ABSTRACT
The expansion of the Ottoman Empire into central Europe was the impetus for Luther's engagement with Islam. From 1521 until the end of his life the Turks forced their way into Hungary with, as many thought, their sights trained on Germany. According to the reformer, the three estates identified above as spiritual, civil, and home life were infused into the fabric of creation, and as such they established the boundaries of natural and appropriate human behaviour and ideas. The rationale behind the instruction to appeal to the authority of Christ seems overly simplistic. Based on what seem like hard and fast principles developed during his debate over authority with Rome beginning in 1518 at the Diet of Augsburg up to and through the early 1520s, one might be tempted to predict that Luther would have advocated an approach to arguing about and against Islam that simply pitted biblical proof texts against their Quranic antitheses.
