The Way Back to Wittenberg

As a speechwriter, I have become interested in the study of rhetoric.

The study of rhetoric has been sidelined in education. Rhetoric makes a lot of people uncomfortable because you could call it the art of lying convincingly to bring about change. Or maybe a better way of putting it would be to say it’s the art of stirring up emotions that will motivate people to make change.

That which winds people up, is not necessarily that which is strictly true.

We want to believe that people are honest and decent in society. Many people probably feel uncomfortable with the idea that we are ‘performing creatures’.

Ever since the Reformation in Europe, we like to think we’re individuals. We can have our own authentic relationship with God. We don’t need to be saved by a corrupt priesthood.

We can be true to our conscience. It would be contemptible to be insincere and just spend our days ‘acting’ in order to get what we want out of others.

In May 2026, I went to a conference on rhetoric, organised for sixth formers, at the Leucorea in Wittenberg, Germany.

This is where theologians, Martin Luther and Philipp Melancthon, devised the new theories, rejecting the authority of the Pope and insisting that everyone should study scripture and see that many of the church’s practices are not in the Bible.

The Protestants didn’t like the idea that we should ‘pretend’. They were uncomfortable with acting out, that is to say using rhetorical tricks in sermons to have an emotional impact.

That suspicion also applies to ‘acting’ in the theatrical sense.

‘Acting’ becomes an important factor in Hamlet’s education. Hamlet studied with the Protestants in Wittenberg. He returns to the court of Elsinore and is confronted with a ghost from Purgatory.

Given that the Protestants did not believe in Purgatory, this is problematic to say the least.

He is disgusted by the shallowness and inauthenticity of the people at court, he wishes to reject their lies.

But he can’t ‘act’ in the sense that he doesn’t want to lie.

But he also can’t ‘act’ in the sense he can’t find the resolution to right the wrongs he has become conscious of.

This is a problem that is still with us today.

Should politicians lie? Or should they tell the truth as far as possible? What does it mean to be a Protestant? Does it mean that we must be true to our consciences?  Is that possible?

I thought I would consult with ChatGPT on this matter. I did and I thought the response was worth reprinting…

In what degree does Melancthon agree with lying? Protestant ethics dictate you should be true to your conscience. But is that possible?

Philipp Melanchthon occupies an interesting and sometimes uncomfortable position on lying because his ethics sits at the intersection of three things:

1. classical rhetoric,
2. Lutheran theology,
3. political realism during the Reformation crisis.

So the answer is: Melanchthon generally condemns lying as sinful, but he does allow forms of concealment, prudential ambiguity, and political dissimulation under pressure. He is not an absolutist in the modern Kantian sense.

The deeper issue in your question, though, is whether Protestant conscience ethics creates an impossible demand: ‘always be true to yourself.’ Melanchthon partly recognises that problem.

Melanchthon on lying

Melanchthon inherited two traditions:

• the Christian tradition of Augustine of Hippo, who argued that all lies are sinful;
• and the classical rhetorical tradition of Cicero and Quintilian, which treated speech as practical, political, and situational.

Melanchthon tries to hold both together.

In his ethical writings and commentaries, he repeatedly says:

• truthfulness is a Christian duty;
• conscience must not knowingly affirm falsehood;
• language exists to communicate reality.

But in practice he also accepts:

• silence,
• strategic withholding,
• diplomatic evasiveness,
• and what we might call “pastoral accommodation.”

This became especially important during the religious wars and imperial negotiations of the Reformation.

For example, Protestants often used carefully crafted formulas that could bear multiple interpretations in order to preserve political peace. Melanchthon was much more willing than Martin Luther to compromise rhetorically.

Luther tended toward bluntness:

“Here I stand.”

Melanchthon tended toward mediation:

“Can this formula be interpreted in a way both sides can accept?”

Critics accused him of ambiguity and softness. Some later Lutherans even called him crypto-Catholic.

So:

• he does not endorse outright lying as morally good;
• but he accepts that political and social life sometimes requires incomplete disclosure and careful speech.

That already complicates the Protestant ideal of total sincerity.

Protestant conscience and the problem of truthfulness

You are identifying a genuine tension within Protestantism.

The Reformation intensified the importance of inward sincerity:

• salvation by faith,
• individual conscience,
• personal conviction before God,
• distrust of merely external ritual.

This creates a new moral burden:
you must mean what you say.

In medieval Catholic culture, identity was often more corporate and sacramental:

• one participated in rituals,
• inhabited roles,
• fulfilled obligations,
• confessed failures sacramentally.

The Reformation shifts moral gravity inward.

The question becomes:

“What do I truly believe in conscience?”

That sounds liberating, but it creates enormous psychological pressure.

Because human beings are divided:

• we perform roles,
• we self-deceive,
• we adapt socially,
• we often do not fully know our own motives.

Melanchthon knew this. He was deeply influenced by classical rhetoric, which assumes that human beings are socially performative creatures.

In fact, rhetoric itself complicates the ideal of total sincerity.

A rhetorician:

• adapts to audience,
• selects emphasis,
• frames arguments,
• suppresses some truths to reveal others.

Pure transparency is impossible in rhetoric.

Is it possible to be fully true to conscience?

This becomes one of the great problems of modernity.

The Protestant conscience ideal gradually produces:

• introspection,
• anxiety,
• authenticity culture,
• autobiographical self-analysis,
• eventually even psychoanalysis.

The individual must continually ask:

“Am I sincere?”
“Do I really believe this?”
“Am I lying to myself?”

And there is no external sacramental system fully capable of resolving the uncertainty.

This is one reason why characters like Hamlet feel profoundly Protestant-modern. Hamlet is obsessed with:

• inward truth,
• hypocrisy,
• theatricality,
• self-examination,
• conscience,
• authentic speech.

Yet he is also constantly acting, staging, delaying, masking, and performing.

He cannot achieve perfect congruence between:

• inner self,
• speech,
• action.

That may be one of Shakespeare’s deepest observations about post-Reformation consciousness.

Melanchthon’s likely answer

Melanchthon would probably reject both extremes:

Not:

• “Lie whenever useful.”

But also not:

• “Human beings can achieve perfect transparent sincerity.”

Instead he sees moral life as:

• fallen,
• rhetorical,
• political,
• pedagogical,
• dependent on prudence.

Conscience matters enormously.
But conscience itself requires formation through:

• scripture,
• education,
• rhetoric,
• moral discipline,
• community.

So conscience is not simply:

“whatever I inwardly feel.”

For Melanchthon, conscience must be educated.

And because human beings are fallen, complete purity of motive is unattainable this side of heaven.

That is actually quite a tragic anthropology.

–

I’ll add as a coda to this the last lines from Lyndal Roper’s biography, Martin Luther, Renegade and Prophet:

What Luther meant by ‘freedom’ and by ‘conscience’ were not what we mean by these words now. It had nothing to do with allowing people to follow their conscience; it meant our capacity to know with God, a knowledge he believed to be objective truth. Luther split the Church and ushered in the denominational era, but he was always a maverick thinker who did not believe in following rules or in devising courts to impose morality. He was a man who retained a healthy mistrust of Reason, ‘the whore’.

The European Speechwriter Network is planning similar conferences to the one described in this article. If you would be interested in attending one, please get in touch.