Martin Luther is most remembered for two of his emphases which played a key role in igniting the Protestant Reformation: (1) his outspoken opposition to corruption within the professing Christian Church, signified by his nailing his “95 Theses” to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany; (2) his pronounced promotion of the Bible’s teaching of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ rather than by one’s own good works. Luther’s later contributions to the Reformation in its ongoing developmental stages are less well known and will be the focus of this Perspective.

Artist's depiction of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms

Artist’s depiction of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms

Due to Luther’s rejection of a number of Catholic Church doctrines and practices, Pope Leo X excommunicated him in January, 1521. Three months later, in response to an official summons, Luther appeared before Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, at the imperial diet (assembly) in Worms, Germany. There Luther was denied the opportunity to defend his teachings and was ordered to recant of his errors. His reported response to the assembly was, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither honest nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”

He was allowed to leave Worms, and on the way back to Wittenberg was intercepted by a group of men who had been sent by Prince Frederick, the Elector of Saxony and a supporter as well as protector of Luther. Luther was secretly taken to the castle of Wartburg so he would be safe from his enemies. While there he was declared an outlaw. Luther spent eleven months at Wartburg, in which time he worked on translating the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into German. That translation, which he completed in 1534, was one of Luther’s grand contributions to the Reformation in Germany. The translation would have a marked and abiding influence on the German church similar to that which the King James Version of the Bible had in English.

Wartburg Castle

Wartburg Castle

While Luther was away from Wittenberg, one of his fellow reformers, Andreas von Karlstadt, took the lead in introducing the first changes into worship services by simplifying the service, translating it into German and removing images from the churches. The changes had much popular support but also started producing some social unrest. Upon returning to Wittenberg in 1522, Luther actually slowed the pace of those reforms, fearing they placed too much emphasis on secondary external matters while diverting attention from the primary spiritual focus of the Gospel. Luther, however, did abolish the office of bishop since he found no warrant for it in Scripture.

Artist's depiction of a peasants revolt

Artist’s depiction of a peasants revolt

Three years later the demands of peasants for more rights led them into armed conflict with the nobles. The Peasants’ Revolt spread to about one-third of Germany. While Luther initially thought the peasants had some legitimate complaints, he strongly opposed their insurrection as posing an imminent danger to society. He was deeply concerned that the peasants had misconstrued the evangelical message to justify their cause and that opponents of the Reformation would blame it for the unrest. He wrote forcefully against the revolt which ended up being brutally suppressed by the nobles, with as many as 100,000 peasants being killed. As a result, many peasants turned away from Luther, returning to the Catholic Church or joining more radical forms of the Reformation.

Martin & Katherine (Katie) Luther

Martin & Katherine (Katie) Luther

An altogether happier development in Luther’s life that same year, 1525, was his marriage, at age 41, to Katherine von Bora, a former nun. Like Luther, many former priests who became reformers married and had families, promoting those as healthy and biblical practices. That was done in marked contrast to the mandatory celibacy of Catholic priests and the sexual transgressions it all too commonly produced. Martin and Katie’s marriage came to be filled with mutual love and devotion, and they had six children.

1525 was also when Luther wrote what he considered his most important theological treatise, On the Bondage of the Will. It was written in response to a work entitled On the Freedom of the Will which Desiderius Erasmus, the leading Renaissance humanist and Catholic scholar of the day, had published the previous year as an attack on one aspect of Luther’s theology. Luther’s treatise argued that man’s will is so utterly enslaved to sin that he cannot exercise his will to choose salvation. Instead, salvation is exclusively by God’s grace. Only by God’s action in predestining, calling and converting a person can he or she be saved. As a result of this exchange between Luther and Erasmus, many humanists stopped supporting Luther. But other humanists redirected their studies from literature to the Scriptures and became ministers.

Desiderius Erasmus, Catholic Scholar and Renaissance Humanist

Desiderius Erasmus, Catholic Scholar and Renaissance Humanist

From 1527 to 1529 Luther devoted much time and attention to a controversy he had over the Lord’s Supper with Ulrich Zwingli, leader of the Reformation effort in Switzerland. Luther held to what came to be known as “sacramental union” (many Lutherans prefer that term to “consubstantiation”), the belief that in communion the body and blood of Christ are actually present with the bread and cup. Zwingli, by contrast, held to a memorial view of communion, that the bread and cup merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ. Luther and Zwingli were unable to reach a consensus, with the result that the Lutheran and Reformed branches of Protestantism have remained divided on the communion issue to this day.

At the Diet of Speyer in 1526 the princes of Saxony decided that, as a temporary solution to their religious divisions, each prince would determine the religious practice of his own territory. In the subsequent 1529 Diet of Speyer the Roman Catholic majority declared there would be no further changes. Furthermore, while Protestant worship would not be tolerated in Roman Catholic territories, Roman Catholic worship had to be tolerated in Protestant territories. The evangelical princes protested those rulings, and from that protest came the designation “Protestant.”

Artist's depiction of Martin Luther with his wife and children

Artist’s depiction of Martin Luther with his wife and children

In 1530 Emperor Charles V returned to Germany for the first time since 1521. He called for the evangelical princes to present a confession justifying their faith. Luther, who was still considered an outlaw, could not attend the Diet at Augsburg. So Luther’s faithful ministry associate, Philip Melanchthon, went in his stead. After consulting with Luther, Melanchthon drew up the Augsburg Confession, an irenic but clear presentation of the basics of Luther’s theology. It has remained the basic confession of Lutheranism to the present day. Charles V rejected the confession, and the threat of war between Catholics and Protestants in Germany became real. Such war did not actually ensue, however, until a few months after Luther’s death in 1546.

Luther was far from a perfect individual. His forceful temperament sometimes led him to deal much too harshly with those who did not share his Christian convictions. He vehemently opposed not only Catholics who opposed evangelicals, but also Jews for their rejection of Christianity, and even Anabaptists whom he viewed as unhealthy extremists in the Reformation movement. Luther reportedly grew more irritable as he aged. That likely was due in part to various illnesses and bouts of depression he suffered in his later years.

Despite his ailments and personal shortcomings, Luther remained active and fruitful in ministry to the end of his life. He continued preaching regularly and teaching at the University of Wittenberg. He wrote on various theological topics and published major commentaries on Galatians and Genesis. He was an advisor to princes, pastors and students. He died peacefully of natural causes in Eisleben (the town of his birth) on February 18, 1546, at age 63. His significant influence on not only Lutheranism but also evangelical Protestantism as a whole continues to this day.

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Sources consulted: Church History in Plain Language, Bruce L. Shelley (Word, 1982), pp. 255-264; Great Leaders of the Christian Church, John D. Woodbridge, Ed., “Martin Luther,” W. Robert Godfrey (Moody, 1988), pp. 187-196.

Copyright 2017 by Vance E. Christie

 

 

Martin LutherOctober, 2017, marks the 500th anniversary of the igniting of what became known as the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther is generally considered the father of the Reformation. Luther’s nailing his “95 Theses” to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, is commonly cited as the event that sparked reformation fires. While there had been other reformers and reformation efforts before Luther, he certainly was the leading human instrument in the much fuller reformation movement that God brought about in Luther’s era.

Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Saxony (part of modern east Germany). He studied at the University of Erfurt, earning the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1502 and the Master of Arts degree in 1505. He then began to study law in keeping with his father’s wishes. But when caught in a severe thunderstorm on July 2, 1505, Luther feared for his life and cried out, “St. Anne, I will become a monk!”

Thus bound by an oath to his father’s patron saint, Luther joined the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt where he practiced strictest discipline in devoting himself to study, prayer and the use of the sacraments. In rigorously employing the sacrament of penance he constantly and closely scrutinized himself for transgressions, sorrowed over his sins, confessed them to a priest and fulfilled whatever recompense was imposed on him. He sought to discipline and even punish himself with prolonged periods of prayer and fasting as well as through sleepless nights and physical self-flagellations.

Luther’s wise superior, Johannes von Staupitz, recognizing the young monk’s tremendous intellectual abilities, encouraged him away from excessive introspection and into the fuller pursuit of his studies. Luther learned Greek and Hebrew and eventually committed most of the New Testament and large portions of the Old Testament to memory. He was ordained a priest in 1507, taught at the universities of Wittenberg and Erfurt 1508-1511, and received his doctoral degree in 1512. That latter year he returned to the University of Wittenberg as a professor. There he carried out his lectures on the Bible, teaching through the Psalms (1513-1515), Romans (1515-1516), Galatians (1516-1517) and Hebrews (1517-1518). Those books of Scripture were foundational in shaping his theological understanding.

Luther experienced his Christian conversion around 1515, through his contemplation of Romans 1:17, which declares of the Gospel: “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” Luther came to understand the Gospel (good news) is that God reckons the perfect righteousness of Christ to sinners who receive it by faith. Faith in Christ and His atoning sacrifice on the cross alone leads to being justified (declared righteous) in the sight of God. This, Luther realized, clashed sharply with the Catholic Church’s elaborate system of sacraments, rituals and other good works by which people hoped to earn their salvation.

In 1517 Luther began publicly preaching against abuses in the sale of indulgences, which had been a favored source of papal income for centuries. People were told that by purchasing indulgences they were exempted from acts of penance over their sins. Indulgences could be purchased for the forgiveness of one’s own sins or for people in purgatory. A Dominican priest named John Tetzel was then preaching throughout much of Germany, to raise funds for the Pope to complete the construction of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings,” Tetzel claimed, “the soul from purgatory springs.”

Artist's depiction of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door

Artist’s depiction of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door

On October 31 of that year, Luther nailed his 95 Theses, also entitled Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, to the Wittenberg church door. That was a traditional way in those days of inviting the academic community to discuss an issue. Others realized the great importance of Luther’s 95 Theses and, without his permission, translated them from Latin (the language commonly used by scholars) into German, then published them.

Luther was soon denounced by the Dominicans and a Vatican theologian as a teacher of dangerous doctrines and guilty of heresy. In July, 1519, Luther was involved in an eighteen-day debate with prominent Catholic theologian John Eck at Leipzig. During the course of that debate Luther publicly declared that the Bible alone, not popes or councils, was invariably true and reliable. “A council may sometimes err,” he stated. “Neither the Church nor the Pope can establish articles of faith. These must come from Scripture.” Eck recommended to Rome that Luther be condemned as a heretic.

Artist's depiction of Martin Luther burning the papal bull that condemned his teachings

Artist’s depiction of Martin Luther burning the papal bull that condemned his teachings

Nearly a year later, in June, 1520, Pope Leo X issued a bull (named after the seal – bulla – on the official document) in which forty-one of Luther’s beliefs were condemned as heretical, false and repugnant to Catholic truth. Luther was called to recant of his teachings under threat of excommunication. He received his copy of the papal bull on October 10. At the end his sixty-day grace period, Luther led a throng of students and other supporters outside Wittenberg where he burned copies of the Canon Law, the works of some medieval theologians and a copy of the bull that condemned him.

During the last five months of that same year, 1520, Luther also produced three of his most influential treatises: (1) His Address to the German Nobility appealed to secular princes to call a council to implement reforms that were needed in the Church. He thought such a necessary, corrective council would otherwise never be convened and appropriately carried out due to the corrupt clergy and the vested interests of the princes of the church.

The 95 Theses Wittenberg church door today

The 95 Theses Wittenberg church door today

(2) Luther’s The Babylonian Captivity of the Church examined the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church and concluded that only baptism and the Lord’s Supper were true, biblical sacraments. Luther rejected the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation (that the bread and cup became the actual body and blood of Christ during communion) as well as the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice (that in communion the priest offered Christ as a propitiation to the Father on the altar). That treatise also promoted the concept of the priesthood of all believers – that all true believers can approach God through Christ and present spiritual sacrifices to Him, rather than relegating such access and service only to Catholic priests.

(3) Luther’s On the Freedom of the Christian Man taught that the inner spiritual freedom that comes through faith in Christ results in outward good deeds on the part of all true believers. True Christians lovingly serve the Lord and their fellow human beings, not to try to earn anything from God, but to seek to please Him in all things. Man needs the law to learn of his moral helplessness and to be led to repentance. But the Gospel is the free promise of grace in Christ and is received through faith in Him rather than by one’s own good works.

In January of the following year, 1521, Luther was excommunicated by the Pope as a heretic. Two months later he was summoned to appear before the emperor Charles V at the imperial diet (assembly) meeting at Worms. Luther was promised a safe conduct, guaranteeing that he could travel safely to and from Worms. He well recalled the similar imperial safe conduct promised to John Hus that was not ultimately honored at Constance, resulting in Hus’s arrest, imprisonment and burning at the stake as a supposed heretic. Despite the possibility of that same fate befalling him, Luther set out for the imperial diet at Worms.

[To be continued in my next Perspective]

Martin Luther quote

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Sources consulted: Church History in Plain Language, Bruce L. Shelley (Word, 1982), pp. 255-264; Great Leaders of the Christian Church, John D. Woodbridge, Ed., “Martin Luther,” W. Robert Godfrey (Moody, 1988), pp. 187-196.

Copyright 2017 by Vance E. Christie