OUR DEBT TO MARTIN LUTHER

If ever there was a time to consider our debt to Martin Luther, this would be the time, for the 500th anniversary of his birth in Eisleben, Germany was celebrated this year on Nov. 10. While the church has long celebrated Reformation Sunday on or near Oct. 31 each year, it does not hurt to notice the close proximity of the two dates.

The first date reminds us that the reformer was born in humble circumstances. His father was first a peasant and then a miner. Both parents were harsh disciplinarians, sometimes beating Martin until the blood flowed. Luther once confessed that it may have been the beatings that led him to a cloistered life in a monastery. And they bequeathed to him an image of God that reflected their own mood: a hard father and strict judge who demanded joyless obedience, one who exacted constant propitiation and who would at last condemn to hell most of the human race. He grew up in a superstitious family of seven children who believed in witches and elves as well as angels and demons. Life for him in Eisleben as a boy, a village of but 3,000, was typical of those traits we associate with “the dark ages.” He was flogged at school 15 times in one day for misdeclining a noun!

The second date, Oct. 31, 1517, has become pivotal in history, for on that day Luther tacked a list of 95 propositions on the door of the Wittenberg church to be debated, thus launching, even if unintentional, the great Protestant Reformation. The lowly monk thus set in motion forces that led to the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire. The world would never be the same, and we are all benefactors, especially in terms of a free church and freedom of conscience.

But what Thomas Carlyle called “the greatest moment in the modern history of man” was not what happened at the door of the Wittenberg church in 1517, but what happened at Worms, Germany in 1521. In less than four years Luther had become such a powerful figure that pope and emperor alike were trying to limit his influence. One church dignitary complained that “All Germany is up in arms against Rome and papal bulls are laughed at.” The main thing Luther had going for him was that almost everyone, including the pope, conceded that ecclesiastical reforms were needed. When both pope and emperor asked Erasmus, who was highly esteemed by all, what to do about Luther, he urged them to leave him alone in his efforts to purge the church of abuses.

But Erasmus was sometimes more direct, for when the Elector Frederick asked him to name Luther’s most serious errors, he replied: “Two: he attacked the pope in his crown and the monks in their bellies.”

Luther was at last summoned by the authorities to the Diet at Worms to give an account of himself. Carlyle may be right in calling it the greatest moment in modern history. It was fraught with danger for Luther, for heretics were usually imprisoned or burned at the stake. He ignored the pleas of his friends that he not go to Worms, and when he reached the edge of the city he received a note warning him to return to Wittenberg.

This is when he made that daring statement that has lived through the centuries: “Though there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roof, I will go there.”

A band of knights rode out to meet him and 2,000 people gathered about his carriage, eclipsing the arrival of the emperor himself, who came to preside over Luther’s judgment. Luther would survive. He was too popular to destroy. The pope had offered clemency and had ordered the authorities not to harm him, if only he would recant.

If Luther ever weakened it was when he first stood before the Diet, which was an awesome court of princes, nobles, prelates, burghers, and a personal representative of the pope, armed with both papal authority and forensic eloquence, beside young Emperor Charles V of Germany. As Luther stood near a table containing his books and pamphlets that had ignited a revolution, he was asked if he was the author of the books and would he retract the heresies contained in them. He humbly admitted that the books were his, but as for retracting them he begged for time to consider. The emperor gave him one day. Martin Luther would never again be so yielding to the princes of the church.

Sensing that a turning point in history was at hand, his supporters came to him at his lodging that night urging him to be steadfast, some of whom came from the Diet itself. The next day, April 18, 1521, there was standing-room only in the Diet chamber. Now when asked if he would repudiate his writings, he avowed that the ecclesiastical abuses he had attacked were generally admitted. When the emperor exploded with a No!, the reformer went on to expose the emperor himself with: “Should I recant at this point, I would open the door to more tyranny and impiety, and it will be all the worse should it appear that I had done so at the instance of the Holy Roman Empire.”

As for the doctrinal portion of his books, which included his emphasis upon justification by faith only, he agreed to retract anything that was shown to be contrary to Scripture. The prosecutor chided him for a trick used by every heretic, including Wycliffe and Huss, that of appealing to Scripture. “How can you assume to be the only one who understands Scripture?”, he was asked, and “You have no right to call into question the most holy orthodox faith, instituted by Christ the perfect Lawgiver, proclaimed throughout the world by the Apostles, sealed by the red blood of martyrs, confirmed by the sacred councils, and defined by the Church.” And the prosecutor reminded Luther that the pope did not allow them even to discuss the issues. He pressed the reformer, still dressed as a monk though he would soon reject all clerical garb, for an unequivocal answer: Do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors which they contain?

Luther told the Diet in no uncertain terms that he did not accept the authority of popes and councils, and that if they could not convict him by the testimony of sacred Scripture “I cannot and will not recant anything.’” My conscience is captive to the Word of God, he told them, which became the essence of the Protestant faith.

A memorial to Luther’s honor in Worms today has engraved upon it “Here I stand, I can do no other,” which he supposedly said on the occasion, and one biography of Luther is entitled Here I Stand. Since these words do not appear in the records of the Diet but only in the first printed version of the speech, it is likely that they are not authentic. But it doesn’t matter, for he said enough. It was not what he said at Worms that made such a difference in history as what he did. He challenged the authority of popes, councils, and priests, and appealed to the Scriptures as the only authority in religion. For this we are all in Luther’s debt. He was God’s man at the right place and the right time. Even the day before was still too soon!

All of this grew out of Luther’s struggle to find peace in the doctrine of salvation by works. He was taught at the monastery that one could become righteous by doing good works, by being obedient to the authorities, and by saying the right prayers. He drove his superiors to distraction in his passion to find the peace of God in his heart. While his order was to read the Bible, they urged him not to read it so much, and they chided him for the “toy sins” he was always confessing. There was one big question that haunted Luther’s mind, and it was the answer to that question, What is faith?, that turned his life around.

While visiting Rome in 1511 in behalf of his order, he made a pilgrimage to the usual holy places about the city, which included the scala sancta or “holy stairs,” which, according to tradition led up to Pilate’s porch where Jesus was condemned. They had supposedly been brought from Jerusalem back in the fourth century. While climbing these stairs on his knees, whereby he would gain indulgences that freed him from doing penance after confession, he found (by intuition?) his answer to the meaning of faith. He stood up and walked back down the steps, declaring to himself The just shall live by faith! What was a desecration of a holy place to the traditional Roman Catholic was to Luther a profession of faith and a declaration of freedom.

He soon wrote into the margin of his Latin Bible alongside Rom. 1:17 the word sole --- “The just shall live by faith only.” In view of the answer he worked out on his knees --- that one is made right with God through faith in Christ apart from works - he was right that salvation is by faith only. He was never able to reconcile James (“not by faith only”) with the great liberating truth he had found, and so that letter became to him “an epistle of straw,” which probably meant that it would not satisfy a starving soul as Romans does.

Erasmus, always a friend to Luther, encouraged him to criticize the church as he would, even the pope, but not to leave the church. It was understandable advice, but, as we all know, it did not turn out that way. Erasmus realized that a “Lutheran” church would only spawn more sects. But if the Lutheran revolt bequeathed to us more sects it also gave us the greatest gift of all, freedom in Christ.

Our own heritage in the Stone-Campbell movement owes much to Martin Luther, for we have always been a people of the Bible, insisting that the Scriptures alone are our guide in all matters of faith and practice. This was Lutheran before it was Campbellian. But Luther bequeathed even more in that he tied the individual’s conscience only to the word of God, not to popes or church councils. He moved us from the authority of the church to the authority of the Bible, with each person responsible to God for the way he interprets and responds to the Bible.

My conscience is captive to the Word of God! It is a glorious heritage. It is the essence of what it means to be a Protestant. --- the Editor