All Creatures Are Martyrs: Martin Luther’s Cruciform Exegesis Of Romans 8:19–22

By Steven W. Tyra

[Steven W. Tyra serves as the pastor for students and young adults at First Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Kent, Wash.]

I. Introduction: “He Who Knows And Understands These Groans”

On December 26, 1542—the Tuesday after Christmas—an aging pastor sat down to compose an especially difficult letter of “spiritual counsel.”[1] From his study in Wittenberg, Martin Luther penned his condolences to his closest friend and colleague, Justus Jonas, who was then leading the evangelical Reformation at Halle. “I have no idea what to write, this sudden disaster of yours has so laid me low,” Luther confessed.[2] Jonas’s wife, Katharine, had died in childbirth. She had been dear to Luther and even more so to Luther’s wife, who was also named Katharine. Between “my Katy” and Katy Jonas there was una anima unitissima, “one soul, as closely united as souls could be.”[3] And so Katy Luther was “lifeless” with grief, while Luther himself offered his friend “these my sobs.”[4]

Even today, Luther’s “spiritual counsel” models good pastoral practice—at least, initially. Having begun so tenderly, however, the letter’s tone suddenly takes a sharp and (to twenty-first-century sensibilities) disconcerting turn: “But how great a chasm separates Turks, Jews, and (what’s worse) papists, cardinals, and all our opponents from this glory and consolation!”[5] The violent rhetoric of the letter’s second half may leave readers questioning Luther’s pastoral wisdom. Why does he choose now to rehearse polemical talking points? How does tough talk about “papists” serve to comfort his friend? The sense of disconnect persists as the pastor invites another “counselor” to join him at Jonas’s bedside:

And as we read happened in the time of Noah they grieve the Holy Spirit, until he is weary of the whole creation—the creation which groans at one with us with groans that are inexpressible for our mutual redemption. He who knows and understands these groans will swiftly hear the creation. Amen.[6]

The reference to Noah and the flood in Gen 6–9 lies on the surface. Digging deeper, we find that this familiar story has been interpreted within the framework of another scripture. When Luther writes that the creatura or “creation” “groans at one with us . . . for our mutual redemption,” he alludes to one of the more enigmatic passages in the NT, Rom 8:19–22. In those verses, the Apostle Paul also describes the “creation” as “groaning” and “in the travail of childbirth.”[7] Connecting the lines of Luther’s thought, then, leads to a surprising conclusion: it appears that Jonas has been encouraged to identify his own “groans” with those of creation itself. Presumably Luther believed that such a notion would console Jonas.

Why would Luther in the most intimate of circumstances—comforting a friend at the loss of a beloved wife—draw upon Rom 8:19–22 and its “groaning creation”? Looking to his treatments of the Pauline text in roughly the same period, we see that the mystery only deepens. Preaching on Rom 8:19–22 in 1535, the reformer had cast the creatura in a role even more improbable than that of grief counselor. Expounding v. 20, he declared,

This is a fine and comforting thought of the apostle’s, that all creatures are martyrs, having to endure unwillingly every sort of injustice. The creatures do not approve of the conduct of the devil and of the wicked in their shameful abuse of creation, but they submit to it for the sake of him who subjected them to vanity.[8]

In this sermon, Luther translated the apostle’s “creation subjected to vanity” into terms that his contemporaries could readily appreciate. Indeed, the reformer bestowed upon the creation one of the most emotionally charged titles in the Christian tradition: the groaning creatures were martyrs. Beasts, trees, stones, and stars bore “the holy cross.”[9] Luther’s discovery of a martyred creation in Rom 8:19–22 may strike some today as refreshingly bold. Others will deem it theologically reckless. Regardless, as a chapter in the history of interpretation, the material begs for explanation. What could have led Luther to identify the suffering of Christians and of the nonhuman creatures so closely that creation’s “subjection” could be termed a “martyrdom”? The question in itself suggests a starting place for discussion, for by invoking the category “martyr” Luther hints that his exegesis has been forged upon experience. Martyrdom, after all, was for sixteenth-century evangelicals no merely academic subject.

In what follows, I will attempt to account for Luther’s exegesis of Rom 8:19–22, beginning from his assertion that “all creatures are martyrs.” The investigation will proceed in three stages. It is necessary first to survey Luther’s responses to martyrdom across his career, aided by the growing scholarly literature on the topic.[10] Then, against this background, I trace Luther’s increasing sense—evident from his youthful lectures on Romans through his late work on Genesis—that Rom 8:19–22 spoke an encouraging word to the cross-bearing community in his own day. Finally, we will hear Luther’s sermons on Rom 8:19–22, where his long meditation on the martyred creation came to full fruition. The reformer’s mature exegesis will invite us to adopt a perspective that is truly “cruciform.” For Luther, the mystery of creation’s “groans” is revealed only through the paradox of the cross.

II. Luther And The Culture Of Martyrdom

1. Stirring The Pot: Martyrs In The Late Middle Ages

In this section, I follow Luther’s lifelong occupation with martyrdom—a story that begins well before his emergence as a “reformer.” For when the flames immolating the first evangelical martyrs were kindled in 1523, the tinder had been stacked for quite some time. The later Middle Ages were awash in martyrdom. To be sure, Europe’s “Christianization” had mostly quenched opportunities to die for the Catholic faith (heresy was another matter) centuries prior; nonetheless, a potent martyr culture shaped the piety of Christians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[11] Meditations on the passion of Christ (the prototypical martyr) abounded in Latin and the vernacular.[12] The cults of various martyr-saints flourished. As a young Augustinian friar, Luther would have breathed a religious atmosphere in which “martyrdom was incorporated into the routines of self-mortification . . . of self-conscious testing and torment. It also induced the study and contemplation, the writing, reading, and representation of martyrs of old.”[13] These reenactments often received graphic visual expression. In 1512, the German painter Lucas Cranach executed a series of woodcuts on apostolic martyrdom in which St. Bartholomew was shown “flayed alive on a cross.”[14] Cranach would subsequently put his talents at the service of the evangelical cause, depicting the new movement and its heroes with all the pathos of his earlier work. But the Reformation’s stake in medieval martyr culture was not merely aesthetic. Brad Gregory concludes that in this respect “the continuity of Protestantism with the past is more striking than any rupture.”[15] From the outset, Luther’s theology exudes a martyrological intensity very much at home in the world captured by Cranach’s woodcuts and paintings.

In the summer term of 1513, a year after Cranach’s work on the apostles, Wittenberg’s newly minted professor of Holy Scripture launched a lecture series on the Psalms. The Dictata super psalterium lasted into 1515. Luther’s expositions include crucial evidence for the emerging “theology of the cross” that in due course would drive his rebellion against the papacy. We also find numerous references to martyrs and martyrdom. For instance, prompted by what David Bagchi amusingly dubs “one of the least promising verses in the entire Bible for such purposes,” Luther offered his students a “Sermon on Martyrs.”[16] The professor interprets Ps 59(60):8—“Moab is the pot of my hope”—as an allegory of “the whole world [totus mundus] . . . which persecutes and afflicts the saints.”[17] The “pot” symbolizes the “tribulations and the inflictors of tribulation”[18] in which the faithful “are cooked [concocti]” and prepared as a special dish for the “heavenly banquet guests,” Christ himself being the “cook.”[19] However unlikely the exegesis might sound to modern readers, Luther’s “application” comes across with bracing clarity: Christians need not despair in the midst of suffering, for by this means Christ readies his chosen ones for the eternal kingdom. This is why “the pot of Moab” contains “hope.” Luther even ventures that “it is the express declaration of sacred scripture: Whoever is outside of tribulation [extra tribulationem] is also outside the state and hope of salvation.”[20] The ancient martyrs prove the maxim by their example. Luther recounts the tale of St. Sisinnius who, as “he was led to martyrdom,” was “then for the first time totally assured [maxime confidebant]” of his state of grace.[21] The saint’s experience is not atypical. Suffering forms “the basis on which the martyrs hoped to be worthy of their crowns, and all Christians are called to martyrdom in this sense.”[22] Martyrium has taken on a wider meaning than literal death. Christ tests all his disciples in this “pot,” and so the presence of “adversaries” should occasion great “rejoicing” as a sure “sign” of their election.[23]

Luther’s doctrine of assurance would undergo considerable development in the years following the Dictata; in this early sermon, his great “discovery” lay still on the horizon. Even so, the themes expressed here would travel with the young professor through the rest of his career.[24] Christ’s blessing paradoxically revealed under its contrary, affliction, the church as a community marked by the cross—these insights continued to brew within the “pot” of Luther’s own spiritual trials until emerging again with maximum pungency as the “theology of the cross.”[25] Martyrdom epitomized the opus alienum, “the strange work” by which God burned the “old man” out of the justified sinner. The martyrs embodied most conspicuously what every Christian experienced. From this starting place, Luther could eventually “define martyrdom as a gift from God, to the martyr who proved the power and wisdom of God in this ultimate sacrifice, and to the surviving people of God, who beheld the paradox of God’s revelation of his love in the martyr’s confession of the faith unto death.”[26] Luther’s elevation of the martyrs as exemplars for “ordinary” Christians had parallels in the period, but the ferocious (and, for many at least, persuasive) contrast he struck between the church under the cross and the church under the papacy may well be his own contribution.[27] We hear the first rumbles of the coming storm when Luther professes himself “astonished [mirum est], if we consider our freedom from suffering [nostram impassibilitatem] throughout the whole church.”[28] Granting that “the world is against the universal church,” what must we conclude of a powerful, prosperous church—one visibly at ease in the world?[29] “For to whom should we consider these things [in Ps 59] spoken and recorded? To stones and trees? Yes, truly they apply to the present time, and they are spoken to stones and trees.”[30]

2. A New Song Begins: The Advent Of Evangelical Martyrdom

The martyr culture shared by Luther and his contemporaries ensured that—at least from an earthly perspective—the first evangelicals to die for their faith did not perish into a void. Their sacrifice resonated powerfully with the ideals and aspirations of many in the Western church. “Early evangelicals were late medieval Christians, so martyrdom was in the air before a single execution had occurred.”[31] On July 1, 1523, expectations materialized. The imperial government in the Netherlands burned at the stake two members of the Augustinian order, Henry Vos and John van den Esschen.[32] Their crime: preaching the views of their erstwhile co-religious, Luther. The two “were immediately hailed as the first martyrs for purified Christian truth.”[33] Luther (by now officially excommunicated and so, depending on one’s sympathies, either a heretic or a prophet) felt the martyrs had vindicated his gospel. In August of that year, he dispatched a glowing letter to the evangelical community in the Low Countries. “God be praised!” he exclaimed,

that we who have known and worshiped so many false saints have lived to see and hear real saints and true martyrs. We up here in Germany have not yet been sufficiently deserving to become so precious and worthy an offering to Christ, though many of our members have not been, and still are not, without persecution.[34]

The return of literal martyrdom authenticated evangelical teaching, for which Vos and van den Esschen had paid the highest price, as “wonderful light, hitherto hidden on account of our sins while we were compelled to submit to the terrible powers of darkness and serve such disgraceful errors and the Antichrist.”[35] Like their ancient predecessors, the new martyrs had sealed the gospel with their blood. Whereas a decade prior Luther had lamented the “freedom from suffering throughout the whole church,” now the Lord at last was revealing his true people to the world through “shame and injury, anxiety and distress, imprisonment and death, for Christ’s sake.” To those with eyes to see, these crosses were no less than “great signs and wonders” for which the evangelicals owed God thanksgiving.[36] Luther openly envies the Dutch faithful their privilege, and urges his readers to “be of good courage and joyfully allow the Lord to slay us.”[37] Here the theology of the cross has left the halls of academic disputation and entered the hearths, pulpits, and public squares ignited by the Reformation.

Such exuberance over gruesome executions (no matter how righteous the victims) may strike twenty-first-century spectators as unhinged, even maniacal. Once again, however, Luther stood firmly in his context. Gregory argues that “the reformers did not scrap the late medieval inheritance; rather, their emphasis on scripture focused it more sharply”[38]—referencing the evangelicals’ constant recourse to those parts of the Bible that foretold the church’s persecution, not least Rom 8. Of course, the movement did reject certain elements of medieval martyrology. Though in 1523 Luther might declare the slain Augustinians “true saints,” Vos, van den Esschen, and those who would share their fate could not, on Reformation principles, become the centers of a new cult, nor be invoked as heavenly intercessors. Be that as it may, fears concerning Catholic “false worship” did nothing to temper enthusiasm for the martyrs or their stories among surviving members of the community, as evidenced by the flood of pamphlets, treatises, and songs dedicated to their memory.[39] Luther composed his very first hymn in honor of the Dutch witnesses to the gospel:

A new song here shall be begun—the Lord God help our singing!
. . . At Brussels in the Netherlands, by two boys, martyrs youthful,
He showed the wonders of his hands, whom he with favor truthful
so richly hath adorned.[40]

In Luther’s hymn, the martyrs duel not merely with wicked Catholic authorities, but against “the old arch fiend” himself, who “bade them God’s dear Word abjure.”[41] The singing congregation ends with a paean to their victory and the Lord’s goodness: “For us we thank our God therefore, his word has reappeared.” The final note is eschatological: “Even at the door is summer nigh, the winter now is ended. . . . His hand when once extended, withdraws not till he’s finished.”[42] Now that the gospel has dawned after the long “winter” under the papacy, the Last Day cannot be far off. Meanwhile, the Lord’s little flock stands in solidarity with its martyrs, confident that the persecution they bear together marks them as heirs of the approaching “summer.”

Luther’s ballad of the “two boys” of Brussels raises a critical point about the meaning of “martyrdom” in the sixteenth century. Today, it would not be out of place to find the term denoting “noble sacrifice” broadly speaking. In early modern Europe, by contrast, “martyr” retained its etymological meaning of “witness” to Christian truth—or at least, the truth as it was understood by the different confessional groups. “Martyrdom” functioned as “an essentially interpretive category, inextricable from one’s religious commitment.”[43] As the century progressed, Lutherans and Catholics were joined by Anabaptists, Reformed, and Anglicans in the race to distinguish true martyrs from the imposters.[44] A Catholic loyalist would never have countenanced Vos and van den Esschen as “martyrs,” even with the caveat “for heresy.” The defrocked Augustinians were criminals. For Luther’s part, those dying for papal doctrine might earn distinction as “the devil’s martyrs”[45]—a grim irony that hardly made “true” martyrdom more ecumenical. Seen from the positive side, martyrological exclusivity meant that martyrs and those who recognized them as such shared a powerful bond. Put simply, to name somebody a “martyr” was to assert not only that “this person perished for God’s truth,” but moreover that he or she was with us. The martyr belonged to the community, and the community to the martyr; both the sacrifice and its memorialization sealed them mutually as the Lord’s true people.

Looking ahead, the period’s martyrological exclusivity also has serious implications for Luther’s exegesis of Rom 8:19–22. When the reformer declared that the nonhuman creatures—sun, moon, air, trees—were merterer (“martyrs”) bearing “the holy cross,” he not only recognized the reality of the creation’s suffering (in itself a bold stroke).[46] By invoking the “interpretive category” of “martyr,” Luther had also staked a claim on the creation. “The whole creation as one being suffers in company with the Christian Church.”[47] In some sense, the martyred creatures belonged to the community. They too were with us.

3. Christ And Judas: Discerning The True Church

The courage of martyrs such as Vos and van den Esschen profoundly impressed Luther, and their witness to the gospel remained precious to him his entire life. On December 10, 1524, a year after the initial burnings in the Netherlands, another Dutch evangelical, Henry of Zütphen, was murdered by a Catholic mob in Meldorf in reprisal for his missionary efforts. Luther wrote a small book dedicated to his martyrdom, praising Henry as “the one who shines most brightly among all these saints.”[48] Once more, Luther takes the event as proof that “in our day the pattern of the true Christian life has reappeared, terrible in the world’s eyes, since it means suffering and persecution, but precious and priceless in God’s sight.”[49] In such afflictions the “Spirit of God . . . confirms his Word with great and mighty deeds.”[50] The themes are by now familiar, showing up in Luther’s earliest ruminations on the church’s “true pattern” (see above). The reformer continued to memorialize individual martyrs into the 1540s. One of his final efforts was on behalf of the Englishman Robert Barnes, burned on July 30, 1540, by his nation’s occasionally Protestant king, Henry VIII. In a preface to Barnes’s published Confession of Faith, the aging Luther looks back on the past two decades and muses, “Who could have believed twenty years ago that Christ our Lord would be so near to us and would eat, drink and converse at our table and live in our houses through his precious martyrs and dear saints?”[51]

Robert Kolb believes that Luther’s unswerving commitment to the martyrs reflected a consistent theological vision. To Barnes’s death in 1540, the response was “that which it had been in the 1520s.”[52] Luther time and again applied “his ‘theology of the cross,’ a theology of paradox that equates God’s wisdom with what seems foolishness to the sinner and God’s power with what seems impotence to the sinner.”[53] Mysteriously, counter-intuitively, God revealed himself in the visible God-forsakenness of Christ and his saints. As Luther put it already in 1522, “It is the nature of the divine word to be heartily received by few, but to be persecuted ruthlessly by many. . . . Wherever Christ is, Judas, Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, and Annas will inevitably be also, so also his cross. If not, he is not the true Christ.”[54] Thus the revelation remained hidden to the world, for God’s Word again “always comes in what seems to be impotence and foolishness to those who do not believe.”[55] Martyrdom in particular “was, for [Luther], literally witness to the faith, the Word of God in action.”[56] The martyrs stood as exemplary disciples clinging to the Word, proclaiming by their hideous deaths God’s beautiful victory over evil. Along the same line, Heiko Oberman has argued that Luther’s doctrine of the church derived its “revolutionary character” from a simple contrast: “The Church of the martyrs need only be compared with the outward magnificence and outward symbols of sovereignty of the medieval Church.”[57] Through his lifelong reflection on martyrdom, the conflict Luther had experienced as a young professor over the church’s impassibilitas found resolution. For the mature reformer, a Christian people “free from suffering” was no longer a problem. It was an oxymoron.

4. A Cruciform Hermeneutic

Luther’s deep concern for the evangelical martyrs not only shaped his ecclesiology; it also dictated how he expounded the Scriptures. The biblical narrative of God’s good creation—grievously wounded by human sin, destined for renewal on the Last Day—was read through the present experience of Christ’s persecuted flock. Kolb helpfully connects the theologia crucis to Luther’s exegetical method, arguing that a cruciform hermeneutic “guided the actual exposition of biblical texts and the application of those texts to people’s lives.”[58] The theology of the cross also charted Luther’s reading of Rom 8:19–22. His expositions of the groaning creation throughout the 1530s and 1540s grounded the church of the martyrs within a wider network of suffering. “Comfort yourselves with that! You who groan . . . are not alone. All creation stands with you.”[59] In the next section, we will follow Luther’s engagement with the Pauline text, beginning with the Romans lectures of 1515–1516.

III. The Church And Creation “Serve The Unworthy”

1. “Happy Science From A Sad Cosmos”

Luther lectured on the Epistle to the Romans immediately following his series on the Psalter, a small part of which we examined previously.[60] This early venture into Pauline exegesis spanned three academic semesters, from Easter 1515 to September 1516.[61] Here once again we encounter Luther as a young professor and loyal Catholic Christian. The late medieval “martyr culture” certainly informed his thought, but martyrdom remained largely a figurative concept. Perhaps for that reason Luther did not employ martyrological motifs in this treatment, as he would subsequently. Nonetheless, his opening engagement with the groaning creation has clearly been stamped by the theology of the cross.

Luther comments on Rom 8:19–22 in good medieval fashion—by dialoguing with the previous tradition of exegesis. He singles out two exegetical trajectories in particular. First, Luther outlines briefly what he takes to be the majority opinion on the text:

By the term “creation” in this place, most understand “humanity” (hominem), namely since “he participates in every creature.” But humanity is better understood through [the term] “vanity,” as Psalm 39 says most appropriately and truly: “Nevertheless, every human living is wholly vanity.”[62]

The notion that “creation” in this passage really meant “humanity” derived from Augustine of Hippo a millennium prior. The African saint had referred the creatura to homines “humans,” while rejecting the view that Rom 8:19–22 taught a bondage and resurrection of the physical cosmos. “For what [Paul] says must not be understood,” Augustine insisted, “in such a way that we suppose the feeling of grief or groaning to exist in trees and plants and rocks and other creatures of this kind.”[63] Augustine’s interpretation was widely followed among medieval commentators.[64] Luther begged to differ. In fact, the young Augustinian proceeded essentially to turn Augustine on his head. On Luther’s telling, Rom 8:19–22 did not teach humanity’s bondage to creaturely “vanity.” Rather, the scripture lamented creation’s subjection to humanity. On the phrase “because of him who subjected it” (v. 20), Luther glosses facit eam servire indignis “he [God] makes it serve the unworthy.”[65] The cosmos labors under “vain” and sinful human beings who are “unworthy” of its service. Hence it “groans.” In effect, Luther held up the passage as a mirror in which his students were forced to confront their defilement of God’s good work. Of course, such a direct and pastoral exposition is in keeping with the whole tenor of Luther’s theology.

Having corrected the “many” (following Augustine) who have mismatched “creation” and “vanity,” Luther moves on to his next opponent. In no uncertain terms, the professor inveighs against the “philosophers and metaphysicians” who have, in his view, badly distorted the scripture:

The apostle philosophizes and is wise about the cosmos [de rebus] in a different manner than the philosophers and metaphysicians. For they turn their eyes to the present state of things [presentiam rerum], so that they only speculate about “substances” and “qualities.” The apostle, on the other hand, recalls our eyes from gazing at present things—from “essences” and “accidents”—and directs them to things as they will be in the future. For he does not say the “essence” or “operation” of the creation, still less its “activity” or “passivity” or “motion” [motus].[66]

In the latter Middle Ages, it had become fashionable for scholastic exegetes to apply the categories of Aristotelian metaphysics to Rom 8:19–22.[67] On such a philosophical reading, the “vanity” in v. 19 signified cosmic “motion,” to which the whole creation was bound. Needless to say, Luther found the use of Aristotle in biblical exegesis less than edifying. In fact, the professor confessed, “I believe myself to owe it as a duty to the Lord to roar against philosophy and call people back to Holy Scripture.”[68]

Luther understands Rom 8:19–22 to teach a far different wisdom than that found in scholastic philosophy. Instead of a lesson about the “present state of things,” such as cosmic “motion,” the groaning creation directs readers to the future:

Therefore you will be the best philosophers and investigators of things, if you will learn from the apostle to gaze at the creation as it expects, groans, and is in travail—in other words, as it loathes what it is [in the present] and longs for what it will be in the future, but is not yet.[69]

Luther warns that applying philosophical categories to the groaning creation completely misses the point. In a memorable phrase, those who pursue such a method “draw forth a happy science from a sad cosmos, and laughingly gather knowledge from things that are sighing with ‘marvelous power.’”[70] By contrast, the professor urges his students to follow the gaze of the “sighing things” themselves and look to the eschatological horizon, the coming restoration “for which it longs.” At this juncture, Luther has introduced a crucial distinction: for those with eyes to see, the creatura indeed offers wisdom, but not through its “substances and accidents” (that is, its metaphysical attributes). Instead, creation witnesses to its Creator through suffering. The service it renders to “unworthy” humanity manifests its obedience (v. 20), while its “groans” (v. 21) articulate its desire for the Last Day. Philosophical interpreters, however, remain deaf to creation’s “sad” testimony. “Thus God’s creation, which is carefully prepared for future glory, is considered by fools only with reference to its present arrangement [apparatu eiusmodi]—and not at all its final goal [fine].”[71] The creation, in other words, is not merely a mechanism (apparatus) or puzzle to be solved by metaphysical inquiry. As Luther remarks in the gloss on v. 20, the apostle “speaks concerning the creation as if it felt, and lived, and grieved.”[72]

In his earliest foray into Rom 8:19–22, Luther therefore eschewed both Augustinian and scholastic distortions (as he saw them). Against the latter especially, the professor concluded his polemic with a solemn resolution:

And thus we conclude: Whoever studies the “essences” and “operations” of the creatures rather than their sighs and expectations, is without a doubt a blind fool. For such a one does not even realize that the creatures are creatures. This is obvious enough from the text itself.[73]

Scholastic interpreters had overlooked the “creatures as creatures” (that is, their status as God’s handiwork prepared for “future glory”), and so were “blind” to the cosmos’s place in the Creator’s salvific economy. For his part, Luther encapsulated his distinctive hermeneutic by alluding to another Pauline scripture: “It is time that we free ourselves from other studies and learn Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (see 1 Cor 2:2).[74] Here we have in seminal form the theology of the cross applied to biblical exegesis. God’s mighty work was hidden under its opposite, weakness—in this case, the creation’s “groans.”

Although the Romans lectures lacked something of what Werner Elert has called the “downright passionate expression”[75] of Luther’s later homilies, nonetheless the first notes had rung forth. In his mature treatments of Rom 8:19–22, the reformer would raise his cruciform exegesis to its crescendo, declaring that the creatures themselves “bore the cross.” In particular, the advent of evangelical martyrdom spurred Luther to ponder the relationship between the suffering creatures and the suffering church. We initially see creation’s martyrdom take shape in the reformer’s imposing work on Genesis.

2. Genesis 39: “A True Martyr” (Among Other Creatures)

Christian theologians can hardly overlook the Bible’s first book in reflecting on creation. If Luther were holding an ongoing conversation with another creational text, we would expect some evidence to show up in the Enarrationes in Genesin, undoubtedly the most important work of the reformer’s latter career.[76] And we are not disappointed. Luther’s references and allusions to Rom 8:19–22 were frequent, especially in Genesis’s opening three chapters.[77] In this context, the passage served as a key point on the canonical map by which Luther charted cosmic history. The Pauline text corroborated the devastating consequences of Adam’s sin for the cosmos, as well as Luther’s conviction that “on the Last Day there will be a far greater change and restoration of the whole creation, which Paul says is now subjected to vanity on account of sin.”[78] For the most part, Luther’s use of Rom 8:19–22 throughout the Genesis lectures reflected this broad perspective. More distinctive, however, was the passage’s appearance in Gen 39. There, the groaning creation began to intersect with Luther’s theology of martyrdom.

In Gen 39, the reformer unpacked the famous tale of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. John Maxfield identifies this episode as “revealing Luther’s understanding of the cooperation of Christian believers in God’s preserving and blessing of the world.”[79] Joseph’s story illustrated the church’s divinely ordained duty to humanity—as well as the hardships inevitably bedeviling its efforts. In Gen 39:19, Joseph’s virtuous flight from his mistress’s blandishments succeeded only in “kindling the wrath” of Potiphar (whose wife exegetes the pericope rather differently). From this domestic drama, Luther drew an object lesson about cross-bearing. At the sad sight of Joseph sitting in prison “arrested for punishment as an adulterer,” Luther remarked, “This truly is the greatest and heaviest cross [gravissima crux].”[80]

Significantly, Luther went on to depict Joseph’s trials as a martyrdom. The patriarch’s anticipation of death was a “cross” outweighing the act of dying itself. In the midst of Luther’s own lifelong combat with Anfechtungen or spiritual “trials,” he often found in the Bible comrades-in-arms. So, on his telling, the imprisoned Joseph was tempted to despair of not simply his life, but his very salvation—for ubi nunc Deus? “Where now is God? Where are those sweeping promises that he would love, keep, and guard his saints?”[81] Every external evidence of the Lord’s favor had been stripped away; to all eyes, including his own, Joseph perished condemned before the world and rejected by God.[82] Here enters the paradox at the heart of Luther’s theology. Precisely when Joseph is most visibly God-forsaken, he encounters God most palpably: “For thus Joseph also thought . . . ‘I will train my gaze on the promises which I’ve heard and the examples I’ve seen, and leaning on them I will wait for help from God.”[83] Cast into the furnace of despair, the patriarch hugs tightly God’s promissio. Because of his faithfulness awaiting “violent death,” verus martyr est—“he is a true martyr.”[84]

That Joseph ultimately evaded execution—rising, in fact, to govern Egypt—diminished his martyrdom in no wise. Luther even likened Joseph to John the Baptist, who also became a martyr on account of a meretrix or “sinful woman.”[85] Of course, by assigning patriarchs and prophets the title “martyr,” Luther did nothing novel. Within the theology of the cross, martyrium had always defined “ordinary” Christian discipleship; martyrdom was never coterminous with bodily death. Whereas in the first Psalms lectures Luther had cited “literal” martyrs such as St. Sisinnius as exemplars, now he put forward the longsuffering patriarchs from Genesis.[86] The professor characteristically made the application of Joseph’s story plain for his audience: “The saints should thus expect no other reward [than Joseph received], nor should they imagine that they owe faith and assiduity in their duties [in officio] to the world for its sake. The world is unworthy that the saints should stir even a finger to serve it.” Rather than fruitful labor, the world deserves “that the devil with all his angels rule over it [ipsi dominetur], which in fact he does, and horribly.”[87] Here, the context is telling. Luther lectures in Wittenberg to students by and large destined for pulpits throughout the parishes of evangelical Germany (and sometimes lands more distant). He steels his charges against persecution—and not merely from hostile bishops and princes. Even their own congregations “make miserable repayment for the faithfulness of their pastors.”[88] To impress the point, Luther reaches for another scripture:

Truly it’s just like Paul says: “The Creation has been subjected to vanity”; Yet, “for the sake of him who subjected [it],” we serve, teach, admonish, suffer, console, and do those things God has handed out for the most part to the unworthy. Here we gain nothing by our duties, other than odium, hostility, and exile. Our whole life is nothing other than the loss of our good deeds.[89]

Alluding to Rom 8:20, Luther applies the creation’s “subjection to vanity” to “us”—that is, the evangelical pastors, as well as (we may surmise) the whole church under the cross. Luther uses the Pauline language to strike a forceful contrast: the “saints” serve the world not propter ipsum “for its own sake,” but rather propter eum . . . qui subiecit—“for the sake of him who subjected [the creation].” Here, “world” (mundus) should not be confused with “the creation” (creatura). Already in the “Sermon on Martyrs” Luther had envisioned “the world against the universal church” (see above). Mundus represented primarily human beings and often incorporated governmental, economic, and—as Luther never tired of pointing out—ecclesial power structures. These were fallen and so “for the most part” were “dominated by the devil.” Practically on his death bed, the reformer would wield the Pauline verses against the “the world,” excoriating “the devilish lies, over which all creation is frightened, trembles, shakes, and cries out about the donkey stable to him who made it subject to such corruption . . .  that he deliver them, which he will soon do.”[90]

On first hearing Luther apply Rom 8:19–22 to the martyrdom of Christians, we might suppose that he has relapsed into something like an Augustinian reading. Referring the “creation subject to vanity” to the church, has he not reintroduced Augustine’s equation of creatura with homines? However, in dramatizing Joseph’s trials for his students, Luther was far from rehashing Augustine. Instead, he articulated the conclusion left implicit in his earlier work on Romans: by submitting to God’s will and “serving the unworthy” in the world, the “subject” church stood in solidarity with the nonhuman creatures. Luther and his contemporaries recognized “sun, stars, trees” as God’s good creatures, now suffering from human sinfulness—a “subjection” that the evangelicals shared and under which they also “groaned.” Creation and the church bore a common cross in a world “bound to corruption.” Accordingly, Luther could counsel his students,

Just as the vine provides wine in great abundance and sweetness even to the worst people, in the same way—since we are “sons of God”—let us imitate the clemency and kindness of our Father [God], as well as the examples of the other creatures. Nor let us bear this ingratitude impatiently, since we have indeed been born and placed in this life and station by God to serve the world and gather in the elect for eternal salvation.[91]

Although it is not identified by the WA editors, I take the phrase cum filii Dei simus “since we are sons of God” as gesturing toward Rom 8:19, “for the creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the sons of God [filiorum Dei in the Vulgate].” The allusion makes sense, given the unambiguous use of 8:20 in the vicinity, and more because of the exhortation that follows. Having already mentioned “the vine,” Luther bids his pupils to imitate “the examples of the other creatures.” As “sons of God” they should emulate creation in serving the “unworthy” until the day of eschatological vindication, their “eternal salvation”—which (not coincidentally) is also how he reads the Pauline text.[92] To his register of exemplars, a canon comprising martyrs from both the ancient church and the OT, Luther has now added the very earth and its fruits. Following that logic, if Joseph’s steadfastness qualified him as a “true martyr” (on a level with John the Baptist) what title shall we assign the “other creatures” whose patient benefaction we are called to follow?

In Gen 39, Luther unfolded a more expansive sense of creatura. “Creation” now comprised a community embracing both the church and nonhuman creatures. As we shall see, the hints sown through the Genesis lectures blossomed into “downright passionate expression” in Luther’s sermons on Rom 8:19–22. From Wittenberg’s pulpit, the church of the martyrs was summoned to stand alongside the martyred creation against Satan’s tyranny.

IV. “All Creation Stands With You!” Luther’s Sermons On Romans 8:19–22

Although to this point we have focused on classroom lectures, creation’s martyrdom was first and foremost a teaching for the pulpit. The creatures’ suffering occurred not in the lecture hall, but met “ordinary” Christians at every step. Luther wanted his congregation in Wittenberg to listen to “the sun, moon and stars, the heavens and earth, the bread we eat, the water or wine we drink, the cattle and sheep, in short, all things that minister to our comfort, cry out in accusation against the world because they are subjected to vanity and must suffer with Christ and his brethren.”[93] Three homilies from two separate occasions have survived on the Pauline text. All were preached on the fourth week after Trinity Sunday.[94] The initial pair date to June 20, 1535, and likely were delivered in the morning and afternoon.[95] The final sermon came nine years later on July 6, 1544. Among other things then, the sermons nicely bookend the period of the Genesis lectures (begun just twenty days prior in 1535, on June 1, and first published in 1544).[96] The coincidence allows for direct comparison: did Luther treat the Pauline text consistently, or was creation’s martyrdom merely a passing rhetorical flourish?

Setting the sermons alongside the Genesis lectures, we find that not only did Luther carry forward the martyrological trajectory in the pulpit, but that his preaching assumed an even greater note of urgency. Far from a rhetorical figure or colorful illustration, the reformer put forward creation’s martyrdom as the central meaning of the scripture, the Holy Spirit’s word for the sixteenth-century church. Once again, the motif’s prominence demands explanation: why would Luther reach for the emotionally fraught concept of “martyrdom”? Could not the creation’s “subjection” have been communicated in less controversial ways? We saw how, lecturing on Gen 39, Luther pressed his pupils to “imitate the example of other creatures” and located the cross-bearing church within the creatura “subjected to vanity.” Similarly, in the sermons, Luther hoped his congregation would “do likewise . . . and reflect that as the creature will rejoice with you on the last day, so does it now mourn with you.”[97] Kolb has commented that in the 1530s Luther’s articulation of the theologia crucis “included more personal feelings of threat and suffering.” In that decade, “Duke George of Saxony persisted in challenging Wittenberg reform, among other ways by persecuting its adherents in the town of Oschatz. The papacy seemed to be moving toward more open and active confrontation with Wittenberg reform”[98]—realities that could not help but weigh upon the pastor and his congregation. Preaching creation’s martyrdom, Luther often referred to the Ottoman menace to Western Europe, for “the created works no more desire such servility than we desire subjection to the Turk.”[99] Facing all these threats, Luther proclaimed that the faithful did not suffer alone, but Herr Gottes gute creatur[100]—“the Lord God’s good creation”—stood alongside them. Luther trusted that such a notion would both console and catalyze. “Remarkable doctrine this, unlike anything elsewhere found in the Scriptures, that heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars, leaf and blade, every living thing, waits with sighing and groaning for the revelation of our glory.”[101] The common expectation of church and creation was a “fine and comforting thought.”[102] No less than for his pastoral candidates, the reformer set up the creatures as exempla for Wittenberg’s peasants, bakers, and merchants to follow.

While they are not identical, the overlap in content and style warrants treating the sermons together. Only in the “afternoon” piece from 1535 did Luther explicitly state, “Er aus allen creaturn merterer macht [He out of all creatures makes martyrs].”[103] Nonetheless, in all the homilies Luther employed the martyrological motifs familiar since the Dictata on the Psalms, transferring them now to “all creatures.” The “heavens and earth” acted as martyrs in at least three ways. First, creation suffered in obedience to God’s Word. Next, by their endurance the creatures battled against Satan and his kingdom. Lastly, the whole cosmos “eagerly expected” eschatological vindication from the Creator. In each respect, the creatures also served as exemplars for the evangelical church. I will unpack these themes in turn.

1. Creation Obeys God’s Word

Luther emphasizes that creation endures martyrdom not mechanically (as if operating under impersonal “laws of nature”), but in obedience to God’s command. He derives this thought from Rom 8:20: “The creation was subjected to vanity not willingly, but because of him who subjected it.” We saw already in Gen 39 Luther’s contrast between serving the world propter ipsum (“for its own sake”) and propter eum (“for the sake of him”)—that is, because of God. The nonhuman creatures relish their servitude to the depraved “world” no more than evangelical pastors enjoy unruly congregations and tyrannical rulers. “Creation . . . does not want to serve and is not willingly subject to futility. If its wishes counted for anything, you would not see much seed, grass, beer, milk, eggs, and wine.”[104] The earth yields its bounty to fallen human beings “not for their own sake,” but because God so bids. Meanwhile, the sun would “deny every one of these wicked wretches even the least ray of light; that it is compelled to minister to them is its cross and pain, by reason of which it sighs and groans.”[105] All creatures, Luther believes, bear das heilige Creutz (“the holy cross”), for God allots each its portion of abuse.[106] The Lord leads the creation to martyrdom neither because it lacks value nor out of neglect. In a sense, he requires of “cattle and sheep” nothing he does not undergo himself. Luther imagines the Creator “reasoning” with the creatures:

God says, “Sun, earth, sky, serve for My sake, for I am a merciful Father . . . and I do good even to the ungodly who slander and despise me and who crucify, blaspheme, and mock My Son. Even beyond this, I offer them the remission of sins. I give them sun, moon, money, property, body, life.” Therefore, he says to creation: “You too, patiently serve these godless miscreants—Turk, pope, robbers.”[107]

Luther’s God is always self-donating. “God did not reveal himself for the first time in the redemption of the world, but already at its creation . . . he poured himself out; he gave himself completely.”[108] The Lord lavishes upon men and women “sun, moon, property, body, life,” and we reciprocate by putting those good gifts in the service of evil. In doing so, we abuse not merely the gift, but the Giver as well. Regardless, God graciously commands the creation to endure humanity’s “vanity” while he himself tolerates blasphemy and mockery. As a sort of solace, occasionally “the Lord allows the creation to make known that it does not serve willingly . . . as when the Elbe overflows.” Natural disasters “make known that [creation] serves you unwillingly; it does this in part that you might be admonished and become righteous.”[109] Creation’s shudders expose human sinfulness, as well as warn against the coming judgment (the third lesson; see below).

The necessity of suffering only in response to God’s specific call was a prominent martyrological theme, especially for the older Luther. As we saw, the reformer eagerly embraced Vos and van den Esschen in 1523. The Augustinians had gone to the stake professing the evangelical gospel; their steadfastness throughout the trial marked them as “real saints and true martyrs,”[110] at least to those who grasped the mysterious ways of God. The outbreak of the Peasants’ War the next year complicated matters. Although Thomas Münzter and his ill-fated followers did not belong to the “Radical Reformation,” strictly speaking, Anabaptist groups hailed them as “martyrs” after the war reached its grisly climax in May 1525.[111] Luther, (in)famously, had thrown in his lot with the nobility; in the minds of many he was implicated in the ensuing slaughter. The reformer accordingly felt constrained to explain why evangelical victims of Roman “tyranny” counted as “martyrs,” while Münzter and company perished as “rebellious murderers.”[112] Subsequent years witnessed escalating violence against Anabaptists—many of whom exhibited outstanding bravery in death.[113] And then there was Huldrich Zwingli (never high in Luther’s affections), killed in battle in 1531. Finally, from across the Channel arrived yet another “gift” from Luther’s old friend Henry VIII. Rome itself could boast of “modern” martyrs, now that the English monarch had taken to beheading Catholic dissenters to his new regime. Among these was the famous scholar and statesman, Thomas More. When asked whether More had died a martyr, Luther reportedly snapped, “Not at all! For he was a very great tyrant against the gospel. He tortured them with strange instruments like a hangman.”[114] Luther had not forgotten More’s collusion in the Henrican persecutions.

Gregory has written of the “weaknesses of nondoctrinal criteria” for distinguishing “true” martyrs from “false” in early modern Europe.[115] By the middle of the sixteenth century, all confessional groups claimed “true martyrs”; they also recognized that their heroes looked remarkably similar to those of their rivals. Evangelicals had gone to the flames without flinching—but then again, so had Anabaptists. English Catholics defied a tyrannical king; but how did they differ from the evangelicals in France and Germany? Gregory sums up the conclusion reached by most parties: “Martyrdom could not follow automatically from the mere fact of suffering death for one’s religious convictions.”[116] Steadfastness alone did not a martyr make. Authentic martyrdom had to be endured for the truth. Luther shared this “martyrological exclusivity” with his contemporaries. At the same time, Luther had broadened “martyrdom” to encompass Christian cross-bearing as a whole. This dimension of the theologia crucis served him well once the need arose to distinguish “true” martyrs from the “false.” Münzter, More, and others might have suffered, but not in obedience to God’s Word (the Protestant gospel). From this perspective, evangelical pastors who faithfully “bore their cross” amidst the daily grind of parish ministry were martyrs. Wild-eyed Anabaptists, on the other hand, foolishly sacrificed themselves for their private opinions; they did not possess the Word. There is evidence that Luther successfully transmitted this broader understanding of martyrdom to his students. Among the martyrs “canonized” by later Lutheranism was Luther himself. Like the patriarchs of old, the great reformer had stood firm through many trials.[117]

“Martyrological exclusivity” determined Luther’s exegesis of Rom 8:20. The creatura was the model martyr, bearing afflictions not for its own “opinions,” so to speak, but at the Creator’s behest. Luther plumbs the little phrase non volens: the creatures’ “unwillingness” evinces not obstinacy, but a healthy aversion to “self-chosen” suffering. Creation’s “harsh servitude . . . causes it pain and is as bitter for it as plague, syphilis, and all illness are to us”[118]—and who would choose to contract the plague? The creatures’ desire for freedom renders their present obedience all the more impressive. Luther deftly makes the connection to himself and the congregation:

Likewise I do not desire to suffer reproach as a heretic and a deceiver, but I endure it for God’s sake, who permits it. This attitude on my part does not make me partaker of the sin committed against me by enemies of the truth. . . . The case is the same as that of the creature suffering abuse for the sake of him who has subjected it. And you Christians are to imitate the example of creation.[119]

Christians should not seek out persecution (as Luther alleges Anabaptists and “Sacramentarians” of all sorts do), nor must they stubbornly insist on their own convictions apart from God’s Word. Rather, Christians ought to remain “unwilling” to suffer, so far as it concerns them. But if trials come on account of the gospel (and they will—for wherever Christ is, there too is his cross), they are to respond with the same ready deference to God’s will as they observe in the creatures. Creation, after all, only tolerates “vanity” propter Deum, “for God’s sake.”[120]

The common lot of church and creation bound them in fellowship. Creatures and Christians were (exclusively) genuine martyrs, and so wore the strange sign of the Lord’s favor. Luther even imagines creation sorry that its “groaning” harms its comrades. Listing various “natural disasters,” from the relatively minor (a horse throwing its rider) to the large scale (flooded fields leading to famine), he remarks “We must take comfort that, when there is lightning and thunder, creation does not intend it against us but against the godless, whom it is serving unwillingly, and we must suffer loss along with them.”[121] For the “sons of God” “the sun overflows with comfort [sol consolatione plenissimus], because it shines for us, and because it groans with us.”[122] One voice expresses the solidarity: “We with it, and it with us—cry out!”[123] The “overflowing comfort” promised here recalls Luther’s “spiritual counsel” to Jonas two years prior. Jonas’s wife, Katy, had been carried off by the greatest “natural disaster” of them all—death itself—which also plagued God’s universe as a whole. The closed ranks between Christians and creatures also point to the second lesson Luther draws from the passage: creation’s martyrdom is a battle against Satan.

2. Creation Battles The Devil

Kolb contextualizes Luther’s martyrology within a larger vision of salvation history: “God defeated evil in the death of Jesus Christ by submitting and succumbing to it. The theology of the cross allowed him to interpret the deaths of martyrs as mopping up actions in God’s battle against evil.” Kolb sees “all [Luther’s] treatments of contemporary martyrs, from 1523 to 1540”[124] depicting this “battle.” And sure enough, we find that the martyred creatures too were enlisted as God’s soldiers against Satan and his forces. In his commentary on Gen 2:1—“And heaven and earth were completed, and all the host of them”—Luther had unpacked exercitus (“host, army”) in an extravagantly “literal” fashion. Why in this passage did Moses use a “military term” (militari verbo) for the creation? “Perhaps [he did so] referring to the future, since God afterwards calls himself the ‘God of armies or brigades’—that is, not only of angels or spirits, but of the whole creation [totius creaturae], which wages war for and serves [militat et servit] him.”[125] The “future” summoning creation to arms opens with the fall—first of Satan, and then of humankind. Luther a little later in the chapter links the fall’s impact on creation with Rom 8:20.[126] The reformer makes clear, however, that despite their “subjection,” the creatures continue in loyal service to their Maker. They withstand a furious foe:

After Satan had been cast out by God for his sin, he was filled with so much hatred of God and humans that, if he were able, he would in one moment despoil the sea of its fish, the air of its birds, the earth of every sort of fruit—he’d destroy everything! But God created all these creatures to stand in battle formation [in milicia] and unceasingly war against the devil and human beings on our behalf. Meanwhile, they serve and succor us.[127]

Satan hates creation—sea, air, and earth. Elert sums up the reformer’s perspective well: “If the world is not only in opposition to God but is also His creature, then . . . the eye of faith will see the beauty of the world as the conquering of demonic darkness.”[128] Satan does his utmost to bring the lively creation to naught. He would ruin all creatures if he could, but they resist him as good soldiers of their Creator. In the Luther quote above, the creatures also war contra homines, “against human beings.” This is in contrast to their “service and succor” pro nobis, “for us.” Luther only hints here at what he preaches starkly on Rom 8:19–22: the creation yields to the bulk of humankind “unwillingly,” but delights to benefit “us” in the church. Likewise, expounding Gen 2:1, the reformer does not tell us the exact manner in which creation fights “the devil and human beings.” In his sermons on the Pauline text, however, he endeavors to set the “battle” before our eyes.

In 1523, Luther’s ballad of the Brussels martyrs had pictured “the two boys” locked in combat with Satan. During their trial before the authorities, “the old arch-fiend . . . bade them God’s dear Word abjure,” but Vos and van den Esschen “stood firm as a tower.”[129] The devil was “filled with hate that he was thus defeated.”[130] Paradoxically, the martyrs vanquished Satan by their death. Just as “God defeated evil” on the cross “by submitting and succumbing to it,” so too the martyrs “enter[ed] Christ’s own order” by ascending to the stake.[131] Martyrdom as a victory over Satan was a trope appearing in the earliest Christian literature.[132] Luther’s homilies on Rom 8:19–22 applied this ancient motif to the creation. The creatures “must even endure forced subjection to the wicked and the devil himself.”[133] So long as Satan sees to it that wealth and dominion fall into the hands of his servants, “the earth must submit to be trodden and to be cultivated by many a wicked one, to whom it must yield subsistence.”[134] The creatures also “groan” in sympathy for Christians suffering ignominy as supposed “heretics and enemies of God”[135]—here we likely have once more the church of the martyrs contrasted with the outward power and prestige of Rome. Satan and the wicked fancy they rule creation through their own might and cunning. Unbeknownst to “the world,” the creatures accept their martyrdom knowing that God “wills for his beautiful creation to lie at the feet of Satan,” just as Christ suffers many of his chosen “to obey a tyrant or a Turk.”[136] In v. 22 (“the whole creatura groans till now”), Luther interprets ingemiscit (“sigh/groan”) as nothing less than conscious lamentation. The creatures sue to a “higher court” against their human masters.

Just as we Christians . . . sigh for and implore help in the Lord’s prayer, so do the creatures sigh. Although they have not human utterance, yet they have speech intelligible to God and the Holy Spirit, who mark the creatures’ sighs over their unjust abuse by the ungodly.[137]

Amidst their groaning, the creatures utter cries of accusation. “This accusing cry is beyond human power to express, for God’s created things are innumerable.”[138] Fallen men and women remain deaf to the clamor, but the Judge hears. By continually witnessing against humanity, the creatures (like other martyrs) participate in (to use Kolb’s phrase) the “mopping up” action against evil. Creation’s martyrdom adds to the case building against “the world” that eventually will move the Creator to righteous vindication. The Last Day holds judgment for some, but for others, renewal. “The creation that we now see will become far brighter and more beautiful.”[139] Creation’s “battle” against Satan is thus inseparable from eschatology. The cosmic renovatio also comprises the final plank of Luther’s exegesis of Rom 8:19–22.

3. Creation Expects Vindication

From the earliest centuries, Christian reflection on martyrdom was indelibly shaped by the gospel itself.[140] The story of Christ’s unjust execution inspired the martyrs’ own endurance, while his resurrection on the third day promised ultimate victory over the church’s oppressors. Arguably, then, the expectation of vindication is inextricable from the very concept of “martyrdom.” In company with the tradition, Luther firmly believed that those suffering for the gospel would not bear ignominy forever. On the authority of Rom 8:19–22, the reformer also shared this eschatological hope with the nonhuman creation.

Luther’s 1523 hymn had climaxed with the promise of eschatological vindication for the Brussels martyrs: “Even at the door is summer nigh, the winter now is ended. . . . His hand when once extended, withdraws not till he’s finished.” The reformer expressed the same sentiment more explicitly (if less poetically) while lecturing on Gen 4:10 and the murder of Abel. Likening the slain patriarch to the evangelical martyrs, Luther assured his students,

The blood of the very excellent and steadfast martyr, Leonard Kayser, which was shed in Bavaria, does not remain silent. The blood of Henry von Zütphen, which was shed in Ditmarsen, does not remain silent. . . . I am saying nothing about a thousand others who, although their names were less renowned, nevertheless were comrades of these men both in the confession of their faith and in their martyrdom. The blood of all these will not keep silence. In due time it will compel God to come down from heaven and execute on the earth a judgment that will be unbearable for the enemies of the gospel.[141]

Luther concludes the account with a characteristic exhortation: “Thus we must not assume that God is disregarding our blood. We must not assume that God has no regard for our afflictions.”[142] Their blood would “not be silent,” but would “compel” (coget) God to “execute judgment” on their persecutors on the Last Day.[143]

As they longed for the eschatological reckoning, evangelical martyrs stood in good company. The creation also “wait[ed] with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19). Luther preached this verse in vividly personal terms:

Creation is subjected, but “in hope.” So watch out! We Christians hope for deliverance along with the creation, and it hopes along with us. The ungodly do not like to hear that creation will be made free. It will be delivered and will attain the glorious freedom of the sons of God, that is, it will enter a kind of service in which the ungodly will no longer see either sun, sky, or any creature, but only wailing and the jealous wrath of fire. Then neither sun nor any creature will smile upon you . . . because you ignored the service of the creation, which served you by the will of God.[144]

For Luther, the creatures’ eternal fate was a matter of justice. The creation had obediently borne the martyrs’ cross, and so would have a share in the martyrs’ joy. At the eschaton, it would “no longer smile” on the Devil and his cohorts. To the contrary: the creatures would witness their former oppressors banished and “thrust into hell, and for all eternity . . . denied sight of sun and moon, the enjoyment of a drop of water or a breath of air, and forever deprived of every blessing.”[145] At this point, it is worth noting how unabashedly material Luther’s vision of eternity was. The damned would pine for air and water, even as the elect would “be impressed with the grandeur of the sun, the majesty of the trees and the beauty of the flowers.”[146] Creation’s final “grandeur” would also vindicate it from the “corruption” and “vanity” incurred by Adam’s transgression. The martyred creatures were destined for a glory even greater than their prelapsarian purity. Quoting Isa 30:26—“the light of the moon will be as the sun”—Luther promised a fully cosmic renovation. In the renewed heavens and earth, “the sun will become seven times more beautiful. Similarly with all the other creatures: sky, stars, grass, and fruits. And we sons of God will be like the sun even in our bodies.”[147]

Once again, Luther did not consign his eschatology to the future, but drew an immediate lesson from the fate of “stars, grass, and fruits.” The church’s solidarity with creation began in the present. Luther encouraged his congregation to “comfort yourselves with that! You who groan . . . are not alone. All creation stands with you, groans against serving the devil and the ungodly.”[148] As he had done with the patriarch Joseph in Gen 39, Luther set up the creatures as exemplary martyrs for Christians to imitate. The creation lay subject at the feet of the ungodly, just as the evangelical church suffered persecution. And yet these trials produced not despair, but hope, for “we are assured that the captivity will not endure forever, but a time must come when the creatures will be delivered.”[149] No less than Leonard Kayser and Henry of Zütphen, the groaning creation would not “keep silence,” but in due time would compel the Creator to vindicate his handiwork.

V. Conclusion: “On The Same Path”

We began our study with Luther’s 1542 letter to his bereaved friend, Justus Jonas. Luther’s counsel that Jonas consider “the creation which groans at one with us with groans that are inexpressible” prompted the question: how could Luther, on the basis of Rom 8:19–22, identify the suffering of Christians with that of nonhuman creatures? That inquiry led us to Luther’s 1535 sermon on the Pauline text, in which he boldly named “all creatures” as martyrs.

By now, it is hopefully clear that Luther’s exegesis was “cruciform” in the truest sense—the “groans” of both Christians and creation participated in the paradoxical victory of the cross. And—more surprising still—the creatures not only groaned, but engaged in conversation with God’s people. By patiently enduring martyrdom, the sun, stars, trees, and cattle assumed the role of teachers and exemplars. By “eagerly expecting” the Last Day, they comforted the weary evangelical community. Casting a glance at Luther’s other works, we find that the creaturely conversation was not confined to a single scripture. Preaching on 1 Cor 15 (not coincidently, another high water mark of NT eschatology), Luther discovered the doctrine of the resurrection “hidden” in the annual cycle of seasons: “For since he produces such beautiful new vegetation year after year from a dead kernel and seed, he is much more disposed to do the same with us when we similarly lie buried under the ground and the time comes for an eternal summer to dawn. Then we will come forth far more beautiful and glorious.”[150] The creatures instructed the church by foreshadowing the Creator’s redemptive purposes. Luther drew the conclusion, “Thus Christians hold true converse with trees and all else that grows on earth, and the latter, in turn, with them.”[151]

In the final analysis, perhaps it is not surprising that a theologian who “talked with trees” could also name nonhuman creatures “martyrs.” Luther’s attentiveness to creation’s “groans” convinced him that the church and the material cosmos were fellows, presently and into eternity. “Wait for it; your hope is certain! It is on the same path as creation.”[152] Without fail, the reformer always concluded his exhortations on a note of hope: as the eschatological horizon loomed nearer, those standing in solidarity with the martyred creation had good cause for rejoicing.

Notes

1. D. Martin Luthers Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe: Briefwechsel (18 vols.; Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1930-1985), 10:227-28 (hereafter WA Br). The letter is translated into English in Martin Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel (ed. and trans. Theodore Tappert; LCC; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1955), 75-76. I have rendered the Latin somewhat differently than Tappert at points.
2. WA Br 10:227.
3. Ibid., 10:228.
4. Ibid., 10:227.
5. Ibid. Following “cardinals” the Latin has “Heinz and Meintz,” which is Luther’s shorthand for “opponents of the Reformation in general.”
6. Et ut in Noe factum legimus, contristant Spiritum sanctum, usque ad poenitentiam creaturae totius, quae una nobiscum gemit inenarrabilibus gemitibus pro redemptione sui et nostrum, quam proprediem exaudiet ille, qui gemitus istos scit et intelligit. Amen (WA Br 10:228). By inenarrabilibus gemitibus Luther may also allude to Rom 8:26, further strengthening the contention that the Pauline chapter stands in the background here.
7. In the Vulgate (which remained the basis for Luther’s exegesis throughout his career): Nam expectatio creaturae, revelationem filiorum Dei expectat. Vanitati enim creatura subiecta est non volens, sed propter eum, qui subiecit in spem: quia et ipsa creatura liberabitur a servitute corruptionis in libertatem gloriae filiorum Dei. Scimus enim quod omnis creatura ingemescit, et parturit usque adhuc (Novum Testamentum Latine [ed. D. Eberhard Nestle; Stuttgart, 1906], 407).
8. Martin Luther, “Another Sermon: Romans 8:19-23, ” in The Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 8 (trans. John Nicholas Lenker; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 109-10. This is the second of three sermons that Luther preached on the text. The first and second, both dated to 1535, were translated by John Lenker in the early twentieth century and have been recently reprinted in the edition cited, pp. 101-8, 109-16. Because of the ease of confusing these two pieces, hereafter they will be referred to as “First Sermon” (1535) and “Second Sermon” (1535). The original texts are found in D. Martin Luthers Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe (72 vols.; Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883-1993), 41:301-11, 311-18 (hereafter WA). The final piece, dated 1544, has been translated just recently by Mark E. DeGarmeaux in Luther’s Works, vol. 58 (ed. Christopher Boyd Brown; St. Louis: Concordia, 2010), 163-70 (hereafter LW 58); this sermon will be noted as “Third Sermon” (1544). The source is WA 49:503-10. Although citing the German (and in the third sermon, sometimes Latin) where required, I will utilize the translations throughout.
9. Luther, “First Sermon” (1535), 108.
10. In particular, I will interact with the work of Robert Kolb, “God’s Gift of Martyrdom: The Early Reformation Understanding of Dying for the Faith,” CH 64 (1995): 399-400; David Bagchi, “Luther and the Problem of Martyrdom,” in Martyrs and Martyrologies: Papers Read at the 1992 Summer Meeting and the 1993 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (ed. Diana Wood; Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 209-19; Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1999), esp. 141-53; John A. Maxfield, Luther’s Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identity (Kirksville, Mo.: Trueman State University, 2008), esp. 100-111.
11. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 47.
12. Ibid., 60-62.
13. Miri Rubin, “Choosing Death? Experiences of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Europe,” in Martyrs and Martyrologies, 154.
14. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 46.
15. Ibid., 140.
16. Bagchi, “Luther and the Problem of Martyrdom,” 210; Luther, “Sermo de martyribus” (WA 3:342-46). See also Luther’s Works (ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann; 55 vols., Philadelphia and St. Louis: Fortress and Concordia, 1955-1986), 10:286-92 (hereafter LW).
17. As it reads in Luther’s Vulgate: Moab olla spei mee. Modern translations of the Hebrew have a rather different sense, e.g., “Moab is my washbasin; upon Edom I cast my shoe” (ESV).
18. tribulationes et tribulatores (WA 3:344; see LW 10:288).
19. WA 3:343; see LW 10:287.
20. WA 3:344; see LW 10:289.
21. WA 3:343; see LW 10:287.
22. Bagchi, “Luther and the Problem of Martyrdom,” 210.
23. WA 3:343, 344; see LW 10:288.
24. See Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 270.
25. That is not to say that the theologia crucis is merely about the church’s “crosses” (although Luther’s followers largely received it that way); additionally, and perhaps most importantly, it is also a way of conceiving God himself. See Robert Kolb, “Luther on the Theology of the Cross,” LQ 16 (2002): 444.
26. Kolb, “God’s Gift of Martyrdom,” 411.
27. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 50-51. See esp. Gregory’s discussion of “white martyrdom” in late medieval devotion, such as the Imitatio Christi.
28. WA 3:345; see LW 10:290.
29. WA 3:344; see LW 10:290.
30. WA 3:345; see LW 10:290.
31. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 141.
32. The Netherlands were at this time under the regency of Margaret of Savoy, the aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
33. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 139.
34. Luther, “To the Christians in the Netherlands,” in Letters of Spiritual Counsel, 193. See WA 12:73-80.
35. Luther, “To the Christians in the Netherlands,” 192.
36. Ibid., 193.
37. Ibid.
38. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 141.
39. Ibid., 140-43.
40. Luther, “A New Song Here Shall Be Begun” (LW 53:215).
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 53:216.
43. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 5.
44. See ibid., 329-39. Gregory argues that “conflicting interpretations” of martyrdom hastened the hardening of confessional lines, even in national contexts where groups were able to live together more or less peacefully (such as Mennonites and the Reformed in Holland).
45. Luther, “The Burning of Brother Henry” (LW 32:267).
46. “Second Sermon” (1535), 109-10; see WA 41:311.
47. “Second Sermon” (1535), 109; see WA 41:311.
48. LW 32:266.
49. LW 32:265-66.
50. LW 32:265.
51. Luther, “Preface to Robert Barnes’ Confession of Faith” (LW 60:230).
52. Kolb, “God’s Gift of Martyrdom,” 407.
53. Ibid., 401.
54. Luther, “A Letter of Consolation to All Who Suffer Persecution” (LW 43:62, 63; emphasis added).
55. Kolb, “God’s Gift of Martyrdom,” 403.
56. Ibid., 404.
57. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, 255.
58. Robert Kolb, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross Fifteen Years after Heidelberg: Lectures on the Psalms of Ascent,” JEH 61 (2010): 85. Kolb uses as a test case Luther’s work on the Psalms from the late 1530s.
59. “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:169).
60. The Lectures comprise two parts: Luther’s interlinear glosses on the text and his Scholia, which were extended commentaries on selected passages. Fortunately, Luther has left us both kinds of material on Rom 8:19-22.
61. Timothy George, “Martin Luther,” in Reading Romans through the Centuries: From the Early Church to Karl Barth (ed. Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen; Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005), 103. George’s introduction helpfully places the Lectures in their university context—even identifying the time of day class began (6:00 a.m.!) and the materials Luther possibly consulted in preparation.
62. Luther, Scholium on Rom 8:19 (WA 56:372; see LW 25:362).
63. Augustine of Hippo, Expositio quarandam propositionum ex epistola ad Romanos in Augustine on Romans: Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, Unfinished Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ed. Paula Fredriksen Landes; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1982), 22.
64. For a sampling of Augustine’s impact on Rom 8:18-22’s medieval career, see William of St. Thierry, Expositio in epistolam ad Romanos (PL 180:633c-635d); Peter Abelard, Commentaria in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos (CCCM 11:219-220); Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam in Bibliorum sacrorum cum glossa ordinaria iam ante quidem a Strabo Fulgensi collecta . . . et postilla Nicolai Lyrani, vol. 6 (Venice, 1603), cols. 108-109.
65. Luther, Glossa on Rom 8:20 (WA 56:80; see LW 25:72).
66. Luther, Scholium on Rom 8:19 (WA 56:371; see LW 25:360-61).
67. For an example near to Luther in time and popular throughout the sixteenth century, see Denis the Carthusian, Ennaratio in epistolam beati Pauli ad Romanos, in Opera Omnia, vol. 13 (Montreuil-sur-Mer: Typis Cartusiae S. Mariae de Pratis, 1901), col. 66d
68. Luther, Scholium on Rom 8:19 (WA 56:371; see LW 25:361).
69. Luther, Scholium on Rom 8:19 (WA 56:327; see LW 25:361).
70. Luther, Scholium on Rom 8:20 (WA 56:372; see LW 25:362). Luther’s reference to “marvelous power” is sarcastic.
71. Luther, Scholium on Rom 8:19 (WA 56:372; see LW 25:362).
72. Luther, Glossa on Rom 8:20 (WA 56:79; see LW 25:72).
73. Luther, Scholium on Rom 8:19 (WA 56:372; see LW 25:362).
74. Luther, Scholium on Rom 8:19 (WA 56:371; see LW 25:360). See also Kolb, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Fifteen Years after Heidelberg,” 84. Kolb identifies 1 Cor 2 as a central text informing Luther’s cruciform hermeneutic.
75. Werner Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism (trans. Walter A. Hansen; St. Louis: Concordia, 1962), 509.
76. For a review of the commentary’s neglect in twentieth-century scholarship, as well as its contemporary resurgence, see Mickey Leland Mattox, “Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs”: Martin Luther’s Interpretation of the Women of Genesis in the “Enarrationes in Genesin,” 1535-45 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 263-75. Mattox persuasively defends the commentary’s integrity against the deconstructions of Peter Meinhold.
77. See, e.g., WA 42:58 (LW 1:77), WA 42:76 (LW 1:100), WA 42:80 (LW 1:106), WA 42:152 (LW 1:204).
78. WA 42:58; see LW 1:77.
79. Maxfield, Luther’s Lectures on Genesis, 185.
80. WA 44:370-71; see LW 7:96.
81. WA 44:370; see LW 7:96.
82. For Joseph as an embodiment of the “theology of the cross,” see Mattox, “Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs,” 225-42. Mattox sees Luther presenting Joseph as a “type not only of the Christian tested by God, but also of the suffering of the abandoned Christ” (226).
83. WA 44:372; see LW 7:98.
84. WA 44:372; see LW 7:98.
85. WA 44:372; see LW 7:98. See also Mattox, “Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs,” 231-35. In what follows, I am not suggesting that Luther in this chapter is only concerned with creation themes or that creation is even his most explicit concern. Mattox demonstrates helpfully Luther’s place in the history of exegesis surrounding Potiphar’s wife, for instance.
86. In addition to Joseph, Maxfield helpfully discusses the role of Abraham and Sarah as model martyrs and disciples (see Luther’s Lectures on Genesis, 111-12).
87. WA 44:371; see LW 7:96-97.
88. Maxfield, Luther’s Lectures on Genesis, 186.
89. Verum ut Paulus ait: ‘Creatura subiecta est vanitati, propter eum autem qui subiect’, servimus, docemus, admonemus, patimur, consolamur, et facimus ea quae a Deo mandata magna ex parte indignis, ubi nihil lucramur nostris officiis, quam odium, invidiam, exilium. Ac tota vita nostra nihil aliud est, quam perditio beneficiorum (WA 44:370; emphasis added). The standard translation falls short here. The sentence is broken into two distinct thoughts—“But, as Paul says: ‘the creature has been subjected to futility but for the sake of him who subjected it’ (Rom 8:20). In great part we serve, teach, admonish, give consolation, and do the things commanded by God for unworthy men” (LW 7:97). This division makes it look as if the content of “what Paul says” is limited to a quotation of Rom 8:20. In fact, Luther does not quote the entire verse, but drops out the phrase non volens “not willingly,” so as to make the Pauline language fit seamlessly into his statement of “what we do” (i.e., “teach,” etc.). In other words, Luther wants his readers to understand that we (i.e., the true church) are “subjected to vanity” along with “the creation,” and our duties to the world constitute our “subjection” which we endure “for the sake of him who subjected,” i.e., God. The point may seem trivial, but it in fact highlights how closely Luther associates the “subject” creatura and the “subject” church—creatures and Christians unite in both service and suffering.
90. Luther, “Against the Roman Papacy, An Institution of the Devil” (1545) (LW 41:361). The allusion is to Rom 8:21. The “donkey stable” is the papacy.
91. WA 44:371-72; see LW 7:97-98.
92. Luther may also have in mind Matt 5:45: “[God] makes his sun rise over the good and bad; and it rain on the just and on the unjust” (Vg.). This would actually strengthen the connection, for Luther frequently pairs this verse with Rom 8:19-20. See “First Sermon” (1535), 107; “Third Sermon” (1544), 166.
93. Luther, “First Sermon” (1535), 104.
94. For an account of the sermons, see Mark E. DeGarmeaux, introduction to “Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Romans 8:18-23” (LW 58:163-64).
95. WA 41:311. See “Second Sermon” (1535), 97.
96. See introduction to LW 1 (ix). See also Luther’s letter “To the Pious Reader” (WA 42:1-2).
97. Luther, “First Sermon” (1535), 108.
98. Kolb, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Fifteen Years after Heidelberg,” 74.
99. Luther, “Second Sermon” (1535), 116.
100. WA 41:310. Luther refers specifically to the “good creation” of gold.
101. Luther, “First Sermon”(1535), 103.
102. Luther, “Second Sermon” (1535), 109.
103. WA 41:311. See “Second Sermon” (1535), 109.
104. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:166).
105. Luther, “First Sermon” (1535), 104.
106. WA 41:310. See “First Sermon” (1535), 107.
107. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:166).
108. Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation (trans. Thomas H. Trapp; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 104.
109. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:168).
110. Luther, “To the Christians in the Netherlands,” 183.
111. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 203-5, 213.
112. Luther, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants” (LW 46:53).
113. For a helpful account of Anabaptist martyrdoms and the theologies that developed from them, see Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 197-247.
114. Luther, Table Talk, recorded by Anthony Lauterbach (LW 54:288).
115. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 320.
116. Ibid., 322. My analysis at this point is very much indebted to Gregory.
117. Robert Kolb, For All the Saints: Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the Lutheran Reformation (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1987), 107-15. In addition to the martyr book of Ludwig Rabus (which prominently features Luther), Kolb produces early sermons and treatises on Luther’s “martyrdom.”
118. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:166).
119. Luther, “Second Sermon” (1535), 114.
120. WA 49:510. See “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:170).
121. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:168; see WA 49:508).
122. WA 49:508; emphasis added. See “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:168).
123. Nos cum ea clamamus, et ipsa nobiscum (WA 49:508). See “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:168).
124. Kolb, “God’s Gift of Martyrdom,” 403.
125. WA 42:56; see LW 1:74.
126. WA 42:58; see LW 1:77.
127. WA 42:56; see LW 1:74.
128. Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 461.
129. LW 53:215.
130. Ibid.
131. Kolb, “God’s Gift of Martyrdom,” 403; LW 53:215.
132. See, e.g., Mart. Pol. 3.4.
133. Luther, “Second Sermon” (1535), 109.
134. Ibid., 110.
135. Ibid.
136. Ibid., 115.
137. Luther, “First Sermon” (1535), 104.
138. Ibid.
139. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:169).
140. In the early church, Irenaeus and Tertullian both cited Rom 8:19-22 in connection to the martyrs’ vindication. For Tertullian, see Herm. 11 (CSEL 47:138.14-17). Irenaeus believed that the creation must be restored to its primeval glory so that “without hindrance it may serve the just” (Haer. 4.32.1) (PG 7:1210c). The “just” are above all the martyrs: “For justice demands that . . . in the creation [conditione] in which they have been killed for the love of God that they should be made alive again in that same creation [in ipsa vivificari]” (Haer. 4.32.1) (PG 7:120b). While similar to that of Luther in many ways, Irenaeus’s interpretation focuses exclusively on the human martyrs’ vindication—creation functions as their reward. Nowhere does Irenaeus hint that creation itself might be a “martyr” or merit vindication in its own right. In this respect, Luther has offered a much bolder reading of the scripture than his ancient predecessors.
141. LW 1:288; see WA 42:213.
142. LW 1:288; see WA 42:213.
143. WA 42:213; see LW 1:288.
144. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:169).
145. Luther, “Second Sermon” (1535), 115.
146. Ibid., 112.
147. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:169).
148. Ibid.
149. Luther, “First Sermon” (1535), 108.
150. Luther, “Sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:35-38” (1532) (LW 28:180). Note that Luther also uses the image of “summer” to describe the eschatological future in his hymn to the Brussels martyrs (see “A New Song” [LW 53:216]).
151. LW 28:180.
152. Luther, “Third Sermon” (1544) (LW 58:170).