Martin Luther’s Definition of the Human Creature

Robert Kolb is Professor of Systematic Theology Emeritus at Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, is co-editor with Timothy J. Wengert of the 2000 translation of The Book of Concord and co-editor with Irene Dingel and Lubomír Batka of The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology (2014). He has authored several books on Luther and Lutheran teaching, including two appearing in 2024: Face to Face. Martin Luther’s View of Reality (Fortress Press) and the second edition of The Christian Faith, A Lutheran Exposition, co-authored with Theodore J. Hopkins (Concordia Publishing House). Here Kolb provides Luther’s assessment of the make-up of the human person who has been created by God.

by Robert Kolb

Most people have presumed that they knew how to define what constitutes being human. However, the thinking that has gone into these presumptions about what precisely constitutes the final creature of the sixth day reveals a spectrum of opinions regarding the vital elements in the discussion of reality in every branch of philosophy and every kind of religion. Martin Luther inherited presuppositions about what comprises the human creature that God fashioned in his own image. Many of those presuppositions arose out of ancient Greek philosophies. In the course of his career as a professor of Bible at the University of Wittenberg, his own discussion of being human evolved on the basis of an ever deeper immersion in the texts of the prophets, evangelists, and apostles. His growing awareness of the mystery of what it means to be the Creator’s human creature led him to define the human creature within the framework of biblical terminology and the distinction of law and gospel. He found in Scripture that God is almighty and responsible for everything. That led him not only to his high appreciation of God as Creator, but also to his conviction that human core identity could be understood only through the unconditional gospel of God’s plan for salvation in the death and resurrection of Christ. At the same time, he knew that God holds his human creatures responsible for being the children created in his own image, and his expectations for their exercise of these responsibilities set down his law for their lives. This theological axiom existed within the context of his use of biblical descriptions of the elements that constitute the person of the human being.

Commentators on Luther’s anthropology have noted that Luther failed to formulate precise standard usage for the several biblical terms for elements that constitute humanity as God’s creation and his use of medieval variants and expressions of them. He developed his holistic view of the thinking-willing-feeling-acting human creature using the terms given to him by biblical and theological texts. Thus, his writings defy succinct systematic synthesizing on how terms for various activities and organs of human thinking and feeling relate to each other.¹ Nonetheless, his use of biblical terminology following the texts gives a clear outline of the reformer’s understanding of what it is to be human.

The Framework of Luther’s Anthropology

In school and university Luther learned the fundamental anthropology of scholastic theologians, constructed out of ideas handed down from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and other ancient authorities. Luther’s teachers had studied under the foremost representative of the train of thinking that flowed from the works of William of Ockham (1287-1347) and Gabriel Biel (1418-1495) at the University of Tübingen. Before the fall, Biel taught that, in the state of innocence, human reason or the intellect possessed a natural knowledge of good and evil and an inborn love of virtue. The will conformed to the judgment of reason and initiated the performance of good acts. However, following the fall, the intellect and the will are subject to the flesh and inclined to defy God. The intellect cannot give the will proper wisdom regarding God and proper human action, and the will is blinded by sin. The will is free and is able to produce the best that the sinner is capable of performing; that is sufficient to earn the aid of the grace that is necessary to equip the person to act in God-pleasing fashion.²

Luther rejected this Ockhamist estimate of the need for human performance “with purely natural powers” to initiate the relationship with God. Nonetheless, he retained the anthropological estimation that reason and will, as well as the emotions, constitute the human being’s fundamental structure along with the body. Luther’s colleague Philip Melanchthon sketched the elements that every human being possesses: reason, will, emotions, and bodily, physical activities (ratio, voluntas, affectus, locomotive).³

However, Luther’s understanding of humanity was not ultimately determined by his knowledge of the philosophical traditions of the Hellenistic world and the processing of them in Christian thought in the Middle Ages: “the heart of the matter was neither in the philosophical substance of human nature, the ‘quiddities’ that so fascinated late medieval theology, nor in the principles of ethics found among Greek philosophers. Biblical anthropology centered on the relationship of humanity to its Creator.”⁴ For this reason Luther and Melanchthon found Aristotle wanting, for his Unmoved Mover had no personal communication with that which he moved. Luther’s understanding of humanity rested ultimately on the personal relationship with the Creator, who spoke with Adam and Eve, and who went looking for them when they decided to avoid conversation with him. In 1529, Luther formulated his first principle for defining the human creature in his explanation of the first commandment. In his Small Catechism, he described human beings as those who “fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”⁵ In speaking of Adam’s trust in Eden, the professor noted that “just as it is the nature of the eye to see, so it was the nature of reason and will in Adam to know God, to trust God, and to fear God.”⁶ In the Large Catechism, he described human beings as those who have “true faith and confidence of the heart, which fly straight to the one true God and cling to him alone,” those who “do not let [their] hearts cling to or rest in anyone else.” For in him they find the source “of all good” and a “refuge in all need.”⁷ Luther’s understanding of what the human creature is revolves around those elements that produce this true faith or trust in the one to whom the person clings and around the ways in which the body and its life receive God’s providing care. He regarded trust as a function of thinking, willing, and feeling, a product of the entire human being.

This conviction that God speaks and human beings respond led Luther to his conviction that God addresses them in two fundamental modes. He tells his people what he has done and is doing for them out of his parental love and faithfulness, the gospel or the promise of new life. He tells them what he expects them to be doing, in commands or the law. Luther preached twice specifically on the proper distinction of law and gospel, once when his understanding of the gospel had come under intense fire from Roman Catholics, and once when the understanding of the distinction of law and gospel had been misrepresented within his own ranks.⁸ In addition, a basic hermeneutical principle delineated his understanding of the shape of human life, the principle of the twofold righteousness, two aspects of human identity.⁹ Luther contrasted as “alien righteousness, that is the righteousness of another person, infused from outside ourselves, … the righteousness by which the righteous Christ justifies through faith,” with the “righteousness that we perform, belongs to us, not that we do this on our own but working together with the first righteousness from outside ourselves.”¹⁰ These presuppositions about the conversation between God and his human creature and about the created nature of the latter shaped what he said in more concrete, detailed terms that defined “the human” … (pp. 41-43).

Luther’s Vocabulary of Human Thinking, Willing, and Feeling

Body and non-corporeal elements of humanity work together in Luther’s composite picture of the human creature. A review of some of his use of biblical terms for their activities reveal that Luther did not develop a succinct definition of how human beings live out their humanity but instead used the variety of terms Scripture and his teachers had placed at his disposal. In medieval thought, reason and intellect may be synonymous, or they may distinguish the action of the intellect and the entity that reasons. Luther is well-known for his dismissal of reason as a “whore,” but his appreciation of properly functioning reason soared to lofty praise when it functioned within its proper bounds. Critical to understanding these two aspects of Luther’s attitude toward human reasoning is his distinction between the realm in which our understanding absorbs who God is and what he has done for sinners, and the earthly realm that he has placed under human stewardship. Lecturing on Isaiah 9:1 in 1543, the professor commented, “reason is the greatest and most unbelievably precious gift of God, nor should it be held in contempt when it wisely puts things in order and discovers things in human affairs.”¹¹ Brian Gerrish cites the reformer’s sermon on Isaiah 60:1-6 in his Church Postil. There, Luther notes that in earthly activities “the rational person is self-sufficient” and reason is a sufficient guide, for instance, in knowing how to “build houses, make clothing, conduct marriage, wage war, navigate on the sea, etc.” In relationship to God, however, “nature is absolutely stone-blind so that it cannot even catch a glimpse of what those things are.” Reason produces government and law if rightly used. It elicits moral behavior that permits society to run more or less smoothly. But it can also construct false systems of government and errant codes of conduct.¹² In a sinful world reason’s challenge is to foster living “soberly, righteously, and godly” (Titus 2:12), a challenge comparable to keeping sober in a tavern, chaste in a brothel, godly in a dance-hall, innocent among murderers.¹³

Luther did not discount the role reason can play in aiding human contemplation of God’s revelation of himself so long as it only supplies tools for understanding and does not try to shape understanding.¹⁴ Luther used elements of Aristotelian logic in explaining biblical concepts, for instance, through syllogisms or the physics of substance and accident, while carefully setting limits on the proper use of these tools.¹⁵ Thus, reason functioned as a significant component part of the human creature; as such, it not only contributed to the fulfillment of the individual but also to the potential for abuse and succumbing to Satanic attack.

The will likewise functions as God’s good gift and yet is subject to Satan’s turning it away from God. Bengt Hägglund summarized Luther’s definition of the human will (voluntas) as the inner orientation of human creatures which determines the entire direction of their lives and expresses, in the actions it causes, their very identity.¹⁶ It included the process of making a decision and a choice (arbitrium). In 1535, he told his students that God commissioned Adam and Eve to have their wills make decisions in exercising their lordship over fish, birds, animals, and their fields. In relationship to God, however, Adam, even before the fall into sin, was like clay in the potter’s hands, in what Luther called a state of “passive potentiality.” His power to want to live in trusting harmony with his Creator was God’s gift.¹⁷

The very understanding of the will as a decision-making agent imposed on Luther the struggle to define how the creature could freely will within an existence whose boundaries or definition had been set by the Creator. Early in his theological development, Luther began his struggle to solve the problem of his inability to turn his will to God alone, the impotence of his powers of choice (arbitrium) to choose God and his will instead of going his own contrary way. He avoided speculation about God’s predestination of sinners for salvation since he had not been present in the divine counsels before the foundation of the world. Instead, Luther concentrated his attention on his own will since he had experienced that its choices in regard to God were bound. In his treatise On Bound Choice (De servo arbitrio), he further struggled with the mystery of how God the Creator can hold the human creature accountable for actions within the sphere of human responsibility when he, as Creator, is responsible for all things. Luther wanted to avoid the implication that the human will stood under “compulsion” in such a way that made this human creature like an automaton or marionette. In no way was he a determinist, nor did he deny human responsibility. Luther stated that the will performs acts of willing “spontaneously and freely” (or in Philip Watson’s rendering “of its own accord and with a ready will”). Thus, even when overtaken by the mystery of sin, people “cannot by their own powers lay aside, restrain, or change, but they keep on willing ... even if compelled by external force [the devil] to do something different....”¹⁸ Luther took over a medieval analogy that may seem limping to modern readers by asserting that “the human will is placed between the two like a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills, as the psalm says, “I was like a brute beast in relationship to you; nevertheless, I am continually with you” [Ps. 73:22-23]. If Satan rides the animal, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run to either of the two riders or to choose one or the other, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of the animal.¹⁹ Hans-Joachim Iwand caught Luther’s intention: “Therefore, we do not want to understand the human being on the basis of the will, but the will on the basis of what it means to be human.”²⁰

The reformer finally turned the focus to the transformation wrought by the Holy Spirit in converting the sinner to faith in Christ. This new creature in Christ lives according to God’s design for human life “from pure willingness and inclination and of its own accord, not from compulsion….” The will of this new creature of faith “cannot be turned another way by any opposition, nor be overcome or compelled even by the gates of hell, but it goes on willing and delighting in and loving the good, just as before it willed and delighted in and loved evil.” The Holy Spirit and God’s grace continue to bestow the new life of the new creature, and that new life includes the restoration of the proper functioning of the human will… (pp. 53-55).²¹

The biblical descriptions of the way in which faith in Christ moves and directs human beings in daily life relied on these terms that Luther found in the biblical text. Rather than giving a succinct definition of the component parts of God’s human creature, he defined being human in terms of the relationship of fear, love, and trust in God above all else, and in terms of the relationships that flow from trust in God revealed in Christ with the neighbors whom we are to love and serve with a Christ-like spirit of self-sacrifice.

Martin Luther’s view of what it is to be God’s human creature focused on the relationship of love and trust that bound him to his God and on God’s providence for his body and the life described as “soul,” “spirit,” and a series of other terms that he assembled from the medieval tradition and Scripture. His sensitivity to the complexity of his own person, the complexity of every human creature, let him focus on his relationship with God as the fundamental element of his humanity. To describe the human role in that relationship, he employed a range of biblical and traditional terms that heightened appreciation of the gift of being God’s human creature. His description of what makes human beings the creatures they are presented a holistic picture, with a higher appreciation of the physical body than had been present in medieval theologians. He acknowledged the ancient and medieval distinction of reason, will, affections, and the physical, but more prominently spoke in biblical terminology, both in setting forth the component parts of the human creature and in treating the struggle between God and Satan within this creature in Pauline terms of “flesh” and “spirit.” Luther’s definition of being human encompassed all of human life, from conception in the womb to the resurrection from death and life eternal, always in relationship with the Creator himself (pp. 57-58).

Notes

1. My thanks to Dennis Ngien, who has pointed me to this analysis as found in Pekka Kärkkäinen, “Emotions and Experience,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Martin Luther, ed. Derek Nelson and Paul Hinlicky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1: 436-448; Simeon Zahl, “The bondage of the affections: willing, feeling, and desiring in Luther’s theology, 1513-1525,” in The Spirit, the Affections, and the Christian Tradition, ed. Dale M. Coulter, & Amos Yong (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), 181-206.

2. Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 48, 63-65.

3. In Loci communes rerum theologicarum, 1521, the topic “De hominis viribus adeoque de libero arbitrio,” Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl [Studien‒Ausgabe], 6 vols., ed. Robert Stupperich (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1951‒1975), 2.1:8‒17, and in Loci praecipui theologici, 1535/1559, Melanchthons Werke, 2.1: 236‒252, esp. 237.17‒25.

4. Erik H. Herrmann, “Luther and the Importance of the Hebrew Heritage for his World of Thought,” in Simul: Inquiries into Luther’s Expression of the Christian Life, ed. Robert Kolb, Torbjörn Johansson, and Daniel Johansson (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 53.

5. Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, ed. Irene Dingel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014) 862/863.3-10) [henceforth BSELK]; The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 351 [henceforth BC].

6. D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883- 1993), 42: 124.11-12 [henceforth WA]; Luther’s Works (Saint Louis/Philadelphia: Concordia/Fortress, 1958-1986) 1:165 [henceforth LW].

7. BSELK 932/933. 4-11; BC 286-387.

8. WA 36:8-23, and WA 45:145-156; see Robert Kolb, “‘The Noblest Skill in the Christian Church’: Luther’s Sermons on the Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 71 (2007): 301-318.

9. See essays in The Alien + the Proper. Luther’s Two-fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship, ed. Robert Kolb (Irvine, CA: 1517 Publishing, 2023).

10. WA 2: 145.9-10, 146.36-37; LW 31:297, 299.

11. WA 40.III:612.31-613.3.

12. WA 10.I, Part 1:531.5-532.12; LW 76:55. See Brian A. Gerrish, Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), 12-14.

13. WA 10.I, Part 1:40.18-41.11.

14. Gerrish, Grace and Reason, 14-16.

15. Theodor Dieter, Der junge Luther und Aristoteles. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Theologie und Philosophie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), 378-422.

16. Bengt Hägglund, “Die Frage der Willensfreiheit in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Erasmus und Luther,” in Renaissance – Reformation. Gegensätze imd Gemeinsamkeiten, ed. August Buck (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1984), 188-189, 193-194.

17. WA 42:64.27-36; LW 1:84-85.

18. WA 18:634.23-29; LW 33:64.

19. WA 18:635.7-22; LW 33:65-66.

20. Hans-Joachim Iwand, Um den rechten Glauben, Gesammelte Aufsätze, ed. Karl Gerhard Steck (Munich: Kaiser, 1959), 56.

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