“I will choose what they ridicule”

Abstract

Abstract After discussing the interaction of concepts of humility and faith in Luther’s theological development up to 1517, this chapter analyzes Luther’s critique of indulgences and scholastic theology in 1517 and 1518 as a two-front struggle against cross-shirking. Luther taught that suffering, as punishment for sin, should be endured willingly by the contrite; he thus worried on the one hand that Christians were taught to appropriate the benefit of others’ suffering—through indulgences and relics—rather than suffering themselves. On the other hand, Luther criticized those whose vigorous self-mortification and apparently patient suffering merely concealed an unwillingness to endure the humiliation and reduction of their own moral and intellectual resources for earning salvation. Luther criticized scholastic theology and theologians for using reason to construct a theology that reflected and buttressed self-assertion and distrust of God, and he offered suffering as a crucible that would separate true and false theologians and doctrines.