‘Natos ex verbo’: Martin Luther and the ‘Mysticism of the Word’

The question of whether Martin Luther’s theology warrants the epithet ‘mystical’ has generated rival and divergent responses. Tracing developments in Luther’s thought concerning the verbum increatum, this essay argues that Luther’s decisive alteration to medieval mysticism rests on developments in his theology of the Word of God. Luther locates the soul’s union with God in an act of radical trust in God’s spoken promises, rather than in a protracted process of inner preparation, purgation, and the re-orientation of human love, and in doing so he effectively proposes a novel understanding of divine agency, presence, and mediation. What on the surface appears to be Luther’s denial of God’s immediacy in mystical experience is rather a reframing and intensification of God’s immediacy in the spoken Word. The evangelical mystic does not understand Christ being begotten in the innermost depths of her being, but as herself being generated of the Word of God.

Duke Scholars

Author Jason Eslicker