Luther amor musicae Martin Luther emphatic speech of primus locus musicae

In this article Wolfram Adolph shows how Luther embraced fundamental cosmological and ethical elements from the Neo-Platonic inspired theology of music from Augustine (musica est optima scientia); and subordinated these to the soteriological-eschatological aspect of a (his) subjective logic of faith. The paradoxical talk about the duplex locus primus, in which Luther seemingly places music after theology (primum locum do Musicae post theologiam), as primus locus post primum locum as it were, is judged by the author to be a hermeneutic indication that both terms carry equal weight in Luther's theological judgment. Consequently, a hegemonic conception of the ontological subordination or secondariness of the charismatic spiritual gift of the creation of music is ruled out - in contrast to an assumed ontologically asymmetrical superordinated theology, according to the traditional scholarly ordo principle, in which music would merely appear act as its epiphenomenon. With his statements about music, Luther himself turns noticeably and linguistically against such a dysfunctional, substantialistic argument and (mis)understood opposition of terminology. The author also demonstrates how Luther reshapes his reformatory concept of music based on pneumatological premises. The correct understanding and use of the theo-pysical and beneficial creature of music (creatura Dei et donum divinum excellentissimum) owes itself ultimately to a co-present occurrence of pneumatic communication and mediation, which, in terms of its profound eschatological dimension, uniquely reveals itself to the believer; and whose content is the exclusive self-tradition of the Spiritus Sanctus.