Sárospataki Füzetek 21. (2017)

2017 / 2. szám - ARTICLES-STUDIEN - INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE SINCE THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION-INTERKULTURELLER DIALOG SEIT DER REFORMATION - Gosker, Margriet: Erős vár a mi Istenünk: 500 years of protestantism in the netherlands in ecumenical perspective

Margňet Gosker

tion to the Virgin Mary. But in his theology, Mary had a different place, and later he rejected the practice of praying to Mary. He brought her high position down to earth, because he wanted to give all the glory to God. But he also acknowledged that God had done great things through Mary, the mother of God (theotokos). He wrote a beautiful commentary on the Magnificat. Everybody should know that God chose a Cinderella (Aschenbrödel) to become the mother of God (Immanuel).27 But to the fundamental insights of his theology also belonged the conviction that Jesus Christ was central. God gives us all the space and the grace and the freedom in Jesus Christ and in Christ alone. According to the legend, he prayed in that famous storm: Holy Anna, help me, I will become a monk. Was the young Luther more attached to Saint Anne than to the Virgin Mary?

Luther grew up in late Medieval times, a period filled with many new inventions, but also with devils and witches, as we know them from the paintings of our Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. People were frightened at that time. They feared the Last Judgement, and priests were preaching hell and damnation. Also the Black Death was ravaging Europe.28 Sometimes — at a rough estimate — a third of the European population died from this terrible plague. Times were hard and a culture of fear ‘ruled the roost’. In the church, much emphasis was laid on sin, repentance and confession. People had to confess and atone for all their sins. The young Luther was suffering under this burden. He was a serious young man, and he wanted to do all that was right. He did his utmost, but if it went wrong time and time again, it often made him desperate. His father wanted his son to study Law, in order to ensure a good future for him, but after a spiritual experience during a violent storm, Martin decided - against the wishes of his parents — to follow his calling. He would go into the monastery and be a monk.

Luther became a monk

In 1505, he entered the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt.29 There he got supposedly, for the first time, a Bible in his hands, and his eye fell on the book of Samuel. He found it captivating. He read and read and read. He exercised himself in the biblical texts and in the scholastic theologies of his time: Johannes Duns Scotus, Gabriel Biel, William of Ockham, Petrus Lombardus,30 and he read also Thomas Aquinas, at least

27 J. Boendermaker: Het Magnificat: Luthers uitleg van de lofzang van Maria (1521), in Selderhuis: Luther Verzameld, II, 812-868, 812, WA 7, 545-601. Het Magnificat in de volkstaal overgezet en uitgelegd door Maarten Luther (1521), Met een inleiding van prof. H. Riedlinger, Antwerpen, Unistad, 1983.

28 F. Kadell: Blicke auf das Alltagsleben Martin Luthers und seinerzeit, in Kadell - Kiesslin - Lüdke- meier (eds.), Lutherland Sachsen-Anhalt, (108-147), 114.

29 The oldest report of Luther's entrance into the monastery comes from Crotus Rubianus, confer C. Augustijn: Luthers intrede in hetklooster, Kämpen, Kok, 1968,6.

30 G. den Hertog: Disputatie tegen de scholastieke theologie (1517), in Selderhuis: Luther Verzameld, I, 25-34. Disputation gegen die Scholastische Theologie, T517,\N/\ 1,224-228.

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