![]() Yet Luther was not a lover of human freedom: he insisted on absolute obedience to the external authority of secular rulers and his violent denunciation of the Peasants’ Revolt and his call for its bloody repression demonstrated a fanatical determination to uphold external authority. That is why the English historian Christopher Hill went so far as to claim that the ‘essence of protestantism – the priesthood of all believers – was logically a doctrine of individualist anarchy’. ![]() The very suggestion that individual conscience could oppose external authority would, in the years to come, crystallise into the affirmation of the ideal of individual freedom. When Luther suggested that he could not but obey his individual conscience, he provided the basis for an argument that was soon perceived as subversive. It soon became clear that once individuals are granted inner freedom they find it difficult to unquestioningly obey any form of authority. The recognition of a sphere where political rule could not legitimately coerce the individual ultimately undermined the status of absolutist authority in all spheres of life. Nevertheless, the coexistence of apparently contradictory relations to authority could not indefinitely survive without one giving way to another. Luther’s protection of the soul from secular imposition led to the paradox of inner freedom with external domination. The freeing of the inner person from the power of external authority restricted the exercise of absolute authority in all its forms. In helping to free the inner person from the power of external authority, Luther’s theology contributed to the weakening of the very concept of external authority, including that of divine authority. This idealisation of the soul and its protected status from external authority encouraged European culture to devote greater interest in individual conscience and eventually to endow the self with moral authority. His Treatise on Good Works (1520) asserted that ‘the power of the temporal authority, whether it does right or wrong, cannot harm the soul’. The distinction that Luther drew about the nature of authority represented an important step in the conceptualisation of a new limit on its exercise. In so doing, his argument implicitly called into question the right of external authority to exercise power over the inner life of people. ![]() Luther did not merely assert the authority of individual conscience to justify his own actions he advanced a compelling case for the value of people being able to act in accordance with the dictates of their conscience. ![]() Until this point, authority was rarely questioned explicitly: the authority of individual rulers or the legitimacy of a particular claim to authority was challenged, but not authority itself.ĭid Luther really hurl the legendary words – ‘Here I stand, so help me God, I can do no other’ – at his accusers? In a sense it does not matter. The very idea of authority – religious and political – became, for the first time, a focus for philosophical debate. His theology of reform also opened up a wider debate on obedience and resistance to political rule. Luther’s claim that Christians could have direct access to God without the need for an intermediary threatened the role of the clergy and the Church hierarchy. This intermeshing of religious and political conflict, which eventually led to the disintegration of a united Christendom, also provoked an irresolvable debate about the locus of religious authority. Luther’s challenge to the papacy’s moral status converged with the ascendancy of secular political forces that challenged its power. His defiant stand gave voice to a sentiment that would eventually provide legitimation for disobeying all forms of authority. His actions did not simply call into question the moral authority of the Church. Luther demanded that the papacy respond to his criticisms of the Church’s moral failings. Yet the Reformation, which started with the publication of his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, set in motion a chain of events that fundamentally undermined the idea of authority itself. It is unlikely that Martin Luther set out to shatter authority.
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