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Chapter 4 examines how Karlstadt unfolded a unique theology and reform program following his public break with Luther. Continuing to engage the Eckhartian tradition, Karlstadt found his center in the goal of “sinking into God’s will,” and he saw earthly life as growth toward the postmortem attainment of this goal, revising the doctrine of purgatory. According to Karlstadt, God exercised divine pedagogy through inward illumination, scripture, and eternally ordained suffering; in turn, Christians were to engage in individual and communal study, self-examination, self-accusation, and improvement. Karlstadt depicted Luther and his Wittenberg allies as enemies of the cross, who refused to sink into God’s will by accusing and denying their own will, and who consequently preferred a practical reform program that did not arouse opposition. This verdict mirrored the verdict against scholastic theology and so-called papists that Luther and Karlstadt shared.

This chapter summarizes Martin Luther's earliest discussions of the mass and describes the unrest in Wittenberg between 1521 and 1522 caused by efforts to reform the mass. The reforming party acted quickly to suppress the claim that adoration of the host was idolatry, a position understood as an attack on Christ's corporeal presence, but it was divided over the pace and extent of liturgical change. Andreas Karlstadt celebrated the first evangelical Lord's Supper at Christmas, but on his return to Wittenberg in March Luther abolished several of Karlstadt's liturgical innovations. Although there was substantial agreement between Luther and Karlstadt concerning the Lord's Supper, they disagreed over whether liturgical change was required by divine law or was subordinate to Christian freedom. Their disagreement first raised the question of authority: How were evangelicals to decide between competing interpretations of Scripture?

This chapter describes Andreas Karlstadt's understanding of the Lord's Supper as it was expressed in eight pamphlets published in 1524–1525. The earliest pamphlets reveal the influence of Ulrich Zwingli, Erasmus, and Cornelis Hoen on Karlstadt's thought, while the last four, written after Karlstadt's public break with Martin Luther, directly attack the latter's position. Karlstadt rejected Christ's corporeal presence in the elements, arguing instead that the Lord's Supper was only a remembrance and proposing a new interpretation of Christ's words, “this is my body,” to uphold that understanding. He also introduced several arguments based on other Scripture texts and on reason to oppose Christ's corporeal presence. Underlying his conflict with Luther was his spiritualist dualism, which led him to reject the ability of material things to convey any spiritual benefit.

This chapter argues that Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt was both a catalyst and an unacknowledged contributor to the development of early Zwinglianism. Ulrich Zwingli was not immediately influenced by Karlstadt, but there were important similarities in how the two men interpreted Scripture passages concerning the Eucharist, some of which could be traced to the influence of Erasmus. The reformers of Basel (Johann Oecolampadius) and Strasbourg (Wolfgang Capito and Martin Bucer) used the arguments of both Cornelis Hoen and Karlstadt to oppose Christ's corporeal presence in the Lord's Supper, thereby incorporating them into early Zwinglian (and later Reformed) eucharistic theology.

This chapter analyzes vernacular pamphlets published by Luther and Karlstadt between 1519 and 1521. It argues that both reformers developed Eckhartian motifs in their writings, while advancing the Wittenberg movement as a summons to true suffering over and against self-willed doctrine and life. That said, Luther described the annihilation of self-trust and union with Christ through faith, while Karlstadt underlined the need to judge the self and “sink” into the divine will. Both recognized the incompleteness of annihilation and union. By undergoing the mortification of their own reason and will, Christians were promised new capacity to see God at work underneath suffering and through the lowly. Analysis of Luther’s Wartburg Postil shows that teachings about the reduction of the sinner unto nothingness (humiliation) and the need for despair of the self were prominent in Luther’s program for evangelical preaching and found enduring place in the Lutheran preaching tradition.

The introduction sets forth the three goals of the book: to explain the varying interpretations of the Lord's Supper that emerged between 1518 and 1525, to describe how those interpretations were received and modified in popular pamphlets, and to demonstrate the significant role played by Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt in the early eucharistic controversy.

Although all “sacramentarians” opposed belief in Christ's corporeal presence in the Lord's Supper, pamphlets printed in 1525 illustrate significant diversity within the sacramentarian movement. Many of the authors usually classified as Zwinglian were reluctant to reject Christ's corporeal presence in print and so refrained from a full public endorsement of Ulrich Zwingli's eucharistic theology. Nevertheless, they were important for spreading an understanding of the Lord's Supper that opposed that of Luther. By the end of 1525 the Silesians Kaspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Crautwald had developed their own understanding of the Lord's Supper under the influence of Zwingli, Karlstadt, and the Hussites. The chapter summarizes in tabular form the most important differences between the chief contributors to the eucharistic controversy at the end of 1525: Cornelis Hoen, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, the Swiss, the Silesians, and Martin Luther.

This chapter analyzes the exchange between Luther, Karlstadt, and Müntzer during the Peasants’ War. Each counseled a different response to persecution, rooted in their respective paradigms of annihilation and union. Personal invective around cross-shirking intended to expose opponents’ inability to receive and teach truth. Luther defended the doctrine of salvation extra nos and the stance of waiting for God to reform hearts as true suffering of God’s condemnation of human ideas and inner resources for salvation. Karlstadt and Müntzer continued to trace Luther’s teaching to self-will, while breaking with one another over the legitimacy of violent rebellion. Müntzer saw the Anfechtungen at the birth of faith as a passing trial, after which illumined Christians could execute God’s will against the ungodly. Karlstadt rejected rebellion as contrary to God’s will. Unlike Müntzer, Karlstadt and Luther constrained the revolutionary implications of democratized mysticism—Karlstadt by delaying union, Luther by redefining it.

This chapter describes arguments against Christ's corporeal presence developed by Hussite theologians in the fifteenth century that became prominent at the beginning of the eucharistic controversy. Taborite theologians adapted some of John Wyclif's arguments against Christ's corporeal presence; these were divorced from their scholastic underpinnings and spread to western Europe chiefly as scriptural proof texts against adoration of the host. In the early sixteenth century the Bohemian Brethren developed more sophisticated arguments that upheld Christ's spiritual presence but rejected his corporeal presence and the adoration of the host. The earlier, more popular arguments were incorporated into the eucharistic treatises of Cornelis Hoen and Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, while the more sophisticated arguments of the Bohemian Brethren were first used by Johann Oecolampadius in the summer of 1525 and by Ulrich Zwingli in early 1526, and they became a standard element of the Reformed understanding of the Lord's Supper and of Reformed Christology.

The style of music appropriate for church was a constant topic of debate. The 16th century saw Lutherans pitted against followers of the Swiss Reformation. Later in the century, an increase in polyphonic choral music competed with congregational singing for supremacy. Attempts were made to use both by alternating stanzas within hymns or having the people sing a hymn melody while the choir sang in parts (the cantional style). In the 17th century, the new Italian style was imported into Germany and caused considerable controversy, which continued into the eighteenth century (the cantata debate). By 1750 the liturgy was truly congregational in virtually all of Germany, and the choir was less of a liturgical ensemble than a performing one. Important voices in the debate included Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Wolfgang Amling, Michael Praetorius, Theophilus Grossgebauer, Hector Mithobius, Christian Gerber, Georg Motz, and various representatives of Pietism, Lutheran Orthodoxy, and Rationalism.

The first collected edition of Augustine's works, published in 1505–6 by the Basel publisher Johann Amerbach, was the version that was used by the first generation of Reformers, including Martin Luther, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Philip Melanchthon and Ulrich Zwingli. The work made an important contribution to establishing the Augustinian canon, yet in many other respects also continued traditional, late-medieval, forms of textual presentation. This chapter assesses the significance of the work for the intellectual history of the Reformation. It explores the manuscript dissemination of Augustine's works in the late fifteenth century before studying how Amerbach's edition dealt with this tradition. It argues that the work contributed crucially to Augustine's emancipation from to the ecclesiastical institutions that had traditionally preserved his legacy.

Chapter 1 focuses on the first half of the sixteenth century. It analyzes Martin Luther’s teachings on images: the link he drew between iconoclasm and radicalism; his emphasis on Christian freedom; the relationship he described between inner (spiritual) and outer (physical) images; and his willingness to use the latter for instruction and commemoration. It then investigates images’ role in proclaiming the Gospel during this period, focusing on the illustrated Bibles and catechisms produced in Wittenberg and beyond. The Lutheran layperson’s encounter with the Word of God was, it shows, frequently mediated by images. The Reformation’s legacy compromised, therefore, not only a series of pastoral and doctrinal justifications for the use of images but also an experience of religious education and worship that was defined by the visual as well as the verbal.