A Lutheran Perspective
We turn then to the Lutheran development and use of adiaphora in the context of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. The basic definition for adiaphora is: things neither commanded nor forbidden in scripture. It is also often defined as “matters of indifference.” As a starting point for Lutherans, the definition of this term has been informed by Article Seven of the Augsburg Confession, which states: “For this is enough for the true unity of the Christian church that the gospel is preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in conformity with the divine Word.
It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that uniform ceremonies, instituted by human beings, be observed everywhere” (Melanchthon, 42). A definite distinction is made between that which is necessary and essential (Word and Sacraments) as opposed to that which may be beneficial and helpful, but is not considered necessary. (Johnson). It should be noted that the category of adiaphora is defined by those things that are not necessary for the unity of the Christian church. For Lutherans, “humanly instituted ceremonies” were thus adiaphora, and as such, these ceremonies may or may not be observed according to the discretion of local congregations.
The definition of adiaphora that is drawn from Melanchthon explanation in the Augsburg Confession was formed principally upon the teachings of Martin Luther set forth in a number of treatises and essays that he produced in response to questions arising during the Reformation. In July of 1520, Luther published a treatise entitled “A Treatise On The New Testament, That Is, The Holy Mass.” Though he had previously written several treatises on the sacraments, Luther had only dealt with the definition and theology of the sacraments in these earlier works. He had not yet addressed the implications of changes in worship practices that were necessary to reflect the theology of the sacraments that he had expounded.
In “A Treatise On The New Testament, That Is, The Holy Mass” Luther began his attack on the Roman Catholic practices in the mass, particularly those practices that reflected the Roman Church’s theology of the mass as a sacrifice – our sacrifice to God. What was essential to Luther was the understanding that worship is the means of God’s working and granting his grace to us humans and not an effort by humans to gain or earn the favor of God by any work of man himself.
In order to accomplish this aim, Luther sought, in this treatise, to define the mass as a testament that is God’s testament to us. If the mass is defined as a testament, then worship must be ordered and practiced to reflect such an understanding. Before defining the mass as a testament, Luther confronts one of his foremost concerns with the way mass is practiced – the distractions from the essential truth of the Gospel. On this point Luther states:
And now it has finally come to this: the chief thing in the mass has been forgotten, and nothing is remembered except the additions of men! … Indeed, the greatest and most useful art is to know what really and essentially belongs to the mass, and what is added and foreign to it. For where there is no clear distinction, the eyes and the heart are easily misled by such sham into a false impression and delusion. Then what men have contrived is considered the mass; and what the mass really is, is never experienced, to say nothing of deriving benefit from it ... If we desire to observe mass properly and to understand it, then we must surrender everything that the eyes behold and that the senses suggest – be it vestments, bells, songs, ornaments, prayers, processions, elevations, prostrations, or whatever happens in the mass – until we first grasp and thoroughly ponder the words of Christ, by which he performed and instituted the mass and commanded us to perform it. For therein lies the whole mass, its nature, work, profit, and benefit. Without the words nothing is derived from the mass. (LW35: 81)
From this passage, it can be noted that Luther is making distinctions between that which is necessary – starting to be defined as word and sacraments – and that which is adiaphora. Luther progresses along this tact as he acknowledges: “Although I neither wish nor am able to displace or discard such additions, still, because such pompous forms are perilous, we must never permit ourselves to be led away by them from the simple institution of Christ and from the right use of the mass” (LW35: 81).
Luther’s intention was not to rid worship of traditions instituted by men, but to subordinate all human tradition and practices to the justifying word of God. To perform the mass and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper properly, such worship practices must first rightly be understood in the literal terms by which Christ instituted it – as a testament – when Jesus says: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:20). To Luther it was essential that one must define and understand the mass as a testament, as he explained:
Not every vow is called a testament, but only a last irrevocable will of one who is about to die, whereby he bequeaths his goods, allotted and assigned to be distributed to whom he will. Just as St. Paul says to the Hebrews [9:16-17] that a testament must be made operative by death, and is not in effect while the one still lives who made the testament. For other vows, made as long as one lives, may be altered or recalled and hence are not called testaments … For if God is to make a testament, as he promises, then he must die; and if he is to die, then he must be a man … Christ also distinguishes this testament from others and says that it is a new and everlasting testament, in his own blood, for the forgiveness of sins; whereby he disannuls the old testament (LW 35:84).
One thing is clearly apparent from his writings on this subject: for Luther, the primacy of the Word must be central to any form of Christian worship. “Let everything be done so that the Word may have free course instead of the prattling and rattling that has been the rule up to now. We can spare everything except the Word. Again, we profit by nothing as much as by the Word” (LW53: 9)
By the term “Word,” it is most likely that Luther included the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion in its simplest form – the elements accompanied by Christ’s words of institution – for it is the proclamation of the gospel in a nutshell. In another of his writings he succinctly stated: “For the preaching ought to be nothing but an explanation of the words of Christ, when he instituted the mass and said, ‘This is my body, this is my blood,’ etc. What is the whole gospel but an explanation of this testament?” (LW 35:106).
Calvinists, Anabaptists, Zinglians, and others among the Protestant Reformers may have appealed to the Word of God as the principal element to worship, but in Luther’s view, the Roman Church did not. For Rome, in sharp contrast to the Reformers, the principal element to worship practice was tradition – the performance of the mass as a sacrifice to God, based on human additions to the worship service. And what differentiated Luther from other reform movements that may have appealed to the Word of God as the principle element in worship was Luther’s insistence on that “Word” being God’s declaration of justification to the ungodly. While Luther was in no way opposed to readings and singing in worship, he nevertheless insisted that whatever was read or sung must be applied to the litmus test of God’s Word of justification. If anything said, sung, or performed in worship is in conflict with God’s justifying Word, then it was not adiaphora. Rather, it must be reformed or removed.
Several years later, Luther wrote an order of service for the German mass. There had been other German orders of worship that had been developed, but these had merely taken the Latin mass and translated it into German. When Luther developed his order of service, he not only translated the liturgy’s text into the German vernacular, he also changed the music into a more German style and rhythm. In defense of his reforms, he wrote: “I would gladly have a German mass today, . . . But I would very much like it to have a true German character. For to translate the Latin text and retain the Latin tone or notes has my sanction, though it doesn’t sound polished or well done.
Both the text and notes, accent, melody, and manner of rendering ought to grow out of the true mother tongue and its inflection, otherwise all of it becomes an imitation in the manner of the apes” (LW 40:141). While seeking to meet the need of his German countrymen who desired a reformed worship order, Luther was cautious about making his fresh new form of practice into something legalistic and binding by replacing one oppressive form of worship with another. Instead, Luther recognized that his new order of worship was within the category of adiaphora and so offered it with the following instruction:
“I would kindly and for God’s sake request all those who see this order of service or desire to follow it: Do not make it a rigid law to bind or entangle anyone’s conscience, but use it in Christina liberty as long, when, where, and how you find it to be practical and useful” (LW 53:61). By this example, Luther provides invaluable assistance for understanding and allowing a variety of practices that are considered adiaphora. They are not required by the command of Scripture nor are they essential to justification or the nature of the Church. Rather, they may be practiced to the extent that they are practical and useful in the edification of others and the worship of God.
Luther’s view on reforming worship practices is very informative in the discernment of a model for approaching other areas of teaching or practice that present both matters that are essential and those which would be considered adiaphora. In Luther’s case, he had great respect for human traditions and the heritage of Christian worship. Yet, he had unreserved contempt for those who considered external human traditions to essential matters and thus binding upon the conscience.
Instead, he considered such external forms adiaphora and thus, he encouraged freedom to be exercised in these areas. His spirit of diversity in worship, however, was tempered by a disdain for those who desired novelty for its own sake and had no appreciation for the tradition and liturgy that had been handed down through the history of Christian practice. Luther held that reform was necessary only when human additions to those worship practices were in conflict with the proclamation of the Gospel – where it turned worship into a work performed by humans rather than Christ’s work of salvation for and to his people. By developing his German order of worship, Luther attempted to preserve the purity of the Gospel as the central focus of worship, while also providing an order of service that was both engaging to the people and respectful to the tradition of Christian worship (Johnson, 11).
Not many years after Luther’s initial work and application of the concept of adiaphora in reforming worship practices, his successors had to address questions that arose when discarded Roman practices were reintroduced due to the pressures of persecution. The Book of Concord’s Solid Declaration set forth an extensive explanation of this issue:
Concerning ceremonies and church rites which are neither commanded nor forbidden in God’s Word, but are introduced into the Church with a good intention, for the sake of good order and propriety, or otherwise to maintain Christian discipline, a dissension has likewise arisen among some theologians of the Augsburg Confession: the one side holding that also in time of persecution and in case of confession [when confession of faith is to be made], even though the enemies of the Gospel do not come to an agreement with us in doctrine, yet some ceremonies, abrogated [long since], which in themselves are adiaphora, and neither commanded nor forbidden by God, may, without violence to conscience, be reestablished in compliance with the pressure and demand of the adversaries, and thus in such [things which are of themselves] adiaphora, or matters of indifference, we may indeed come to an agreement [have conformity] with them. But the other side contended that in time of persecution, in case of confession, especially when it is the design of the adversaries, either through force and compulsion, or in an insidious manner, to suppress the pure doctrine, and gradually to introduce again into our churches their false doctrine, this, also in adiaphora, can in no way be done, as has been said, without violence to conscience and prejudice to the divine truth. (Solid Declaration, Art. X, ¶1-3).
The remaining paragraphs of Article X set forth in greater detail how matters deemed adiaphora may be allowed, but those which are judged by the Word of God to be false doctrine must be rejected. As with Luther, so the authors of the Solid Declaration looked to God’s Word as the definitive standard when evaluating what God has commanded or forbidden and what matters are indifferent.
In the late 16th century and into the 17th century, the question of permissible worship practices turned from reforming the Roman mass to regulating Protestant worship practices. This issue was the subject of many debates that pitted Lutheran against Calvinist reformers. Ironically, the Calvinist’s started from a position that was consistent with the Lutheran’s Book of Concord. In fact, they defended a concept of the indifference of forms of worship, such as the use of instrumental or vocal music, as the grounds for removal of instruments and the singing of hymns from Calvinist worship practices. (Irwin, 160).
Lutherans, however, were unwilling to settle for an approach founded upon adiaphora because they considered it to be only a half-hearted endorsement of music in worship. While alluding occasionally to the teaching on adiaphora, the Lutherans, instead, saw Scripture and Christian tradition as pointing clearly to the importance of music as a means of praising God and receiving spiritual benefits. Because God instructed such a means of praise, music was regarded as far more integrally connected with the means of salvation than merely considering it to be one of the adiaphoristic forms of worship. While maintaining Luther’s profound respect for music, these later Lutheran theologians’ rigid adherence to the tradition they regarded as authoritative made them insensitive to the role of music in worship.
The issue came to a head at the Colloquy of Montbéliard in 1586 where the Reformed (Calvinist) spokesman Theodore Beza debated the Lutheran Jakob Andreae. Andreae opened the colloquy with an account of how Calvinists were using horses to pull down and tear out pipe organs from church sanctuaries. He contended that this demonstrated that Calvinists erroneously believed that musical instruments, like organs, were expressly forbidden by God in worship, and thus, were not considered by them to be within the allowable realm of adiaphora. (Irwin, 160).
Thinking he had bested his opponent, Andreae was quite taken off guard when Beza agreed that such destructive practices should be condemned because pipe organs, as other musical instruments, were indeed adiaphora. Beza tempered his position, however, by noting that music had been abused under the Roman papacy when it served only to delight human ears. In contrast, he observed that when music is used for the praise of God, it has a special power for moving the human spirit to devotion and true worship.
Beza concluded that “music is neither good nor evil, neither commanded nor forbidden, but that it depends for its value of being used in such a way as to promote true worship” (Irwin, 161). In response, Andreae stated: “[W]e are herein in agreement with one another that organs and instrumental music are a free matter which one may have or not and for which each church has power and authority” (Irwin, 162). Thus, the concept of adiaphora was the foundation for the allowance of a variety of worship practices between Lutherans and Calvinists on the matter of instrumental music.
The debate over the use of both instrumental and vocal music in reformed Christian worship practice, however, continued into the 17th century. From the Lutheran perspective, Philipp Arnoldi set forth a clear statement of the adiaphorist position: “In sum, as far as our figural and instrumental music in German and Latin language is concerned, we have as support the example of our forefathers and Christian freedom. In the Old Testament they necessarily had to perform according to their ceremonial law, but we are not bound to this and do not defend it with such great necessity as the adversaries [i.e. the Calvinists] exert themselves and cry loudly for abolishment” (Irwin, 165 quoting Ceremoniae Lutheranae (Königsberg, 1616).
These Lutheran theologians were adhering to a view of music as adiaphora which was consistent with the high regard that Luther himself had expressed for worship traditions that were consistent with the proclamation of the Gospel. Arnoldi, though, did not consider music itself to be a matter of indifference. Strictly speaking, only the varieties of instrumental and vocal forms of music were within the category of adiaphora. This more refined view of music was expressed by Balthasar Meisner in his work Collegii Adiaphoristici where he observes that adiaphora are “middle things” because they are midway between the divinely commanded and the divinely prohibited (Irwin, 166).
In another of his works, Meisner suggests that music itself has been commanded by God when he stated: “The Holy Spirit is not so much opposed to the sweet joy of holy Psalms as that he required and demanded the same from his faithful in both Testaments” (Irwin, 166 quoting Collegii Adiaphoristici). While Meisner does not cite specific Scriptural prescriptions for the kind of music to be used in the church, he does emphasize that Paul urged the faithful to “love and pursue the holy harmony of songs” (Ibid.).
In comparison with these expressions of Lutheran views on music as adiaphora, the Calvinist theologian Peter Martyr Vermigli articulated his view in support of the exclusion of music with an explanation consistent with an adiaphorist statement of the issue when he wrote:
I affirm that faithful and religious singing may be retained in church; but I do not confess that any precept exists on this matter in the New Testament. Wherefore if there be a church which does not use it, for just cause, it may not rightly be condemned, provided that it does not defend this matter illicitly by its nature or by the precept of God nor stigmatize other churches where singing and music are used or exclude them from the fellowship of Christ (Irwin, 168 quoting Loci Communes (Zürich, 1587)).
While one might imagine that Vermigli’s position would have been welcomed by his brothers on the Lutheran side of the Reformation, their response to the Calvinist churches that excluded music developed into a much more rigorous stance that move farther and farther away from the adiaphorist approach to such matters that had prevailed in the earlier days of the Protestant movement to reform the church.
At the close of the 17th century, one Lutheran theologian thus observed: “In the beginning of the Reformation it happened that middle things [i.e. adiaphora] were employed out of love and for the improvement of the weak; but what was then a free matter in the good hope that those who had such ceremonies would turn to us is now compulsory and almost an article of faith which we cannot change” (Irwin, 172 quoting Theophilus Grossgebauer, Wächterstimme auss dem verwüsteten Zion (Frankfurt am Main, 1661)).
From its beginnings in the early part of the 16th century to the end of the 17th century, Lutheran reformers used an adiaphorist approach by Lutheran reformers to the task of discerning what elements of traditional Christian worship practices could be retained and which needed to be reformed. While their application of adiaphora sometimes yielded a more legalistic conclusion in the defense of what these reformers found to be “necessary,” on the whole, the Lutheran perspective on adiaphora provides for us today a workable model for addressing issues of import within communities of faith that range far beyond questions of worship practices.
In order to examine for carefully the use and effectiveness of adiaphora, we turn now to a more formidable debate that separated the Lutheran church in the Germany of the 1930’s. With the rise of Adolph Hitler to Reich Chancellor in 1933, Nazi rule began to permeate every dimension of German society. The Lutheran Church was then the established state-sponsored religion in Germany. Its ministers were paid by the government as civil servants.
The Nazi’s sought to make this established German church “pure” by the adoption of the Aryan paragraph in the new Church Civil Service Law of that year. This provision, in its initial formulation, restricted membership in the German church to only those of the Aryan race. Later, it was revised to require those who served as ministers of the church to be of Aryan decent. A sizeable number of German pastors organized in opposition to the Aryan paragraph. Among them was the young Dietrich Bonhoeffer who assisted in drafting the following statement in response to the new law:
According to the confession of our church, the church’s teaching office is bound only to authorized vocations in the church. The Aryan paragraph in the new Church Civil Service Law has given rise to a legal situation that directly contradicts this fundamental confessional principle. It proclaims as church law a condition that is unjust according to the confession and that violates the confession. There can be doubt that the ordained clergy affected by the Civil Service Law, insofar as they have not been deprived by formal procedure of the rights of ministry, should continue to exercise in full the right freely to proclaim the Word and freely to administer the sacraments in the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union, which is based on the confessions of the Reformation. Anyone who assents to such a breach of the confession thereby excludes himself from the communion of the church. We therefore demand the repeal of this law, which separates the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union from the Christian church. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Berlin: 1932-1933, 164)
Bonhoeffer and the other pastors who opposed the Aryan paragraph declared that the law that sought to impose this racial restriction upon ministers of the German church was unjust, should be repealed and, what is more, if not repealed, should be violated. Bonhoeffer and the pastors who had stated their opposition to the Aryan paragraph expected to be expelled from the established German Church. Bonhoeffer wrote to Karl Barth seeking advice on a possible course of action that might lead to separation from the established German church (DBW, 164-66). Although Barth counseled Bonhoeffer and his colleagues to wait and not initiate a separation, the time soon came for the issuance of the Bethel Confession, that had been authored principally by Bonhoeffer, and with its issuance, the formation of the Confessing Church.
A debate then ensued between the German Christians who both submitted to and defended the Aryan paragraph, on the one side, and the Confessing Church, who rejected the Aryan paragraph, on the other. In its most radical form, the Aryan paragraph stated, “Non-Aryans are not members of the German Reich Church and are to be excluded through the establishment of their own Jewish Christian congregations.” (DWB, Vol. 12, 425). In its later version, it provided that: “The law governing state officials is to be applied to church officials; thus employment of Jewish Christians as pastors should be discontinued, and none should be accepted for new employment.” (DBW, 425).
Bonhoeffer was a chief spokesman for the Confessing Church in this debate. In his treatise, The Aryan Paragraph in the Church, Bonhoeffer set forth the various arguments presented by the German Church in defense of the Aryan paragraph and then systematically refuted them. A large part of the German Church’s argument was founded upon their contention that the Aryan paragraph was matter of external church organization that is adiaphora. For example, the German Christians said: “We don’t want to take away from Jewish Christians the right to be Christians, but they should organize their own churches. It is only a matter of the outward form of the church.” (DBW, 427). In response, Bonhoeffer stated:
The issue of belonging to the Christian community is never an outward, organizational matter, but is of the very substance of the church. Church is the congregation that is called together by the Word. Membership in a congregation is a question not of organization but of the essence of the church. To make such a basic distinction between Christianity and the church, or between Christ and the church, is wrong. There is no such thing as the idea of the church, on one hand , and its outward appearance, on the other, but rather the empirically experienced church is the church of Christ itself. Thus, to exclude people forcibly from the church community as the empirical level means excluding them from Christ’s church itself. (DBW, 427).
Since the question of membership in the church went to the very substance of what the Scriptures teach on the nature of the Church which is the Body of Christ it could not be characterized as a matter of external organization. The German Christians then directly asserted that the Aryan paragraph’s exclusion of Jewish Christians from being pastors in the German Church was an adiaphoron, that is, something that does not affect the confession of the church. They sought to use the Lutheran teaching on adiaphora as a shield against the protests raised by the Confessing Church.
Against this assertion, Bonhoeffer stated that the Aryan paragraph struck at the very substance of both membership in and the ministry of the church. In so doing, it attacked the confession of the church – the essential beliefs upon which the church was founded. The Aryan paragraph obscured and perverted the truth of the Gospel. Thus, it was not a matter of adiaphora, but struck at the very essence of the nature of the one true Church which is Christ’s Body.
Bonhoeffer’s refutation of the German Church’s use of adiaphora in defense of the Aryan paragraph, however, went significantly farther. He noted that even if the question of who is eligible for church ministry were considered a matter of adiaphora for the sake of argument, then the German Church should still yield its position in favor of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer makes his argument by quoting a portion of Article X of the Book of Concord where adiaphora is addressed:
Thus, Paul submits and gives in to the weak in matters of food or days (Rom. 14:6). But he does not want to submit to false apostles, who wanted to impose such things upon consciences as necessary even in matters that were in themselves free and indifferent. Col. 2:16: ‘Do not let anyone make matters of food or drink or the observation of festivals a matter of conscience for you.’ And when in such a case Peter and Barnabas did give in to a certain degree, Paul criticized them publicly, as those ‘who were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel’ (Gal. 2:14). For in such a case it is no longer a matter of external matters of indifference, which in their nature and essence are and remain in and of themselves free, which accordingly are not subject to either a command or a prohibition regarding their use or discontinuance. Instead, here it is above all a matter of the chief article of our Christian faith, as the Apostle testifies, ‘so that the truth of the gospel might always remain’ (Gal. 2:5). Such coercion and command obscure and pervert the truth of the gospel, because either these opponents will publicly demand such indifferent things as a confirmation of false teaching, superstition, and idolatry for the purpose of suppressing pure teaching and Christian freedom or they will misuse them and as a result falsely reinstate them. . . Thus, submission and compromise in external things where Christian agreement in doctrine has not already been achieved strengthens idolaters in their idolatry. (DBW, 431-32, quoting the Formula of Concord, Article X, ¶¶13-14, 16).
By returning to the Book of Concord, Bonhoeffer demonstrated that the Lutheran approach to adiaphora that had been developed in the earliest stages of the Reformation, some 400 years before, was still valid and applicable to the pressing issues of his day. And so it is for all who seek to live and learn in the community of Christian faith. By taking the Lutheran perspective on adiaphora as an exemplar, we may formulate an approach to determining what issues, ideas or practices may rightly fall within the category of adiaphora and then, having identified an adiaphoron, we may develop a model allowing for a diversity of thought and practices within the guiding parameters of both the glorification of God and the edification of others. To this task we now turn.
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