’s excesses, that would scotch those hopes irrevocably. But Elector John knew they must make an effort, and at last he succeeded in twisting Luther’s arm into an agreement to go. Nonetheless, Luther wrote to Philip beforehand. “I know I cannot give an inch,” he said, “and, after reading their arguments, I remain certain they are wrong.”1 And there were further problems. Not only would Luther not compromise on the issue of whether the Real Presence of Christ—meaning the actual body of Christ—was present in the Eucharist, but he could not even consent to the fundamental idea behind the meeting. He knew that Philip wanted them all to come together for the specific purposes of a political—and therefore military—alliance against the emperor, but Luther’s understanding of Scripture did not give him permission to disobey the governmental authorities whom God had placed over him. He could disagree with them, as he had already done, and could be willing to die for what he believed. He could let them kill him, but he could not take up arms against them. That was simply something outside what was possible. He also realized that to create such an alliance as was being proposed would be hopelessly provocative: We cannot in conscience approve such a league inasmuch as bloodshed or other disaster may be the outcome, and we may find ourselves so involved that we cannot withdraw even though we would. Better be ten times dead than that our consciences should be burdened with the insufferable weight of such disaster and that our gospel should be the cause of bloodshed, when we ought rather to be as sheep for the slaughter and not avenge or defend ourselves.2

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He therefore advised his correspondent not to “stop the flow, let the blood out, because they say it is the ‘golden artery,’ and it is indeed golden. It’s said that everything evil to do with illness flows out; it’s a dung-gate for all illnesses, and those people live the longest.” 34 Although perhaps unpleasant to modern readers, the words reflect contemporary beliefs; humoral medicine assumed that the world and the body were interrelated. “Flows” were always good for the body, and should never be stopped: Menstrual blood, pus, and urine expelled bad substances from the body and thus were healthy. Luther saw illness as a disruption of the essential exchange between the body and the world, and considered his physical ills to be connected to his emotional state. How indeed could this have been otherwise at a time when the emotions and character were thought to depend on the mixture of humors in the body? What was unusual about Luther, however, was that he also sought to derive spiritual certainty from his bodily experiences, and this became increasingly so the older and sicker he became. During his time in the castle, his troubles focused mostly on his head, and he readily provided a natural explanation based on drinking bad wine. But he simultaneously provided a spiritual interpretation: Since the headaches prevented him from translating the Old Testament, and thus were obstructing God’s work, they consequently had to be diabolic. Thus Luther’s own body became a battleground in the cosmic struggle between God and the Devil. As he wrote to Melanchthon, the Devil had now turned away from tempting him spiritually and had switched to physical assaults. “All right,” he declared, “if he devours me, he shall devour a laxative, God willing, which will make his bowels and anus too tight for him.” 35 — F OR about a month, from May 22 to mid-June, Luther had no news from the Wittenberg delegation in Augsburg. He knew that this was a crucial time, for Melanchthon was finalizing the confession of faith that would be presented to the emperor. 36 Were they keeping secrets from him? 37 Only half-jokingly, he described the anxious wait for post to Spalatin: The first messenger arrived, and was asked: “Haven’t you brought letters? No. How are the gentlemen? Fine. The second came, and then the third and fourth: always the same, no letters. How are the gentlemen? Fine.”

• From A History of God (1993)

  Despite the bad press it has in the Bible, there is nothing wrong with idolatry per se: it becomes objectionable or naive only if the image of God, which has been constructed with such loving care, is confused with the ineffable reality to which it refers. We shall see that later in the history of God, some Jews, Christians and Muslims worked on this early image of the absolute reality and arrived at a conception that was closer to the Hindu or Buddhist visions. Others, however, never quite managed to take this step, but assumed that their conception of God was identical with the ultimate mystery. The dangers of an “idolatrous” religiosity became clear in about 622 BCE during the reign of King Josiah of Judah. He was anxious to reverse the syncretist policies of his predecessors, King Manasseh (687–42) and King Amon (642–40), who had encouraged their people to worship the gods of Canaan alongside Yahweh. Manasseh had actually put up an effigy to Asherah in the Temple, where there was a flourishing fertility cult. Since most Israelites were devoted to Asherah and some thought that she was Yahweh’s wife, only the strictest Yahwists would have considered this blasphemous. Determined to promote the cult of Yahweh, however, Josiah had decided to make extensive repairs in the Temple. While the workmen were turning everything upside down, the High Priest Hilkiah is said to have discovered an ancient manuscript which purported to be an account of Moses’ last sermon to the children of Israel. He gave it to Josiah’s secretary, Shapan, who read it aloud in the king’s presence. When he heard it, the young king tore his garments in horror: no wonder Yahweh had been so angry with his ancestors! They had totally failed to obey his strict instructions to Moses.31 It is almost certain that the “Book of the Law” discovered by Hilkiah was the core of the text that we now know as Deuteronomy. There have been various theories about its timely “discovery” by the reforming party. Some have even suggested that it had been secretly written by Hilkiah and Shapan themselves with the assistance of the prophetess Huldah, whom Josiah immediately consulted. We shall never know for certain, but the book certainly reflected an entirely new intransigence in Israel, which reflects a seventh-century perspective. In his last sermon, Moses is made to give a new centrality to the covenant and the idea of the special election of Israel. Yahweh had marked his people out from all the other nations, not because of any merit of their own but because of his great love. In return, he demanded complete loyalty and a fierce rejection of all other gods. The core of Deuteronomy includes the declaration which would later become the Jewish profession of faith:

• From A History of God (1993)

  The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been a period of painful extremity and excitement of spirit which had mirrored the revolutionary turbulence of the political and social world. There had been nothing comparable in the Muslim world at this time, although this is difficult for a Western person to ascertain because eighteenth-century Islamic thought has not been much studied. It has generally been too easily dismissed by Western scholars as an uninteresting period, and it has been held that while Europe had an Enlightenment, Islam went into decline. Recently, however, this perspective has been challenged as being too simplistic. Even though the British had achieved control of India in 1767, the Muslim world was not yet fully aware of the unprecedented nature of the Western challenge. The Indian Sufi Shah Walli-Ullah of Delhi (1703–62) was perhaps the first to sense the new spirit. He was an impressive thinker who was suspicious of cultural universalism but believed that Muslims should unite to preserve their heritage. Even though he did not like the Shiah, he believed that Sunnis and Shiis should find common ground. He tried to reform the Shariah to make it more relevant to the new conditions of India. Walli-Ullah seemed to have had a presentiment of the consequences of colonialism: his son would lead a jihad against the British. His religious thought was more conservative, heavily dependent upon Ibn al-Arabi: man could not develop his full potential without God. Muslims were still happy to draw on the riches of the past in religious matters, and Walli-Ullah is an example of the power that Sufism could still inspire. In many parts of the world, however, Sufism had become somewhat decadent, and a new reforming movement in Arabia presaged the swing away from mysticism that would characterize the Muslim perception of God during the nineteenth century and the Islamic response to the challenge of the West.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  During Luther’s childhood, Hans Luder would have been a force to be reckoned with. He was a physically powerful man, and once, when a pub fight broke out in his presence, he poured beer over the two combatants to separate them, clouting both on the head for good measure with a jug until the blood ran.37 He was also not a man to be crossed lightly. We find him complaining about the high charges of the winch-winders, and about another mine operator who, he claimed, was stealing his ore (the accused countered that Luder was taking his charcoal).38 The court books are littered with disputes between the mine operators—small wonder, with 194 shafts at the industry’s peak in the early sixteenth century in the Mansfeld and Eisleben areas, where it could be hard to know where one mine’s territory began and another ended. Time and again, the mine inspector would be called to check the location of boundary stones. Tunnels honeycombed the hills. The longest was a remarkable eight miles long, and it was rumored that a man could reach Eisleben from the castle in Mansfeld through the tunnels. It was also a world of dizzyingly complex financial arrangements. Much of the mining structures had to be maintained collectively, and the records afford a glimpse of the maze of loans, counter-loans, and securities as money circulated among the small group of mine operators, or was advanced by the capitalists of Nuremberg, and as mines were relinquished and redistributed.39 Hans Luder would have been caught between several competing forces: the counts, who leased the mines and constantly sought to extract more money by altering the legal terms; the other mine managers, who were only too quick to seize an advantage; the miners, whose labor actually produced the wealth from the ground, and who were beginning to organize collectively; and the capitalists in faraway Nuremberg and Leipzig, who drove hard bargains and to whom it was only too easy to become irrevocably indebted. These economic relations were new, and they were complicated. The large-scale mining leases given to new mine owners and the silver refining introduced in the fifteenth century brought in the capitalists from outside. These developments created deeply uncertain relationships, legally, economically, and socially. The new leases issued by the counts were no longer permanent but temporary, and created a two-tier legal arrangement among the small elite of mine owners. There was no guarantee of success, however. Some entrepreneurs earned vast amounts of money—families like the Heidelbergs and the Drachstedts made fabled fortunes—while others were sinking deeper and deeper into debt.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Shortly before the party reached Eisleben, Luther became very ill, collapsing in the wagon. He remarked that this was again the work of the Devil, who always attacked him “whenever I have something important that I have to do.” His body was rubbed with hot cloths and he revived. In Eisleben, Luther stayed in the house of Dr. Drachstedt, a major figure in the mining business with long-standing links to Luther’s family.12 Meetings had to be organized around the old man’s illness, but even his precarious physical state was not enough to get the counts to agree. Negotiations dragged on for three weeks, with Luther desperate to get home. Meanwhile, he devised a daily routine. Just as mealtimes with the whole household were central to his life in Wittenberg, so in Eisleben he kept a common table, with guests. Mealtimes were devotional occasions, as they had been in the monastery. Then, every evening around eight o’clock, he rose from the table and left the big parlor to go to his room, where he would stand by the window, praying—“so earnestly and intently that we…keeping silent, often heard some words and were amazed,” according to his companions. Afterward, he would turn from the window, happy, “as if he had put down a burden,” and talk to his associates for another quarter hour before going to bed. Luther knew that he was facing death, and he talked about how “we old ones have to live so long that we see into the backside of the Devil, and experience so much evil, faithlessness and misery.” There was also talk at dinner about whether the dead would recognize one another, one of the very few occasions on which Luther speculated about the afterlife. He was sure that they would—just as, when Adam first met Eve, he knew at once that she was flesh of his flesh.13

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  His religiosity had nothing saccharine about it. His relationship with God was not that of a believer cheerfully confident of having been “saved.” It was wrested from his Anfechtungen and it engaged all his intellectual and emotional capacities. He would pray for hours a day, conversing with God, but this never gave him happy assurance: For Luther, doubt always accompanied faith. Melanchthon described how, in one debate, Luther suddenly became unsure that he was right, and he left the room, falling on his bed and praying.49 This was not how one would expect a university professor to behave: He was utterly engaged in the subject under discussion, and shaken to the core by the thought that he might have been mistaken. Luther’s extraordinary openness, his honest willingness to put everything on the line, and his capacity to accept God’s grace as a gift he did not merit are his most attractive characteristics. Luther is a difficult hero, nonetheless. His writings can be full of hatred, and his predilection for scatological rhetoric and humor is not to modern taste. He could be authoritarian, bullying, overconfident; his domineering ways overshadowed his children’s lives and alienated many of his followers. His intransigent capacity to demonize his opponents was more than a psychological flaw because it meant that Protestantism split very early, weakening it permanently and leading to centuries of war. His anti-Semitism was more visceral than that of many of his contemporaries, and it was also intrinsic to his religiosity and his understanding of the relation between the Old and the New Testament. It cannot just be excused as the prejudice of his day. His greatest intellectual gift was his ability to simplify, to cut to the heart of an issue—but this also made it difficult for him to compromise or see nuance. And yet only someone with an utter inability to see anyone else’s point of view could have had the courage to take on the papacy, to act like a “blinkered horse” looking neither to right nor left, but treading relentlessly onward regardless of the consequences. And only someone with a sense of humor, a stubborn realism, and a remarkable ability to engage the deepest loyalties of others could have avoided the martyrdom that threatened.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It is not surprising that Karlstadt’s treatise would be listed in the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.21 When he issued it in German, and toned down much of the invective, Karlstadt included passages on the appropriate behavior of wives, which emphasize their duty to obey: “For this reason God made women (who are normally soft and gentle) especially tough. He hardened them so that they may serve their husbands.”22 While Karlstadt advocated marriage, his revulsion toward sexuality and the flesh ironically owed a great deal to the Christian monastic ascetic tradition from which he was trying to escape. It was strong stuff. When Luther read it, he admired the learning but was taken aback by Karlstadt’s narrow and literalist understanding of the passage about Moloch, fearing it would lead to ridicule from their opponents. Luther worried that by exciting “such a big crowd of unmarried people to matrimony” through what seemed to him to be a biblical passage referring not to masturbation but to something as harmless as nocturnal emissions, they might create even greater burdens for their consciences. It was easier for Karlstadt, a secular priest, to be more radical than Luther, who still agonized over whether priests and monks were in the same position in relation to celibacy. Pondering it all, Luther joked to Spalatin that he certainly would not be driven to take a wife himself.23 Some of his unease sprang from the fact that Karlstadt understood “flesh” more literally and narrowly than Luther, for whom it was a much more capacious term, including sins like envy, anger, or even reliance on other people’s physical presence. A letter of September 9, 1521, one of the most revealing letters Luther wrote from the Wartburg, shows him almost thinking aloud, as he considered the draft passages on monastic vows in Melanchthon’s Loci communes, which its author had sent him and which were also influenced by Karlstadt’s treatise. Luther’s thoughts suggest that he was grappling with his own sexuality. He opens by wishing that he and Melanchthon could engage in a face-to-face disputation, for then it would be possible to see where the real disagreements lay. Underneath the ostensible subject of debate—vows and their validity—it seems that what is actually disturbing Luther is the idea of the “burning flesh,” to which he comes at the end of the letter: What, Luther wondered, did Paul mean by “burning,” which both Karlstadt and now Melanchthon interpreted to mean sexual desire? And how serious a sin was it?24

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  And, as he received a steady stream of requests for advice, he had to hammer out the practical theology—on baptism, marriage, divorce, and death—that was essential to forming a new Church. The man who had been convinced, in 1520, that all believers were equally priests now had to decide questions about authority and structure within the Church. Should there be bishops, as he seemed to concede in 1530? Ferocious arguments with sacramentarians, supposedly to find common ground, in fact established clear and unbreachable distance with them in matters of both belief and practice, as Luther tried to convert them to his point of view rather than listen to them. Equally, he moved away from an early commitment that matters of belief should never be settled by force, though he would always remain queasy about punishing heretics. At the same time, he slowly approached the idea that it might be justifiable to resist the emperor in certain circumstances. Shortly after the Diet ended, Luther had written in his Warning to His Dear Germans that if the emperor ordered them to take up arms against their fellow Lutherans, they should not obey, and that a persecuted Lutheran who resisted death rather than enduring suffering in a Christian manner should not be accounted rebellious. 1 This was not yet resistance to the emperor, but it went further than his position of March 6, 1530. The same October, he took the view that legal experts, not theologians, should decide if resistance to the emperor was ever justifiable. This position allowed him to support the Schmalkaldic League and its military objectives without developing a political theology that sanctioned resistance. 2 Despite the political necessity for the evangelicals to make common cause, it continued to prove difficult to get their theologians to make peace with one another. From the Swiss and southern German perspective, it was imperative to reach an accord. If the Lutherans had seemed weak and isolated in Augsburg, this was even more true of the sacramentarians. Zwingli had composed his own articles of belief, but had been unable to present them; the Upper Germans had formulated a separate confession of faith as a compromise with Lutheranism, but this had been accepted by only four towns; 3 and as the Swiss refused to sign the document, which became known as the Tetrapolitana, they would not be admitted to the Schmalkaldic League. Zwingli and the Swiss had always been aware of the looming danger of political isolation and had looked for allies ever since the Catholic Swiss cantons had formed an alliance against the evangelicals in 1524. Zwingli had hoped to join with Philip of Hesse, and even toyed with an alliance with France.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Not drinking has chipped off some armor I’ve hardened over my softest aspects, and now I sit in a coffee shop niggling with a woman who most days feels like the only roadblock between me and a truckload of flaming horseshit. She says, You honestly think you’re gonna sit here with me and figure out how to conduct every day of your life henceforth without a drink? Why not? Because nobody graduates. Each day you’ll feel different. If you’re numbed out, you act based on how you’re supposed to feel rather than how you actually feel. You need a toolbox of sober alternatives. Get more women’s numbers. If I’m not around, you’ll have to call somebody else. I hate everybody else. For somebody who worries about being judged so much, you’re a tough crowd. I say, Maybe I should use Jake’s line: I tell people I have an allergy to liquor. When I drink it, I break out in handcuffs. See, you’re starting to like the group. The religious shit— Spiritual shit, Joan corrects. Whatever. It makes my skin crawl. Anyway, I don’t get how it works. Joan says, You don’t know how electricity works, either, but you use light switches. I suspect a trap, I say. Like those ladies at the meeting. They’re always offering to take care of Dev if I need help. This bothers you? Joan says. One of your big grumbles is how no one helps with your son. Warren helps more and more, the more incompetent I get. I got more accomplished when I drank, actually. At this point in your life, you don’t know how not to drink yet. No alcoholic does. It takes training. I watch the yellow leaves blow down the street and eventually say, Maybe those women want to kidnap Dev, even. Joan shakes her head and grins. Now that I’ve begun to say aloud what I actually think, head-shaking is a common response. She says, You spend way too much time alone. Cut off as I felt from Warren before I quit drinking, it’s worse sober. Now everything he does just irritates the shit out of me. I say, The only time I connect with people is away from Warren. That can’t be good. You told me yourself, Joan says, how weighed down with school he is—plus work, plus your three-year-old. Give getting sober a chance. Try not to make any big moves. The only way I know to arrive at balance in my choices is through prayer. Like I get on my knees and say to the air molecules, Do I get divorced—and some note with yes or no gets lowered down to eye level, suspended on a fishhook. If you need God with skin on, go to your group and ask the first person you see. You want me to go to this group of virtual strangers and ask whoever I see first whether to stay married or not, then do what they say?

• From A History of God (1993)

  Yet the new version of monotheism, which eventually became known as “Islam,” spread with astonishing rapidity throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Many of its enthusiastic converts in these lands (where Hellenism was not on home ground) turned with relief from Greek Trinitarianism, which expressed the mystery of God in an idiom that was alien to them, and adopted a more Semitic notion of the divine reality. I 5 Unity: The God of Islam N ABOUT THE YEAR 610 an Arab merchant of the thriving city of Mecca in the Hijaz, who had never read the Bible and probably never heard of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had an experience that was uncannily similar to theirs. Every year Muhammad ibn Abdallah, a member of the Meccan tribe of Quraysh, used to take his family to Mount Hira just outside the city to make a spiritual retreat during the month of Ramadan. This was quite a common practice among the Arabs of the peninsula. Muhammad would have spent the time praying to the High God of the Arabs and distributing food and alms to the poor who came to visit him during this sacred period. He probably also spent much time in anxious thought. We know from his later career that Muhammad was acutely aware of a worrying malaise in Mecca, despite its recent spectacular success. Only two generations earlier, the Quraysh had lived a harsh nomadic life in the Arabian steppes, like the other Bedouin tribes: each day had required a grim struggle for survival. During the last years of the sixth century, however, they had become extremely successful in trade and made Mecca the most important settlement in Arabia. They were now rich beyond their wildest dreams. Yet their drastically altered lifestyle meant that the old tribal values had been superseded by a rampant and ruthless capitalism. People felt obscurely disoriented and lost. Muhammad knew that the Quraysh were on a dangerous course and needed to find an ideology that would help them to adjust to their new conditions. At this time, any political solution tended to be of a religious nature. Muhammad was aware that the Quraysh were making a new religion out of money. This was hardly surprising, because they must have felt that their new wealth had “saved’ them from the perils of the nomadic life, cushioning them from the malnutrition and tribal violence that were endemic to the steppes of Arabia, where each Bedouin tribe daily faced the possibility of extinction. They now had almost enough to eat and were making Mecca an international center of trade and high finance. They felt that they had become the masters of their own fate, and some even seem to have believed that their wealth would give them a certain immortality. But Muhammad believed that this new cult of self-sufficiency (istaqa) would mean the disintegration of the tribe.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Today we are less likely to be as optimistic about science, which can only explain the world of physical nature. Wilfred Cantwell Smith pointed out that the Logical Positivists set themselves up as scientists during a period when, for the first time in history, science saw the natural world in explicit disjunction from humanity. 3 The kind of statements to which Ayer referred work very well for the objective facts of science but are not suitable for less clear-cut human experiences. Like poetry or music, religion is not amenable to this kind of discourse and verification. More recently linguistic philosophers such as Antony Flew have argued that it is more rational to find a natural explanation than a religious one. The old “proofs” do not work: the argument from design falls down because we would need to get outside the system to see whether natural phenomena are motivated by their own laws or by Something outside. The argument that we are “contingent” or “defective” beings proves nothing, since there could always be an explanation that is ultimate but not supernatural. Flew is less of an optimist than Feuerbach, Marx or the Existentialists. There is no agonizing, no heroic defiance but simply a matter-of-fact commitment to reason and science as the only way forward. We have seen, however, that not all religious people have looked to “God” to provide them with an explanation for the universe. Many have seen the proofs as a red herring. Science has been felt to be threatening only by those Western Christians who got into the habit of reading the scriptures literally and interpreting doctrines as though they were matters of objective fact. Scientists and philosophers who find no room for God in their systems are usually referring to the idea of God as First Cause, a notion eventually abandoned by Jews, Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians during the Middle Ages. The more subjective “God” that they were looking for could not be proved as though it were an objective fact that was the same for everybody. It could not be located within a physical system of the universe, any more than the Buddhist nirvana. More dramatic than the linguistic philosophers were the radical theologians of the 1960s who enthusiastically followed Nietzsche and proclaimed the death of God. In The Gospel of Christian Atheism (1966), Thomas J. Altizer claimed that the “good news” of God’s death had freed us from slavery to a tyrannical transcendent deity: “Only by accepting and even willing the death of God in our experience can we be liberated from a transcendent beyond, an alien beyond which has been emptied and darkened by God’s self-alienation in Christ.” 4 Altizer spoke in mystical terms of the dark night of the soul and the pain of abandonment. The death of God represented the silence that was necessary before God could become meaningful again.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  A man, on the other hand, should not aim to lead this kind of life: Not only were monks vowing to obey someone else, they were resorting to begging instead of earning a living. 25 Luther was evidently beginning to reject the monastic life, as an estate of perpetual childhood. Luther adopted a much more personal tone as he talked about his own vows. Recalling the promise he made in the storm, he wrote, “I was practically seized by God, rather than drawn” into the monastery. 26 Yet in the very same sentence he admits he fears that “I, too, may have taken my vow in an impious and sacrilegious way.” Revealingly, he recalled his father’s reaction: “Let’s hope that this was not a delusion from Satan,” the words that, Luther told Melanchthon, at the time “took such deep root in my heart that I have never heard anything from his mouth which I remembered more persistently. It seemed to me as if God had spoken to me from afar, through my father’s mouth.” Now his father’s words struck him in a different way. Instead of concluding that his father had been right, and that the visitation had been diabolic, Luther feared that perhaps there had been nothing miraculous about his vocation at all. So, if it had not been a calling, he concluded, “Am I myself already free and no longer a monk?” 27 Then, dropping the confessional tone and returning to marriage, Luther’s mood suddenly changed. Perhaps, he teased Melanchthon, you are just trying to pay me back, by wishing a wife on me “in order to get even with me for having given you a wife.” Indeed, it was Luther, fearing for the small and sickly-looking Melanchthon, who had found him a wife. “Philipp is marrying Catharina Krapp,” he had written to Johannes Lang in August 1520, “which they say I was the author of. I do for men whatever is best if there are means.” He added insouciantly that he was “not at all bothered by the universal clamor.” 28 Catharina brought only a small dowry and was not especially good-looking. It seems that the first years of the union were not happy, with Melanchthon describing marriage as a “servitude.” 29 Yet for all his bluster that sexuality was not a problem for him, and his insistence that “flesh” was a broad term, one senses that Luther was confronting his own “flesh.” It is surely significant that here he chose the married man Melanchthon as his confidant, and not the bachelor Spalatin (to whom, by contrast, he had been remarkably frank about his constipation). Moreover, Luther was beginning to discuss his sexual identity by way of examining the relationship with his father. — T HESE musings would find their way into the treatise De votis monasticis ( On Monastic Vows ), which Luther finished in November 1521.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  —AT least fifteen years older than Luther, Staupitz was utterly different in background, well traveled, and at home among the nobility and at court.47 A patrician who had grown up with Friedrich the Wise of Saxony, he was initially vicar general of the observant wing of the order, but would also become head of the conventuals in Saxony, those Augustinians who took a laxer line.48 He and Luther probably met in April 1506 when Staupitz was in Erfurt; it would have been Staupitz who gave Luther formal permission to become a priest—monks were not automatically priests—deciding too that he should study theology. Being Luther’s confessor was a most demanding task. The young monk’s relentless pursuit of perfection meant that he once confessed for six hours at a time, and Staupitz must have been at his wits’ end. Staupitz had a relaxed attitude to sin—he once joked that he had given up making vows, for he was simply unable to keep them—but what worried Luther were not the usual sins but the “real knots”: his lack of love of God and his fear of judgment. On one occasion when confronted with Luther’s overscrupulous confessing, Staupitz told him: “I don’t understand you”—which, as Luther later remarked, was hardly comforting. Staupitz believed that temptations were good because they taught one theology. For his part, Luther believed Staupitz thought he was largely battling against the sin of pride, but his own later view was that the opposite was true: The Anfechtungen were the Devil’s “thorn in the flesh”; they were not warnings against arrogance. Like a good father, Staupitz consistently tried to calm Luther’s fears, reminding the young monk that God loved him. He toned down Luther’s perfectionist streak and countered his vehemence and anger with a mild self-deprecation and a little teasing. He was probably just the kind of steady interlocutor Luther needed, but both men realized that Staupitz did not truly grasp his passionate religiosity.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The papal legate Tommaso de Vio, known as Cajetan, had arrived at the Imperial Diet, the meeting of the estates of the empire, in Augsburg in the spring of 1518. Recently made a cardinal, Cajetan was a serious churchman who led a simple, exemplary life. He was also a scholar who for many years had been writing a modern commentary on the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Yet he was open to humanist ideas, too, and had advised his fellow Dominicans that wars of subjection should not be fought against native peoples in the New World. The mission to Augsburg was his first diplomatic posting and it was a difficult one, for he was trying to secure German support for Pope Leo X’s crusade against the Ottomans. The German estates proved recalcitrant, unwilling to raise the taxes required, and insisting that the Pope and Emperor Maximilian accept their complaints about the exactions of the papacy as a condition of any further subsidy.25 Luther’s ruler Friedrich the Wise was in a powerful political position at Augsburg. Not only was his support crucial for getting the estates to pay up; Maximilian’s key aim at the Diet was to secure the election of his son Charles to the imperial title. As one of the Electors, Friedrich’s vote mattered, and so Cajetan, disappointed and furious at the shortsightedness and self-interest of the estates, had to tread carefully when the question of the Elector’s professor at Wittenberg was raised. Both Friedrich and Spalatin were impressed by Cajetan’s apparent good faith and open-mindedness: Indeed, the cardinal stated that he was willing to avoid a trial in Rome by meeting with Luther on German soil, at Augsburg. He seemed to be a man with whom they could deal; Spalatin wrote to Luther calming his fears and assuring him that the cardinal was well inclined toward him.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  15 — J UST what a mistake Luther had made in agreeing to meet in Leipzig was evident from the start. Held at the height of summer, when, as Luther’s friend and chronicler Friedrich Myconius put it, the weather was good for hiking, the debate attracted large crowds from all around. Eck got there first, timing his arrival for the day before Corpus Christi, and was entertained by the mayor, with whom he lodged. He was therefore able to take part in the town’s Corpus Christi procession alongside the town dignitaries. Since the festival, during which the boundaries of the parishes are reaffirmed, was an important celebration of local identity, this was a shrewd move. 16 Luther arrived on the Friday after Corpus Christi, June 24, having traveled to Leipzig with Karlstadt and Melanchthon, this time not on foot but by open wagon. On this occasion, there was no need to demonstrate his humility in contrast to papal pomp. Karlstadt had insisted on bringing a whole reference library with him but his books were so heavy that his wagon got stuck in the mud, breaking the axle, just as it was about to enter the city gate. This was hardly a good omen for the man who had tried to ridicule his opponent with his “wagon cartoon”; it seemed that it was Karlstadt’s cart rather than Eck’s that was bound for disaster. 17 The Wittenberg delegation stopped off not at a monastery but, perhaps tellingly, at the house of the printer Melchior Lotter. 18 Despite the cheerful summer mood, there was an underlying menace in the Wittenbergers’ behavior, however. Luther’s and Karlstadt’s wagons were escorted by ranks of students, armed with spears and halberds. Armed men were posted to prevent fights breaking out in the lodgings where the students stayed, while seventy-six guards stood watch daily at the castle where the debates took place. 19 The disputation lasted nearly three weeks, beginning on June 27 and concluding on July 15, 1519. It was held in the parlor of the castle, the room having been especially decorated for the event. Two pulpits stood facing each other, one decorated with a tapestry featuring St. George in honor of the Saxon duke, the other, St. Martin. After a festive Mass in the Church of St. Thomas—a new twelve-part Mass had been specially composed for the occasion—the audience adjourned to the castle where Petrus Mosellanus, the university’s professor of Greek, gave a ceremonial speech, admonishing both sides to stick to the substance of the matter and to avoid harshness in their exchanges.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  —WHILE Karlstadt was establishing his church at Orlamünde, matters at Allstedt were proceeding apace. In March 1524 a nearby pilgrimage chapel was burned to the ground—and if Müntzer had not been involved, he had also not disapproved, believing the pilgrimage to be godless idolatry that had to be brought to an end. In June, the atmosphere in Allstedt became tense when villagers from nearby Sangerhausen fled to the town after Catholic persecution, and as passions mounted over how the arsonists would be punished. Müntzer became convinced that the Last Days were imminent. In July, Duke Johann and his son passed through Allstedt, again staying in the castle, and Müntzer seized the chance to preach in front of them. He chose as his text the second chapter of the book of Daniel, which he interpreted to mean that secular princes must root out the ungodly. “God is your shield,” he told the princes, “and will train you for the battle against his enemies….But at the same time you will have to endure a heavy cross and a time of trial, so that the fear of God may be manifest in you. That cannot happen without suffering.” If they did not heed the call, he threatened, “the sword will be taken from them.”28 This was seditious. But Müntzer did not stop there, and had the sermon—with a long passage on dreams added—printed at Allstedt. Not surprisingly, he and several of his supporters were summoned to appear at Weimar to answer for their actions in late July. On July 24, in an increasingly fraught situation, Müntzer appealed to the people of Allstedt to form a league, urging them to swear a formal oath. More than five hundred of his supporters did so, which included not only citizens of Allstedt but peasants from the surrounding countryside and miners from Luther’s own Mansfeld as well. Council members and even the duke’s official were impelled to join in a covenant with God that replaced earthly political allegiances. This was a revolutionary reconfiguration of politics, and it brought ducal officials, townsfolk, miners, and peasants together in a shared sense of communal belonging that overcame class antagonism. But when Müntzer and the Allstedt authorities (many of them his allies) were interrogated at Weimar, his supporters caved in, blaming Müntzer alone for the disturbances. The local ducal official too switched sides and took action, shutting down the printer, ordering Müntzer to refrain from incendiary preaching, and disbanding the league. In early August, having been effectively silenced and feeling betrayed by his supporters who turned out to be “Judases,” Müntzer decided that the cause in Allstedt was lost and left in the middle of the night, leaving his wife and child behind. With one of his followers, he escaped to the small imperial town of Mühlhausen.