The Reformer: Martin Luther

October 26, 1958
Akron
Also: Rochester 10/29/61, Revised 10/25/64

The Reformer: Martin Luther – Saint, Sinner, Savage

This is Reformation Sunday, marking the birthday of the Protestant Church. Next Friday marks the four hundredth and thirty first anniversary of the day Martin Luther tacked the 95 theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral. The political, economic, social and religious effects of the Protestant Reformation is one of the important changes in the history of the Western World. Marking the historic significance of this day, I would like to discuss the leading person of the Reformation, Martin Luther, and contrast him with Thomas .... Luther is one of the most controversial persons in history. He was a saint, a sinner and savage (or vulgarian or bigot), depending upon the point of view from which he is seen. His followers hailed him as a true prophet of the Lord. Roman Catholics called him a child of the devil and accused him of demolishing Christianity. The agrarian reformers of that turbulent sixteenth century said he was the toady and supporter of the feudal lords and princes. Religious radicals, Carlstadt and Muenster, for example, compared him to Moses who led the way out of Egypt, but then deserted his followers, leaving them to perish in the wilderness. Those who have looked at his personal life with critical eye have sometimes thought him to be a corrupt, coarse, vulgar libertine who broke with Roman Catholic tradition so that he might marry a nun and rear children in sin and vulgarity The critics submit Luther’s own TABLE TALK as evidence of his degraded personality.

This we know, the history of the world was altered because Martin Luther lived. In abolishing the authority of the Pope, Martin Luther established the freedom of the Christian. When this principle became established, the administration of the life of the religious institution became the responsibility of the parish – a congregation of laypeople. Martin Luther did not anticipate, and actually opposed many of the consequences of the Reformation he spearheaded. The principle of the authority of the lay congregation had extreme political revolutionary effects. The self-administration of religion pointed the way to and established a principle for worldly self-government as well. Therefore, it is of particular importance to the liberal groups, whose guiding principle of freedom is most uninhibited, to understand Martin Luther. ... this sermon divides into 1) The Setting, 2) The Augustinian Priest, 3) The Reformer and Supporter of Princes, and 4) The Man, Martin Luther.

Although Martin Luther was not born when the Reformation began, he is the great reformer. To know the Reformation we must understand that the Renaissance, the revival of Learning, had been in progress for at least two centuries. In the 13th century, Petrarch and Boccaccio had notable advanced the humanist studies. The Medici family, also of Florence, had been the greatest patrons of art, sculpture, literature and philosophy that the world had ever known, and under their sponsorship, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Mirandola, Raphael and others had created wonders of art and letters that still summon our wonder at their imaginative, skillful genius. In 1453 the world’s greatest cultural center, Constantinople, had fallen to the Turks and the scholars of Greek learning who had preserved the manuscripts and art objects of Hellenism fled to Italy and other parts of Europe. [note in margin: “12 universities, Germany, 1409 – 1506]

Not only did the Renaissance signal the revival of arts and learning, but a most significant political movement was beginning to make its strong eddies felt in the ebb and flow of the Holy Roman Empire. Although Germany had lagged somewhat, England, France and Spain had assumed form as independent nations. The masses had no share in political rewards or freedoms, although they were the objects of the most severe hardships and cruel sufferings. Their ... order was serfdom.

The Roman Catholic was the authoritarian church. There was no toleration of revolt, but the seeds that were to bear fruit in Luther’s time had been sown. John Wyclif of England, opposed to the wealth of the church and clerical interference in all areas of life, believed that the Bible should be the possession of the people and had translated the scriptures into English. Wyclif was executed, his ashes scattered on Thames, but neither his convictions nor his bravery were forgotten. In 1373 [was the birth of] John Hus, a Bohemian priest who became influenced by Wyclif’s teaching, and preached an evangelical doctrine which was anathema to the Roman Catholic Church. John Hus avowed that the true head of the church was Christ, not the Pope. The unprincipled Church gave him safe conduct to the Council of Constance, but broke faith and burned him at the stake July 6, 1415, but neither was his memory forgotten, nor his principles rejected, by his followers. In 1498 the austere monk of Florence, Savonarola denounced the Pope, and after a succession of first temporary triumph and then humiliating defeat was burned at the stake. But even as the smoke and smell from the burning flesh and faggots were dispersed to the winds, so the knowledge of his revolt against Rome became widely perceived to other reformers, including Martin Luther, who was but a fifteen year old student when Savonarola was executed.

Something else had happened which was to make the world different than it had ever been before. Printing had been invented, the peoples of the world would not only become more literate, but the printed word was to bring them the wisdom of scripture in their own language, and the protesting pamphlets of the reformers.

In this seething cauldron of social change, a baby boy was born to a peasant miner, Hans Luther and his wife Marguerite, in 1483. November 10 was St. Martin’s Day, and the little child was named Martin after the patron saint. Although like so many of the world’s great, Martin’s parents were peasant stock, Hans Luther not content to accept poverty and misery of the miner’s lot, and by individual effort sought to make his lot better and his family more comfortable and privileged. In these beginning times of individualism, his efforts brought some reward, as Martin was enabled to go to school and university, to be prepared for the practice of law, which was his father’s wish for his eldest son.

The schools of that day were organized, administered and taught by the Church and its various orders. Thus, Martin’s early schooling was directed by the Brethren of the Common Life, an order dedicated to education. Then, in the university he was influenced by the Augustinian order. Under the strong influences of the monks, together with his personality which was unusually sensitive to supernaturalism and, along with his fine mind which was capable of wrestling with intricacies of language, philosophy and theology, Martin Luther found his hopes turning toward the Church and away from the law. Although Hans Luther was deeply religious, his wish that Martin be a doctor of the law was so strong that when Martin announced that he was to be an Augustinian monk, his father was deeply hurt and years were to pass before he really forgave the son who was frustrating the parent’s deepest wish. This revolt against his father’s authority, acceptance of church authority, ....

After a farewell party, Martin’s friends escorted him to the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt on the 17th of July 1505 and he entered its gates there to endure the privation of the order and to know the religious joy of humbling his passions, following the tedious routine of prayers and study, eventually when ordained to know the joy of celebrating the mass in which the wafer and wine became the body and blood of Christ.

As a monk, Martin Luther was conscientious to a degree we would think to be unnatural. He fasted for days at a time, went night after night without sleep so that he might devote himself to prayer unceasingly (and in so doing permanently injured his health). He whipped himself to subdue the desires of the flesh. Although he was a model of holiness to his brother monks, his personal anxiety increased. He became increasingly morbid. Luther, a child of his times, feared the devil and believed the arts of witchcraft could have a dreadful effect on him. The iron discipline of the Augustinian cloister had the natural effect of subduing his outward expressions of feeling and intensifying the inward fires of human passions.

Following his ordination as a priest, he turned to teaching at the University and soon became a most popular teacher, His large following of students was drawn for several reasons. His peasant inheritance gave him the common touch, and his plain talk and natural illustration reached the core of matters. [He was less bound to narrow conventions and traditional formulas monks of more aristocratic stock.] Following his master’s degree he earned a doctor of theology, a rare scholastic honor in those days.

His talents and drive soon won greater recognition. When only 31 years old in 1515, he was appointed District-vicar of the Augustinian order. Thus in addition to his devotional duties as a monk, his university responsibilities as a teacher of philosophy, he had additional responsibility of [acting as superintendent] to the ten Augustinian monasteries in his district.

This devout Augustinian monk was obsessed not only with neurotic fears for his salvation, but also he was upset by dishonesty and corruption readily discovered in the Church of that day which was dominated by the Renaissance Popes, who had a high degree of sensitivity to artistic beauty and an insensitive attitude toward personal and organizational corruption.

Thus what Martin Luther had hopes would be a high experience of his life resulted in considerable disillusion. He and another Augustinian made a pilgrimage to Rome. There he could not escape noticing the corruption, hypocrisy and political knavery of the hierarchy. Rome, like all great capitals of that day, was dirt-infested, priest-ridden, and morally soft. The irreverence of the priesthood shocked this simple, devout German peasant priest. It is said that while climbing the sacred stairs, that Paul’s words to the Romans fixed themselves in his brain, “the just shall live by faith,” and he realized that acts of piety, like climbing stairs on his knees, were of little effect. But it is part of that growing spirit of rebellion which some have named the Reformation.

How much the extent of his Roman visit influenced his revolt, we do not know. Perhaps it was but a small but significant episode in his long life.

The real spark of the Reformation was ignited when the Roman hierarchy decided that in order to build magnificent St. Peter’s Cathedral, much money had to be raised. So the sale of indulgences was authorized. The doctrine was that by their purity the saints had built up a bank account (so to speak) of piety, on which the sinful could draw to lessen their years in purgatory. So Tetzel, a monk went through the countryside urging peasants to buy indulgences so that their dead relatives might be released from purgatory sooner. It is said that Pope Leo X, who was the son of Lorenzo Medici, said cynically about the response of the pious peasants, “This story of Jesus has helped us a lot.”

On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther tacked a manuscript to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral. 95 propositions for debate were listed. Luther questioned the indulgences with a series of logical propositions, the most telling of which proposed that if the Pope had the power to release soul from purgatory, then he should do so at once, not for money, but out of the spirit of love and charity. Although years were to elapse between the nailing of the theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral and the actual formation of the Reformed Church, that date is historically looked upon as the birthday of Protestantism. Luther’s theses were formal but his vernacular comment was “God will not tolerate this flea market!”

News of the opposition of this Augustinian monk to the plans of the hierarchy soon reached Rome and action followed. Luther refused to recant, he had a notable debate with John Eck and undoubtedly would have been executed as a heretic except for one historical tide. Nationalism was dawning, and the feudal lords and princes of Germany were very much opposed to the Roman Church drawing off large sums of money from the homeland for St. Peter’s, or any other foreign enterprise.

Luther began to write, and his pamphlets pointed unquestionable to a strong difference with the principles of the hierarchical church. He proposed the priesthood of all believers and that there were only two sacraments authorized by scripture, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These were heretical opinions, unquestionably. Luther was excommunicated, and would have been seized, except Frederick, elector of Saxony had him spirited away to Wartburg Castle. But the printing press was pounding out Luther’s writings and they were widely distributed, and the people responded. When Luther emerged from Wartburg, he found himself organizing a Reformed Church.

Then occupied one of the most puzzling aspects of Luther’s strange character. The impetus to religious freedom had other consequences. The peasants revolted against their landlords and princes. It was natural but unexpected that they should seek to throw off political and economic oppression when the way to religious freedom had been pointed out. Historically we know that this is one of the glories of religious freedom – other benefits to mankind are the natural consequence. But Luther proved to be the toady and supporter of the princes. Neither the implications of religious freedom, nor love for the peasant people from which he sprang mitigated the severity of his condemnation of the Peasant’s Revolt. To the aristocratic Lords and Princes, Luther offered these words of encouragement, “Hearken Dear Lords .... Let him who can stab, strike and strangle .... These are such strange times that a prince can go to heaven more easily by spilling blood than other through prayer.”

The peasants were crushed, murdered, tortured, starved.

Luther was not a tolerant man. Even admitting that like all persons, he was a child of his own age, we find it difficult to reconcile this devout man who professed the Lordship of the gentle Christ with the Luther who was savage in his bigoted hatred of the Jews, and unremitting in his urgings to destroy and persecute them.

Luther could not get along with other reformers. He refused to shake hands with Zwingli because the latter would not accept Luther’s interpretation of the Lord’s Supper.

But this person, Martin Luther, was not only an Augustinian priest, a reformer of strange and devious as well as noble ways, he also was a man.

When the Reformers were celebrating freedom from the Roman Catholic Church, the monasteries and convents were opened, the monks and nuns sought marriage and Christian homes, sometimes marrying each other. Catherine Von Bora was a nun who was jilted by a suitor shortly after her release from the convent. Martin Luther sought to be a marriage broker to her and find a suitable husband. However, when it was reported to him that Catherine Von Bora would marry only Dr. Amadorf or Dr. Luther, he investigated further, with the result that shortly after, the ex-priest Martin Luther and the ex-nun Catherine Von Bora were married and established their home in the Augustinian cloister in Wittenburg where formerly Luther had lived the monastic life. [note in margin: A news release Oct ’64 – their wedding ring had been found in an E. Berlin home]

Theirs was a busy home. Not only were six children born to them, but also they were hospitable and generous to the homeless; at one time, not less than eleven orphans shared their home and table. The reminisces of this home life are found in Martin Luther’s TABLE TALK, remarkable for the insight it gives into the personality of this father. he was gentle, but at times objectionably vulgar and rude.

When the plague struck, as it did frequently in those days, sometimes death came close. One of the children, Elizabeth, died in infancy. Hans and Paul lived to maturity and their descendants still are living in Germany. Marguerite lived to girlhood, but in a terrible time of trial for the busy parents, she died of illness. In the grief of that occasion, Luther formed the tune and words of his greatest hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

This aging father had innumerable organizational details of the reformed church. He was called to settle disputes between princes. His health, never good since his monastic days, grew worse. After a winter journey under difficult conditions, he died after attempting to resolve a conflict between two lords.

What shall we say of this man? He was a reformer. He was a reactionary who was unbelievably harsh with his fellow Peasants. He was intolerant. He was an anti-Semite. He was coarse and vulgar. But also, he was a great preacher and scholar. He translated the Bible into German, giving the people the scripture. His courage sparked the Reformation, giving birth to the numerous free Christian groups among which in later years our own was to be numbered. He was the Reformation’s greatest hymn-writer. Schweitzer remarked that the only person who ever really understood Martin Luther was Bach. He was a kind and loving, but financially embarrassed father. He was a teacher who won the respect of his students.

But the most loving and most human epitaph that the reformer earned, was written by the ex-nun that became his wife and the mother of their children. A month after his death, Catherine Von Bora Luther writing to her sister remarked how much she missed him:

Christina,

Who would not be sorrowful and mourn for so noble a man as my dear Lord, who served not only one city or land, but the whole world? Truly I am distressed that I cannot tell my sorrow to anyone. If I had a principality or empire it would never have cost me so much pain to lose them as I have now that our Lord God has taken from me, and not from me only but from the whole world, this dear and precious man.

(304 A MIGHTY FORTRESS, pp. 18-19)