We continue this week in our Summer Reformation Survey with a look at the man whose 95 Theses turned out to have such an enormous impact. Who exactly was Martin Luther? What did he believe? Why wasn’t he martyred like the pre-reformers? Why did his stand for truth have such a great impact on Europe? And was he really anti-semitic? We will consider these questions and more.
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oh God I pray that you help me to be able to explain well about Luther’s life that would be an encouragement that we would learn from him in Jesus name amen let’s start with an overview of Martin Luther’s life Martin Luther born in 1483 died in 1546 was born in icelaven in Saxony part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time it’s roughly near the center of modern Germany he was the eldest son of a middle class minor and a difficult childhood but was given a good education Luther’s father wanted his son to pursue a lucrative career in law but something derailed these career plans on July 2nd 1505 while coming home from law school Luther was caught in a thunderstorm you may have heard about this the storm was intense there was a lightning strike close by Luther and terrified of the prospect of death and divine judgment Luther cried out to Saint Anne help Saint Anne I will become a monk he was making a promise now God not Saint Anne was the one who brought Luther safely through the storm but he had made this vow many people go back on their vows when those vows are made in crisis moments but Luther felt like he could not do so so later that month Luther left law school and entered an augustinian monastery so so much for law school Luther was initially very happy when he moved to Monastery he was he felt secure and at peace with God and His superiors recommended him to become a priest which is what he became in 1507.
while a priest though Luther became increasingly anxious the responsibilities of priests such as offering the mass had emphasized to Luther the accountability that he had before God for everything that he did therefore Luther felt increasingly filled with Terror at the Holiness and greatness of God Luther then threw himself into all forms of penance that the Catholic Church provided so that he could secure peace with God both in the regular Catholic practices but also monasticism he wanted to find peace but whatever he did it wasn’t enough no matter how many times Luther fasted prayed voluntarily suffered went on pilgrimage or practiced confession he still felt his great guilt before God in fact doing these things made him feel more guilty not less Johann Von stouffitz he was the leader of the monastery and Luther’s Confessor a mentor to Luther he became concerned about Luther Luther often awoke Stout bits in the middle of the night to do more confession stopwitz directed Luther away from so much introspection and toward the teaching of the Christian Mystics who stressed salvation not through penitential works but through love for God but this didn’t work for Luther either because the requirement to Simply love God seemed impossible to Luther in Luther’s mind God was the exacting judge determined to destroy Luther felt hatred not love for God so then stop with had another idea why not make Luther a teacher of theology now that certainly was a bold move you want to make a religious wreck a teacher of others but stop its reason that teaching might get Luther’s mind off of his so many haunting questions and might even help Luther find the answer by the way sound guys I just lost sound I can’t hear anything anymore oh uh yeah okay maybe there’s a little bit there but I’ll keep going so Luther followed his mentor’s advice and began to study theology in 1508. oh actually okay I have a little bit of sound now Luther got to know the Bible a little bit better as he studied theology but his terrified anxiety continued nothing seemed to help even learning more about the Bible didn’t seem to help what else could Luther do oh what about going to Rome the most holy city in Christendom the seed of the Pope the place where the apostles were buried well that didn’t help either Luther went to Roman 1510 hoping excited to find the answers excited to find what the thank you church leaders there could do for him but he only came back disillusioned by the city’s great worldliness the corruption that was so evident in the clergy he knew he would not find his answer there so he came back and continued to study in 1512 Luther completed his Doctorate in theology and was accepted as Doctor of the Bible at the University of Wittenberg so by that time Luther had become very knowledgeable of the Bible and of the church fathers the writers of the church fathers but he was not yet converted you tried everything that the Catholic Church offered him to make peace with God but he still felt at enmity he still felt guilty Luther once famously said quote if anyone could have gained Heaven as a monk then I would certainly have done so unquote he tried everything but it wasn’t enough Luther started teaching the Bible to his students at Wittenberg however and he went through transformation as many of you know it’s one thing to learn a subject it’s another to teach it sometimes teaching is how you really learn or you really appreciate something because in teaching you have to work out all the problems and objections in your mind if you’re going to teach something as true you have to be able to know it well to explain it well Luther first started teaching through the songs but the real Great unveiling of gospel Truth for him likely began in 1515 when Luther started lecturing through Romans there’s some debate on exactly when Luther came to saving Faith some say it was latest 15 19.
but I favor the earlier date around 1515.
as Luther studied the book of Romans the verse Luther got stuck on was Romans 1 17. Romans 1 17 says for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed a righteousness that is by faith From First to Last just as it is written the righteous will live by faith the traditional Catholic interpretation of this verse had always linked the righteousness or Justice that could be translated either way the justice of God with God’s Wrath against sin and that’s exactly what verse 18 the very next verse in Romans goes on to describe but Luther could not understand how God’s Wrath against sin could be connected with the word gospel because that’s what verse 17 says the gospel of righteousness of God is revealed how can God’s righteousness to judge sin wrathfully be good news this righteousness of God or justice of God that the verse talks about was exactly what Luther according to a Catholic interpretation was exactly what Luther had always hated here because Luther saw in the Justice of God his own Doom so Luther wrestled with this verse and he battled with it for days finally God opened his understanding Luther realized that the righteousness of God in this verse is not God’s righteous wrath against sin but God’s Gift of imputed righteousness with which God justifies a person by faith Luther wrote of this Epiphany quote all at once I think I have something on the next slide yeah all at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into Paradise itself through open Gates immediately I saw the whole of scripture In a Different Light I exalted this sweetest word of mine the justice of God with as much love as before I had hated it with hate unquote so behold then the loving-kindness of God to our brother in the past Dr Martin Luther the monk was saved God brought him to saving faith now Luther’s Discovery or rather rediscovery of gospel Doctrine had huge implications for the Catholic Church the Luther did not see these right away he continued to be a good Catholic priest and Professor though he did also share the righteousness of God as he understood it through the gospel to his students and fellow faculty Luther was not initially looking to challenge the pope or to break away from the Catholic Church though increasingly he thought that Catholics should be thinking more about what he discovered before Luther wrote his famed 95 Theses Luther actually wrote a separate document the 97 Theses which were a critique of Catholic theology Luther wrote These 97 Theses hoping that they would provoke a debate among his fellow Catholic Scholars and in this debate Luther could argue for salvation by faith but when this document was published there was not much interest in it outside of the University of Wittenberg it didn’t really go anywhere there was however quite a huge reaction when Luther wrote about a different issue the sale of indulgences now recall what an Indulgence is Indulgence Catholic Indulgence is a pardon for sin based on merits earned by the Saints and apply to you if you get an Indulgence you won’t have to pay for your sins when you go into purgatory or at least you won’t have to pay as many pay as much now the sale of indulgences indulgences actually still exist today in the Catholic Church but you can’t buy indulgences anymore the sale of indulgences was something that was practiced back in Reformation times and it played a huge role in bringing about the Reformation technically even back then you never bought you never bought some Indulgence you merely gave to the church which was a good work and that good work earned you an Indulgence but that was all really a smoke screen people understood how it really worked really the church was selling you for a price freedom from punishment and Purgatory for yourself or for one of your relatives some people saw through this practice of selling indulgences they knew it was just a money making scheme of the church but many others especially poor peasants who didn’t have much hope in this life didn’t see much point and seeking comfort in this life they bought indulgences with a little money that they had they got for themselves these little certificates that said you have an Indulgence for your sins many Renaissance popes sold indulgences to finance their Wars or to support their artistic projects projects like the construction and beautification of Saint Peter’s Basilica that grand Church in Rome and the Sistine Chapel both of them were partially funded with indulgences in 1517 a certain Cardinal wanted to purchased an archbishopric from the pope and that’s simony but he needed money and so he commissioned a monk Johann tetzel to sell indulgences in Saxony where Luther was now tetzel was a very unscrupulous indulgent seller giving wild problem promises wild promises about indulgences to gain customers much like televangelists do today he and his associates likely use the following jingle as soon as the coin and the copper Rings the soul out of purgatory Springs it Rhymes in the original German as well so a little catchy jingle promising just just put the coin in and free from purgatory you are now tetzel also guilt-tripped his listeners by Vivid sermons or sermonettes in which he painted for his listeners their relatives suffering in purgatory for instance he Persona or he imitated a mother or a father begging his child to stop being so selfish put some money into the church coffers and free that person from purgatory why wouldn’t you do that why are you going to let me keep on suffering he painted that picture before his listeners now these manipulative these Wicked appeals made Luther very angry so Luther wrote a document the 95 Theses or 95 points of discussion about indulgences and he nailed them to the doors of the castle Church in Wittenberg now when did he do this as far as we can tell it was on hallowed Eve that is the day before All Saints Day October 31st 1517.
now we have to think of this nailing the 95 Theses as a dramatic defiant action but it was actually probably pretty pedestrian Luther was angry to be sure but basically he was posting some ideas on a community message board for him and his fellow Scholars to debate his Theses were written in Latin not in German so this was not going to be for the common people to read most people didn’t know Latin furthermore Luther had expected to stir up some public interest with his 97 Theses and that didn’t happen so he likely wasn’t expecting too much from his 95 Theses and these species were not a Protestant Manifesto as we sometimes think of them they were specific Challenge on indulgences in fact their title makes that evident the full title of the 95 Theses is disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences what did he actually say in these Theses well Luther mainly asserted that indulgences do not do anything they don’t prevent damnation they don’t prevent suffering at all but repentance toward Jesus covers all sin so then one has no need for indulgences Luther even raised the question in his document if the pope can voluntary deliver voluntarily deliver Souls from purgatory for the sake of money why doesn’t he just free everyone from purgatory for the sake of simple love if he can do that why not wouldn’t that be what you’d expect of your Christian leader so when Luther wrote these things about indulgences he likely did not realize the nerve he had struck those wishing for reform in the church they saw the indulgences or the sale of indulgences as one of the most flagrant forms of corruption and many Germans resented the idea of mostly Italian popes fleecing ignorant German Germans with false promises in these indulgences so it happened that someone we don’t know who they took down the Theses that Luther posted they translated them into German and then sent them to a printer to make copies for any literate German to read within months thousands of copies of the 95 Theses were circulating stirring great unrest among Germans against the pope and against the Catholic church and forcing the sale of indulgences in Germany to a screeching halt many saw the 95 Theses as more than a challenge against the sale of indulgences but actually a challenge against the authority of the Pope that’s pretty serious but why didn’t the pope just arrest Luther and nip this unrest and Revolt in the blood well the answer is politics and God sovereignty got it arranged that the first 30 years of reformation in Europe should occur at the exact time that the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were often distracted by other concerns most notably Wars with France and the prospect of war with France and wars with the ottoman Turks so they couldn’t focus on Luther at first actually the pope who was Pope Leo the tenth he thought that Luther could be handled without drastic action and he trusted in the augustinian monks of whom Luther was part of their order he trusted the monks to get their colleague back in line instead however Luther persuaded many of the augustinian monks that he was right and so they actually joined him as allies so that didn’t work the pope then tried to discredit Luther in a couple of theological debates in 1519 Catholic Theologian named Johann EK debated Luther and Leipzig on the subject of papal Authority had this debate Luther defended himself well showing from the scriptures and the writings from the early church fathers that the pope did not have special or ultimate Authority however EK was able to get Luther to admit that Luther agreed with the teaching of John Huss remember Huss talked about him last time heck therefore thought to heal won the debate Luther had confessed himself to be in line with a condemned heretic surely that means he’s defeated but many who witnessed the debate notwithstanding Luther’s connection to Huss were persuaded by Luther’s arguments and they joined in his movement by the end of 1519 Luther had written and published several books and pamphlets and he continued to teach and preach at Wittenberg with many coming to listen to his gospel Proclamation and explanation from Over the 95 Theses by the end of 1519 were no known throughout Europe and support for the Reformation was growing and growing the next year though the political climate had changed enough that the pope was ready for more serious action in June 1520 the pope issued a bull that is an official Proclamation against Luther calling on all Catholics to burn Luther’s books and he called on Luther to Rick hand in 60 days or face excommunication well Luther had reached the point of no return excommunication would make him an enemy of all Catholic society and government and would very likely lead to his death but to recant would undo all the work that he had done and cause him to be unfaithful to God’s gospel Luther took the full 60 days to determine his response but on the last day they went out to the Public Square with some of his students set up a bonfire and burned the Pope’s Proclamation Luther also wrote a response to the pope which he condemned the pope as an antichrist and he condemned the Pope’s church as quote the most Lawless den of robbers the most Shameless of all brothels the very Kingdom of sin death and Hell unquote well the probax communicated Luther I communicated Luther on January 3rd 1521 and he sought to get the secular authorities to arrest Luther so Luther could be put on trial but again God had chosen to provide protection for Luther remember I told you how the Holy Roman empire was divided into many different kingdoms or Prince dumps with an elected Emperor over them well the prince of Luther’s region the region of Saxony was Frederick the wise who while not necessarily convinced of Luther’s ideas at first was determined to protect Luther until Luther was at least given a fair hearing the Holy Roman Emperor however did not want to be so charitable the Holy Roman Emperor at this time at this time is Charles V who was also king of ultra Catholic Spain and he controlled part of the Netherlands so very powerful he called an imperial Council known as a diet in January of 1521 in the city of thems Germany or what we call worms the subject of the diet was what to do what to do with the invading ottoman Turks in Europe but also what to do with Martin Luther the emperor summoned Luther to appear at this diet but Frederick the wise who had considerable influence in the Empire as an elector one who actually chooses who the next Emperor will be he made Charles give Luther a guarantee a safe passage to and from the diet of course such a guarantee did not work so well for us a century earlier but Luther nonetheless attended when Luther appeared before the emperor Luther saw a collection of his works and was only asked two questions were these Works indeed written by Luther and was Luther ready to recant of his heresies Luther asked for more time to prepare his answer and was given a day in which he prayed and consulted With Friends the next day Luther gave his reply his reply came in a sober but powerful speech Luther said The Works were indeed his but that he would not recant at all it concluded his speech with these famous words quote since your majesty and your worship’s desire a simple reply I will answer unless I am convinced by scripture and plain reason I do not accept the authority of popes and councils so they have contradicted each other my conscience is captive to the word of God I cannot and will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe God help me amen he may also have added the words here I stand I can do no other but that is debated Luther said these words in Latin and then repeated them in German to which there were even some cheers and Applause Luther then raised his arm in a jousting salute before he was dismissed now the emperor was furious at Luther’s Defiance not only of papal Authority but also Imperial Authority but because of pressure from Frederick the wise Charles did not immediately arrest Luther nonetheless the subsequent Edict of worms condemned Luther as a notorious heretic this meant that it was only a matter of time likely before Luther would be caught and killed but someone was going to kidnap Luther first before the council was finished Luther fled the council but he was seized on the way home by some Agents from Frederick the wise and taken to one of Frederick’s castles woodberg castle and Luther remained there for a time in a kind of Witness Protection Program from the castle Luther continued to write pamphlets and letters including ones that denounced compulsory confession and allowed for the breaking of monastic vows but his most important work and one for which he now had much time to accomplish was a German translation of the New Testament and whose New Testament did he use to make this translation why erasmus’s critical Edition published only a few years earlier Luther completed his German translation and published it in 1522 that’s a German translation of the New Testament and because Luther had received word that things were getting out of hand back in Wittenberg in his absence he decided to exit Witness Protection and go help meanwhile the Holy Roman Emperor was occupied with other pressing matters when Luther was away from Wittenberg or while Luther was away some began to call and proceed to enact radical change in the church some had started smashing all religious icons others were calling for armed Rebellion against civil Authority once the third returned he immediately preached against such radicalism and he halted the movement towards that direction radical instigators were banished from Wittenberg and Luther resumed the process of gradual reform you see one of the ideas that defined Luther’s Reformation program is something called the normative principle of worship the normative principle of worship is something is permissible in church as long as the New Testament doesn’t speak against it if the New Testament doesn’t forbid it it’s okay for you to do in church that’s the general idea this means Reformation for Luther was actually quite conservative we think of it as being a radical in some ways he was but he’s actually pretty conservative in Wittenberg Luther did not get rid of the mass after all the New Testament doesn’t forbid such a service though he did change the mass to emphasize that it was not a re-sacrifice of Christ’s body since that’s not an accord of the New Testament but he didn’t get rid of it Luther also did not get rid of icons religious icons are okay Luther even kept some parts of the Catholic Church hierarchy this is partly why things along these lines this is partly why if you’ve ever been to a Lutheran Church or talked to lutherans today you’ll notice that Lutheranism seems kind of Catholic it’s partly due to Luther’s philosophy but in all the practices that Luther did keep in the church he wanted to make sure that the gospel was clearly visible and intact one very noticeable change from Catholicism though was the abolition of mandatory clerical celibacy and Luther himself would embody this change by his own marriage in 1523 Luther helped a group of nuns escape a Convent by smuggling them in Barrels in a wagon one of these nuns that he helped Escape was named Katarina sonbora despite the daring rescue it wasn’t love at first sight between them Luther actually thought he would never get married because he daily expected to die as a martyr any day now I’m probably gonna die nevertheless June 13 15 25 Luther proposed to Catherine I was married to her on the same day in a private ceremony more public ceremony commenced two weeks later he was 41 she was 26.
their marriage caused much controversy on the one hand many of Luther’s friends supported the move since they figured it was about time that he got married since he kept preaching and that everyone else ought to get married and partake in this special mode of sanctification from God but others thought that the marriage would cause a scandal to the hurt of Luther’s Ministry remember people at this time were still working through the idea that monastic vows don’t really matter it was a big deal if a monk or a nun decided to get married but a monk marrying a nun that’s like an apocalyptic shock yeah we got to get in the mindset of the people but Luther figured that well it will be shocking it would probably be a good thing in the end so he got married he married a nun former monk Mary’s a nun and after the marriage Catholics were beside themselves inventing all sorts of vicious rumors about Luther and Katie one writer even claimed that the child of such an Unholy Union would surely be and surely be the Antichrist in reality the Luthers had a great and loving marriage an example to all Protestant families Catherine whom Luther often called Katie had a strong personality just the kind of woman that Luther needed to keep him going she was Godly intelligent industrious a crucial part of Luther’s life and Ministry the pair had six children together and their marriage lasted all the way until Martin Luther’s death in 1546.
she died about six years later in 1552.
so Martin Luther gets married the last 20 years or so the reformer’s life from 1525 to 1546 saw Dr Luther trying to develop the German Protestant church and protect it from both Catholics and radical reformers on the one side you have a group that wants to outright destroy protestantism and on the other side you have a group that or groups that want to take reform into what Luther saw as dangerous and unbiblical directions we can break these opponents down into three groups first there were those who wanted social Revolution they’ll banished from Wittenberg some radical preachers continue to stir up the German Peasants and knights and advocated the redistribution of wealth and the redressing of social ills in 1524 then a large-scale peasant War engulfed much of Holy Roman Germany though Luther sympathized with a downtrodden peasants and believed they had genuine griefs to be redressed he could not countenance armed Rebellion against god-ordained authorities therefore Luther condemned the rebellious peasants in the strongest terms and he called for them all to be crushed and crushed they were with as many as one hundred thousand peasants slaughtered in the different battles many surviving peasants felt like Luther had betrayed him or betrayed them and they no longer supported him so the Protestant movement begins to fracture a little bit another even more radical rebellion occurred in Munster about 10 years later this rebellion was led by anabaptist radicals we’ll talk about who the anabaptists were next week but it was led by these radicals who proclaimed a coming apocalypse an imminent apocalypse and their re-establishment of a New Jerusalem in Germany specifically in the city of Munster these Rebels took up arms gained control of the city of Munster set up a Theocratic Kingdom and also established polygamy at least that’s what their enemies claimed the rebels established in the city an army of both Catholics and Protestants was assembled and eventually they broke the Revolt recaptured the city and executed the rebel leaders now despite Luther’s attempts to distance prosthetism from these radical revolts many Catholic rulers in Europe took these rebellions as a sign of the true dangers of protestantism and therefore they began to persecute and even execute many Protestant preachers so we have Luther contending on the one hand against those who want to use protestantism as an excuse for social change second we have Luther contending against other Protestants actually the group that we would mainly call the reformed this group basically felt that Martin Luther’s reforms were not going far enough we’re foreign Protestants first arising in Switzerland but later appearing in France the Netherlands and this and Scotland they embraced a more radical reforming principle than Luther did the regular regulative principle of worship so we have the normative and the regulator the regulative is really the opposite of the normative principle the regular principle says you can’t do something in church worship unless the New Testament specifically says that you can it’s kind of like strict and loose interpretations of the Constitution Luther says if it’s not forbidden you can do it the reform said unless it’s specifically permitted you can’t do it so reform Protestants you could understand they got rid of a lot of things they got rid of icons they got rid of the mass they even sometimes got rid of musical instruments and even choirs because the New Testament doesn’t specifically say those should be part of church worship so there were differences between the basic principles of Lutheran Protestants and reform Protestants another big difference between these two groups was their viewpoint on the Eucharist what we call communion or the Lord’s table the traditional catholic view was and still is something called transubstantiation they believe that during the observance of the Eucharist The Bread and Wine literally are transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus though they still look like Bread and Wine they’re not actually Bread and Wine anymore they’re the body and blood of Jesus that’s transubstantiation Luther rejected that view but it took us somewhat modified view called consubstantiation consubstantiation understands that the Bread and Wine in communion do not stop being Bread and Wine they’re still Bread and Wine but Christ’s literal body and blood are also present in the elements of communion so it’s kind of like both they’re both Bread and Wine but they’re also the body and blood of Jesus that’s consubstantiation that was Luther’s view the reformed Protestants did not see Christ literally present in the bread and wine at all The Bread and Wine in their view were either simply a memorial that was zwingley’s view or Christ was only spiritually present in the bread and wine that was Calvin’s view now were these differences in understanding the Lord’s Supper really that big of a deal well Luther sure thought thought so in 1529 there was a meeting led by a Protestant Prince a very important Prince named Philip of Hessa and he brought together at this meaning the most eminent Protestant theologians this meeting was called the Marburg colloquy The Hope was that reformers from Switzerland like zwingley might agree with theologians from Germany like Luther and Protestants could unite both religiously and politically as wingley and Luther were both present at the meeting and they and their allies agree on 14 out of the 15 points of doctrine that were brought up on the last point though number 15 the Eucharist they could not agree the disagreement actually became quite heated and the colloquy broke up without Unity Luther said at the meetings end quote I would rather drink blood with a papist than mere juice with zwingly so it pretty much rejected the reform so according to reformed reforming principles in the view of the Lord’s table we now have two branches Within protestantism protestantism is fracturing again so we have those who wanted radical social change Luther contends against we have those who want a greater spiritual reform that separated from Luther and Luther contends against and finally there were those that felt that Luther’s reforms were going too far and this group mainly consisted of the Catholics but also included the humanists remember how the humanist Scholars helped bring about the Reformation but after the Reformation started many of them separated from Luther and the other reformers partially over the dispute that took place between Erasmus Prince of the humanists and Luther on Free Will their little pamphlet War but also they moved away from the Protestant movement when they saw some of the excesses or what they perceived as excesses among the Protestants naturally the pope and his supporters they continued their verbal assaults against Luther and against Protestants but increasingly there was the Specter of real war between Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire official Toleration for Lutheranism and protestantism ebbed and flowed if sometimes granted official Toleration and sometimes that Toleration was revoked in fact we actually get the term Protestant from that going back and forth in 1529 the emperor revoked Toleration for the Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire and the a group of protestant princes and theologians they presented a document to the emperor they solemnly declared what their beliefs were which is the same as the word protest in an older understanding and hence they became known as Protestants they declared their beliefs and became those known as the ones who declare their beliefs Protestants anyways so a toleration Ebbs and flows in the Empire the emperor in 1530 gives the Protestants a chance again to present their beliefs to him the diet of Augsburg but and the Protestants prevent or present the Augsburg confession but he still rejects the Protestants ultimately and warns that they better recant or he’s going to go to war with them Protestants band together in Alliance they figure we’re not going to be able to stand against this powerful Emperor unless we stand together they formed a small caldic League great name for an alliance this is swayed the emperor from war for a Time and he again extended Toleration to the Protestants but after this league weakened about a decade and a half later the emperor and his Catholic allies finally did make war and they defeated the Protestants and the wars of the small call Deck league in 1546 to 1547.
Luther had just died at this time but though the emperor and the Catholics won the war it was all kind of a waste of time they couldn’t Force the protestantness the Protestants to give their beliefs protestantism had become too entrenched in the northern Holy Roman Empire that Conquest could not force the people back into the fold of Rome though the emperor pretty much gave up he again extended toleration of the Protestants in 1555 and then in 1556 the emperor abdicated the throne it was too stressful dealing with these stubborn Protestants and the other burdens of Empire here’s a map by the way showing the religious makeup of Europe around 1550 the orange regions they show the rough extent of protestantism Lutheranism the green and blue regions that would be a reformed understanding anglicanism here in England and we have a Eastern Orthodoxy over here and the yellow is Catholicism so lots of Protestants in Northern Holy Roman Empire and also in the Scandinavian countries so we have these opposition forces all pushing on Luther and all pushing on the German Protestants at the same time we’ve got political revolutionaries we’ve got those who want greater reform and about the Catholics but once a totally snuff out reform so you can understand that pretty stressful being Martin Luther and there would be frequent Temptation toward discouragement but Luther pressed on he continued to preach and write until his death he not only wrote pamphlets against radicals and against the Catholic Church they also created resources for the church including a full German translation of the Bible Old Testament included that was published with the help of his colleagues in 1534. he also created two catechisms for instructing the laity he also wrote many hymns and we know one of those most famous A Mighty Fortress Is Our God Luther became increasingly ill as he got older and this made him more irritable on top of that near the end of his life Luther’s 13 year old daughter Magdalene died and this was the Deep blow to Luther in 1546 Luther returned to ice lab in his town of the town of his birth to sort out some family business he preached his last sermon there and then died a few days later from a stroke he was later buried underneath the pulpit in the Catholic church at Wittenberg in his lifetime Luther wrote over 400 works and 60 000 pages of material but when Luther reflected on his ministry he had this to say quote all I have done is to put forth preach and write the word of God and apart from that I’ve done nothing while I’ve been sleeping or drinking Wittenberg beer it is the word that has done great things I have done nothing the word has done and achieved everything unquote good words so we’ve seen Luther’s life let’s now turn to discuss some of the theological ideas that were particularly important to Luther’s Ministry we’ve mentioned some while discussing his life like his reforming principle and his view of the Eucharist but let’s discuss a few others first there are the five sole we sometimes think about the the Solas of the Reformation Luther certainly one of those who was important for re-establishing these five solos what are the Solas well Sola scriptura scripture alone as Christ’s word is the Christian’s Authority solafide men are justified by faith alone apart from any good works or ritual so la grazia God’s unmerited favor alone provides both the way of Salvation and the faith to believe in it Solas Christus Christ is the only object of Faith only his righteous life and sacrifice justifies and solely Deo Gloria our salvation and all of life and men are in history is all for God God’s glory he alone deserves it so Luther is certainly agreeing with and teaching the five Solas in this predestination a doctrine that flows out of the five Solas we often looked at Calvin as the reformer who re-established the doctrine of God’s sovereignty and salvation but really almost all the Protestant reformers embraced and preached this Doctrine Calvin systematize and explained it best so he becomes the one known for it but Luther was quite adamant about Sovereign election and the other doctrines of Grace most famously arguing for election in his book against Erasmus the book entitled The Bondage of the will next we see in Luther a redeemed use of the law that is to say that Luther’s emphasis on faith and Grace and salvation did not make him and to know me he did not get rid of the Holy immoral commands of the Old Testament or the New Testament rather Luther emphasized that after One Believes a person is enabled and delighted to keep the commands of God next in Luther we see a universal priesthood though I think that title is a little bit misleading and I would prefer a communal priesthood we sometimes think of the think of Luther as establishing the following idea I don’t need to go to God through a priest I can go to God directly well that is true but that doesn’t mean that Luther thought or taught that Christians could be self-sufficient with just the Bible and the Holy Spirit far from it Luther taught that Christians needed that a Christian needed his Brethren and needed the church not to interpret the Bible for him or to intercede for him before God but to intercede with him before God and to provide a check on his interpretation after all God did give teachers to the church we would do well to remember this communal aspect of our priesthood today and not become loon Ranger Christians next Luther asserted a revelatory rather than a reasonable theology all that means is that Luther taught that we must submit our understanding of who God is to what actually to what God actually revealed about himself rather than saying what God what God is like based on what we think he should be like or what our emotions feel like God ought to be Luther says You must submit your understanding to what God actually revealed in the scripture a revelatory theology next there were the two gospel sacraments that Luther advocated remember that there were more sacraments in the Catholic Church Luther examined the seven Catholic sacraments and he concluded that well not necessarily bad the only two true sacraments were baptism in the Eucharist they are the only two inaugurated by Jesus himself and they were both obviously symbols of the Gospel remember Luther wants to keep the gospel very clear in line with Catholic tradition Luther and most of the other reformers practiced infant baptism reasoning that even though salvation is by faith and not by baptism baptism is a symbol of the Gospel even for babies because such children are given gifts without doing anything which is exactly what God does for us in Salvation all right we wouldn’t agree with Luther on that but that’s what he did when it came to the Eucharist Luther did Elevate the place of preaching in the church to a great extent but the Eucharist was still the center of the service Luther got rid of all the ideas of sacrifice in the Eucharist and achieved marriage and transubstantiation nevertheless he believed that Christ as we saw is present in the elements in a special way and that Believers were specially communing with Christ in the gospel symbolism of the Eucharist he saw that as critical and even a central part of the service finally there was Luther’s views on church and state he believed that they should be separate well at least in theory Luther thought that the government didn’t have a role in rooting out heresy or supporting Orthodoxy it was just to keep order and Christians were to submit to that government but in practice there are a lot of tricky situations the Lutheran Churches since they lost the Catholic land that went with those churches they no longer had a way to support themselves they actually needed the government to step in and provide for the church also you have radical heresies rising up people advocating social revolution in the name of God is the government not supposed to act against those Heretics and then you have the persecution from Catholics against Protestants are Protestants just supposed to submit and you have the strange hierarchy of rule in the Holy Roman Empire you have a Catholic Emperor at the top but you have Protestant princes Underneath Him so to whom is the peasant supposed to submit to his local ruler or to the emperor is there a way to do both things were getting a little complicated so Luther in practice tended to support a connection of church and state at least when the state was Protestant even though in theory he advocated their separation now before we move on from Luther we’ve gone to talk about a few of Luther’s mistakes this isn’t to make Luther look bad or to invalidate his ministry but this is to show that Luther was human just like we are a redeemed sinner who God used mightily we can learn from Luther’s mistakes just as we learn from the mistakes of men and women in the Bible men and women who are otherwise great examples of faith there were three main mistakes from Luther that we need to admit and we need to learn from the first of us is unnecessary harshness and vulgarity Luther was a pretty passionate guy but sometimes he spoke too harshly as he himself admitted at times so not to say the harsh language is always wrong false teachers and false teaching do deserve strong rebuke as we see in the scriptures but one must be careful not to go overboard Luther also sometimes used vulgar language and images as part of his denunciation of the Catholic Church for example I can’t show you this picture because it’s obscene but Luther had printed and distributed a picture explaining the origin of Catholic monks and the picture shows the devil going to the bathroom so yeah that was what Luther sometimes did if people complained against Luther for using such coarse language or vulgar images Luther would say well the Catholic church is that disgusting of a church they are vulgar so they deserve vulgar pictures truly Luther’s coarseness and severity resonated with many of the common people and it helped turn public opinion against the Pope in many instances so you could say this coarseness and severity was effective but no strategic gain is worth a compromise to a Christian witness we know Ephesians 4 29 the Bible calls us to be blameless in word indeed even when we confront our opponents and there are plenty today who use Luther’s vulgarity as a way to discredit him and Protestants as a whole so Lutheran is Zeal sometimes got carried away and became a little too harsh and a little vulgar the second big mistake was the episode of the bigamy of Philip Hess now before I explain this remember that bigamy is having two wives at the same time form of polygamy we don’t have all that we don’t have time for all the details of this situation but I will just summarize there was an important Protestant Prince named Philip of Hessa who wrote to the theologians in Wittenberg in 1539 asking if a second wife might be permitted to him based on the precedent of the Old Testament Philip believed that or he believed the Bible but he had a terrible relationship with his wife he felt that there was no way to repair it and there’s also no way for him and to remain sexually abstinent Philip had gotten involved in various Affairs and his conscience was tormented not to mention he was ruling as a hypocrite before his people so why not free himself from this immorality and his tortured conscience and do as the Patriarchs and Kings of Israel had done in the Old Testament why not take another wife after all the New Testament never condemns polygamy why should Philip be forbid a second wife now Luther and the others when they got this letter they recoiled from the idea of improving polygamy but they nonetheless struggled to answer what appeared to be tacit approval from God of polygamy in the Bible you have righteous men doing it in the Old Testament it’s never condemned could polygamy be a special dispensation from God in certain circumstances in responding and giving counsel to Philip there were political ramifications he was an important prince in the struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Protestants there was also his kingdom to consider there was his soul to consider so finally Luther and the others replied and basically said you should be self-controlled and you should make up with your wife but we can’t say that taking a second wife is a sin so if you’re insistent upon having a second wife at least do it secretly well that’s pretty weak permission but Philip felt like it was permission nonetheless and he went ahead and did his day boxed and he married a second wife in secret huh was that the end of that unpleasant business well no of course not within a year Philip’s secret was out resulting in a massive scandal for both Philip and for the advising theologians Luther included Luther because the advice was given privately as in a confessional to a priest he denied any role in it he said I didn’t say those things nonetheless the Scandal greatly harmed Luther and protonism in Germany Catholics savored this development gleefully pointing their fingers and saying see this is what happens due to your Reformation this is what your Reformation produces and many Believers were discouraged by this news societal vices made a comeback people were less zealous to proclaim the gospel Luther very much lamented the whole business in his letters his later letters and he hoped that Christ would just return soon and fix everything how could Luther and the others have blundered so badly well we can’t be too hard on them they were dealing with many holdovers of medieval Catholic thinking and they just weren’t ready for a desperate Challenge on the topic of monogamy but we better learn from this we can’t be caught flat-footed in our own day because polygamy is sure to make a comeback we’ve already seen the beginnings of sexual Moors being eroded we’ve seen much of that it’s only a matter of time before polygamy comes and we have to have a ready defense and of course that goes back to the Paradigm that God outlined in Genesis 2 24.
for this reason a man one man a biological man will leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife one woman one biological woman and they shall become one flesh that’s our basis the final issue the elephant in the room when it comes to Luther’s mistakes is what Luther said about the Jews and we’re pretty short on time so I’ll just have to summarize this in uh Luther’s writings he actually was pretty compassionate toward the Jews at first and he rebuked Christians for being harsh towards them being unreasonable being unloving and he says how do we ever think about them if we act like this but towards the end of his life Luther was quite different in his attitude gee that’s sort of the uselessness of sharing the gospel with the Jews he confirmed and asserted the rumors about the Jews that they were secretly hating everybody and plotting to overthrow society and he advocated doing things like burning all Jewish houses seizing all Jewish wealth and forcing all Jews into manual labor of course this sounds a lot like Nazi or hitlerism and Nazi ISM in the 1930s and they actually look back to Luther as part of justifying what they did though the basis of their racism is different in these two instances now many opponents of protestantism have seized upon these works of Luther as proof of The Emptiness of protestantism and the compromised nature of Luther’s Ministry but how could Luther said such things against the Jews we can make some observations to help us understand why it was normal anti-Semitism was normal at the time it actually was normal for Luther to be so uncharitable to his opponents it’s funny when you compare what Luther said to the Jews compared to what he said to the reformed or to the Catholics it’s actually kind of moderate he said much worse things about the pope and Catholics hard to believe I know but that was Luther’s way with his opponents he was very severe this work was actually written in response to a Jewish apologetic pamphlet that which was probably also very polemical we don’t have it so we can’t tell but that would probably give us some context Luther this was written towards the end of Luther’s life where he was more ill and more irritable perhaps lost some of his mental ability and he often wrote in times of passion he would say things that he would later not wish to have said do such observations excuse Luther no they don’t you might understand how he wrote these things but in the end it was wrong it was sin it was unloving it was unprofitable it was foolish but does that mean that Luther’s Ministry is totally discounted because he did this or his other mistakes no we can’t do that we don’t do that it’s silly to say that one mistake invalidates a whole Ministry no we have to practice discernment we look at what’s profitable in a person and we look at what’s not profitable the more right on they are the more we’re going to benefit from them no one in church history is perfect no one today is perfect only Christ is nevertheless we can still profit from imperfect men if we test what they say by the Bible and that’s really what the Reformation is all about it comes back to the Bible it is to be the center of our lives and our thinking our Authority and this is what we are decling to well that’s it for today we’ve covered Martin Luther next week we move to Switzerland and we learn about Paul Rick swingly let me close in prayer God we thank you for the ministry of Luther an imperfect man but a man that you mightily used we thank you for him we’ve inherited much and been blessed by his ministry even today I pray God that we would embrace the same Zeal for your scriptures that we would trust it to do the work and not in ourselves in Jesus name amen all right thank you everybody I will see you next week let me know if you have any questions or comments just email me