“Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me, Amen.”
– Martin Luther
Here I Stand, A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton (New York, New York: Meridian, 1995, 302 pages with bibliography, references, source of illustrations and index).
Many years ago, when first I began to read about the Reformation, I came across Roland Bainton’s biography of Martin Luther and couldn’t put it down. I thought then, and think to this day, that it is a classic on the subject of Martin Luther and the Reformation.
Born in England in 1894, Bainton lived most of his life in the United States, graduating from Yale University with a Ph.D., where he later served as the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History. With a background like that, readers it may be tempted to suppose that Bainton’s writing, while scholarly, would have little appeal to the non-specialist. He would be half right. While it is true that Bainton was a gifted scholar, Here I Stand is anything but a dull read.
“‘ ‘St. Anne help me! I will become a monk,’ ” are the first words we hear from Luther in Here I Stand. Always with a flair for the dramatic, Luther, the young university student, was returning to his studies at the University of Erfurt when he was knocked to the ground by a sudden lightening strike. Convinced by this that God was calling him to life in the monastery, Luther would abandon his secular studies to join the Augustinian order of monks.
As the Apostle Paul, whose teachings he would one day expound so well, Luther excelled many in zeal for his calling. Bainton quotes Luther thus, “I was a good monk, and I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery it was I. All my brothers in the monastery who knew me will bear me out. If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading, and other work.”
As Bainton tells it, Luther was something of a holy terror in the confessional. “He confessed frequently,” writes Bainton, often daily, and for as long as six hours on a single occasion. Every sin in order to be absolved was to be confessed…Luther would repeat a confession and, to be sure of including everything, would review his entire life until the confessor grew weary and exclaimed, ‘Man, God is not angry with you. You are angry with God. Don’t you know that God commands you to hope?’ ”
But while Luther’s confessional zeal exasperated the poor brother unfortunate enough to be tasked with having to hear it, it was the young monk who had the correct understanding of God’s holiness. In all this, God was teaching Luther the central tenant of Christianity, that justification comes not through the works of the law but through belief (faith) in Christ alone. Luther wrote, “I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, ‘the justice of God’…Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven….”
But if the words of Paul served as a gate to heaven for Luther, the reaction of the Roman Catholic Church to his subsequent activities would soon show him the earthly price of faithfulness to Christ.
As one who understood that a man is justified by faith in Christ alone, Luther soon found himself at odds with the practice of selling indulgences. Exactly one year before his famous act of nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door, on October 31, 1516 Luther preached against indulgences in the hearing of his prince, the Elector of Saxon. According to Bainton, indulgences “were the bingo of the sixteenth century,” and to the extent that they brought in revenue to the Elector, Luther displeased the prince for pointing out the fraud.
Continuing with his discussion of indulgences, Bainton brings out the interesting occasion for Luther’s jeremiad against the practice: the construction of St. Peter’s in Rome. It strikes this author as no small irony that the construction of the single best-known symbol of papacy – St. Peter’s Cathedral – actually served as the spark that helped to set off the Reformation. To hear Bainton tell it, Pope Julius II had commissioned the building of the edifice to replace an old wooden basilica dating from the time of Constatine, but had died before the work could be completed. In Bainton’s words, “The piers [of St. Peter’s] were laid; Julius died; the work lagged; weeds sprouted from the pillars; [Pope] Leo took over; he needed money.”
And to where does a pope in need of money turn in his distress? To the “bingo of the sixteenth century” of course. That is to say, indulgences. And who better to hawk these indulgences than a certain Dominican by the name of John Tetzel, who seemed to be something of a sixteenth century Elmer Gantry. Tetzel had a marvelously effective sales pitch, in which he pleaded with his hearers to release their loved ones from the torments of purgatory through the purchase of indulgences, promising them, “As soon as the coin the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
All this was too much for Luther, who in response wrote his 95 theses, nailing them to the Wittenberg church door, October 31, 1517. Concludes Bainton, “Luther took no steps to spread his theses among the people. He was merely inviting scholars to dispute and dignitaries to define, but others surreptitiously translated the theses into German and gave them to the press. In short order they became the talk of Germany. What Karl Barth said said of his own unexpected emergence as a reformer could be said equally of Luther, that he was like a man climbing in the darkness a winding staircase in the steeple of an ancient cathedral. In the blackness he reached out to steady himself, and his hand laid hold of a rope. He was startled to hear the clanging of a bell.”
There is, of course, much more to Here I Stand than can be discussed in this short review. Suffice it to say that this book is a classic of Reformation history, one that both informs and inspires. All those interested in Reformation history, whether a novice reader or a seasoned scholar, will find value in Bainton’s work.
Lux Lucet 
IMHO people should be steered away from Luther and Lutheranism because of their absurd understanding of the person of Christ, the Lord’s Supper, salvation, and especially their understanding of scripture, being Van Tillians before Van Til himself. Their false doctrine damages souls. As far as the Reformed are concerned many Lutheran pastors, like Luther, are slanderers accusing the Reformed of many things of which they’re not guilty, e.g. Harold Senkbeil in Sanctification: Christ in Action setting up Chuck Swindol as Reformed and then attacking him/it as though it was Reformed…just one example. I suppose one would have to spend some time around them to pick up the hate, something I wouldn’t recommend.
If one spent some time around Luther it wouldn’t take him long to alienate that individual…and that spirit lives on in many Lutheran churches.
As Reformed believers, obviously we have our differences with Luther and Lutheran theology. That said, Luther understood and taught the doctrine of Justification By Belief Alone, so the Reformed have that in common with him.
Regarding Lutheran attitudes to Reformed believers, maybe some of them aren’t terribly fond of Calvinists, but in my experience, I have not seen the level of animosity you describe. I’m not familiar with Harold Senkbeil’s work.
In my own assessment of Luther, I can see how he might alienate those around him. He was something of a theological bulldozer, which suited him well for the task of taking on the lies of Antichrist, but made it hard for him to work with others.
Steve,
IMHO, Implicitly, Luther, denied justification by belief alone in Christ alone (JFACA) and added to it belief in the physical body of Christ in the bread and His blood in the wine, his own doctrine. He locks salvation up to ones view of the Lord’s Supper. This becomes obvious when he told Zwingli at Marburg, “…we don’t have the same spirit” and later in his tracts, when he became overly abusive, against the same and his followers. This addition by Luther ought to give his own followers, at least, some pause. They contrive a reason against us for this, saying that, we hold a false view of the person of Christ, therefore, we hold a false view of the supper. Experiencing their false teaching first hand, I would steer people away from Luther and the Lutheran Church. The supposition that they hold JFACA is not enough to overcome the other doctrines they hold that undermine it.
The Reformed look at Luther as their friend when in fact by his own words, he is not, condemning them and us. It’s not that Luther alienated some around him in general or that he was abrasive in personality (he was) which is bearable under certain circumstances, it’s that he would alienate and condemn you, me, Robbins, and every other Reformed person who lauds him, for holding a different view of The Supper. This same spirit (hardness of heart) lives on today. among the more conservative of them in the WELS and LCMS. When I attended the WELS one of their number (pastor or theologian) wrote a diatribe, “We (Still) Don’t Have the Same Spirit.” A Lutheran friend gave it to me and I asked him rhetorically what it meant to which I received a shrug. I stated that that by implication I’m not a Christian. Oblivious, he was aghast. At least to me, words mean something. Obviously to a Lutheran or Van Tillian words don’t mean much. When a would be Christian says to another, “We don’t have the same spirit” the meaning is obvious to any sane person.
As far as being a theological bulldozer I believe the Lutheran Reformation, Luther being its head, was a stunted reformation in which many of the idols of Catholicism remained and plague us today. It was Luther’s own sinful personality that caused it to be thus and his disciples are plagued with the same spirit. As a side note it’s interesting how some Reformed theologians make Zwingli out to be the obstinate one.
It is their Van Tillian view of scripture that should garner the most concern from us. Are we to overlook in Luther and Lutheranism what we find abhorrent in our own circles? Lutheranism is the most likely source of Van Til’s error, “The apparent contradictions are to stand as they read and you are a rationalist if you don’t accept this or try to seek resolution of passages.” Not so!
I believe that many of the Reformed have done a disservice to Christ and His church by trying to placate Luther (and Lutherans) in his obstinate stance on The Supper. Having come through, I’m of no such mind. I don’t care what they think. I don’t believe Christ is present in (with, and under) the bread or wine in any way shape of form either physically or spiritually (animism). Zwingli did a fine job refuting Luther’s error from John 6. If the errorist will not repent, it’s not the job of the righteous to placate but stand firm. Our desire to placate the absurdity has brought us to the absurd with confusing statements about the Lord’s Supper especially it’s being called a mystery which I don’t believe for a second. This defeats and negates the whole purpose of God’s design in revelation. Does God really come to us rationally through the Word and then cast us back on mystery in the Lord’s Supper? I think not.
There are the other doctrines on which they err: 1) The natures of Christ, believing that the human nature doesn’t remain human and that the divine doesn’t remain divine mixing the natures; 2) Salvation, believing that it can be lost and regained much like a person dresses and undresses. If this doesn’t violate JFACA I don’t know what does. Is one initially justified by faith but subsequently justified by works? This is what Piper teaches; 3) Election, as if God were not sovereign, a doctrine they try to minimize, which they believe will damage the elect. The Reformed have followed Lutheran teaching trying to soften the blow of God’s determination. This undermines the character of God in order to make Him acceptable to sinful man. The Bible makes it clear that God has this whole deal wrapped up tight. Nothing is accidental, not the fall of Adam or the damnation of the reprobate. All of it was ordained beginning to end. This begs a question. What do they mean when they say, “Jesus is Lord?” Obviously it’s not quite what the Bible means when it states that, “Jesus is Lord.” Maybe they don’t know what “Lord” means.
Anyway, thanks for the venue to vent.
Respectfully,
Eric