“Luther discovered a perfect example of the Word’s ability to grow God’s kingdom sans a baton or baseball bat in his own experience of the preceding years. “I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends…, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”

“I can drive no man to heaven or beat him into it with a club.” So observed Luther on March 11th, 1522, in a sermon to Wittenberg parishioners. Though his point was rather obvious, Luther felt compelled to make it because in his absence from Wittenberg during the preceding ten months, certain persons had grown impatient with the progress of reformation in the city and had resorted to means of legal compulsion and/or violence to bring about the changes in doctrine and worship they desired.

Luther had, in fact, made the same point in a sermon to the same audience the preceding day. Having insisted in no uncertain terms upon the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation, from which faith love for God and others as well as pure worship necessarily springs, Luther emphasized in that earlier sermon that such faith itself properly springs from the proclamation of God’s promises, not from the use of force: “I cannot, nor should I, force anyone to have faith.” Indeed, the use of force is ultimately, in Luther’s estimation, unnecessary and unfruitful for the successful expansion of God’s kingdom, because the divine word of promise — first as it is encountered in Scripture and then as it is proclaimed by God’s ordained ministers — accomplishes that very task. “The Word created heaven and earth and all things; the Word must do this thing [i.e., achieve the conversion of men], and not we poor sinners.” For our part “we should give free course to the Word and not add our works” — that is, our means of coercion — “to it.” “We should,” that is, “preach the Word, but the results must be left solely to God’s good pleasure.”

Luther discovered a perfect example of the Word’s ability to grow God’s kingdom sans a baton or baseball bat in his own experience of the preceding years. “I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends…, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”

It’s questionable whether Luther retained his position on the exclusive prerogative of the Word to accomplish the growth of Christ’s kingdom in later years. Increasingly alarmed over time by the extreme efforts of Anabaptists to implement their own version of a spiritual/civil kingdom by force (which means, thankfully, they never possessed in sufficient measure), Luther grew ever more tolerant of the use of reciprocal force to keep the Anabaptists in line, civilly and (perhaps) religiously. One could, maybe, argue that his position remained consistent, and that the force against the Anabaptists he eventually endorsed was purely towards the end of political restraint rather than religious uniformity.

Regardless, the willingness Luther showed even in the 1520s to see civil offenders repressed by military/legal means reminds us that his doctrine of the Word’s power was specifically a theological point about how Christ’s kingdom is sustained and increased, not a generic endorsement of persuasion vis-à-vis coercion in every conceivable context.  A strong hand is sometimes required to keep wayward citizens — or, for that matter, wayward children — in line. Only the Word, however, can produce genuine faith, hope, and love directed towards God within a man, woman, or child.

Luther found a biblical example of the Word’s exclusive power to bring about renewal and reform in the Acts 17 account of Paul’s missionary work in Athens. “When Paul came to Athens, a mighty city, he found in the temple many ancient altars, and he went from one to the other and looked at them all, but he did not kick down a single one of them with his foot. Rather he stood up in the middle of the market place and said they were nothing but idolatrous things and begged the people to forsake them; yet he did not destroy one of them by force. When the Word took hold of their hearts, they forsook them of their own accord.”

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