Index:

Editor’s Notes

 

A Brief Study of Jeremiah 3 on Divorce – David J. Engelsma

 

Clear and Present Danger: An Overview of Luther’s Demonology – Ronald L. Cammenga

 

A Review Article – Herman C. Hanko

 

No Other Gods…No Other Name – Robert D. Decker

 

Book Reviews:

 

        

 

Editor’s Notes

 

      This is the last issue under my editorship.  I plan to retire at the end of June 2006.  My successor in the department of Practical Theology is the Rev. Barrett L. Gritters.  Appointed to this position by the Synod of the Protestant Reformed Churches in 2003, Prof. Gritters expects to receive the Master of Theology Degree from Calvin Theological Seminary in May of this year.  This degree, along with nearly twenty years pastoral experience in two large congregations in West Michigan, will serve Prof. Gritters, the Protestant Reformed Theological Seminary, and the Protestant Reformed Churches well.

      A great deal of work goes into the publication of this Journal.  Hence we would be remiss if we were to omit an expression of our deep appreciation to the faculty secretary, Judi Doezema, for her expertise in typesetting each issue, and to her husband, Donald Doezema, for his careful proofreading of each issue.  It will be difficult indeed to replace these two dedicated servants of our Lord.

      A new Editor will be introduced in the upcoming issue next fall.

R.D.D.

 

 

A Brief Study of

Jeremiah 3 on Divorce

David J. Engelsma

 

Introduction

      In their zealous defense of remarriage after divorce, especially on the ground of adultery, some appeal to Jeremiah 3.  Their argument is that the prophet teaches that Jehovah Himself divorced the nation of Israel for her adultery, thus dissolving His marriage to her.  Jehovah was then at liberty to take another wife, the New Testament church.  The basis of the argument is verse eight of Jeremiah 3:  “And I saw when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce….” 

      The argument has its apparent force.  Jehovah did divorce His Old Testament wife.  What is lawful for God as the divine husband must be lawful also for human husbands and, by implication, for wives as well. 

      God has made earthly marriage the outstanding symbol of His own covenant relation with His chosen people.  Jeremiah 3 represents God’s covenant with Israel as a marriage.  In this marriage, God was the aggrieved husband—the “innocent party.”  Israel was the adulterous wife, who “hast played the harlot with many lovers” (v. 1).  Among other Old Testament passages, Ezekiel 16 also portrays God’s covenant with His Old Testament people as a marriage.  Addressing Jerusalem, God said, “Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness:  yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine” (Ezek. 16:8).  Ephesians 5:22-33 teaches that God’s covenant with the New Testament church is the mystery reflected by, and the reality of, the earthly marriages of Christians.  In Christ, God is married to the church.  He is her husband; she is His wife.            

      Therefore, God’s dealings in His covenant are the pattern for the behavior of Christian husbands and wives in earthly marriage.  If He divorced His covenant people, as Jeremiah 3 certainly says He did, Christian husbands and wives may likewise divorce their marriage companions.  At the very least, they may divorce on the ground of the adultery of their wife or husband.  To this point, the argument is sound.

      But the argument goes further.  It maintains either that the adultery itself dissolves the marriage, or that the divorce on the ground of adultery dissolves the marriage.  Those who insist on the right of remarriage after divorce on the ground of adultery are never clear, whether the adultery or the divorce dissolves the bond.  This ambiguity is significant, if not deliberate.  In any case, so goes the argument for remarriage on the basis of Jeremiah 3, one who divorces on the ground of adultery is at liberty to remarry.  The assumption on which this argument in favor of remarriage rests is that God’s divorce of Israel dissolved the marriage, so that God could freely marry the New Testament church.   

      Although he does not refer to Jeremiah 3, Gary North makes a case for remarriage after divorce based on God’s divorce of Israel and supposed remarriage to the church.

 

God divorced Israel when Israel revolted by crucifying Christ.  This was the last straw.  Israel had committed spiritual adultery repeatedly, from the golden calf forward.  God soon remarried; He gained a new bride, the Church.  Jesus Christ is the bridegroom of the Church, not of Israel.  The legal basis of this marriage was a prior divorce.  If God had not lawfully cast off Israel, the Church could not legitimately be called God’s bride.  God is not a bigamist.  Divorce and remarriage:  without both of these covenantal actions on God’s part, there could be neither Church nor salvation in New Testament times.1 

 

      The appeal to Jeremiah 3 in support of the right of remarriage, especially after a divorce on the ground of adultery, is found also in Reformed churches.  Not infrequently, Reformed laymen will point to Jeremiah 3 as posing a difficulty for the position that the marriage bond is unbreakable even in the case of divorce on the ground of adultery.

      The appeal to Jeremiah 3 in defense of remarriage is groundless.  The chapter lends no support whatever to the doctrine and practice of remarriage after a divorce on the ground of adultery.  On the contrary, this passage in the Old Testament is conclusive proof that earthly marriage, like its spiritual counterpart—the covenant of God in Jesus Christ with His chosen people—is indissoluble.  Even adultery does not dissolve the relationship.  Man cannot and God will not dissolve the bond.  In the case of earthly marriage, of course, the indissolubility applies to the God-intended time of marriage:  as long as the two married persons live.  God dissolves every earthly marriage by the death of one of the marriage companions (I Cor. 7:39; Rom. 7:2, 3).

 

The Divine Divorce

      God did indeed divorce Old Testament Israel.  Jehovah declares this in verse eight with two strong expressions:  “put her away” and “[gave] her a bill of divorce.”  The reference is to Israel of the ten tribes, who by the time of Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry were already in exile in Assyria.  Both expressions describe the divine divorce of Israel as effecting separation.  As marriage is a union consisting of the intimate sharing of life, divorce is separation.  God “put” (Hebrew:  ‘sent’) His wife, Israel, away.  He sent her away from His presence, out of their home, and far from His fellowship.  He will not live with her any more.  She may not live with Him. 

      God made this separation a formal, legal matter.  He gave her a “bill of divorce.”  The forceful Hebrew has ‘a bill of cutting off.’  God cut Israel off from His communion with all the benefits of this communion for the wife.  That the separation was realized, enforced, and publicized in a legal document indicates the seriousness of the marital rift.  This was no ordinary lovers’ spat.  This was not even an instance, serious enough, of a husband’s or wife’s staying away overnight, or asking the other to leave for a night, before things are worked out the next day.  All of Israel’s rights and privileges as wife were suspended in law.  Implied is that Israel had neither the holiness nor the righteousness that are required for living with God.  The filthy adulteress could not live with the holy God.  The guilty adulteress might not live with the just God.  Now there was no easy way back to God’s fellowship for Israel—or for God.  All of the charges and demands of the divorce decree with regard to the unfaithful wife must be met and satisfied.

      The historical reality of the divorce was the exile of the ten tribes in Assyria.  God sent Israel away from His presence in the land of Canaan.  He cut the nation off from His covenant fellowship in the land of promise.  The banishment from His fellowship was righteous judgment—a “bill of divorce.”

 

The Lawful Ground

      The ground for the divorce was the adultery of God’s wife, indeed, repeated acts of adultery.  This is expressed in the divorce decree:  “For all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce” (v. 8).  Israel had “played the harlot with many lovers” (v. 1).  “As a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the Lord” (v. 20).  Israel was unfaithful in the most intimate aspect of her relationship with Jehovah.

      In addition, Israel refused to repent of her adultery and to return to her husband.  God’s charge against Israel throughout the passage, that she carried on impenitently in her adulteries, proves that the Authorized Version’s translation of the last part of verse one is correct:  “Yet return again to me.”  The verb is an imperative.  Grammatically, the verb form could also be rendered as a question, “And you would return to me?” or, “Would you return to me?”2   Translating the last part of verse one as a question would imply that Israel was inclined to return to God.  But the context makes plain that Israel had not the slightest desire to return to God.  In verse seven, God explicitly charges Israel with refusal to repent:  “I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me.  But she returned not.”  Israel was brazen:  “Thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed” (v. 3). 

      After the divorce, as before the divorce, Israel had no interest in returning to Jehovah.  Therefore, the LORD must call his divorced wife to come back:  “Turn, O backsliding children” (v. 14).  The same verb occurs in verse fourteen that is found at the end of verse one, and in verse fourteen there can be no question that it expresses a summons.

      Besides, translating the last part of verse one as a question, “Would you return again to me?” leaves an impression that conflicts with the main thought of the entire passage.  The impression is then that Israel desired to return, but Jehovah discouraged the returning.  The main thought of the passage is the very opposite.  Jehovah desired the return of His wife, but she was unwilling.  Again and again, God called to Israel in the person of a wounded, loving husband, “Turn!  Return!”

      Israel’s impenitence was an important aspect of the ground of the divorce.  God did not divorce Israel simply on the ground of adultery.  He divorced the nation on the ground of her continuing impenitently in adultery.  Israel’s impenitence also magnified the grace of God in maintaining the marriage and in eventually restoring Israel to His fellowship in the covenant.  The maintenance of the marriage and the restoration of its communion were not due to anything in Israel, including Israel’s repentance, but only to the faithfulness of God to His marriage vow. 

      The ground of the divorce was adultery.  It was a lawful ground simply because the righteous God, who is the source and standard of all justice, made it the ground of His divorce of His wife. 

      The spiritual reality of Israel’s adulteries was her worship and service of other gods.  Jeremiah 3:6 indicates the reality when it charges that Israel “played the harlot” on “every high mountain and under every green tree.”  In these places the Israelites built their altars to the idols and carried out their idolatrous ceremonies.  The “many lovers” of both Israel and Judah are identified in verse nine as “stones and … stocks,” that is, idols. 

      It should not be overlooked that Israel’s spiritual adultery included physical adultery.  Worship of the idols permitted, incited, and called forth adultery, fornication, and homosexual acts on those high mountains and under those green trees.  The same is true of the worship of idols by the false and apostatizing churches today.  The gods they create by their corruption of the truth of the gospel encourage sex outside of marriage, divorce and remarriage, and even homosexual practice.  Because holy marriage is the symbol of the covenant, departure from the covenant and its worship of the one, true God is always marked by gross transgression of the seventh commandment.  Always, the “acts of synod” of an apostatizing denomination advertise the departure from God by decisions that solemnly approve the depraved sexual behavior of the idolatrous culture to which the churches have succumbed.  Thus, the faithless churches enthusiastically participate in the destruction of holy marriage.

      On the ground of Israel’s idolatry, God officially suspended the communion of the covenant of grace. 

      Jeremiah 3 does indeed teach that God, the divine husband, divorced His wife on the ground of her spiritual adultery.

 

The Bond Yet Unbroken

      What Jeremiah 3 does not teach is that the divorce annulled, or dissolved, the marriage.  Much less does the chapter teach that the divorce opened up the way for God to take another wife, namely, the New Testament church.  Rather, the passage clearly teaches that, although God divorced Israel, He maintained the marriage with His wife.  The divorce temporarily suspended the fellowship—the life together—of the union, but it did not abrogate the bond of union itself.  In the later language of the Christian church’s doctrine of marriage, God’s divorce of Israel was only a “separation of bed and board,” not a “dissolving of the bond.”3  God did not renounce His love for His wife, did not renege on His marital vow to her, and did not give up His will to have her in the communion of the marriage.

      That God’s divorce of Israel in no wise intended, or effected, the dissolving of the marriage was evident in the very fact of the divorce itself.  The penalty for adultery in the Old Testament was not divorce, not even divorce by a formal decree, but death.  God prescribed death for an adulterous wife.  “If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman:  so shalt thou put away evil from Israel” (Deut. 22:22). 

      Death was also the punishment of spiritual adultery, that is, idolatry.  “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you . . . Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:  But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.  And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God” (Deut. 13:6-10). 

      But God did not put His own adulterous, idolatrous wife to death.  He only divorced her.  And the reason, as Jeremiah 3 makes abundantly plain, is that He still loved His wife and was determined to have her.  He was merciful to His wife and would forgive her:  “Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you:  for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever” (v. 12).  The mercy of Jehovah would not unjustly ignore the death penalty that He prescribed and that His faithless wife deserved.  But He would Himself suffer the death penalty in Jesus Christ.

      The first verse of Jeremiah 3 proves, in a striking, indeed, startling way, that God was still married to divorced Israel.  To Israel who had “played the harlot with many lovers” and whom God had already divorced, according to verse eight, God called, “Yet return again to me.”  This was a call to His wife, as verse one makes plain:  “They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again?  Shall not that land be greatly polluted?  But thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord.”  Whereas it was not permitted in Israel for a wife divorced from her husband and remarried to another man to return to her first husband, God called His wife back to Himself, even though she had committed adultery with many companions and even though God had divorced her.  Divorced Israel remained the wife of the Lord.

      What is striking, even startling, about this insistence on the maintenance of the marriage and on Israel’s return to her rightful husband is the contrast between God’s marriage to Israel and a law governing the earthly marriages of the Israelites.  Verse one refers to the law concerning divorce and remarriage in Deuteronomy 24:1-4.  Deuteronomy 24:1-4 forbade a husband who had divorced his wife, on some other ground than her adultery, to take her back, if a second husband divorced her, or died.4  God, however, will take His wife back, even though she gave herself to many lovers and despite the fact that He had given her a bill of divorce.

      This deliberate contrast in Jeremiah 3:1 between the law that Moses laid down for Israelites in Deuteronomy 24 and God’s own behavior towards His wife points out that the New Testament church must not determine her marriage doctrine and practice from Deuteronomy 24.  The law of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 was merely Moses’ tolerance of deviation from God’s original ordinance of marriage on the part of hard-hearted Israelite men.  It was a stop-gap measure, somewhat to protect vulnerable women, who otherwise would have been passed around like property.  This was Christ’s analysis of Deuteronomy 24:1-4, and indictment of the kind of people for whom the law was necessary, in Matthew 19:8:  “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives.”

      Deuteronomy 24 does not reveal the truth about marriage, divorce, and remarriage.  It reveals the wickedness in marriage of hard-hearted, that is, unbelieving, men.  The truth about marriage, already in the Old Testament, is revealed in Jeremiah 3:1:  Even though He must divorce an unfaithful wife, God maintained the marriage and called His wife back to Himself. 

      Verse fourteen of Jeremiah 3 is decisive, and explicit, regarding the question, whether God divorced an original wife so as to annul the marriage and open the way for Himself to marry another.  Addressing faithless, divorced Israel, Jehovah exclaimed, “Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you:  and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.”  Although His wife was unfaithful, although she committed adultery with numerous lovers, although she was as yet impenitent, and although God had divorced her, God was still her husband, and she was still His wife.  The bill of divorce did not touch, much less dissolve, the marriage bond:  “I am married unto you.”  Indeed, the fact of the marriage is the reason why God called Israel back, as it is the reason why she ought to come back, to live with Him:  “for I am married unto you.”

 

The Return of the Wife

      Even though it is not the main interest of this brief study, I note that the call of God to His unfaithful wife, to return, is effectual.  Israel would return to Jehovah.  Israel would return because Jehovah would efficaciously draw the elect of the ten tribes back to Himself.  This is the teaching of the prophet in verses fourteen through sixteen:  “I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion:  and I will give pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.  And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land….” 

      The restoration of Israel of the ten tribes to communion of life with Jehovah her God in the marriage of the covenant would take place chiefly in the return of Judah from Babylon.  Elect Israelites would join the remnant of Judah in returning to Canaan—to their home and to their husband.  “In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers” (v. 18).  This return would not only be physical.  It would also be spiritual.  By the power of the love of God expressed in the call to return, the elect members of the ten tribes of Israel would “acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and … have not obeyed my voice” (v. 13).  The only way back to the bosom of the husband for the adulterous wife is repentance. 

      God made plain that the restoration of Israel to the fellowship of the marriage covenant would not be a national revival, or even a mass conversion of Jews.  Rather, God would take Israel “one of a city, and two of a family” (v. 14).  In the elect of the nation, even though they are few in number, Israel would be restored.

      The reunion of the elect of the ten tribes and the elect of Judah would again manifest the oneness of God’s marriage companion.  Because of the historical schism in Israel at the time of Rehoboam, which division persisted in Jeremiah’s day, Jeremiah 3 speaks of two women, “backsliding Israel” and “her treacherous sister Judah” (vv. 6, 7).  But it is a mistake to speak of God’s “two wives” in the chapter.  Nor does the chapter do so.  God had only one wife in the Old Testament.  This wife was Israel, the nation made up of both the northern and the southern kingdoms.  They belonged together.  God would bring them together.  The figure in Jeremiah 3 of marriage breaks down at the point of the historical division of the nation.  If we were of a mind foolishly to pursue the figure, we would have to speak of the ten tribes as half of God’s wife, Judah being the other half.  Or, a little less foolishly, we would regard the ten tribes as one form of God’s one wife, Judah being the other form.

      However this may be, Jeremiah 3 gives no support to those eager to promote remarriage after divorce.  The chapter gives no support to those who like to argue for the right of remarriage of the “innocent party,” that is, the husband or wife whose marriage companion has committed adultery and who has divorced the unfaithful wife or husband on the ground of her or his adultery.  The chapter gives no support to the notion underlying the position that the “innocent party” may remarry, namely, that adultery dissolves the marriage bond.  Israel’s adultery did not dissolve her marriage to Jehovah.  Jehovah’s “bill of divorce” regarding Israel on the ground of her repeated adulteries did not dissolve the marriage bond.  Jehovah was still her husband; Israel was still His wife.  The wife could, and would, return to the communion of life of the marriage.

      Appeal to Jeremiah 3 in support of remarriage after a divorce on the ground of adultery is utterly mistaken.

 

The Heresy of Jehovah’s Remarriage

      Not only is appeal to Jeremiah 3 in support of remarriage mistaken.  The appeal implies heresy.  For the appeal to Jeremiah 3 in support of remarriage holds that God abrogated His covenant with Israel.  His word of promise failed.  His love towards Israel cooled.  His will to save Israel changed.  The reason for this defeat and failure of Jehovah was Israel’s disobedience. 

      Appeal to Jeremiah 3 in support of remarriage implies the denial of the sovereignty of God’s grace in the realizing of His covenant and the saving of His covenant people in the Old Testament.

      Scripture exposes this denial of God’s sovereignty in His covenantal dealings with Old Testament Israel as erroneous.  With regard to God’s word of covenant promise, that is, the vow God took in marrying Israel, the apostle declares, “not as though the word of God hath taken none effect” (Rom. 9:6).  The perishing of the majority of Israelites and, indeed, of the nation do not indicate the failure of the promise or the abrogation of the covenant.  For the true Israel of God always was the elect in Christ among them, and in these elect, with whom the covenant was established by unconditional promise, the covenant is fulfilled (Rom. 9:6ff.).

      Psalm 106:45 contradicts the heretical doctrine, that God dissolved His covenant with Israel because of Israel’s unfaithfulness.  The conclusion of the long list of Israel’s grievous sins in the covenant, running from verse six through verse forty three, is not that Jehovah finally forgot His covenant.  Rather, verse forty-five declares:  “[Nevertheless] he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his mercies.”  Jehovah kept His covenant despite Israel’s appalling wickedness.  He kept His covenant because the covenant did not depend upon Israel, but only upon His own steadfast covenant love.

As this brief study has demonstrated, Jeremiah 3 itself, the chapter appealed to by defenders of remarriage, affirms God’s maintenance of His covenant with Israel—with Israel of the ten tribes—despite Israel’s unfaithfulness in the covenant.  “I am married unto you, and I will take you” (v. 14).  In the old covenant, God was gracious.     

And His grace was sovereign.

 

God, No Bigamist

      Adding to the heresy of the appeal to Jeremiah 3 in support of remarriage after divorce on the ground of adultery is the common notion on the part of those who make the appeal, that God, having rid Himself of His first wife—Israel—was then free to take a second—the New Testament church. 

      According to this notion, God has had two wives!

      God is the original divorcing and remarrying husband!

      The notion is blasphemy!

      The church is not a second wife of God, whether after Israel or alongside Israel.  The church is the fulfillment and reality of Old Testament Israel. 

      The truth that the church is the spiritual reality of Old Testament Israel is widely overlooked today in the discussions between progressive dispensationalists and covenant theologians.  Progressive dispensationalism tries to accommodate premillennial dispensationalism somewhat to covenant theology’s affirmation of the oneness of Israel and the church, while holding on to traditional dispensationalism’s insistence on the difference between the two peoples.  The covenant theologians in this ecumenical discussion exert themselves to allow for significant difference between Israel and the church, while still maintaining a unity of the people of God. 

      Alarmingly, this discussion sometimes involves viewing the church as “superseding” Israel.  The progressive dispensationalists describe at least some of their covenant partners in the discussion as holding “supersessionism.”  Evidently, some who deny dispensationalism’s teaching that national Israel has a separate future as the kingdom people of God alongside the church present the relation between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church as the church’s superseding Israel.  Progressive dispensationalist Robert L. Saucy describes covenant theology as the “idea of a continuity of Old Testament Israel with the church in the sense that the church assumes the place of a ‘new Israel.’”  Against the doctrine of the oneness of Israel and the church, he contends that “for Paul, the historic Israel . . . could not be superseded by a new people of God.”  In this connection, Saucy criticizes those who teach a “transfer” to the church of promises originally made to Israel.  Covenant theology is the view of the church “as a ‘new Israel’ taking the place of historical Israel in God’s salvation plan for the world.”  With covenant theology in mind, Saucy declares that “Israel itself is never portrayed as a type in the strict sense of being superseded by an antitype.”5

      Genuinely Reformed, covenant theology does not teach “supersessionism.”  The church does not “replace” Israel.  The church does not “take the place of” Israel.  Nothing rightly belonging to Israel is highhandedly “transferred” to the upstart church. 

      The church is Israel—grown-up, mature, spiritual Israel—as the apostles teach in I Peter 2:9, Galatians 6:16, Romans 2:28, 29, and many other places.  For the church is the people, nation, and body of which Jesus Christ is savior, king, and head.  And that which made Israel, Israel, that is, the people, nation, and congregation of God in the Old Testament, was Jesus Christ in the midst of her by divine promise.  The Jews in the middle east, and elsewhere, today, are not, and never will be, the reality of Old Testament Israel, except insofar as some of them are brought into the church, where alone anyone can share in the reality of Israel.  To the church belong all the promises made to Old Testament Israel.  They are the church’s promises.  For they are all “yea” and “amen” in Christ (II Cor. 1:19, 20). 

      As the true Israel of God, the church is God’s one and only wife.  Jehovah God does not have two wives, as premillennial dispensationalism, both traditional and progressive, necessarily teaches.  Since the Old Testament teaches that Israel was the wife of God and since the New Testament teaches that the church is the wife of God in Jesus Christ and since dispensationalism teaches that Israel and the church are two different peoples, dispensationalism holds that God has two wives.  For dispensationalism, God is the original bigamist.

      Neither does God have two wives successively, as is the position of those who appeal to Jeremiah in support of the teaching that divorce on the ground of adultery annuls the marriage so that the “innocent party”—God Himself in Jeremiah 3—may remarry.  God did not divorce and remarry.  God did not divorce Old Testament Israel and remarry the New Testament church.  He did divorce His unfaithful wife, Israel.  But He maintained the marriage with Israel, which He had established by a solemn, unconditional vow.  On the basis of the cross and in the way of Israel’s repentance, God brought His wife back.  By the Spirit of the crucified and exalted Jesus Christ, in the fullness of time the young lady grew up, to become the lovely bride who is the faithful New Testament church.

 

Truth for Christian Marriage

      Because God Himself has patterned the earthly marriage of Christians after His own spiritual marriage (the covenant of grace), we can derive important truths concerning earthly marriage in the church from Jeremiah 3.

      First, marriage is a lifelong bond, which is not dissolved by the adultery, or even the repeated adulteries, of one of the marriage companions.

      Second, divorce is permissible, sometimes even necessary, in the case of adultery, especially when one’s wife or husband continues impenitently in adultery.  Adultery is a lawful ground for divorce.  The New Testament bears this out in Matthew 5:31, 32 and Matthew 19:9.

      Third, divorce—divorce in the sense of a legal decree—effects separation, but the separation is not the dissolving of the marriage.  This truth is of fundamental importance in the current debate, such as it is, in Reformed churches concerning marriage, divorce, and remarriage.  Many dismiss, out-of-hand, the teaching that biblical divorce, that is, divorce on the ground of adultery, does not dissolve the marriage bond, but only effects legal suspension of the life together of the married couple.  The attitude towards this teaching borders on contempt.  Any theologian or church that does not recognize that divorce in the Bible refers to the dissolving of the marriage, so that the “innocent party” at least, may freely remarry is regarded as ridiculous.  But the Bible explicitly teaches a full, legal divorce that does not dissolve the marriage.  The Bible teaches such a divorce in Jeremiah 3.  God gave Israel a “bill of divorce,” but He remained married to divorced Israel (Jer. 3:8, 14).  Though lacerated, the marriage was intact.

      Fourth, an important practical reason for recognizing that adultery, or divorce on the ground of adultery, does not dissolve the marriage bond, so as to permit remarriage, is to leave the way open for reconciliation.  In addition to being sinful, remarriage after a divorce is easy and ugly.  Reconciliation is difficult and beautiful.  Where children are involved, reconciliation is also beneficial for the covenant children.

      Fifth, the believing husband or wife whose marriage has been deeply troubled by the adultery of his or her marriage companion is moved by the example of Jehovah God Himself, in Jeremiah 3, to be merciful to the offending wife or husband, as Jehovah God has been merciful to His wife.

      “Although you have played the harlot with another lover, or played the lover with a harlot, yet return again to me.”          

      “Yet return again to me.”

      “Even though I have given you ‘a bill of divorce’ on the ground of adultery.”

      “For I am married unto you.” 

Clear and Present Danger:

An Overview of Luther’s Demonology

 

Ronald Cammenga

 

Introduction

      Some may argue that Martin Luther had a lifelong obsession with the devil.  Such would be an extreme view.  But to insist that Luther was profoundly conscious of the devil, his workings and his power, is to do justice to the facts.  Behind Luther’s reformatory work was the deep-seated conviction that the devil was in no small way responsible for the declension of the church.  Luther did not conceive of his battles as a reformer primarily in terms of physical opponents, like the pope, heretics, fanatics, or wicked rulers.  He was, instead, convinced that his battle was “… not against flesh and blood…” (Eph. 6:12), but against the devil and demonic hosts.

      Luther’s battle with the devil, however, was not only a battle that took place in the scholarly and ecclesiastical arenas.  More fundamentally, his battle with the devil was a personal battle within himself.  Behind his struggles with various doubts, fears, and sins he saw the devil as tempter seeking to derail not merely the work of reformation, but his own personal salvation. 

Luther’s battle with the devil took place on both these fronts. 

      Luther never produced what could be called a systematic theology.  His demonology must be gleaned, therefore, from his numerous references to the devil scattered throughout his writings.  References can be found in his exegetical works, his lectures, sermons, and commentaries especially.  Not to be neglected is Luther’s hymnody, which provided a unique genre for expressing his views concerning the devil.  Luther’s writings of a more personal nature detail his own inner struggles against “the Prince of Darkness grim.”  Luther did not content himself with a description of the spiritual opponent of God and the church.  He also set forth the remedies to Satan’s assaults, as he sought to arm himself and all believers against the wiles of the craftiest of all enemies. 

      What becomes abundantly plain from an examination of his writings is that Luther’s conception of the devil was no abstract, theological matter for him.  Luther viewed the devil as “a clear and present danger”1  both for the church as a whole and for the believer personally.  This “clear and present danger” was not the clear and present danger of some fictional techno-thriller, but the clear and present danger of a real enemy, confronted close at hand, and with whom church and believer alike are involved in a life and death struggle.  For, “No matter how well known it may be or how carefully learned, the devil, our adversary, who prowls around and seeks to devour us (I Pet. 5:8), is not dead.”2   Of this clear and present danger Luther sang in his hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”  The opening stanza of the familiar English rendition of Luther’s great Reformation song is:

      A mighty fortress is our God,

      A bulwark never failing;

      Our Helper He, amid the flood

      Of mortal ills prevailing.

      For still our ancient foe

      Doth seek to work us woe;

      His craft and power are great,

      And armed with cruel hate,

      On earth is not his equal.3 

 

Luther’s demonology: who the devil is

      There can be no question that Luther was influenced by the popular demonology of his day.  Kostlin and Hay write:

 

   We here recognize in Luther very plainly the power of the conceptions of the devil then prevalent among the masses, and derived in part by tradition from the heathen world, under the influence of which he spent the years of his youth….4 

 

Carleton Cunningham, in his essay “The Devil and the Religious Controversies of Sixteenth-Century France,” describes the beliefs about the devil, demons, witchcraft, and the occult that permeated European society in the sixteenth century, as well as the impact these beliefs had on the Protestant reformers.5   Clearly, Luther was in this respect, as in so many others, a child of his times.

      Although decidedly influenced by the popular beliefs of his day, Luther nevertheless strove to ground his teachings concerning the devil in Holy Scripture.  Even his own experiences with the devil, the close encounters that he frequently very vividly described, were experiences, in Luther’s judgment, that mirrored the testimony of Scripture.  Luther did not simply uncritically adopt the standard medieval lore and superstitions relating to the devil and demons.  But in this whole area, as in every other, he grounded his teaching in the only and ultimate authority of Scripture.  Hence, there was a sifting by Luther that resulted in discarding the chaff of pure superstition and retaining the kernel of truth according to the Word of God, as that truth also rang true to his own experience.  Althaus is right when he remarks:

 

   Luther presents a doctrine about the devil on the authority of the Holy Scriptures and in continuity with ecclesiastical tradition.  What he says about the devil, however, and the way in which he says it, goes far beyond Biblicism and traditionalism.  He does not merely develop further a piece of theological and popular tradition; rather, on the basis of his own experience, he bears witness to the reality and the terribleness of the power of the devil.  He does this in utter seriousness and with deep personal conviction.  It is not simply to construe this part of his theology as something inherited from the Middle Ages, even though some of its specific details are determined by the traditional belief in devils and demons.  Luther takes the devil much more seriously than the Middle Ages did.6 

 

Oberman agrees.

 

   This new belief in the Devil is such an integral part of the Reformation discovery that if the reality of the powers inimical to God is not grasped, the incarnation of Christ, as well as the justification and temptation of the sinner are reduced to ideas of the mind rather than experiences of faith.  That is what Luther’s battle against the Devil meant to convey.  Centuries separate Luther from a modern world which has renounced and long since exorcized the Devil, thus finding it hard to see the difference between this kind of religion and medieval witchcraft.  But Luther distinguishes sharply between faith and superstition.  He understood the hellish fears of his time, then discovered in the Scriptures the true thrust and threat of Satan and experienced himself the Devil’s trials and temptations.  Consequently he, unlike any theologian before or after him, was able to disperse the fog of witches’ Sabbath and sorcery and show the adversary for what he really was: violent toward God, man, and the world.  To make light of the Devil is to distort faith.7 

 

      Following Scripture’s testimony, Luther viewed the devil as an angel created by God.  Although he expressed uncertainty with regard to the day on which God created the angels, Luther conjectured that they were likely created on either the second or the third day.8   Originally, the devil was a good creature.  Not only was he a good creature of God, but originally the devil, known personally as Lucifer, occupied a very high position in the angelic realm.  From that glorious position, on account of the sin of pride, the devil fell.9   Since his fall, Satan has exerted himself against God and man, Christ and the church.  Allied with the devil are the demonic hosts that fell away from God under Satan’s leadership and now stand in subservience to him.  Luther’s view was that the devil is absolutely depraved, that is, depraved without any possibility of remedy.  He opposed the notion of Origin that even the devil would ultimately be saved and united with God.10 

      It was the devil, without question in the mind of Luther, who was the instigator of the temptation of Adam and Eve in paradise.  He was the tempter.  Although it was a real serpent that tempted Eve, clearly the rational-moral being speaking through the serpent was Satan himself.11   That the devil tempted Eve to sin presupposes that at that point he was himself already a fallen, sinful creature.12   Certainly, Eve should have known this.  And she did know it.  For this reason, Luther faulted Eve for carrying on polite conversation with the enemy of God.

 

   With what great unconcern Eve listens to the serpent!  We do not talk so intimately with a puppy that has been raised in the home and has been made accustomed to it—or with a chick.13 

 

In the fall of man, the devil revealed his true personality.  He is a liar and murderer from the beginning, as Jesus pointed out to the scribes and Pharisees in John 8:44.  Luther could very vividly describe the devil’s appearance and personality, accentuating his animosity towards God and good.

 

   “Moreover, let us note that on the body of Satan there are shaggy and detestable hypocrites, because a shaggy skin is a mendacious skin.  But a nature skin should not be rough.  Furthermore, the red color pertains to homicides.  These two portents—namely, falsehood and homicide—are in the church and the body of the devil.14 

 

 

The reality of the devil’s involvement in the world

and the affairs of men

      Luther was convinced, both on the basis of Scripture’s testimony and his own experience, that the devil and his hosts exhibit a real presence and exert an equally real influence on the world of human experience.  Luther believed that there were male and female demons.15   He believed that there were goblins and ghosts, specters and poltergeists, hags and witches.16   All of these not only had contact with the world of humans, but were able also, in negative and harmful ways, to impact the lives of men, women, and children.  Haile observes,

 

   Devils were in evidence everywhere.  Luther’s sermons and private remarks are brimful of tales about that grim, mocking demon, a helpful but ever insolent servant.  He was held responsible for pretty much every trivial inconvenience and monstrous evil in the world, from the sulphur taste clinging to certain beers, to the crazy carryings-on of the radical sects and the unspeakable perversions of the papacy.17 

 

“And though this world, with devils filled…”18  was not just a hypothetical possibility with Luther.  It was the sober reality.

      In the light of Scripture, Luther rejected at least two false notions respecting demons that were prevalent in his day.  One of the lively debates of the day was whether ghosts were spirits of the dead haunting the earth, or demons.  Even though at one time Luther expressed the desire, after he died, to return to earth as a ghost in order to pester the priests and monks,19  in fact he repudiated the belief that ghosts are the spirits of the dead.  After a man dies, he is cut off from the earth and contact with the earth; his soul goes either to heaven or to hell.20   Luther also rejected a popular superstition of his day that sexual union between a devil and a human being was possible, resulting even in offspring.  Luther dismissed this notion as silly and contrary to the laws of creation.21 

      However, Luther did believe that the devil and his demons made their presence known in everyday life in a multitude of ways.  He saw the influence of the devil in the blowing of evil winds and the devastation of storms.22   The devil was behind sickness, the plague, and other misfortunes that overtook human beings. 

 

   I believe that in all grave illnesses the devil is present as the author and cause.  First, he is the author of death.  Second, Peter says in Acts that those who were oppressed by the devil were healed by Christ.  Moreover, Christ cured not only the oppressed but also the paralytics, the blind, etc.  Generally speaking, therefore, I think that all dangerous diseases are blows of the devil.  For this, however, he employs the instruments of nature.23 

 

In one place Luther recalled events of his childhood.

 

   When I was a boy, there were many witches who cast spells upon cattle and upon people, especially upon children.  They also damaged the crops through storms and hail, which they caused by their sorcery.24 

 

He goes on to express his conviction that now that the gospel has been restored, such incidents are greatly diminished “… because the Gospel drives the devil and all his illusions from their seat of power.”25

      In his own life, Luther often experienced intense wrestlings with the devil.  In some instances, Luther undoubtedly went too far in identifying what he considered the devil’s shenanigans.  Nevertheless, there is in Luther a keen awareness of the devil and his activities that contrasts sharply, not only with the modern mind, but with the thinking of many Christians.  Raise the prospect today of the devil’s real influence and involvement in the affairs of men, and the response is incredulity.  How can any right thinking person living in our modern scientific age really consider it possible that evil spirits are involved in the world of humans.  Not so Luther.

      Many of Luther’s encounters with the devil were, fittingly, in the darkness of night.  He complained that frequently the devil came to harass him after he had retired for the evening.  In one place he lamented that he slept at night not only with his wife, Kate, in the bed, but with the devil lying next to him as well.26   In his Table Talk, Luther related the devil’s unsettling vexation of a fellow minister who sought Luther’s advice in dealing with the situation.  According to Luther “…Satan disturbed his peace with nocturnal tumults and the smashing of all the utensils in his house.  Satan hurled pots and dishes close to his head, so that they broke in pieces, and Satan annoyed him by laughing outloud….”  This had lasted for a whole year.  Luther did not dismiss his fellow pastor’s experience as ridiculous, but gave him advice for chasing the devil away.

 

   Don’t give in to that robber!  Suffer the outward things and the minor damage that comes from the breaking of pots, for it can’t harm you in body and soul, as you have found, for the angel of the Lord is with you.  Let Satan play with the pots.  Meanwhile pray to God with your wife and children [and say], ‘Be off, Satan!  I’m lord in this house, not you.  By divine authority I’m head of this household, and I have a call from heaven to be pastor of this church.  I have testimony from heaven and earth, and this is what I rely on.  You enter this house as a thief and robber.  You are a murderer and a scoundrel.  Why don’t you stay in heaven?  Who invited you to come here?’  In this way you should sing him his litany and his legend and let him play as long as he pleases.27 

 

One of Luther’s own notable close encounters with the devil took place during his confinement at the Wartburg.  “I was often pestered [by the devil] when I was imprisoned in my Patmos, high up in the fortress in the kingdom of the birds.”28   Well known is the alleged incident involving the inkwell.  So viciously did the devil assault Luther while he was in the process of translating the Scriptures into German that Luther is reported to have thrown his inkwell at the tempter.  Although the factualness of this incident is disputed, it is in keeping with Luther’s sense of the real presence of the devil in his life.  Luther lived his life, not only in the presence of God, but under the constant gaze of the devil.  Never was he far from Luther, never totally out of the picture.  For Luther, the devil was always “a clear and present danger.”

 

Luther’s view of his reformatory work as battle with the devil

      Beyond his personal wrestlings with the devil, Luther viewed his work as a reformer (pastor, professor, and theologian) as conflict with the devil.  His assault on the errors in the church consisted ultimately of warfare with the devil.  And in his reformatory work he experienced opposition as attacks perpetrated, in the final analysis, by the devil.  The recovery of the gospel had, in Luther’s judgment, provoked the devil to a more frenzied attack against the church than at any previous time in history. 

 

   It is a general thing that men are more wicked where the Gospel is preached than where it is not preached.  This comes from the fact that where God and His Word are, the devil is angry and cannot stand a loss in his kingdom.  …when the light of God’s Word is turned on again and he is revealed and exposed, then he rages and raves and becomes rabid and insane.  He cannot stand it but becomes furious and rouses his followers also.  While they used to be pious people, he now inflames them to all kinds of sin, avarice, jealousy, hatred, heresy, and commonly practiced vices without number.  He has awakened.  And where the Word of God is active, there he bestirs himself the most.29 

 

And again:

 

For the devil cannot do otherwise than attack this doctrine vehemently, with might and with craft; nor does he rest as long as he sees even a spark of it remaining.  We, too, merely because we preach the Gospel purely, suffer all sorts of evils both on the right hand and on the left from the world, the devil, and his apostles.30 

 

      Luther saw the devil and the devil’s direct influence in the heretics and fanatics of his day.  He regarded the Anabaptists as “… possessed by the devil and … seditious and bloodthirsty men.”31   He viewed the antinomians as under the devil’s influence, and their teaching as a “poisoned dart” of the devil.32   He regarded those who differed with him over the sacraments, especially Zwingli, as instruments of Satan.33   It was the devil who roused the peasants in their revolt against the oppression of their lords.  One particularly ominous devil was the Turk, by which Luther meant the advancing hordes of Islam.  He spoke frequently of two unholy triumvirates.  The first was the familiar triumvirate of sin, hell, and the devil.  The second, less familiar to twenty-first century Christians was the pope, the Turk, and the devil.  “Consequently, the Turk, the pope, and countless other devils must come from Italy, Spain, and all the corners of the earth, to vex, afflict, and kill us because of our unspeakable and disgraceful contempt.”34  

      But chief among the devils Luther engaged was the devil of Roman Catholicism.  For Luther, it was the devil who animated the Roman Catholic Church of his day.  All of the errors, every heresy, the multitude of abominable practices, the immorality and avarice of clergy and laity alike, were inspired by the devil.  He regarded the churches as “… truly schools of the devil.”35   He regarded the Roman Catholic Church as a chapel of the devil.  “For it is the devil’s rule to build a chapel next to a church and temple of Christ, that is, to appropriate the works and examples of the fathers, (and) disfigure them….”36   His judgment was, “The papacy is a congregation of demons and of the worst people….  All its assemblages are of the devil.  Therefore let us shun them, lest we become sharers in their plague.”37   The gospel exorcises all the Roman devils: pilgrimage-devils, bull-devils, brotherhood-devils, saint-devils, mass-devils, purgatory devils, monastery-devils, priest-devils, heresy-devils, and pope-devils.38  Frequently, Luther refers to the Romish clergy as “devil’s priests”39  and “the devil’s retinue.”40 

      There were two aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice that were particularly devilish to Luther.  The first of these was Rome’s attack on marriage by insisting on the celibacy of her clergy. 

 

   What need is there of saying more?  Such was the devil’s raging against holy matrimony, God’s creation, that the papists compelled men to forswear married life; they established orders with their celibate life; and they declared the life of married people detestable in comparison with their celibacy.41 

 

Repeatedly, Luther used Paul’s language in I Timothy 4:1 and referred to Rome’s insistence on celibacy as a “doctrine of demons.”42   Luther’s considered judgment was that:

 

   … the estate of marriage does not set well with the devil, because it is God’s good will and work.  This is why the devil has contrived to have so much shouted and written in the world against the institution of marriage, to frighten men away from this godly life and entangle them in a web of fornication and secret sins.43 

 

The insistence on celibacy was not merely a human commandment; it was also a commandment of the devil.44   Expressing utter disdain, in language characteristic of Luther, he asserted:  “But the pope declares:  ‘No one can be a servant of the church unless he remains celibate.’  This is what he teaches in his canons, which have dropped from the devil’s behind.”45

      Especially devilish to Luther, however, was the teaching of Rome that permeated the fabric of the Romish church, namely, the doctrine of meritorious good works, or works righteousness.  He called Rome’s promotion of such things as pilgrimages, entrance into a cloister, or fleeing into the wilderness “the devil’s lies and deadly venom.”46   He urged his followers:

 

   Therefore may the stumbling block of the cross never be taken away, which is what would happen if we were to preach what the ruler of this world (John 14:30) and his members would like to hear, namely, the righteousness of works; then we would have the devil friendly to us, the world on our side, and the pope and the princes kindly disposed toward us.47

 

      Luther frequently referred to those who worked in order to merit their salvation as the “devil’s martyrs.”  In one place he said, “This must be applied to all the self-righteous, who toil and deprive themselves of food and drink and exhaust their strength in a matter that is of no consequence.  They are the devil’s martyrs.  They work harder to get to hell than we to heaven.”48   In another place he wrote, “Therefore the workers of the Law are very rightly called ‘martyrs of the devil,’ if I may use the common expression.  They earn hell by greater toil and trouble than that by which the martyrs of Christ earn heaven.”49   And again:  “… the martyrs of the devil suffer more than those of God.”50   Luther took note of the irony of it all: “It is a double and just penalty to be tortured and plagued here on earth with the austere but vain sanctity with which the devil’s martyrs torture themselves, and then later to be the devil’s own forever.”51   From this point of view, Luther referred to the devil as “the holy devil,”52  as well as “God’s ape,”53  that is, from the point of view of his promotion of works righteousness as God’s own holiness.  It was this lie and murderous deception that pervaded the church of Luther’s day.  From this grievous error, the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, received through faith, delivered men.  For Luther, it was the gospel and only the gospel that exorcised the devil of works righteousness.

      The devil of works righteousness was particularly evident to Luther in monasticism. 

 

   Moreover, as Satan acted then, so he does now.  It is God’s command that we should believe the Gospel about His Son and thus be saved.  This is the true wisdom, as Christ also says (John 17:3): “This is eternal life, that they know Thee, the true God, and Him, whom Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ.”  This wisdom the monk disregards and turns to other things.  He puts on his cowl, girds himself with a rope, assumes the vow of celibacy, etc.; and he imagines that in this way he will please God and be saved.  This high and mighty wisdom, which makes an effort at the veneration and worship of God, was planted by Satan and by original sin into this wretched nature, so that often men have disregarded the Word which God set before them for their salvation, that they might turn to their own thoughts.54 

 

In another place, Luther remarked:

 

   A barefooted friar with his rope and his wooden shoes belongs in the same category.  He fasts much, babbles and gobbles, observes his monastic rules, does not lie down without his cowl, lets the lice devour him, and imagines that he will go straight to heaven—and not he alone; but he presumes that by virtue of his good works and the merits of his order he can draw others up with him.  But this is not traveling the way to heaven.  No, it is hastening straight to hell in sheer blindness and in the devil’s deception.55 

 

The monastic ideal of extraordinary service to God was, according to Luther, the greatest of delusions.

 

   But if anyone preaches:  “I will retire from the world and become a Carthusian monk in order to serve God, I will become a hermit”—thus the world has sought righteousness and the service of God in vows, cowls, and tonsures—he is serving the devil, not God.56 

 

 

Luther’s view of the Roman papacy

as an institution of the devil

      Luther reserved his harshest devil rhetoric, however, for the Roman papacy.  Both the institution of the papacy and the popes personally, Luther regarded as especially devilish.  “The pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, monks, yes, the entire ulcerous growth, and the devil are one and the same thing; for the papacy is of the devil.”57   As an institution, the papacy was a contrivance of the devil.

 

   The Holy Spirit appointed several bishops in one city, but each one of you is over several cities, and a simple pope wants to be bishop over all the cities of the world; by whose command or authority?  By the devil’s own, who through you opposes the Holy Spirit and that which he has instituted.58 

 

The popes were guilty of connivance with the devil, not chiefly on account of their worldliness, idolatry, and immorality.  Their complicity with Satan was seen especially in their rejection of the true gospel brought to light through the Reformation and their persecution of those who maintained the pure gospel.

 

   The pope and his gang have lived shamefully and have practiced idolatry, but now they are also encumbering themselves with the sin of refusing to hear and to tolerate the message of the forgiveness of sin; they even crown this sin with blasphemy and persecution.  This is truly the sin of Antichrist, yes, of the devil himself.59 

 

      Luther made no bones about associating the pope with the devil.  He called the pope the “devil’s bridegroom,” and the church of which he is the head the “devil’s whore.”60   Luther faulted the papacy for the perversion of the gospel, accusing the pope of  “… throw(ing) the dear Gospel into a manure pile and a puddle.”61   The title that befits the pope is “vicar of the devil.”62   Because the pope threatened with excommunication from the church all who disobeyed his laws, “… it is the devil himself who is speaking in the person of the pope and in all such papal decrees.”63   It was Luther’s judgment that “he who wants to hear God speak should read Holy Scripture.  He who wants to hear the devil speak should read the pope’s decretals and bulls.”64   And further, “… the pope made all the kings and princes of the world beholden to him and exceedingly lavish, not only with their properties and wealth but also with their bodies.  But in return for such great favors he led them astray and gained them for the devil.”65   The pope was “the devil’s swine” who “has fallen snout and all” into the devil’s snare.66 

 

The believer’s personal struggles with the devil

      Concerned as he was to engage the devil without, Luther was equally concerned to expose and confront the devil in his assaults upon the believer personally.  Similarly, his perception of the devil’s manifestation in apostate Rome did not blind his eye to Satan’s presence in the true church of Jesus Christ.  As far as Luther was concerned, there was nothing so characteristically Christian as warfare with the devil.  Oberman is correct in his opinion that,

 

   There is no way to grasp Luther’s milieu of experience and faith unless one has an acute sense of his view of Christian existence between God and the Devil:  without a recognition of Satan’s power, belief in Christ is reduced to an idea about Christ—and Luther’s faith becomes a confused delusion in keeping with the tenor of his time.67 

 

      Luther’s discussion of the believer’s personal struggles with the devil and his many temptations was seldom a discussion in the abstract.  Rather, Luther treated the believer’s conflict with Satan as that conflict took shape in everyday life in the world, in virtually every area of earthly life, by every child of God no matter what his or her calling in life may have been.  Not only did he view Satan’s temptations as common to all believers, so that all believers experienced fundamentally the same spiritual warfare and faced the same sorts of dangers, but what becomes plain from his writings is that Luther consistently identified himself with every believer in his own wrestlings with the Prince of Darkness.  Luther was not superior because he was Luther, and therefore in some way immune to the devil’s machinations.  But Luther was a man among men, weak, fallible, prone to evil, given to impatience and despair, no less vulnerable to Satan’s devices than any other child of God. 

      What especially exposed the believer to the devil’s temptations was the weakness of his own sinful, depraved nature.  This was the enemy within the gate, the devil within every child of God. 

 

   For the devil goes to work with might and main to impede and obstruct the Gospel; he uses every obstacle at his disposal.  Besides, he enjoys the advantage of having as an ally within our own hearts that great piece of Adam, who is too lazy by nature, too sluggish, and too tired to engage in a battle like this and always draws us back, thus making it especially hard and unpleasant to keep on contending with opposition and obstacles of so many kinds and to fight to the finish.68 

 

This is “… the tyranny of Satan, to whom this wretched nature has been subjected because of sin.”69   In his inimitable way, Luther referred to the corrupt nature of the saints as “the devil’s yeast.”70  

      Luther saw one of the greatest temptations of the devil faced by the believer to be pride.  “If the angels fell because of the pride they took in the greatness and excellence of their gifts, it will also be the ruin of human beings….”71   Closely associated with pride was the disunity in the church that often accompanied it, believers setting themselves up against their fellow believers.  “That is the devil’s joy and delight,” Luther contended.  “He strives for nothing else than to destroy love among Christians and to create utter hatred and envy.  For he knows very well that Christendom is built and preserved by love.”72   It was the devil of pride and disunity that reared its ugly head in the reformation movement and threatened to undo it.  Luther complained, “The devil is a murderer and liar or seducer (John 8:44), and he has proved this sufficiently among us and is again beginning to prove it by means of new spirits and factions.”73 

      Luther warned often against the sins of the flesh with which the devil threatened the saints.  Fornication was an especially powerful temptation of the devil.  “It is an evil raging which cannot be easily restrained, because it is blind and deaf and is simply a fury and a madness inspired by the devil.”74   Reflecting on Joseph’s temptation by Potiphar’s wife, Luther commented, “Therefore the devil comes and tempts him on the right after he could not conquer and overthrow him on the left with toils, slavery, and exile.”75  

      Another of Satan’s attacks on the holy life of the people of God was riches and the lust of the things of this earth.  Luther spoke of those who lived for this life and riches as those who were “in the devil’s exile.”76   He faulted the pope and many of the clergy for having succumbed to this arrow shot from the devil’s bow.

      An ever-present danger was rebellion and lawlessness, the pride that manifested itself in a refusal to submit to those whom God had placed in positions of authority over the Christian.  Luther praised the example of Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, who was a faithful and obedient servant of his master.  He contrasted Eliezer’s spirit with the spirit of the day.

 

   Our age has no example to equal this one.  But everybody is complaining about the malevolence and the unheard-of insolence of domestics who do not serve their masters but give them orders.  The Holy Spirit does not approve of such servants; they are an abomination in the sight of God and slaves of the devil, whom they serve and obey.77 

 

Reflecting further on the pervasive lawlessness of his own day, Luther said:

 

   … there is the freedom of the flesh, which is chiefly prevalent in the world.  Those who have this obey neither God nor the laws but do what they please.  This is the freedom which the rabble pursues today; so do the fanatical spirits, who want to be free in their own opinions and actions, in order that they may teach and do with impunity what they imagine to be right.  This is a demonic freedom, by which the devil sets the wicked free to sin against God and man.78

 

      In his tract Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants, Luther was especially severe in his rebuke of the lawlessness of the peasants.  “I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants,” he judged.  He added, “… they are doing the devil’s work.”79   And again:

 

   See what a mighty prince the devil is, how he has the world in his hands and can throw everything into confusion, when he can so quickly catch so many thousands of peasants, deceive them, blind them, harden them, and throw them into revolt, and do with them whatever his raging fury undertakes.80 

 

Luther saw the duty of the magistrates, as God’s own commission to them, as the duty to resist this attack of the devil.

 

   Such men must be checked and punished with fire, sword, the wheel, imprisonment, and punishments of every kind by means of which the devil is repressed in unruly and insubordinate men; for otherwise impunity from all crimes would rush in like a deluge in all its might.81 

 

      Trials, especially severe trials or the accumulation of trials, made the Christian particularly susceptible to the assaults of Satan.  In this respect, the devil “likes to fish in troubled waters.”82   Luther knew how prone the believer is at such times to the devil’s temptations. 

 

   … if the devil notices that you have the Word and are confident that your life is pleasing and acceptable to God on account of the Word, he will not rest but will put in your way trials and afflictions of every kind even in the most trivial matters.  You will experience faithlessness on the part of the household, the hatred of your neighbors, and the death of your children83  or of your wife.  All these things will happen in order that your faith may be exercised.84 

 

In another place, Luther cautioned:

 

   … after we have set foot on the way, have ventured forth and begun to believe, then it is necessary that we become sure, keep our feet on the ground, and not be drawn back or be frightened away.  For here again the devil tries to conjure up his phantoms, to cause heartache, and to cast all sorts of stumbling blocks into our way, in order to lead us beside and off the right way, to keep us from pursuing the right course.85

 

      An especially grievous assault of Satan was his tempting of the child of God to doubt.  Luther considered doubt to be peculiarly demonic.  Just as at the beginning, when Satan cast doubt in the mind of Eve concerning the Word of God, so he continually tempts the believer to doubt and to fear. 

 

   For the devil has no other dart with which to gain mastery over us than the picture of an unmerciful and angry God.  If that shot hits the heart, no man is staunch enough to bear it.  Therefore Christ always contends against this and arms us with the weapons of defense by assuring us that He Himself vouches for the Father’s love.86 

 

      Throughout his life, Luther wrestled with doubt and fear.  Doubt and fear precipitated his entrance into the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt.  In the monastery, he struggled with doubt.  He tells us that he would have died from despair if his mentor, Staupitz, had not delivered him. 

 

   Staupitz used to comfort me with these words: “Why do you torture yourself with these speculations?  Look at the wounds of Christ and at the blood that was shed for you.  From these predestination will shine.  Consequently, one must listen to the Son of God, who was sent into the flesh and appeared to destroy the work of the devil (I John 3:8) and make you sure about predestination.  And for this reason He says to you:  ‘You are My sheep because you hear My voice’ (cf. John 10:27).  ‘No one shall snatch you out of My hands’” (cf. v. 28).87 

 

Relating his own struggles and the means of God to his deliverance, Luther gave counsel to believers struggling with doubt and fear.

 

      In the world, on the other hand, nothing but hatred, persecution, temptation, and all sorts of adversity continue; and a Christian must finally become weary and dejected.  I myself have often experienced this when the devil, through the agency of the world and my conscience, put me to the test so severely that I did not know where to turn.  And since the devil does not cease, or desist from, frightening and wearying us with thoughts of sin and death, the Holy Spirit will not stop fortifying our hearts against this and inspiring us with a courage that will overcome it all and cause us to say with the prophet David in Ps. 118:17:  “I shall not die, but I shall live, even though I feel a thousand deaths.  I will still stand justified and holy before God, even though I felt burdened with the sin of the whole world.  I will still be saved and go to heaven, even if you opened your hellish jaws much wider.  My Lord Christ is not my enemy, neither is the Father or the Holy Spirit; for They all co-operate in affording me the comfort which the Father sends, the Son prays for, and the Holy Spirit Himself brings.”88 

 

Victory in the battle with the devil:

assured because of God’s sovereignty

      Luther did not content himself with vividly describing the devil and detailing the Christian’s lifelong battle with the devil.  He also held forth the believer’s victory and the means to his victory over the devil.  The Christian has and must live in the assurance that he has the victory over his dread foe.  And the Christian must avail himself of the means that God has provided for defeating the devil’s onslaughts.

      The foundation stone of this assurance for the believer is the truth of the sovereignty of God, the absolute sovereignty of God.  God exercises his sovereignty over the devil and over all the activities of the devil.  The devil does not rage outside of the sovereign control of God; he is not a power in the world alongside of the power of God.  Even the devil and the demons of hell are subservient to God and the saving purposes of God with respect to His people.  From this point of view the devil is God’s devil.  Kostlin and Hay are correct in their assessment of Luther’s view. 

 

   The entire sphere of human life and the world in general appears to Luther involved in a conflict being waged between the devils, on the one hand, and God and His angels on the other—a conflict, moreover, in which God Himself already has the devil in His power, and permits the latter to ply his arts only in so far as may accord with and serve the divine purposes.89 

 

And again:

 

   In their rage, moreover, they [the devils, RC] are not only held in check by their triumphant opponents, God and His angels, the latter far exceeding them in understanding, power, and even number; but they are compelled by their very rage, against their will, themselves to serve God and further His purposes.  He uses them in accomplishing His “strange work.”  What they do, He does, since He, by withdrawing His hand purposely, allows them to do it.90 

 

Althaus agrees with the assessment of Kostlin and Hay.

 

   Satan and his evil work are also subject to God’s almighty activity.  This means that the devil must still serve God’s will for men and for the world in spite of the fact that his will and activity are directed against God.  God keeps him in his service and uses him for his own work.  He uses him primarily as the tool of his wrath.  What God’s wrath does and what Satan does frequently appear to be one and the same.91 

 

Kramm is, therefore, wide of the mark in his insistence that Luther’s teaching regarding the real power of the devil and his view of the sovereignty of God are contradictory.  “Sometimes it sounds in Luther’s sermons and hymns as if the world were a battlefield between two equal powers, a good God and an evil god called Devil….”  According to Kramm, “Luther does not try to bridge the gulf” between these two realities.92   In reality Luther holds to the sovereignty of God over the devil in such a way that, although as a rational, moral creature the devil acts freely, nevertheless everything he does he does according to God’s will and in order to fulfill God’s purposes. 

      The comfort of God’s people in their battle with the devil rests in God’s sovereign rule over the devil.  It is the comfort, first of all, that God’s power is greater than the devil’s.  God is God; the devil is not God.  Because God’s power is greater than that of the devil, the Christian need not fear the devil’s ravings.  “Although sin makes itself felt, death bares its teeth, and the devil frightens us, still there is far more grace to prevail over all sin, far more life to prevail over death, and far more God to prevail over all devils.”93   “The will of God stands firm, however, and what the Lord wills is finally carried out, even though Satan and all the gates of hell resist it.”94   Commenting on John 15:1, Jesus’ teaching that He is the true vine and His Father the husbandman, Luther writes:

 

   But since God Himself calls Christ His true Vine, let the world, the devil, and hell call us what they please.  If they hurl us into the ovens or into hell, it shall not harm us; for here is God, who has a stronger and more forceful language and voice than the world and the devil.  He will outshout them and compel them to let us be with Christ and remain His true and fruitful vine branches.95 

 

      But God’s power is not simply greater than that of the devil.  In His sovereign power God actually uses the devil so that in everything that he does he is accomplishing the purposes of God.  God sends the devil; God uses the devil; the devil is God’s pawn and puppet.  “Hence rascals and wrong are a good thing too.”96   It was God who permitted Satan to tempt Eve and who used Satan to bring about the fall of the race.  In the fall of man, God was engineering His own divine purposes.97   Because of God’s sovereignty, the devil and the world may actually be of greater service to the Christian than the blessed angels or pious saints.98   It is God Himself who troubles us in various ways through the devil.99   The ungodly smugly attribute to the devil the ills that befall them; in doing so, they sin by not seeing the hand of God.100   “In all trials and afflictions man should first of all run to God; he should realize and accept the fact that everything is sent by God, whether it comes from the devil or from man.”101  

      One of the chief purposes of God with the devil is His use of Satan as the instrument of His wrath. 

 

   In like manner, we today, when we are afflicted by war with the Turks, by the plague, and by famine, or are harassed in other ways by the devil, all complain about the greatness of our misfortunes.  But you would hear no one say:  “We have sinned.  We have done evil.  Lord God, have mercy upon us; be mindful of Thy mercy, which is of old” (cf. Ps. 51:4; 25:6).  We do not turn to God, who punishes us.102 

 

Even in connection with the uprising of the peasants, which Luther condemned, he admonished his readers to consider that through the upheavals of the peasant revolt “… God may, perhaps, have thus aroused the devil as a punishment upon all Germany.”103   God uses the devil, often, as the instrument of His punishment of sinful men.  “In the same way the Lord also commands the devil and the flesh to tempt and overwhelm the man who has deserved it in the eyes of the Lord because of his wickedness.”104 

      Because God is sovereign, the believer ought not to fear the devil nor doubt his own or the church’s final salvation.  The devil does God’s bidding and realizes God’s purposes, which purposes are always saving in relation to His own.  Victory is assured!

 

Victory over the devil grounded in Christ’s saving work

      The believer rests in God’s sovereignty, that the sovereign will of God aims at both his temporal and eternal welfare, because of Christ’s saving work.  The assurance of victory over the devil is grounded in Jesus Christ.  About this, Luther was very explicit.

 

   In Christ we have victory over the devil and against the power of the devil.  The power of the devil is death, sin, and an evil conscience.  Through these he reigns.  He also has shields and weapons.  He terrifies hearts with death and inclines the will to sin wherever he desires.  From all these we have not only been delivered, but we even have victory.  He who has overcome the world has also overcome the devil.105 

 

This was the purpose of the incarnation:  the defeat of Satan.

 

   The devil’s work is to crush us under his feet and, because of our sin, to dispatch us from life into death.  For this reason the Epistle to the Hebrews calls Satan the originator of death (Heb. 2:14).  To bring to naught this work of Satan, Christ came.106 

 

   … keeping in mind that the Son of God was sent into the flesh to free us from sin, death, and the tyranny of Satan.107

 

Christ is the devil’s spoiler.  Comparing Christ to Abraham in his spoiling of the kings of the Canaanites (Gen. 14), Luther said: “He took the devil by surprise, retrieved the plunder, and deprived the robber of his spoils.  Thus, whoever believes in Him has the promise of eternal deliverance from sin, death, and the devil.”108   Christ is the “devil’s devil.”109 

 

   Likewise, if the devil whips me, I have a stronger devil, who will whip him in turn.  And when the more powerful devil battles and conquers the powerful one, I am set free….  For Christ is my devil against the devil, that I might be a son of God….110 

 

Luther held forth the believer’s victory in Christ in the second stanza of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

      Did we in our own strength confide,

      Our striving would be losing;

      Were not the right Man on our side,

      The man of God’s own choosing.

      Dost ask who that may be?

      Christ Jesus, it is He;

      Lord Sabaoth His Name,

      From age to age the same,

      And He must win the battle.111 

 

 

Victory over the devil enjoyed by faith

      The believer’s victory over the devil that is grounded in the finished work of Christ is enjoyed by faith.  Justification by faith was no merely dogmatic truth for Luther.  For justification by faith means deliverance from the devil by faith.  Through faith the believer is freed from Satan’s tyranny, from the devil’s temptations, and from the misery and death that attend servitude to the god of this world.  True and saving faith—that is the victory over the devil, for “The pope and the devil have a faith, too, but it is only a ‘historical faith.’”112   “To those who have faith, however, this stingy and paltry phrase ‘Believe in Christ’ is the power of God (Rom. 1:16), by which they overcome sin, death, and the devil, and obtain salvation.”113   Commenting on I Peter 5:9, Luther wrote:

 

   Thus St. Peter has given us adequate instruction as to how we should fight against the devil.  This does not require much running to and fro or any work you can do; it requires only that you cling to the Word through faith.  When the devil comes and wants to drive you into melancholy because of your sin, just take hold of the Word of God, which promises forgiveness of sins, and rely on it.  Then the devil will soon desist.114 

 

In another place Luther extolled faith as the victory over the devil in these words:

 

   The curse has been taken away by Christ, and a blessing will be bestowed on all who receive Him and believe in His name.  The remarkable blessing is this, that after being freed from sin, from death, and from the tyranny of the devil, we are in the company of the angels of God and have become partakers of eternal life.115 

 

      As always, the contrast to faith for Luther is the biblical contrast of works.  In the way of works, trusting in one’s works, relying on the merit of one’s own works, there cannot be victory over the devil.  The man who relies on his own works, or the works of any other, is doomed to defeat at the hands of the devil.

 

   But how do I approach this Savior and Redeemer?  By means of cowls or monastic orders and rules?  No!  Just cling to the Son in faith.  He conquered death and the devil, and He slit the devil’s belly open.116 

 

To the accusations the devil raises in the mind of the child of God, Luther recommended the answer of faith.

 

   Little is gained against the devil with a lengthy disputation; but a brief word and reply such as this is effective: “I am a Christian, of the same flesh and blood as my Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  You settle with Him, devil!”  Such a retort would soon make him depart.117 

 

In another place, Luther gave the same advice.

 

   Thus the believer can raise himself up through faith alone and gain a comfort that is sure and firm; and he need not grow pale at the sight of sin, death, the devil, or any evil.  The more the devil attacks him with all his force and tries to overwhelm him with all the terrors of the world, the more hope he acquires in the very midst of all these terrors and says: “Mr. Devil, do not rage so.  Just take it easy!  For there is One who is called Christ.  In Him I believe.  He has abrogated the Law, damned sin, abolished death, and destroyed hell.  And He is your devil, you devil, because He has captured and conquered you, so that you cannot harm me any longer or anyone else who believes in Him.”  The devil cannot overcome this faith, but he is overcome by it.118 

 

Victory over the devil worked by means of the Word,

the sacraments, and prayer

      The believer is not left defenseless against the attacks of the devil.  In his goodness God has provided believers with the means to arm themselves against him.  Luther has the Christian sing of his divine armament in his hymn, “God the Father with Us Be.” 

      God the Father with us be, Let us not fall to badness;

      Make us from all sinning free, And help us die in gladness.

      ‘Gainst the devil well us ware, And keep our faith from failing,

      Our hope in thee from quailing.  Our hearts upon thee staying.

      Let us wholly trust thy care, With all good Christians sharing,

      Escape the devil’s snaring, Him with God’s weapons daring.119 

 

      Chief among these means, in Luther’s view, is the Word of God and the preaching of the Word of God.  Notwithstanding the devil’s attempt to subvert the Word of God, and thus disarm the church and the Christian, God has faithfully preserved His Word.

 

   Although the Antichrist in Rome and the devil frightfully mutilated and perverted all that is divine in the church, God nevertheless miraculously preserved Holy Scripture—even though it was darkened and dimmed under the pope’s accursed rule—and passed it down to our day.120 

 

So often Christians “… see only groanings, tears, troubles, and oppression of the poor; we see the devil’s behind; we do not see the face of God.  But let us believe, hope, wait, pray; let us listen to the Word and cling to it.”121   In this respect, believers must learn from the examples of the saints of the Old Testament.  “David was a very saintly man and most ardent in his worship of God.  But how quickly he is driven to adultery, murder, and blasphemy!  For to be asleep with regard to the Word of God is to open the window to the devil.”122   Over and over again, Luther pointed the saints to the Word as the means to overcome the devil.  “In the Word, therefore, there is a most powerful kingdom against death, sin, the devil, and all their tyranny, with power to save, to set free, and to defend for eternal salvation.”123   Of the power of the Word, Luther sang in his “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”  In the familiar English version of his well-known Reformation hymn, he speaks at the end of the third stanza of “One little Word” that fells the devil, and goes on in stanza four to sing:

      That Word above all earthly powers—

      No thanks to them—abideth;

      The Spirit and the gifts are ours

      Through Him who with us sideth.

      Let goods and kindred go,

      This mortal life also;

      The body they may kill,

      God’s truth abideth still,

      His kingdom is forever.124 

 

      Luther faulted the fanatics who belittled the Word, exalting above the Word their own mystical experiences.  Such subjective experiences do not arm against Satan, but are themselves a means of Satan to draw the believer away from the Word. 

 

   But you must not imitate the fanatics and say: “Well, if the oral Word does not help [in the battle against Satan, RC], then I will retire into my chamber, speculate, and gape until the Father draws me and touches my heart.”  Away with your thoughts!  Don’t ever do that!  The devil has his hand in that.  Even if all your meditations were as sweet as sugar, they are still of the devil.125