QuestionsShould we believe without proof?Reason, the "devil's whore", before the Word
Should we believe without proof?Faith goes beyond

Reason, the "devil's whore", before the Word

Reason, the devil's whore

Martin Luther 1483 · 1546Before God, the human will is not free: without grace it wills evil; with grace it wills the good; but it never chooses its master. It is "bound".
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What it claims

In the things of God, one must keep reason in check, not follow its "beautiful thoughts", and believe against its objections.

Why

On God, reason takes its own ideas for the Holy Spirit and no one can correct it: one must hold to the Word.

In short

"Reason, the "devil's whore", before the Word" is an argument by Martin Luther (Last Wittenberg sermon, 17 January 1546 (WA 51, 126 and 129)) on the question "Should we believe without proof?" (answer: faith goes beyond). Its claim: In the things of God, one must keep reason in check, not follow its "beautiful thoughts", and believe against its objections. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 3 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Last Wittenberg sermon, 17 January 1546 (WA 51, 126 and 129)
Valid

A month before his death, Luther preaches in Wittenberg. He distinguishes gross sins, which everyone sees (usury, drunkenness, adultery), from a sin that is harder to see: reason when it claims to judge the things of God. He calls it "the devil's whore", the highest the devil has. It thinks it is guided by the Holy Spirit, and neither jurist, nor physician, nor king can correct it. One must hold it in check and stay with the Word, even when it objects that baptismal water is only water. Note that Luther does not despise reason in general. In 1536 he calls it, in the affairs of this life, the best of things and "something divine".

P1In the things of God, reason thinks itself enlightened: it takes its own ideas for the Holy Spirit and wants to be clever.
P2Unlike gross sins, no one can judge this error of reason: neither jurist, nor physician, nor king.
P3God's Word (baptism, Christ, the Trinity) teaches what reason finds ugly or absurd: "water, what can it do?".
P4 · implicit premiseWhen the Word and reason conflict on God, the Word must prevail, since reason has no judge above it except the Word.
In the things of God, one must keep reason in check, not follow its "beautiful thoughts", and believe against its objections.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Analogy.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Luther himself (Disputatio de homine) 1536 · attacks premise 1

Elsewhere Luther sets the scope of his thesis. In the affairs of this life (arts, medicine, law, government) reason is the best of things and "something divine"; God did not take it from man after Adam's fall. But compared with theology, it knows almost nothing about man. The devil's whore is therefore not reason in everything, but reason claiming to judge God.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Luther in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: this clarification limits the argument, it does not refute it. The thesis of 1546 aims at reason in the things of God, not reason in general.
Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae) 1265 · attacks the conclusion

For Aquinas, grace does not destroy nature but perfects it: natural reason should minister to faith, as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity. Faith goes beyond reason without contradicting it, and reason can defend faith against objections.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Luther in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: this is the basic disagreement between the scholastic tradition and Luther about the role of reason in faith. In this sermon Luther does not answer Aquinas: he targets reason's objections against the Word (baptism, the Supper).
William Kingdon Clifford (The Ethics of Belief) 1877 · attacks the conclusion

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Applied to Luther (our reading): believing against reason's objections would be a moral fault, not a virtue.

a defender replies
William James (The Will to Believe) defender of the argument · 1896
James defends a right to believe without decisive evidence, but within a narrower frame than Luther: when the option is live, forced and momentous, and cannot be decided on intellectual grounds, our passional nature may and must decide. He does not say one should believe against reason.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Clifford rejects any belief without evidence; James allows a restricted case; Luther goes further, asking to believe in spite of reason's objections in the things of God.