Religious Humility in Luther & Heidegger

Cont Philos Rev (2009) 42:171–200
DOI 10.1007/s11007-009-9102-4
The phenomenology of religious humility

in Heidegger’s reading of Luther
Karl Clifton-Soderstrom
Published online: 15 May 2009

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract The return to religion in contemporary continental philosophy is char-

acterized by a profound sense of intellectual humility. A significant influence within
this discussion is Heidegger’s anthropology of finitude in Being and Time and his
later critiques of onto-theology. These critiques, however, were informed by He-
idegger’s earlier phenomenology of the lived experience of religious humility
performed alongside his reading of Martin Luther’s theology. This article shows that
for Luther and Heidegger, religious humility is foremost an affection structured
according to the enactment of one’s dissimilitude from God and resulting existential
tribulation. During a seminal period in his development, Heidegger’s phenome-
nology of humility changed from an Eckhartian conception of detachment culmi-
nating in the unio mystica to a Lutheran conception of humiliation and Anfechtung.
Heidegger’s break from a mystical phenomenology of humility parallels Luther’s
own break from that tradition, and anticipates contemporary developments in the
continental philosophy of religion.
Keywords Heidegger Luther Phenomenology Humility Religious experience
The problem of religious humility hides behind the debates in the philosophy of
religion, and rarely comes to the forefront of explicit philosophical concern. The
absence of sustained treatments of religious humility in the philosophy of religion
seems strange given that the major religious traditions all grant humility a central
place when describing a person’s disposition toward the divine in both epistemo-
logical and ethical matters. We could explain this absence in the philosophical
conversation by simply noting that philosophy couches religious dispositions or
virtues such as humility and hope in epistemological or ontological conceptions and
K. Clifton-Soderstrom (&)
Department of Philosophy, North Park University, 3225 W. Foster Ave, Chicago, IL 60625, USA
e-mail: kclifton-soderstrom@northpark.edu
123
172 K. Clifton-Soderstrom
systems. From the standpoint of the phenomenology of lived experience, however,

we only achieve a philosophical understanding of religion through a proper
description of the intentionality of the religious life. This description must precede
our debate on the epistemic issues of certainty, doubt, warrant, proof, and
justification of theistic claims as well as the ontological issues of the being, non-
being, presence, and absence of the divine. Among contemporary philosophers of
religion influenced by the phenomenological tradition from Husserl and Heidegger
through Marion, the debates over apophatic theology, the God without being, or
beyond being, etc. entail a return to religion with a profound sense of philosophical
humility. The most significant source of the contemporary continental return to
religion goes back to Heidegger’s anthropology of finitude in Being and Time and
his later critiques of onto-theology. As I argue here, however, these modes of
thinking the religious in a new philosophical light had their origins in Heidegger’s
phenomenology of humility in religious life performed in the lecture courses given
prior to Being and Time. In particular, I argue that it was Heidegger’s reading of
Martin Luther’s early theology that brought about an important shift in his
phenomenology of religious life.
In this article, I demonstrate how Luther and Heidegger understood humility as
an affective disposition operative in the religious life, and how Heidegger retrieved
a Lutheran interpretation of humility for his own phenomenological descriptions.
My thesis is that for both Luther and Heidegger religious humility is best described
as an affection of openness to the divine informed by the continuous enactment of
one’s dissimilitude from God and accompanied by existential tribulation. My
argument begins first with a review Luther’s theological conception of humility as it
grew out of monastic theology and, in particular, the theology of St. Bernard of
Clairvaux. While influenced by these traditions, Luther’s description of humility
was bound to his theology of sin which distinguishes Luther’s description of
humility as humiliation from earlier formulations. Second, I trace the changes in
Heidegger’s own phenomenological description of humility between the years 1917
and 1921 in terms of the major theological thinkers he retrieved. I show that during
a seminal period in his thought, Heidegger turned to Luther and his conception of
humility as humiliation in particular, as distinct from his earlier retrieval of
Eckhart’s humility as detachment. Eckhart understands detachment to be an
affective disposition that achieves a similitude between the human soul and God
culminating in the unio mystica. Luther, however, understands humiliation as
affective disposition toward the persistent dissimilitude between the human soul and
God resulting in a perpetual humiliation of the self. Heidegger’s description of
humility comes into concord with Luther’s account, and indeed his break from a
mystical phenomenology of humility parallels Luther’s own break from that
tradition. These connections are seen not only in comparing Luther’s and
Heidegger’s phenomenology of the religious life, but also in Heidegger’s own
explicit reading of Luther’s early theology.
Before proceeding with the argument, the place of this study within recent
scholarship should be noted. Since the publication of Heidegger’s early lecture
courses and the archival work of scholars over the last 15 years, the significance of
Martin Luther’s theology for Heidegger’s philosophy has been made apparent.
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The phenomenology of religious humility in Heidegger’s reading of Luther 173
Throughout Heidegger’s early seminars, we find direct and indirect references to

thinkers such as Augustine, Bonaventure, Eckhart, Luther, Schleiermacher,
Kierkegaard, and others. Heidegger made no secret of the fact that Christian
theologians influenced his early philosophy. When we encounter the conceptual
language he used in his philosophical writings to describe human existence in the
world, we find terms taken more from descriptions of the religious life than from
any tradition of philosophical inquiry (e.g. guilt, fallenness, submissive devotion,
being-toward-death, anxiety, etc.) Luther became one of the chief theological
influences on Heidegger’s philosophy.
On the opening page of one of his final lecture courses at Freiburg in 1923,
Heidegger summarizes his recent research over the last 6 years, ‘‘Companions in
my thinking were the young Luther and the paragon Aristotle, whom Luther
hated.’’1 If we look through Heidegger’s courses from 1917 to 1923 we discover
that Luther references appear in almost every text included in the Gesamtausg-
abe.2 His colleagues also attested to his interest in Luther. Husserl himself wrote
in 1922,
There is one major theme of [Heidegger’s] studies, which are centered
essentially upon the phenomenology of religion, that he, as a former ‘Catholic’
philosopher, understandably cannot treat here freely, namely, Luther. It would
probably be of great importance for his development if he could go to
Marburg. There he would be an important link between philosophy and
Protestant theology (with which he is thoroughly acquainted in all of its forms
and which he appreciates fully in its great unique values).3
During his years at Marburg after 1923, Heidegger was considered a resident expert
on Luther, giving lectures on the reformer for faculty members in theology. Even as
late as 1927, Heidegger acknowledges the significance of Luther for his philosoph-
ical thinking. He writes in a letter to Rudolf Bultmann concerning the project of
Being and Time, ‘‘Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard are philosophically essential
for a more radical understanding of Dasein.’’4 Among the host of other theological
voices found in Heidegger’s texts, Martin Luther stands out as particularly
significant. Nevertheless, despite the evidence in Heidegger’s texts and among his
colleagues that Luther was crucial to his development as a philosopher, until recently
there have been relatively few scholarly studies on Luther’s influence. Though there
1
Heidegger [Gesammtausgabe (hereafter GA) 1988, 63:4].
2
References to Luther in the GA of Heidegger’s early Freiburg lectures include GA, 1987, 56/57:18;
GA, 1990, 58:62, 204–205; GA, 1995, 60:67, 281–282, 308–310; GA, 1985, 61:7, 182–183; GA, 1988,
63:5, 14, 27, 46, 106. See also Martin Heidegger, ‘‘Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles
(Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation)’’, (hereafter PIA).
3
Private correspondence from Husserl to R. I. Natorp from February 1922 quoted in Kisiel (1993,
p. 530).
4
Private correspondence from Heidegger to Rudolf Bultmann, written on December 31, 1927 recorded
in Kisiel (1993, p. 452).
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has yet to emerge a sustained treatment of how he was significant, the secondary
literature on the early Heidegger acknowledges the fact of Luther’s importance.5
This article contributes to this growing literature, by focusing on the intention-
ality of religious humility that Heidegger addressed in his phenomenology of
religion and indicating its important for other themes within Heidegger’s work.
Heidegger’s phenomenology of humility is interesting for reasons both internal and
external to his own work. First, his phenomenology of humility is an important
contribution to the phenomenology of the affectivity of religious life. Second, his
retrieval of the Christian theological traditions into phenomenology is distinct from
though methodologically significant for the contemporary dialogue between
Christian theology and phenomenology. Third, his phenomenology of humility is
not static, but develops over the course of several years according to the theological
traditions with which he is in dialogue. The problem of religious humility thus is a
helpful touchstone toward grasping the changing influences on Heidegger’s thought
during this period. Finally, his conception of religious humility anticipates his later
claim that philosophy’s radical questioning is methodologically atheistic and his
critique of the onto-theological character of metaphysics. Gaining a better
understanding of his phenomenology of humility thus helps connect his method-
ological and ontological claims with concrete lived experience of religious life.
1 Luther on humility within the religious life
Before examining Heidegger’s interpretative retrieval of Luther, it is important to

lay out Luther’s own view on humility within the context of his intellectual project.
Luther’s early theology is a theologia crucis which, in his interpretation, functions
to perpetually prepare the religious person to receive God’s grace by drawing the
believer’s attention to their own fallen state and the promise of grace revealed
foremost in the suffering, death and the resurrection of Christ. Luther’s early
theology is distinguished from other systematic or constructive theological methods
by its emphasis on dismantling the presumptions of natural knowledge of the divine
for the sake of disposing the person’s openness to God’s chosen point of revelation
5
See, for example, Edmund Schlink, ‘‘Weisheit und Torheit,’’ Kerygma und Dogma I, p. 6. In 1963, Otto
Pöggeler’s remarked on Heidegger’s retrieval of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation in Heidegger’s 1920–
1921 course on Augustine. Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, pp. 27–28. See also
Richard Schaeffler’s examination the implicit references to Luther in Sein und Zeit, Richard Schaeffler,
Frömmigkeit des Denkens. Martin Heidegger und die katholische Theologie. Hans Georg Gadamer also
acknowledges Heidegger’s debt to Luther in Heidegger’s Wege: Studium zum Spätwerk, p. 131. John van
Buren has done the most work on Heidegger’s retrieval of Luther in John van Buren, ‘‘Martin Heidegger/
Martin Luther,’’ Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in his Earliest Thought, pp. 159–174. See also
his work The Young Heidegger: Rumor of a Hidden King, pp. 146–202. Theodore Kisiel also
acknowledges the significance of Luther in Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Being and Time, pp. 205–
210, 228. Ted Sadler acknowledges Luther’s significance for Heidegger’s retrieval of Aristotle. In the
opening lines of his book Heidegger and Aristotle, he notes that ‘‘Heidegger’s Seinsfrage, in its
confrontation with Aristotelian metaphysics, can only be understood within a context of ‘Wittenbergian’
proportions. Without an appreciation of the role of Luther it is inevitable that Heidegger’s fundamentally
polemical relation to Aristotle will be obscured.’’ Nevertheless, Sadler himself does not specifically
analyze the importance of Luther.
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on the cross. This twofold movement of destruction and reception will be crucial to
Heidegger’s own conception of phenomenology. As I will demonstrate below,
humility plays a central role in opening the person to the divine. Indeed, humility is
so closely aligned with Luther’s early description of faith that humility can be said
to be synonymous his concept of faith.6
With regard to his interpretation of humility, Luther was influenced by the
traditions of monastic theology of the late middle ages. As a product of cloister life,
monastic theology was quite distinct from the theology that emerged from the
schools and centers of learning. For the monastic theologian, one’s own experience
and the quality of one’s life played an essential role in the method of thinking proper
to theology. Monastic theology sought to gain a practical and affective wisdom
about the divine alongside an intellectual understanding. It was interwoven with the
liturgical practice of hearing the Word of God and aimed at forming the life of the
thinker.
Monastic theologians, nevertheless, had a deep respect for the intellectual
traditions in Christian theology and the skills of careful reasoning, textual analysis,
and precise rhetoric. It is important then, not to place monastic and scholastic
theologies at opposing poles, reducing the explanation of their differences to
opposing categories such as intellectual/affective, rational/irrational, or essential/
existential. The potential problem monastic theologians saw with the thinking being
done at the schools was a methodological one: there was too strong a separation of
intellectual speculation or philosophical dialectics from affective and practical
wisdom, and the subordination of these other types of knowledge from theological
reflection. This is not to say that such isolation of the head from the heart was
practiced among all scholastics—many indeed were pious friars themselves—but
rather that the risk of this isolation was ever present given the methodological
commitments of scholastic theology. If the driving motivation of late scholastic
thinking was to achieve conceptual clarity, the driving motivation of monastic
thinking was to open and preserve mystery.7 Rather than claiming that the tradition
of monastic theology of which Luther was a part was un-intellectual, it would be
more precise to say that the intellectual elements necessary for monastic theological
reflection were understood within the larger context of the spiritual development of
the whole human being as it came to be lived intellectually, affectively, and
actively.
For Luther and monastic theologians alike, humility was chief among the virtues
that guided the affective and practical wisdom theology sought. Bernard of
Clairvaux’s interpretation of humility was particularly influential on Luther’s own
position and displays many similarities.8 Bernard emphasized the importance of
6
Several Luther scholars defend this close association of faith and humility, most notably von
Loewenich and Gerrish. Gerrish, for example maintains that ‘‘the concept of faith was born out of the
concept of humility in the actual development of Luther’s thought’’ (Gerrish 1962, p. 111).
7
For more on these distinctions, see the excellent treatment of medieval monastic theology in Leclerq
(1961).
8
The texts of Bernard were highly influential on the monastic piety of Luther’s younger years. Bernard’s
sermons, which Luther most certainly would have heard repeatedly at meals in Erfurt, were some of the
most popular texts in the monastic world at the time. In this regard, Bernard came to have a profound
123
religious experience in the doing of theology. ‘‘Today the text we are to study is the
book of our own experience. You must therefore turn your attention inwards, each
one must take note of his own particular awareness of the things I am about to
discuss.’’9 This opening statement of the third sermon on the Song of Songs
indicates a theme that was of continual significance for Bernard and Luther, namely
the inward turn toward one’s own experience and self-knowledge as a precondition
to faith. Bernard encourages his readers to examine their own hearts, and to direct
their reflection and wisdom toward the reality of God as it is encountered within
their own living existence. Bernard’s and Luther’s twofold emphasis on inward-
ness—the examination of the self’s experience and the experiencing self—gives a
broader context for their insights into humility in the religious life. Bernard’s
command to ‘‘know thyself’’ is very much tied to his other admonition to ‘‘be
humble.’’ He and Luther both hold that humility is self-knowledge perfected.10 For
both thinkers, to know oneself is to know oneself in relation to God. Self-knowledge
does not entail one’s identity as an individual being, independent from the divine
who is both the creator and redeemer of humanity. Therefore, to know oneself in
relation to God is to be humble, for it involves a renunciation of a human being’s
self-sufficient merits before God and reliance upon divine grace. Bernard writes on
this connection between humility and self-knowledge,
There are then different kinds of knowledge, one contributing to self-
importance, the other to sadness. Which of the two do you think is more useful
or necessary to salvation, the one that makes you vain or the one that makes
you weep?… Paul does not forbid thinking, but inordinate thinking. And what
is meant by thinking with sober judgment? It means taking the utmost care to
discover what are the essential and primary truths, for time is short… There is
nothing more effective, more adapted to the acquiring of humility, than to find
out the truth about oneself. There must be no dissimulation, no attempt at self-
deception, but a facing up to one’s real self without flinching and turning
aside. When a man thus takes stock of himself in the clear light of truth, he
will discover that he lives in a region where likeness to God has been
forfeited… If you lack self-knowledge you will possess neither the fear of God
nor humility.11
Footnote 8 continued
influence on Luther’s theology of the cross and provided a crucial counterweight to the late Scholastic
theology Luther was studying simultaneously. In particular, Bernard’s reflections on the cross and the
nature of Christian humility given in his sermons on the Song of Songs would have a most direct impact
on Luther’s emerging theological position. While Luther became more critical of Bernard’s theology later
in his career, he retained a deep respect for Bernard’s personal piety. The texts of Bernard’s that Luther
quotes most often are his Sermons on the Song of Songs within which much of his reflection on humility
occurred.
9
Bernard (1971, p. 16). Heidegger references this sermon in his notes on medieval mysticism. Heidegger
[GA, 1995, 60:334 (252)].
10
For a descriptive analysis of Luther’s notion of humility as perfected self-knowledge, see von
Loewenich (1976, pp. 128–132).
11
Bernard (1971, pp. 175–179).
123
According to Bernard, ‘‘Humility is the virtue by which man has a low opinion of
himself on the basis of an utterly true knowledge of self.’’12 Self-knowledge is
humbling because through it, insight is gained into one’s sinfulness and separation
from God. To know oneself is to realize in an existential way, the radical difference
between oneself and the divine. Understood religiously, knowledge of self is not
primarily a knowledge of one’s powers and gifts inherent to oneself as an individual
human being, but a knowledge of one’s failings before the divine Other. For
Bernard and other mystics, humility is a virtue. It is counted as a merit in one’s
standing before God, indeed for Bernard it is the only merit one can claim before
God.13
Like Bernard, Luther held that humility and self-knowledge go hand-in-hand. In
keeping with the basic theme of his theologia crucis, Luther holds that to know
oneself is to know oneself as a sinner before a redemptive God.14 Humility is
marked by the way it amplifies one’s dissimilitude from God, thus making one
increasingly aware of sinful humanity’s distance from God. In order to appreciate
his interpretation of humility, it is necessary to understand how humility is born out
of sin-consciousness and matures into humiliation proper.
2 Humility and sin-consciousness
In Luther’s early work, humility originates through sin-consciousness, the acute

existential understanding of one’s own sin. Like many of Luther’s basic theological
concepts, his concept of sin was not articulated in a definition that could be easily
applied to specific life circumstances or actions. Rather, the concept emerges from a
host of statements and descriptions, usually associated with particular biblical
passages from the Psalms, the Prophets, and especially Paul. The most common
descriptors of the concept include ‘‘pride,’’ ‘‘self-will,’’ ‘‘self-righteousness,’’
‘‘unfaith’’ and ‘‘ingratitude.’’ Together these terms form a constellation that
describes humanity’s fallen relationship to God. Ingratitude, Luther writes, is the
‘‘the most shameful vice and the greatest contempt of God.’’15 Ingratitude leads to
egocentrism, self-satisfaction, self-will, and eventually self-righteousness. Pride and
self-will indicate a sinful humanity who claims the world as its own, something it
deserves for itself without acknowledgment of the creator. In the end, Luther uses
all of these descriptors of sin to point to one basic idea: sin is the desire to set
oneself in place of God by not allowing God to be God.
It is important to distinguish exactly what Luther is referring to with his concept
‘‘sin’’ because it bears directly on how humility orients the religious life. In his texts,
Luther refers to a variety of concepts including radical sin (peccatum radicale),
natural sin (peccatum naturale), personal sin (peccatum personale), and actual sinful
deeds (peccatum). Radical sin is the ‘‘root sin’’ or hereditary sin from which all actual
12
Posset (1999, p. 224).
13
von Loewenich (1976, p. 134).
14
Luther, Luther’s Works (LW, 1957a, 10, p. 239).
15
Luther (LW, 1962, 14, p. 51).
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sinful deeds originate. Radical sin indicates the basic condition of humanity in its
unfaithful relationship to God, and is thus a qualitatively different category than any
individual sinful act or aggregate of such acts. Radical sin is a concept of existence
permeating one’s entire being and referring to human nature and its inner tendency to
forget its creatureliness and place itself above God. An individual sinful act is a
specific action against God localized in the unique time, space, and life of the sinner.
Despite making this crucial distinction between radical sin and sinful acts, Luther
claimed that there is an inseparable connection between radical sin and individual
sinful acts. Radical sin is the condition for the possibility of any individual sinful
act. ‘‘Sin, in the Scripture, means not only the outward works of the body but also all
that happens to move men to do these works, namely, the inmost heart, with all its
powers.’’16 Radical sin is that which can ‘‘move men to do these works [of sin].’’ In
fact, Luther holds, when scripture refers to sin, it most often does not mean sinful
acts.17 Sin is not adequately conceptualized as the transgressions of the law in
thoughts, words, and deeds. ‘‘Our weakness lies not in our works but in our nature;
our person, nature, and entire being are corrupted through Adam’s fall.’’18
A further distinction must be made. Knowing the concept of sin is distinct from
existentially understanding sin (i.e. sin-consciousness). In moving from the former
to the later, we move from an ontological consideration of humanity’s inherited
corruption to an existential consideration of an individual’s guilt.19 To realize one’s
guilt is to become existentially aware of oneself as a sinner before God. Such
awareness is accompanied by an affective disposition of horror on one’s own
sinfulness (affectus horrens peccatum).20
The existential understanding of one’s sin entails less than complete knowledge of
sin and oneself. For both sin and the self remain radically hidden from our own
knowledge. Luther affirms that God’s law is written in the human heart. The
corruption of humanity does not negate all knowledge of the law and hence makes
possible knowledge that one has transgressed against God. The individual can
become aware through their own natural reason that one’s actions can and do on
occasion violate God’s law. One knows that one sins against divine law and thus
there is at least partial knowledge of sin. One cannot understand, based one one’s
natural reason alone, one’s radical sinfulness… Individual sins are akin to moral
failures and can be grasped as distinct indiscretions or temporary weakness of the
will, but ‘‘no man can ever discover or comprehend his wickedness since it is infinite
and eternal.’’21 Luther argues that because our sin is so radically definitive of our
16
Luther (LW, 1960b, 35, p. 369).
17
Luther (32, p. 224).
18
Ibid.
19
Paul Ricoeur writes in his own phenomenological analysis of religious intentionality, ‘‘It can be said,
in very general terms, that guilt designates the subjective moment in fault as sin is its ontological moment.
Sin designates the real situation of man before God, whatever consciousness he may have of it… Guilt is
the awareness of this real situation, and, if one may say so, the ‘for itself’ of this kind of ‘in itself’’’
(Ricoeur 1967, p. 101).
20
Heidegger expands on Luther’s notion of the horror of sin-consciousness in his 1924 lecture ‘‘Luther’s
Concept of Sin’’ (cf. Heidegger 2002, p. 106).
21
Luther (LW, 1958, 32, p. 240).
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existence, it ultimately remains hidden to us. ‘‘A man by his own nature does not
know where sin comes from nor does he even know sin itself.’’22 The self has no
power in itself to fully come to terms with its own corrupt identity.
The incomprehensible depth of radical sin in the life of the believer indicates
another essential element of religious thinking, namely suspicion of one’s own will.
In the religious life, the person become a question to oneself. The attempt to grasp
the full depth of my own sinfulness discloses within my seemingly earnest
intentions the ‘‘most secret vice of pride.’’23 This vice is secret because I can never
be sure that my actions are motivated by love for God of love of self.24 When we
existentially understand our own sin, we experience a profound doubt of ourselves
as capable actors seeking to live a good life before God. As subjects, we never reach
complete transparency; we are never fully present to ourselves. We lose the
confidence in our own willful intentions to make a movement toward God. The
religious individual may indeed desire greater similitude with the divine, but when
faced with the depth of their guilt, realize the lack of absolute integrity and
genuineness to act in accordance with this desire. Radical guilt reveals that the
failure to achieve union with God is not a result of the subject’s not being far
enough along in his spiritual journey, nor not being purified enough through good
deeds, meditation, or the intellectual exercises. My actual failure to realize my
religious desire is thwarted by the limited potential inherent to my very being. My
guilt reveals that my will to work toward my own righteousness before God is and
has always been bound.
A final characteristic of religious guilt is the experience of the bondage of the will
(servum arbitrio).25 The human will is bound to sin and is incapable of releasing
itself form this enslavement, and thus is unable to accept the grace of God on its
own. It must be kept in mind that in speaking of the bound will, Luther focuses our
attention on the will’s impotence with regard to salvation, and not its power in
deciding about worldly affairs. Human beings are relatively free to act within a host
of spheres in the world—e.g. everyday individual decisions about work, human
relationships, survival, politics, etc. The extent to which humans voluntarily choose
22
Luther (LW, 1960a, 34, p. 156).
23
‘‘No one can be certain that he is not continually committing mortal sin, because of the most secret
vice of pride’’ (Luther LW, 1958, 32, p. 83).
24
‘‘Since man never acts without reluctance, he never does good without its being corrupted. Therefore,
he never completely fulfills the law of God. There is, however, no integrated will in this life; therefore we
always sin even when we do what is right’’ (Luther LW, 1957b, 31, p. 61). Luther certainly does not deny
the power of the moral will. Such a power makes possible one’s subjugation to God’s commandments and
the performance of good works. Rather, Luther doubts whether the good moral will sinks fully into the
depth of the soul or if there is not some secret harbinger of resistance to God.
25
The concept of the servile will found its most pointed expression in Luther’s confrontation with
Erasmus accounted in De servo arbitrio (1525). Nevertheless, in this work, Luther indicated an important
nuance to the concept. Luther avoided denying humanity a passive capacity for receiving divine grace. In
The Bondage of the Will he writes, ‘‘If the power of free choice were said to mean that by which a man is
capable of being taken hold of by the Spirit and imbued with the grace of God, as a being created for
eternal life or death, no objection could be taken. For this power of aptitude, or as the Sophists say, this
disposing quality or passive aptitude, we also admit’’ (Luther LW, 1972b, 33, p. 67).
123
and thus influence the direction of their lives and history in a wide variety of ways is
debated by Luther but is not the chief concern of the theological concept of the
servum arbitrio. The ‘‘bondage of the will’’ refers to the specific situation of one’s
right standing before God, i.e. religious existence, whereby one may fruitlessly
attempt self-justification before God through one’s own effort. Recognizing the
bondage of one’s will against the ability to reconcile oneself to God through one’s
own effort is definitive of the existential understanding of guilt.26
With regard to the servum arbitrio, there are thus two related experiences. The
first experience of the religious individual is that one’s will is indeed prevented from
effecting reconciliation with God. It is an impossible task to free oneself from one’s
sin, because sin is the ontological state of one’s personhood. The subjective
experience of guilt thus becomes precisely the experience through which one
realizes the limitations of one’s will. The second experience of the religious
individual is the realization that one is responsible for one’s own servile will. One’s
will is both bound and responsible for his own captivity. ‘‘He wills to sin and he sins
voluntarily, not under compulsion or innocently, even though he cannot choose to
change his will through himself.’’27 Luther does not attempt to resolve this
paradoxical claim whereby one is both bound and responsible for one’s own
bondage, but uses it to expresses the profound bondage of the will experienced
through religious guilt.
3 Humility as humiliation
We have seen how the religious self understands its relationship to God anew
through the existential experience of guilt. With the recognition of one’s own
sinfulness, the individual is faced with a choice: either continue to confront and
confess one’s guilt with humility, or flee from that difficulty and make light of one’s
fallen relationship with God. I would argue that if the religious individual does not
flee in the face of one’s own guilt, the person chooses to enter a process of
humiliation. The significant components of humiliation include, what Luther calls,
the ‘‘magnification’’ of one’s sinfulness, the experience of religious trial (Anfech-
tung, tentatio), and finally the reduction of the self to nothing before God. In order
to grasp religious humility through each of these components, it is important to
recognize that the proper understanding of sin is dependent upon one’s affect toward
it. In faith experience, therefore, the self’s relation to its own depravity is not best
described as an objective epistemic awareness. Sin is known affectively.
26
‘‘Where now is free will? Where are those people who are trying to affirm that we of our own natural
powers can produce the act of loving God above all things?… It is simply impossible for us of ourselves
to fulfill the law… The common saying that human nature is in a general and universal way knows and
wills the good but errs and does not will it in particular cases would be better stated if we were to say that
in particular cases human nature knows and wills what is good but in a universal way neither knows nor
wills it. The reason is that it knows nothing but its own good.’’ Luther (LW, 1972a, 25, p. 344).
27
Luther (LW, 1970, 39, p. 379).
123
This knowledge of sin, moreover, is not some sort of speculation or an idea

which the mind thinks up for itself. It is a true feeling, a true experience, and a
very serious struggle of the heart, as he testifies when he says (v. 3), ‘‘I know
(that is, I feel or experience) my transgression.’’ This is what the Hebrew word
means. It does not mean, as the pope taught, to call to mind what one has done
and what one has failed to do; but it means to feel and to experience the
intolerable burden of the wrath of God. The knowledge of sin is itself the
feeling of sin, and the sinful man is the one who is oppressed in his conscience
and tossed to and fro, not knowing where to turn. Therefore we are not dealing
here with the philosophical knowledge of man, which defines man as a rational
animal and so forth. Such things are for science to discuss, not for theology…
A theologian discusses man as a sinner.28
One’s affective disposition toward oneself as sinner is significant for Luther’s
theology because the knowledge of sin entails the confession of sin before God. In
faith experience, the earnest person believes that the radical corruption of humanity
is not simply a quality of human nature as such but of one’s own personal being.
There is no way to distance oneself from it through theological abstractions or limit
its impact on one’s identity through assigning it to particular acts of the will. Only
though self-examination and a continual attitude of confession does one come to
understand sin.
We so rarely analyze ourselves deeply enough to recognize this weakness in
our will, or rather, disease. And thus we rarely humble ourselves, rarely seek
the grace of God in the right way, for we do not understand. For this disease is
so subtle that it cannot be fully managed even by very spiritual men…. Thus
they humble themselves, thus they plead, thus they cry, until at last they are
perfectly cleansed—which takes place in death.29
The humility entailed in confession of one’s sin goes beyond the mere recognition of
one’s sinful nature. Humility involves humiliation according to which one
‘‘magnifies their sin.’’ Consider the opening lines of his Lectures on Romans,
The whole purpose and intention of the apostle in this epistle is to destroy all
righteousness and wisdom of our own… to blow (sins) up and to magnify
them (that is, to cause them to be recognized as still in existence and as
numerous and serious), and thus to show that for breaking them down Christ
and His righteousness are needed for us.30
‘‘If any of you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he
may become wise’’. Moreover, what he says concerning foolishness must be
understood for all other imperfections, so that he who wants to be righteous,
truthful, and powerful, must become a sinner, a liar, and a weakling. This
pathway is spiritual, not physical or natural, that is our whole self-
28
Luther (LW, 1955, 12, p. 309).
29
Luther (LW, 1972a, 25, p. 221).
30
Luther (WA 56, p. 3), translated by Bernard Lohse in Lohse (1999, p. 248).
123
understanding must be destroyed, for it causes us to misjudge ourselves so

badly.31
The realization of one’s guilt and the subsequent call to magnify sin, leaves the
sinner in a profound state of Anfechtung. Luther’s notion of the Anfechtung is a
hallmark of his theology of the cross and his own biography. While the German
word is notoriously difficult to pin down to a single English word, a host of
translations may be given to fill out its meaning.32 In recent Luther scholarship,
a variety of translations are given. The English translation of Pieper’s Christian
Dogmatics uses ‘‘temptation’’; Bouman’s translation of Von Loewenich uses
‘‘trials’’; Plass’s translation in What Luther Said uses ‘‘affliction.’’ The American
translation of Luther’s Works adopts all three—temptation, trial and affliction—and
adds a fourth, ‘‘tribulation.’’ Several texts speak to the constellation of meanings
ascribed to the theological concept. The description in the explanation of the Ninety-
Five Theses is most poignant,
At such a time, God seems terribly angry, with [the religious individual] and
the whole creation. At such a time there is no flight, no comfort, within or
without, but all things accuse. At such a time as that the Psalmist mourns,
‘‘I am cut off from thy sight’’ [Ps. 31:22], or at least he does not dare to say,
‘‘Oh Lord… do not chasten me in thy wrath’’ [Ps. 6:1]. In this moment
(strange to say) the soul cannot believe that it can ever be redeemed other than
that the punishment is not yet completely felt… All that remains is the stark
naked desire for help and a terrible groaning, but it does not know where to
turn for help. In this instance, the person is stretched out with Christ, so that all
his bones may be counted, and every corner of his soul is filled with the
greatest bitterness, dread, trembling, and sorrow…
And yet, though the righteous are not immune from such anguish, their anguish is
experienced differently than that of the wicked. The righteous have the added
temptation to flee from such trials into a comfortable, false peace.
31
Luther (LW, 1972a, 25, p. 214). To qualify his hyperbolic language against good works and the
importance of acquiring virtue in the religious life, Luther writes shortly after making this point, ‘‘All of
the things we have said here must be correctly understood, however, namely that righteous, good, and
holy works must not be understood as being disapproved in the sense that they are to be omitted, but only
with respect to the meaning… we give to them… that is, we do not trust in them as if we had the strength
to be sufficiently righteous before God because of them.’’
32
For an important treatment on the nature of Anfechtung, see Die Anfechtung bei Luther. Paul Beuhler
summarizes Luther’s concept, ‘‘Through the Gospel the Christian has come to learn of a gracious God in
Christ Jesus; however his life experiences present to him a God who is still wrathful and who not only
refuses to forgive sins, but reminds him of them. The hard, concrete experiences of life contradict what
he has learned by faith. God on his side through the Anfechtungen is drawing him closer to him and
throughout the Anfechtungen always intends that they should be beneficial to the Christian. The
Christian, however, interprets them as forms of God’s retribution for sins and as signs of his wrath…
Anfechtungen are an aspect of faith, not as that faith trusts in God and relies on him for all good, but as
that faith faces realities in life and in the world different from those offered in the Gospel.’’ Beuhler
(1942, p. 7) quoted and translated by David Scaer in ‘‘The Concept of Anfechtung in Luther’s Thought’’
(Scaer 1983).
123
However, it is not the punishments [of Anfechtungen] which produce the

restlessness, as is evident from the martyrs and from those men who have been
steadfast, but rather the dread of and the flight from punishments, both of
which arise from frailty of trust in God.33
For Luther the life of the Christian is filled with constant temptations (tentatio),
assaults (imprugnatio) and tests (probation).34 Death, the devil, the world and the
fear of damnation, can readily reduce humanity to a state of hopelessness and
helplessness. The resulting Anfechtung, with its affinities to the concept of Angst, is
characterized by the self’s doubt, despair, and anxiety. The central point of Luther’s
position on the Anfechtungen of religious life is that God himself is the source of
them and that they may be used to turn the soul toward humble self-examination.
More specifically, Anfechtungen, whether seen in the passion and death of Christ or
in the life of the believer, are understood as how God performs his opus proprium
(proper work) through an opus alienum (or alien work). If the proper work of God is
to reconcile humanity back to Godself through love and grace and dwell with them
in the fullness of life, this is made possible only through the alien work of a
believer’s humiliation and Christ’s own suffering and death. The religious person
knows God is not only through their own humiliation; God makes himself known
through God’s own suffering. With regard to the believer’s own faith, God destroys
the pride and complacency of humanity in order that through such humiliation to the
point of despair, humanity may turn and be receptive to the grace of God. In order to
be justified to God, one must first recognize one is a sinner and then humble oneself
before God. God both humiliates and justifies the sinner. It is this negative
movement that must precede the positive movement of salvation. ‘‘An action which
is alien to God’s nature results in an action which belongs to his very nature: God
makes a person a sinner in order that he may make him righteous.’’35 Luther goes
beyond the claim that the Christian life is accompanied by inevitable suffering and
trials to hold that the task of the believer is to embrace the sufferings of faith
through self-humbling.
In this respect, Luther goes beyond certain elements of Bernard’s interpretation
of humility. For Bernard and other mystics, humility is a virtue. It is counted as a
merit in one’s standing before God. Luther emphasizes the significance of humility
in religious consciousness, but goes further to say that humility results in no virtue
of the person, but sheer ‘‘nothingness.’’ To think humiliation of the self through to
its radical conclusion, Luther held, was to regard the humiliated self as nothing
before God. What this ‘‘nothingness’’ means, precisely, must be clarified. Consider
Luther’s description of humility in his meditation on the Magnificat.
In Scriptural usage, ‘‘to humble’’ means ‘‘to bring down,’’ or ‘‘to bring to
naught.’’ Hence, in the Scriptures, Christians are frequently called poor,
afflicted, despised… God chose what is low and despised in the world, even
things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.’’… Since, then, it is His
33
Luther (LW, 1957b, 31, p. 128).
34
Other descriptors used by Luther include persecutio, tribulation, percussio, mortificatio, and perditio.
35
Luther (LW, 1957b, 31, p. 35).
123
manner to regard things that are in the depths and disregarded, I have rendered
the word ‘‘humility’’ with ‘‘nothingness’’ or ‘‘low estate.’’… True humility,
therefore, never knows that it is humble, as I have said; for if it knew this, it
would turn proud from contemplation of so fine a virtue… It is in vain,
therefore, to teach men to be humble by teaching them to set their eyes on
lowly things, nor does anyone become proud by setting his eyes on lofty
things. Not the things but our eyes must be changed; for we must spend our
lives here in the midst of things both lowly and lofty.36
To be truly humble is to undergo humiliation to the point of claiming nothing of
sufficient merit before God. Nothingness is not some thing that we bring to God, but
is rather an affective disposition of sheer openness and receptivity to divine grace.
As affection, it entails the disposition of one toward the divine through which God
becomes significant to the individual as gift. ‘‘They, therefore, do an injustice who
hold that [Mary] gloried… in her humility… For not her humility but God’s regard
is to be praised. When a prince takes a poor beggar by the hand, it is not the beggar’s
lowliness but the princes grace and goodness that is to be commended.’’37 Thus,
humiliation does not reveal the virtue of the individual to God, but alters the
disposition of the individual to be receptive to the mercy and generosity of God. In
the end, the humiliation of the self that results in the self becoming nothing before
God, is precisely an affectivity of humble openness to the divine.
To summarize, humility and self-knowledge go together in Luther’s interpreta-
tion of the religious life. To know oneself is to undergo a process of existential and
affective humiliation in ever deepening recognition of one’s sinful nature. This
knowledge of self and knowledge of one’s fallenness before God is not a speculative
‘‘idea of the mind’’ but a ‘‘true feeling and very serious struggle of the heart.’’ In the
end, humility is an affective disposition of complete openness to the divine that
recognizes the radical dissimilitude of the self from the divine. For Luther, humility
is thus an affection that is in touch with both the self and the divine and has a kind of
wisdom about their difference. The self is not forgotten in one’s humble openness to
the divine, but remains that which must always be humiliated in order to be open to
the divine. Such humiliation is accompanied by its own affections of Anfechtungen
(i.e. horror, anxiety and tribulation). In the end however, Luther holds that only
through the recognition of our dissimilitude from God, can we receive God as a gift.
Luther summarizes this point well in his scholia on Psalm 95,
Light does not arise except with those who are in darkness… Thus, those who
see themselves as being in darkness and unworthy are already righteous,
because they give themselves what is their own, and to God what is His own…
Therefore, we read that it is to the humble that God gives his grace [I Peter
5:5]. And from this it follows that before all things we should be humiliated,
so that we may receive light and grace… Humility and grace will simply not
be separated… Thus it follows that as confession remains in the heart, so long
36
Luther (LW, 1956, 21, pp. 314–316).
37
Luther (LW, 1956, 21, p. 314).
123
does beauty remain, and as long as humility remains, so long does grace
remain.38
4 Heidegger on humility within religious life
Heidegger was not a theologian. Despite remaining within the disciplinary

boundaries of his philosophical method and concerns, his phenomenology of
religious life nevertheless intentionally engaged the Christian theological tradition.
The dialogue of philosophy and theology present within his early work is confirmed
in his treatment of the phenomenology of religious humility. Discerning exactly
how Heidegger is concerned with humility, however, is a more challenging task
than it is for Luther. The reason for the difficulty is that on first reading, Heidegger
rarely focuses explicit attention on humility as a distinct experience, as he does, for
example, with another Christian affection of hope in his analysis of Paul.39 If,
however, we interpret humility to generally mean submissiveness of the self before
God and are attuned to the theological traditions he is referencing, then we more
clearly see a variety of descriptions of humility in Heidegger’s phenomenology and
the central place it holds within his phenomenology of religious life. Indeed, my
contention is that we see Heidegger’s concern with humility more clearly precisely
when we appreciate his use of Lutheran terminology for his descriptions. In
particular, I argue that between 1917 and 1921 Heidegger presents two distinct
descriptions of religious humility through a constellation of concepts he examines.
In addition, I argue that the difference between the two forms of humility parallel
distinctions made by Luther himself. The first description is retrieved from medieval
mysticism and is motivated by Heidegger’s assertion that the mystical life is
fundamentally a humilitas animi on the way to a union with God. He examines this
humble life though an analysis of the mystical concepts Hingabe, Gelassenheit and
Abgeschiedenheit. Simply stated, he presents a mystical understanding of humility
as the disposition of submissive devotion to the divine that makes possible union
with the divine through the soul’s similitude with God. The second description is
retrieved from the apostle Paul, Augustine and Luther and is akin to Luther’s notion
of humility as humiliation described above. In this second description, Heidegger
examines humility through an analysis of the experiences of tribulatio, tentatio, and
Bekümmerung. Through this analysis, Heidegger presents a Lutheran understanding
38
Luther (WA 4, p. 111ff).
39
Heidegger addresses humility (humilitas) most explicitly in his lecture notes on medieval mysticism.
See, for example, his note on the difference between the humilitas of mysticism with that of Luther in
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:310 (235)]. In the early hours of his WS 1919–1920 course Grundprobleme der
Phänomenologie, Heidegger cites the following passage from Dilthey: ‘‘The famous crede ut intelligas
says first of all that the full range of experience must be present to analysis if it is to be exhaustive. The
distinct element in the content of Christian experience lies above all in humility, which is grounded in the
seriousness of the conscience when it passes judgment’’ [Dilthey (1922, 1973) translated in Betanzos
(1988)]. In a letter to Elizabeth Blochmann, Heidegger notes the receptive and submissive attitude
necessary for both phenomenology and religion as an ‘‘inner humility before the mystery and grace of
life’’ [Heidegger and Blochmann (1989, p. 7) translated in Kisiel (1993, p. 112)].
123
of humility as a disposition of self-humiliation before God that results in an concern

over one’s dissimilitude from God.
5 Medieval mysticism: similitude with God in humility
Heidegger became increasingly skeptical of scholastic theology after his 1916

Habilitationsschrift. In the aftermath of his new critical attitude toward the role of
theorization in philosophical thinking, Heidegger continued to study Christian
religious thinkers and traditions. This research was performed for the most part from
1917 to 1921 and resulted initially in a loose collection of notes written before 1919
for a proposed course entitled ‘‘Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism.’’
Topically, the notes cover more than medieval mysticism and include reflections on
Luther, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Rudolf Otto. Rather than giving a phenome-
nology of mysticism in any general or systematic sense, the course shows the
convergence of Heidegger’s two phenomenological pursuits: the phenomenology of
life experience itself and the phenomenology of religious life experience. What is
important in the present article is not whether Heidegger correctly understood the
mystical thinkers—e.g. Eckhart, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Johannes Tauler—in
their own right, but rather how he articulated the religious life through conceptual
structures taken from them.
On the first page of his course notes, Heidegger gives his philosophical intentions
for examining medieval mysticism.
Phenomenological research into religious consciousness is the driving
problem and method. This means: 1. (negatively) renunciation of constructive
philosophy of religion, 2. (negatively) non-absorption of the purely historical
as such, 3. tracing back to the genuinely clarified and genuinely originally seen
phenomena to pure consciousness and its constitution.40
These three elements of Heidegger’s pursuit shed some light on what is meant by
the title of the course ‘‘Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism.’’ The first
point distinguishes Heidegger’s interest in religion from what usually passes as the
philosophy of religion. He is not attempting an epistemological critique of religious
truth claims nor questioning whether belief in God is rationally justified. Such
questions operate within the theoretical attitude and are set above the living
experience of religious faith and thinking. The key word in the title is foundations.
This indicates Heidegger’s regressive method that aims to trace backwards to
originary faith experience.41 The method seeks to get behind the dogmatic
interpretations of faith and return to original religious experience in the concrete life
of the believer. Heidegger’s second point further clarifies what foundations mean.
The course does not demonstrate the influence of philosophical movements or
thinkers that pre-date medieval mysticism, e.g. Plato, Neo-Platonism, Stoicism,
Aristotle, Augustine. ‘‘Philosophical foundations’’ does not refer to the
40
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:303 (231)].
41
Heidegger will later come to call this regressive thinking ‘‘destruction’’ (Destruktion).
123
metaphysical or moral systems out of which mysticism arose as a meaningful way

of being religious. A particular mode of religiosity is not adequately grasped
philosophically solely by locating it within a particular intellectual history.
‘‘Foundations’’ thus refers to the pre-theoretical, originary experiences within
which mysticism as a unique form of religious expression exists. The third point
states positively the aim of the course—to trace back to the originary phenomena as
constituted in consciousness. As a phenomenologist, Heidegger does not interpret
mystical religious experience through preconceptions borrowed from, for example,
Scholastic-Aristotelian or Platonic philosophical systems.42 The emphasis on
foundations, originary experience, and original religiosity becomes a predominant
theme in both Heidegger’s descriptions of phenomenological and religious thinking.
Within these notes, Heidegger interprets religious humility as the self’s
submissive devotion to the Absolute that results in a deep intimacy between the
religious person and God. One of the first conceptions of religious humility
Heidegger examines is Hingabe (dedicative submission). We find this favored term
of Heidegger’s in the KNS 1919 course. Heidegger’s first uses the term in his
Habilitationsschrift to characterize the medieval notion of ‘‘an absolute devotion to
and passionate immersion in the transmitted body of knowledge.’’43 In this context,
the affective ‘‘giving oneself over to the subject matter’’ values the object to which
one is devoted to take priority over the subject. Hingabe thus presents a unique
notion of ‘‘objectivity’’ that is not marked by the theoretical attitude whereby the
subject separates oneself from the object in order to understand it. In other words, if
it is proper to the subject matter that one is devoted to it subjectively, then there
remains a kind of remaining true to the object pole of the relationship. Rather
Hingabe makes possible a radically intimate relationship between subject and
object, out of which meaning is grasped immediately. It involves a form of passivity
that allows oneself to be stirred and directed by the intended object. Analogously,
dedicative submission to the divine—i.e. the emotive surrendering one’s self over to
God—makes possible intimacy with God (Gottesinnigkeit). God becomes that
toward which one is so ecstatically stretched, such that in the moment of absolute
abandonment God and soul achieve union.44 Of course, the experience of Hingabe
is not a momentary feeling toward the divine, but comes to define the ongoing
meaning of religious life.45
42
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:307 (233)].
43
Heidegger (GA 1:198). Heidegger borrows the term from Emil Lask, who in his Logik der
Philosophie, describes the immediate experience of the categories of meaning. According to Lask, in
moments of aesthetic, ethical or religious experience, we find ourselves already given over to meaning
prior to our theorization of it. In such experiences, Hingabe connotes a pre-theoretical, immediate
experience of meaning marked by an attitude of dedication, self-resignation, devotion, and submission.
Whereas Lask used the term to describe categorical intuition, Heidegger applies the term more generally
to describe the phenomenological intuition.
44
Van Buren (1994, p. 303).
45
Heidegger retrieves both Eckhart and Schleiermacher by connecting Hingabe with Schleiermacher’s
description of feeling absolute dependence on the divine. For example, Heidegger writes ‘‘Devotion
(Hingabe): original stream in of fullness, without restraint, letting oneself be excited. To get back to the
experience of the inner unity of life. Religious life is the constant renewal of this procedure’’ [Heidegger
GA, 1995, 60:322 (243–244)].
123
In the life of the religious individual, Hingabe brings about the unio mystica
according to a rather specific intentional structure. In his search for the ‘‘immediacy of
religious experience, the unrestrained vitality of dedicative submission to the holy’’46
Heidegger finds Meister Eckhart’s concept of Abgeschiedenheit (detachment)
illuminating for the structure of religious submission.47 Detachment indicates the
process by which the religious subject is formed through an ongoing inward return to
the soul’s origin and ground. The return to one’s ground entails the religious subject’s
affective renunciation of everything other than its ground, namely a renunciation of
the world and its objects. In this constitutive moment of comportment toward the
world, the subject is repulsed by the world and thus seeks to distance oneself from it
for the sake of making God immediately present to the subject.48 Eckhart explains that
detachment from the world and its objects is necessary according to the principle that
‘‘like is only known by like.’’ Heidegger writes on this point,
Corresponding to the fundamental principle that the same is recognized only
through the same—that the same becomes object only for the same—the
theory of the subject, the soul develops; here also the process of undoing the
multiplicity, of the rejection of the individual forces in their individuality and
determinate directionality, the return to their ground, origin, and their root.
Elimination of all change, multiplicity, time. Absoluteness of object and
subject in the sense of a radical unity and as such unity of both: I am it, and it
is I. From this the namelessness of God and the ground of the soul.49
In order for there to be unity between the Absolute, which is devoid of all multiplicity
and change, and an individual human being, which is caught in change, multiplicity
and temporality, the human must empty oneself of all worldly attachments and loves.
A humble affection toward God entails a repulsion away from the world and an
inward turn toward the soul’s ground which belongs to God. Only through this
humble affection toward God can one be receptive to nothing but God.50
In the moment of union between mystic and divine, the divine is a nothingness, a
lack, an absolute non-personal God-head. Its significance for the religious person
does not lie in its content, but in its very ineffability, indeterminacy, and
undifferentiated simplicity. This entails that God is known through the emptiness of
its form, by a soul that is also emptied of all multiplicity. Heidegger notes that
Abgeschiedenheit is oriented toward not a theoretical but rather an ‘‘emotional
nothing,’’ ‘‘the God-ignited emptiness of form,’’ ‘‘a repulsion of the world’’ reached
46
Kisiel (1993, p. 82).
47
Abgeschiedenheit is usually translated ‘‘detachment,’’ though the English translators of GA 60 use
‘‘seclusion.’’ Detachment is a more accurate translation of than seclusion. Abgeschiedenheit articulates an
attitude toward that which distracts one from the divine, and not the attitude toward the divine itself.
48
‘‘Detachment [is] not a theoretical not-seeing, but an emotional one; in its primordial form [it is]
precisely religious, and accordingly the ways and steps to it as ‘repulsion’’’ [Heidegger GA, 1995, 60:308
(234)].
49
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:316 (240)].
50
Sonya Silka offers a helpful examination of Heidegger’s use of Eckhart’s Abgeschiedenheit in Silka
(1997, pp. 133–141).
123
by a progressive suspension of all multiplicity, particularity, and specificity.51 In the

end, there is a reductive unity of subject and object: ‘‘I am It; and It is I.’’
In summary, in his 1917–1919 notes on medieval mysticism, Heidegger sketches
a notion of humility using the concepts of Hingabe and Abgeschiendenheit.
Humility adopts the particular affective dispositions of submissiveness toward God
and detachment from world. Thus understood, humility makes possible the unio
mystica because the soul can achieve similitude with God when it strips itself of its
worldly attachments and seeks its own inherent capacity to receive God. Eckhart
writes, ‘‘The man who has annihilated himself in himself and in God and in all
created things… has taken possession of the lowest place, and God must pour the
whole of himself into this man, or else he is not God.’’52 As Heidegger himself
notes, submissive devotion, letting-be, and detachment together form the constel-
lation of a mystical humility.53
6 Heidegger on Paul, Augustine, and Luther: humility and tribulation
Between 1917 and 1919 Heidegger underwent a profound struggle with his own
faith, wherein his confessional ties moved away from the ‘‘system of Catholicism’’
and moved toward Protestant/Free Christianity. In 1917 he was married to Elfriede
Petri, a Lutheran, who had initially intended converting to Catholicism but never
did. Later, she expressed that between their marriage in 1917 and the winter of
1919, she and her husband had many doubts about their Catholic faith. On
December 23, 1918, Elfriede met with Father Engelbert Krebs concerning her and
Heidegger’s decision not to baptize their soon-to-be born child within the Catholic
Church. Prof. Krebs noted the meeting in his diary and recorded in the first person
what Elfriede spoke to him. ‘‘My husband has lost his religious faith, and I have
failed to find mine. His faith was undermined by doubts even when we got married.
But I myself insisted on a Catholic wedding, and hoped with his help to find faith.
We have spent a lot of time reading, talking, thinking, and praying together, and the
result is that we have both ended up thinking along Protestant lines, i.e. with no
fixed dogmatic ties, believing in a personal God, praying to Him in the spirit of
Christ, but outside any Protestant or Catholic orthodoxy. [Krebs continues in his
own voice] Having qualified for a lecturer on Catholic Philosophy, Heidegger will
get himself into a lot of trouble for changing sides. He is growing away from
Catholic thinking.’’54
My interest in Heidegger’s turn toward a Protestant faith is not biographical, but
philosophical. In this final section, I show that from 1919 to 1921, Heidegger’s
descriptions of humility changes from an Eckhartian interpretation to a Lutheran
one. This shift entails a new emphasis on the self-world of the religious person, the
enactment sense of faith experience, and sin-consciousness as constitutive elements
51
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:316–317 (240)].
52
Eckhart (1981, p. 197).
53
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:309 (235)].
54
Ott (1993, p. 109).
123
in the religious life. In this shift, Heidegger reconceives humility in light of the
religious person’s ongoing, existential knowledge of one’s dissimilitude from God.
Religious humility changes from Abgeschiedenheit to tribulatio, i.e. the trial of
humiliation of the religious subject resulting from the existential consciousness of
one’s sin. Throughout his notes on medieval mysticism, Heidegger’s describes
religious experience culminating in the self’s union with the disinterested emotional
nothing of the God-head. After 1919, his phenomenology of religious experience
describes the religious individual’s felt distance from the divine and the importance
of amplifying that feeling. When his phenomenological focus shifts away from the
experienced, devotional object to the experiencing self, there is also a shift toward
the relational and enactment-sense of sin and emotional anxiety within the
experiencing subject. In the end, to feel humble before God entails a feeling of
anguish over one’s distance from God. This anguish is not simply overcome in a
more mature faith. Like Luther before him, Heidegger argues in reference to Paul and
Augustine that spiritual trial itself is essential to the affective openness to the divine.
Already in the notes on medieval mysticism, he makes a distinction between a
mystical conception of humility as letting-be and the Lutheran conception of
humility wed to tribulation.
The constitution of the experience of God (birth of God.) The specific a priori of
natural corruption (not capacity), humble letting-be (Gelassenheit), gratia
operans—gratia cooperans… The motive of mysticism in absolute history is the
preparation of fides (faith) [and the] realization of humilitas through detachment.
Mysticism gave Luther ‘a world of inner experience and also showed the
methodological way to securing it and enhancing that world. This is also why the
motivating force of humility could not in the long run operate merely as an
impediment to the jubilant and sure development of fiducia. The humilitas,
tribulatio itself becomes the expression of a personal certainty of salvation.’55
The text displays Heidegger’s retrieval of Eckhartian Gottesgeburt, Gelassenheit
and Abgeschiendenheit that fit with his other reflections in the 1917–1919 notes. He
also, however, introduces Luther as someone who thought differently than Eckhart
and other medieval mystics precisely on the relation of humility to faith.
What is the significance of this shift for the meaning of humility? First,
Heidegger explicitly uses two different words for faith fides and fiducia. Heidegger
understands mysticism to involve the preparation of the soul for fides. Later in the
course, he notes that the unique contribution of the Reformation and Luther in
particular was their emphasis on fiducia as the definitive description of faith.56
Immediately following the above text from the mysticism course, Heidegger
55
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:308 (234)]. See also Kisiel’s explanation of Heidegger’s ‘‘Theo-logical
Beginnings,’’ in Kisiel (1993, p. 111).
56
There were various definitions for faith in late medieval scholasticism, of which fiducia was just one.
Others included fides informis, fides formata, fides implicita, fides explicita, fides quae, credulitas and
fiducia (trust in the promises of God). For Heidegger to isolate the distinction between fides, as something
akin to credulitas, and fiducia, is telling of Heidegger’s dualistic categories for an intellectual, theorizing
belief and an existentially, enacted trust. Such a categorization is a particularly Protestant way to establish
a difference between the two.
123
supports a common distinction often made between fides and fiducia: fides refers to
a cognitive/noetic belief whereas fiducia is an affective/volitional trust. As trust,
faith is a matter of the heart and involves one’s affective concern for one’s own
existence as judged and redeemed.
Protestant and Catholic faith are fundamentally different. Noetically and
noematically separated experiences. In Luther an original form of religios-
ity—one that is also not found in the mystics—breaks out. The ‘‘holding-to-
be-true’’ [fides] of Catholic faith is found entirely otherwise than the fiducia of
the reformers.57
Second, Heidegger connects the experience of Lutheran humilitas with tribulatio.
Humility entails the experiences of trial, tribulation, fear and trembling undergone
by the self before God. Luther, Heidegger contends, goes one step further than
saying that humility and trail go together. For it is not merely despite humility’s
tribulatio that the religious self achieves certainty of one’s personal, saving
relationship to God. Trial is indeed essential to fiducia; trial alone, paradoxically,
gives one the assurance of salvation. Heidegger suggests here what we already have
seen in our examination of Luther: the religious self’s suffering and humiliation are
essential to faith experience. Thus Heidegger concludes this text with a typically
Lutheran dialectical phrasing, namely, that the feeling of certainty in faith is
achieved through a feeling of insecurity. Our own insecurity—i.e. our struggle to
find the revealed God behind the hidden God, to see the love of God behind God’s
apparent wrath, to see our justification behind our sin—gives witness that we are on
the path of faith. As Luther himself notes, and Heidegger would affirm, the worst
kind of trial consists in not having any trial. That securitas with regard to one’s
salvation is a form of akeˆdia.58 We shall see this same interpretation of religious
trial carried through in his reading of Paul and Augustine.59
Heidegger continues to draw connections between the affections of humility and
trial in relation to fiducia in his 1920–1921 religion courses. In the first course,
Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion, he shows that Paul demonstrates
that disposition and mood are essential components of religious knowledge. More
specifically, Heidegger notes the importance of affectivity by describing two
affections present within Paul’s religious experience: feelings of weakness and
distress. Weakness and distress describe the basic mood of his religious life; Paul is
constantly beset by suffering, despite his joy as an apostle. Alongside his
interpretation of First and Second Thessalonians, Heidegger introduces Paul’s
autobiographical comments made in II Corinthians 12:2–1060 where Paul discloses
57
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:310 (236)].
58
Luther (LW, 1962, 14, p. 60; LW, 1969, 42, p. 75).
59
We must acknowledge that this phenomenological description is incomplete. In order to take
reassurance from our insecurity, we must already trust in the divine in a way that both appreciates one’s
own sin and the promise of divine grace. This suggests that the religious life is a circular movement of
affections, which is always incomplete and fraught with frustrations, but propelled by the hope that
frustration is not all there is.
60
‘‘A thorn was given in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too
elated… Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘‘My
123
the ‘‘self-world’’ of his faith. Paul sets up a stark contrast between a humble faith
marked by weakness and a prideful faith marked by boasting and ambition. In the
Corinthian passage, Paul explains why he does not boast of mystical visions of
paradise, mystical hearings of divine words, or being caught up into ‘‘the third
heaven’’ as others have sought in their religious lives. Rather, ‘‘Paul wants to be
seen only in his weakness and distress.’’61 Paul has been given a thorn in the flesh
‘‘to keep me from exalting [hyperairomai] in the excess [hyperbole] of revelations.’’
In this passage often quoted by Luther, Paul explains that only through weakness
does one attain strength. He thus constantly humiliates himself before others and
God, so that God’s grace may abound even more in him. What is important in
Heidegger’s reading of Paul here is that he notes Paul’s affective state of distress,
tribulation, and anxiety as a constitutive way of being-a-self before the divine.62
II Corinthians 12:2-10 gave us a preview of the self-world of Paul. The
extraordinary in his life plays no role for him. Only when he is weak, when he
withstands the anguish of his life, can he enter into a close relationship with
God. This fundamental requirement of having-God is the opposite of all bad
mysticism. Not mystical absorption and special exertion; rather withstanding
the weakness of life is decisive.63
The 1921 course on Augustine further develops the significance of humility in
relation to spiritual trial that is in basic agreement with Luther’s interpretation.64 In
order to grasp the connection Heidegger makes between humility and trial in
Augustine, we need to examine several elements including the central motivation of
the Confessions, the importance of sin-consciousness in Augustine’s account of the
religious life, and finally how humility as a response to sin-consciousness enacts a
fleeing-from-God.
Understanding the motivation of the Confessions is key to understanding
Augustine’s position on humility. As was the case in Paul’s epistles, Augustine’s
Footnote 60 continued
grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’’ So, I will boast all the more of my
weakness, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.’’
II Corinthians 12:7–10. (NRSV) Interestingly, this passage was also a favorite of Luther’s when
explaining the theologia crucis.
61
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:98 (69)].
62
The emphasis given to the Corinthian passage does not suggest that the tribulation of Paul is only
related to the expectation of the Parousia as is often emphasized in the secondary literature on Heidegger.
63
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:98 (69)].
64
Theodore Kisiel notes the striking similarity between Heidegger’s interpretation of Augustine and
Luther’s theologia crucis. He writes ‘‘[While interpreting Augustine’s emphasis on the inner religious
life] Heidegger does not even mention Luther’s distinction [between a theologian of the cross and a
theologian of glory] at this point in the course, but his entire interpretation in this excursus, down to his
selection of texts from the Augustinian opus, is clearly being guided by that distinction… Thus Heidegger
is now subtly bringing the full possibility of his own methodology of formal indication to bear onto such a
theology of the cross, as he extends his two conceptual diagrams prefiguring what it means to be
(= become) a Christian, one Pauline [in the 1920–1921 course] and one Augustinian [in the 1921 course],
in the direction of a verbalized ‘crucifixion schematism’ of the Christian factic life, which is at least in the
spirit of Luther.’’ Kisiel, Genesis of Being and Time, p. 210.
123
text is understood phenomenologically through the how of its enacted communi-

cation. For Paul, the how of his communication is proclamation; for Augustine, the
communicative situation is confiteri (confession). According to Heidegger’s reading,
the Confessions narrates Augustine’s search for the authentic condition for attaining
an originary experience of the divine.65 Just as Heidegger interpreted the humilitas
animi as the original condition for immediate experience of the divine among the
mystics, so he searches for the analogous original experience in Augustine. This
authentic condition is tied into the very idea of the confiteri. The content of the
Confessions is related to three tasks a confiteri accomplishes: confession of sin,
praise of God, and profession of faith.66 The motivation of writing the confessions is
not, however, located in any one of these elements but in Augustine’s existential
concern for the conflictual relationship between them. The inner conflicts between
loving his God and confronting his own corruption and between praising God while
acknowledging an impure heart mark Augustine’s concrete life situation.
Heidegger makes the important discovery in his reading that Augustine’s
existential conflict is not an impediment to his search, but is the very condition for
experiencing God. Augustine’s inner conflict is summed up in the phrase quaestio
mihi factus sum—I have become a question to myself.67 The search for God through
the questioning of a conflicted self becomes the guiding theme of the Confessions
and Heidegger’s main point of interest. How one becomes a question to oneself is
bound to how one makes confession of one’s sinfulness.68 The temptations to sin are
experienced in various concrete ways including the concupiscentia carnis (desires
of the flesh), concupiscentia oculorum (desires of the eyes), and ambitio saeculi
(secular ambition). Formally speaking, however, Augustine presents a threefold
conception of sin according to how a religious person understands one’s own
sinfulness: through the theoretical, aesthetic, and enactment sense.69 Consistent with
his search for the primal Christian experience, Heidegger subjects the theoretical
and aesthetic understandings of sin to phenomenological critique that aims to
uncover a more originary experience. In the end, Heidegger claims that the
enactment sense of sin points to an originary religious experience and reveals a
more radical notion of religious humility.
(1) The theoretical conception of sin: Augustine’s theoretical understanding of
sin is rooted in the axiological system he imports from Neo-Platonism. The
axiological system divides reality into a hierarchical ranking of goods, of which
God is the highest good (summum bonum). With regard to the religious life,
Augustine claims that God alone is to be enjoyed (fruitio Dei) for its own sake as the
summum bonum. All other goods are to be more or less used (uti) and enjoyed, but
65
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:283 (214)].
66
Wills (1999, p. xiv).
67
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:177–178 (129–130); 263 (198); 280–285 (212–115)].
68
‘‘The problem of the confiteri arises from the consciousness of one’s own sin. The tendency toward
vita beata [the happy life]—not in re [in actuality] but in spe [in hope]—emerges only from out of the
remissio peccatorum [remission of sins, the reconciliation with God]’’ [Heidegger GA, 1995, 60:283
(214)].
69
Ibid.
123
always ultimately for the sake of enjoying God. In this system, sin is understood
theoretically as the privation of the good (privatio boni). In the hierarchy of being
wherein all existence is oriented toward the summum bonum, ‘‘Sin is a lower
measure of reality.’’70 With regard to the religious life, perversio (sin) results when
those things which should only be used (i.e. earthly goods) are enjoyed for their own
sake, and/or that which should be enjoyed for its own sake (i.e. God) is used for the
sake of enjoying some lesser good.71
When examined phenomenologically within the context of the religious life, the
meaning of the summum bonum is related to how the summum bonum becomes
accessible in experience. When reading Augustine’s account, the phenomenologist
must distinguish ‘‘to what extent this originates from one’s own experience, and to
what extent it can be demonstrated to have been determined by the cultural-historical
situation of Augustine.’’72 Augustine’s theoretical approach to God and sin arise out
of a cultural situation informed by the Patristic intellectual tradition and its integration
of neo-Platonic and Christian worldviews. According to Heidegger, Augustine’s
position on how the summum bonum becomes accessible in experience is also directly
in line with this Patristic tradition. According to that tradition, the summum bonum is
accessible through an ascent along a hierarchy of goods from the sensible world to the
supersensible world. In defense of this originally Platonic notion, the Patristic writers
cite the apostle Paul in the epistle to the Romans 1:20—‘‘Ever since the creation of the
world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been
understood and seen through the things he has made.’’ (NRSV) The religious soul, in
this interpretation, is capable of the ascent toward the highest good. With this passage,
Augustine’s neo-Platonic axiological system seems to be confirmed biblically.
According to Heidegger, however, this is a misinterpretation of the biblical text
and an inadequate phenomenological description of originary religious experience.
Heidegger proclaims that ‘‘Only Luther really understood the passage for the first
time. In his early works, Luther opened up a new understanding of primordial
Christianity.’’73 Against Augustine’s and the Patristic interpretation, Luther claimed
that due to humanity’s radical sin, the authentic condition for an originary religious
experience cannot involve an ascent from the world to God. Rather, the authentic
condition for religious experience involves humiliation, tribulation and anxiety
founded on one’s dissimilitude from God. Heidegger cites Luther’s Heidelberg
Disputation to develop his critique of Augustine.74 He highlights three of Luther’s
70
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:283–284 (214)].
71
Heidegger notes that in Augustine, ‘‘These are Plotinian ideas that connect to a certain conception of
Paul’s thought in the letter to the Romans’’ (Ibid.).
72
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:280–281 (212)].
73
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:282 (213)].
74
As early as 1963, Otto Pöggeler noted, ‘‘Heidegger referred to Luther in his lecture course on
Augustine and Neoplatonism and indeed to the theses of the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation. These were
still not well known in 1921, but in the meantime have received notice to a great extent through the
introduction of ‘dialectical theology.’… In his ‘Theology of the Cross’ Luther thus retrieves the ‘factical
life-experience’ of primordial Christianity. Such Christianity renounces all visions and revelations, above
all even the visions of metaphysics, and by appropriating weakness plumbs the depths of the factical, the
essentially ‘historical life’’’ (Pöggeler 1987, pp. 27–28).
123
theses: 19, 21, and 22. Introducing Luther here fits with Heidegger’s descriptions of
originary religious experience as one of humility, trial and destruction of the self
before God. As we have seen from our analysis of Luther above, theses 19–22 are
found in a section of the Disputation where he lays out the basic tasks of religious
thinking and how they differ from speculative thinking. Theses 19–22 are
immediately proceeded by the 18th which states ‘‘It is certain that man must
utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of
Christ.’’75 The entire set of theses following this carries through the theme of
humiliation and destruction that must be the initial task of the theologian. In the
immediate context of Heidegger’s course on Augustine, Luther offers up a notion of
God that is wholly other from the sensible things of the world and remains wholly
other than the soul. The religious self does not contemplate the things of the world
and then Platonically ascends to a vision of the summum bonum. Rather, as Luther
notes in thesis 21, ‘‘It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his own good
works unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil until he
knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but God’s.’’ The theologian
does not achieve theological wisdom through abstraction from the visible world; the
religious individual seeks wisdom in the visible revelation of God on the cross. It is
only by becoming weak, being humiliated and undergoing suffering with Christ,
that religious wisdom is achieved and the ‘‘accessibility to the divine’’ is made
possible.
After using Luther to criticize Augustine’s theoretical understanding of sin and
God, Heidegger examines phenomenologically two other forms of sin conscious-
ness and their relationship to religious humility.
(2) The aesthetic view of sin: Distinct from the theoretical view of sin, is the
aesthetic. The aesthetic view of sin connotes a way of relating to one’s sin that is
best described as a way of looking, as if from a distance. The metaphors of sight and
vision are deployed to describe one mode of self-understanding. Through an
aesthetic conception of one’s sin, the religious person achieves a proper vision of
the self that engenders humility. Here Heidegger quotes from Confessions Book
VIII.vii.
But while he spoke, You, my Lord, turned me around toward myself, so that I
no longer turned back on myself where I had placed myself while I was not
willing to observe myself. And you showed me my face so that I might see
how ugly I was, how disfigured and dirty, blemished and ulcerous.76
The consciousness of one’s own sin entails a turn away from God and a turn toward
oneself. In this moment, one is repulsed by the unsightly visage of oneself as a
sinner. In such an experience, one stands ‘‘outside’’ oneself and looks back upon
oneself. There is a distanciation between the experienced object (the sinful self) and
the experiencing subject. While this experience retains a subject/object structure, an
aesthetic experience of sin is personal; the ugliness of myself as sinner repulses
75
Luther (LW, 1957b, 31, p. 51).
76
Quoted and translated from the Latin in Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:274 (206)].
123
me.77 This aesthetic experience of sin makes possible an initial affection of religious
humility toward oneself whereby one has a lower view of oneself.
When examined phenomenologically, the aesthetic understanding of one’s sin is
found to be a way of looking at oneself before God; it is a form of observation. The
intentional structure of the experience indicates that one is separated from oneself
and passively reflects back upon oneself as sinner. Just as the prideful vision of
one’s self-importance and meritious standing before God is a passive way of seeing
oneself, so here too does humility depict a way of seeing the self. The aesthetic view
of one’s sin, however, does not yet disclose the way being-sinful and hence being-
humble before God are being lived out in one’s own religious life. A religious life is
understood in the enactment of it. The aesthetic view of sin takes an observational
stance that, like the theoretical stance, is a step-removed from the actual living
experience itself. The aesthetic view does not yet uncover the originary affection
and enactment of humility. To grasp a living religious humility, Heidegger holds,
one must understand the enactment sense of sin presented in Augustine and Luther.
When examined from this perspective, sin consciousness means more than passively
seeing oneself as ugly in the eyes of God, sin means an active fleeing from God
through which ‘‘the distance to God increases.’’78 Humility thus becomes not simply
lowering one’s view of the self, but rather a way of being before the divine as distant
such that one lives in dependence upon God.79
(3) The enactment sense of sin: It is significant that Heidegger uses the same
language to describe the enactment sense of sin in his Augustine course as he does
in his later lectures on Luther.80 Both descriptions portray the humility resulting
from sin-consciousness in an active, dynamic sense as a fleeing from God,
accompanied by tribulation (Anfechtung), which itself keeps one authentically open
to the divine. Heidegger claims that in the Confessions,
Augustine communicates all [religious] phenomena in the posture of the
confiteri, standing within the task of searching for and of having God… The
condition is such that, if one takes it seriously, one (initially) moves away
from God. With the ‘‘question mihi factus sum,’’ the distance to God
increases… the problem of confiteri arises from the consciousness of one’s
own sin. The tendency toward vita beata [the happy life]—not in re [in
actuality] but in spe [in hope]—emerges only from out of the remissio
peccatorum [remission of sins], the reconciliation with God…. The enactment
sense of sin: only he loses You who leaves you; he who leaves You, to where
77
This repulsion is an affection akin to Luther’s description of the horror (affectus horrens peccatum)
that one feels toward oneself as sinner. See Heidegger’s lecture on Luther’s concept of sin in Heidegger
(2002, p. 106).
78
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:283 (214)].
79
Along the same lines, Heidegger cites Adolf Reinach in his lecture notes from 1918, ‘‘I experience an
absolute dependency on God. Insofar as I myself am participatory in this experienced relationship, this
state of affairs does not stand before me—rather I myself experience myself in this relationship, a
relationship then which, naturally, cannot become an object to me.’’ Adolf Reinach, Sämtliche Werke, 607
cited in Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:327 (247)].
80
Cf. Heidegger (2002).
123
does he flee, if not from you as the merciful one to You as the wrathful one?
This is the decisive conception.81
In Heidegger’s treatment of sin-consciousness in Augustine, we see Lutheran
descriptions repeatedly made—e.g. increasing the distance from God as a condition
of experiencing God, the centrality of sin-consciousness for this increased distance,
the distinction made between the religious life lived in re and in spe, and finally the
double activity of God as merciful and wrathful.82 Heidegger finds in Augustine
elements that point to the factic existence of genuine religious life, though he
believes that they do not work within the Platonic elements of his thought. Luther,
so its seems, is the one who helps Heidegger determine where Augustine falls short.
For Heidegger and Luther, the authentic condition of experiencing God is restless
existential trial in view of one’s own most separation from God and not restful
enjoyment of God as the highest good. In this context, humility as the submission to
the divine takes on a different meaning than found in the idea of Hingabe used by
Heidegger earlier in the mysticism course. Submission to the divine entails the
submission to the radical dissimilitude from God and the ongoing anxious suffering
necessary to be open to the divine. Succinctly stated, one must first lose God in
order to be found by Him; one must first move away from God, to the point of the
absence of God, before God can be given to an authentically open heart. This is
precisely the same point Luther makes in his understanding of humility as an
ongoing affection of religious faith. Humility is thus bound to the other dominant
themes in Luther’s theology including the notion of divine hiddenness (i.e. God is
present through absence), Anfechtungen, and the dialectical interpretation of being
both righteous and sinful.
It is no surprise then that we find this same interpretation of sin in Heidegger’s
reading of Luther 2 years later in 1923.83 In two lectures given in Rudolf
Bultmann’s course, ‘‘The Ethics of St. Paul’’, Heidegger outlines the basic position
81
Heidegger [GA, 1995, 60:284 (214–215)]. See also Heidegger’s early description of the meaning of
becoming a question to oneself, ‘‘Moving away from God, increasing the distance. In the question of
possessing God: The more he advances toward the authentic conditions of enactment, the more dangerous
these conditions turn out to be, in hostility to himself’’ [Ibid. 264 (198)]. Though we do not have the space
to examine these remarks, it is interesting to point out the similarity to Heidegger’s statements about the
atheism of philosophy. For example, compare the above remarks with these more philosophical ones.
‘‘Philosophy, in its radical, self-posing questionability, must be a-theistic as a matter of principle. The
more radical philosophy is, the more determinately is it on a path away from God; yet, precisely in radical
actualization of the ‘‘away’’, it has its own difficult proximity to God’’ (Heidegger GA, 1985, 61:148).
Also, ‘‘Any philosophy that understands itself in terms of what it is, that is, as the factical how of the
interpretation of life, must know—and know it precisely if it also has an ‘‘intimation’’ of God—that the
throwing of life back upon itself which gets actualized in philosophy is something that in religious terms
amounts to raising one’s hand against God’’ (Heidegger 2002, p. 194).
82
We might speculate that the reason why Heidegger claims he cannot go further with this interpretation
with his students. He claims he will not go into more detail on the theological conceptualizations
‘‘because they are very difficult and require conditions of understanding that cannot be achieved in the
context [of this course].’’ This may be because they have little understanding of the Lutheran theology
that shapes Heidegger’s reading of Augustine. Kisiel remarks that ‘‘It might well have been controversial,
if not scandalous, had Heidegger taken this Lutheran tack in ‘‘Catholic Freiburg’’ so early in his public
career and at such an early stage of his Lutheran studies’’ (Kisiel 1993, p. 111).
83
Heidegger (2002, pp. 105–110).
123
of Luther’s concept of sin and demonstrates its continuity throughout Luther’s

theology. In his lecture, Heidegger defends the thesis that for Luther,
The more one fails to recognize the radicalness of sin, the more redemption is
made little of, and the more God’s becoming man in the Incarnation loses its
necessity. The fundamental tendency in Luther is found in this manner: the
corruptio of the being of man can never be grasped radically enough….
corruptio amplificanda est [corruption is something to be amplified.]84
The amplification of sin marks the enactment sense of humility. Here we find a
position consistent with Heidegger’s interpretation given in the Augustine course
that radical humility before God not only takes a modest view of the self and is
submissive toward the divine, but enacts a movement away from God. ‘‘The real
meaning of sin is this: He who flees [from God] once flees in such a way that he
constantly wants to distance himself further, he fugit in aeternum [keeps on fleeing
forever.]… And nonetheless the situation of man in which he distances himself from
God is a relation to God that shows itself in a certain looking back on man’s part in
the sense that God is rejected as auctor peccati.’’85 Heidegger interprets Augustine
to support the same thesis of Luther regarding the meaning of humility as
humiliation. In Heidegger’s Lutheran interpretation of the religious life, the
religious person, through one’s own aptitudo passiva (passive capacity or aptitude)
may receive divine grace by ‘‘letting God be God.’’ Such a disposing quality entails
stepping back from one’s own willful and active pursuit of God whereby one
attempts to grasp the divine (a pursuit which is always corrupt given the fallen will).
This stepping back, this distancing oneself from and moving away from God, allows
one to be found by God and thus graced by God.
7 Conclusion—humility and the flight from god
To have faith is not simply to believe a particular set of propositions, but to be

affectively disposed toward the divine in such a way that one is receptive to God and
concerned with one’s own openness. It is commonplace to describe Luther’s and
Heidegger’s sense of faith as existential. It is important to note, however, that this is
not enough to describe the kind of concern operative in religiosity. The existentiality
of religious faith must be oriented by the proper affection toward oneself and toward
God lest it become idolatrous self-absorption. For Luther, humility is the affection
that prevents such self-absorption. Humility is an affection that is simultaneously
oriented toward oneself, God and their mutual dissimilitude. Religious affections are
intentional, i.e. they are about God, and reflective, i.e. they are about one’s openness
to God. One’s affections thus are always and already caught up in a hermeneutical
circle between interpreting that toward which one is attuned and interpreting the
adequateness of one’s attunement. This dual intentionality of the affections is
supported by Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious consciousness.
84
Ibid., 106.
85
Ibid., 109.
123
Heidegger’s phenomenological descriptions of the religious life disclose humility

as one of its basic affective dispositions. In some regard, humility is the affection
par excellence, for it is itself associated with the passivity, submission, and
openness that marks all ways of being affected. It is, nevertheless, distinguished
from other affections. According to Heidegger’s account, religious humility is the
affective submission to the divine in view of the persistent dissimilitude between the
human soul and God. Humility does not reduce that dissimilitude, but rather moves
one to realize it at ever deepening levels of concern. Humility is thus associated with
sin-consciousness; it is experienced as a perpetual humiliation of the self before God
and is accompanied by existential tribulation. Heidegger’s description of humility is
in concord with Luther’s account. We can see this not only when we compare
Luther’s and Heidegger’s descriptions of the religious life, but also when we
examine Heidegger’s own reading of Luther found in lectures on Paul, Augustine
and his 1923 lectures for Bultmann.
Nevertheless, a phenomenology of humility is not congruous with a phenom-
enology of the religious life as a whole. If humility alone defined the religious life,
there might remain nothing to this life other than despair. Paradoxically, humility
may contain its own seed of hope noted by Heidegger in his reading of Augustine
and Luther, ‘‘To where does [the sinner] flee, if not from You as the merciful
one?’’86 This movement away from God, where the self submits to their own
dissimilitude from God, is nevertheless a relationship to God that is pregnant with
possibility. This is where Heidegger will turn in his examination of hope and the
eschatological expectation that famously inaugurated his phenomenology of
temporality in Being and Time. Without this grounding in humility, however, hope
would become mere certainty.
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Religious Humility in Luther &amp; Heidegger

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Cont Philos Rev (2009) 42:171–200

The phenomenology of religious humility

Published online: 15 May 2009

Abstract The return to religion in contemporary continental philosophy is char-

Keywords Heidegger Luther Phenomenology Humility Religious experience

systems. From the standpoint of the phenomenology of lived experience, however,

Throughout Heidegger’s early seminars, we find direct and indirect references to

1 Luther on humility within the religious life

Before examining Heidegger’s interpretative retrieval of Luther, it is important to

2 Humility and sin-consciousness

In Luther’s early work, humility originates through sin-consciousness, the acute

This knowledge of sin, moreover, is not some sort of speculation or an idea

understanding must be destroyed, for it causes us to misjudge ourselves so

However, it is not the punishments [of Anfechtungen] which produce the

4 Heidegger on humility within religious life

Heidegger was not a theologian. Despite remaining within the disciplinary

of humility as a disposition of self-humiliation before God that results in an concern

5 Medieval mysticism: similitude with God in humility

Heidegger became increasingly skeptical of scholastic theology after his 1916

metaphysical or moral systems out of which mysticism arose as a meaningful way

by a progressive suspension of all multiplicity, particularity, and specificity.51 In the

6 Heidegger on Paul, Augustine, and Luther: humility and tribulation

text is understood phenomenologically through the how of its enacted communi-

of Luther’s concept of sin and demonstrates its continuity throughout Luther’s

7 Conclusion—humility and the flight from god

To have faith is not simply to believe a particular set of propositions, but to be

Heidegger’s phenomenological descriptions of the religious life disclose humility

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