More on Luther and Islam

Luther burns the Papal Bull.

A friend who is schooled in Medieval History has been good enough to review my recent piece on Luther and Islam and give his possible objections to the thesis that Luther was influenced by Islam. Here are his comments and my responses. We'll call him Albertus Magnus:

Albertus:

Thomas More is known for the pleasure he took in making ad hominem arguments. Why didn't he throw this one at Luther, that he was a closet Mohammedan?

Abbot:

I think that reputation comes specifically from More's response to Luther's attack on Henry VIII's defense of the sacraments. Here's a choice passage translated into the English vernacular:

“Come, do not rage so violently, good father; but if you have raved wildly enough, listen now, you pimp. You recall that you falsely complained above that the king has shown no passage in your whole book, even as an example, in which he said that you contradict yourself. You told this lie shortly before, although the king has demonstrated to you many examples of your inconsistency ....

But meanwhile, for as long as your reverend paternity will be determined to tell these shameless lies, others will be permitted, on behalf of his English majesty, to throw back into your paternity's shitty mouth, truly the shit-pool of all shit, all the muck and shit which your damnable rottenness has vomited up, and to empty out all the sewers and privies onto your crown divested of the dignity of the priestly crown, against which no less than against the kingly crown you have determined to play the buffoon.

In your sense of fairness, honest reader, you will forgive me that the utterly filthy words of this scoundrel have forced me to answer such things, for which I should have begged your leave. Now I consider truer than truth that saying: 'He who touches pitch will be wholly defiled by it' (Sirach 13:1). For I am ashamed even of this necessity, that while I clean out the fellow's shit-filled mouth I see my own fingers covered with shit.”

St. Thomas More, sketch by Hans Holbein.

Thomas More was a very good writer; his Utopia is a classic of English Lit. He is using irony very nicely here. I think his point is as he states it—he is deliberately adopting Luther's own tone and turning it back at him, “throwing back into your paternity's shitty mouth all the shit that it has vomited up.” Henry VIII no doubt felt it far too far beneath his dignity to reply in kind himself. Indeed, so did More—he published the defense pseudonomously. To say that he “took pleasure” may be true, but it is purely an inference, and an inference going counter to his own professions in doing it.

It is only just and fair to fight fire with fire; and everyone has the inalienable right to self-defense. This hardly makes both sides equally guilty.

Ergo, More at least, on this example at least, is not a salient counter to my point that Catholic writers were just too sincere and academically well-bred to make such accusations as “closet Muslim” against Luther. More, even if he were aware of Luther being influenced by Islam, could only have used that claim here if Luther had already made the accusation against Henry.

Albertus:
There is another example of a Catholic apologist taking the gloves off; why didn't he, too, accuse Luther of Mohammedanism? One of the first people to write against Luther, named Cochlaeus, titled one of his pamphlets "Against the Cowled Minotaur of Wittenberg." An idea he proposed somewhere was that Luther's career as so-called reformer was simply a matter of the old rivalry between Augustinians and Dominicans getting out of hand. I don't know if he was entirely serious in saying so or in what spirit he said it.

Abbot:

Nor I, but from what you quote, it sounds as though Cochleaus's spirit is more good-naturedly humorous than angry. To call someone a “cowled minotaur” might easily be an expression of respect—suggesting someone formidable in the mazes of scholarly argument.

The mild tone here would actually tend to support my thesis. Accusing Luther of being an overly-partisan Augustinian? It reminds me of a little book I picked up somewhere of early WWII British propaganda, called “Adolf in Blunderland.” It portrayed Hitler, of course, as Alice, and as a bit of a confused naive, and began by apologizing for the thing obviously being propaganda, but “turnabout is fair play.” Read today, it seems absurdly pusillanimous. If the Brits could so misread Hitler, even after the war had begun, when we now find his mendacity and evil so obvious he is more or less considered evil incarnate, it seems possible enough that the Catholics could have misread Luther, even all along.

Not to say Luther is the devil incarnate. Just that he might well have been influenced by Islam without this being pointed out.

Calvin, without Hobbes.

Albertus:
The two sides don't appear to have held back in throwing whatever they had against one another. An example (maybe pertinent to your thesis) is that Protestants accused Catholics of being Judaizers for their supposed attachment to works and for other reasons; and Catholics accused Protestants of being Judaizers for their scripturalism and for other reasons. Everyone accused the Anabaptists of Judaizing. No one I've heard of said anything about Islam, but not, apparently, because they were all too inhibited to say nasty things (Judaizer -- not a compliment -- and other things) against one another. And if one side had consisted of only fair-minded disputants and it honestly believed that the other was influenced by Islam, of course it would have said so. If you believe that the accusation of Judaizing was a fair one and was deserved, then you should agree that a fair accusation of Islamizing would have been made, by the same token.

Abbot:

Albertus, you are a Jew. No offense intended. You know this, but our learned audience may not. I think you are guilty of a common and very odd Jewish misconception here; one that I have heard many times. Thanks for giving me the chance to point it out.

No, calling someone a “Judaizer” would not be an insult among Christians.

Even very well-educated Jews seem convinced that Christians are somehow opposed to Judaism. Here's simple proof that they are wrong: Luther quite openly and publicly revised his Bible to reflect the Jewish one. No secret, and nobody on either side thought this discredited him in any way. Just the reverse—the Jews were respected as an authority on these books at least arguably higher than that of the Church councils, otherwise infallible. That's pretty high praise.

Just stop and think: the Hebrew scriptures are well over half of the Christian Bible. When Christians read these books, do you really think they are despising the people they read about? Do you think they see them as an alien people? Do they scorn Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, Solomon, David, and the Maccabees? Or Jesus, Peter, and Paul, for that matter? Of course not. They--we--read it, with the conviction that we are the Hebrews. Everyone and anyone who has grown up as a devout Christian, be assured, believes in his heart that he is a Jew.

It is no coincidence that fundamentalist Christians tend to be strong supporters of the state of Israel. The identity is intense.

Jews do not seem to get this. It seems to be important to their (your) self-identity instead to suppose that Christians are against them. A Jewish fellow grad student in religion at Syracuse once informed me solemnly, as if she were the expert on the Christian education system, and I as a Christian would not know, that all Christians are taught that “the Jews killed Christ.” When I told her I had gone to Catholic schools all my elementary years, and never heard this, she advised me that my school must have been unusually liberal. It wasn't—for one thing, it wasn't just one school I went to, but several. For another, my family, and Gananoque, where I mostly grew up, as a community, were culturally and politically conservative, not liberal. Moreover, I have asked other Catholics, and none have ever remembered being taught anything of the sort. Not suprisingly: it would be obvious theological nonsense. If one Catholic were to suggest such a thing to another Catholic, he would probably be laughed at, even if not condemned for racism. (Can't vouch for Protestants).

Yet this seems to be an article of faith among even very well-educated Jews, even those specializing academically in Comparative Religions, and even in the face of obvious empirical evidence: if the Christians have all been taught this, how is it they do not know they have been taught this?

Also at Syracuse, more or less of a piece with this, one semester I signed up for a course on the Holocaust, taught by some renowned Jewish scholar, there as a guest lecturer for a semester. She began the first class, on the first day, with the unsubstantiated declaration that “the Jewish question is the central issue of all European history.”

I dropped the class the same day; I knew no independent thought would be permitted, nor clear reasoning presented, and it would be a waste of a semester.

My ancestors are from Ireland. I'm quite sure the very last thing they had on their mind over the last two thousand years, or the last five hundred, was “the Jewish question.” And I'm sure this was always true for the vast majority of the population of Europe. Most probably lived their lives having never seen a Jew, and having no idea what a Jew was, had they cared. Jews here indulge in pure paranoid thinking. They seem convinced the rest of the world spends all their free time trying to figure out new tortures for Jews.

Of course, the interfaith contact between Jews and Christians, and Jews and Muslims, has not always been sweetness and light. Of course, Christianity has specific theological disagreements with Judaism. But the most remarkable thing about it all is this: there are still Jews. This cannot be said of any other significant European or North African or Middle Eastern faith group of comparable antiquity, can it? Never mind faith group: probably not of any other group ethnically distinct on any other grounds left without a geographical home for a comparable length of time. Where on the streets of modern Toronto (and leaving aside pop cult pseudo-religions without any historical pedigree) are the followers of Mithras, or Orpheus, or Pythagoras, or Sol Invictus, or the mystery religions, or Isis?

This is the great miracle. Leaving aside Divine Providence, as we certainly should not, the obvious principal reason Judaism, by contrast to all imaginable others, has survived, is surely the innate respect it commands in the other Abrahamic religions that have embraced it in their bosoms. That is the bottom line: R-E-S-P-E-C-T, not hostility.

I think it can be argued—indeed it has been argued—that the holocausts and pogroms have mainly come precisely where the fabric of Christianity (or Islam) has been somehow torn, usually by the rise of secularism, removing the Jews' protective gabardine cloak (or perhaps, cloak of many colours). Nazi Germany would be the prime example.

Huss.

It is very dangerous to Judaism, and to Jews, not to mention interfaith relations, that Jews do not seem to recognize this. Tragically, the average Jewish intellectual seems always assiduously to be sawing at the branch he is sitting on.

So, in sum, the cases are not parallel. To call someone a Judaiser would have been as likely to be praise as blame. Hence no ad hominem. But to call someone a Muslimizer would have been an accusation of cultural treason. It was not the Jews mustering at the gates of Vienna.

So actually seeing the connection would not have been sufficient reason for a Catholic apologist to make the charge. It could well have been considered beyond the pale.

(Ah, there's another example of Jewish paranoia. I have had Jewish friends inform me that the English expression “beyond the pale” refers originally to the Jewish settlements in Russia. Of course it doesn't. The original idiomatic “pale” was probably the one surrounding the English possessions in France, but a far earlier and the best-known pale in English is that which fenced out the native Irish in Ireland. For most of their history, truly, the English really were not that obsessed with where the Jews were living in Russia.)

Albertus:

If the accusation was plausible and even deserved, how could it have been a secret to the entire Catholic Church, a learned institution that had been interrogating suspects (including Huss and Wycliff) regarding their religious beliefs for centuries and recording detailed confessions of all kinds?

SR:

As above, I have no reason to assume it was a secret.

But, indeed, it might have been.

First, though, and most fundamentally, note that your argument here is simply an appeal to authority. This cannot be allowed in debate, because it preempts all debate in advance, and indeed all possibility of human progress. For example, one could as readily ask, “okay, if there really is an America, how come nobody ever discovered it before Columbus?” “If the theory of relativity is correct, how come nobody thought of it until Einstein?” “If it is really possible to fly a plane, how come nobody ever did it before the twentieth century?” And so on... The question presupposes that no new ideas are possible.

So this particular question need not be answered.

Nevertheless, I will answer it. First, regarding interrogations specifically, there is of course a natural human tendency not to self-incriminate. That should go without saying.

Second, besides it being entirely possible that many Catholics knew it, without saying it, and many Protestants knew it, without saying it, I think it is within the bounds of probability for us to have been blinded by our categorization system. Academics stick to their academic subject. Theologians study theology, and they tend to study it in isolation from history and geography. Geographers, conversely, rarely wade into the details of theology. To do so would be positively discouraged among academics—it smacks of dilettantism, and runs the risk of being made to look foolish or uneducated, surely any academic's greatest fear.

Accordingly, fresh insights are often possible when we knock down these walls and study two or three subjects in parallel—say, theology, history, and geography together.

Third, we tend to study only our own civilization, and even only our own national culture; this used to drive me mad as an undergrad. Doing so blinds us to the constant crossfire among different cultures. To cite an obvious and common, but infuriating, example, I was only a few hours ago reading an essay that remarked that such and such a large reptile species was only discovered a few years ago. Discovered by whom? In fact, it has probably been well known to humans for millennia, and was a common feature of the local diet in the area of the Philippines in which it was “discovered.” Discovered by academics from an English-speaking country—nobody else, apparently, is human. The classism and racism of this casual assumption is staggering, yet it is the way academics usually think.

Ergo, to many, even most academics, and specifically to those studying Christian theology, Islam and Muslim theology per se probably did not exist. It is even quite possible that Luther or Hus or Wycliffe got their ideas from Islam without knowing they were from Islam, picking them up more or less from the cultural backchatter on the quad—ideas in the air. I tend to give them credit for at least knowing whereof they spoke, though.

And fourth... see below.

Albertus:
For the record, each side had its mild and fair champions.

Abbot:

Nope, uh-uh, I won't let you get away with that one, Al. It's a question of morality. That's “moral equivalence.” That's the usual alibi of the innocent bystander, and there's none so guilty as the innocent bystander. While there may have been some harsh words on both sides, that does not mean they must have been equally harsh. To cite the obvious, extreme example, if there was some obvious bad feeling between the Nazis and the Jews in the 30s and 40s, and no doubt harsh words on both sides, it does not follow that they must have been equally guilty of the Holocaust. Don't pull a Pontius Pilate, Al. It's not very Magnus of you.

For my part, I find it striking that throughout the history since the Reformation, and continuing in the present day, Catholic thinkers and writers have generally tried to be rather scrupulous and fair—even to absurd lengths, to my mind—towards Protestant thinkers and Protestant doctrines, while Protestants seem completely unrestrained in attacking Catholics, up to and including lies and calumnies.

Case in point, on the Catholic side: I picked up Bokenkotter's A Concise History of the Catholic Church at my own church's bookshop. Obviously, then, a Catholic perspective. How does it treat Luther?

“How compatible Luther's theology was with Catholic tradition is a question that has been debated ever since.... Unlike too many presentations at that time, it was ... profoundly biblical. ... a recent Catholic scholar has affirmed that the real paradox of the Reformation is that until the Council of Trent, Martin Luther was one of the few theologians in Germany who uncompromisingly defended the biblical and Catholic teaching of man's bondage to sin...” (p. 189)

And so on, in similar vein. Nicey-nice.

Meantime, some Protestants are still today writing tracts insisting that the Vatican is the “Scarlet Woman,” the “Whore of Babylon,” in Revelations.

As it happens, there is a theological reason for this.

“Catholic” means universal. It is of the essence of Catholicism's self-conception that is sees itself as the guardian and embodiment of the consensus of all Christians. This comes, of course, from the Nicene Creed, which defines the true church as “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” There is, therefore, an intrinsic drive to see agreement among Christians whenever possible, and to woo outliers back into the fold rather than anathematize them. The separation with the Orthodox East is a wound to the Church's very being, to its self-perception. The separation with the Protestant North is a second, similar wound. The urge is therefore always to lure back the lost sheep.

The Reformed and Lutheran Churches, whether or not they accept the Nicene Creed, see things very differently. For them, the Bible is prior to the Creed. They look at the concept of “the Elect,” in Revelations, and in many of Jesus's words, and assume from this that most people are going to hell. Accordingly, it does not seem to them any kind of rebuke to themselves if they do not represent the broad consensus of all Christians. The broad consensus is the road to hell. That is, instead, cause for confidence that their particular denomination constitutes “the elect.”

Not to get sidetracked into how Catholics interpret these passages—I leave it at two words, purgatory, and works.

So, what to Catholics seems a “scandal,” to Protestants, seems a self-justification. It follows that their practical approach to the split will be different. The drive among Catholics is almost always to kiss and make up, to seek some consensus, while among Protestants it is generally to somehow prove that all Catholics are damned.

This is reflected, for example, in a huge body of “black legends”--of anti-Catholic propaganda—imbuing Protestant culture, and indeed English-language culture, as a result. You probably believe some of them yourself. Yet there is simply no equivalent body of “black legends” among Catholics or Catholic cultures about Protestantism. To cite just one classic example, Protestants almost always believe with some fierceness that the intention of the Medieval Catholic Church was to keep the common people ignorant, that Catholics do not read the Bible, are told not to read the Bible, and the Catholic Church fought against translating the Bible into the vernacular. This is more than just debatable-- it is wild-eyed, dishevelled-haired, false. Feel free to ask for other examples; I could fill books with them...and others have.

Nothing comparable on the Catholic side.

Refusing to mention the obvious similarities between Protestant and Muslim theology, even if they see them, could easily be an example of this approach. Pouring oil on troubled waters. Bringing up such ad hominems is not going to make reconciliation easier.

Meantime, as I said, the Protestant side cannot really be expected to blow the whistle on themselves.