Martin Luther on Origen and Jerome as dangerous teachers

[Reformed Covenanter]

The quotation below comes from Martin Luther's comments on Galatians 2:21b:

Here again I warn that Paul is not speaking about the Ceremonial Law, as the sophists continually imagine. Origen and Jerome were the originators of this error. They were extremely dangerous teachers on this point; all the scholastics followed them, and in our day Erasmus approves and confirms their error. But the godly should simply avoid the foolishness of these men, who so distorted Paul with their stupid glosses. They are speaking of something they have neither known nor experienced. As though the ceremonies were not good and holy also! Surely the ordinance of the priesthood, circumcision, sacrifices, worship, divine service, and similar holy works were all ceremonies. Therefore he is speaking about the entire Law.

Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians: Chapters 1-4 (1535) in Luther’s Works: Volume 26, trans. and ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St Louis MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), pp 180-81.

 

[Sam Jer]

The quotation below comes from Martin Luther's comments on Galatians 2:21b:

Here again I warn that Paul is not speaking about the Ceremonial Law, as the sophists continually imagine. Origen and Jerome were the originators of this error. They were extremely dangerous teachers on this point; all the scholastics followed them, and in our day Erasmus approves and confirms their error. But the godly should simply avoid the foolishness of these men, who so distorted Paul with their stupid glosses. They are speaking of something they have neither known nor experienced. As though the ceremonies were not good and holy also! Surely the ordinance of the priesthood, circumcision, sacrifices, worship, divine service, and similar holy works were all ceremonies. Therefore he is speaking about the entire Law.

Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians: Chapters 1-4 (1535) in Luther’s Works: Volume 26, trans. and ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St Louis MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), pp 180-81.

I remember being surprised at the harsh language Luther is willing to use towards past thinkers when I read his "bondage of the will". Origen disturbed me less for the early church recognised him as a heretic, but I really wondered at the harsh language used of Jerome, which is not something we hear today (then again, I am not that familiar with Jerome's work, I mostly know about his Vulgate and position on canonical disputes).

Perhaps we on the more Reformed side should be more willing to call out problems in the ancients, and not try to appease Roman apologists as much. I mean we don't give anyone in the lasr half-millenia an ignoring of everything problematic in their writing, so no reason we should treat older writers any diffrent. Of course this should come along with good patristic scholarship showing we still have better ground in that era than anyone outside Protestantism does.

Does anyone who knows how to search know whether there were competing views of the passage recorded before or during Jerome's time?

 

[MW]

For Luther the doctrine of justification by faith was a life and death struggle to maintain the pure gospel. We appreciate his fight and stand on the same doctrinal ground. But he also tended to make this a canon within the canon. Everyone and everything was judged in the light of it, even the words of Scripture. James comes out looking like a right strawy epistle. No wonder, then, if the fathers come in for some scathing rebukes.

In the Tabletalk Luther says this of Jerome: "Jerome should not be numbered among the teachers of the church, for he was a heretic; yet I believe that he is saved through faith in Christ. He speaks not of Christ, but merely carries his name in his mouth." His criticism is of teachers, not Christians. At one point he called all the fathers in general "false prophets" who were seduced into errors but did not remain in them. They knew better on their death-beds.

The Reformed tradition was just as willing as Luther to critique the fathers and schoolmen, but they often did so with a slightly different tone and with a greater emphasis on systematic coherence across the whole of Scripture. Different fathers came to be appreciated for their own contributions in various fields. This appears to me to be a more balanced way of judging men.

However, there is one sentence in Luther that always strikes me: "O what a happy time have we now in regard to the purity of the doctrine; but alas! we little esteem it." Anyone who has learned the doctrine of justification by faith and seen the tendency of men to turn back to the fathers will know what Luther was saying. We can look back at them with mixed feelings; but we should never go back to them. Praise God for more light!

 

[jwright82]

The quotation below comes from Martin Luther's comments on Galatians 2:21b:

Here again I warn that Paul is not speaking about the Ceremonial Law, as the sophists continually imagine. Origen and Jerome were the originators of this error. They were extremely dangerous teachers on this point; all the scholastics followed them, and in our day Erasmus approves and confirms their error. But the godly should simply avoid the foolishness of these men, who so distorted Paul with their stupid glosses. They are speaking of something they have neither known nor experienced. As though the ceremonies were not good and holy also! Surely the ordinance of the priesthood, circumcision, sacrifices, worship, divine service, and similar holy works were all ceremonies. Therefore he is speaking about the entire Law.

Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians: Chapters 1-4 (1535) in Luther’s Works: Volume 26, trans. and ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St Louis MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), pp 180-81.

Also, I remember in reading Prue's work on "Post-Reformation: Lutheran Dogmatics" that the immediate and future generations of confessional Lutheran's were not so absolute.
I mean I don't own or have read Martin Chemnitz on the "The Council of Trent" but from what I read about it, he seems to be very well versed in the Patristics. For what it's worth but I'm not Lutheran.
Luther was a unique person, with his own proclivities but Lutheran's are not necessarily that way.

 

[Henoch]

The quotation below comes from Martin Luther's comments on Galatians 2:21b:

Here again I warn that Paul is not speaking about the Ceremonial Law, as the sophists continually imagine. Origen and Jerome were the originators of this error. They were extremely dangerous teachers on this point; all the scholastics followed them, and in our day Erasmus approves and confirms their error. But the godly should simply avoid the foolishness of these men, who so distorted Paul with their stupid glosses. They are speaking of something they have neither known nor experienced. As though the ceremonies were not good and holy also! Surely the ordinance of the priesthood, circumcision, sacrifices, worship, divine service, and similar holy works were all ceremonies. Therefore he is speaking about the entire Law.

Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians: Chapters 1-4 (1535) in Luther’s Works: Volume 26, trans. and ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St Louis MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), pp 180-81.

He is 100% right!
Those passages clearly aren't speaking about ceremonial law- in Romans 2 Paul clearly shows that he's talking about the moral law(coveting, adultery, spiritual idolatry etc.)!
Such writings must be rebuked! At one place they'd talk about the beauty of Christ and at another they'd talk about baptismal regeneration, celibacy and quote the apocrypha as divine(Wisdom mostly)- all of them Augustine, Jerome ,Origen.
Origen was a heretic in that he was a universalist- he did see some neat types of Christ in his allegorical readings of the Old Testament.
Another issue with the Fathers is lots of the writings attributed to them are SPURIOUS(pseudoepigrapha, mostly written by Papist editors to support their doctrine)! Today we know them to be spurious but probably not in Luther's time due to the lack of textual criticism.

E.g. if you look at Migne's Patrologia Graeca/Latina- there are plenty of volumes branded spuria

I personally was reading Jerome's(or Pseudo-Jerome I guess) commentary on the Psalms
And at the end of chapter 17 he says this

Delectationes in dextera tua usque in finem. In illa delectabili potentia tua qua tecum sancti sunt regnaturi, quae nullo fine concluditur. Unde eos deprecamur ut ab his nequaquam disjuncti, si non meremur vestiri gloria, non excludamur a venia.

He says we have to pray to the dead that their merit is attributed to us and that we receive forgiveness from them!

Madness!! I couldn't read that any further! We can't support fathers who spout such utter blasphemous heresies! The Papists may adore their errors and go a-whoring after them but we shall cling to Sola Scriptura! Amen!