The Reformation and Dionysius on Ecclesiology
J.V. Fesko
J.V. Fesko (Ph.D., The University of Aberdeen) is the Harriet Barbour Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson
Introduction
We live in a socially democratized period of history. There are some remnants of social hierarchy where bluebloods are rumored still to roam in places like Martha’s Vineyard, Monaco, or the French Riviera. But for the most part, anyone from any walk of life can ascend the heights of the social ladder—a mere commoner can become royalty. Such is the case, for example, with many of the tech giants of Silicon Valley. A computer nerd can rise to become one of the most powerful people in the world.[1] Most tech moguls did not come from aristocratic backgrounds or from the higher echelons of society. The idea of social nobility is largely a relic of the past, but this is not how things have always been. From the early Middle Ages and even up to nineteenth century, one of the most dominant ideas was that the world consisted of an ontological and cosmological hierarchy. Everything and everyone had a place in a hierarchical order, an order that reflected the very being and nature of God. Common versions of this hierarchy placed God at the top followed by angels, human, animals, plants, and a descending scale of inanimate objects, from gold to dirt. People also attributed a similar hierarchy to spiritual and temporal authority structures. The church was superior to the temporal realm; therefore, the state was subject to the church in all matters. The church had its hierarchy that descended from pope, archbishop, bishop, priest, monk, and the laity. A similar descending scale marked the temporal realm, which goes from the king, duke, earl, knight, to the serf.
The hierarchal understanding of the world was so common that it appeared in the architecture of castles and cathedrals, in artwork, as well as in plays. The hierarchy appears in Dante Alighieri’s (ca. 1265-1321) The Divine Comedy, with the nine concentric circles of heaven and the corresponding nine circles of hell. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when Macbeth dares to assassinate King Duncan and disrupt the hierarchy, chaos ensues. John Milton (1608-1674) captures the idea when he writes in his famous Paradise Lost:
Well hast thou taught the way that might direct
Our knowledge, and the scale of Nature set
From centre to circumference, whereon
In contemplation of created things
By steps we may ascend to God.[2]
Likewise, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) thought it was sheer madness that his contemporaries would deny the existence of the hierarchy: “How so many learned heads should so farre forget their Metaphysicks, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, so as to question the existence of Spirits.”[3] For people living after the Enlightenment, and Lockean ideas that all men are created equal, it can be difficult to enter and comprehend a hierarchical world.[4] As such, it can be challenging for Protestants who have lived in the wake of the sixteenth-century Reformation to understand, appreciate, and analyze properly the significance of their own ecclesiology in contrast with the views of the Roman Catholic Church.
Tradition and the exegesis of various texts of Scripture undoubtedly play a role in separating Roman Catholics and Protestants but given the ubiquitous nature of the hierarchical views of the world, one cannot ignore the significance of hierarchy. Hence, this essay explores the role of hierarchy in Roman Catholic ecclesiology and the subsequent Protestant rejection of it as an unbiblical concept. The essay proceeds by first exploring hierarchy in Roman Catholic ecclesiology, an idea that largely owes its existence to the writings of an anonymous early medieval theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. fifth to sixth century ad). This first section traces the influence of Dionysius upon Roman Catholic hierarchical ecclesiology as well as its doctrine of the sacraments. Second, the essay explores how Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546), challenged the notion of Dionysian ecclesiastical hierarchy. In setting forth one of the first Protestant ecclesiologies, Luther’s doctrines of Scripture, union with Christ, and the priesthood of all believers factor in his rejection of the Roman Catholic hierarchical ecclesiology. Third, the essay briefly investigates the impact of Luther’s ecclesiology to show how Reformed churches embraced Luther’s insights. This third section succinctly examines the doctrines of Scripture, soteriology, and ecclesiology. The essay concludes with some observations about the importance of the Protestant rejection of hierarchy in their doctrine of the church.
Roman Catholic Ecclesiology
Significant fountainheads for Roman Catholic ecclesiology lie in two sources—Scripture and Neo-Platonic philosophy. The Neo-Platonic concepts come in primarily through the works of Augustine (354-430) and Pseudo-Dionysius.[5] To these names we can also add Boethius (ca. 480-524), who was influential in medieval theology through his The Consolation of Philosophy.[6] Boethius was an official for the king of Italy and was imprisoned where he wrote of a “hierarchical vision of reality that provided a framework for scholastic thinking.”[7] In a poem about how God governs the universe, Boethius derives the structure of the cosmos largely from Plato’s Timaeus and the use of a Neo-Platonist commentary by Proclus (412-485), a Greek Neo-Platonist philosopher. In his poem, Boethius writes of God who governs the universe and grants motion to all things, and as such, God is the highest good who creates a heavenly pattern, and in this pattern, God creates all things divided into harmonious parts. God also creates lesser living souls and gives them light chariots that are fit for their heavenly nature.[8] Human beings are supposed to seek ultimate happiness through participation in the divine.[9] They are supposed to ascend from the lowest sin-infected realms to the highest where God resides to find true happiness.[10]
Boethius presents a sketchy and roughly drawn hierarchical conception of reality, whereas Dionysius writes two elaborate treatises, The Celestial Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.[11] Dionysius defines a hierarchy in the following manner: “A hierarchy is a sacred order, a state of understanding and an activity approximating as closely as possible to the divine. And it is uplifted to the imitation of God in proportion to the enlightenments divinely given to it.”[12] The goal of hierarchy is for human beings to be like God and thus be one with him.[13] There is a celestial hierarchy in the greater cosmos, one inhabited by angels, which comprises a hierarchy according to their various divinely assigned stations. There are three groups of angels: (1) the most holy thrones, the station of the cherubim and seraphim; (2) authorities, dominions, and powers; and (3) angels, archangels, and principalities.[14] The closer an angelic being is to the godhead, the higher his rank. Moreover, the higher beings have the responsibility of conveying information to lower ranked beings given their proximity to the godhead.[15] This heavenly hierarchy serves as the divine exemplar for earthly authority structures within and without the church, but especially for the church: “This arrangement is copied by our own hierarchy which tries to imitate angelic beauty as far as possible, to be shaped by it, as in images, and to be uplifted to the transcendent source of all order and of all hierarchy.”[16]
Like the heavenly hierarchy, those who are in closer proximity to God have a greater capacity for the knowledge of God and thus the responsibility to convey this knowledge to those who are lower in rank. Priestly vestments, for example, signify a person’s capacity to serve as a spiritual guide and to instruct people in the knowledge of God.[17] But like the threefold heavenly hierarchy, there is a threefold earthly hierarchy: there are (1) the sacraments, (2) those who are inspired by God and thus comprehend them, and (3) those who are sacredly initiated by them.[18] Dionysius describes the role and function of ministers in the following manner,
Their first power consists in purifying the uninitiated by way of the sacraments. Their middle power is to bring illumination to those whom they have purified. Finally, they have the most marvelous power of all, one which embraces all who commune in God’s light, the power to perfect these by way of the perfected understanding they have of the contemplated enlightenments.[19]
Like the heavenly hierarchy, the earthly copy consists first of those who behold God and then their power descends throughout the entire hierarchy of sacred orders.[20] Why are priests and monks superior to other human beings? They are the in closest proximity to God and have singularly devoted their lives to conformity to God and thus to the study of his knowledge. Hence God has dispensed perfecting grace upon them in order to carry out their task, a divine gift not given to those outside the priesthood.[21]
When later theologians reflected upon holy orders, one of the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, the concept bore the hierarchical fingerprints of Dionysius. Bonaventure (1221-74) explains, “Orders is a certain sign through which a spiritual power is conferred upon the ordained.”[22] This echoes Dionysius’s conception of the divine power conferred by God upon clerics. Like Dionysius, Bonaventure believed Christ had instituted a sacramental remedy for fallen humanity’s salvation and he had specifically entrusted it to certain men, which required their separation from ordinary people. Like Dionysius’s monks, orders indicate that a man has been set apart and completely consecrated to the worship of God, hence monk’s receive a tonsure, or the shaving of the crown of their head. This tonsure signifies the disassociation from temporal affairs and the elevation of his mind to the knowledge of God, that which is eternal.[23] In distinction from Dionysius, Bonaventure identifies seven orders of clerics, who all ultimately serve the chief rank, the priest who consecrates the sacrament of the body of God.[24]
This clerical hierarchy unsurprisingly has higher and lower ranks. Bonaventure explains the nature of the clerical orders,
And because the lower the degree of authority, the more widely it is distributed, and the higher the degree, the more narrowly it is concentrated: therefore there are many bishops, a lesser number of archbishops, very few patriarchs, and but one father of fathers, rightly called Pope, as the unique, first, and supreme spiritual father, not only of all fathers, but likewise of all the faithful; as first hierarch, only spouse, undivided head, supreme pontiff, vicar of Christ, fountainhead, origin and law in relation to all authorities of the Church; the one from whom all orderly power descends as from the summit to the very lowest members of the Church, according to what the loftiest dignity in the hierarchy of the church demands.[25]
This earthly ecclesiastical hierarchy mirrors the heavenly angelic hierarchy, but it was not limited to the church. Given the church’s collective proximity to the godhead, especially through its clerical ranks culminating in the Pope, ecclesiastical authority was automatically higher than temporal political authority.[26] Bonaventure was not alone in his use of Dionysius, as other medieval figures such as Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) regularly employed his thought. In fact, Thomas cites Dionysius more than seventeen hundred times.[27] Dionysius, as one can imagine, makes numerous appearances in Aquinas’s thought, especially on his understanding of mystical union, angelic hierarchy, and ecclesiastical hierarchy.[28]
In the sixteenth century numerous Roman Catholic theologians employed and defended the idea of a celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchy. In the famous Leipzig Disputation (July 1519) between Luther and Andreas Karlstadt (1486-1541) on the one side and Roman Catholic theologian Johannes Eck (1486-1543) on the other, Eck appealed Dionysius’s work on ecclesiastical hierarchy to support papal authority and Roman Catholic polity.[29] Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) offered one of the most in-depth articulations of the hierarchical ontology in his The Mind’s Ascent to God by the Ladder of Created Things (1634).[30] Roman Catholic John Colet (1467-1519) wrote Two Treatises on the Hierarchies of Dionysius, in which he explained the seven sacraments from Dionysius’s two works on hierarchy.[31] And the hierarchical idea of ecclesiastical authority continues into the present day.[32] The influence of Dionysian hierarchy, consequently, should neither be underestimated nor ignored.
Luther’s Reform
When Luther set his sights on reforming the church, he targeted the unbiblical claims regarding papal authority. This was one of the debated subjects at the Leipzig Disputation where Eck appealed to the authority of Dionysius. Luther brushed aside Eck’s claims for two reasons. First, medieval theologians received the Dionysian corpus as authoritative because of its perceived antiquity and purported ties to the apostle Paul (Acts 17:34). But there were some, such as Nicholas Cusa (1401-1464) and Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) who questioned the authenticity of Dionysian authorship. Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) discovered Valla’s view and included it in his Greek New Testament in a marginal note on Acts 17:34. Once Erasmus published Valla’s opinion, Protestant Reformers such as Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531), John Calvin (1509-1564), Martin Bucer (1491-1551), and Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586) rejected the authority and purported antiquity of the Dionysian corpus. The reformers saw this as a significant chink in Rome’s ecclesiastical armor that undercut claims about papal authority, though some such as Bucer, Calvin, and Chemnitz did not reject everything Dionysius had to say.[33]
Second, Luther rejected papal authority and the idea of ecclesiastical hierarchy because of his doctrines of Scripture and the priesthood of all believers. In many respects, the Leipzig Disputation was ground zero for the amalgamation of Luther’s views on grace, righteousness, good works, authority, and church polity. At the Leipzig Disputation Luther argued that the pope did not have authority over the Scriptures but rather the Scriptures had authority over the pope, a point he argued in his earlier published Thirteen Propositions Concerning the Power of the Pope (1519).[34] On the heels of the Leipzig Disputation, Luther published his Treatise on the New Testament (1520), where he first made reference to the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Here Luther sets aside ideas of hierarchy: “Thus it becomes clear that it is not the priest alone who offers the sacrifice of the mass; it is this faith which each one has for himself. This is the true priestly office, through which Christ is offered as a sacrifice to God, an office which the priest, with the outward ceremonies of the mass, simply represents. Each and all are, therefore, equally spiritual priests before God.”[35] Rather than appeal to a celestial hierarchy or promote an ecclesiastical hierarchy of clerical orders, Luther believed, “Faith alone is the true priestly office.”[36]
Between August and November of 1520 Luther published his so-called “Reformation treatises,” To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and The Freedom of a Christian. In these three treatises Luther further refined his ecclesiology and challenged hierarchical clericalism and promoted, among other doctrines, the priesthood of all believers.[37] In these documents several key themes emerge regarding Luther’s ecclesiology, which stand in stark contrast to Roman Catholic views: the supreme authority of Scripture, his rejection of Dionysius, union with Christ, and the theology of the cross.
Luther’s commitment to the supreme authority of Scripture surfaced in his stand at the Diet of Worms (1521) when he famously declared: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”[38] The church, pope and councils included, were under the authority of Scripture, not parallel with or over it. But Luther did not come to this conviction at the Diet of Worms but had been developing it in the years leading up to his trial. In his Babylonian Captivity of the Church, a treatise challenging the seven sacraments of Rome, Luther argued that God always deals with man through a word of promise, which means that the only way that people can deal with God is through his word, the Scriptures.[39] This meant that pope, bishop, or church could not impose any law upon any Christian. To impose unbiblical or extrabiblical laws was the mark of tyranny and antichrist.[40] Correlatively, priests or bishops derived their right to office only to the degree that they preached the gospel.[41] For Luther, the word is supreme. Unlike Roman Catholic views that argue that the church gave birth to the word, Luther believed the converse: “For the church was born by the word of promise through faith, and by this same word is nourished and preserved.”[42] In fact, Luther elsewhere referred to the word as the womb of the church.[43] For this reason, Luther writes, “For the Word of God is incomparably superior to the church, and in this Word the church, being a creature, has nothing to decree, ordain, or make, but only to be decreed, ordained and made. For who begets his own parent? Who first brings forth his own maker?”[44] Given the supreme authority of Scripture in the life and doctrine of the church, Luther therefore rejected appeals to church tradition.
One representative of tradition that Luther directly rejected was Dionysius. As an Augustinian monk, Luther was familiar with the Dionysian corpus. In his early writings he mentioned the flood of new commentaries and translations of The Mystical Theology, The Divine Names, the hierarchies, and some of his letters.[45] But as Luther’s theology developed, he ultimately rejected Dionysian concepts. Luther’s critics specifically asked him about the status of Dionysius, especially since Roman Catholic theologians had looked to him as an authority in matters of ecclesiology and sacraments. Luther was willing to acknowledge that Dionysius was a writer of antiquity but ultimately rejected his claims on two grounds. First, Luther was one of the first theologians in the sixteenth century to question the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus.[46] And, second, Luther held Dionysius up to the bar of Scripture and found him wanting: “I would ask, by what authority and with what arguments does he prove his hodge-podge about the angels in his Celestial Hierarchy—a book over which many curious and superstitious spirits have cudgeled their brains?”[47] Luther believed that Dionysius presented speculative rather than exegetical arguments for his angelic hierarchy, and if the angelic hierarchy was questionable, then so too was its purported earthly ecclesiastical reflection. Luther ultimately believed that Dionysius engaged in Platonic allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures rather than offer sound exegesis.[48] On this basis, Luther rejected Rome’s claims about ecclesiastical authority, and four of Rome’s seven sacraments: confirmation, extreme unction, marriage, and holy orders. The last is one of the most significant for his ecclesiology, as his rejection of holy orders essentially razed existing hierarchical authority structures within the church.
In the place of an ecclesial hierarchy, Luther put forth two ideas, namely, union with Christ and the priesthood of all believers. In his rejection of Dionysian hierarchy, Luther pointed his readers to Christ:
So if I had my way, no believing soul would give the least attention to these books [the Dionysian corpus]. So far, indeed, from learning Christ in them, you will lose even what you already know of him. I speak from experience. Let us rather hear Paul, that we may learn Jesus Christ and him crucified. He is the way, the life, and the truth; he is the ladder by which we come to the Father, as he says: ‘No one comes to the Father, but by me.’[49]
If Dionysius constructed an angelic and ecclesiastical ladder by which people could ascend to God and participate in the divine, then Luther replaced this hierarchy with the ladder of Christ and his word. So, Luther did not oppose the idea of union with God but disagreed over the means and direction of traffic. For Rome people ascend via priests and sacraments but for Luther Christ and his word descend to fallen sinners. The only way that people could ascend was through faith in the crucified Messiah. Not only, therefore, were people justified by faith alone in Christ alone, but faith united people to Christ in holy union.[50] Luther describes the believer’s union with Christ in terms of the bond of marriage—what is Christ’s belongs to the believer, and what is the believer’s belongs to Christ.[51] By this holy marriage, therefore, the believer’s union gives him the right to Christ’s priesthood.[52] Through union with Christ believers share in Christ’s offices: “Thus Christ has made it possible for us, provided we believe in him, to be not only his brethren, co-heirs, and fellow-kinds, but also his fellow-priests.”[53] This means that all people in the church are essentially of equal authority—there is no ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Based upon two chief texts, 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a royal priesthood and a priestly realm,” and Revelation 5:9-10, “Thou hast made us to be priests and kings by thy blood,” Luther argued that all people in the church had equal standing: “Because we are all priests of equal standing, no one must push himself forward and take it upon himself, without our consent and election, to do that for which we all have equal authority. For no one dare to take upon himself what is common to all without the authority and consent of the community.”[54] Rather than receive appointment and ordination from higher ecclesiastical authorities, Luther believed that ministers could only take office with the consent of the people in the church. Luther was willing to leave a role for the bishop in the ordination of a priest, but only ultimately as a representative of the community, not as a representative of the ecclesial hierarchy.[55] Luther believed the communal consent of the church was not only scriptural but also in line with patristic tradition as Augustine, Ambrose (337-97), and Cyprian (ca. 200-58) were ordained to their bishoprics through election by the laity, according to Luther.[56]
The equality of all people in the church had implications for ethics, ecclesiology, and politics. Luther pointedly asked why a territory would be placed under an interdict if a priest was murdered but the same would not occur if the victim were a peasant.[57] Ordination did not raise mere mortals into the ranks of Dionysius’s ecclesiastical hierarchy where they were supposedly a step closer to God on their way up the mystical ladder. Luther would have none of this: “Be gone, all of you that would live in safety; flee, young men, and do not enter upon this holy estate, unless you are determined to preach the gospel, and can believe that you are made not one whit better than the laity through this ‘sacrament’ of ordination.”[58] Luther’s view stands in contrast to the later-codified view of the Roman Catholic Church that ordination placed an indelible mark upon the priest, one that could never be taken away. In other words, once a priest, always a priest even if one ceased to perform his priestly office.[59] Instead, according to Luther, there was no difference between laymen and priests except for the sake of office and work—they were equal in status.[60] Priests were not superior to the laity, which meant that all have the responsibility to study the word of God and interpret it. People have this right because of their priestly status.[61]
But just because Luther razed ecclesiastical hierarchy did not mean that he completely flattened and democratized the church. There are certainly several statements in Luther’s 1520 Reformation writings that sound like he was in favor of an entirely democratized church. Luther, for example, states: “Let everyone, therefore, who knows himself to be a Christian, be assured of this, that we are all equally priests, that is to say, we have the same power in respect to the Word and sacraments.”[62] But such statements should be read in conjunction with others, namely, that all are equal with regard to status but not office.[63] And in this case, ministerial office qualifies a person, not for elevated status, but for service to this fellow priests: “The priesthood is nothing but a ministry. This we learn from 1 Corinthians 4, ‘This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.’”[64]
By virtue of faith in Christ and baptism, all believers are therefore priests and by virtue of a spiritual power, elevated above all authority, without exception.[65] But Luther’s idea about the Christian’s place vis-à-vis authority should be read within the context of his dialectic of freedom: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”[66] Within this dialectic Luther admits that all Christians are free, but not with regard to physical powers: “This is not to say that every Christian is placed over all things to have and control them by physical power—a madness with which some churchmen are afflicted—for such power belongs to kings, princes, and other men on earth.”[67] Christians therefore submit to authority, not because they must but because they can—because they are free to do so.
At this point Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers intersects with his theology of the cross. Ministers of God’s word do not work for themselves but for the benefit of others.[68] The minister, indeed all Christians, must willingly serve others without hope of reward but only for the service of others and the fullness and wellness of his faith.[69] The driving factor behind the minister’s service is the fact that he represents the crucified Messiah.[70] Luther explains this point in his criticisms against the elevated nature of the Pope,
The pope is not a vicar of Christ in heaven, but only of Christ as he walked the earth. Christ in heaven, in the form of a ruler, needs no vicar, but sits on his throne and sees everything, does everything, knows everything, and has all power. But Christ needs a vicar in the form of a servant, the form in which he went about on earth, working, preaching, suffering, and dying. Now the Romanists turn all that upside down. They take the heavenly and kingly form from Christ and give it to the pope, and leave the form of a servant to perish completely. He might almost be the Counter-Christ, whom the Scriptures call Antichrist, for all his nature, work, and pretensions run counter to Christ and only blot out Christ’s nature and destroy his work.[71]
Luther believed that the Dionysian ecclesiastical hierarchy inverted and even eliminated the cross of Christ. The earthly hierarchy mirrored the heavenly one, but one of the problems with the heavenly hierarchy is that it had no place for the crucified Messiah. Hence, in Luther’s mind, Rome produced an unbiblical hierarchical authority structure around priests and sacraments rather than around the crucified Messiah and his word.
Implications and Influence Upon Reformed Ecclesiology
There are significant differences between the common medieval Dionysian and Luther’s respective ecclesiologies. The point cannot be stressed enough—Luther presents an entirely different ecclesiology in comparison with his sixteenth-century Roman Catholic counterparts. For Dionysius and Rome, hierarchy, union with God, liturgy, ascent, sacraments, and ecclesiology comprise one complex of thought.[72] Dionysius significantly shapes Rome’s ecclesiology and worship.[73] The clerical orders, who themselves constitute a God-given sacrament to the church, are ontologically superior to the laity, and given their singular devotion to God, are naturally better suited for the knowledge of God. They communicate God’s knowledge on to the laity. Space limitations prohibit exploration of these implications, but this hierarchy entails Roman Catholic teachings such as the magisterium’s sole right to interpret the Scriptures, the equal authority of church tradition and Scripture, and the doctrine of implicit faith, namely, that uninformed laity must trust the teaching of the church and embrace it as their own. Another entailment concerns the sacraments. In a Dionysian hierarchy, God cannot directly communicate or convey his grace to human beings because they are too far down the chain. Hence, God clothes his invisible created grace in the visible form of the sacraments and entrusts them to the priests.[74] The sacraments are the chief means by which people become united to Christ, as in baptism, and continue their conformation to Christ’s image through participation in the divine nature through the Eucharist, among other sacraments. The priesthood and sacraments, therefore, are the axis upon which the Roman Catholic soteriology and ecclesiology rotate.
In stark contrast to the priestly-sacramental structure, Luther’s ecclesiology rotates around the axis of Christ and his word. All are priests given their faith in and union with Christ, and only the consent of the community grants right and authority for one of their fellow priests to assume the office of servant, or minister, among them. The minister does not occupy a higher office or ontological status. The preaching of Christ’s word takes front and center, and this is even the case with the sacraments. Luther does not characterize the sacraments as visible forms of invisible grace, a formula that echoes Platonic and Dionysian categories of participation and hierarchy. Rather, even the sacraments are a form of the word of God. According to Luther, sacraments are “promises which have signs attached to them.”[75] For Luther, a sacrament was ultimately a visible verbal promise.[76] The same emphasis found its way into the Apology for the Augsburg Confession, which states: “For just as the Word enters through the ear in order to strike the heart, so also the rite enters through the eye in order to move the heart. The Word and the rite have the same effect. Augustine put it well he said that the sacrament is a ‘visible word,’ because the rite is received by the eyes and is, as it were, a picture of the Word.”[77]
To say the least, Luther’s ecclesiology reverberated throughout Europe and radically impacted the Reformed wing of the Reformation. I can only touch upon the various ways that Luther’s doctrine of Scripture, soteriology, and ecclesiology reconfigured the worship and ecclesiology of the Reformed churches. Luther’s doctrine of Scripture had a significant impact upon the Reformed churches. Sola scriptura was a rallying cry for the Reformed church as a whole and was confessed in numerous Reformed confessions and catechisms. The Geneva Confession (1536), written by Calvin, states,
We declare that we desire to follow Scripture alone as rule of our faith and religion, without mixing with it any other thing which might be devised by the opinion of men without the word of God, and without claiming to accept for our spiritual government any other doctrine than what is conveyed to us by the same word, without addition or diminution, according to the command of our Lord (§I).
Just like Luther, Reformed churches believed that the word was how God personally spoke to his people whenever it was read or preached. Heinrich Bullinger (1504-75), successor to Zwingli, church leader of Zurich, and author of the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) writes, “Wherefore when this word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe the very word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful” (1.4).
In his polemical disputations against the Roman Catholic doctrine of Scripture, William Whitaker (1548-95) directly tackled Dionysian hierarchy. Whitaker, for example, engaged Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662), an early medieval eastern theologian, and his Dionysian claim that God’s revelation was unsuitable for the laity. Maximus, referring to Dionysius, believed “it is not fit to reveal the holy things to the profane, nor fling pearls to swine.”[78] Dionysius’s hierarchy precluded the laity from direct interaction with divine knowledge, but Whitaker countered: “The laity ought not to be compared to swine, nor treated as profane, or spectators of the Eleusinian mysteries.”[79] Rather, all people in the church should have access to divine knowledge, to the word of God. Like Luther and other Protestant reformers, one of the key reasons Whitaker rejects Dionysian claims is because he doubted his authenticity, which stood in contrast to appeals to his authority by Roman Catholics.[80]
Where Luther’s doctrine of Scripture made one of the most visible impressions was in the architecture of Protestant churches. In Reformed churches the Lord’s table replaced the altar of the mass, and the table was no longer front and center as it had been in Roman Catholic churches. In most medieval Roman Catholic churches, the mass was central to worship, hence the altar was front and center and the pulpit was off to one side. In Reformed churches the table was either moved to the side, or if it was front and center, it sat beneath an elevated pulpit to convey the centrality of the word in the life and worship of the church.[81]
The doctrine of Scripture was the driving force behind the Reformed understanding of soteriology and ecclesiology. In one sense, Luther’s soteriology bears many similarities to his Roman Catholic counterparts—they both emphasize the doctrine of union with Christ. But in Luther’s formulation, sola fide stands out as a unique element, that which unites the believer to Christ, grants him access to Christ’s imputed righteousness, and entitles him to all that belongs to Christ, including his high priestly office. Union with Christ is no longer mediated through descending chain of greater to lesser beings, whether angelic or human, but rests solely in Christ. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), for example, explains that Christ is called “the Anointed One” because God the Father anointed him with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet, our only high priest, and our eternal king (q. 31). Conversely, the catechism explains believers are called Christians because they by faith share in Christ and in his anointing (q. 32). Zacharias Ursinus (1534-83), the chief architect and commentator on the Catechism explains that, as members of Christ, we share in his anointing and thus in his prophetical, priestly, and kingly offices.[82] By virtue of our priestly office, we have the responsibility to: (1) teach others; (2) call upon God and have a correct knowledge of him; (3) offer proper gratitude, worship, and obedience to God; (4) mortify our old man; (5) offer prayers; (6) give alms; (7) confess the gospel; (8) and cheerfully and patiently endure the cross.[83] All share in Christ’s anointing and thus share in his priesthood.
But just as Luther distinguished between priesthood and service, Reformed theologians recognized that not everyone has the requisite gifts for ministerial service.[84] Calvin, for example, affirmed the necessity of ministerial office without embracing notions of Dionysian hierarchy. Commenting on Ephesians 4:4, and the Roman Catholic claims that this text supported their claims for papal authority, Calvin writes,
Let that passage be diligently pondered, and there will be no doubt that Paul there meant to give a complete representation of that sacred and ecclesiastical government to which posterity have given the name of hierarchy. Not only does he not place a monarchy among ministers, but even intimates that there is none. There can also be no doubt, that the meant to express the mode of connection by which believers unite with Christ the Head. There he not only makes no mention of a ministerial head, but attributes a particular operation to each of the members, according to the measure of grace distributed to each. Nor is there any ground for subtle philosophical comparisons between the celestial and the earthly hierarchy. For it is not safe to be wise above measure with regard to the former, and in constituting the latter, the only type which it behooves us to follow is that which our Lord himself has delineated in his own word.[85]
Here Calvin’s rationale for rejecting Dionysian hierarchy sounds virtually identical to Luther’s: he dismisses it because Scripture does not teach it, and Calvin only retains the offices that Scripture explicitly mentions, namely, the temporary offices of apostle, prophet, and evangelist, and the perpetual offices of pastor, teacher, and deacon.[86] In contrast to Luther, however, Calvin believed that fellow pastors, not the congregation, should appoint ministers.[87]
Conclusion
Luther’s scriptural insights regarding the doctrines of Scripture and the priesthood of all believers rolled over Western Europe and permanently changed the ecclesiastical landscape. The church would never be the same again. There is a sense in which the Reformation is over. Luther challenged the unbiblical notions of Dionysian hierarchy that color Roman Catholic ecclesiology. But Luther’s reformation is not simply about replacing priests with ministers. Rather, Luther’s reform of the church was about repositioning Christ and his word in the central place in the life and doctrine of the church. People in the church no longer look to a clerical hierarchy and the sacraments for their salvation and ascent to God—they no longer must ascend the priestly ladder to reach heaven. Rather, God in Christ has condescended and spoken his word, both audible and visible—word and sacrament, to fallen people so that they might be united to him by faith alone. All are, in the words of the apostle Peter, “a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:4). Luther courageously and literally turned his world upside down. What mere mortal would dare challenge the ecclesiastical hierarchy of his day, indeed, Christ’s vicar on earth, the pope? Luther rightly paused to contemplate his actions when he took his stand at the Diet of Worms, but in the end, it was his supreme confidence in the word of God that led him down the road of reformation. Indeed, the Reformed churches owe a debt of gratitude to this one insignificant monk who was willing to turn his world upside down so that Christ and his word would once again reign supreme in his church.
[1] Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook (New York: Doubleday, 2009).
[2] John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. John Leonard (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2000), 114.
[3] Thomas Browne, A True and Full Copy of that which was Most Imperfectly and Surreptitiously Printed Before Under the Name of: Religio Medici (London: Andrew Crooke, 1645), 64; Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (New York, NY: Harper Torch Books, 1936), 80.
[4] John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 2: iv-v.
[5] Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being, 67.
[6] Roger Haight, S. J., Christian Community in History (New York, NY: Continuum, 2004), 1:215-16.
[7] Haight, Christian Community in History, 1:215.
[8] Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy, Theological Tractates, Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. F. Stewart, et al. (1926; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 271-72.
[9] Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 281.
[10] Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 335.
[11] Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1987). All subsequent quotations from The Celestial Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy come from this edition. For what follows, compare with Haight, Christian Community in History, 1:301-05.
[12] Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 153.
[13] Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 154.
[14] Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 160-61.
[15] Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 164, 168, 178.
[16] Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 169.
[17] Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 186.
[18] Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 233.
[19] Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 235.
[20] Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 236-37.
[21] Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 245.
[22] Bonaventure, The Breviloquium, The Works of Bonaventure, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, N. J: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963), 265.
[23] Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 266.
[24] Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 266-27.
[25] Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 267-68.
[26] Jean Leclercq, “Influence and Noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages,” in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1987), 31. Roman Catholic theologians, for example, defended the idea that ecclesiastical authority was exempt from the rule of temporal authority. See, for example, Francisco Suarez, Defense of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith Against the Errors of Anglicanism, trans. Peter L. P. Simpson (New York, NY: Lucairos Occasio Press, 2012), 2:27-60.
[27] Daniel T. Lochman and Daniel J. Nodes, eds., John Colet on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Dionysius (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 46.
[28] Bernhard Blankenhorn, The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D. C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 215-496; Serge-Thomas Bonino, Angels and Demons: A Catholic Introduction (Washington, D. C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 231-56; Oliva Blanchette, “Aquinas’s Conception of the Great Chain of Being: A More Considered Reply to Lovejoy,” in Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, ed. Kent Emery, Jr., Russell L. Friedman, and Andreas Speer (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 155-87.
[29] Johannes Eck, “Incipit Disputatio Excellentium Theologorum Iohannis Eckii et Martini Luttheris Augustiniani,” in D. Martin Luthers Werke, Schriften Teil 1, Band 2 (1884; Weimar: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus, 2003), 257, 262; Karlfried Froehlich, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century,” in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1987), 41.
[30] Robert Bellarmine, De Ascensione Mentis In Deum Per Scalas Rerum Creatarum (Colnia Agrippina: apud Cornel. ab Egmond., 1634); Bellarmine, The Mind’s Ascent to God by the Ladder of Created Things, in Robert Bellarmine: Spiritual Writings, ed. John Patrick Donnelly and Roland J. Teske (New York: Paulist Press, 1989); Lovejoy, Great Chain, 91.
[31] John Colet, Two Treatises on the Hierarchies of Dionysius, trans. J. H. Lupton (London: Bell and Daldy, 1869).
[32] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Ligouri, MO: Ligouri, 1992), §§1537-1600.
[33] Froehlich, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation,” 38-57.
[34] David P. Daniel, “Luther on the Church,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 338.
[35] Martin Luther, A Treatise on the New Testament, That Is, the Holy Mass, in Luther’s Works, ed. E. Theodore Bachman, vol. 35 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1960), 100-01. Note, all subsequent references to the English edition of Luther’s Works will be abbreviated as LW, followed by volume and page number.
[36] Luther, A Treatise on the New Testament, LW 35:101.
[37] Daniel, “Luther on the Church,” 339.
[38] Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York, NY: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1960), 185.
[39] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:42.
[40] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:72.
[41] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:91.
[42] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:107.
[43] Luther, First Lectures on the Psalms 1, LW 10:397.
[44] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:107.
[45] Froehlich, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation,” 41.
[46] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:109 n. 194.
[47] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:109.
[48] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:109-10.
[49] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:109.
[50] Luther, Freedom of the Christian, LW 31:351.
[51] Luther, Freedom of the Christian, LW 31:352.
[52] Luther, Freedom of the Christian, LW 31:354.
[53] Luther, Freedom of the Christian, LW 31:355.
[54] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:129; Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:112.
[55] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:128.
[56] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:128.
[57] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:132.
[58] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:115.
[59] Council of Trent, Session 23 (15 July 1563), §4, in Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, eds., Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 2: 866-67. All subsequent quotations of Reformation-era confessions and catechisms come from this source unless otherwise noted.
[60] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:129.
[61] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:135-36.
[62] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:116.
[63] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:129.
[64] Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:113.
[65] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, LW 31:354.
[66] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, LW 31:344.
[67] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, LW 31:354.
[68] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, LW 31:364.
[69] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, LW 31:365.
[70] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:140.
[71] Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44:165.
[72] Blankenhorn, Union with God, 6; Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 2, Theological Aesthetics (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1984), 154, 204.
[73] Blankenhorn, Union with God, 8; von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord, 160-61, 180.
[74] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (1911; Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1948), IaIIae q. 111 art. 1; Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), 3:150; Blankenhorn, Union with God, 266; Bonino, Angels and Demons, 53-54.
[75] Luther, Babylonian Captivity of the Church, LW 31:124.
[76] Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1966), 25.
[77] Apology of the Augsburg Confession, art 13, in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000), 219-20.
[78] William Whitaker, A Disputation on Holy Scripture, Against the Papists, Especially Bellarmine and Stapleton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), 253; cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 153.
[79] Whitaker, Disputation on Holy Scripture, 253.
[80] Whitaker, Disputation on Holy Scripture, 253, 575-76.
[81] For examples of the differing architectures, see Donald J. Bruggink and Carl H. Droppers, Christ and Architecture: Building Presbyterian /Reformed Churches (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965).
[82] Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. G. W. Williard (1852 reprint; Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, n. d.), 178.
[83] Ursinus, Commentary, 179.
[84] Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin (1956; Cambridge: James Clarke, 2002), 202-03; compare with Martin Luther, Psalm 110, LW 13:332.
[85] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957), 4.6.10.
[86] Calvin, Institutes, 4.3.4-6, 8.
[87] Calvin, Institutes, 4.3.15-16.