MARTIN LUTHER:
FLAME OF THE REFORMATION
The Great Protestant Reformation, with which the Lord Almighty freed His true
Church from the bondage of Roman captivity, is usually dated to October 31,
1517. On that day, a German Augustinian monk, named Martin Luther, nailed a
document on the door of the castle church
of Wittenberg. This
document was actually a rather innocent academic proposal to the theological
students at Wittenberg
to debate some issues of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther had nailed it on the
door of the church because it was the usual notice board for the town. It
contained 95 theses or propositions for the scheduled debate. But because the
document so fearlessly and cogently questioned the doctrine and authority of
the Papacy, it began to attract great public attention, and began to be copied,
translated to German, printed and distributed very widely—the printing press
having recently been invented. Martin Luther was in this way plunged into fame,
and became, as it were, the prince of the Reformation which had been in the
throes of birth-pains since Wycliff and Huss.
Luther the Student
Luther was born on November 10, 1483, in Saxony,
Germany. Though
his parents were very poor, they were very strict and religious. They were
devoted Catholics, and had even named their son “Martin” because the day after
his birthday was the feast day of St. Martin as observed by the Roman Catholic
Church.
Luther entered the University
of Erfurt at age 18; and
soon distinguished himself as a good scholar. Within a couple of years,
however, divine providence would lead him in another direction. First, at age
20, Luther found a complete copy of the Latin Bible in the University Library.
Reading it, he was especially impressed with the account of Hannah dedicating his
son Samuel to the service of the Lord and how the Lord eventually called
Samuel. It is possible that he had begun thinking of becoming a monk since
then. Secondly, shortly after his graduation, in 1505, when he was about to
make preparations to enter the Law profession to fulfil his father’s wishes,
Luther found himself caught in a terrible thunder-storm. Fearing for his life,
he fell prostrate to the ground, crying, “Help, beloved St. Anna, I will become
a monk!” His father almost went mad when he heard the news; but Luther kept his
vow. He gave away all that he had and entered an Augustinian monastery known as
the Black Cloister in Erfurt.
Luther the Monk
Luther had entered the monastery in the hope of finding peace for his soul.
Believing that the ascetic life in the cloister would bring him peace, he
became one of the most sincere, conscientious and honest monks. He begged for
food in the streets, performed menial tasks, prayed seven hours a day, fasted
for days regularly, confessed his sins to a priest at least once a week, and
literally tortured his body by whipping to obtain peace for his soul. He was so
scrupulous in the performance of his duties and asceticism that later he would
say, “if ever a monk could have gotten to heaven by monkery, I would have
gotten there.” But peace did not come to him. Luther grew increasingly
discouraged. He had hoped to escape sin and temptation by being shut off from
the world, but he found that while he was externally pious, he could not escape
the burden of sin within. He had to contend with temptations of anger, envy,
hatred and pride. He saw in the Scriptures that God is a consuming fire, a God
of wrath and divine justice; and he could not get over the words: “I, the LORD
thy God, am a jealous God” (Ex 20:5). Luther was being crushed by his right
conception of the holiness of God, coupled with a failure to see that believers
are forgiven because of the righteousness of Christ imputed on them. Just as
the believer’s sin is imputed on Christ and paid for on the cross—though Christ
had no sin, so Christ’s righteousness is imputed on the believer—so that he is
deemed righteous in God’s eyes though he remains a sinner. Failing to
understand this, Luther thought that God expects sinners to earn their own
righteousness.
By the grace of God, a man by the name of Johnann von Staupitz, the head of the
Augustinian Order in Germany, visited the Black Cloister from time to time. As
Luther and Staupitz became friends, Staupitz became the Lord’s instrument to
lead Luther to look unto the finished work of Christ rather than trusting in
his own righteousness. Eventually, as Luther continued to search the Scripture,
the Holy Spirit so illumined his heart that the truth of Paul’s word, “The just
shall live by faith” (Rom 1:17; cf. Hab 2:4; Gal 3:11) shone brilliantly. A
reformation had begun in Luther’s heart!
Luther the Professor
Staupitz also persuaded Luther to enter the priesthood, and then through
Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, obtained a teaching post for Luther at
the University of Wittenberg.
In the year 1510, Luther was commissioned to go to Rome as a representative of
the Augustinian Order. Luther was delighted, for he had thought that Rome was
the ‘holy and eternal city of God’ where the Pope, the vicar of Christ, was
seated. But he was to be sorely disappointed, for instead of holiness, he saw
and heard of gross wickedness, superstition and ignorance among the clergy in
Rome. The Pope, Julius II, was hardly anything more than a scheming politician
greedy of gain, and many of his priests were not even believers.
It was, perhaps, at this time that Luther, wishing to liberate his grandfather
from purgatory, had climbed the 28 steps of the famed Scala Santa (said
to have been miraculously transported from the Judgement Hall of Pilate in
Jerusalem), on his bare knees, and reciting the pater noster at
each step. But at every step he took, the words of Habakkuk, “The just shall
live by faith,” resounded in his ears in protest. Luther reached the top of the
stairs, but by that time, he had begun to ask: “Who knows whether this is
true?”
Returning to Wittenberg, Luther received his Doctor of Divinity, and in 1515,
he began to preach in the parish church. Many came to hear him, for Luther,
like no other preachers, opened the Scriptures to the common folks.
Luther the ‘Rebel’
In 1514, a certain Prince Albert wanted to bribe Pope Leo X to allow him to
fill the vacant arch-bishopric of Mainz. Leo X who was at that time aspiring to
build the present Saint Peter’s cathedral imposed a huge sum on Albert. He then
suggested that Albert take a loan from the wealthy Fugger banking family in
Augsburg, and as a security for the loan, the Pope issued a papal bull
authorising the sale of Indulgences in Saxony. An Indulgence is a document signed
by the Pope, which was scandalously held to be able to free man from the
temporal penalty of sin or to release a soul from purgatory. Having secured the
loan, Albert immediately employed a Dominican monk, Johann Tetzel, to sell the
Indulgences on his behalf. Tetzel set off immediately and eventually reached
Brandenburg, a few miles from Wittenberg. But Frederick the Wise, shocked at
the man’s trade and yet more at his scandalous life, forbade him from entering
Saxony. Tetzel nevertheless set up his store at Juterbock, a small town on the
Saxon frontier. And since, Wittenberg was only an hour and a half’s walking
distance to the town, thousands flocked to do business with him.
Luther soon discovered the moral havoc that Tetzel was creating in Wittenberg.
One day, some citizens of Wittenberg came to him confessing of having committed
thefts, adulteries, and other heinous sins. “You must abandon your evil
courses,” replied Luther, “otherwise I cannot absolve you.” To his surprise,
and grief, they replied that they had no thought of leaving off their sins,
since they had already bought Indulgences for them.
Luther, much saddened by what he saw and heard, eventually wrote his famed95
Theses on the doctrine of Indulgence and posted them on the door of
the church on October 31, 1517. These propositions, Luther undertook to defend
the next day at the university against all who might choose to debate with him.
However, no one turned up. All the students and professors at Wittenberg were
one with Luther. Instead, as mentioned earlier, the propositions began to gain
a wide audience.
Luther the ‘Heretic’
Soon, not only was the sale of Indulgence seriously impaired, but the threat to
authority and doctrine of the church began to be felt in Rome. Cardinal Cajetan
was sent to Wittenberg to examine Luther, but the Reformer refused to
acknowledge that what he taught were errors. Cajetan left in anger and secretly
gave orders that Luther should be taken captive, but Luther received a timely
warning and escaped. Not too long later, the Pope sent a good-natured man, Karl
von Miltitz, together with an expensive gift for Frederick the Wise, to
persuade Luther to recant. This time, Luther apologised for his vehemence, and
undertook to refrain from further disputations if his opponents also remained
silent. However, he soon made clear that he had not changed his mind on his
fundamental doctrinal principles.
Within six months, in July 1519, Luther was called to a debate with Johann Eck
at Leipzig. There, Luther questioned the authority of the papacy as well as the
infallibility of the church councils and insisted on the primacy of the
Scripture. Eck retorted by attempting to discredit Luther by labelling him a
Hussite. Luther was not only undaunted, but became even more outspoken. Within
months, Luther published three pamphlets of great significance. The first,
the Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, called
upon the German nobles to reform the church and society since the papacy had
failed to do so. The second,The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,
attacked the entire sacramental system of the medieval church by maintaining
that there are only two sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—rather than 7.
The third, The Freedom of the Christian Man, was written for the
pope to teach him the doctrine of justification by faith alone in a non-polemic
tone.
The pope was not impressed. On June 15, 1520, he issued a papal bull,
excommunicating Luther as a stubborn and dangerous heretic and ordered that his
writings be burned. In reply, Luther burned a copy of the bull in front of a
great crowd, including his students and fellow professors, exclaiming as he did
so: “As thou [the Pope] has vexed the Holy One of the Lord [Christ], may
eternal fire vex thee.” With this statement, Luther effectively excommunicated
the Pope from the true Church of Christ, and later denounced the Pope as the
Anti-Christ.
The Pope, fuming in anger, requested Emperor Charles V, a devote Catholic who
had recently been elected to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, the most
powerful monarch at that time, to deal with Luther. Charles V agreed and
summoned Luther to appear before him at the Diet of Worms. Luther, against the
counsel of his friends, decided to go, saying, “If there are as many devils in
Worms as tiles on the housetops I will go there.”
When he arrived at Worms
on April 16, 1521, the streets were lined with people curious to catch sight of
the man they thought to be the devil personified. The assembly hall where his
trial was to take place was equally crowded, but with 206 people of great
political and religious stature. The meeting was presided by Johann von Eck who
immediately asked Luther to retract his doctrines. Having asked for time to
reflect and pray, Luther responded the second day on April 18, 1521. His
speech, which was made both in Latin and German, shook the world with these
bold and uncompromising words: “Unless I am convinced by testimonies of the
Scripture or by clear arguments that I am in error—for popes and councils have
often erred and contradicted themselves—I cannot recant, for I am subject to
Scriptures I have quoted; my conscience is captive to the Word of God…. Here I
stand; I cannot do otherwise. So help me God.”
Luther the Knight
Although Luther was allowed to return to Wittenberg
after his momentous speech, his life was in great danger. Had it not been the
intervention of Frederick
the Wise, who arranged to ‘abduct’ him while he was on his way back, Luther
would surely have been exterminated.
Luther was brought to Wartburg castle where he was disguised as a knight so
that his enemies could not find him or molest him. It was in the seclusion and
peace of Wartburg that Luther not only wrote numerous other pamphlets against
Roman Catholic doctrines, but translated the New Testament into German from the
original Greek. By 1522, it was already on sale in the German shops at a price
easily affordable by the common people. This translation (together with the OT
counter-part which was completed in 1534) was to become the firm basis of the
German Reformation.
Ten months later, Luther returned to Wittenberg.
By then the Reformation was already well underway, and Luther’s life was no
longer in grave danger.
Luther the Writer
In 1525, Luther, broke his illegally made monastic vow of celibacy to marry
Catherine von Bora, an escaped nun who bore him six children. Though he could
easily have become rich by the sale of his books, he gave most of what he
earned to the poor and to the work of the Reformation, so much so that his
family frequently did not have enough money to buy ordinary necessities. Yet,
the family was an extremely happy one. This, though Luther was constantly
extremely busy, and though Catherine had to support the family by rearing pigs
and fishes.
Luther was a rapid writer, producing an ocean of literature by the time of his
death on February 18, 1546. The current American edition of his writings takes
up 55 large volumes! Some of his most famous writings include Bondage
of the Will, which was written in response to the semi-Pelagianism of
Erasmus; his Small Catechism for use by his congregation and
his Large Catechism for pastors.
Although Luther did not fully reform the church since he only rejected what he
thought to be directly “against Scripture,”—which to him did not include
altars, images and crucifixes, or holy-days,—Luther’s courage, testimony,
writings and ground works set the stage for the more thorough Reformation
of Zwingli, Calvin and Knox. Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformada! Once
the church is reformed, it must continue to reform itself to God’s Word.
Thank God for Martin Luther, but let us not stop there. Let us resolve never to
undo the cause of Luther. Roman Catholicism remains anti-Christian as long as Rome does not believe
that justification is by grace through faith alone,—whatever the
framers of the ECT or ECT II may say, and
however the Pope may apologise for the past errors of the church. Roman
Catholicism cannot change because of her doctrine of the infallibility of popes
and councils. She is supposed to be semper idem (always the
same). To admit that she was in error at all is to admit the fallibility of
popes and councils and so destroy the authority of the papacy. Jude’s clarion
call to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the
saints” (Jude 3) is as relevant today as it was in the days of Luther—perhaps
even more so, as we see Rome
taking steps to entice Christians back to her fold.
—J.J. Lim