E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten
Trueman Luther on the Christian Life
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2510-0
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Cross and Freedom
E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten
Reihe: Theologians on the Christian Life
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2510-0
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Carl R. Trueman (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College. He is a contributing editor at First Things, an esteemed church historian, and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Trueman has authored or edited more than a dozen books, including Strange New World; The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self; and Histories and Fallacies. He is a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
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MARTIN LUTHER’S CHRISTIAN LIFE
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
L. P. HARTLEY, THE GO-BETWEEN
Martin Luther, the man who should perhaps shoulder the greatest responsibility for rupturing the Western church in the Reformation, came from a relatively humble background that gave no hint of the controversial stature he would later achieve. He was born on November 10, 1483, to Hans and Margaret Luther in the town of Eisleben. Ironically, while this town played little role in Luther’s life as a whole, he was to die there in 1546, shortly after preaching his last sermon in the local church.
Hans Luther was a son of the soil, but in accordance with medieval inheritance laws, he did not inherit the family farm. Instead, as the oldest son, he was expected to make his own way in the world. This he did, first as a miner and then as a mine manager. The need for work meant that the Luther family had to leave Eisleben for Mansfeld just a few weeks after Martin’s birth, but Hans ultimately did well and rose to the level of his managerial position.
Like many parents who have worked hard and enjoyed social mobility, Hans Luther had greater hopes for his son. Thus, he decided that the young Martin would not have to work at the physically hard labor that had marked his own early life but would go to university to study for a career in law. And so it was in 1501 that Martin left home and matriculated at the University of Erfurt.
Studies at the university were typical of late medieval institutions. Law was one of the three higher faculties, along with medicine and theology, and in order to qualify to study it, the student first had to pass through the general arts curriculum, which Luther did. Thus, he was typical of his age in pursuing an unexceptional education. This ordinary start, however, was to be dramatically disrupted.
It was in 1505, while returning to the university after a visit to his parents, that Luther found himself in a situation which changed his life forever. Caught in a thunderstorm, he was almost killed when a bolt of lightning came crashing down at his side. Today, we regard such things as natural phenomena, the result of massive ionic imbalances in the atmosphere created by the collision of ice crystals at high altitude; in Luther’s day, such things were supernatural acts of God, intimations of divine judgment. Consequently, as the lightning bolt earthed beside him, Luther threw himself to the ground and screamed, “St. Anne, save me and I will become a monk!” St. Anne being the patron saint of miners, it was quite probably instinctive for Luther to call upon the saint who was presumably central to the piety of the household in which he had grown up.
All the evidence suggests that Luther was rather earnest and an intense young man. Such a vow to God, even when made in panic at what he must have thought could be his moment of death, was to him a very serious matter, and within a few days he presented himself at the door of the Augustinian cloister in Erfurt.
The choice of the Augustinian Order might at first appear to be significant. As it bears the name of the great Bishop Augustine of Hippo, the great opponent of Pelagius, might not Luther have chosen this order because of its view of God’s grace? This is unlikely. The name was certainly taken from Augustine, but the order itself was not particularly committed to an especially pristine Augustinianism. In fact, as all medieval theology was to some extent a dialogue with Augustine, one might say that all medieval theology could be categorized as broadly Augustinian.
Luther’s decision to abandon a potentially lucrative career in law and pursue a monastic vocation proved extremely upsetting to Hans, and the relationship between father and son was badly disrupted for some years. In modern Luther studies this has led the psychoanalyst and writer Erik Erikson to argue that Luther’s theological struggles were really a projection of his dispute with his father onto God.1 Thus, Luther ostensibly sought to be right with God when, in reality, he was seeking to be right with his earthly father.
Evangelical Christians have tended to dismiss Erikson’s thesis as speculative and reductionist. In fact, while it is undoubtedly reductionist to make Luther’s theology merely a cipher for his personal anxieties about his family, it is surely also true that the relationship between a father and a son is both complex and important. Thus, it stands to reason that Hans’s disapproval of his son’s move to the cloister impacted Luther’s life in significant ways.
Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the father-son drama came as a result of another decision Luther made: to become a priest. Monks were members of religious orders but were not necessarily ordained to the priesthood and thus would not have the sacramental duties and pastoral responsibilities of the parish priest. Luther, however, was ordained as priest in 1507 and officiated at his first Mass. The moment was one of high drama for him: not only was his father present, but Luther was also aware that as a priest he was in effect making, touching, and holding the real body and blood of Christ in the bread and the cup. The question that burned Luther’s soul for many years became acute at this point: how could he, knowing how sinful he was, possibly stand in such proximity to a holy and righteous God?
Later Protestants have often forgotten that Luther’s existential struggles with God’s righteousness cannot be separated from his sacramental theology. The Mass left a lasting impression on his soul, not only on the grounds that he was making God but also because he later came to see the medieval view of it as the centerpiece of a works righteousness that served only to fool individuals into thinking they were doing good works. It was never transubstantiation that he found so obnoxious in the medieval sacrament; it was the implication of sacrifice, of offering something to God, that was so disturbing to him.
In 1508, Luther was transferred from Erfurt to the relatively new University of Wittenberg. Founded in 1502 by Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, this was to be Luther’s home, with brief exceptions, for the rest of his days. Later in Luther’s story, this university had two particular points of significance. First, it was a new foundation and, as such, its founder was eager for it to make its name. When Luther became infamous in 1517 and beyond, it is thus not so surprising that Frederick would exert his influence to protect his controversial professor. Then, as now, there was a sense that all publicity could at least be made into good publicity, if the time was right.
The other significant factor was the location of the institution in Electoral Saxony. While the Holy Roman Empire had been founded by Charlemagne in 800, it had undergone considerable political development in the Middle Ages. Under the Golden Bull of 1356, it was established that the emperor should be appointed by a vote of a college of seven electors, among whom was numbered the prince of Saxony. Thus, when Luther moved to Wittenberg in 1508, he came under the authority—and, crucially, the protection—of an imperial elector. This position effectively gave Frederick the Wise political power and influence beyond what the economic and military strength of his territory might have suggested. As history played out, it also meant that Luther was far safer there than he might have been elsewhere.
For the rest of his life, Luther would have the dual role of professor of theology and pastor. As professor, he followed the standard career path of a late medieval theologian, lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Four Books of Sentences and then on large sections of Scripture. It is the ignorance and snobbery of modern Protestantism which derides the Middle Ages for a failure to engage with the text of Scripture. While it is true that the text of choice—indeed, for most, the only accessible text—was the Latin Vulgate, the average medieval professor was expected to have exegeted his way through more Scripture before he was deemed remotely competent as a theologian than any seminary professor in North America today.
The years 1510–1511 saw Luther traveling to Rome on business for the Augustinian Order. As for many before and since, his visit to the Eternal City was a profoundly moving and conflicted experience. In addition to its obvious historical and theological significance, he was impressed by the opportunities for piety that the city represented, with its multitude of relics and religious artifacts. Nevertheless, he also witnessed firsthand the corruption that coexisted amid the piety. The images of excess that the papal court presented to him would shape his later opinions of the papacy and, indeed, fuel the kind of rhetoric he was happy to deploy against it.
Back in the classroom, Luther continued to exegete his way through books of Scripture, particularly the Psalms and Romans. This routine work was to have a major impact upon his theology, as it led to two significant changes in his thinking between 1512 and 1517. First, he changed his mind on the nature of sin and baptism. He had been taught that sin was a fomes, akin to a piece of tinder. The implication was that sin was a weakness that needed to be dealt with via the sacraments. One might say that such an understanding of sin meant baptism was understood as a kind of damping down of the problem or a temporary fix. Once sin reared its ugly head within the life of...
