Luther's Works

Welcome to Session One of TLC's first Web Bible Study!
By Reverend Jean Lebbert

I had a dream years ago. I am kind of sure that it was post-seminary, but not too post. In the dream, I was at a garage sale and I found a box with the complete set of Luther's Works for TEN DOLLARS!!!

Sometimes-just often for us to keep hanging on to thrilling hopes-sometimes waking life turns out better than dream life. A while later, the way I remember it, Pastor Pieper had a water leak over his bookshelves and had to box up all his books and while boxing up books he hadn't looked at for a while and realizing he would probably never look at them, he decided to get rid of them. And among those was his set of Luther's Works, which he offered to me FOR FREE!!!

I have had them sitting all pretty and organized and everything on my shelves-oh, looked at a couple of them-but not until now have I had a venue to thoroughly use them.

I plan to enjoy this study as much as you, as we journey through the Bible and through Luther's Works, and wherever else this study leads us. Blessings.

In Volume 1 of Luther's Works: Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 1-5, in the Introduction, we read, "It is usually supposed that on Thursday of the week of June 3, 1535, Luther began his great Lectures on Genesis." 1535! May Spirit bless us with insight into 16th century theology and our very own, five centuries later.

Our text this week is:
Genesis 1:1 (NRSV) "In the beginning when God created* the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God** swept over the face of the waters."

(*Other translations state this as "when God began to create" and others as "In the beginning God created"
**Other translations state this as "while the Spirit of God" or "while a mighty wind")

Luther writes, "The first chapter is written in the simplest language; yet it contains matters of the utmost importance and very difficult to understand. It was for this reason, as St. Jerome asserts, that among the Hebrews it was forbidden for anyone under thirty to read the chapter or to expound it for others."

What? Anyone under THIRTY forbidden to read Genesis 1? And we call OUR GENERATION biblically illiterate.

Luther is referring to Jerome's letter to Paulinus, Epistle LIII, Patrologia, Series Latina, XXII, 547. (For those of you who have rolled up your sleeves and happen to be reading this in a seminary library).

Luther continues, "They wanted one to have a good knowledge of the entire Scripture before getting to this chapter. Not even with this practice, however, did the Jewish Rabbis achieve anything worthwhile; for in their commentaries men twice thirty and even older prattle most childishly about these extremely important matters."

Well, Luther rants on and on, sans political correctness. But I have to ask, "How is one supposed to get a good knowledge of the Scriptures if they can't start at the beginning?" It reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses, Proverbs 4, verse 7, "The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight."

Here's one insight (to start getting wisdom): when I took Old Testament at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, I got this book that breaks the Pentateuch down to the four storytellers that biblical scholars know perpetuated the sacred stories during the oral eras, and Genesis chapter one comes to us from the last storytellers, the Priestly tellers, who were giving wisdom and insight to the kings and queens and providing sacred mortar to the priests and high priests who were expounding on the Laws of Moses and doing all the rituals of worship. God gets less and less human in the Priestly stories, and the heavenly throne gets farther and farther from earth. Take a quick peek at Genesis, chapter 2, the last half of verse 4-it's another creation story. Notice that God is called LORD God-that's a sign of another storyteller we will get to later in this study. Now, read verse 8-LORD God is planting a garden! Quite a difference from the disembodied voice that speaks and everything comes to be that we have in Genesis 1.

Wait! Luther is speaking up again, "Indeed, human reason cannot avoid being overwhelmed by the grandeur of this subject matter and coming into conflict with it. . . Thus among the Hebrews, the Latins, or the Greeks there is no guide whom we could follow with safety in this area. In view of this we likewise shall deserve indulgence if we do the best we can. For apart from the general knowledge that the world had its beginning from nothing there is hardly anything about which there is common agreement among all theologians."

In the 21st century, we can add "scientists" to Luther's comment. Put scientists and theologians in a room together to hash out what actually happened "In the beginning" and they'll sound like a room full of theologians-or scientists, for that matter!

Maybe those ancient Hebrews had something. Let's wait until we are thirty, when we have experienced the grandeur and chaos of life-how all of life is real and good and awful and awe full, then let's come to the notion of the power from whence we came.

Interesting that the Hebrews chose "thirty" because that's such a holy number in our sacred stories. I wonder if they meant literally thirty or the sacred-metaphorical-God's-time thirty.

Luther goes on (bet his students needed coffee to get through his lectures), explaining that there were controversies among Hilary and Augustine* about Genesis 1:1-if it tells us that God created everything instantaneously on that first act, and then spent 5 days giving the formless void shape and distinction or if God created successively in the course of six day. Was it a big bang or a long week?

(*Hilary, On the Trinity, XII, ch. 40, Patrologia. . . and Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri XII, IV. . .)

Not to mention Nicholas of Lyra who claimed that God did "the work of separating in the first three days, and the work of adorning in the following three days."

Phew. If you are still with me, I have to conclude now. Luther said this chapter (and we are only at the first verse) has the simplest of language, is of the utmost important, and is very difficult to understand.

Hang in there, though. We have only just gotten to the formless void, aka, chaos. Tune in next week.


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