Addressing the issue of “Luther and ontology” requires clarity first on what ‘ontology’ is. Within Luther scholarship, unfortunately, there has sometimes been confusion on this basic issue. Thus it is that I will first get clear on the nature of ontology and how it relates to metaphysics. Only then will I review some of the secondary literature on Luther and ontology, pointing to areas within Luther’s theology where the question of ontology is deeply important for his theology. Finally, I will suggest areas of continuing research. For both Luther’s theological predecessors and Luther himself, ontology and semantics are closely related. Interpreters of Luther sometimes have forgotten this, ignoring ontological aspects of his own thinking, and thus projecting their own ontological assumptions upon the theology of the great Reformer.
1.1 The Meaning of Ontology and its Relationship to Metaphysics
Many mistakenly believe that the terms 'metaphysics' and 'ontology' are coextensive, referring to the same set of philosophical issues. This is not so. Both terms have a long and rich history that must be untangled in order to grasp the nature of their connection. As it turns out, while the term 'ontology' ('ontologia', 'ontology', etc.) generally applies to a sub-region within metaphysics that specifically concerns general questions of being, the discipline of metaphysics is much wider, investigating the general (or universal) features (or principles) of reality presupposed by concrete experience as such.
Historically, the term 'metaphysics' derives from the collection of 14 books by Aristotle appearing in his corpus after the Physics.[1] Andronicus of Rhodes probably titled these books "Ta meta ta phusika," perhaps thereby warning students that these texts should only be undertaken after mastering the books of the Physics, all dealing with the principle of change. Metaphysics, on the other hand, connotes the study of those things that do not change. It is the discipline dealing with first causes, with God and the Unmoved Mover.
Inwagen and Sullivan provide the following list of "metaphysics" according to Aristotle's conception.[2]
- Being as such
- The first cause of thing
- That which does not change
Aristotle, however, also famously believed that metaphysics is concerned with being qua being. Accordingly, it is not just a study of first causes and unchangeable things, but examines objects "from a particular perspective, from the perspective of their being beings or things that exist. So metaphysics considers things as beings or existents and attempts to specify the properties or features they exhibit just insofar as they are beings or existents."[3] Considered in this way, metaphysics is a universal discipline, studying notions such as identity, difference, similarity, dissimilarity, and the categories that grant the possibilities of for being to be.
Inwagen points out that what we mean by "metaphysics" greatly expanded in the seventeenth century, thereby confusing matters even more. While older metaphysics dealt with traditional questions of being as such, categories of being, universals and substance, metaphysics since the 17th century became increasingly concerned with questions of modality, space and time, persistence and constitution, causation, freedom and determinism, and the mental and the physical.
Bruce Aune clarifies the relationship between general and special metaphysics that developed with the expansion of metaphysical questions in the seventeenth century.
General metaphysics includes ontology and most of what has been called universal science; it is concerned, on the whole, with the general nature of reality: with problems about abstract and concrete being, the nature of particulars, the distinction between appearance and reality, and the universal principles holding true of what has fundamental being. Special metaphysics is concerned with certain problems about particular kinds or aspects of being. These special problems are associated with the distinction between the mental and the physical, the possibility of human freedom, the nature of personal identity, the possibility of survival after death, and the existence of God.[4]
Oftentimes scholars claiing that Luther is unconcerned with metaphysics or ontology are conceiving metaphysics in the later seventeenth century sense of the term, and not according to the concept present in Luther’s own time.
The word ontologie actually develops much later than “metaphysics,” occurring first in the German language only in the work of Rudolf Goeckel (1547-1628) and Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609), and is later defined more fully by Johann Georg Walch (1693-1775) in his Philosophische Lexicon as follows:
Ontology concerns the doctrine of being, and is understood as a name of a new philosophy of science that treats being in general and its properties (l.c., s.v. Ontologie 1. A. 1726, 2. A. 1733, ND dieser Thoemmes 2001).
Ontology is thereby the study of being insofar as it is possessed by any kind of entity. Christian Wolff (1679-1754) famously distinguishes ontology as metaphysica generalis (inquiry into the general categories of being) from the metaphysica specialis dealing with God (natural theology), the soul (natural psychology), and the world (natural cosmology).[5]
So in what did the subject of metaphysics consist in the High and Late Middle Ages? The following is my own (rather incomplete) list of traditional metaphysical questions of the period:
- In what does metaphysics consist? Does the question of God fall under metaphysics broadly conceived, or is it a question of a "divine discipline" (scientia) falling outside of metaphysics proper?
- What is the relationship between the essence and existence of a thing, and what is the ontological status of the distinction putatively separating them?
- How can the distinction between actuality and potentiality be conceived in spiritual matters where the distinction between form and matter fails to obtain?
- Do universals exist and, if so, what is their ontological status?
- How is individuation possible without matter, and how should identity, distinction and similarity be conceived?
- What is the role of the senses in acquiring knowledge, and can this role be squared with the notion of illumination stretching back to Augustine?
- Can knowledge of God be "demonstrated," and what precisely is the nature of such a demonstration.
John Wippel points to the two traditions developing after the rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics. In Book IV Aristotle talks of a discipline concerned with being as being and not with questions about particular attributes of being characteristic in the various other disciplines.[6] In Book VI, however, Aristotle mentions a "divine science" concerned with immovable and separate entities. Presumably, it is precisely because there is a domain of separate, immobile entities that physics cannot be considered the first science.[7] Reconciling these two conceptions of metaphysics -- first science dealing with being qua being and first science dealing with separate and immobile entities -- spurred lively philosophical discussion in the Middle Ages as to precisely what metaphysics is.
Wippel points out that Duns Scotus in his Questions super libros Metaphysicorum asks the question as to the proper subject matter of metaphysics by contrasting the approaches of Avicenna and Averroes:
Is the subject of the Metaphysics being insofar as it is being (ens inquantum ens) as Avicenna holds? Or is it God and the intellectual (Intelligentiae) as the commentator Averroes suggests? [I. I(1891-5, v. 7, p. 11)]
After discussing the question of whether metaphysics can have God as its subject, Avicenna concludes that since God's existence can be demonstrated, and since no particular discipline can demonstrate its own subject matter, then only metaphysics broadly conceived, as the study of ens inquantum ens, can establish divine existence.
While Avicenna placed God under the metaphysics of being qua being, the other great Islamic commentator Averroes disagreed, holding that one does not need to establish God as the subject matter of a unique discipline, for the existence of God can be established by physics. Accordingly, the subject matter of metaphysics, ens inquantum ens, concerns substance primarily, not God. Metaphysics properly studies substance, but includes that "separate substance which is the first form and the end or final cause of all other substance" (387). Physics establishes that there is such a separate substance, and metaphysics examines that substance as well as all other substances. Most 13th and 14th century thinkers followed Avicenna: Metaphysics concerns ens inquantum ens, not divine being.
While Sigar of Brabant and Duns Scotus both include the question of God within metaphysics, the latter explicitly denies that God can be its subject matter since metaphysics deals with the universal and the question of God is particular (389). Scotus writes:
Even though God, however, is not the first subject of metaphysics, God is nevertheless considered in that science in a most noble way (nobilissimo modo) in terms of which [God's being] can be considered as acquired naturally in another discipline (sciential) (Ord. Pros., pars 3, q. 2, n. 193).
[1] Aristotle did not call these books by this term, but named the discipline at work in it either 'first philosophy' or 'theology', calling the knowledge to which it aims, 'wisdom'. See Michael Loux, Metaphysics. A Contemporary Introduction, 3rd ed., (New York: Routledge, 2006), 2ff.
[2] van Inwagen, Peter and Sullivan, Meghan, "Metaphysics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
[4] Aune, Metaphysics: The Elements (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
[5] The preceptive reader will recall that Kant subjects all of these three (rational theology, psychology and cosmology) to merciless attack in his Critique of Pure Reason. As the domain of metaphysics was expanding in the seventeenth century, the term 'ontology' gained currency in dealing with select metaphysical questions directly pertaining to being. Elisabeth Maria Rompe's Die Trennung von Ontologie und Metaphysik: Der Ablösungsprozess seine Motivierung bei Benedictus Peterius und anderem Denkern des 16. u. 17. Jahrhunderts (Bonn: Universität Bonn, 1967 diss.) provides a valuable insight into the process of the separation of the two terms.
[6] John Wippel, "Essence and Existence," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edts. Kretzmann, Kenny & Pinborg,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 385-410.
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