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

by Eric Metaxas

So much followed from this single insight. For example, if we appeal to Mary and the other saints before we appeal to Jesus himself, are we not effectively denying the Incarnation itself?

Remember that you are able to release them, for As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, The soul from purgatory springs.*

At the Sorbonne in Paris, theologians spoke out against indulgences. It was a widely recognized problem that needed fixing, but who was listening, and who would do anything about

After Tetzel had received a substantial amount of money at Leipzig, a nobleman asked him if it were possible to receive a letter of indulgence for a future sin. Tetzel quickly answered in the affirmative, insisting, however, that the payment had to be made at once. This the nobleman did, receiving thereupon letter and seal from Tetzel. When Tetzel left Leipzig the nobleman attacked him along the way, gave him a thorough beating, and sent him back empty-handed to Leipzig with the comment that this was the future sin which he had in mind. Duke George at first was quite furious about this incident, but when he heard the whole story he let it go without punishing the nobleman.

revoco!

But what is more astonishing still is that despite this perfect clarity about the situation Staupitz never followed Luther out of the church but faithfully remained there until his death.

This must at least convince any objective observer of this history that there were deeply principled and godly men on both sides of the great and coming divide.

For another, Eck and Luther had a number of ugly written exchanges in which Luther accused Eck of being interested not in truth but in flagrant showboating. He called him “a prankster and a sophist,”5 and it is clear that he had been hurt by his former friend’s vicious attacks. Eck fired back by saying that anyone who attacked the beloved church could be no friend, that his first responsibility was to defend the church.

“The citizens of Leipzig,” he later wrote, “neither greeted nor called on us but treated us as though we were their bitterest enemies.”

As soon as he sees that he has made a rash statement, he gradually turns the discussion into another channel. Sometimes he embraces the opponent’s opinion in somewhat different words, and then, with astounding guile, attributes to his antagonist, in a completely changed form, his own previously held opinions.

What is of greatest importance in this Leipzig disputation is that because he was in a debate, Luther said things he would likely never have said in another context.

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.

These were dangerous and provocative stands that no one had any idea he would take—not least himself—when two years earlier the subject of indulgences first prompted him to write his Ninety-five Theses.

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.*

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,

But this was a trickling freshet when one considers what was to come. The snow of fifteen centuries was melting, and in the next year alone Luther would gush forth a roaring torrent of writings that a year earlier would have been undreamed by anyone, including Luther himself.

Until now, he had been rather tame and timid. He had been measured and moderate. But now he would be wild and aggressive, attacking everything that needed attacking with seemingly no patience for considering how it might come across.

The Donation of Constantine was a document purported to have been written by Emperor Constantine early in the fourth century, giving all authority over Western Europe to the pope, and the church had used it for centuries to underscore the inviolability of the pope’s authority.

Luther saw that it was now proven to be a forgery, his fury increased the more.

To a faithful son of the church it felt like a stinging betrayal, and it made him wonder: What else was a

He feared God more than death, and God would not allow him to be silent.

The idea that there was a special caste of people who alone had the privilege to preach and to pastor and to hear confession was simply not biblical. It had been invented out of whole cloth by human beings and had no basis in scripture. Therefore for every Christian to have to submit to this, especially now that it was being used to tyrannize people—to bully them into submitting to a power and authority that was not given by God—was

So if the pope and his deputies will not do their jobs, you the German nobles can do it yourselves. He was appealing to the nationalistic and anti-Roman sentiment, but only up to a point.

One thing we see is that in 1520 Luther had accepted the idea of an irreparable breach with Rome. There was only the very slimmest of possibilities that Rome would do the right thing, but Luther was sure that he had done the right thing and would not gainsay it now in the slightest. Everything had changed since Leipzig.

Luther summed it up in this typically colorful image. “Is this not a joyous exchange,” he asks, “the rich, noble, pious bridegroom Christ takes this poor, despised wicked little whore in marriage, redeems her of all evil, and adorns her with all his goods?”

In the end, only a single member of the Leipzig faculty—his Humanist name, appropriately, was Vulcan—rather pathetically set a small handful of Luther’s writings aflame.

So when Frederick did finally meet with the new emperor, he persuaded him not to simply condemn Luther at the upcoming diet, which was to be held in the imperial city of Worms, but at least to give him a hearing there.

Everywhere their party traveled, Luther was greeted by throngs of admirers. How his writings and teachings had spread could never have been fully known to him until now, and there is no doubt that it was a stunning and humbling revelation.

Swawe wrote that it was all just like Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. It was breathtaking. Of course Luther could not help wondering whether that meant that he was days away from his Good Friday, but over and over he gave it all to God. Thy will be done.

It must also be said that this would have been the first time that Luther and Frederick had ever laid eyes on each other. They would again see each other in the chamber the following day, and then never again. They communicated only through letters, and never spoke.

On this day, Luther was prepared, and his voice was neither quiet nor meek, as on the previous day. Though he spoke with respect and humility, he spoke with courage and boldness too.

I cannot escape my duty to my Germans. I commend myself to Your Majesty. May you not suffer my adversaries to make you ill disposed to me without cause. I have spoken.

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the scriptures or clear reason, for I do not trust in the Pope or in the councils alone, since it is well known that they often err and contradict themselves, I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand. God help me. Amen.17

But so many historians have conflated our modern ideas about conscience with Luther’s very different ideas about it that we have accepted a deeply mistaken idea about what Luther meant, and therefore about what his stand at Worms meant.

The German word he used, Gewissen, really means “knowing.”

The modern concept of conscience has come to mean something almost completely subjective, as though each of us has his own barometer and that barometer were sacrosanct, as though each person’s truth were comparable to truth itself.

The only difference between his view and the church’s view was in the idea that one’s conscience must obey God himself.

Luther asserted the idea that only the Scriptures could be that inerrant standard to which everyone—including the church—must repair.

So it was not Luther’s conscience that trumped anything. It was the Word of God that trumped everything.

God did not crush us but showed us mercy, and Luther could see that the church had not adopted this view,

biblical idea of a merciful God who did not demand that we obey but who first loved us and first made us righteous before he expected us to live righteously.

He was asserting the freedom of the individual to do as God pleased—if

Luther was asserting the modern idea of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience for the first time in history.

Just as Jesus had called upon the Pharisees to stop their outward obedience to God and go far deeper, to inward obedience, so Luther called upon every Christian to cease the petty obedience to church that was nothing when compared to the freedom and joy of actually obeying God.

O we blind Germans, how childishly we act and allow the Romanists to mock and fool us in such a pitiful way!

that neither pope nor emperor possesses any authority unless it is given to him from God. It is an echo of what Jesus said to Pilate, when Pilate asked, “Don’t you know that I have the power to crucify you?” and Jesus replied, “You have no authority over me, except that which has been given you from above.”

Luther felt differently, but as he made clear in his letter to the emperor and many other times, the Word of God was sacrosanct, and his duty to declare it wherever he went trumped any man-made constrictions.*

Möhra, the village where his father, Hans, had been born.

just as they were passing through a ravine near Schloss Altenstein—the three of them were violently set upon by a group of armed horsemen. Whether Petzensteiner was in on the ruse, we don’t know, but we do know that seeing the armed horsemen approaching, he leaped off the wagon and fled on foot, arriving in Waltershausen that evening. The kidnappers—for such they now revealed themselves to be—pointed their fearsome crossbows at the wagon driver, demanding with rough curses to know whom he was carrying.

But there was no going back. Luther had said and done things with real consequences, some good, some bad, and some indifferent. Close to home, some followers were doing things Luther would stand against, but many others were reading his works and joining and spreading the ferment of these new ideas just as he had hoped.