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An assignment on Martin Luther and Women

Subject: HC – 20: Women in the History of Christianity

Submitted to: P. R. Margaret kalaiselvi

Submitted by: Shongsir Dilbert Monsang M.Th.Iyr. (H. C)

Introduction

Educated man’s ideas about women are one of the easiest things to investigate when
exploring the experience of women in any culture, as they are more likely to be recorded than
women’s own ideas. So in order to strengthen/support the struggle of women’s right/equality
there has been studies on the Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther’s ideas about women. This
paper briefly deals on Martin Luther and Women.

Luther’s viewed on Women

Martin Luther wrote on various theological, political and intellectual topics in books,
pamphlets and journals. And there are countless biographies about Martin Luther’s in many
languages; there are specialized analyses of his ideas about various theological, political and
intellectual topics. But sadly there has been not a detail written record about women by
Martin Luther. No doubt, he used to mention about women here and there in his writings on
marriages, family life, monks and nuns etc. ( This may be due to his main concern to other
issues and the Feminist debates had not taken strong stand in his days like today). So when
someone wants to study Martin Luther’s ideas about women, they searched in his writing on
Creation, marriages, family life, monks and nuns and sometime from his meal time table talk,
letters and preaching’s.

Creation: Luther never took the second creation account (Gen. 2:4b-25) to expressed his
viewed on the creation of human being, which anti-feminist used as their tool to discriminate
women/rule over women. Instead his creation theology/ideas were taken from Genesis 1:1-
2:4a and especially from Genesis 1:26, 27 about human being and said, “I believe that God
has created me together with all that exist”.1 He believe that not only man and woman were
created by God but also all that exists – Plants, animals, birds, fish etc. Here there is no
question of woman form from man and so they are subordinate to man. When it comes to the

1
Timothy J. Wengert, ed. Harvesting Martin Luther’s Reflections on Theology, Ethics, and the Church (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans publication company, 2004), 79.
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image of God it is both man (Adam) and woman (Eve) that God created them in His image
and every quality in man is also in woman, Luther said.2

Marriages: Marriage was considered to be obstacle, temptation, and sinful these were the
reasons why Clergies were not allowed to marry in those days and Celibacy was a practice
(even today Roman Catholic Clergies were not allowed to marry). The idea was if a Clergy
marry, his time will be taken by his wife and he will not be able to serve the church properly.
Women were regarded as unclean, tempters so who ever fall into women fall into sin, the
teaching was “even if wisdom itself were a woman also one should not marry”.3 These kinds
of ideas greatly degraded the status of women and they were regarded as evil. So man prefers
to stay unmarried. At this time Luther’s teaching was marriage was ordained by God in the
creation and it is God’s will that man and woman get marry, live a family life and multiply.
Man and woman can be partners in God’s ministry complementing each other in God’s
ministry (this is against the teaching and believe of man only is to be ministers). He even
encourages the monks and nuns to get marry if they will and not to submit themselves
forcefully against their will to the order/law of practicing celibate life.4 His teaching was so
influential that some nuns ran out of their monastery and got marry, among them Luther
marry Katherine Von Bora and settle an example of Christian family life.5

Priesthood of all believers: By this every individual believers stand directly before God,
he/she intercede to God for herself/himself. She/he read the Bible, interprets it, confess
her/his sin and pray. For every individual there is no substitution; she/he has received the
authority of substitution. Christ Jesus has set every believer in Him free and reconciles them
to God. So in this Priesthood of all believers idea what Luther was saying is there is no higher
and lower, man-superior and woman-inferior, but all are equal because Christ has make us
equal, He has make us priest, every believer in Christ is a priest both men and women.6

The Office of the Ministry and the Call: Even though Luther said every believer is a priest
also it would not, however, be possible for every member of the community to publicly
administer the word and sacrament to the entire community. That would lead to a deplorable
confusion. To avoid this community must commit the public ministry to “some on person”
who administers it for the sake of and in the name of the church. And for this office of the
ministry Luther never said/wrote that it will be man only who will be in this office of the
ministry. He does say, “Some one person”7 who had the inner call from God and approved by
the people and not necessarily insisted by people against the person will. The Call should be
individual willingness to the call of God and the people. And this “some one person” can be a
woman or a man.8 So where is the question of man alone in the ministry of the office?

2
Hugh Thomson Kerr, ed. A Compend of Luther’s Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster press, 1943), 82.
3
Timothy J. Wengert, ed. Harvesting Martin Luther’s Reflections on Theology, Ethics, and the Church, 170.
4
Hugh Thomson Kerr, ed. A Compend of Luther’s Theology, 194.
5
James L. Schaaf, trs. Martin Luther Shaping and Defining the Reformation 1521-1532 (Minneapolis: Fortress
press, 1994), 198.
6
Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress press, 1988), 314-315.
7
Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, 323.
8
Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, 329.
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Luther in the Scholarship on Women

Most consideration of women and the reformation go off in one of two directions. The
first explores women’s action in support of or in opposition to the protestant and catholic
reformations and looks more broadly at women’s spiritual practices during this period. The
second focuses on the ideas of the reformers and the effects of the reformations on women
and on structures that are important to women, such as the family.9

Analyses of Luther’s ideas about women, marriage and sexuality have been part of the
second direction, and they, too, have tended to divide into two groups. Older studies of
Luther’s and other protestant thinkers’ ideas about marriage and the family, often written
from a clear confessional viewed point, frequently describe Luther as rescuing marriage (and
by extension women) from the depth of dishonour created by the medieval catholic
championing of the virginity. These studied are joined in their largely positive evaluation of
the effects of Luther’s ideas on women by newer works written primarily by church
historians trained in Germany, who also emphasize the honor accorded the role of wife and
mother in Luther’s thinking; because the vast majority of women in early modern Europe
were wives and mothers, this respects worked to improve status and heighten their social role.
Luther took great care, they note, to highlight the important role women played in both the
Old and New Testament, and specifically and vociferously attacked the scholastic denigration
of women. For Luther, women were created by God and could be saved by faith; spiritual
men and women were largely equal.10

A second group of scholars, most of them social historian and literary scholars trained
outside Germany, have viewed Luther’s ideas about women and their impact more
negatively. They point out that elevating marriage is not the same thing as elevating women,
and that, by emphasizing the centrality of marriage, Luther and other Protestants contributed
to growing negative opinions of the 10-15 per cent of the population who never married, and
restricted women’s proper sphere of influence to the household. They note that though Luther
denounced the ideas of Aristotle on many things, he accepted the Greek Philosopher’s idea
that women’s weaker nature was inherent in their very being; this inferiority was deepened by
Eve’s actions and God’s words in the Garden of Eden, but was there from creation. Women’s
faith and spiritual equality were not to have social or political consequences, and the Biblical
examples of women’s preaching or teaching were not to be taken as authorizing such actions
among contemporary women.11

9
Merry E. Wiesner, “Studies of women, the Family and Gender” in “Reformation Europe: A guide to Research
II”, edited by William S. Maltby (St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1992), 159-87.
10
Susan C. Karant-Nunn and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds. Luther on Women a Source Book (Cambridge:
Cambridge University press, 2003), 89-90.
11
Renate Bridenthal, “The Reformation of Women” In “Becoming Visible: Women in European History 3 rd
edition, edited by Susan Mosher Stuard and Merry E. Wiesner (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 175-202.
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Conclusion
There are plenty of ammunition in Luther’s words for both sides of the debate (those
who said Luther favour women and those who against it), often expressed in the strong
language that he favoured; he is self contradictory, but never ambiguous. Because Churches
today are still wrestling with the balance between men’s and women’s spiritual equality and
social difference, his words, like those of other authoritative religious writers, are not simply
matters of history interest. The contradictions found in Luther’s writings are also found in the
central books underlying the world religions. So that this, too, are easily mined for statements
supporting nearly every opinion that could be held about the relative worth of and proper role
for women and men.

Bibliography
Althaus, Paul. The Theology of Martin Luther. Philadelphia: Fortress press, 1988.

Bridenthal, Renate. “The Reformation of Women” In “Becoming Visible: Women in European

History” 3rd edition, edited by Susan Mosher Stuard and Merry E. Wiesner. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Karant-Nunn, Susan C. and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds. Luther on Women a Source Book.
Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2003.

Kerr, Hugh Thomson, ed. A Compend of Luther’s Theology. Philadelphia: The Westminster
press, 1943.

Schaaf, James L. trs. Martin Luther Shaping and Defining the Reformation 1521-1532.
Minneapolis: Fortress press, 1994.

Wengert, Timothy J, ed. Harvesting Martin Luther’s Reflections on Theology, Ethics, and the
Church. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publication Company, 2004.

Wiesner, Merry E. “Studies of women, the Family and Gender” in “Reformation Europe: A
guide to Research II”, edited by William S. Maltby. St. Louis: Center for Reformation
Research, 1992.