Did Martin Luther Have a Life-Long Belief in the Immaculate Conception? [Part 1]

 

[I owe a lot of credit to James Swan for providing this material in his research. I highly recommend his website for Luther research, in particular Luther's Mariology].

When it comes to studying the theology of Martin Luther, the amount of books and articles written on the subject is really quite endless. In particular, his theology of Mary, the blessed Mother of our Lord, has been hotly debated in the past century or so (but there were things on the subject produced before that time as well). I wanted to write this article series on the subject of whether or not Martin Luther had a life-long belief in Mary's immaculate conception. 

In this first part, I will be examining a few of the common quotes and citations used by Roman Catholic apologists to propagate the "later" Luther's belief in the immaculate conception. 

Quote #1 - "It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin"  (Sermon "On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God," in 1527)

This is the probably one of the most famous quotes used by Rome's defenders to allege Luther's late belief in the immaculate conception (it should be noted that the younger Luther's belief in the immaculate conception is generally not a point in dispute). 

The citation given above is commonly just that, without any primary source. However, research has been done on this particular quote and we have finally found its ultimate source: Luther scholar Hartmann Grisar in his six-volume series on Luther's life, work, and beliefs cites this quote in volume 4, page 238:

Grisar, 4:238

Grisar says this later in the same volume:

"In the same year [1516], on the Feast of our Lady's Conception, he speaks of her name, which he says is derived from "stilla maris," and extols her as the one pure drop in the ocean of the "massa perditionis." To his admission here that her conception was immaculate he was still true in 1527, as has already been shown; after 1529, however, the passage containing this admission was expunged when the sermon in question was reprinted. In his home-postils he says of her conception: "Mary the Mother was surely born of sinful parents, and in sin, as we were"; any explanation of the universal belief to the contrary and of his own previous statements he does not attempt. (3) [(3) - "Werke," Erl. ed., 6 2, p.433 ]" (Grisar 4:500-501)

Often times, Roman Catholic apologists will give you the citation from Grisar earlier in the volume, but will not tell you that Grisar says that this quotation was later on removed from the copies of Luther's sermons. 

However, Grisar himself does cite a primary source, which it would be beneficial for us to look at. Here is a screenshot of the quotation from a scanned copy of the book Grisar is appealing to:

"Werke," Erl. ed., 15 2, p. 58."

Here is another edition containing the sermon but with the following footnote added:

"From here on until the end, is only found in the edition of the year 1527" - view on Google Books

The footnote is linked back to this paragraph:

Now I want to investigate some further material regarding this deletion. 

Grisar cites Catholic scholar Nicholas Paulus, the source being a scholarly journal in German which discusses this issue. This is what Grisar's statements are mostly resting upon.

Lutheran historian Eric Gritsch discussing the sermon in question says the following:

"In another version of the same sermon from 1528 Luther declared that Scripture did not say anything about the conception of Mary. Accordingly, various ideas can be advanced, as long as none of them becomes an article of faith. For an analysis of the two versions, see Dufel, 169-170" (H. George Anderson, J. Francis Stafford, Joseph A. Burgess (editors) The One Mediator, The Saints, and Mary, Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII, pg. 381)

Ewald Plass gave us a 3-volume set entitled What Luther Says. In it, he gives another confirmation of the fact that the sermons on the immaculate conception were deleted:

"In this sermon Luther still holds to the immaculate conception of Mary. In later editions of the discourse the paragraphs which contain this error were omitted." (What Luther Says, vol. 3, pg. 1297)

The most probable reason for why this sermon was edited was because of Luther's dissatisfaction with Stephen Roth's edition of his sermons printed in the late 1520s to the early 1530s. The editors of Luther's Works state the following: 

"Originally, Luther may have held something similar to the Thomist position, put forward in the Festival Postil (1527), sermon on the conception of Mary, WA 17/2:287-288, though the material in question seems to be solely the responsibility of its editor, Stephan Roth (d.1546), and was removed from the 1528 and subsequent editions: see StL 11:959-961; Baseley 1:50-51. In his later preaching, Luther affirmed that Mary had been both conceived and born in sin and connected her purification from sin with the work of the Holy Spirit at the time of Christ's conception: see e.g., Luther's sermons for Christmas Eve 1539, WA 47:860, and 1540 WA 49:173; Dufel, Luther's Stellung zur Marienverehrung, pp. 163-174, 196-97; Kreitzer, Reforming Mary, pp. 110-11." (LW vol. 58, pgs. 434-435, fn. 10)

The sermon edited and put together by Roth is contained in WA volume 17 pgs. 280-289. 

I will be utilizing Joel Baseley's translation of this sermon [link on Internet Archive]

Context of the Sermon

The sermon from Luther is an exposition of Luke 11. Below I will give some quotes from this sermon illustrating how Luther is not actually teaching a Roman Catholic Mariology (of the 1854 domatic-version of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception). It might be profitable to note that throughout the entire sermon, Luther is mostly discussing the nature of original sin (as well as actual sin), not the B.V. Mary.

"Some want to find a compromise and say that human conception happens in a two-fold way. The first comes from the natural joining of a man and his wife. The second conception happens after this when the body is attached to the mother's womb and the soul is then [supposedly] poured in by God the Creator. We don't need to say anything about this first conception. Nothing rests upon this first conception since the virgin Mary was also conceived this way after the common manner of all people. Yet it is this first regard that Christ alone is unique. In this, He alone would be conceived in a special way, having nothing to do with a man. For it had to be that Christ would be conceived, as God and man, complete in all His members and for this reason it is noteworthy that His alone would be the altogether high spiritual and holy conception." (Baseley's translations, pgs. 50-51)

"But in the conception of the virgin Mary, since her body was made initially in exactly the same way other children are made, until the pouring in of the soul, nothing of significance can be tied to that. If her conception proceeded in that way, then she would have had to have been fortified against original sin before the soul would be added. But that God did anything unique in her conception is not revealed to us in the Scriptures and so there is also nothing here to be definitively believed or preached. But speculation concerning this will go on. One will think what he wants but yet he cannot make any article of faith out of it." (Baseley's translation, pg. 51)

I agree with the following conclusion of Eric Gritsch:

"In 1527 Luther dealt with the Immaculate Conception of Mary, advocating a middle position favored by a majority of theologians. Following Augustine, Luther told his congregation that Mary had been conceived in sin but had been purified by the infusion of her soul after conception. Her purification was complete due to a special intervention of the Holy Spirit, who preserved her from the taint of original sin in anticipation of the birth of Christ. Thus the Virgin Mary remains in the middle between Christ and humankind. For in the very moment when he was conceived and lived, he was full of grace. All other human beings are without grace, both in the first and second conception. But the Virgin Mary, though without grace in the first conception, was full of grace in the second. That is quite proper. For she was a medium between all generations: she was bom from a father and mother, but gave birth without a father and mother, partly spiritually and partly bodily, because Christ was conceived of her flesh as well as of the Holy Spirit. But Christ himself is a father of many children, without a carnal father and mother. Just as the Virgin Mary remains in the middle between physical and spiritual birth, finishing the physical and beginning the spiritual, so she rightly remains in the middle concerning conception. Whereas other human beings are conceived in sin, in soul as well as in body, and Christ was conceived without sin in soul as well as in body, the Virgin Mary was conceived in body without grace but in soul full of grace." (Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII, pg. 238)

Thus, it is not even completely certain as to which view Luther was taking in this particular sermon. But whatever it was, it was not the 1854 dogmatic version of the Immaculate Conception as believed by Roman Catholicism today.