The Church Of All Ages In Luther’s Lectures On Genesis
Brian T. German
Fall 2022
Luther may have been a jack of all theological trades, but so far as he was able throughout his career, he preferred to lecture on the Old Testament. He took up the book of Psalms multiple times, spent several years on the prophets (most notably Isaiah and the Book of the Twelve), and devoted roughly the last decade of his life to the book of Genesis—a massive project that fills eight volumes in the American Edition of his works.
One of the more remarkable features of Luther’s Lectures on Genesis is the way in which he relates the biblical texts to the church of all times and places. In what follows I will highlight this point with some key moments in Luther’s treatment of four individuals from the book of Genesis—Abel, Noah, Abraham, and Jacob—when he speaks of their significance for the church of all ages. I conclude with what these examples indicate about Luther’s approach to the Old Testament as Christian Scripture.
Abel: The Beginning of the True Church
For Luther, the Christian church was established in the Garden of Eden; perhaps surprisingly, it had everything to do with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In one place Luther even called this tree “Adam’s church, altar, and pulpit,” because “Here he was to yield to God the obedience he owed, give recognition to the Word and will of God, give thanks to God, and call upon God for aid against temptation.” Luther supposes that Adam and Eve would have first eaten from the tree of life, but then gathered around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on the Sabbath to reflect on God’s word about this tree, obey God by not eating from it, instruct each other, pray, praise, and so on.
The serpent, then, attacks Adam and Eve’s place of worship. Luther views the fall into sin as effectually relocating the church, as it were, from the notorious tree to what will be a clear focus of attention throughout the rest of his lectures on Genesis: the promised Seed to come (Genesis 3:15). Crucial for our purposes is that Luther sees this momentous promise as not just a prophecy of an individual to come but also as a sentence of perpetual enmity between those believing in the Seed of Eve and those following the serpent throughout every age.
This focus becomes abundantly clear when Luther explains the meaning of the narrative of Cain and Abel. Even the etymology of these two names for Luther bears witness to a conflict that continues to take place in his own day. Cain, he explains, derives from the verb קָנָח meaning “to get, acquire,” signaling for Luther that Adam and Eve believe this firstborn son to be the one promised in Genesis 3:15. Abel (הֶבֶל), on the other hand, is a noun that means “mist, vapor,” which Luther takes as indicative of vanity (recall Ecclesiastes’ refrain: “Vanity, vanity…” [הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים]). “Thus he to whom no hope attached, or only a futile one, is called Abel; but he from whom everything is hoped is called Cain.” What appears at first glance to be mere name selection actually carries theological significance for the whole history of the church, as Luther explains in light of how this brutal narrative unfolds:
Here the church begins to be divided into two churches: the one which is the church in name but in reality is nothing but a hypocritical and bloodthirsty church; and the other one, which is without influence, forsaken, and exposed to suffering and the cross, and which before the world and in the sight of that hypocritical church is truly Abel, that is, vanity and nothing. For Christ also calls Abel righteous and makes him the beginning of the church of the godly, which will continue until the end (Matthew 23:35). Similarly, Cain is the beginning of the church of the wicked and of the bloodthirsty until the end of the world.
From the time of Cain and Abel “until the end of the world,” the world will have two and only two churches. No one in the history of humanity will be able to stand in between these two or create a third one.
As one can imagine from how Luther viewed Genesis 3:15, the essential difference between the two churches hinges on “the hope and promise of the blessed Seed.” What is particularly striking, however, is how Luther extends the enmity depicted in Genesis 3:15 first to Cain and Abel but then immediately to his own day. He remarks: “Even then the divine promise began to work itself out, in that the serpent’s seed bit the heel of the blessed Seed (Genesis 3:15), just as we experience today. Therefore this should not frighten us. It should rather be a source of comfort for us to learn from experience that we are being dealt with by our adversaries in the way bloodthirsty Cain deal with righteous Abel.” The murder of Abel was the serpent biting the heel of the “Seed,” and the afflictions of the church in Luther’s day derived from the same source. Indeed, this is how it will be in the church throughout the ages, “until the end of the world.”
Noah: The Promise to the Gentiles
Noah is introduced abruptly in the book of Genesis after a somewhat obscure narrative involving “the sons of God,” “the daughters of man,” “Nephilim,” and the Lord’s explicit regret over making humanity (Gen. 6:1–8). Luther saw this admittedly enigmatic account as the first clear evidence of the enmity between the church of Cain and the church of Abel on a global scale. The “sons of God,” he argued, were those with faith in the promised Seed, while the “daughters of man” were those of the false church, enticing the true church with intermarriage as a means of harassing it. Thousands of years may have elapsed since Cain killed Abel, but the war between the serpent and the Seed had not diminished one bit. Genesis 6 reveals an “everlasting” reality: “The church of Satan is everlastingly at war with the church of God.”
A fascinating development in Luther’s “two church” thinking then emerges when he reaches the account of Noah’s drunkenness after the flood and the differing responses of his three sons (Genesis 9:12–28). The first point of order for Luther is that Ham’s behavior toward his father is yet another expression of the persecution of the true church by the false church, which, Luther reiterates, “has been going on from the beginning of the world.” Ham is therefore cursed by Noah, while the other two sons, Shem and Japheth, are blessed, and yet they are blessed in different ways. Japheth is said to dwell in the tents of Shem (Genesis 9:27), indicating some sort of superiority for the latter, whom Luther sees as representative of the true church. But if Ham is of the false church and Shem belongs to the true, what does this mean for the tent-dwelling Japheth? The brief oracles spoken by Noah have major significance, Luther insists, because they “concern even our own age….” He parses what is said about each son as follows:
Hence the church of Gentiles and Jews is depicted here. Ham is a castaway and is not given access to the spiritual blessing of the Seed except insofar as this takes place through irregular grace. But Japheth, even though he does not, like Shem, have the promise of the Seed, is nevertheless given the hope that he will be embodied into the fellowship of the church. Thus we Gentiles, who are the children of Japheth, do not indeed have the promise given to us; and yet we are included in the promise that was given to the Jews, for we have been foreordained to the communion of saints of the people of God. All this has been recorded, not for the sake of Shem and Japheth but for the sake of their descendants.
The brief words of Noah to his sons establish an openness to the Gentile world that extended to Luther’s own era and continues to the final day. “This is an outstanding promise,” Luther adds, “It remains in force until the end of the world.” Whenever Gentiles are grafted into the church of any age, God’s word through Noah about Japheth is being fulfilled yet again.
Abram/Abraham: The Renewal of the Church
The call of Abram in Genesis 12 is a pivotal point in the book of Genesis from a number of perspectives. For Luther it marked a kind of rebirth of the church, “a new stem” being brought forth even in the midst of great ungodliness. Much like the way in which the words of Noah to his sons constitute some of the lifeblood of the church of all times, the Lord’s promise to Abram about being a blessing to all the families of the earth fills the same vein. Luther explains:
[The promise to Abram] also describes the progress and the good fortune of this entire people, indeed of the entire church to the end of the world. Whatever will be achieved in the church until the end of the world and whatever has been achieved in it until now, has been achieved and will be achieved by virtue of this promise, which endures and is in force to this day. If you desire to reduce to a few words the history of the church from the time of Abraham until today, carefully consider these four verses [Genesis 12:1–4].
The promise to Abram is foundational for the life of the church, but the significance of Abram for ecclesiology does not stop there. Even though Abram is the recipient of this monumental promise, it does not preclude him from also participating in its reality. Luther regards the people migrating with Abram, for example, as converts to the true church, brought about by Abram’s preaching of the word. There is also a figural dimension at work here, as this seemingly isolated event serves as a lasting model for what it means for Christians to be converted by the word and travel toward their heavenly promised land. The same goes for Abram’s afflictions. When the narrative mentions that upon the group’s arrival, “the Canaanites were in the land” (Genesis 12:6), Luther saw another rich image of the life of the church in any age.
The fact that Moses adds that the Canaanites were in the land serves to remind us of the wretched exile in which the holy patriarch lived. For he dwelt not among friends but in the midst of enemies and among men who were different in their worship and religion. … Thus you see that in all ages the lot of the church is the same: it is the prey of the ungodly, and yet the Lord preserves it in a marvelous manner, even against the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18).
Abram’s call out of paganism is the church’s summons from the ungodliness that surrounds it. Abram’s sojourning with companions grafted in is the church’s sojourning with companions grafted in. Abram’s hostile surrounding is the church’s hostile environment. And yet the church is never without a definite place to gather, hear the word, offer prayers, praise, and sacrifice, which Luther saw exhibited by Abram’s multiple altars (Genesis 12:7–8). That God reckons Abram’s faith as righteousness in the midst of such sojourning is not just for Abram but “to comfort the church of all times.”
Jacob: A Model for the Church
Luther’s notion of two churches throughout the book of Genesis is his stock in trade by the time he reaches the Jacob narratives. So it is hardly surprising to find him explaining the enmity between Jacob and Esau even in the womb as of the same substance with the enmity between Cain and Abel, and more foundationally, the enmity “between the descendants of the serpent and the Seed of the woman.” The old battle is fought anew.
Like Abraham and other members of the true church before him, Jacob also had his fair share of exile throughout his life. In Luther’s view the very fact that the book of Genesis features such a pattern is indicative of an ecclesial reality made manifest across the ages: “This is the constant course of the church at all times, namely, that promises are made and that then those who believe the promises are treated in such a way that they are compelled to wait for things that are invisible, to believe what they do not see, and to hope for what does not appear. He who does not do this is not Christian.” Jacob as a “deceiver” may have lived up to the meaning of his name when cheating Esau out of his father’s blessing (Genesis 27), but in light of the promises given him, his exile is not simply condign punishment for his actions. Rather, Jacob is paradigmatic for what faith in God’s promises looks like in any age; he is a paradigmatic Christian.
A particularly powerful example of Jacob as a model of Christian faith—in our view one of the most captivating expositions in all of Luther’s Lectures on Genesis—is his treatment of Jacob’s wrestling with God (Genesis 32:22–32). For Luther, this narrative offers an invaluable window into the way God “plays” with his saints, a kind of bird’s-eye view of divine/human interaction that can be utterly terrifying if one is merely “under” it. The key to Jacob’s victory as Luther sees it is that God had already given Jacob the very means whereby God Himself could be conquered; and because the same holds true for Luther’s own day, the text offers extraordinary comfort for the faithful of any age. As Luther beautifully articulates it:
It is the fullness of consolation that God exercises us in such a way and exhorts us to fight and shows that it is to Him a most pleasing sacrifice to be conquered by us. … God is conquered in this way as soon as He has surrendered Himself to us, so to say, and revealed Himself in His Word, promise, and Baptism. It remains that you should conquer those things which want to take this God away from you, namely, through the truth of the promises and faith. Or, if He pretends that He is unfriendly and angry with you inasmuch as He does not want to hear you and help you, then say: ‘Lord God, You have promised this in Your Word. Therefore You will not change Your promise. I have been baptized: I have been absolved.’ If you persistently urge and press on in this way, He will be conquered and say: ‘Let it be done unto you as you have petitioned, for you have the promise and the blessing. I have to give in to you. For a constant and persistent seeker and petitioner is the sweetest sacrifice.’
Jacob’s overcoming is the church’s prevailing, and Luther reiterates this point in various ways. At times, for example, he does so to encourage his hearers to stay faithful in the midst of dark days: “For we are reminded here that in our life we should prepare ourselves in the same manner and learn to recognize the church of God in that picture of Jacob’s struggle. For God hides the church and also our salvation under a dark and horrible cover, to which we must become accustomed so that we do not despair or fall into unbelief even in the greatest dangers and adversities which are thrown in our way by Satan, the world, or God Himself.” In another place, Luther emphasizes that Jacob’s wrestling not only depicts the faithful of both testaments but also covers both the individual and the corporate dimensions of the church: “Jacob is a picture of the true posterity of Israel, that is, of all the saints and of us also who believe in Christ. Therefore Israel is in this temptation with Jacob when either the individual members are privately tempted or the whole church in general is tempted.” Whatever the nature of the affliction, the church of any age must never trust in the things of the flesh, which Luther sees reflected in the displacement of Jacob’s hip socket at the end of the account.
Conclusion
Luther is convinced throughout these lectures that the text of Genesis must in some way be constitutive for the one church of both testaments. The death of Abel is not just a tragic account of brotherly envy but actually establishes the nature and character of churchly persecution in any age. Noah and Abram/Abraham do not just receive prophecies about the church in their own day; their experiences are also paradigmatic for Christians in any period of history. What happened to Jacob at that one time and place is meant ultimately to reveal an ecclesial reality of all times and places.
What could be said more broadly about Luther’s approach to the Old Testament as Christian Scripture? In our judgment, Luther believed that the Old Testament was able to speak clearly on its own terms about various aspects of Christ and His body, the church, without recourse to how the Old was received in the New. That is to say, he found in the Old Testament’s own idiom (its grammar, syntax, and vocabulary) a unique witness to the one spiritual reality that exists in Christ across all ages. One may imagine Luther asking himself as he approached each pericope: “What is it about this text that gives us the clearest, most immediate witness to the person and work of Christ for the sake of His body, the church?” That, at the end of the day, is what he was after as he engaged the Old Testament: its pastoral potential.
Brian T. German is associate professor of theology and director of the Concordia Bible Institute at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon, WI.
Endnotes cited come from Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols., eds. J. Pelikan and H. Lehmann (St. Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1955ff.), selections from vols. 1-6.
For a full list of the endnotes please refer to the print edition of Lutheran Forum Fall 2022.
