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Gabriel Biel on Liberum Arbitrium: Prelude to Luther’s De Servo Arbitrio

1970; Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tho.1970.0078

2473-3725

James E. Biechler,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

GABRIEL BIEL ON LIBERUM ARBITRIUM: PRELUDE TO LUTHER'S DE SERVO ARBITRIO RCENT CONCENTRATION of scholarly interest upon the late medieval period and, in particular, upon that era's theology, has called for a contemporary examination of the thought of Gabriel Biel of Speyer (d. 1495) , professor of theology and later rector of the University of Tiibingen.1 Biel's theology exerted a significant, if not crucial, influence which recent scholarship increasingly discovers to have been more pervasive and profound. Ample evidence of Biel's direct influence upon Luther himself is not difficult to find. In his Randbemerkungen zu den Sentenzen des Petrus Lombardus Luther explicitly refers to Biel's Collectorium, the latter's own commentary on the Sentences.2 In addition, Melanchthon tells us that Luther was able to quote Biel and Peter d'Ailly from memory.3 And, of more interest for our 1 Particularly noteworthy examples are the recent studies of Leif Grane, Contra Gabrielem: Luthers Auseinandersetzung mit Gabriel Biel in d!ff Disputatio ccmtm scholasticam theologiam 1517 ([Copenhagen]: Glydendal, 1962), and Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963). • D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883-), ix, 40. 36 and 74. 9. [Hereafter cited as W. A.] Luther's Randbemerkungen is dated c. 1509-10. It is not certain that he had direct access to the 1501 edition of Biel's CoUectorium; his references here may derive from his courses under Jodocus Trutvetter and Bartholomaus Arnold von Usingen. Cf. Robert Herndon Fife, The Revolt of Martin Luther (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), pp. 49-50. Fife also notes that Luther used either Biel's Lectura super cancme Missae (Reutlingen , 1488) or the Epithoma ea;positionis canonis Missae (Tiibingen, 1499). Ibid., p. 97. Curiously Fife is under the impression that Biel was a member of the Augustinian order: "The basic work he [Luther] used ... was that of an eminent member of his order, Gabriel Biel. ..." Ibid. 8 " Gabrielem et Cammeracensem pene ad verbum memoriter recitare poterat."Corpus Reformatorum, Philippi Melancthonis Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, ed. Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider (Halis Saxonum Apud C. A. Schwetschke et Filium, 1839), VI, 159. 114 GABRIEL BIEL ON " LIBERUM ARBITRIUM " 115 subject, we have Luther's own marginal notes in the Wittenberg monastery's copy of Biel's CoUectorium in the 1514 Lyons edition.4 The notes are not extensive and their importance can be easily exaggerated. But they are directly concerned with the question of justification and the role of the human will in salvation. The Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam of December 4, 1517 5 attacks Biel's doctrine and can be directly connected with the Collectorium passage annotated by Luther. These preliminary remarks are meant to set the stage for a discussion of Gabriel Biel's concept of liberum arbitrium, a doctrine which would prove to be of crucial importance in the eventful years of the early sixteenth century. Our chief source is Book II, distinctio 25 of Biel's Epithoma pariter et collectorium circa quatuor Sententiarum libros (Tiibingen, 1501). A brief historical comment on the notion liberum arbitrium will introduce our examination of Biel's teaching; we will conclude with some remarks regarding the clearest expression of Luther's reaction to the theory-his famous De servo arbitrio. HISTORICAL NOTE By the fifteenth century the term liberum arbitrium had a thousand years of history behind it, and the concept to which the term referred was centuries older. For the medieval thinker the term was a classical one, part of the technical vocabulary of the philosopher-theologian. Its roots were unquestionably philosophical, dependent in large part on Aristotle's treatment of choice and the voluntary in his Nicomachean Ethics. Christian thinkers had little difficulty integrating his doctrine with revelation. In the Scriptures man's psychological freedom of choice is a presupposition rather than an assertion. The drama • Paul Vignaux, "Luther, lecteur de Gabriel Biel," Eglise et TMologie, )!2 (March, 1959), 88. For the text of these marginal notes cf. Hermann Degering, Luthers Randbermerkungen zu Gabriel Biels Collectorium in quattuor libros sententiaru11b und zu dessen Sacri canonis missae expositio (Weimar: Verlag Hermann BOhlaus Nachfolger, 1988). • W. A...