Martin Luther

Martin Luther (1483-1546), German religious reformer and theologian began the Protestant Reformation and founded the Lutheran Church as a branch of Christianity dominant in Germany and Scandinavia. While there had been reform movements in the Roman Catholic Church before him, as well as various sects and heresies, but they were not on a sufficient scale to disrupt the medieval Church. Luther was the first to definitively break the unity of Roman Catholic Christendom. His Lutheran Church broke with the pope, but became subservient to the state. He reshaped German religious culture through rejection of Catholic liturgy and celibacy; he created a new Lutheran liturgy using his very popular hymns and his translation of the Bible into German.

Life

Luther was born on Nov. 10, 1483, in the central German town of Eisleben in Thuringia. His father, Hans Luther, originally a peasant, learned mining skills, and became a businessman who owned several small foundries; his mother, Margaretta, came from an educated urban professional family. Martin was strictly brought up in a traditional family. He entered the University of Erfurt in 1501, took a master of arts degree in 1505 and studied law in preparation for the legal career his father planned for him. Erfurt was the center of humanism, and Luther was well educated in Aristotle and the Roman classics by leading scholars.

Young Luther was tormented by the current picture of man's destiny. His Germany was obsessed by a cult of death, which had arisen after the Black Death more than a century before his time; however, not even death was as appalling as the judgment thereafter and the prospect of everlasting damnation. In July 1505, when Luther was returning to the university after a visit with his parents, a thunderstorm overtook him. Struck to the ground by a bolt of lightning, he cried in terror to his father's patron saint, "St. Anne, help me! I will become a monk." Two weeks later he entered the strict Augustinian order.

Catholic monk and professor

Luther took his final vows and in May 1507 he was ordained a priest. He was assigned to the town of Wittenberg, Saxony, the next year as an instructor in logic and physics at the new University of Wittenberg, with its 180 students. Luther spent nearly his entire life in Wittenberg. He was favored and protected by the government, thanks to the influence of his friend, the court chaplain Georg Spalatin (1484-1545). He learned Greek and Hebrew and especially studied the Bible itself, as well as standard theological treatises by Scholastic thinkers Peter Lombard (c.1100-60), John Duns Scotus (c.1265-1308), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Pierre d' Ailly (1350-1420) and William of Occam (1288-1347). Above all he was influenced by Augustine 354-430), the reputed founder of his order. He was also influenced by Nominalist theologian Gabriel Biel (c.1420-95) (his teacher's teacher), who taught that sinners could attain genuine contrition for their sins. Biel clarified the issue and Luther in 1517 came down strongly in opposition to it. The university awarded him the degree of doctor of theology in 1512 and Luther rapidly advanced in his teaching career and became a successful administrator; he preached regularly in the parish church. In 1510-11 he went to Rome on official business for five months, his only trip outside Germany. He later said he saw Rome's corruption, but most historians believe his later animadversions were shaped by his later alienation from the papacy and by his later alignment with German nationalist anti-Italian xenophobia. He did not yet in 1511 share the anti-papal and anti-Roman mood in Renaissance Germany that he later became leader of.

Luther's fears continued to harass him. Repeated bouts of depression may have arisen partly from physical causes having to do with Luther's savagely ascetic regime that was self-imposed and against the advice of his confessor. "I vexed myself with fasts and prayers beyond what was common...if I could have got to heaven by fasting, I should have merited that twenty years ago.... I afflicted myself almost to death." That is, he sought to earn heaven by self-torture. In reaction, he decided that nothing in the power of man is good enough to constitute a claim upon God. He fully explored the penitential system of the Church so that the sins which he could not expunge or eradicate might yet be forgiven, only to discover that he could not confess all of his sins. Some sins were forgotten and others not recognized, for man does not see that he is a sinner until confronted by the accusing finger of God. The mystic way of ceasing to struggle and of surrendering oneself to the wonder and the goodness of God offered no solution--for Luther, God was a consuming flame.

The solution to Luther's problems came through the study of the Bible; he was appointed to the chair of biblical study at Wittenberg. In writing lectures on Psalms, Romans, and Galatians from 1513 to 1516 Luther came to the conclusion, fundamental t Protestant theology, that man depends for his salvation on the sheer grace of God, made available through the sacrificial death of Christ. Christ is not primarily the terrible judge who condemns sinners, but the redeemer upon the cross. Man has only to believe and to accept in trust what God has done to be forgiven, even though sin is never entirely taken away. This was to become the central doctrine of Luther's creed: the doctrine of justification by faith.

The critical point at which Luther's position diverged from that of the Catholic Church was in his absolute denial of man's ability to do anything whatsoever toward his own salvation. The Church taught that through grace man is given by God the ability to fulfill His commandments. Since man is free to reject this grace, if he accepts it instead and performs good works, his deeds are meritorious. But Luther affirmed that when good deeds are performed with an eye to reward they are damnable sins.

Turning point: indulgences

Luther's actual breach with the Church was occasioned by the pope's use of indulgences. An "indulgence" was a remission by the Church of punishment time in Purgatory, which was a penalty for sin. (Indulgences did not help souls sent to hell.) Invented in the 11th century, indulgences at first only remitted penalties imposed by the pope on earth, but by the 1480s the pope claimed an extension to penalties imposed by God in Purgatory. Some popes undertook not only to remit penalties but also to forgive sins. In return for such benefits the recipients made cash contributions in accord with a graded tariff based on ability to pay. The underlying theory of the entire transaction was that Christ and the saints by their good works had earned more credits than were needful for their own salvation and had stored up a treasury of merits from which the pope could make transfers to others.

The privilege of dispensing the particular indulgences which drew Luther's ire was granted by Pope Leo X to Albrecht, archbishop of Mainz. The public thought money was going to Rome to build St. Peter's Church; in reality, half the money went to Albrecht so that he could repay the loan that had enabled him to purchase from Rome a second archbishopric. The proclamation of the indulgence was entrusted to Johann Tetzel, a Dominican monk with considerable experience in the field. The indulgence was declared, in an accompanying document, to confer the forgiveness of sin, and there was the further statement that those who secured indulgences for relatives in Purgatory need not themselves be contrite. Tetzel assured his hearers that:

As soon as the coin in the coffer rings

The Soul from purgatory springs

95 Theses: 1517

The 95 Theses issues in 1517 hurled Luther into a world of swirling controversy and extreme danger, leading to his excommunication by the pope in 1520 and his criminalisation in the Holy Roman Empire by the Diet of Worms in 1521. Luther's role changed from that of a would-be reformer of the Catholic Church to a declared foe of that institution, as it refused to heed his call to bring its beliefs and practice into line with the doctrines he had been uncovering in his study of the Bible.

On 31 October 1517 Luther posted on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg a set of propositions for debate. This procedure was customary among theologians. The Latin document had 95 theses. Luther sharply attacked any linkage between the raising of money and the remission either of sins or penalties. He denied the jurisdiction of the pope over Purgatory, noting that if the pope could release souls, he should let them all out without collecting a penny. Many colleagues agreed with Luther thus far. But he went on to deny the fundamental theory of the treasury of the accumulated merits of the saints; he attacked not just the abuse of the indulgences but the core idea.

Luther sent a copy of his 95 theses to Archbishop Albrecht, asking him to stop the indulgences. Printed copies in Latin and German began to circulate widely, and many clerics agreed with Luther. Reform was in the air. The alarmed archbishop forwarded the document to Pope Leo X (1475–1521, pope 1513–21). Leo was a Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent; he was an aristocrat of dilettantish learning and a worldly patron of expensive arts and architecture (especially St. Peter's church) that had to be paid for. He had no interest in correcting the abuses of indulgence vending. Indeed, Leo routinely endorsed the claims of the indulgence-vendors and affirmed that souls were immediately released. Luther retorted that the pope was wrong. This was close to heresy. The pope summoned Luther to Rome. At this point Luther's prince, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, the senior member of the electors of the Holy Roman Empire, stepped in and insisted that his subject must have a fair hearing on German soil. The centuries-old German distrust of an Italian papacy was thus the first factor which gave Luther protection.

A compromise was arranged that Luther would not go to Rome but would appear at a hearing before Cardinal Cajetan, a Dominican, at Augsburg in 1518. The Cardinal confronted Luther with the papal pronouncement, or bull, of Clement VI in 1343, which contained the doctrine of the accumulated treasury of the merits of the saints. Luther rejected this bull, thereby impugning not only the authority of a particular pope but also of the canon law generally. He refused to reacant his argument that the efficiacy of a sacrament depended on the faith of the recipient. Luther thus called into question central traditions of the Church, saying the office of the pope and his authority was in opposition to God's word, and that sacraments were not automatically effective. Cajetan branded Luther a heretic and told him to depart and not to return unless ready to recant. The pope wanted the Augustinians seize Friar Martin and bind him in chains and send him to Rome; but that was now politically impossible and did not happen.

Luther counterattacks

Instead Luther was free to publicize his position widely, so that everyone now recognized Luther as the defiant German rebel against the Church. He wrote a powerful series of pamphlets that rallied political and intellectual support.

The Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation called upon the rulers, including the emperor, to reform the Church. Luther demanded that the papacy be restored to the poverty and simplicity of the days of St Peter, with the pope turned virtually into a sort of St. Francis. Luther said the finances and vast real estate holdings of the Church should be handled by national churches, not the pope. Germans cheered. More radical was the demand for the abolition of clerical celibacy, which the Germans had opposed back when it was imposed in the 11th century by Gregory VII.

On The Babylonian Captivity, written in Latin and directed at priests, was even more challenging. Luther attacked the sacramental character of the Church and thereby undercut its theocratic claims. The Church counted seven sacraments; Luther counted only two that were authorized by Christ, baptism and the Lord's Supper (and maybe penance, but he later dropped that one). Luther argued that the Catholic Mass was not the true Lord's Supper, for the Mass is not a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ. The wine as well as the bread should be given to the laity. Church doctrine held that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ; only the outward appearances, or "accidents," of bread and wine remain. This doctrine was called transubstantiation, and was based on the philosophy of Aristotle, whom Luther could not tolerate. Luther offered his own doctrine of consubstantiation--that after consecration the substances of bread and wine remain along with the body and blood of Christ. The priest causes no miracle, because Christ is everywhere present and at all times. All that the minister does is to open the eyes of believers to Christ where he is, because God's presence and Christ's presence, though universal, are not universally obvious. When this tract appeared, Erasmus, the eminent humanist in Amsterdam, declared the breach between Luther and the Church was now irreparable.

Luther went further, promulgating the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. In the Freedom of the Christian Man Luther declared the Christian to be free from all priestcraft; the minister is merely one who, out of the body of the universal priests, has been set aside to perform a particular office.

Diet of Worms: 1521

The papal bull reached Luther on October 10, 1520. giving him 60 days to recant. Luther's reply was the tract Against the Execrable Bull of Antichrist. On the day 60 he burned the bull in public. Formal excommunication was delayed. International politics came into play; Luther's protector, Elector Frederick of Saxony, was a critical person no power dared to alienate. The Diet of Worms, an imperial meeting unexpectedly became a council of the Church. It would not take action without hearing Luther. was particularly insistent that his subject be given a fair hearing, so Emperor Charles V, though a most orthodox Catholic, issued the summons to Luther, who arrived after a triumphal tour across Germany. Luther admitted he wrote the pamphlets and explained on April 18:

Unless I am convicted by Scripture or by right reason (for I trust neither in popes nor in councils, for they have often erred and contradicted themselves)-- unless I am thus convinced, I am bound by the texts of the Bible, my conscience is captive to the Word of God, I neither can nor will recant anything, since it is neither right nor safe to act against conscience is neither. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.

Luther was formally declared an outlaw in the Edict of Worms (May 25, 1521); the lines of the Reformation were now hardened.

Bibliography

• Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (1978; reprinted 1995) excerpt and text search
• Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther. (3 vols. 1985–93), by a leading German scholar
• Dickens, A. G. Martin Luther and the Reformation (1969), basic introduction
• Ganss, Henry G. "Martin Luther," in Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) vol 9, a thorough but hostile short biography from a Catholic perspective.
• Junghans, Helmar. Martin Luther: Exploring His Life and Times, 1483–1546. (book plus CD ROM) (1998)
• Köstlin, Julius. "Martin Luther," New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, (1911) 8:69-79, short older biography by leading German scholar
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation (2005), influential recent survey of the entire movement; excerpt and text search
• McKim, Donald K., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther (2003), 320pp; 18 essays by scholars; online edition at Questia; excerpt and text search
• Mullett, Michael A. Martin Luther (2004) online edition
• Ranke, Leopold von. History of the Reformation in Germany (1905) 792 pp; by Germany's foremost scholar complete text online free
• Ritter, Gerhard. Luther, His Life and Work (1963)online edition
• Smith, Preserved. The Life and Letters of Martin Luther. (1911) complete edition online free

Primary sources

• Luther, Martin. Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings, edited by John Dillenberger (1958) excerpt and text search
• Luther, Martin. Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings (with CD-ROM), edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Timothy F. Lull, and William R. Russell (2005) excerpt and text search
• Luther, Martin. The Letters of Martin Luther (1908) full text online free
• Luther, Martin. Conversations with Luther...Table Talk (1915) full text online free
• Luther, Martin.