ANTO ́NIA SZABARIact of Reformation, the apocalypse. Luther liked to repeat the popular saying ‘‘The longer
the world goes on, the worse it becomes [Die Welt wird je la ̈nger, je a ̈rger]’’: this proverb
became the expression of his open endorsement of the increasing number of religious
offenses,scandala—even including (what he considered to be) blasphemy, heterodoxy,
and inauthentic forms of worship.^47 Luther thus exploits and intensifies the eschatological
significance of the figure of the ‘‘stumbling block’’:A ̈rgernisis the worsening of the world.
The Monk-Calf is a scandal in this sense; it is a divine sign, a warning.
While the Christian is not supposed to pry into the secrets of divine election, in his
social dealings with others he can see the visible Church, the preliminary revelation of the
final, invisible Church of the elect, emerge. This is why Luther is able to find consolation
in the fact that the elect, the ones who will not stumble—however small their number
may be—are protected, while the rest of the world deviates from orthodoxy as a conse-
quence of his teachings. Moreover, all he can do to promote a Reformation is to provoke
morescandala, the falling away of many from faith, in other words, to provoke through
injurious language to which others take offense: ‘‘Cursed, damned, and destroyed must
be the papacy together with all earthly kingdoms that are against your kingdom.’’
Luther does not intend to amend people with his ‘‘interpretation’’; rather, he antici-
pates a deterioration of the entire ‘‘papal kingdom’’ as the consequence of the appearance
of the Monk-Calf and as the effect of his pamphlet: ‘‘For this reason they [the faithless]
should not believe me in this matter but rather take offense more and more and be
stubborn, after which they will not know the truth or improve their faithless lives.’’^48 Let
us consider the provocative core of Luther’s claim. While the ‘‘testament’’ in which God
reveals himself, speaks, transforms the reader-listener into a believer who understands it,
bona fide, to be a felicitous speech act, scandalous rhetorical practice, theologically speak-
ing, produces the ‘‘faithless’’—a category that is also produced by a language whose ‘‘ef-
fect’’ the ‘‘faithless’’ is and through which it becomes recognizable as such. The end of
the world is already happening—thanks to Luther’s insults. The outrageous language of
this pamphlet is modeled upon the language of the Bible. There is only one way in which
the Monk-Calf can (at least textually) be redeemed: by not being offended by it, in other
words, by fully subscribing to the satire as if it were as true as the Word of Scripture. It
all comes down to the reader’s interpretation, to his willingness to read the message. With
this strategy, Luther increases the significance of insulting considerably, while he also
wards off responsibility for it. If you are insulted by Luther, if you take offense, if you do
not see the real state of affairs in this satirical image, you have already stumbled over the
stumbling block that is an ineluctable manifestation of the will of adeus abscondituswhose
full revelation is postponed until the Last Judgment.
The use of the notion of scandal as a polemical concept did not stop here. Luther’s
adversaries, both Catholics and dissidents within the Reformed movement, turned his
weapon against him. The moral use of this concept in the Reformation continued to rely
on the normative idea of a ‘‘respectable majority’’ (corresponding to each of the various
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