從聖母到聖徒: 馬丁路德對馬利亞的重塑

Contrary with today Protestant’s reluctance to talk about saints and the Virgin Mary, Martin Luther, the first reformer in Protestant history, talks a lot about the Mother of God, and in a surprisingly positive way. Indeed, throughout his life, Luther did not abandon devotion to Mary completely, and he still retained a remarkable amount of Catholic teaching about Mary, which was only discarded by his successors. Luther articulated clearly Mary’s importance to Christian tradition and theology. However, as is well known, Luther castigates the multiform abuses of Marian devotion and veneration in the Catholic Church. Starting by rebuking the practice of idolatry, Luther eventually transformed and reevaluated the role of the Virgin Mary in his scattered writings. Although he did not intend to provide a Mariology, Luther recreated an understanding of Mary in line with his reform theology. From the medieval portrait of the heavenly Queen and intercessor, Mary was remodelled by Luther into a far more human, more pious mother, who paradoxically remained a virgin, and who faithfully bore and raised the Son of God. Luther’s reimagining of Mary is, notably, almost a pattern for all subsequent Protestant attitudes towards Mary, so it deserves a close examination. Based on the existing scholarship, and the conviction that Luther, the pioneer of the Protestant Reformation and the most influential reformer in the early years, should be considered independently of the tradition he helped to found, this essay aims to analyse Luther’s view of the Virgin Mary further. In particular, it pinpoints Luther’s reimagining of Mary. Through investigating Luther’s views of Mary in response to his time, my contention is that Luther turns the lay enthusiasm toward Mary into a Protestant pedagogy. Both intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, he accommodates Mary within his theological framework, and creates a new image of Mary as a mere human, a subordinate figure to Christ, and after all a Protestant exemplary. This essay consists of three parts. It first studies the shape of Marian devotion in Luther’s time. Then, it gives a chronological survey on Luther’s developing attitude toward the Virgin throughout his life. After that, it synthesises Luther’s doctrinal arguments on Mary to show how Mary is reimagined theologically.