Martin Luther

A young man terrified of God

Martin Luther was born in 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony, the son of an ambitious copper-mining entrepreneur who wanted him to become a lawyer. In July 1505, returning to university, Luther was caught in a violent thunderstorm. A lightning bolt knocked him to the ground. Terrified, he cried out, "Help me, St Anne! I will become a monk!" Two weeks later, to his father's fury, he entered the strict Augustinian friary at Erfurt.

Luther was an exceptionally serious monk. He fasted, prayed, went without sleep and confessed for hours, sometimes daily. But he found no peace. He was haunted by the "righteousness of God," the idea that God is just and punishes sinners. How could he ever know he had done enough? Had he confessed every sin? Was his sorrow genuine, or only fear? He later said that if any monk ever got to heaven by monkery, it would have been him. He even came to hate the righteous God who demanded the impossible.

His wise superior, Johann von Staupitz, tried to help. He told Luther to look to the wounds of Christ instead of his own sins, and he made him study for a doctorate so he could teach the Bible at the new University of Wittenberg. In 1510 Luther visited Rome on business for his order and was shocked by its worldliness.

The breakthrough

As a professor at Wittenberg, Luther lectured on the Psalms, Romans and Galatians. Sometime between about 1513 and 1519, scholars debate exactly when, he had a breakthrough while wrestling with Romans 1:17: "In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed... as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'"

He came to see that "the righteousness of God" did not mean the righteousness by which God judges and punishes. It means the righteousness God gives as a free gift to sinners who trust in Christ. "Here I felt that I was altogether born again," he later wrote, "and had entered paradise itself through open gates."

This became the heart of his theology: Justification by grace through faith alone (sola fide). We are not made right with God by our good works, merits, pilgrimages or indulgences, but only by trusting God's promise in Christ. The believer is, in Luther's famous phrase, simul iustus et peccator, at the same time righteous (in God's sight, because of Christ) and a sinner (in himself). Good works do not earn salvation. They flow from it, as good fruit grows from a good tree.

The Ninety-five Theses

In 1517 the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel was preaching an indulgence near Saxony. It was to raise money for the rebuilding of St Peter's in Rome, and also, secretly, to pay off a debt that Albrecht of Brandenburg had incurred to buy his third bishopric. People came back to Wittenberg with indulgence letters, telling Luther they no longer needed to repent.

On 31 October 1517, Luther sent Ninety-five Theses to Archbishop Albrecht. According to a story first told after his death, he also nailed them to the door of the Castle Church, the university's notice board. Historians debate whether the nailing happened. The theses were written in Latin as points for an academic debate. They questioned whether the pope had power over purgatory and attacked the selling of indulgences. "Why does the pope," asked thesis 86, "whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, not build the basilica of St Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?"

Luther expected a debate among scholars. Instead, the theses were translated into German and printed. Within weeks they had spread across Germany, and within months across Europe. Luther had touched a nerve.

The Reformation family tree

From protest to break

Events moved fast. Rome began proceedings against Luther. At the Leipzig Debate in 1519, the skilled Catholic theologian Johann Eck pushed Luther into admitting that popes and councils could err, and that Jan Hus had been right on some points. Luther was now openly challenging the church's authority.

In 1520 he wrote three explosive treatises in quick succession:

• To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation called on German princes to reform the church, since the pope would not. He taught the "Priesthood of all believers": all baptized Christians are priests, and clergy differ only in their office, not their spiritual status.
• The Babylonian Captivity of the Church attacked the sacramental system. He kept only baptism and the Lord's Supper (and at first penance) as true sacraments. He rejected the Mass as a sacrifice and transubstantiation as an explanation, while still affirming Christ's real presence.
• The Freedom of a Christian, a gentle, beautiful work, explained that "a Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none" through faith, and "a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all" through love.

Pope Leo X issued a bull threatening Luther with excommunication, calling him a wild boar ravaging the Lord's vineyard. In December 1520, Luther publicly burned it, along with books of canon law, before a cheering crowd of students. He was excommunicated in January 1521.

"Here I stand"

The new emperor, Charles V, only 21 and ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and much of Italy, summoned Luther to the imperial assembly, the Diet of Worms, in April 1521. Luther's ruler, the elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, secured him a promise of safe conduct. Remembering what had happened to Hus, Luther's friends warned him not to go. He went anyway.

Before the emperor and the assembled princes, Luther was shown a pile of his books and asked to recant. After a night to think, he refused. Unless he was convinced by Scripture and plain reason, he said, his conscience was captive to the Word of God, and he could not and would not recant, because going against conscience is neither right nor safe. The famous words "Here I stand, I can do no other" may have been added in printed versions afterward, but they capture his stand.

The emperor declared him an outlaw. Anyone could kill him without penalty. On his way home, Luther was "kidnapped" by men in disguise, actually Frederick's soldiers, and hidden in Wartburg Castle. There, disguised as "Knight George," in about eleven weeks he translated the New Testament from Erasmus's Greek into vigorous everyday German. Published in September 1522, it sold thousands of copies at once. His complete Bible (1534) shaped the modern German language, as the King James Bible later shaped English.

Building a church

Back in Wittenberg, Luther led a cautious, practical reform, opposing radicals who wanted to move faster (see The Radical Reformation):

• Worship was put into German, with the cup given to lay people. He kept much traditional liturgy, vestments and art, rejecting only what he thought contradicted the gospel.
• Hymns: Luther loved music and wrote hymns for congregational singing, including "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
• Catechisms (1529): his Small Catechism taught families the Ten Commandments, Creed and Lord's Prayer in simple question-and-answer form.
• Marriage: Luther rejected compulsory celibacy. In 1525 he married Katharina von Bora, a former nun who had escaped her convent hidden in herring barrels. She ran their busy household, farm and student boarding house with great skill, and they had six children. Clerical marriage created the Protestant parsonage, a new model of Christian family life.
• Schools: Luther and his gifted colleague Philip Melanchthon pushed for schools for boys and girls so everyone could read the Bible.

The Peasants' War

Luther's message of "Christian freedom" was heard by German peasants, who were suffering under rising dues and lost rights, as a call for social justice. In 1524–1525 a huge rebellion swept southern and central Germany. Some leaders, like the radical preacher Thomas Müntzer, saw it as the last battle before Christ's return. At first Luther criticized the lords' oppression. But as violence spread, he wrote a savage pamphlet, Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, urging the princes to "smite, slay and stab" the rebels. The princes crushed the revolt, killing perhaps 100,000 people. Luther's reputation among common people suffered, and the Lutheran Reformation became firmly tied to the princes.

"Protestants" and the princes

The Reformation spread through cities and territories whose rulers adopted it. When the imperial Diet at Speyer in 1529 tried to reverse reforms, the Lutheran princes issued a formal "protest." From this came the name Protestants. In 1530 Melanchthon presented the Augsburg Confession, a moderate summary of Lutheran belief, to the emperor. It remains the basic Lutheran confession.

After decades of tension and war (see Wars of Religion), the Peace of Augsburg (1555) allowed each German prince to choose Lutheranism or Catholicism for his territory. The principle was later summed up as cuius regio, eius religio, "whose realm, his religion." Lutheranism also became the state religion of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.

The dark side

Luther was a man of enormous courage, warmth, humor and earthy language. He was also stubborn, intolerant and capable of shocking violence in words. His falling-out with Erasmus over free will, in The Bondage of the Will (1525), was bitter. At the Marburg Colloquy (1529) he refused to compromise with Zwingli over the Lord's Supper (see Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed). He approved, privately, the bigamous marriage of his ally Philip of Hesse.

Most disturbing are his late writings against the Jews. Early in his career he had hoped Jews would convert and criticized Christian mistreatment of them. When they did not convert, he turned savage. In On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) he urged burning synagogues, destroying Jewish homes and expelling Jews. These words were later exploited by the Nazis. In 1994 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America formally repudiated them, as have other Lutheran churches.

Luther died in 1546 in his birthplace, Eisleben. A note found in his pocket ended: "We are beggars. That is true."