Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World

by Eric Metaxas

Both of them believed infant baptism a wicked idea. Both of them believed images must never be used. Both of them seemed to be antiauthority in their disdain for nobles and their special affinity with the peasants.

overzealous anti-popery that had run so far away from Rome that it had stupidly circled the globe to end up back at Rome

“The pope commands what is to be done,” he wrote, “Dr. Karlstadt what is not to be done.”18 Luther saw both as the opposite of the freedom promised in the Gospel.

Melanchthon was upset at what he perceived as the harshness of Luther’s tone toward Karlstadt, but, alas, very much of what Luther would write in the years hence would read like a modern-day late-night tweet storm.

In To the Christian Nobility, he had made clear that Christians were free, but he also made it clear that their freedom made them duty-bound to behave well toward others.

his conviction that the Gospel must never proceed through force or violence.

Luther now traveled after Eisleben, he saw groups of peasants on the march, and he sensed the demonic spirit of murder that was in the air.

They had become rabid and bloodthirsty, so now there was but one thing to be done: he must rally the nobles to crush them.

Everywhere now, and in Thuringia and Saxony especially, thousands of peasants were looting and destroying cloisters.

In Thuringia alone, more than seventy cloisters were sacked, and the monks treated despicably.

The fanatic peasant mobs swarmed in ev...

There was no justice being sought, nor even the pretense of such. It was nothing but vengeful murder a...

Against the Murdering and Thieving Hordes of Peasants.

So he now whirled about and exhorted the nobles throughout Germany—the very men whom God had given the sword—to use that sword with all their terrible might and main. They must not hold back but do everything in their power to obliterate and smash into dust this bloodthirsty rebellion that was not of God but of the very devil himself.

If the raging peasant fire was not extinguished by the nobles, the result would be more burning and bloodshed and suffering than ever before.

“Thomas Müntzer with the sword of Gideon.”*

four thousand peasants were slaughtered, while something like four of the nobles’ soldiers were killed.

The next day Müntzer underwent a trial in which he was tortured and confessed a number of things.

eighty thousand peasants had died,

the Reformation of Luther had been so mixed up with this sprawling blood-soaked tragedy that in the eyes of any inclined against that Reformation, it was further discredited.

On May 27, Müntzer and fifty-three others—Pfeiffer among ...

Although he had done whatever he could to prevent the violence that had broken out and before that had warned against the doctrines of Karlstadt and Müntzer, many nonetheless blamed him for what had happened, and the Reformation fell into greater disrepute in certain precincts.

“Death is oh so bitter—not so much to the dying as to the living whom the dead leave behind.”4

the Devil, who so slanders the marital state and has made it shameful—and yet allows adulterers, whores, and dissolute knaves to survive in high esteem all the same—that

they must be consummated in full view of a witness.

Erasmus had spread the false rumor that Luther had taken advantage of the young nun and was only marrying to cover his beastly tracks.

Karlstadt was quietly hiding under Luther’s aegis, he wrote a full apology—titled Apology—in which he explained himself and told of his wanderings among the violent peasants.

Now forty-two, Luther was set in his ways. He would continue living in the same place he had been living since coming to Wittenberg fifteen years earlier. The only difference was that then there had been forty monks living in the Black Cloister and now there was only one former monk—and one former nun.

But the success of Luther’s marriage is a testimony both to Luther and to his Kathie. He was cheerful toward her in all the years of their marriage, and when one considers how exceedingly cranky and angry he could be to everyone with whom he dealt, that is the more extraordinary.

Luther had chosen what by all accounts was an ext...

She was significantly younger than he, by fourteen years, but somehow the two of them fit together...

She moved from Cranach’s palatial and extremely well-appointed home to the near stable

Luther received no income from his torrential publications because even though the publishers made a mint from them, Luther refused to take a penny, nor did he take money for all of his preaching.

they provided room and board for many University of Wittenberg students.

six children.

Erasmus is an eel. —Martin Luther

THE CATACLYSMIC FALLING-OUT between Luther and Erasmus must rank as one of the intellectual battles of the ages.

Both Luther and Erasmus spoke out against the church’s legalistic approach in so many things, its emphasis on silly rules and behavioral issues at the expense of deeper principles. Erasmus said that the principal teaching of the church at this time was less “loving one’s neighbor” than “abstaining from butter and cheese during Lent.”1 And Luther and Erasmus both saw the pope and the papacy as one of the principal problems and said

Aristotle is so in vogue that there is scarcely time in the churches to interpret the gospel.

fact, Erasmus had pointedly dedicated his commentary on the four Gospels to the four sovereigns of the new national

states: Henry VIII of England, Ferdinand of Austria, Francis of France, and Charles of Spain.

Erasmus’s indifference to theology per se is an important difference between them and would be the thing that led to their dramatic and public clash.

It is probably Luther’s astonishing intellectual wingspan—to be able to go from Greek and Latin

translation and deep exegesis and scholarship to preaching candidly and clearly to the open-minded peasant—that marks him as a genius for the ages.

He not only did not disdain the common man but positively h...

the “Prince of the Humanists,” Erasmus—ride

Erasmus was asked by King Henry VIII of England to write something against Luther.

the death of Pope Leo in December 1521 had an effect. Leo was succeeded by Adrian VI, who, like Erasmus, was a Dutchman and very much wanted to drain the papal swamp.

As soon as the book appeared, everyone in the Humanist universe went mad with expectations over what was clearly shaping up as an open conflict between

the “Prince of the Humanists” and the leader of the Reformation. It would be a battle for the ages, the two intellectual heavyweights of the age squaring off.