MARTIN LUTHER.
TWO
VIEWS.
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY.
No B 581 . . . (1985).
By John M. Todd and others.
[In this pamphlet we present two views on the life of
Martin Luther written by two eminent Catholic Scholars. In this first article,
by John Todd, a sincere and irenic effort is made to build a bridge of
understanding between Catholics and Lutherans by attempting to portray Luther
in the most positive light possible.
In the second article, H.O. Evennett
describes the work of Luther in such a way that would sound a note of caution
in a too eirenical approach to the disaster which
Christendom endured at the time of the Reformation.
An excellent and recent study of some of the issues
raised by these two viewpoints can be found in the pamphlet:
“WHAT DID LUTHER REALLY WANT? A Contribution to
Dialogue with Protestants” by BRIAN W. HARRISON
which can be accessed at
http://www.pamphlets.org.au/australia/acts1694.html
It is strongly recommended.]
Part
One.
MARTIN
LUTHER.
By John M. Todd.
Young Luther.
Hans and Margaret Luther saw that young Martin was a promising child.
Instead of apprenticing him in his father's copper mining business, they sent
him off to a boarding school at
Like everyone else, Martin was in and out of church. He had a strong
musical streak in him and from an early age loved the chant, the ritual and the
traditional melodies, secular and religious. At school he learnt the usual
things at the heart of which lay the science of constructing good sentences. He
remembered going round the town with songs 'to beg for bread' as the tradition
was. And he remembered some over-severe teachers, and others more gracious. The
Head Master was one of the latter, and always raised his scholar's beret as he
arrived in front of the class saying: 'God may intend many of them for
burgomasters, chancellors, scholars, rulers.'
At the age of seventeen, in the year 1501, Martin went off to
University. He was impressed by the great town of
As an undergraduate Martin Luther continued his studies of the written
and spoken word, together with some elementary philosophy and theology. Soon
like all other university people he would be bilingual; all his academic work
including his letters to colleagues would be in Latin - plus the occasional
German expletive or idiom. [All his life Luther was troubled by coarse language
and abundant explicatives.] He used to walk the forty
miles home. On one such occasion he cut his leg badly with the short sword,
which he carried on cross country journeys. Weapons were widely carried, and
there was a special rule banning them from examinations; people might get too
excited. Many students only lasted for one, or two years, dropping out in large
numbers. In the third year Luther passed his finals in second place out of
seventeen.
Graduation early in 1505 was a grand affair. Luther wrote later: 'What a
glorious thing it was when the degrees were conferred on the new masters, and
torches were carried before them in their honour.' And now what? Luther's father wanted him to study law and
Martin bought the books, notably the great book of Canon Law, Corpus Juris Canonici. The
undergraduate term had ended in April, and Luther started work again in the
early summer. At the end of June there was a break covering the period from the
Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (June 28) to the Feast of the Visitation of the
Virgin Mary (July 2). He went home for it. On the way back one of the frequent
summer thunderstorms which still build up quickly in this heavily wooded area
broke out. Lightening flashed right beside Luther, and knocked him to the
ground, without otherwise injuring him. In his terror he swore he would become
a monk. The idea must surely have been in his mind for it to come out so
easily.
Augustinian Friar.
Within a fortnight, to the intense annoyance of his father, who had
hoped for a fine career for him, Luther was a postulant at the house with the
best reputation in
In the friary it was back to theological study again. Luther found the
discipline, even the quite severe fasts, welcome. In those days a monk or friar
was normally advanced rapidly to the priesthood. In 1507, only twenty-one
months after reception as a novice, Luther found himself preparing for his
ordination at the age of twenty three. [This lack of preparation of priestly
candidates was one of the many reforms eventually addressed by the Council of
Trent.] Life was beginning to weigh on him. He was subject to bouts of
depression. He was also a perfectionist and was overawed by the ideals to which
he must adhere and the responsibilities which were about to become his. An
early sign of his anxieties appeared on the day of his first Mass.
As he began to read the opening words of the Canon, Te
igitur clementissime Pater,
'Therefore O most merciful Father. . .' Luther was overcome suddenly by a kind of identity crisis. Years later
he described his sudden feelings thus: ' . . . shall I, a miserable pygmy, say
I want this, I ask for that? For I am dust and ashes and I am
speaking to the living, eternal and true God.' He made as if to leave
the altar. But the Prior, who was standing by to steady the
new priest, turned Father Martin back. The Mass proceeded as normal.
After Mass there was a party. Luther's father had relented, and had come over
to the Friary on horseback with a party of friends and a substantial gift to
the community. But the loss of his son's expected career still rankled, and
when the party was under way and the drink was flowing
he twitted young Martin about his vow in the thunderstorm, saying he hoped it
wasn't a devil who had prompted him. Luther expostulated and his father
reminded him of the biblical injunction to honour his
father and mother. It was a moment of decided embarrassment. For Luther it was
more. He would often return to his father's words in his writing.
Luther progressed rapidly in the friary, proceeding to teach the young
students whilst following further studies in the University. He advanced more
swiftly than some colleagues thought proper, to the theological degree of Sententiarious in 1509, which enabled him to lecture in
theology at the University. [Luther was undoubtedly of a very high
intelligence, but one can share his confreres doubts
about the prudence of his rapid advancement when one considers his later
stubborn arrogance in face of the authority of the Tradition of the Church.] In
1510 Luther accompanied an older friar on an 800 mile journey on foot to
The man who had picked Luther out for promotion was his Provincial Superior,
Johann von Staupitz. He saw that Luther's enormous
energy and outstanding ability, in spite of a nervous and depressive
temperament, deserved and needed employment. [Staupitz
plays a strange role in the drama of Luther’s rebellion. He finally joined
Luther in abandoning his solemn vows of religion and adopting the new Lutheran
creed.]
Other members of the Order seemed to share his confidence. Fr Martin was
elected sub-prior of the friary at
Crisis.
Luther lived the normal life of a friar, reciting the Psalter in choir
each week, teaching in the friary and the University. He became the most
popular special preacher in the town church, and was fast becoming the bright
young man of
Luther's approach was dynamic and very personal. He spoke as one
committed. His material was always intelligent and also imaginative. He
objected to a philosophical approach to the gospel, and indeed to theology. He
preferred the approach of
Luther felt he could never live up to the ideals put before him, that he
could never earn the merit he was supposed to do. As soon as he had been to
confession he thought he must go again. [He suffered terribly from scruples.]
The arms of Jesus on the cross seemed to loom over him threateningly. Sometimes
the bouts of depression became intolerable. In this misery, moments of
suffering sometimes became so intense that he said he thought if they had
lasted for as much as a tenth of an hour 'he would have ceased to exist
completely . . . at such a time God seems terribly angry . . . All that remains
is the stark naked desire for help and a terrible groaning . . . the person is
stretched out with Christ so that all his bones may be counted.' From such
suffering, Luther developed his 'Theology of the Cross', a development of the
piety and mysticism centred on the passion which was
widespread in the late medieval Church. The cross remained central to Luther's
preaching and theology for the future, and it provided genuine comfort to
himself.
But the central problem remained: How can man measure up to God? How
could man be justified in God's eyes? Theologically the problem had been posed
for centuries: Could man do anything good at all without the assistance of
grace? The late medievals often said that man could
do something and that he 'must do what he could'. Natural man could do his bit.
But Luther found this simply to be untrue for himself. Far from man being able
to do anything it was God who did everything. Man was never able to obey God's
law fully. The only answer for Luther was to throw oneself into God's hands and
believe, put one's entire trust in Jesus Christ. Grace alone, according to
Luther, enabled man not only to keep the law but live the life of charity to
which he was called by the Word of God in the Bible.
Born again.
There are a number of texts in which Luther described how he came to see
that this was what the Bible said, [at least in his opinion] and how it was
like a complete new revelation, an understanding, which at last lifted the
burden from his shoulders.
[Not one father of the early Church taught Luther's
doctrine of justification, and Luther himself became well aware of this,
although he felt that some of the earlier doctors of the Church - Ambrose,
Bernard, Bonaventure, and above all Augustine - came closer to the truth than
others. On the whole, he did not find the fathers profitable on what he saw as
the essence of the Gospel:
"Jerome may be read for historical reasons, for on faith and
the doctrine of the true religion he does not have a word. Origen I have
already banned. Neither does Chrysostom rate with me. He is a mere prattler.
Basil is worthless; he is quite the monk; I should not give a nickel for him. The
Apology of Philip {Melanchthon - Luther's latter fellow-reformer} is better
than all the doctors of the church, also Augustine himself." (Plass 1959, I: 313-14). {E. M. Plass (ed.) "What Luther Says: an Anthology."
3 vols.
It is clear that this new ‘revelation’ occurred as a series of insights
between 1513 and 1518. But Luther speaks of one occasion occurring in a room in
the tower of the friary, and this is sometimes referred to as the
'tower-experience'. In the last year of his life he was persuaded to write an
introduction to a collection of his Latin works, and he set down there what he
understood to have occurred:
'Though I lived as a religious without reproach, I felt I was a sinner
before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. . . I hated the righteous
God who punishes sinners. . . .' Then he turned to St. Paul's words in the
Letter to the Romans: ‘He shall live who is righteous’ God justifies all who
believe, in just the same way as he had justified Abraham on account of his
faith.’
Until this time the word 'penitence' and the
word 'righteous' had both been threatening words for Luther - the righteous God
never satisfied with the penitent sinner. But now the scene was transformed.
Staupitz helped by telling Luther that repentance began not with the love of
self (as some sophisticated writers had said) but with the love of God. Another
confirmation of Luther's approach was Erasmus's fresh translation of the New
Testament where he translated the word metanoeite
more correctly, not as 'do penance', as Jerome had done in the Vulgate [the
result of repentance], but as 'change your heart', be converted.
Luther said Staupitz's words 'stuck in me like
some sharp and powerful arrow and I began from that time on to look up what the
Scriptures teach about penitence. And then, what a game began. The words came
up to me on every side jostling one another and smiling in agreement so that
where before there was hardly any word in the whole of Scripture more bitter to
me than poenitentia, now nothing sounds sweeter or
more gracious.' He said the same of 'righteousness'. Instead of a vision of man
struggling hopelessly to achieve righteousness, he saw the gracious God
justifying the man who believes the Word of God. The faithful man, always a
sinner, is yet always justified.
'I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise . . .
a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself. . . . I found
analogies in other phrases, the work of God, that is what God does in us; the
power of God, with which he makes us strong, etc.' So the justice of God for
Luther was no longer his power condemning man but his power justifying the
believer.
The Ninety-five Theses.
Luther, now thirty-three, published his first two books, one a new
edition of a book inspired by
At this time also Luther began, like many people across
http://www.pamphlets.org.au/australia/acts1338.html
It will help us understand Luther’s times.]
In Wittenberg the Elector had a great Museum of Relics and every year on All
Saints' Day a special Indulgence could be gained by visiting it and venerating
the relics contained in it, such as the remains of the one of the Holy
Innocents, a phial of the Virgin's milk, and many other such - 5,003 of them
altogether. They remind us of Chaucer's Pardoner, with his documents from
From about the year 400 as the Roman Empire collapsed and nomadic tribes
infiltrated into
Luther looked behind the many corrupt practices to the theology which justified
them. To him some of the practices looked like an absolute contradiction of the
gospel as he now understood it. How could the gospel which told a man that 'he
must lose his life to save it' be turned into a scheme for gaining merit by
cash contributions? Yet at first Luther was so sure of the true spiritual
authority of the Church and the theology it promulgated that he tried to
construct theories to justify Indulgences. It was in this frame of mind,
intellectually, that he wrote his Ninety-Five Theses. He may or may not
have nailed these up on the castle church door: this was a normal way for a
university teacher to invite fellow academics to challenge or discuss his
views. He certainly sent them to his Archbishop on 31 October 1517, All Saints'
Eve. The Archbishop was no paragon of Catholic virtue, by any means but he
detected in Luther’s Theses a denial not only of abuses of Indulgences, but a
denial of the doctrine itself and the underlying authority of the Church to
issue them.
Luther's emotional involvement and his real theological insight got the
better of him in the accompanying letter to the Archbishop which criticised abuses in the preaching of a local Indulgence.
After a very humble opening he ended with prophetic words: 'Oh, great God! The
souls committed to your care, excellent Father, are thus directed to death. For
all these souls you have the heaviest and a constantly increasing
responsibility. . . No man can be assured of his salvation by an episcopal function!'
Encounter with
The Archbishop, Albrecht of Hohenzollern, Prince of Brandenburg, still
in his twenties, owing large sums of money to
Little as Luther guessed it, both the Archbishop and the Preacher set
wheels in motion immediately to have Luther's theology examined by
In August 1518 Luther received the first document from
' . . . in the New Law the Pope's judgment is the oracle of God.' Luther
himself was called 'a leper . . . a dog and the son of a bitch, born to snap
and bite at the sky . . . with a brain of brass and a nose of iron.'
{Regrettably such was the arrogant style of ‘ad hominem’ denunciation of heresy
at the time. It is a pity that a more theological answer was not given to
Luther’s theological difficulties.] This was no response to the lengthy,
carefully argued Explanations which Luther had written and sent to the
Pope with a letter of loyalty three months earlier. Many historians have
questioned the sincerity of this letter in view of the subsequent events. He
was to write on 13 March1519: "I am at a loss
to know whether the pope be antichrist or his
apostle"
Two months later Luther was informally examined at
As feared, a document was delivered a few weeks later to Luther's
sovereign, the Elector of Saxony,
Fourteen months after the writing and dissemination of the Ninety-Five
Theses Luther was becoming famous, on account not so much of his theology as of
his encounter with
Luther was not one to leave problems unattended to. He began reading
widely on the Church and its history, and its nature as evidenced in the Bible.
The following year, 1520, the results of this research began to pour from his
cell. First however came a Sermon on Good Works,
in answer to queries whether his theology of faith meant that Christians were
absolved from good behaviour. He trounced the absurd
notion. Genuine good works, however, he said came from genuinely faithful
people. It was no good being a 'do gooder' on a
superficial level. But from Christians who believed the Word of God, works of
justice and charity would flow inevitably and were to be praised.
Many plans for the reform of the Church had been announced in the
previous hundred years. None had been taken up effectively by the Church
authorities. In these circumstances Luther abandoned all notion of historical
hierarchy and said it was up to the generality of members of the Church to take
up the challenge, and principally to those in society who had power. Thus the
seeds were sown that would turn the
He found only three sacraments – this in contrast to the seven
sacraments that the Church had up till then proclaimed. He found that all baptised Christians were priests and so he abolished any
concept of a special sacramental priesthood. He found therefore also that
priests need not be celibate a conclusion embraced by a remarkable number of
the German clergy, a sign perhaps of the spiritual poverty of so many of the
vocations in that country. He said the laity should receive the wine at Mass,
agreeing in this with the Hussite heretics. He said
that the Church’s ‘failure to preach the Gospel in its fullness’ and its
manipulation of laity by its control of the sacraments (issuing bans for purely
secular reasons) proved that the papacy was Antichrist. It had betrayed the
gospel. Thus proclaimed Luther.
These were the most immediately stunning of his assertions. When set
alongside his dynamic personal religion and his theology of faith, in a context
of the general German nationalist consensus of criticism of the Church
authorities and put into the mouth of a man of exceptional intellectual
ability, a linguist and a poet, the result was a mixture of great explosive
potential. Explosions were in any case welcome among those numerous German
speaking people who resented the apparently arrogant Italian churchmen who were
responsible for the flow of funds from Northern Europe to
One more factor completes the picture. For the first time, in every town
and village, the travelling merchants now carried printed material, not only of
a pious nature or popular songs, but on controversial issues. Luther's pieces
were rapidly disseminated, they made quick profits as they were in such high
demand, and the literate members of society read them out in the market places.
They presented a searing condemnation of the activities of the Church
authorities, and a definition of the Church which ran counter to the everyday
reality of the
The Reformation begins.
To Cajetan's dismay - he wanted Luther only to
be warned - the more aggressive forces at
On the day on which Luther became automatically a heretic for failing to
appear for examination, his colleague at
The new young Emperor, the Spanish and French speaking traditionalist
Charles Habsburg, now Charles V, summoned Luther to his first Diet. [To the
best of his lights Charles was a good Catholic. He retired to a monastery
towards the end of his life to prepare for eternity. How many absolute rulers
do you know who abdicate their crowns to prepare to meet their maker?] To his
surprise a majority of the Electors and others attending the gathering at
Luther's Sovereign, the aged Elector, Frederick the Wise,
was in a dilemma. He and his advisers concocted a plan, with Luther's
agreement, to kidnap him on his return journey to
At Wittenberg Luther's colleagues in both the University and the friary
felt they should take steps to put Luther's principles into practice. [This was
now a religious revolution.] They began to celebrate ‘mass’, omitting the
references to it as a 'sacrifice', communicating the wine to the laity [just as
the Hussite heretics had done, and for similar
reasons], and wearing no vestments. Statues were removed. [Shades
of the Iconoclasm heresy of the 8th century!] The friars
queried the morality of the whole vow-taking process. Some left the friary.
Sporadic, unplanned contentious reforms, combined with anticlerical riots by
the students, led to something like the beginning of anarchy. The Elector, very
worried, wrote asking Luther's advice. Eventually the Town Council begged him
to return.
Meanwhile, Luther had been translating the New Testament into
contemporary German. The people must have access to the primary source of their
faith. In twelve weeks, from December 1521 to March 1522, doing 1,500 words a
day, Luther did it. [In total, there had been
at least eighteen complete German Bible editions, ninety editions in the
vernacular of the Gospels and the readings of the Sundays and Holy Days, and
some fourteen German Psalters by the time Luther first published his own New
Testament translation.] Until then translations had
been very expensive, published sometimes without permission from the Church
(and sometimes forbidden if they were accompanied by heretical footnotes), had
only been available to the wealthy in vast tomes. [What was especially new was
the vast circulation Luther’s translation achieved with the co-operation of
profit-seeking itinerant book-sellers.]
In the first week in March Luther arrived back. He shaved, put on his
Augustinian habit and preached on eight successive days. He told the populace,
including his colleagues, that they were behaving in a disorderly fashion, that
they were putting a new legalism in place of the old legalism and that they
needed to love as well as to believe. In the autumn the New Testament was
published in a version available to everyone.
The Reformation had begun. Supported by the Elector, his colleagues, and
many of the people, Luther was able to inspire and organise
the changes he believed should be made in
Luther left the town only occasionally for a local preaching tour or to
solve some particular problem, or to go once to the far south of Saxony to the
Castle of the
Luther against the Reformers.
Luther was often bothered about the immense changes he had set on foot.
Should he have done it? He examined his conscience and came to the conclusion,
in spite of the chaos unleashed on
In many ways Luther was conservative in temper. He had a great respect
for civil authority, and nursed romantic hopes about the young Emperor. At
The Lutheran ‘mass’ was celebrated with the Roman text, but shorn of
references which might encourage the idea that to celebrate mass was to do
something intended to appease God, or to earn merit, to offer a sacrifice in
the pagan sense as Luther put it. Luther was not averse from using the word
'sacrifice' for the Eucharist when it was used in the sense of a sacrifice of
thanksgiving, celebrating the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth
as the act of salvation. But he believed the use of the word in the canon had
come to obscure the essential meaning of the Eucharist. In effect the canon was
cut down to not much more than the words of consecration.
During 1522-5 Luther wrote and composed many hymns and carols, some
still widely in use. He gradually introduced German into the liturgy, always
retaining however a substantial amount of Latin. Working with other musicians
he arranged the texts for a sung German ‘mass’ using his own great musical
ability to produce chants which drew their inspiration from Gregorian and folk
melody. His liturgical and musical innovations paved the way directly for the
emergence of the Bach Chorale.
Last Years.
We still seek a full understanding of the Reformation. The friars in the
Augustinian Friary at Wittenburg, when convinced that
they could follow their own judgement without damning
themselves, simply left the religious life. They were not driven out, rather
the opposite. Somehow the life of the vows in many religious houses had lost
its inner force and dedication. [This is damning evidence of the poor
understanding of the meaning of solemn vows and Catholic mindset of the bulk of
religious at this time in northern
The Elector and the other authorities and town councils got Luther to
help them with plans for education, welfare, parish visiting and organisation. He wrote texts for them. He wrote a Short
Catechism and a Long Catechism. As the response to his initiatives
grew, political problems emerged. What if the Emperor should try by force to
reverse the changes and restore traditional Catholicism? Should the Elector and
others resist? Luther said, No. Later the lawyers
persuaded him that it was written in to the constitution that one might resist
if the Emperor ovestepped
his powers; and to interfere with the preaching of ‘God's word’ [as newly
promulgated by ‘reformers like Luther himself] would be such interference. So
from 1531 Luther agreed that resistence was
acceptable. But the Emperor was always occupied with wars east, west and south
chiefly in resistance to the rising Turkish threat, and the matter did not
arise in Luther's lifetime.
The Peasants were chronically restless and Luther [at first] supported
their demands for greater economic and social justice. But again he said, even
in the face of grave injustice, they should not turn to violence. He appeared,
but was not, contradictory because although he had lectured the princes and
lords on their obligations in justice to the peasants, when the Peasants Revolt
came in 1525 he supported the authorities in putting it down - and did so in
words so violent that they shocked many people. [They shock many people today!]
Luther had an aggressive side to him which his friends deplored [as do
any modern readers of his works]. It came out in the later part of his life
also against the Jews, the perennial scapegoats of medieval
Luther today.
Within twenty five years of Luther's death his teaching had won the
allegiance of a majority of the people in several large German speaking areas.
Reform movements had taken root in several other countries in
During Luther's lifetime there were Christians who sometimes attended
liturgies of both papal and Lutheran persuasions. As late as 1541 at
Luther's central insight, his doctrine of the justification of the
sinner through faith alone, is now considered by many theologians of both
traditions as not in principle running counter to Catholic tradition. Sadly,
the possibility of agreement was obscured over the ages by polemics [especially
on the fanatical insistence on the (non-scriptural) word ‘alone’]. Today, a
broad consensus is emerging on the doctrine of justification: 'it is solely by
grace and by faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit in us
that we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit who renews our hearts
and equips us for and calls us to good works' (Catholic-Lutheran Joint
Commission statement on the Augsburg Confession, 1980).
Differences remain. How eventually the papacy can come
to be seen in an acceptable light by Lutherans is perhaps more difficult - even
though Luther himself did not rule it out in principle. The Catholic
theologian Karl Rahner has described his 'Dream' of a
future meeting of Church leaders which shows the Pope acting in a way that
could be acceptable and possible. The sacraments and the priestly ministry also
remain areas of some disagreement. But Luther never became 'Protestant' in the
sense of seeing the Church simply as a gathering of individual Christians. His
liturgical, sacramental and pastoral style at
Part Two.
MARTIN LUTHER.
By H. O. EVENNETT M.A.
Fellow of and Tutor in History at
NOTE.
This article is reprinted from The Reformation, by H. O. Evennett M.A. Additional matter has been supplied by the
Rev. J. Brodrick S.J.
MARTIN LUTHER.
Early Life.
Martin Luther, a miner's son, was born at Eisleben,
in
It is not as a mere denouncer of ordinary abuses that we must regard this
Augustinian Friar who shook the world, but as the creator of a revolutionary
theological doctrine in regard to the method of Salvation - the doctrine of
Justification by Faith Alone.
Justification by
Faith Alone.
The steps by which Luther, in his monastic years previous to the
outbreak of the Indulgence Controversy in 1517, slowly evolved this belief, are
now traceable in his early commentaries and lectures, which have fortuitously
come to light in the course of the last fifty years, [since 1900,] and the
discovery of which, together with Father Denifle's
epoch-making book, published in 1904, (* Luther und Luthertum.
Gradually, not suddenly, he reached an answer that assuaged the pain of his
questionings: Original Sin had totally vitiated man's nature and will,
rendering them utterly powerless for good. Man could contribute nothing to his
own Justification; to strive for merit was in vain. Salvation could be attained
only through the recognition of God's power and willingness to effect redemption by the free imputation of His own goodness
to those who put their complete trust in Him to do so.
Luther was aware that this view of the economy of Salvation was original, yet
at the same time he also believed it to be Catholic. Indeed, Denifle showed that Luther's interpretation of Romans 1:
17, "Justus autem ex fide vivit"
- "The just man lives by faith", the biblical text on which he
chiefly relied, was a medieval commonplace, and that Luther could hardly have
been unaware of the many passages in the Liturgy and the Breviary which
stressed the place of Faith in Justification. But the revolution in
Justification by Faith Alone lay in the Alone. In the complete denial of
any independent power for good in fallen man was contained in germ all
Protestantism - the Unfree Will; Predestination; the
attack on Hierarchy and Sacramentalism; the Priesthood
of All Believers [and the non-existence of any 'Ministerial Priesthood']; the
Invisible Church.
The Indulgence
Controversy.
Luther did not, of course, immediately perceive all this. The
remorseless drawing out of all the terrible implications of Justification by
Faith Alone was the work of the Indulgence Controversy that broke out in
October, 1517, and culminated in Luther's excommunication in 1521. In
challenging a disputation upon Indulgences, Luther was not so much protesting
against the methods by which the Great Indulgence of 1517 was being preached as
expressing an uneasy feeling that the whole doctrine, involving as it did the
idea of a transfer of merit to wipe out punishment, accorded ill with
Justification - total Justification - by Faith Alone. He was denounced to
A National Hero.
We have come to our second problem. Why did this theological controversy
become of such enormous significance? Why did this morbid and troubled Friar,
hitherto no public figure outside his own order, attain within three years to
the status of something like a national hero? Why, all over
In the first place there were, it would seem, theological centres
in which academic opinion had slowly been drifting toward the anti-humanist
doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone that Luther had painfully worked out
as an anodyne for his own introspective despair. We may see in the works of our
own John Colet, and in those of the Picard scholar, Lefevre
d'Etaples, who survived until 1536 and never formally
renounced Catholicism, an Augustinianism that placed increased emphasis upon
the role of Faith in the economy of salvation. And among the German Augustinian
Friars of Luther's own order, a revival of the study of
But Luther and his case made a far wider appeal than even this. For all kinds
of quite extraneous issues became associated with his fight against
The Political
Issue.
To abuse the Papacy as an oppressive foreign institution by which crafty
and easy-living Italians exploited virtuous and sensitive Teutons
in questionable Italian interests, was a sure passport to popularity.
Instinctively, Luther harped on this theme, with a coarse, passionate, but
successful artistry. National feeling in
That these things could be, says much for the decline which the Church's hold
over clergy and laity in
An intensification of lay control over ecclesiastical affairs marked the
century which preceded the Reformation, and the independence of the Church
constituted the last formidable obstacle in the path of those forces which were
moving, through the centralized Renaissance governments, towards the creation
of the
The Political
Issue (The Peasants' Revolt).
Luther's own Prince, the Elector of Saxony, at once a friend of
humanists and an exploiter of relics and indulgences,
chose to protect the heresiarch's person without formally accepting his
doctrine or breaking with the Pope. A period of honourable
captivity for Luther in the Wartburg was followed by a virtual freedom of
action when he returned to
Considerations of another kind were also preparing the way for the eventual
capture of Lutheranism by political forces. The doctrines of the Invisibility
of the true Church and the Priesthood of All Believers [to the exclusion of a
Hierarchical Priesthood] destroyed the Catholic conception of the Church on
earth as a formal institutional Unity with inherent independent juridical
powers vested in Pope and hierarchy. There remained instead the idea of local
communities representing the projection on to the earthly plane of the
Already the fissiparous results of the appeal to Scripture alone were becoming
evident. The conflict between Luther and Carlstadt was paralleled in every place
where the New Preaching appeared. Worst of all, the economic position of the
preachers was insecure. They could seldom make good their claim to the Catholic
endowments and ecclesiastical machine, even when they themselves had been the
local Catholic priests. Luther decided to make his appeal to the secular power,
asking it to declare openly for his cause and to take over its organization, in
order to give stability and order to the communities. It is a disputed question
whether Luther originally held that the Prince, or chief magistrate, was always
ipso facto the rightful ruler of the Church and wielder of spiritual
jurisdiction; or whether he merely held that in the existing circumstances the
Prince was the most suitable person to whom the Christian community should
entrust the exercise of those powers of Church government which all possessed
severally. The point does not affect the upshot. The Elector of Saxony and the
Landgrave of Hesse, reassured by Luther's attitude
during the Peasants' Revolt, and perceiving their opportunity of abolishing the
autonomy of the Church and seizing its wealth, accepted his invitation. In 1526
and 1527 the Catholic Church in their territories was destroyed.
State-controlled Lutheran establishments were set up by means of Princely
commissions; and the models thus created were followed by the many other German
States which, in the course of the next twenty-five years, embraced
Lutheranism.
The Political
Issue (The Lutheran Princes).
This virtual handing-over of a religious movement to political authority
marks the end of what may be called Luther's prophetic period. Henceforward
much power, even of doctrinal control, was exercised by the Lutheran Princes.
The theory was that doctrine was self-evident from the Bible, and was authoritatively
promulgated in such works as Melanchthon's Loci Communes. But in
practice the complete State control of worship and ceremonial implied a certain
doctrinal initiative, while the choice between the many conflicting prophets
with their varying brands of Lutheranism lay entirely with the Prince.
Its adoption by the State complicated the nature of Lutheranism. Originally a
mere system of belief it became in addition a great complex of vested political
interests, and any attempt at reconciliation which ignored this fact and took
account only of pure theology, was doomed to failure from the first. None the
less, many such attempts were made by eirenically-minded
theologians from the fifteen-thirties to the fifteen-fifties, of which the
famous Ratisbon Conference of 1541, associated with
the name of Cardinal Contarini, came nearest to
success. Only six years after the ineffectual ban of
Luther's Marriage
and Death.
Martin Luther went through a form of marriage with the ex-nun, Katharine
von Bora, in 1525, when he was forty-two. Melanchthon deplored the marriage,
but hoped that the refining influence of his young consort would cure Luther of
his habit of making coarse jokes. It had no such result, for his speech and
writings grew coarser with the years, and towards the end of his life passed
all bounds of decency.
Luther gave his formal written sanction to the second bigamous marriage of the
Landgrave Philip of Hesse in 1540. This act of the
Doctor has been regarded by some of his warmest admirers, Kostlin
for instance, as "the greatest blot on the history of the
Reformation."
In 1545, the year before he died, Luther issued two broadsides, entitled Donkey-Pope
and Swine-Pope, embellished with wood-cuts by Lucas Cranach and
quatrains by the Doctor himself, which he called his "last will and
testament." Both verses and pictures were gross obscenities, which no publisher
of our time, not even the lowest, would dare to re-issue. Luther's last sermon
was a fierce, unbridled attack on the Jews, whose expulsion from Eisleben he vociferously demanded. He died at Eisleben four days after that expression of hatred, on February
18th, 1546.
Father
Doctor Leslie Rumble, M.S.C.and his radio audience
had the following reaction to Mr Todd's research on Martin Luther.
Q. I have read a book, "Martin Luther,"
by John M. Todd, which the publishers say will help to uproot lingering
prejudices that prevent many Catholics from seeing Luther plainly for what he
was, a man totally committed to Christ and intensely concerned for His Church.
A.
Mr.
Todd is a Catholic layman with a not always prudent enthusiasm for the reunion
movement. In April, 1964, the Catholic Archbishop Garner, of
Q. The Swiss theologian Dr. Hans Kung,
commending the book, said: "He who would understand the modern Catholic
Church must understand the Reformation. He who would understand the Reformation, must understand
Luther."
A.
Whatever
be the truth of Dr. Hans Kung's remarks, he knew enough to realise that Mr.
Todd's book could not lead to a genuine understanding of Luther and should have
said so. It has been said that the Luther of the violent, abusive and
scurrilous writings that came from his pen was not the whole Luther, and that
he was after all an earnest religious reformer. But the reverse is also true.
Earnest religious reformer as he was bent on being in his own way, he was yet
the Luther of the violent, abusive and scurrilous writings. It is one thing for
Catholic scholars to admit that Luther was not wholly without virtues, even as
Protestant scholars admit that he was not wholly without faults; but it is too
much to be told by publishers that their book will enable us to "see Luther
plainly for what he was, a man totally committed to Christ." Martin Luther
was far too self-centred for that.
The
Methodist Dr. Gordon Rupp, an acknowledged authority on Luther, says in his
book "The Righteousness of God" that Luther had two violent
hatreds, that of those he called "the apostate Jews," and that of
what he called "apostate Catholicism." Luther, he writes, believed
"the papacy was toppling to its doom;" and he quotes Luther as
saying: "Living, I was your plague; dying, I shall be your death, O Pope."
Not to see such aspects of Luther is scarcely to understand Luther. However, as
Pope John XXIII said: "We do not want to put anyone in past history on
trial. Responsibility is divided. Let us come together and make an end of our
divisions." Luther's teachings, variously interpreted, contributed towards
that fragmentation of Christendom which to a great extent now constitutes the
ecumenical problem which we can only hope and pray with God's help to solve.
But we won't make progress by refusing to face facts and by leaning over
backwards, unrealistically pretending to ourselves that Luther was a man
"totally committed to Christ and intensely concerned for His Church."
He was too wrapped up in Martin Luther for that.
Q. What would that great convert
A.
Arnold Lunn, who is still convinced that Luther's personal defects
of character are impossible to defend, would agree that in God's providence he
did, by his revolt against the Catholic Church, shock Catholics from the
godless humanism of the Renaissance period into taking personal religion
seriously instead of yielding too much to intellectual wrangling, institutional
politics, and merely lip-service in the Christianity they professed. The
Council of Trent, in 25 Sessions held during 18 years from 1545 to 1563,
inaugurated the "Counter-Reformation" within the Catholic Church
itself. The English Cardinal Pole told the Council that the only way to meet
the challenge of the Protestant Reformation was, not by conflict, but for
Catholics to reform themselves. Admitting this, Arnold Lunn
certainly still holds, as all Catholics do, that Luther went too far in
declaring reason itself, ecclesiastical authority, Sacraments in the Catholic
sense of the word, and "good works" to be useless. But Arnold Lunn cannot be accused of being anti-ecumenical. With the
permission of the late Cardinal Griffin of