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, and later also strong among their immigrants to the United States. 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. He helped reshape German religious culture through rejection of Catholic liturgy and the creation of a Lutheran liturgy using his hymns and 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 priest 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. He studied theology, especially the Bible itself and books 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. 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

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
• 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