Module E. Now for Something Completely Different:
Martin Luther, the Epistle to the Romans, Faith and Works, and ... a Little  Mormon Theology, Perhaps?

Since we’ve now had modules on tribal warfare, comparative linguistics, sacred architecture, and a sweeping historical overview, perhaps it’s time, as the Monty Pythons used to say, for something completely different, for a look at some facets of our own theology in the light of the history of European religions.

I had this crazy idea the moment I thought of traveling past Worms. Even after I realized we would not be stopping there, I stubbornly clung to the notion of talking about Martin Luther and the Reformation, not only because Luther is so interesting and so important for history in his own right, but because I think the implications from the Reformation for understanding our own theology are momentous. I don’t want to preach (to the choir, I’m sure), but I would like to share a few of my humble insights made along the way.

So as we glide along quietly in the early morning hours past the city innocently entitled Worms, perhaps we should recall an even more amusing term (to adolescents, anyway): the Diet of Worms. (A diet is something that meets daily, from Latin dies, day. In German the word is Tag.) And this Diet has to do with the Reformation, of course, and not German cuisine.

(As usual, I rely heavily for the following on various encyclopedia entries about Luther. I have seldom placed everything in quotation marks, in the interest of making this easier to read, and in view of the fact that it is not intended for publication. Be aware that almost every name, fact, date, title, etc. in these modules... ,however, comes from various resource books and articles, not from my fading memory.)

Here, in 1521, at the Imperial Diet of Worms (German: Reichstag zu Worms), at this formal deliberative assembly, in arguably one of the most important events in history, one of the most important Germans of all time, Martin Luther, had been  excommunicated by the pope and ordered to appear before the Holy Roman Emperor for trial and punishment. This was done by a so-called Papal bull issued by Pope Leo X called Exsurge Domine (“Arise, O Lord”), issued in June of 1520:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/BullExurgeDomine.jpg/220px-BullExurgeDomine.jpg

(A Papal bull is an important communication from the pope. It is called a bull because of the lead seal – Latin: bulla – affixed to it. You may recall that the Golden Bull of 1356, issued not by the pope, however, but by Emperor Charles IV, had a golden seal, as we have previously seen. Here’s a typical lead one issued by Pope Urban):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Bulle_pape_Urbain_V.jpg

On one side of the seal are stamped the likenesses of St. Paul and St. Peter with the abbreviation SPASPE (SPAul + SPEter) and on the other the name of the pope sending the bull.

Exsurge Domine outlined 41 purported errors found in Martin Luther’s 95 theses and other writings related to or written by him.

The Diet was conducted from January to May 1521, with the Habsburg Emperor Charles V presiding. The powerful Prince Frederick III, Elector of Saxony (powerful because he was one of the 7 men who elected the Emperor), Luther’s protector, had obtained an agreement that if Luther appeared he would be promised safe passage to and from the meeting.

This guarantee was seen as essential after the treatment of the Czech reformer Jan Hus, who was tried and executed at the Council of Constance (on Lake Constance on the Rhine not far upstream from Basel) over a hundred years earlier, in 1415, despite a similar promise of safe conduct.

Luther was summoned to renounce or reaffirm his views. When he appeared before the assembly on the 16th of April, Luther concluded his defense by saying: “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.”

Before a verdict was reached, Luther started back toward his home in Wittenberg, but about half-way there, his friends, under the guidance of Prince Frederick III, the Elector of Saxony, dressed up as bandits and kidnaped this stubborn and fearless man and secretly whisked him away to a castle, the Wartburg, in the state of Thuringia, where he was known only as “Junker Jörg” something akin to “Squire George.”

Luther and his friends must have known that as an excommunicant and outlaw his life would be forfeit, that he would be “Vogelfrei” (as free as a bird, i.e. that there would be an open season on him, permitting anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence), for as the Emperor Charles V then did declare in the Edict of Worms, a decree issued over a month later, on the 25th of  May 1521:

“For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, whereupon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work.”

While we look briefly at what brought him into conflict with church and empire at Worms in the first place, I want to leave Luther for a little while there in the Wartburg, hard at work translating the New Testament into the vernacular German (from a new Latin translation from the Greek by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, friend of Sir Thomas More – the man for all seasons – one of the greatest Renaissance Humanist scholars of Europe, who also made the Greek New Testament available for the first time and thus set off a great outpouring of the study of Greek and of New Testament scholarship generally):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Hans_Holbein_d._J._-_Erasmus_-_Louvre.jpg

Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, Saxony, about halfway between Frankfurt and Berlin, in 1483. He became a student of law, then philosophy, and finally theology, at the University of Erfurt, which he later described as a “beer house and a wh*** house.”

He left the study of law almost immediately, viewing it as representing uncertainty. Philosophy also proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason but none about loving God, which to Luther was more important.

For Luther, reason could be used to question men and institutions, but not God. Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, and Scripture therefore became increasingly important to him.

On July 2nd, 1505, he was returning to the university on horseback after a trip home. During a severe thunderstorm, a lightning bolt struck near him. Later telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, “Help! Saint Anna, I desire to become a monk!” He came to view his cry for divine help as a vow he could never break.

Two weeks later he had left school, sold his books, and entered a closed Augustinian friary in Erfurt. Those who attended a farewell supper walked him to the door of the Black Cloister. “This day you see me, and then, not ever again,” he reportedly said. His father was furious over what he saw as a waste of Luther’s education.

Brother Martin devoted himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession. He later described this period of his life as one of deep spiritual despair, saying “I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul.”

Johann von Staupitz, Brother Martin’s superior, directed Luther’s mind away from continual reflection upon his sins toward the merits of Christ. He taught that true repentance does not involve self-inflicted penances and punishments but rather a change of heart.

This was supremely important to Luther’s later view of salvation by faith in and the grace of Jesus Christ rather than by works. Heaven knew he’d done all the good works, but he was still miserable and still felt profoundly un-saved.

In this he was somewhat like Paul, who after having lived a life attending most zealously to the detailed works of the Law of Moses, suddenly awoke on the way to Damascus in the recognition that all his diligence had only made him into a closed minded, heartless, murderous, religious maniac.

In 1507, Luther was ordained to the priesthood, and in 1508, his old mentor Johann von Staupitz, now the first dean of the newly founded University of Wittenberg, sent for Luther to teach theology.

In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. (Clearly enormous sums were going to be required to create such a magnificent edifice):

http://media-1.web.britannica.com/eb-media/86/121386-004-04D0E536.jpg

Tetzel and his ilk were essentially attempting to “monetize” an aspect of Catholic theology that emphasized good works over faith: Faith alone cannot justify man; rather, justification depends on only that faith that is active in doing good works (fides caritate formata).

Catholics see as a basis for this belief the recommendation of Jesus to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

The treasures that Jesus himself laid up and in addition, all those treasures of the saints and other holy people, who have surely laid up many more merits than they would ever need to be saved themselves, all have been accumulating for many generations in the treasury of merit.

Tetzel and the other indulgence salesmen taught that one could purchase in the form of an indulgence the right to use to some of these extra, available, merits. They coined a catchy advertizing slogan: “Der Groschen in den Kasten klingt, die Seele in den Himmel springt.” (As soon as your coin in the coffer rings, your soul into heaven springs.)

(In fairness, this was a corruption of the idea of indulgence in the first place. The Catholic Encyclopedia defends the doctrine: “It is easy to see how abuses crept in. To give money to God or to the poor is a praiseworthy act, and, when it is done from right motives, it will surely not go unrewarded.”)

But for Luther, the sale of indulgences in his area of Germany was like a theological red flag to an easily enraged bull. On the 31st of October 1517, Luther wrote to his Archbishop, Albrecht of Mainz, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his “Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” which came to be known as The Ninety-Five Theses.

It has also been claimed that he tacked a copy of his theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg, which was commonly used as a bulletin board. The theses were in Latin, and were certainly not intended to arouse the public, but were an invitation to interested colleagues to debate an important theological question. (That he tacked the theses on the door at all has been called into question by some, though not by me; I think he definitely tacked them up. You just have to know this guy!)

Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly “searching, rather than doctrinaire.” Hillerbrand allows that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: “Why is the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Croesus, building the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?”

At any event, by January of 1518 friends of Luther had translated the 95 Theses from Latin into German and printed them, making the controversy one of the first in history to be aided by the printing press. Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months, they had spread throughout Europe, reaching France, England, and Italy. Students began to throng to Wittenberg to hear Luther lecture.

Luther’s study of the Bible, especially of the writings of Paul, had had a profound effect on his thinking about salvation, also called justification: He explained his concept of justification in the so-called Smalcald Articles, a summary of Lutheran doctrine, written in 1537 for a meeting of the Schmalkaldic League in the town by that name in preparation for an intended ecumenical Council of the Church (which was never held):

“The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans 3:24–25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23–25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that faith alone justifies us ... Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls.” (Mark 13:31)

In its most basic form, Luther’s thought is summed up by Paul in Romans 3:28, as Luther translated the verse, adding a key word, allein, to the original: “So halten wir nun dafür, daß der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werke, allein durch den Glauben.” (Therefore we conclude that man is justified [allein = solely] by faith, apart from the deeds of the [Mosaic] law.”

Luther’s use of the word allein was intended to lend emphasis and clarity to his expression: faith, not works, makes us saved, much as today’s Living Bible, for example, so clearly translates the verse: “So it is that we are saved by faith in Christ and not by the good things we do.”

When he was criticized for inserting the word “alone” after “faith” he replied: “The text itself and the meaning of St. Paul urgently require and demand it. For in that very passage [Paul] is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the Law [of Moses]. . . But when works are so completely cut away – and that must mean that faith alone justifies – whoever would speak plainly and clearly about this cutting away of works will have to say, ‘Faith alone justifies us, and not works’.”

Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz did not reply to Luther’s letter containing the 95 Theses. Instead, he had the theses checked for heresy and in December 1517 forwarded them to Rome. (Besides, he needed his share of the revenue from the indulgences himself, to help pay off a papal dispensation for his tenure as Archbishop.)

Pope Leo X was used to dealing with all kinds of reformers and heretics, and he took his own time to respond. Over the next three years he deployed a series of papal theologians and envoys against Luther, which served only to harden Luther’s theological positions.

First, the Dominican theologian Sylvester Mazzolini drafted a heresy case against Luther, whom Leo then summoned to Rome. The Elector Frederick persuaded the pope to have Luther examined at Augsburg instead, where an Imperial Diet was to be held.

There, in October 1518, under questioning by papal legate Cardinal Cajetan, Luther stated that he did not consider the papacy part of the biblical Church because certain historical interpretations of Bible prophecy concluded that the papacy was the Antichrist.

These prophecies concerning the Antichrist soon became the center of the controversy, and the hearings degenerated into a shouting match. Much more than his writing the 95 theses, then, Luther’s confrontation like this one with the church branded him as an enemy of the pope. Here, Luther is depicted with (the seated) Cardinal Cajetan:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Luther-vor-Cajetan.jpg

Cardinal Cajetan’s original instructions had been to arrest Luther if he failed to recant, but Luther slipped out of the city at night, unbeknownst to Cajetan.

In January 1519, at Altenburg in Saxony, the papal nuncio Karl von Miltitz adopted a more conciliatory approach. Luther made certain concessions to von Miltitz, himself a Saxon, and a relative of Luther’s protector the Elector, and promised to remain silent if his opponents would as well.

The theologian Johann Eck, however, was determined to expose Luther’s doctrine in a public forum. In June and July 1519, he staged a disputation with Luther’s colleague Andreas Karlstadt at Leipzig and invited Luther to speak.

Luther’s boldest assertion in the debate was that Matthew 16:18 (“ thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”) does not confer on popes the exclusive right to interpret scripture, and that therefore neither popes nor church councils were infallible.

For this, Eck branded Luther a new Jan Hus, referring to the Czech reformer and heretic burned at the stake in 1415. From that moment, he devoted himself to Luther’s defeat, gladly accepting the assignment, later at the Diet of Worms, of interrogating Luther.

In the fall of 1520, Johann Eck proclaimed the papal bull Exurge Domine in Meissen and other towns. Karl von Miltitz, the conciliatory papal nuncio, attempted to broker a solution, but Luther, who had in October sent the Pope a copy of his pamphlet On the Freedom of a Christian, publicly set fire to the bull and other papal documents as well as various other books of his enemies at Wittenberg on the 10th of December 1520.

As a consequence, Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X on the 3rd of January 1521, in another bull called Decet Romanum Pontificem. The pope had the power to excommunicate Luther, but the enforcement of the ban on the 95 Theses fell to the secular authorities, hence Luther had to be summoned before the Emperor at Worms.

(In his debates at Worms with his persecutor, now prosecutor, Dr. Johann Eck, as well as elsewhere in his writings, the earthy Luther insisted on referring to the learned doctor as “Dr Eck” which in German spells the word Dreck, “filth, crud, dirt, feculence, muck, smut...”)

We left Luther, aka Junker Jörg, busily translating the New Testament at the Wartburg. With no other distractions, this he accomplished in very short order indeed, and he also completed other writings, including a renewed attack on Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, whom he finally shamed into halting the sale of indulgences in his episcopates.

In his The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, Luther assured monks and nuns that they could break their vows without sin, because vows were an illegitimate and vain attempt to win salvation by works. (Later, after his stay at the Wartburg, Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, one of 12 nuns he had helped escape from the Nimbschen Cistercian convent in April 1523, when he arranged for them to be smuggled out in herring barrels.) “Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far different thoughts,” he wrote to Wenceslaus Link, “the Lord has plunged me into marriage.” Katharina was 26 and Luther was 41.

Some priests had already married, including Andreas Karlstadt and Justus Jonas, but Luther’s wedding set the seal of approval on clerical marriage. He had long condemned vows of celibacy on Biblical grounds, but his decision to marry surprised many, because Luther had once said “I shall never take a wife, as I feel at present. Not that I am insensible to my flesh or sex (for I am neither wood nor stone); but my mind is averse to wedlock because I daily expect the death of a heretic.”

Kate and Martin had a very happy long life and six children, one of whom died as a young child, however, another at age 13 in her father’s arms. (Kate was as impressive in her realm as a mother and Hausfrau as Martin was in his.) Here are their likenesses, painted by the famous Hans Holbein:

http://91.241.55.179/magazin/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Katharina-von-Bora-und-Martin-Luther1.jpg

Meanwhile, back at the Wartburg, Luther was monitoring rapid developments occurring at Wittenberg. His protégé Andreas Karlstadt, with others, had embarked on a radical program of reform there in June 1521, exceeding anything envisaged by Luther.

These reforms provoked disturbances, including a revolt by the Augustinian friars against their prior, the smashing of statues and images in churches, and denunciations of the magistracy. After secretly visiting Wittenberg in early December 1521, Luther wrote A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion.

Wittenberg became even more volatile after Christmas when a band of visionary zealots arrived, the so-called Zwickau prophets, preaching revolutionary doctrines such as the equality of man, adult baptism, and Christ’s imminent return. When the town council asked Luther to return, he decided it was his duty to act.

Luther secretly returned to Wittenberg on the 6th of  March 1522. “During my absence,” he wrote to the Elector, “Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I cannot repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word.”

For eight days in Lent, beginning on Invocavit Sunday, the 9th of  March, Luther preached eight sermons, which became known as the “Invocavit Sermons.” In these sermons, he hammered home the primacy of core Christian values such as love, patience, charity, and freedom, and reminded the citizens to trust God’s word rather than violence to bring about necessary change:

“Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: ‘Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it.’ But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battlefield, then he shudders and shakes for fear.”

The effect of Luther’s intervention was immediate. After the sixth sermon, the Wittenberg jurist Jerome Schurf wrote to the Elector: “Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin’s return spread among us! His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth.”

Luther next set about reversing or modifying the radical church practices. By working alongside the authorities to restore public order, he signaled his re-invention as a conservative force within the Reformation. After banishing the Zwickau prophets, he now faced a battle against not only the established Church but also the radical reformers who threatened the new order by fomenting social unrest and violence.

Despite his victory in Wittenberg, Luther was unable to stifle radicalism further afield. Radical preachers such as Zwickau prophet Nicholas Storch and Thomas Müntzer helped instigate the German Peasants’ War of 1524–25, during which many atrocities were committed, often in Luther’s name.

There had been revolts by the peasantry on a smaller scale since the 15th century. Luther’s pamphlets against the Church and the hierarchy, often worded with “radical” phraseology, led many peasants to believe he would support an attack on the upper classes in general.

Revolts broke out in Franconia, Swabia, and Thuringia in 1524, even drawing support from some disaffected nobles, many of whom were in debt to their overlords. Gaining momentum under the leadership of radicals such as Müntzer in Thuringia and Michael Gaismair in Tyrol, the revolts turned into outright war.

Luther sympathized with some of the peasants’ grievances, but he reminded the aggrieved to obey the temporal authorities. During a tour of Thuringia, he became enraged at the widespread burning of convents, monasteries, bishops’ palaces, and libraries. In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, written on his return to Wittenberg, he condemned the violence as the devil’s work, and called for the nobles to put down the rebels like mad dogs:

“Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel ... For baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who, of their own free will, do what the apostles and disciples did in Acts 4:32–37.

“They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others — of Pilate and Herod — should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, want to make the goods of other men common, and keep their own for themselves. Fine Christians they are! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants. Their raving has gone beyond all measure.”

Without Luther’s backing for the uprising, many rebels laid down their weapons; others felt betrayed. Their defeat by the Swabian League at the Battle of Frankenhausen in 1525, followed by Müntzer’s execution, brought the revolutionary stage of the Reformation to a close. Thereafter, the so-called Radical Reformation was relegated to the Anabaptist movement and such groups as the English Ranters, while Luther’s more conservative Reformation flourished under the protective wing of the existing secular powers.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to bring up another very painful historical fact, namely that later in his life Luther also became a flaming Anti-Semite.

Luther’s attitude toward the Jews changed over the course of his life. In the early phase of his career — until around 1536 — he expressed concern for their plight in Europe and was enthusiastic at the prospect of converting them to Christianity through his religious reforms.

Later, Luther denounced the Jewish people and urged their harsh persecution. In his tract On the Jews and Their Lies, he deplores Christendom’s failure to expel them and adds “We are at fault in not slaying them”:

http://blogs.jpost.com/sites/default/files/120921%20-%201543_On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies_by_Martin_Luther(2).jpg

http://static.lulu.com/browse/product_thumbnail.php?productId=18726491&resolution=320

Not long after writing Jews and Their Lies, Luther penned another tract called Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi (Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ), in which he equated Jews with the Devil and described them as pigs sucking at the teats of the Judensau, the Jewish Swine:

“Here in Wittenberg, in our parish church, there is a sow carved into the stone under which lie young piglets and Jews who are sucking; behind the sow stands a rabbi who is lifting up the right leg of the sow, raises behind the sow, bows down and looks with great effort into the Talmud under the sow, as if he wanted to read and see something most difficult and exceptional; no doubt they gained their Shem Hamphoras [unknowable name] from that place.”

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Wittenberg_Judensau_Grafik.jpg/640px-Wittenberg_Judensau_Grafik.jpg

Luther describes a carving similar to the one on the cover of the pamphlet, which is still visible high on the outside of the Wittenberg city church today, along with a more recent marker placed on the pavement beneath it, acknowledging the painful fact of its existence, how such things contributed to the Holocaust, and apologizing for it in the name of the Church.

Here’s the carving:

http://www.w-nienke.de/assets/images/autogen/a_JudensauAmSudostgiebel.jpg

Here’s the modern plaque, showing evil beginning to bubble up out of the ground:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Judenmahnmal-Wittenberg.jpg

This is on the outside, south-east rear corner, of the Stadtkirche in Wittenberg, now called Lutherstadt Wittenberg:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Stadtkirche_Wittenberg.JPG

The prevailing view among historians is that Luther’s anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany, and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an ideal foundation for the Nazi Party’s attacks on Jews.

 Reinhold Lewin writes that “whoever wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther.”

Just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther.

Diarmaid MacCulloch argues that Luther’s 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was nothing less than a “blueprint” for the Kristallnacht.

Shortly after the Kristallnacht, Martin Sasse, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, published a compendium of Martin Luther’s writings. Bishop Sasse “applauded the burning of the synagogues” and the coincidence of the day, gleefully noting in the introduction, “On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.” The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words of Luther, “the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.”

Some scholars do dissent, questioning whether it is not anachronistic to view Luther’s work as a precursor of the racial antisemitism of the Nazis, viewing Luther’s influence as limited, and the Nazis’ use of his work as opportunistic. For them, Luther’s antisemitism was based on theology, not race.

Gordon Rupp, for example, wrote: “Luther’s antagonism to the Jews was poles apart from the Nazi doctrine of “Race”. It was based on medieval Catholic antisemitism towards the people who crucified the Redeemer, turned their back on the way of Life, and whose very existence in the midst of a Christian society was considered a reproach and blasphemy. Luther is a small chapter in the large volume of Christian inhumanities toward the Jewish people.... Needless to say, there is no trace of ... a relation between Luther and Hitler. I suppose Hitler never once read a page by Luther. The fact that he and other Nazis claimed Luther on their side proves no more than the fact that they also numbered Almighty God among their supporters.”

In the end I suppose I agree with Roland Bainton, noted church historian and Luther biographer, who wrote with reference to On the Jews and Their Lies: “One could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was written.”

Luther was a prolific hymn-writer, authoring songs such as “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”  (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God), based on Psalm 46, and the Christmas hymn “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her” (From Heaven Above to Earth I Come), based on Luke 2:11-12.

Luther connected high art and folk music with all classes, clergy and laity, men, women and children, encouraging the singing of German hymns in connection with worship, school, home, and the public arena. He often accompanied the hymns himself on the lute.

At least 38 of his hymns have survived, including this one, Gelobet seist du Jesu Christ (Praise be to thee, Jesus Christ):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/WalterGelobet.jpg

Here’s a manuscript of A Mighty Fortress bearing Luther’s signature:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Luther%27s_Ein_Feste_Burg.jpg

Luther’s hymns inspired composers. Johann Sebastian Bach included several verses as chorales in his cantatas and based chorale cantatas entirely on them, namely Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4; Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein, BWV 2; Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7; Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 62; Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, BWV 91; and Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 38. Later he composed Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80 and Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit, BWV 14. (BWV = BachWerkeVerzeichnis, a numbered compendium of Bach’s works.)

Finally, let’s come to Luther’s Bible translation which is brilliant in so many ways. For the first thing, he very wisely chose a variant or dialect of German spoken at the Saxon chancellery, possibly the only dialect of the time capable of being made intelligible to both northern and southern Germans on both sides of the Benrath line. Out of the thousands of competing and largely mutually incomprehensible dialects in Germany at the time, Luther’s language became, as his movement spread, the language we call Standard German today, for Protestants and Catholics, north and south, alike.

He intended his vigorous, direct language to make the Bible accessible to everyday Germans, “for we are removing impediments and difficulties so that other people may read it without hindrance.” Luther’s boldness as a translator and his genius as a sensitive listener to the real speech of real Germans of the time, gives his work a vivid authenticity often lacking in more timid translators with tin ears.

(It’s daunting to translate sacred writ. It is very common for more timid translators to cling fearfully to the original language in all its literalness and idiosyncracies. In a later module I intend to touch on this again in regard to the German versions of the Book of Mormon.)

In an Open Letter About Translating, Luther responded to his critics with his typical coarse, earthy disdain. Here’s a section regarding Catholics complaining about his adding the word allein (sola) to Romans 3:28:

“I know very well that in Romans 3 the word sola is not in the Greek or Latin text — the papists did not have to teach me that. It is fact that the letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at [that word] like cows at a new gate, while at the same time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text –  if the translation is to be clear and vigorous it belongs there.

“I wanted to speak German, not Latin or Greek, since it was German I had set about to speak in the translation. But it is the nature of our language that in speaking about two things, one which is affirmed, the other denied, we use the word allein [only] along with the word nicht [not] or kein [no].

“For example, we say ‘the farmer brings allein grain and kein money’; or ‘No, I really have nicht money, but allein grain’; ‘I have allein eaten and nicht yet drunk’; ‘Did you write it allein and nicht read it over?’ There are countless cases like this in daily usage.”

My favorite of Luther’s examples in the letter on translation has always been this one about the abundance of the heart:

“We do not have to ask the Latin letters how we are to speak German, as these donkeys do. Rather we must ask the mother in the home, the children on the street, the common man in the marketplace. We must be guided by their language, by the way they speak, and do our translating accordingly. Then they will understand it and recognize that we are speaking German to them.

“For instance, Christ says: Ex abundatia cordis os loquitur. If I am to follow these donkeys, they will lay the original before me literally and translate it thus: ‘Aus dem uberfluss des hertzen redet der mund’ [out of the excessiveness of the heart the mouth speaks]. Tell me, is that speaking German? What German could understand something like that? What is ‘the excessiveness of the heart’? No German can say that; unless, perhaps, he was trying to say that someone was altogether too generous, or too courageous, though even that would not yet be correct.

“‘Excessiveness of the heart’ is no more German than ‘excessiveness of the house,’ ‘excessiveness of the stove’ or ‘excessiveness of the bench.’ But the mother in the home and the common man say this: ‘Wes das hertz vol ist, des gehet der mund über’ [If someone’s heart is full, his mouth overflows]. That is speaking good German of the kind I have tried for, although unfortunately not always successfully. [Paying attention to the] literal Latin is a great obstacle to speaking good German.”

Printed at a time of rising demand for German-language publications, Luther’s version quickly became the most popular and influential Bible translation by far. Furnished with notes and prefaces by Luther, and with woodcuts by Lucas Cranach that contained anti-papal imagery, it played a major role in the spread of Luther’s doctrine throughout Germany.

The Luther Bible was a powerful impetus for and influence on the development of other vernacular translations as well. Our beloved King James Version owes its origins to William Tyndale –  83% of the KJV NT and 76% of the OT is Tyndal – who, like Robert Barnes from that group of scholars associated with Cambridge’s White Horse Inn, were all influenced by and in some cases traveled to Wittenberg to consult with Luther.

A few final thoughts:

It would be terribly presumptive of me to suggest to anyone what she or he should think or do about theology or their philosophy of life, but I can’t help making a couple of observations gleaned from my study of Luther which have acquired meaning in my own life.

The first is that perhaps we need to remind ourselves occasionally today – literate as we are and with a veritable flood of sacred writings to choose from – what a breathtaking theological breakthrough it was after Luther to be able to read the Word of God in one’s own tongue and make up one’s own mind about what it says.

I can’t help seeing a direct causal thread leading from Martin Luther in Wittenberg in 1520 to Palmyra in 1820 when young Joseph Smith read for himself, in his own tongue, in the Epistle of James: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not.”

Like those Christians after Luther, I hope I will never have to have my theology, my view of myself, my view of the world, my view of my role in the world, and my view of God, dictated to me from some secondary or tertiary source, from some contemporary equivalent of a priest, for example, who (thinks he) is the only one in the village who can read Latin.

Rather, I hope we will all be able to derive our world view more directly from Holy Writ, which we continue to learn to read carefully for ourselves. (This is one of the reasons I began to learn Ancient Greek; I wanted to know more directly what the New Testament says.)

But I also think that in Luther there was another important lesson for me to learn. When a scholar was hired many years ago to teach Swedish in my department at BYU, very early on this Lutheran professor said to me: “You Mormons seem very much like the Catholics: you seem to rely more heavily on works than you do on faith.”

I was initially annoyed, but as I thought about it more I began to see what he, as a Lutheran, had immediately seen in us. Prior to that occasion I think I had not given it any thought at all, but as a life-long devout Lutheran, for him this was theology 101, this was his second nature, this was how he divided the theological world, into faith and works.

And then my wife Linda happened to read an interesting book entitled Believing Christ by Stephen E. Robinson of BYU, which also exists in condensed form as an Ensign article.
Professor Robinson tells a story about his own family:

“More than a decade ago, my wife and I were living in Pennsylvania. Things seemed to be going well. I’d been promoted in my work and was also serving in the bishopric. Janet had given birth to our fourth child, had graduated from college, had passed the CPA exam, and had been called to serve as Relief Society president. We were busy but happy, and I thought we were doing the right things.

“Then my wife began to feel an overpowering sense of discouragement. She asked to be released from her callings, and try as I might, I could not get her to tell me what was wrong.

“One night, after two weeks of being prodded by a sometimes insensitive but worried husband, she finally said, ‘All right. You want to know what’s wrong? I can’t do it anymore. I can’t get up at 5:30 in the morning to bake bread and help my kids with their homework and do my own homework. I can’t do my Relief Society stuff and get my genealogy done and sew and go to the PTA meetings and write the missionaries. …’

“She added, ‘I don’t have the talent that Sister Morrell has. I can’t do what Sister Childs does. I try not to yell at the kids, but I do. I’m not perfect, and I’m never going to be perfect. I’m afraid I’m not going to make it to the celestial kingdom.’

“I said, ‘Janet, I know you have a testimony. …’

‘“Of course I do! That’s what’s so terrible. I know the gospel’s true. I just can’t do it. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I can’t do it all, all of the time.’

“It was a long night. At last we came to understand what was wrong. We realized, after talking together, that Janet was trying to save herself. She knew that Jesus is an adviser and a teacher. She knew that he is an example, the head of the Church, our Elder Brother, and even God. She knew all that, but she did not understand His role as the Savior.”

Steven Robinson is saying here that his wife believed in Christ but she didn’t believe Christ, she didn’t believe that it was He who had to save her, not her own works. Like others trapped in this kind of default assumption – that they must rely on themselves to work out their own salvation –  Janet was, at this moment not unlike the young Luther, doing all the good works humanly possible, and yet was deeply miserable, despairing – correctly so! – that her salvation was infinitely beyond her ability to work out.

The moment she saw that the works of a mere mortal can never have the power to save, that only the atoning blood of a loving infinite God can redeem and justify struggling mortals, again not unlike Luther or Paul, Janet Robinson could begin to cast all her burdens on the Lord and recognize the profound truth Luther saw in Romans 3:27-28: “Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.” (New Living Translation)

At some point I began to be interested in the life and thought of my maternal great-great-great grandfather, Amasa Mason Lyman, an Apostle who had been a counselor in the First Presidency with Joseph Smith. It turns out that he and Janet Robinson shared similar default assumptions about the role of faith and works, with bad results in both cases.

What Elder Lyman began to preach, and for which he was eventually excommunicated, was essentially the same doctrine that had led Janet Robinson to her crisis.

It happened in this manner: in 1860, Brigham Young appointed three of the twelve apostles — Amasa M. Lyman, Charles C. Rich, and George Q. Cannon — to the presidency of the church’s European Mission. Amasa, the most senior, was the defacto president.

Elder Lyman was widely known as one of the most powerful and riveting orators in the Church and he gave many many sermons all over Great Britain and Scandinavia, with never the slightest question about his orthodoxy, until suddenly, on March 16, 1862, in Dundee, Scotland, Lyman preached both a morning and an afternoon sermon, portions of which had the appearance of all but denying the necessity for the atonement of Jesus Christ and implying that we could entirely work out our own salvation. For Amasa, there in Dundee, as for Janet Robinson, the abstract old question of faith vs. works had become a tangible, real problem.

Edward Leo Lyman, in his magisterial biography of Amasa, describes the Dundee morning sermon, entitled “The Nature of the Mission of Jesus,” (published in the Millenial Star) in which Amasa reportedly said: “I do not care what you say has cleansed you from all sin; but I do not want you to believe that the Blood of Jesus has cleansed you from all sin, and yet see you going down to perdition because you have continued to sin. I want you to understand that by practicing purity continually, by being righteous and holy, honest with our God and with one another – by this means we will avoid doing evil.”

(Though no one in attendance seemed to take any umbrage – who could have argued that practicing purity continually was a bad thing? – years later other members of the Quorum thought this sounded like a too-extreme emphasis on works and a too extreme de-emphasis of the role of the atonement and blood of Christ in our salvation.)

In the afternoon’s discourse, Amasa encouraged his listeners: “Lay up then your treasures in heaven – knowledge that will enable you to shun every evil – by bringing home to yourselves an ever-increasing store of intellectual blessings.”

Leo Lyman summarizes the day’s overall message: “To [Amasa] Lyman, Christ’s primary mission was to emancipate the soul from ignorance and outline the pathway for individuals to follow to salvation by applying gospel principles.”

Amasa then uttered what Leo calls his fateful statement: “The life and glory we seek is not in the ordinances any more than in the blood shed on Calvary. It is in the knowledge of God awakened in the soul, in the light that leads us onward and upward to exaltation and happiness. There deliverance and glory are found.”

Thomas Alexander has called Lyman’s view a case of “radical perfectionism,” the idea that one can work out one’s own salvation, following Christ’s example as He worked out His salvation, to be sure, but not relying upon His atonement to do it for us.

I very much resonate with my ancestor’s stirring call to move upward and onward in light through the knowledge of God awakened in the soul, and I resonate with the idea of radical perfectionism and eternal learning, but I can also see that the blood shed on Calvary has been reduced in this sermon to a lesser role than the exciting new idea of eternal progression.

(Considering that Amasa made many other statements in his life praising the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, I have to wonder whether he may have simply made more of a rhetorical blunder here than a theological one, a failed attempt to show how glorious eternal progression is, something even more exciting – if you can believe it! –  than the very sacrifice of our Savior on the cross!)

This was not how others read it, however. The doctrines expressed in these speeches appeared to have gone unnoticed for about five years, but on January 21, 1867, Lyman was brought before his fellow quorum members to answer for his heretical words. Lyman confessed his error and apologized to the quorum. He wrote a letter of apology to the general membership of the church, which was published in the Deseret News.

But, months later, Lyman again began publicly preaching the substance of his 1862 Dundee speeches. Evidently the logic of his position continued to appeal to him, and he may also have had something of the stubbornness of a Luther about him: “I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.”

As a result of his failure to live up to his confession and apology – though the story is much more complicated than that – the church stripped Lyman of the apostleship on October 6, 1867; he was excommunicated from the church on May 12, 1870.

On January 12, 1909, by direction of church president Joseph F. Smith, Amasa Lyman was posthumously reinstated as a church member and an apostle.

Amasa’s son Francis M. Lyman and his grandson Richard R. Lyman became apostles in the LDS Church. Francis became the President of the Quorum of the Twelve. Amasa’s great-great-grandson James E. Faust served as an apostle for 29 years and as second counselor in the First Presidency of the church from 1995 to 2007.

So what is my point? Only that as I have matured and have had loved ones with serious illnesses and terrible addictions, and as I have made a serious study of the writings of Paul, and as I have learned a few things about Martin Luther, and as I have contemplated the course of my great-great-grandfather’s life, I have come to believe that there is hardly any principle of the gospel that is more important to me now than the idea of handing the question of my salvation and the salvation of my family over to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and divesting myself of the notion that I can in any meaningful way do enough to save myself, much less save my family.

Only the infinite atonement of the Savior can do that. And what a relief it is to have that burden lifted from my shoulders! Of course I still agonize over bad decisions and bad outcomes, but I know that the Lord will eventually dry all tears, that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ, the only one who has the power to save us all.