Martin Luther and the Death of Faith

Benjamin A. Sorensen Of European religious leaders throughout history, few merit as much attention as Martin Luther. Born on the tenth of November around 1483, the miner's son became a huge and successful force for a reformation of the church, and unwittingly led to the complete break of Protestant Germany with the Roman Catholic church. His preaching and writing were heard and read in all of Germany, and the German Empire soon became divided over him. His mark upon the world is still evident today, but his most lasting and perhaps most unwitting contribution to our world is the death of the Age of Faith. Though this was not the main thrust of his reforms and preaching, it was their inevitable result.

Martin Luther, after spending considerable time at a university, gave up scholastic pursuits for the life of a monk, taking vows and learning the scriptures and rites associated with monastic life. During this time, he he visited Rome and saw the people and priests were "openly infidel, and scoffed at the services they performed . . . [They] were men of the most shameless lives" (Lindsay 44). This was Martin Luther's first real disillusionment with the Catholic Church, and, as will be noted later, was brought about by an observation of their outward acts. He returned to the monastery troubled by what he had seen. From there it was an almost inevitable step to his well-known protest against the sale of indulgences. From that time, his fame grew through all of Germany and even beyond as he was brought into conflict with the Catholic church -- not because he desired a break with the Catholics, but because he desired the Papacy to amend and correct what he saw as gross excesses and perversions of doctrine. In this matter as in others, he tended to attack one extreme by emphasizing the other end of the same extreme. The sale of indulgences, for example, showed the doctrines of merit and penance taken to an extreme conclusion. Martin Luther replied by preaching the other extreme -- that good works were of no use in and of themselves, and that penance was not necessary where a repentant heart was to be found.

In the course of time, his teachings caught on, and various German principalities were forced by the Emperor and Rome to declare either for or against Martin Luther, after a time. Among those that declared for him (and it is a tribute to the strength of his ideas and writing that any should have been allowed to declare for him), he began to establish a church because they asked it of him.

However, as with any religious figure, one must ask if Martin Luther held himself to the tenets which he preached. And that, in turn, brings up the question of Martin Luther's specific beliefs. Martin Luther became not only a monk but a Doctor of Theology; he was well versed in scripture and the religious thought of the period and of antiquity. Most of his preaching can be nailed down to a few basic propositions, though. First, that the Bible is the only source of the Word of God; second, that it is only through the Grace of God that man can be saved; third, that ever man has an equal opportunity before God for salvation, that a clergyman was not inherently more blessed than a layman; and finally that there is no specific spiritual or mystical priesthood that some believers possess and others do not.

The third and the fourth beliefs are closely related; they both spring partly from what Luther saw as distortions of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper as practiced by the Catholic Church at the time and from the life of the monastics and especially the mendicant orders. The teaching of the time was that there was some special virtue to swearing to a life of poverty, and that such an oath put a monastic beggar on a higher, more worthy plane than a man who devoted himself to farming or mining. It should be noted that though Luther defied his father by joining a monastic order, he later foreswore his monk's vows upon discovering them to be false. Luther protested that God was no respecter of persons and that all would be brough to God based on their quality of faith more than their choice of vocation. He also felt that ideas of transubstantiation and the priest partaking of the Sacrament on behalf of the congregation made the Lord's Supper essentially worthless by both denying the faithful the chance to partake and by implicitly denying the Lord's omnipresence (if the priest brings the Lord down into the bread, then he was obviously not there to begin with). Here, he took his backing from the writings of Paul.

The second belief springs more directly from Luther's personal life, which was fairly guilt-ridden as a young man (Lindsay 25). In learning the monastic routine, he regarded any mistake or deviation from the rituals as a serious sin to be confessed, sending him into fits of gloom and despondency, an emotional habit which lasted the rest of his life, even after he learned to be free of the burden of guilt. His epiphany came from the writings of Paul, and those writings were to be his motivating force in defense of the doctrine of salvation of grace for the rest of his life. From this belief he gained the self-confidence that was to assist him through the rest of his life (Lindsay 37). The Catholic belief was that excess good deeds on the part of saints produced merit which the Pope was able to distribute to the sinner upon evidence of penance. Martin Luther vigorously attacked this idea, claiming that from Christ alone would forgiveness come when there was a truly penitent heart. He repeatedly accused the Catholic Church of turning repentance into a money-making venture, and it was this abuse of doctrine that led him to write the ninety-five theses.

Seeing that the Pope and Rome were abusing the Gospel and were faithless, is is only natural that Martin Luther would turn to the Bible as the only source for the true word of God. Catholic belief held the Pope to be the single person able to give an authoritative translation or interpretation of the scriptures. Martin Luther again felt that this denied the believer a connection to Christ that was an essential part of faith. He emphasized scriptural precedent and authority over all concerns, including the tradition and precedent of the Catholic Church.

Did he hold to these tenets?

In many ways, yes. Yet even in his own life, he showed a slight tendency to, like the Pope, pick and choose the scriptures he uses to justify his beliefs and arguments. He sometimes ignored obvious scriptures in order to support his basic propositions, and yet he cannot have been unaware of their existence with his training in theology and his intense study and translation of the Bible.

Martin Luther has a strong tendency to divide the Bible into the "frightening" God of the Old Testament and the "loving and friendly" Christ of the New (Lull 108). Yet we find the violent and forcible clearing of the temple by Christ in the New Testament, as well as numerous references to the sufferings and pain of the damned who do not the will of Christ or even those who do not believe when they have heard his world (notably Matt. 8:12, 11:23, 12:31, 23:34-36; 2 Thes. 2:10-12; Heb. 12:26-31). At the same time, we find God in the Old Testament constantly extended mercy to the penitent (e.g. David and Bath-Sheba, the numerous times Israel fell into apostasy and idolatry), giving the Israelites every opportunity to repent and be washed completely from all sins (Isa. 1). Martin Luther admits that Old Testament prophets including Moses had a knowledge of the coming of the Lord (Lull 114), but does not mention the opportunity for faith on Christ and the Gospel that such revelations entail. Ancient Israel, according to Luther's own argument, had the Gospel as much as the Jews of the New Testament, and the punishments of a vengeful God came upon those who rejected the Gospel of Christ. Yet Luther skips this point. He denies any kind of special priesthood in spite of Paul's statements to the contrary (see Titus 1:5, 2 Tim. 1:6, etc). He gives God's Grace preferential treatment when so many scriptures attest to the need for works as well. He goes so far as to call the Epistle of James "an epistle of straw" (Lull 117), even though he has admitted that all apostles teach the gospel from a different angle (Lull 115). Luther teaches the Bible as the sole authority on the Word of God while having to ignore parts of the Bible in order to establish his own reforms. In that way, he is perhaps as culpable as the Pope for twisting doctrines.

So what is left for Luther? He has beliefs that cannot be accepted by a Catholic Church. Namely, his denial of a priesthood ordination by tradition would have completely shattered the church's spiritual authority over man. Luther would have had to have been naive in the extreme to believe that his ideas could meld successfully with core Catholic teachings. He should have seen that he would have to from another church once he came out in opposition to the Pope.

But what kind of church can he form? He cannot have priests according to Catholic tradition; the succession from St. Peter is denied. Yet he himself teaches that "though it is true that we are all equally priests, yet we cannot, nor ought we, if we could, all to minister and teach publicly" (Lindsay 96). Yet someone must teach the word of God as it comes from the scriptures. What qualifications must a ministering priest have? "There is need of schools that boys and maidens may be taught [the gospel] and all good morals in their youth. There is need also fo the gift of knowing such languages as Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. For all this must be some real supervision, to see that all these things are done. Bishops, in the mediaeval sense of the word, might be superfluous, but their true function, that of oversight, was a thing indispensable" (Lindsay 225). A bishop must teach Latin and Greek and Hebrew to students so that they can understand the scriptures, then. But Martin Luther himself admits that languages are insufficient -- especially Hebrew -- for the translation of scripture (Lull 132-134). Martin Luther's church will contain priests educated in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and trained to educate the children in all things.

The inevitable birth of this church from Martin Luther's preaching and beliefs begins the killing stroke to the Age of Faith he so vigorously defended. Instead of a priesthood capable of miracles given by the power of God, a priesthood of literal power given to those deemed worthy by those in authority, we have a priesthood of scholars, whose primary qualification is a university education. The authority of the God of Miracles has been superseded by a God of Education. Martin Luther's church is a church for the Age of Reason. The problem is that once education departed from religion, it took the priest's foundation with it. All one needs to start a Protestant church is a Bible and a loud voice. Among the more dominant Protestant denominations, we find that very few of them actually believe in a resurrection or atonement -- the two doctrines that Luther held closest to his hear -- because it is not reasonable to believe in such things after having received an education, but there is no other authority to turn to.

By setting up a secular clergy with a secular education, Martin Luther laid the groundwork for a church that had no basis of faith in God. Put in other terms, Martin Luther contributed directly to the death of the Age of Faith.

Works Cited

Lindsay, Thomas. Luther and the German Reformation. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1913.

Lull, Timothy. Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings. Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1989.