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

by Eric Metaxas

I see that it is utter madness even to touch with the little finger that branch of theology which deals chiefly with the divine mysteries unless one is also provided with the equipment of Greek.

So whereas Erasmus never directly dealt with the theology and doctrines behind or beneath the problems he saw, Luther, as an exegete savant, was always trying to dig into the kernels of the text, knowing that if the church’s understanding of things was made plumb at its foundation, the rickety structure above it would inevitably be able to correct itself.

But we now know that the heated room that was Luther’s study for decades—and where he therefore did his biblical exegesis—was in that part of the monastery located in the tower. It so happened, however, that in the base of this tower there was an outhouse.

So even if Luther got the tremendous insight not precisely while indisposed upon the commode but upstairs in his heated study, he nonetheless would have said the “cloaca,” as was the general habit.

And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. Thus a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Hereupon I ran through the Scriptures from memory. I also found in other terms an analogy, as the work of God, that is, what God does in us, the power of God, with which he makes us strong, the wisdom of God, with which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.

God reached down not halfway to meet us in our vileness but all the way down, to the foul dregs of our broken humanity. And this holy and loving God dared to touch our lifeless and rotting essence and in doing so underscored that this is the truth about us. In fact, we are not sick and in need of healing. We are dead and in need of resurrecting. We are not dusty and in need of a good dusting; we are fatally befouled with death and fatally toxic filth and require total redemption. If we do not recognize that we need eternal life from the hand of God, we remain in our sins and are eternally dead.

So it fit well with Luther’s thinking that if God were to bestow upon him—the unworthy sinner Luther—such a divine blessing, it must needs be done as he sat grunting in the “cloaca.” This was the ultimate antithesis to the gold and bejeweled splendor of papal Rome. There all was gilt, but here in Wittenberg it was all Scheisse. But the shit in its honesty as shit was very golden when compared to the pretense and artifice of Roman gold, which itself was indeed as shit when compared to the infinite worth of God’s grace. That was cheap grace, which was to say it was a truly satanic counterfeit. True grace was concealed in the honesty—in the unadorned shit—of this broken world, and the devil’s own shit was concealed in the pope’s glittering gold.

According to this Reformation breakthrough, all the marmoreal and golden splendor of the Vatican was nothing more or less than a monument to mankind’s efforts to be as God—indeed was a monument to the very devil of hell. It was our attempt to be good without God, to impress God and be like him without his help. It was all far worse than excrement could ever be, for it pretended to be good and beautiful and true and holy, and in reality it was not just not these things but the very bitterest enemy of them.

For Luther, any appeal to Mary and the saints instead of to Jesus himself became a satanic twisting of the holiest and highest truth in the universe.

If you needed to raise what was then the equivalent of billions of dollars from the back of a wagon, Tetzel was your man. It is true that he would often say things that were technically not true—which is to say, doctrinally false—but if he could gin up the generosity of the faithful in doing so, the powers that be would look the other way.

Luther was certainly bothered that money was being sucked away from those who had so little, but it bothered him more that the church via this practice of indulgences was actually leading the faithful away from Christ.

he explained to his flock that the paper they purchased meant nothing if they were not genuinely contrite for any sins they had committed. And if they were genuinely contrite, the paper still meant nothing, because God forgave their sins anyway.

So it was a declaration not to the world—most of whom could not read the Latin in which the theses were written anyway—nor even to Rome or to the pope. It was but a declaration to other theologians, all of whom read Latin, and it meant to say that this was a very important subject worthy of debate.

because the Castle Church was very much at the center of life in the community of Wittenberg, the huge wooden doors through which everyone entered the church were the best place to post anything of any community interest, making them the all-purpose bulletin board for the small city.

In fact, it began to make sense only decades later, when Melanchthon recalled it, although, as we have said, he was not yet in Wittenberg when it happened, and was really only recounting the recollections of others who had been there. So when he did, he was speaking in the way so many of us do when remembering things: we aren’t telling an untruth but conflating things in a way that is not perfectly and literally accurate, specifically to make a larger point, and, as good fiction does, to tell a greater truth.

He felt that he was doing something good, something that the pope and others would surely recognize as such. They were not his adversaries—not yet—and he was a faithful monk in the only church in Western Christendom. And he could not himself conceive of things snowballing as they would soon do. So, on the day he posted his letter and on the day he posted his theses, he had no idea what dark forces he would rouse from their slumbers.

But how could Albrecht ever pay it back? Where there was a will, there was a way, and Pope Leo happened to come up with a way that was ingenious. What if Albrecht was willing to sponsor an indulgence crusade in his territory—ostensibly to help build the new St. Peter’s in Rome? But what if the pope would officially allow him to retain half of all he raised for himself and with that money pay back the greedy Fuggers? No one need know the details, and everyone might come out ahead. And so it happened.

That the humble faithful would hurl their coins into an iron coffer believing they really would pay for their sins—and simultaneously build St. Peter’s—was bad enough. But that half of what they paid was actually going to pay an exorbitant debt so that a papal rule might be ignored—and the ambitious archbishop could collect a second impressive bishopric—took the cake. And ate it too.

And following his posting them, an academic debate on the subject was scheduled. But not a soul showed up for this debate. Why students did not show up, we don’t know. But because the theses were written in Latin, the non-Latin-speaking citizens of Wittenberg were at a disadvantage and did not show up either. Except for the actions of Archbishop Albrecht and Tetzel, the whole thing might have fizzled like an errant spark landing on damp ground.

Therefore the pope, when he uses the words “plenary remission of all penalties,” does not actually mean “all penalties,” but only those imposed by himself.

For the graces of indulgences are concerned only with the penalties of sacramental satisfaction established by man.*

If the church is making rules about consequences for sin, then it is able to establish a system todo away with those consequences, but not before God. Only God can deal with eternal matters, and a system that would look for satisfaction outside at Jesus is wildly mistaken. This is not dissimilar from a government imposing fines to make some wrongdoing settled. But paying that fine does nothy about the sin before God.

Injury is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to indulgences than to the Word.

“Why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?”

“Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Croesus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?”*

One thing seemed quite clear: for them to say anything one way or another could only get them in trouble, so they opted simply to pass the buck to Rome. And this is what Albrecht now did. And that is how the warehouse of fireworks was finally lit.

The Nuremberg Humanist and printer Christopher Scheurl was impressed with what he read and thought that the theses should be reprinted, and without the fussy legality of needing to obtain copyright permissions, he simply printed them himself, right there in his own town of Nuremberg, instantly ensuring that they would have a dramatically wider reading. In this way, the horse snuck out of the barn, because once the theses were circulating, the whole controversy would take on a life of its own.

As you are surprised that I did not send them to you, I reply that my purpose was not to publish them, but first to consult a few of my neighbors about them, that thus I might either destroy them if condemned or edit them with the approbation of others. But now that they are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation, I feel anxious about what they may bring forth: not that I am unfavorable to spreading known truth abroad—rather this is what I seek—but because this method is not that best adapted to instruct the public. I have certain doubts about them myself, and should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was going to happen.

It was as though a hastily written e-mail to a friend were inadvertently forwarded to a major news organization or as though an ill-considered thought were captured on a “hot mic” and thenceforth broadcast to the world. Luther had no choice but to do his best with the events that had run far ahead of his control. In chasing them, he would end up in places he had never dreamed.

He also explained that the idea that someone could by paying a few coins get out of what God in his infinite wisdom has ordained—such as suffering for a sin for the good of one’s soul—is blasphemous and contrary to common sense.

It is interesting to see that when church and state are not separate—as they were not then and would not be anywhere in the world for nearly three centuries—the theological and ecclesiastical quickly became political.

Pope Leo X would very much want Frederick on his side in choosing Maximilian’s successor, and this political consideration crucially moderated the pope’s response in the Luther affair.

It was on decisions like this—which had little to do with what was right or wrong, but everything to do with what was politically expedient—that the future of the Reformation and Europe, and the world, would hinge.

What makes him particularly interesting as the figure chosen to deal with Luther at Augsburg is that during the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), Cajetan played a leading role and was the one to bring about a decree claiming that the pope’s authority was indeed superior to that of church councils. After this, Pope Leo X made him a cardinal, and he remained a powerful and important figure in the church for many years.

He saw now what he had deep down feared but had desperately hoped could not be true: that the greatest minds of the church were genuinely unaware of having become unmoored from the rock of the Scriptures and were even indifferent to this. They were blithely floating down the river toward a great cataract and didn’t seem to notice that they had ever moved. Luther sincerely hoped that somehow he might waken them from their reveries and get them to see their danger so they might paddle to shore before it was too late.

Luther backed up his position with several scriptural references, the most notable being the one with which he has come to be most closely associated, Romans 1:17, which states, “For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”6 It did not say or imply that the church must somehow be involved in this, nor did the other scriptural examples imply that. On the contrary. Luther was implying that the priest was really only ratifying what had already taken place between the believer and God by faith.

But unless Cajetan and the rest of them pointed to that God through his Scriptures and plainly showed Luther his error, he was quite immovable.

He knew he would be putting himself in tremendous danger, but out of respect for his sovereign, and with full faith in the God whose truth he desperately meant to uphold, he would go. It is another example of Luther’s faith that despite having no idea what lay ahead for him, he would do the noble thing and trust in God.

I daily expect the condemnation from the city of Rome; therefore I am setting things in order and arranging everything so that if it comes I am prepared and girded to go, as Abraham, not knowing where, yet most sure of my way, because God is everywhere. But I will of course leave a farewell letter; see to it that you have the courage to read the letter of a man who is condemned and excommunicated.

Because to suggest that the church did not automatically speak with the voice of God was to suggest that the church could err. This would always be the sticking point and Luther would not even in this otherwise deeply humble letter remove that point.

Against his own inclinations, things had now entered a new and more public stage. Though he certainly didn’t like it, he nonetheless felt that somehow God must be behind these strange developments, pushing him forward.

The way things had transpired had galvanized Luther profoundly. In his mind, there was no doubt that the truth would win, whatever became of him. He had not asked for this fight, but neither could he hide from it. The more he saw that the facts were on his side, the more emboldened he was to present them, to uphold the truth. What especially irked him was the idea that the church—and Eck—were twisting the Scriptures to make their silly points. If only they hadn’t done that, his sense of justice would not have been so provoked, but this was far beyond the pale, and he felt he must expose it.

All he read made it clearer and clearer that it was a human institution. It was not possible from Scripture to find any evidence that it had been divinely ordained. This was the issue, and by declaring otherwise, the current pope—and such as Cajetan and Eck—had put the papacy on impossibly rotten foundations. If one loved the church, one must fix this, and Luther would do so. That month seems to have been a turning point for Luther.

For Luther, it was faith (pace Romans 1:7) that created the Christian and the body of Christians, called the church. Wherever faith existed in Christ, all followed, including beyond the Roman church, which is to say in the Eastern Greek church as well.

The more he stared at what was in front of him, so clear and so awful, the more he became convinced that the church had for four hundred years been in a kind of Babylonian captivity, just as Israel had been. And if he like a prophet did not point this out and call for the church to repent and return to God’s truth, he would himself be guilty. He therefore had no fear in doing so.

A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it. As for the pope’s decretal on indulgences I say that neither the Church nor the pope can establish articles of faith. These must come from Scripture.21

But in the heat of battle, he took some new and shocking theological positions from which he could never again retreat. He came out decisively for the idea that the Bible must supersede the church, which came to be known as the idea of Sola scriptura.

But when at last Luther read the little book on Hus’s views, he was bowled over. It too set forth this most basic idea that Christ alone was the head of the church, and it took the pope to task for being unable to declare this unequivocally. And Hus had said that unless his accusers could clearly show him where he had erred from Scripture, he would not recant. For these things, Jan Hus had been condemned and burned at the stake. Luther was quite flabbergasted. “We are all Hussites without knowing it!” he said.*22

Part of Luther’s appeal came from his escalating outspokenness. Just when he said one thing that everyone insisted no one must ever say, he said another and then another. It was as if the zeitgeist itself could barely keep up with him. The reason for this was that as Luther’s sense of his own danger increased, so did his boldness. He thought, what do I have to lose? I am speaking the truth and therefore my life is in danger, so I might as well say what I can while I have breath in me. His willingness to go further and further, wherever he felt the truth led him, became breathtaking.

Luther proclaimed—in German, so all could understand—that he advocated that the church should allow the laity to take both the bread and the wine at Communion. Hus had argued the same thing, so by doing this Luther was taunting all those who had accused him of being a Hussite, especially Eck. The implications were staggering. Luther was in effect reestablishing the biblical idea that everyone who has faith in Christ is equal and that the church’s position that priests are somehow different from the people in the pews is wrong. For him, the Scriptures established the idea of “a priesthood of believers,” and anyone who truly believed was a Christian equal to any other Christian, so why should only the priests take the wine at Communion?

Luther was obviously not ignorant of the political implications of what he had discovered, but he was wisely chary of being lured toward making an idol of politics, of “immanentizing the eschaton” through a utopian nationalistic program and making the Gospel an afterthought. It must be front and center; of that he would be certain.