The formation of a Lutheran concept of history

From the very beginning, the Reformation movement in Germany faced the problem of its historical legitimation. Just before Martin Luther's interrogation in Augsburg in October 1518, Cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetan levelled the accusations. Luther's doctrine of grace and sacraments was an innovation, an outpouring of human imagination and a deviation from church tradition. Luther replied that only that is true which is according to the bible. Everything else, including church tradition, is only human words and thus subject to the historical transience. The Reformer cultivated a dialectical conception of church history. There are times of the revival of the faithful and the proclamation of the gospel, in which the Word of God would travel among the people like a ‘downpour’. These alternated with times of decay and apostasy. When the Word of God is at its highest, the diabolic seed of doubt is formed. When the Emperor Constantine raised Christianity to the status of a state religion, the heresies that would lead to the reign of the Papal Antichrist were formed.

Luther did not see himself as an apostle or inspired prophet, but as a teacher sent by God in the tradition of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Johann von Wesel, Johannes Reuchlin and Jan Hus. After all, he had even called himself a Hussite. In the exegesis of the Apocalypse of John, published in 1530, he recognized in the revelation an interpretation of both past and future history. The rebuilding of the Holy City was the victory of the Reformation. But apart from this figurative interpretation of history, there is no return to a blessed original state. Luther's view of history is progressive; not linear, but dialectical. The present is not a restoration of the Early Church, but an epoch in its own right. In the last years of his life Luther sees the end of history coming. According to the preface to the book of Daniel of 1541, all the signs proclaimed by Christ and the apostles were being fulfilled in history.

Luther's interpretations shaped the historical picture of Lutheran theologians of the sixteenth century. This was dominated by a figurative interpretation of the past, a dialectical, forward-looking concept with an apocalyptic undertone and eschatological expectation, and it was based on a Reformation tradition of reference to proscribed heretics such as Jan Hus.