Are there any records of what Martin Luther thought of the more radical offshoots of Protestantism? For instance, the Anabaptists who took part in the Munster rebellion?

by MaxwellThePrawn
technodude69

Yes, there are many, Luther was a writing-machine, the amount of surviving various writings and letters we have of him is unbelievable. What I am knowledgeable about in regards to this question is his relationship to Thomas Müntzer, who was in favor of a radical, "revolutionary" protestanism in the context of the peasant war. We have a very good record of their relationship because they wrote many letters to each other. Their relationship started out pretty good but as Müntzer drifted farther apart from Luther theologically and politically, their relationship soured and their later latters are basically just wild insults and them wishing death to each other and calling the a other a demon and servant of Satan.

Luthers relationship to the more radical offshoots of Protestantism is complicated because Luther's stance sometimes changes in different texts and the man was known for his emotional outbursts so it's sometimes debatable if he really meant certain statements or if he just threw them in there in a fit of rage (there is one infamous open letter where he begged the authority to violently kill any rebelling peasents). This whole ordeal has also been highly politicized since, starting with Engels, Luther become known as a "Fürstenknecht" (bondsman of the lords) who was determined to keep the authorities in power and to supress an revolutionary outbreaks. What is clear however, is that, according to Luther's teaching of the two realms, the earthly political and social order was justified through God and there was no religious justification for rebelling against it in a fundamental fashion because that could cause a disruption the godly order, which put the earthly authorities in charge on earth. Luther also thought that the Bible made it clear that any follower of Christ had to be willing to tolerate earthly injustice and cruelty. So, according to Luther there was no religious basis to justify a radical re-imagination of society. However, that doesn't mean that he didn't see any possible criticism of the existing social order, clearly he was quite willing to criticizse authorities and his early communication with the peasent revolt around Müntzer was even somewhat positive since he saw that the peasants were living in an awful situation. There was open letter where he essentially asked the authorities to be a bit nicer to the peasants and warned them that things could go out of hand if things continued as they were (obviously, they did). But still, any political changes motivated by religion could not threaten the basis of the worldly order and theology could not justify earthly revolts. I don't think Luther would have been in favor of a secular revolt against authorities because he saw political instability as one of the signs of the end times but he basically said, according to his teaching of the two realms, as a theologician that's not his business, the reason why he was so against radical Protestantism was because it justified it's political revolt through religion.