Pekka Kärkkäinen: Augustinian, Humanist or What? Martin Luther's Marginal Notes on Augustine

Martin Luther began his career as a theologian in the convent of Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt. Among his earliest writings there are marginal notes on Augustine's works. Luther was not interested in Augustine only as a member of the Augustinian Hermits. Instead of basing his theological thinking on the usual authorities such as the standard theologian of his order, Giles of Rome, Luther called for a return to the theological purity of earlier writers like Peter Lombard and especially to Augustine. This kind of approach may be seen as a kind of humanist return to the sources. Despite such programmatic remarks, Luther seems to have retained much of the late medieval theological tradition. Curiously enough, the authorities he cites are not writers of his own order, but those of the via moderna, followed by secular theologians in his home university.

This paper will investigate with help of a few examples, whether we can find some characteristics of Luther's different intellectual contexts in his early reading of Augustine and how these characteristics fit in with the overall picture of his theology during this early phase.