Did Martin Luther lay a foundation for George Orwell?
Luther’s stand against authoritarianism foreshadowed our use of ‘plain reason’ and personal judgement, says Sandison, or empiricism and individualism, as we might say. Luther siezing on St. Paul’s “Prove all things” to defend his position provides ” a motto not only for himself, but for that moral and intellectual movement which was to exert, down to our own day, a major creative influence on the development of Western culture.” [via Books, Inq.]
Dangerous territory, but I believe this is true. What Luther fought for was a balanced position–one that gave weight both to authority and to individual freedom. “Weigh all things” is a very good epitome of his principle. If popes and councils can err, Luther reasoned, how are we to know the truth? His answer was that we must study Scripture, absorb its principles, and judge all things by it. But at the same time the church as a whole must act as a brake on individual enthusiasm, and the individual must humbly submit himself to the reasonable arguments of his fellow believers. It’s a checks-and-balances sort of thing.
Later thinkers threw out the reverence for Scripture, and later threw out Reason itself. Perhaps Luther was too optimistic about the capacity of individuals to live out his balance in the context of being members of the church. But it was that idea (in my view) that created modern democracy.