ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Martin Luther's notions of the Spirit and places Luther on a continuum with the radical Spiritualists that extended from the thoroughgoing Spiritualism of a Sebastian Franck to the sacramentalism of the Catholic Church. This exploration is undertaken with an eye eventually to plotting other sixteenth-century spiritualists, for example Calvin, along that same continuum. Three claims characterized Spiritualism's positions on the relationship of Word and Spirit: the Word could not be deciphered without the special inspiration of the Spirit; the Word remained a dead letter without the direct inspiration of the Spirit; the Spirit must precede the outer Word in the production of faith. The key to Luther's distrust of radical Spiritualism was the Spirit, or, rather, his differing conceptions of the Spirit. Reformers of all stripes appealed to the Spirit in their efforts to break down or break through the ecclesiastical and philosophical structures that constrained them.
