Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 - February 18, 1546) was a Christian theologian, Augustinian monk, professor, pastor, and church reformer whose teachings inspired the Lutheran Reformation and deeply influenced the doctrines of Protestant and other Christian traditions. Luther began the Protestant Reformation with the publication of his Ninety-Five Theses on October 31, 1517. In this publication, he attacked the Church's sale of indulgences. He advocated a theology that rested on God's gracious activity in Jesus Christ, rather than in human works. Nearly all Protestants trace their history back to Luther in one way or another. Luther's relationship to philosophy is complex and should not be judged only by his famous statement that "reason is the devil's whore."

In 1513, he began his first lectures on the Psalms. In these lectures, Luther's critique of the theological world around him begins to take shape. Later, in lectures on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, this critique becomes more noticeable, and it was during these lectures that Luther finally found the assurance that had evaded him for years. The discovery that changed Luther's life ultimately changed the course of church history and the history of Europe. In Romans, Paul writes of the "righteousness of God." Luther had always understood that term to mean that God was a righteous judge that demanded human righteousness. Now, Luther understood righteousness as a gift of God's grace. He had discovered, or recovered, the doctrine of justification by grace alone, and it was this discovery that set him afire.

In 1517, he posted a sheet of theses for discussion on the University's chapel door. These Ninety-Five Theses set out a devastating critique of the church's sale of indulgences and explained the fundamentals of justification by grace alone. Luther also sent a copy of the theses to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz calling on him to end the sale of indulgences, but Albrecht was not amused. In Rome, cardinals saw Luther's theses as an attack on papal authority. In 1518, at a meeting of the Augustinian Order in Heidelberg, Luther set out his positions with even more precision. In the Heidelberg Disputation, we see the signs of a maturing in Luther's thought and new clarity surrounding his theological perspective--the Theology of the Cross.

After the Heidelberg meeting in October 1518, Luther was told to recant his positions by the Papal Legate, Thomas Cardinal Cajetan. Luther stated that he could not recant. Unless his mistakes were pointed out to him by appeals to "scripture and right reason", he would not, in fact, he could not recant. Luther's refusal to recant set in motion his ultimate excommunication.

Throughout 1519, Luther continued to lecture and write in Wittenberg, and in June and July of that year, he participated in another debate on Indulgences and the papacy in Leipzig. Finally, in 1520, the pope had enough, and as a result, on June 15th the pope issued a bull (Exsurge Domini--Arise O'Lord) threatening Luther with excommunication. Luther received the bull on October 10th and proceeded

to publicly burn it on December 10th.

In January 1521, the pope excommunicated Luther. In March, he was summoned by Emperor Charles V to Worms to defend himself. During the Diet of Worms, Luther refused to recant his position. Whether he actually said, "Here I stand, I can do no other" is uncertain, but what is known is that he did refuse to recant, and on May 8th was placed under Imperial Ban.

This placed Luther and his duke in a difficult position. Luther was now a condemned and a wanted man. Luther hid out at the Wartburg Castle until May of 1522, and when he returned to Wittenberg, he continued teaching. In 1524, Luther left the monastery. In 1525, he married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, and had six children. From 1533 to his death in February of 1546, in Eisleben he served as the Dean of the theology faculty at Wittenberg.

The distinction between the Law and the Gospel is a fundamental dialectic in Luther's thought. He argues that God interacts with humanity in two fundamental ways--the law and the gospel. The law comes to humanity as the commands of God, such as the Ten Commandments. The law allows the human community to exist and survive because it limits chaos and evil and convicts us of our sinfulness. All humanity has some grasp of the law through the conscience. The law convicts us of our sin and drives us to the gospel, but it is not God's avenue for salvation.

Salvation comes to humanity through the Good News of Jesus Christ. The Good News is that righteousness is not a demand upon the sinner but rather a gift to the sinner. The sinner simply accepts the gift through faith. For Luther, the folly of indulgences was that they confused the law with the gospel, and that by stating that humanity must do something to merit forgiveness, they promulgated the notion that salvation is achieved rather than received. Much of Luther's career focused on deconstructing the idea of the law as an avenue for salvation.

Another fundamental aspect of Luther's theology is his understanding of God. In rejecting much of scholastic thought, Luther rejected the scholastic belief in continuity between revelation and perception. Luther notes that revelation must be indirect and concealed. Luther's theology is based on the Word of God, thus his phrase sola scriptura, and that it is not based on speculation or philosophical principles, but in revelation.

Because of humanity's fallen condition, one can neither understand the redemptive word nor can one see God face to face. Here Luther's exposition on number twenty of his Heidelberg Disputation is important. It is an allusion to Exodus 33, where Moses seeks to see the Glory of the Lord, but instead sees only the backside. No one can see God face-to-face and live, so God reveals himself on the backside, that is to say, where it seems he should not be. For Luther, this meant seeing Christ in his human nature, in his weakness, his suffering, and his foolishness.

Thus revelation is seen in the suffering of Christ rather than in moral activity or created order and is addressed to faith. The Deus Absconditus is actually quite simple because it is merely a rejection of philosophy as the starting point for theology. Why? Because if one begins with philosophical categories for God, one begins with the attributes of God: i.e., omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, impassible, etc. For Luther, it was impossible to begin there and by using syllogisms or other logical means