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FAITHFUL TO THE END:
LUTHER IN HIS LATER YEARS
(1530s–1546)
Martin Luther was thirty-four years old when he wrote the Ninety-Five Theses. He was thirty-seven when he was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, forty-one when he married former nun Katharina von Bora, and forty-six when the Augsburg Confession was produced in 1530. That event marks “a plausible dividing line between the younger and the older Luther,” writes Mark U. Edwards.
Most Luther biographies practically end the Reformer’s career with the Diet of Augsburg, as do the Luther movies of 1953 and 2003. Several recent books, however, have sought to do justice to Luther’s later life: Luther: An Experimentin Biography by H.G. Haile, Luther’s Last Battles by Edwards, and the third volume of Martin Brecht’s biography, Martin Luther: The Preservation of theChurch, 1532–1546.
In 1530, Luther was a middle-aged man, but he felt old. “The years are 3 He was also experiencing serious episodes of alarming, piling up,” he lamented. painful illness. In March 1531, Luther wrote, “I am seriously declining in strength, especially in the head. It hinders me from writing, reading, or speaking 4 The next year, he had to give up much, and I am living like a sick man.” preaching for a time because dizziness made it impossible for him to complete a sermon. He struggled at times with deep depression. “I can’t banish the thought from my mind,” he said, “when I wish that I had never started [the reform of the church]. So likewise when I wish I were dead rather than witness such contempt [for the Word of God and His faithful servants].”
According to Roland Bainton, Martin Luther became “prematurely an irascible old man, petulant, peevish, unrestrained, and at times positively 6 But, Bainton writes, “Luther’s later years are… by no means to be coarse.” written off as the sputterings of a dying flame…. To the end he was preaching, lecturing, counseling, and writing.”
Despite advancing age, chronic illness, and debilitating depression, Luther gave himself to the preservation of the church that he had done so much to create and define. Brecht writes in the foreword to the third volume of his biography, “The subtitle of this volume indicates what was most important for the old 8 Acknowledging Luther’s bitterness to Luther: the preservation of the church.” his enemies, rudeness to his friends, and “serious errors both in practice and in theory,” Brecht concludes that “to the end, however, his positive contributions and deep insights remained more significant. Abruptness and resignation were not able to stifle the tender tones and the fundamental trust in God that came from his belief in justification by faith.”
Life at Home
Luther, under the ban of empire and church for the rest of his life, lived and worked in Electoral Saxony. In 1525, Elector Frederick the Wise was succeeded by his brother John and in 1532 by John’s son, John Frederick, who looked to Luther as his mentor. Another part of Saxony was ruled by Duke George, a learned and sincere Roman Catholic, with whom Luther constantly clashed in increasingly sharp publications.
Luther lived in Wittenberg, in the former Black Cloister, with his wife and growing family.
Without Katharina, the mature Luther would be incomprehensible. Their marriage of convenience had become a happy one. In 1531, after six years of marriage, Luther said, “I wouldn’t give up my Katy for 10 He described the epistle to the Galatians, which he France or for Venice.” 11 “No sweeter thing than love of woman dearly loved, as “my Katie von Bora.” —may a man be so fortunate,” Luther wrote in the margin beside Proverbs 31 in his German Bible translation. The words had been spoken to him by a lady in Eisenach when he was a schoolboy.
In his Genesis commentary, Luther wrote, “With the woman who has been 13 But joined to me by God I may jest, have fun, and converse more pleasantly.” for Luther, a good marriage was more than fun. It involved intellectual companionship and required mutual forgiving and forgetting. Luther and his wife were both realistic about marriage and about each other. He admitted that Katie had “some shortcomings” but that they were “outweighed by a great many 14 Luther teased her, and occasionally spoke sharply to her or about her, virtues.” but she usually took it in good spirits. She could also express her candid opinion about her husband to him and to others. When Luther made a will in 1542, he was especially concerned to ensure Katie’s future, because according to Saxon inheritance laws, she would have received little.
Luther and his wife loved each other, and they made love. They had six children. Luther was nearly forty-three at the birth of their first child, Hans, and fifty-two when Margaret, their youngest, was born. He took delight in his 15 He wrote a charming letter to four children; they were a “most beautiful joy.” year-old Hans, creating for the little boy a tale about a beautiful garden with delicious fruit and little ponies with golden bridles and silver saddles, to 16 Luther could be cranky with his motivate Hans to study, pray, and be good. children at times and occasionally too severe, but he loved them deeply and was quick to learn important spiritual lessons from them.
Luther was convinced that he could not carry on his work without Katie. He was notoriously inept at household finance and gave little thought to everyday matters. His practical-minded wife planted a large garden, operated her own brewery, and treated her husband’s illnesses with the expertise of a physician. She cared for the steady stream of relatives, students, and visitors to their Wittenberg home, creating “a model for the Lutheran household in centuries to 18 Luther recognized in Katie “his principal support in this world…. His come.” marriage with her was the single greatest new influence on his life and thinking 19 A short time before he died, he asked his gathered friends after the monastery.” to comfort Katie, who “served me not only as a wife but as my assistant.”
Summarizing Doctrine
The year 1530 was difficult for Luther. The diet met in Augsburg; it was an important confrontation between the Catholic and Lutheran parties in the presence of Emperor Charles V. Luther, still an outlaw and without safe conduct, could not attend, but got as close as he could at the Castle Coburg, still safely within the borders of Electoral Saxony. For five months, he was again “in the wilderness,” as he had been at the Wartburg. There was little he could do but read, think, write—and pray and worry. On the walls of the room he used as a study at the castle, Luther wrote several verses from the Psalms. One was Psalm 118:17: “I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord.” He encouraged himself with the thought that “though the cause be great, he who has brought it about, who directs and guides it, is great too, yes, the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth. This is by no means our cause, so why should we keep on tormenting ourselves over it or plaguing ourselves to death?”
Luther worried that Philip Melanchthon would yield too much to the Catholics at Augsburg, but in the end he was immensely pleased with the Augsburg Confession. He thought its moderate tone better than anything he could have achieved. “I know nothing to improve or change in it, nor would this be appropriate,” Luther wrote, “since I cannot step so softly and quietly.”
Years later, in 1537, while suffering from heart trouble, Luther wrote a series of doctrinal statements at the request of Elector John Frederick, to be used in preparation for the anticipated General Council, long hoped for but now feared by Luther and the Protestants. In the preface, he announced that he was still alive and “still writing, preaching, and lecturing every day.” He then stated “his personal and fully developed views about what matters could not be 23 Faith in Christ is “the first and chief article,” Luther wrote. compromised.” “We hold that man is justified, without the works of the law, through faith…. From this article no wavering is possible, even if heaven and earth pass away.” After Luther’s death, this work received the title Smalcald Articles, and was incorporated into the 1580 Book of Concord. These articles, which summarize his theology, were in an important sense his last will and testament. He wrote that “those who live after me [will] have my testimony and confession to show where I have stood until now and where, by God’s grace, I will continue to stand.”
In 1520, the young Luther wrote in To the Christian Nobility of the GermanNation that Christ seeks as His representatives on earth not popes and prelates but ministers in the form of servants, the form in which he went about on earth “working, preaching, suffering, and dying.”
Late in 1531, Luther described his workload: “Four times a week I preach in public, twice a week I lecture, and in addition I hear cases [for pastoral counseling], write letters, and am working on a book for publication.” Preaching, teaching, counseling, and writing—these tasks occupied Luther for the last fifteen years of his life.
A Man of the Bible
Martin Luther was above all a man of the Bible. He gave his life to studying the Bible, translating it, preaching and teaching it. In October 1532, Luther said: “For some years now, I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and 28 And he wanted others, especially his fellow Germans, to read what it meant.” and study the Bible for themselves. In September 1534, the first complete Wittenberg Bible appeared, translated by Luther into living, everyday German. “He had truly listened to the common people—the language of the common man was not too lowly to be the language of God.”
Luther continued to work on his Bible translation—revising and perfecting it —with the help of others. Before dinner every Wednesday and Thursday, from the summer of 1539 to the beginning of 1541, he assembled a group of scholars, his “Sanhedrin” he called them, to assist him in revising his translation of the Old Testament. The last printed page on which he ever looked was the proof of the latest revision of his New Testament. “The German Bible is Luther’s noblest achievement,” Roland Bainton writes.
Luther’s preface to the Old Testament was revised to accompany his new translation of the Old Testament of 1545. Luther urged the reading of the Old Testament, because there, he wrote, are found “the very words, works, judgments, and deeds of the majesty, power, and wisdom of the most high 31 In 1546, Luther revised his preface to the New Testament to introduce God.” his fresh translation. Once again, Luther insisted on what he saw as the chief doctrine of the Bible: what the gospel demands is not good works but faith in Christ.
Much of Luther’s time in his last years was spent happily teaching and preaching the Bible—“allowing the Scriptures of the past to become the tidings of the present.”
In 1535, Luther became dean of the University of Wittenberg, a position he held for the rest of his life. For the older Luther, no work is as revealing as his massive Lectures on Genesis, delivered from 1535 to 1545. Despite his insistence on the literal meaning of the text, Luther frequently went far beyond the actual text, leaving very few theological problems untouched. In these lectures we find, as Heiko Oberman writes, “concentrated summaries of his 33 Luther was not satisfied, however, with his work. “The lectures are theology.” hastily thrown together and are imperfect,” he said. “I can’t do justice to such a thing while I’m busy with many tasks. To do much and to do it well don’t fit 34 Luther told his students that “Genesis is a charming book and has together.” wonderful stories. I can’t altogether understand it, however. I’ll have to be dead four years or so before I comprehend fully what creation means and what the omnipotence of God is.”
In the Pulpit
Luther taught the Bible at the university (preparing a generation of Lutheran preachers) and he preached it at Wittenberg and in other places in Saxony.
Johannes Bugenhagen (called Pomeranus by Luther because he was born in Pomerania), the regular pastor of the Wittenberg town church, was frequently away on church business, and even when he was in town, he often had Luther preach. Luther criticized his colleague’s preaching at one point, agreeing with Katie that Bugenhagen wandered too far from his subject. “Pomeranus preaches the way you women usually talk. He says whatever comes to mind. Dr. Justus Jonas is accustomed to say, ‘One shouldn’t hail every soldier one meets.’” (Luther’s Table Talk contains occasional disparaging comments about women, perhaps half in jest. After all, Katie was listening.) Luther called the people of Wittenberg “my congregation.” Late in 1536, he said, “I’ve preached here [in the city church of Wittenberg] for twenty-four years. I’ve walked to church so often that it wouldn’t be at all surprising if I had 38 “When I not only worn out my shoes on the pavement but even my feet.” preach here [in Wittenberg],” he told a visiting pastor, “I adapt myself to the circumstances of the common people. I don’t look at the doctors and masters, of whom scarcely forty are present, but at the hundred or the thousand young people and children. It’s to them that I preach, to them that I devote myself, for they, too, need to understand. If the others don’t want to listen they can leave. Therefore, my dear Bernard, take pains to be simple and direct.”
Luther’s sermons of lively biblical exposition were simple and clear, with pointed and sometimes sharp application, not always happily received. Luther saw stinginess, greed, and usury—not using one’s possessions in a Christian way —as serious problems in Wittenberg. He warned against immorality and drunkenness. The latter, Luther believed, was the prevailing sin among Germans (although he himself enjoyed his German beer). Luther knew that there could never be a sinless community on earth, but he expected a Christian city like Wittenberg to take more energetic action against abuses than it actually did. Despite the many pessimistic judgments he made in his later years, Luther could say, “I entertain no sorry picture of our Church, but rather that of the Church flourishing through pure and uncorrupted teaching and one increasing with 40 In 1545, he wrote a poem about how the excellent ministers from day to day.” poor, small city of Wittenberg had become famous “by God’s Word that streams from it and creates many souls for heaven.”
Luther was a good and effective preacher, but he was well aware of the difficulties of his task. “I have never been troubled by my inability to preach well,” he said, “but I have often been alarmed and frightened to think that I was obliged to speak thus in God’s presence about his mighty majesty and divine 42 Early in 1533, Luther said, “If I were to write about the burdens of the nature.” preacher as I have experienced them and as I know them, I would scare everybody off.”
Luther knew the problems and challenges of preaching. He also knew its power, because God was in it. God says to us, “‘Preach! I shall give the increase. I know the hearts of men.’ This should be our comfort, even when the world 44 Luther said that in his sermons he was also preaching to laughs at our office.” himself. He confessed, “I preach to others what I don’t do myself.”
A pastor asked Luther, “Reverend Father, teach me in a brief way how to preach.” Luther responded, “First, you must learn to go up to the pulpit. Second, you must know that you should stay there for a time. Third, you must learn to get down again.” The pastor was put out with Luther for what appeared to be a flippant answer. But then it occurred to him that the doctor had hit the mark very well. Luther explained that “anybody who keeps this order will be a good preacher. First, he must learn to go up to the pulpit, that is, he should have a regular and a divine call. Second, he must learn to stay there for a time, that is, he should have the pure and genuine doctrine. Third, he must also learn to get 46 Luther practiced down again, that is, he should preach not more than an hour.” what he preached. “I have learned this art,” he said. “When I have nothing more to say I stop talking.”
Luther preached until the very end. He delivered his last sermon on February 15, 1546, three days before his death. The location of his grave was chosen with great care—in front of the pulpit in the Castle Church of Wittenberg, because Luther considered the pulpit his most important place of work.
Later Writings
When Luther was not preaching and teaching, he was writing. He wrote hundreds of letters during his later years—fully a third of his total correspondence—in which he offered instruction, counsel, comfort, correction, and warning.
Luther produced pastoral writings, such as the charming little book he wrote for his friend and barber Peter Beskendorf, who asked Luther for instruction on how to pray. In that book, titled A Simple Way to Pray, Luther “succeeds in 48 His short Comfort being extremely practical and profound at the same time.”for Women Who Have Had a Miscarriage grew out of his concern that mothers whose babies die before or at birth know that God is not angry with them, that His “will is always better than ours, though it may seem otherwise to us from our human point of view,” and that their babies, though unbaptized, are not lost but saved by the prayers of their parents “in view of the promise that God willed to be their God. God… has not limited his power to the sacraments, but has made a covenant with us through his word.”
The older Luther was above all a practical theologian, working hard to structure the life of the church around the newly recovered doctrines of the Bible. He wrote a new constitution for the Lutheran churches. The important thing for Luther was not how the church was organized, but that the gospel be preached in it. He left much of the work of actually composing the new church orders and seeing them established to younger colleagues such as Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, for whom extensive travel was less difficult than for the aging and often-sick Luther.
The Bible, the catechism, the liturgy, and the hymnbook—the needs of the Reformed church—were all met by Luther himself. Luther emphasized congregational singing to encourage lay participation in worship and to teach, through words of hymns, true doctrine to ordinary people. His love for music—he said that music is second only to theology as a comfort to the human soul—and the hymns he wrote, with those he inspired, established his reputation as “father of the German hymn.”
Luther was shocked to discover while visiting the churches of Saxony in 1528 that the common people had “no knowledge whatever of Christian 51 He produced a Large Catechism for pastors and teachers and a teaching.”
Small Catechism for more general use. The Small Catechism became Luther’s most widely used writing in the centuries after its first publication in 1529.
In 1544, Luther consecrated the first church built for Protestant worship in Germany, in Torgau on the Elbe. Luther believed that “good, modest churches with low arches are the best for preachers and for listeners, for the ultimate object of these buildings is not the bellowing and bawling of choristers but the Word of God and its proclamation.”
On the Councils and the Church was the most substantial writing of Martin Luther’s later years. He wrote it in anticipation of a Catholic council, which was not in fact convoked until just before his death. On the Councils and the Church was “a work of profound historical and theological scholarship,” Jaroslav 53 In it, Luther draws on immense historical documentation to Pelikan writes. define the role of church councils and gives a final statement of the exclusively spiritual nature of the church. He clearly explains the distinction and connection between the empirical church and the hidden, or, as it was later called by Protestants, the “invisible” church. Luther describes seven characteristics of the church: sermon, baptism, holy communion, absolution, ordination, divine worship, and suffering and persecution. For Luther, the heart of the matter is that the church is neither building nor institution nor structure but the gathered congregation, the people of God. Luther had written in the Smalcald Articles that “a seven-year-old child knows what the church is, namely holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd.”
It was only in his later years that Luther found opportunity to study church history more thoroughly. He found, to his delight, that historical sources supported the theological convictions that he had drawn directly from his reading of the Bible. He then used history, as well as the Bible, to undermine papal claims and to portray the papacy as the kingdom of the Antichrist.
Polemical Works
On the Councils and the Church is not only an important work of ecclesiology; it 55 In his last years, Luther is a prime example of Luther’s “polemical overkill.” produced a stream of polemics against an assortment of enemies—Roman Catholics, Erasmus, other Protestants (including renegade Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Anabaptists), Turks, and Jews. The polemics of the older Luther are more violent, abusive, and vulgar than those of the younger man. “I hate 56 He railed against Erasmus from the bottom of my heart,” he declared.
Protestants who disagreed with him. He found no reason to be more charitable with these “false brethren” than he was with his opponents from Rome. Huldrych Zwingli, Johannes Oecolampadius, the Anabaptists, and even at times Martin Bucer, Luther said, were instruments of the devil.
Luther recognized that anger was his besetting sin. He knew that at times he was “proud and arrogant—as you see in my books that I despise my adversaries. 57 Luther believed, however, that his anger served a useful I take them for fools.” purpose. “Anger refreshes all my blood, sharpens my mind, and drives away temptations,” he commented. He saw himself as “a coarse woodsman, who must 58 Luther said, “I was born to go to war and give battle pioneer and hew a path.” to sects and devils. That is why my books are stormy and warlike. I have to root 59 Melanchthon out the stumps and clumps, hack away the thorns and brambles.” agreed. In his funeral oration for his friend, He agreed with Erasmus’ statement that “Because of the magnitude of the disorders, God gave this age a violent physician.”
Some have attempted to excuse or soften Luther’s harsh polemics. Haile argues that these writings should not be dismissed “as mere emotional outburst. Few authors have had as much experience with the pen as he, and rare is the human who has so carefully searched his own soul. Luther knew what he was 61 Luther’s abusiveness was “a deliberate rhetorical tactic,” Edwards doing.” argues. He could write a moderate, well-reasoned polemic if political circumstances made it advisable. “When Luther was harsh and abusive, it was by 62 Edwards notes that Luther directed “his attacks more against the devil choice.” 63 The devil, of allegedly motivating the opponent than against the man himself.” course, in Luther’s view, deserved all the abuse that could be heaped upon him.
Kittelson claims that Luther’s harsh words were “in no way an emotional outburst from a sick, old man. Rather, like most public actions, they grew from a 64 Gritsch says combination of internal convictions and external developments.” that Luther’s fierce Against Hanswurst“displayed his masterful use of medieval abusive language and wit to expound the distinctions he made between the true church of the gospel and the false church of Rome.”
It is frequently said that sharp polemics were common in the sixteenth century and that Luther was simply following a well-established practice. But Luther appears to have gone beyond most other figures of his time in extreme expression. Melanchthon at times regretted Luther’s violent language. Even Katie objected. Luther was harshly criticizing Caspar Schwenckfeld’s book on Christ when Katie interrupted, “Ah, dear Sir, that’s much too coarse!” Luther replied that people like Schwenckfeld cause him to be coarse, because “this is 66 Luther’s attack on Catholics in Against the way one must talk to the devil.”
Hanswurst was, Heinrich Bullinger wrote to Martin Bucer, “unbecoming, 67 It is difficult to read completely immodest, entirely scurrilous, and frivolous.”
Luther’s extreme language without a profound sadness that a great man and earnest Christian did not see that there was a better way to stand for the truth. Luther, rebuking Erasmus, wrote in On the Bondage of the Will that a true Christian delights in assertions—“I mean a constant adhering, affirming, 68 Yes, but how one confessing, maintaining, and an invincible persevering.” does that is not unimportant.
Against the Papacy at Rome, Founded by the Devil, the last major polemic of Luther’s life, was written at the request of his prince, John Frederick, to strengthen the resolve of the Protestants on what became the eve of religious war in Germany. “Without question it is the most intentionally violent and vulgar writing to come from Luther’s pen,” Edwards writes. “It was also superb for 69 The heart of Luther’s writing was his rallying the faithful on the eve of battle.” intense conviction that he was attacking the Antichrist. He combined logic, history, Scripture, and verbal abuse in depicting the horrifying nature of the papacy in the most vivid way he could.
In 1541, Elector John Frederick asked Luther to write an appeal for prayer against the Turks to help build morale for defeating the Turks militarily. But in his Appeal for Prayer against the Turks, Luther seemed more concerned with the lack of Christian commitment on the part of the German people and saw the advancing Turkish armies as a sign of God’s rod of chastisement. He began:
They say there is no helping up a man who turns down good counsel.
We Germans have heard the word of God now for many years, by which God, the Father of all mercies, enlightens us and calls us from the abominable darkness and idolatry of the papacy into the light of his holy kingdom. But today it is a horrible sight to see how thankless and ungrateful we have been toward it.
Luther concluded his appeal by warning that
we Christians are not to put our hope in our cleverness, nor in our might…. Our solace, boldness, self-confidence, security, victory, life, joy, our honor and glory are seated up there in person at the right hand of God the Father Almighty…. We commit all to him. He will do all things well as he has from the beginning, does now, and always will do unto all eternity. Amen.
Luther’s central conviction was that the Turks “were God’s punishment on a sinful Christendom that, among other sins, tolerated the papal abomination.” For this reason, Luther’s polemics against the Turks seem more restrained than his writings against the Jews, Catholics, and even some other Protestants.
The tone of Luther’s writings about the Jews shifted over time from cautious hope to bitter denunciation. Luther reminded his people that Gentiles are the 72 He described David and pagans and the Jews are the blood relatives of Christ. the writers of the New Testament as “real Jews,” and stated that we Gentile Christians are in no way equal to the Jews—except for Augustine, “who is the 73 Luther only doctor in the church of the Gentiles who stands out above others.” argued that if the Jews were treated kindly and were correctly taught the Holy Scripture—Old and New Testaments—then “many of them would become true Christians and would return to the faith of their fathers, the prophets and the patriarchs.” When Jews converted to Christianity, Luther said, they became our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Few Jews, however, became Christians. When it was rumored that some Jews were attempting to convert Christians to Judaism, it was too much for Luther. His earlier, more accepting attitude turned into angry rejection, not because the Jews were Jews but because they were not Christians. In 1543, Luther published On the Jews and Their Lies, in which he urged German leaders 74 It was, Gritsch writes, “an to “chase all the Jews out of their land.” unforgivably harsh judgment” for one who had shown so much love for the people of Israel in his work as an Old Testament scholar.
Wrestling with His Legacy
In March 1545, Luther completed the preface to the Wittenberg edition of his Latin writings. At times, Luther seemed proud and pleased that he had written so many books. At other times, he expressed misgivings about them. When printers urged Luther to allow them to publish his collected works, Luther said, “I’d rather that all my books would disappear and the Holy Scriptures alone would be read.” When he completed his large commentary on Galatians, he said, “I wonder who encourages this mania for writing! Who wants to buy such stout tomes? And if they’re bought, who’ll read them? And if they’re read, who’ll be edified by them?”
Later, Luther said, “If my advice were taken, only the books of mine that contain doctrine would be printed, such as my Galatians, Deuteronomy, and John. The rest [of my books] should be read merely for the history, in order to 77 In the preface to his Latin books, see how it all [the Reformation] began.”
Luther described the beginnings of the Reformation, creating “an important historical personal testimony.”
Dealing with Political Authorities
Luther spent the last years of his life as a counselor to princes, attempting to support the religious movement he began and to prevent it from becoming entangled in political interests. He did not relish this role. In earlier years, Luther adamantly rejected armed resistance to the emperor in defense of the faith. Later, Luther shifted his position somewhat, holding that the right of military resistance to the emperor was a political and legal question and not a theological one. He attempted to quiet the consciences of those, including himself, who might worry that resistance to the emperor in defense of religion would be a violation of God’s will.
It was not in Luther’s character to compromise on matters of Scripture and theology. He was never theologically comfortable with the notion of defending the gospel with the sword. Circumstances, however, required concession and accommodation, and Luther reluctantly adjusted while attempting to remain true to his convictions.
Pessimism about the World
Luther had no great hope for much improvement in the state of the world. He said, “God does not think so much of his temporal realm as he does of his spiritual realm…. So I would not advise that any changes be made. We just have to patch and darn as best we can while we live, punish the abuses, and lay 79 Luther’s illustration of the futility of bandages and poultices over the sores.” human efforts to solve the world’s problems is often quoted: “The world is like a drunken peasant. If you lift him into the saddle on one side, he will fall off on the other side. One can’t help him, no matter how one tries. He wants to be the devil’s.”
Despite his pessimistic attitude, Luther did not give way to cynicism or passivity. He worked to try to help make life in this world more tolerable. The last days of his life were spent at the negotiating table dealing with secular matters. Luther clung to the view that he set forth years earlier in To theChristian Nobility of the German Nation: his national program for “his beloved Germans” was one of “repentance, repair, and reform, with no prospect of a 81 Luther took comfort in his golden age until after the Second Coming.” conviction that he lived in the last days when God would return and make everything right. He believed that the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 was “truly the 82 Ten years later, he said, “I always hope last trump before the day of judgment.” 83 Even that the day of judgment isn’t far away and that we’ll live to see it.” encouraging events Luther interpreted as signs of the end times. “I think the last day is not far off,” he commented at table. “My reason is that a last great effort is now being made to advance the gospel. It’s like a candle. Just before it burns out it makes a last great spurt, as if it would continue to burn for a long time, and then it goes out.”
Spiritual Warfare
Once, Luther, joking with his friends, told them that he was “a simple man.” “You are more learned than I am in economic and political matters,” he said. “I’m not interested in such things. I’m concerned about the church and must 85 The devil was very real to defend myself against the attacks of the devil.”
Luther—and very powerful. Luther said, “The devil is as big as the world, as wide as the world, and he extends from heaven down into hell.”
Luther wrote: “Reader, be commended to God, and pray for the growth of the word against Satan. Strong and evil, now also very furious and savage, he 87 The devil knows his time is short and the kingdom of his pope is in danger.” often troubled Luther by saying, “Before there was glorious peace, but now you 88 Luther sometimes dealt with have disturbed it, and who ordered you to do so?” the devil by making fun of him with coarse, rude language. He also learned how to answer the devil’s theological arguments. Luther told a guest who was obsessed by thoughts of his sins: “Do not argue with Satan about the law. Make him discuss grace.”
While facing the power of the devil and the strategies of evil men, Christians seem to be fighting a losing battle. “Neither sweat nor sword can ever advance the messianic kingdom,” Luther said. Rather, it comes by “enduring, working, persevering, waiting—publicly proclaiming the Gospel, openly beseeching God to intervene.”
Suffering
In To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, the young Luther had written that it is the suffering Christ who seeks representation on earth not only through our working and preaching but also through our suffering and dying. The older Luther knew what it was to suffer. During the last decade and a half of his life, his physical ailments and discomforts became critical and at times life threatening. He was often in pain, sometimes in agony, from kidney stones and gallstones, stomach disorders, increasing deafness, shortness of breath, severe headaches, and heart problems. He suffered mentally and emotionally, troubled by spiritual depression and doubt and despair for the world, and sometimes for the church. He was deeply disappointed about the progress of the Reformation movement and anxious about the dangers that political involvement might bring. Toward the end, Luther began to question his own sanity, and even had thoughts of suicide. But he was able to say, “Well. All right. If I go mad, God will remain sane and Christ my Lord will be my wisdom.”
In times of depression, Luther said, we must “double up our fists and pray,” 92 He urged the prayers of but he admitted that it was not always easy to do so. friends. He depended on Katie’s love and wisdom. Eating a fine meal and drinking good beer also helped. Music, he found, was a good way to “banish 93 Above all, Luther turned to the trials and thoughts,” since the devil hates it so.
Bible for help in times of trouble. Preaching from 1 Peter 5:5– 11, he urged Christians to fling aside “care and fearful apprehensions… but not into a corner… for when cares cling to the heart, they cannot be flung aside in that way. Let the Christian learn to cast both his heart and his cares upon God’s back, for God has a strong neck and strong shoulders; He can easily carry the load.”
Commenting on Ecclesiastes 6:12, Luther asked, “Why are we so vexed by thoughts, seeing that the future is not in our power for one moment? Let us, then, be satisfied with the present and commit ourselves to the hand of God, who 95 During a time of sickness in alone knows and controls the past and the future.” 1542, he found help in Psalm 31, admitting that he had not really understood “My times are in thy hand” until then. “That is, my whole life, each day, hour, moment—which is the same as to say, ‘My health, sickness, misfortune, happiness, life, death, joy, and sorrow are in thy hand.’” Luther suffered the loss of friends and relatives. While he was at Coburg Castle in 1530, news of his father’s death shook him. He took his psalter, went to 97 The next year, Luther’s mother died. Nothing his room, and wept for two days. caused Luther greater suffering than the death of his thirteen-year-old daughter, 98 The separation caused by her death Magdalena, on September 20, 1542. troubled him beyond measure. He said, “It’s strange to know that she is surely at peace and that she is well off there [with her Father in heaven], very well off, and yet to grieve so much!” To friends who sympathized with him, he said simply, “I’ve sent a saint to heaven.”
Despite his suffering, Luther kept on preaching, teaching, and writing. It could even be said that because of his suffering, he kept on. From Psalm 119, he derived three rules for the “correct way of studying theology”—“oratio[prayer], meditatio[meditation], tentatio[suffering].” It is primarily through tentatio in its many forms that one comes to understand “how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God’s Word is, wisdom beyond all wisdom.”
Martyrdom was important to Luther because it epitomized his idea of the church as a suffering community. In his 1539 book On the Councils and theChurch, he explicitly identified suffering and persecution as one of the marks of the true church:
The holy Christian people are externally recognized by the holy possession of the sacred cross. They must endure every misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil, the world, and the flesh… by inward sadness, timidity, fear, outward poverty, contempt, illness, and weakness, in order to become like their head, Christ.
On July 1, 1523, two Augustinian monks from the monastery at Eisleben, Luther’s birthplace, were burned before the town hall of Brussels. When Luther received the news, he began to weep and said, “I thought that I should be the 102 During a first to be martyred for the Holy Gospel; but I was not worthy of it.” serious illness a few years later, Luther became depressed because he thought that God did not consider him worthy of martyrdom. Robert Barnes, an Augustinian monk from the Cambridge monastery who had studied in Wittenberg, was burned at Smithfield on July 30, 1540, by order of King Henry VIII. Luther published a German translation of Barnes’ last confession of faith. In the foreword, Luther wrote: “It is a particular joy to me to hear that our good and pious companion at home and table has so graciously been called upon by God to shed his blood for the sake of His beloved Son and to become a holy 103 From his first lectures on the Bible to his last on Genesis, Luther’s martyr.” view of the church remained unchanged: it is a visible and suffering communion of Christians. Through his long study of the prolonged trials of the patriarchs in Genesis, Luther learned that life can be a greater and truer martyrdom than any death, however spectacular.
World-Weariness
Luther enjoyed life in Wittenberg with his wife, children, students, friends, and his dog. He was delighted with the beauty of nature around him. On January 1, he greeted the year 1538 with the words, “How good, joyful, and auspicious is the beginning of a new year for the glory of Christ, the salvation of his church, 104 In 1539, he reveled in the and the confusion of Satan and his adherents!” flowers of a spring day, “whose blooms are a parable of the resurrection of the dead. How pleasant the trees are! How delightfully green everything is beginning to be!… If God can take such delight in our earthly sojourn, what must it be like in the life to come?”
More and more, however, Luther was plagued with discouragement— about himself, the state of the world, and even the church. In April 1533, Luther declared, “I am quite tired of living. May our Lord God come soon and quickly 106 In 1538, he said, “I am now exhausted and full of cares, yet I take me away!” 107 A few years later, he confessed, “I’m fed up am plagued with many duties.” with the world, and it is fed up with me.”
Approaching the End
In his lectures, Luther came to the last chapters of Genesis as he came to the last weeks of his life. There, he found many precious truths to strengthen his faith. He said about Jacob’s death, “Jacob dies, it is true, yet his death is tantamount to life—indeed, it is the closest thing to life.” Luther spoke for Jacob in the first person, “I am dying and shall lie in the sepulcher, but God lives. He who has promised the land into which he will lead you will also set me over into another, 109 Luther lectured for a few more weeks on far better land. For it is his promise.” the burial of Jacob and on Joseph’s death and burial. He finally ended his ten year labor on the book of Genesis on Tuesday, November 17, 1545, with the words: “And that is the sweet book of Genesis. May our Lord God give it to others to do a better job after me. I can do no more. I am weak. Pray God for me, that he may give me a blissful end.”
Luther was sick and weak, but he was still feisty. In January 1546, a few weeks before he died, he began a treatise against the Louvain theologians. He was more enraged at them than befits a theologian and an old man, he explained, “but one must resist Satan’s monsters even if one must blow at them with one’s last breath!”
On February 7, Luther was in Eisleben on his third trip to help two counts, who were brothers, reconcile their differences. While there, he wrote to his wife in a playful and bantering tone:
To my dear wife, Katherine Luther, doctoress and self-tormentor at Wittenberg, my gracious lady, Grace and peace in the Lord! Read, dear Katie, John and the Small Catechism, of which you once said: Indeed, everything in this book is said about me. For you want to assume the cares of your God, just as if He were not almighty and were unable to create ten Dr. Martins if this old one were drowned in the Saale or suffocated in a stove or trapped on Wolf ’s fowling floor. Leave me in peace with your worrying! I have a better Caretaker than you and all the angels. He it is who lies in a manger and nurses at a virgin’s breast, but at the same time sits at the right hand of God, the almighty Father. Therefore be at rest. Amen.
Catholics and Protestants awaited news of Luther’s death—the Catholics hoped for a terrible death (to prove that he was wrong) and the Protestants a triumphant one (to prove that he was right). There are many great events in Luther’s life, but none greater than his last few days. Two days before he died, he wrote a few lines in Latin, found next to his deathbed. They read in part, “No one should believe that he has tasted the Holy Scriptures sufficiently unless he has spent one hundred years leading churches with the prophets.” This was followed by the words “We are beggars” in German, and in Latin again, “That is 113 With those words, Luther aptly and humbly summed up his life as a true.”
Reformer and theologian. It was not what he did, but what God did through him. He was a beggar. That is true.
Martin Luther died in the early morning hours of February 18, 1546, only a few steps from the house in Eisleben where he was born sixty-two years earlier. A crowd of people surrounded his bed and tried to comfort him, as he kept repeating, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” His comfort was not in what he had done for God, not in his love for God, but in God’s love for him such that He gave His only Son to die for his sins. Luther had given his life to preaching and teaching Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, received by faith alone. His one great message was that “the life of a Christian is linked to the lifeline of mercy which God established in Christ. Thus, the Christian truly lives by faith alone rather than by the merit of good works aimed 114 Luther’s longtime friend Justus Jonas, then pastor in Halle, at pacifying God.” asked, “Reverend father, will you die steadfast in Christ and the doctrines you have preached?” “Yes,” replied the clear voice for the last time.
Oberman ends his biography of Luther: “According to the medieval memento mori, in the midst of life we are surrounded by death. Luther’s faith enabled him to vigorously turn this on its head: ‘In the midst of death we are surrounded by life.’” Martin Luther was buried in front of the pulpit in the Castle Church of Wittenberg on February 22, 1546. It was an appropriate place. The pulpit was the place of his life’s work. He was a preacher of the Word of God.
And he was faithful to the end.
Notes
Notes
1. Mark U. Edwards Jr., Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics 1531–46(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 10.
2. H.G. Haile, Luther: An Experiment in Biography(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980); Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles; Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532–1546(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).
3. Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil(Doubleday, 1992), 328. Oberman’s book is dedicated to the memory of Roland H. Bainton “who combined the gifts of profound penetration and powerful presentation to make Martin Luther come alive for generations of students of the Reformation, on both sides of the Atlantic.” My quotations from Luther are taken from LW or from secondary sources as footnoted. The footnotes of these secondary sources provide the location of the quotations from the various German editions of Luther’s works.
4. Kittelson, Luther the Reformer, 241.
5. LW, 54:30. Occupying vol. 54 of Luther’s Works is Table Talk, a collection of Luther’s conversation with dinner guests at Luther’s house, the former Augustinian monastery, in Wittenberg. Here Luther is at his best (and sometimes at his worst) in his honest, down-to-earth, and often humorous comments. Table Talk must, of course, be used with care since it comes not directly from Luther, but from friends and students who recorded his words. But, as Roland Bainton writes, “This material is not to be indiscriminately rejected. Often it is highly piquant and has the veritable ring of Luther” (Studies on the Reformation[Boston: Beacon, 1963], 99). Luther’s Table Talk is especially important for this chapter since it comes from the older Luther (1531–44).
6. Bainton, Here I Stand, 292.
7. Ibid., 300.
8. Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532–1546(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), xii. Brecht’s first two volumes are titled Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483–1521(1985) and Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521–1532(1990).
9. Brecht, The Preservation of the Church, xii.
10. LW, 54:7.
11. Ibid. , 54:20.
12. Haile, Luther, 259.
13. Brecht, The Preservation of the Church, 235.
14. LW, 54:8.
15. Brecht, The Preservation of the Church, 236.
16. Haile, Luther, 90–91.
17. See Roland H. Bainton, “Luther on Birds, Dogs and Babies,” in Studies on the Reformation, 67– 74.
18. Haile, Luther, 264.
19. Ibid., 262.
20. Ibid., 219.
21. LW, Vol. 43: Devotional Writings II, ed. Gustav. K. Wiencke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), 173.
22. Ibid. , 43:297–98.
23. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), xvii.
24. Martin Luther, Word and Sacrament, 38:11–21, quoted in Haile, Luther: An Experiment inBiography, 209.
25. Martin Luther, Smalcald Articles, in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the EvangelicalLutheran Church, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959), 289.
26. LW, 44:165.
27. LW, 54:22–23.
28. Ibid., 54:165.
29. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, 305.
30. Bainton, Here I Stand, 255.
31. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 119.
32. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, 173.
33. Ibid., 166. “Although these lectures deserve to be used as an introduction to Luther’s world of faith, they have nearly fallen into oblivion owing to the prevailing interest in the young Luther” (167). Martin Brecht writes that Luther’s great lectures on Genesis “are unquestionably monumental documents of Luther’s mature theology, and they also reflect his participation in the developments, problems, and conflicts of the last decade of his life” (136).
34. LW, 54:289.
35. Ibid., 54:409.
36. Ibid., 54:428.
37. Luther “was a stout defender of womankind in a world where slighting remarks were in vogue” (Haile, Luther, 270).
38. LW, 54:206.
39. Ibid., 54:235–36.
40. Bainton, Here I Stand, 286.
41. Quoted in Brecht, The Preservation of the Church, 265.
42. LW, 54:158.
43. Ibid., 54:73–74.
44. Ibid., 54:213.
45. Ibid., 54:75.
46. Ibid., 54:393.
47. Ibid., 54:292.
48. Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God(New York: Dutton, 2014), 271.
49. LW, 43:247, 249.
50. Haile, Luther, 53.
51. Quoted in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 409.
52. LW, 54:272.
53. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 157.
54. Luther, Smalcald Articles, in The Book of Concord(1959), 315.
55. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, xiii.
56. LW, 54:84.
57. Ibid., 54:93.
58. Edwards , Luther’s Last Battles, 6.
59. Haile, Luther, 161.
60. Clyde Manschreck, Melanchthon: The Quiet Reformer(New York: Abingdon, 1958), 275.
61. Haile, Luther: An Experiment in Biography, 164.
62. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 143, 162.
63. Ibid., 152.
64. Kittelson, Luther the Reformer, 259.
65. Eric W. Gritsch, Martin: God’s Court Jester; Luther in Retrospect(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 82.
66. LW, 54:470.
67. Quoted in Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 155.
68. LW, 33:19.
69. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 163.
70. LW, 43:219, 241.
71. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 98.
72. Ibid., 122.
73. LW, 54:340.
74. Ibid., 54:426.
75. Gritsch, Martin: God’s Court Jester, 83.
76. LW, 54:311.
77. Ibid., 54:440.
78. Brecht, The Preservation of the Church, 144.
79. Haile, Luther, 101.
80. LW, 54:111.
81. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, 47.
82. LW, 54:186.
83. Ibid., 54:402.
84. Gritsch, Martin: God’s Court Jester, 82.
85. LW, 54:405.
86. Haile, Luther, 185.
87. LW, 34:338.
88. LW, 54:96.
89. Haile, Luther, 188.
90. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, 72.
91. Haile, Luther, 217.
92. Ibid., 302.
93. Ibid.
94. What Luther Says, 3:1541.
95. Ibid. , 3:1542.
96. Haile, Luther, 300.
97. Oberman , Luther: Man between God and the Devil, 311.
98. Luther’s eight-month-old daughter, Elizabeth, had died August 3, 1528.
99. LW, 54:432–33.
100. Brecht, The Preservation of the Church, 143.
101. LW, Vol. 41: Church and Ministry III, ed. Eric W. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 164.
102. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, 265.
103. Ibid., 269.
104. LW, 54:255.
105. Ibid., 54:351.
106. Ibid., 54:83.
107. Ibid., 54:281.
108. Ibid., 54:448.
109. Haile, Luther, 321.
110. Ibid., 324.
111. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 201.
112. What Luther Says, 3:1545.
113. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, 167.
114. Gritsch, Martin: God’s Court Jester, 75.
115. Oberman , Luther: Man between God and the Devil, 3.
116. Ibid., 330.