A prominent feature of Martin Luther’s polemics was his use of ancient heretics and the heresies attributed to their name. His usage of these ancient heresies/heretics towards his religious opponents served the purpose of exposing doctrinal, moral/spiritual, and (theo)-logical problems that were perceived to be more troublesome than merely promoting a wrong teaching. In other words, the fundamental problem with false teaching was not that someone happened to arrive at an incorrect biblical interpretation or a faulty doctrinal conclusion. The root of heresy, for Luther, was twofold: pride and reason. In his polemics, Luther often upheld Arius and Arianism as the epitome of this twofold error for all heretics and heresies across the centuries including his own religious opponents in the sixteenth century.
For the 1700th commemoration of the Council of Nicaea, Luther’s engagement with Arianism has the prospect of shedding important light upon how to defend the faith anew in every generation. Indeed, Luther recognized the truth of the Solomonic wisdom, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” In a Table Talk recorded by Veit Dietrich in the Spring of 1532, Luther reflects upon the return of the church’s ancient heresies in his day. He runs through a list saying that Sabellius was first followed by the Patripassians, the Arians, the Manicheans, and ending with the Photinians. “Thus the devil assailed Christ from stem to stem,” and so Luther concludes, “There was nothing left to attack, and so the devil has to start all over again from the beginning.”
The purpose of this paper is to investigate Luther’s usage of Arius/Arianism in his sixteenth century religious polemics in order to illumine his understanding of the root of heresy as pride combined with the elevation of human reason above divine scriptural revelation. Analysis of Luther’s account of the Council of Nicaea in his 1539 treatise, On the Councils and the Church, will serve as a primary text for this study. A goal of this examination will be to glean wisdom on how to defend the Christian Faith learning from Luther’s understanding of the reoccurrence of ancient heresies from generation to generation that present age-old challenges to the truth of the Triune God, his saving gospel, and the confession of sola Scriptura.