| Zusammenfassung: | ABSTRACT This article contextualizes three theological currents of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The first current examined is Luther’s early theology, especially its fierce anti-Pelagian Augustinianism and polemical Scriptural interpretation, sola scriptura. The second current discussed is the connection between Hermeticism and Christian Kabbalah created in the writings of the Florentines Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. As part of the emergence of a new concept of magic and the socalled prisca theologia both tried to harmonize all contemporary forms of worship by pointing to alleged Christian origins and thereby developed an optimistic anthropology derived from Hermetic sources, one that strongly contradicted Luther’s soteriology. The third current includes the concept of magic propagated by the Malleus maleficarum, whose Augustinianism, demonology, and view of witches were, on the one hand, directed against the disciples of Florentine Hermeticism, and, on the other hand, showed striking parallels to Luther’s theology that have long gone unexamined. Starting from the observation that there was, in the young Luther’s surroundings, a learned audience, receptive to the ideas of the Florentines, the interdependences between the demonology of Malleus, the “modern” Hermetic, Kabbalistic and magic-related prisca theologia, and the Lutheran-Augustinian Theologia christiana are traced in this article. The thesis is put forth that Luther’s early Christocentrism can be described as an alternative program to these other theological currents.
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