Author: Isaac Dragomir

Luther: “The Hausvater Can Provide His Own with the Necessities through the Word”

“The mercenary papists who have intruded themselves ply their trade of consecrations, so that while the sacraments are here the Word does not exist in Bohemia. That is, they deprive you of essentials and lord it over you in nonessentials.”

excerpt from
De instituendis ministris Ecclesiae.1
Wie man Kirchendiener wählen und einsetzen soll.
An den Rath und Gemeine der Stadt Prag.2
CONCERNING THE MINISTRY.3
1523.

To the ILLUSTROUS SENATE
and People of Prague, from Martin Luther, Preacher at Wittenberg.

Grace and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. . . .

These atrocious and cruel conditions ought in all justice compel us, with one accord, to rid all Bohemia of these monsters. Clearly if misfortune and need are so great that they can secure ministers in no other way [than by subterfuge], I would confidently advise that you have no ministers at all. For it would be safer and more wholesome for the father of the household to read the gospel and, since the universal custom and use allows it to the laity, to baptize those who are born in his home, and so to govern himself and his according to the doctrine of Christ, even if throughout life they did not dare or could not receive the Eucharist. For the Eucharist is not so necessary that salvation depends on it. The gospel and baptism are sufficient, since faith alone justifies and love alone lives rightly.

Surely if in this way two, three, or ten homes, or a whole city, or several cities agreed thus among themselves to live in faith and love by the use of the gospel in the home, and even if no ordained man, shorn or anointed, ever came to them or in any other way was placed over them as minister to administer the Eucharist and other sacraments, Christ without a doubt would be in their midst and would own them as his church. Christ would not only not condemn, but surely would reward a pious and Christian abstinence from all the other sacraments when these would be offered by impious and sacrilegious men. For He himself said “One thing only is necessary,” the Word of God, in which man has his life. For if he lives in the Word and has the Word, he is able to forego all else in order to avoid the teachings and ministries of impious men. And what would it avail to have all other things, but not the Word by which one lives? The mercenary papists who have intruded themselves ply their trade of consecrations, so that while the sacraments are here the Word does not exist in Bohemia. That is, they deprive you of essentials and lord it over you in nonessentials.

The father in the home, on the other hand, can provide his own with the necessities through the Word and in pious humility do without the nonessentials as long as he is in captivity. In this regard we follow the custom and law of the Jewish captives who were not able to be in Jerusalem or to make offering there. Upheld in their faith alone by the Word of God they passed their lives among enemies while yearning for Jerusalem. So in this case4 the head of the household suffering under the tyranny of the pope would act most appropriately and safely if while longing for the Eucharist, which he neither would dare nor could receive, in the meantime zealously and faithfully propagated faith in his home through the Word of God until God on high in his mercy either brought the captivity to an end or sent a true minister of the Word. So, I hold, it is better to have none than to have a minister who is guilty of sacrilege, impiety, and crime, and comes as a thief and robber only to kill and destroy.

But now, thanks be to God, this condition is grievous and inevitable only in the case4 of the weak and over-scrupulous. The others who have faith and know the truth, possess full freedom and means to drive away unworthy ministers and to call and appoint only such worthy and devout men as they choose. For by a pretty invention, of which only the man of sin is capable, the papal theory perpetuates its ministry through an indelible character and safeguards it against removal by any kind of wrongdoing. In this way the pope establishes his tyranny and confirms the commission of sin with impunity while no freedom is given to choose better men and we are forced to endure evil men. But of this we shall speak a little later.

  1. D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe, vol. 12 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1891), [WA 12:]160–96. ↩︎
  2. Trans. Paul Speratus, in Dr. Martin Luther’s Sämmtliche Schristen, ed. Dr. Joh. Georg Walch, vol. 10, Catechetische Schriften und Predigten, neue revidirte Stereotypausgabe (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1892), [St. L. 10:]1548–603. ↩︎
  3. Trans. Conrad Bergendoff, in Luther’s Works, gen. ed. Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 40, Church and Ministry II, ed. Conrad Bergendoff (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958), [LW 40:]3–44. ↩︎
  4. LW has ease. So also in following paragraph. ↩︎