Tag: conscience

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As Lutheran As It Gets

09: Kittleson – Luther the Pastor

Pr. Riley and Pr. Gillespie free range graze on James Kittleson’s “Luther the Reformer.”

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Higher History

Who Was Martin Luther? Part 9

Martin Luther Wittenbrerg doors

Rev. Donavon Riley

Martin Luther’s move to Wittenberg did not lighten his workload at all. In fact, if anything, after he received his special license that made him a candidate for the doctorate in 1512, Luther’s life became so busy he barely had time to sleep.

“I could use two secretaries,” Luther wrote, “I do almost nothing during the day but write letters… I am a preacher at the monetary, a reader at meals, a parish preacher, director of studies, supervisor of eleven monasteries, superintendent of the fish pond at Litzkau, referee of a squabble at Torgau, lecturer on Paul, a collector of materials for a commentary on the Psalms, and then, as I said, I am overwhelmed with letters. I rarely have time for the required daily prayers and saying mass, not to mention my own temptations with the world, the flesh, and the devil. You see how lazy I am.”

Still, the old nagging questions hung onto him. Martin was still in search of a merciful God. As “lazy” as he imagined himself to be, or not, Luther’s studies and teaching led him deeper into Scripture. He searched, and wrote, and lectured, and preached like a man on his hands and knees crawling through the valley of the shadow of death. He hunted God through the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, which was where his particular theological expertise lay.

This is why, as Luther later said, “I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search deeper for it, where my temptations took me.”

During his early years as a lecturer Luther taught the book of Genesis (1512), the Psalms (1513-15151), Romans (1515-1516), Galatians (1516-1517), Hebrews (1517-1518), and again the Psalms (1518-1521).

And through them all, Luther was hunting for God’s mercy. He chased after “the righteousness of God,” to understand what “righteousness” meant. As Luther said years later, “I hated that word [at Romans 1:17], ‘the righteousness of God,’ which, according to the custom and the use of teachers, I had been taught to understand in the philosophical sense with respect to the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner.”

“Though I lived as a monk without reproach,” he said, “I felt, with the most disturbed conscience imaginable, that I was a sinner before God. I did not love, indeed I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners and secretly (if not blasphemously and certainly with great grumbling) I was angry with God, and said, “As if indeed it is not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost through eternal sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Ten Commandments, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel’s threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!”

This is why he had been taught, and continued to teach in his early lectures, that when St. Paul wrote that “the righteous live by faith,” Luther had to be righteous to be given and keep faith. Martin did not care how sinners come to God. He was only interested in how a Christian can live with a God whose demand for righteousness can never be satisfied.

God was righteous and holy. Martin Luther was not. And the Gospel, no matter how many times he heard it, taught it, or preached it, gave his heart no rest. Luther heard the Gospel, but the question stuck in his mind: “How can I ‘live by faith?'”

Next time, we will look at Luther’s biblical lectures and how these lectures led him to the discovery that changed not just the Christian Church, but the world.

Rev. Donavon Riley serves as pastor at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Webster, Minnesota.

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Higher History

Who Was Martin Luther? Part 8

Luther in Rome

By Rev. Donavon Riley

Martin Luther’s time in the monastery, all his study and work, all his searching for a merciful God, kept leading him back to the same point: If he wanted to enter into eternal life he needed to make sure he was always leaning toward heaven.

It didn’t matter if he was praying, or scrubbing floors, or just out for a walk, Luther was taught by every authority in the church, that if he just did his best, God would show him grace. But, only if the young monk did his best.

As Luther later said, when he thought back about this time in the monastery, “I Iost hold of Christ the Savior and comforter and made him a stick-master and hangman over my poor soul.”

There was not anything during those early years that shows us Luther was going to bust loose from what the church of his day believed and confessed as the truth about God, salvation, and so on. In fact, young Martin pretty much went along with what he was taught, even after he began to teach at university. He lived the way he was expected to live. He taught what he was expected to teach. He was, by most everybody’s opinion, a good and faithful monk.

Even his trip to Rome in 1510 did not change his attitude toward the faith of the Church. Near his 27th birthday, Luther was sent by his order to Rome in the hope that someone higher up, with more authority in the Church, could settle some political infighting that was happening amongst the monastic orders.

Luther and one other monk walked to Rome in the winter of that year—yes, they walked to Rome, over the Alps, in the winter!—as representatives of their order. Even though Luther expected to find a Rome (and a pope) that represented an example of faith, hope, and charity for the whole Church, what he found was something different.

First, the pope was not even in the city when Luther was there. Second, Rome was not a clean city. Garbage and sewage were dumped into the gutters. Wealthy people, especially women, avoided walking on the streets, mostly because they were under constant threat of being mugged. Third, Luther wanted to say a Mass at one of the little chapels that were everywhere in Rome at the time, but they were so jammed with priests wanting to do the same, that when he got his turn at an altar another priest behind him kept saying, “Hurry up! Hurry up!” the whole time. All in all, his experience in Rome was so bad that Luther, when he returned to Wittenberg, said that Romans were no better than dogs.

Still, he was able to overlook the poor conditions of the city and the overall miserable piety of the clergy he saw there, that as he later said, Luther “was so drunk… submerged in the Pope’s dogmas that I would have been ready to murder all… who take but a syllable from the obedience to the pope.” Life in Rome may not have been what Luther expected, but his hope in the Church and God’s grace were there for him, even if they were hidden and had to be hunted up.

When the young monk got back to Erfurt, and it was determined that what Rome had decided about their infighting was unacceptable, monks took sides. That is why, in the end, Luther and his friend Johannes Lang, were more or less pushed out of the monastery and sent into exile, to live at the monastery in Wittenberg, the “Black Cloister,” with their superior and friend in the Augustinian order, Johann von Staupitz.

Next time, we will look at what kind of city Wittenberg was in 1511, and what happened to Luther when he arrived.

Rev. Donavon Riley is the pastor of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Webster, Minnesota. 

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Higher History

Who Was Martin Luther? Part 7

Martin Luther and Staupitz learning the Gospel

Rev. Donavon Riley

Martin Luther was now living with fifty other monks at the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. Along with the regular monastic observances that occupied his time, “Brother Martinus,” as he was now called, spent much of his day sweeping and cleaning. Little time was left to him to continue his studies or pursue his questions about where he might find a merciful God.

But, at the same time, the new vicar general of the Erfurt monastery, Johann von Staupitiz, learned from others of Luther’s interest in biblical studies. After speaking to the young monk, Staupitz persuaded the monastery’s prior to give Luther a new job that would set him to the work of memorizing the Bible. Luther was now expected to learn the Bible, and be able to recite every page, from heart. Luther did this and impressed Staupitz so much that his career path as a professor of theology was practically certain.

However, before that could happen, and not even a year after he had entered the monastery, Brother Martinus was ordained into the priesthood. On April 3, 1507 (possibly on Easter Saturday) Luther was ordained. One month later, on May 2, he celebrated his first Mass at the Augustinian church.

By Luther’s own words, it was a difficult thing for him, that first Mass. As he later said while lecturing about Isaac’s prayer in the book of Genesis:

“‘And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord answered his prayer'” (Genesis 25:21). A prayer like this, which breaks through the clouds and reaches up to the majesty of God, is not easy. I, ashes, dust, and full of sin, speak with the living, eternally true God. This cannot but cause one to tremble, as did I when I celebrated the Mass… joyous faith, however, which rests on the mercy and the Word of God overcomes the fear of his majesty…and rises boldly above it.”

By 1507, Luther was on his way to becoming a Master of Theology, under the watchful eye of his professor, Johannes Nathin. By April 1508, Martin was scheduled to lecture. At Wittenberg, Staupitz set Luther to lecturing on Aristotle’s “Ethics” for the winter semester. Luther also prepared to receive his doctorate in theology at that time. In the autumn of 1509, he was called back to Erfurt to lecture, too. But that lasted only three-quarters of a year. Soon enough, Luther was called back to Wittenberg as a member of the theological faculty.

The next several years were critical for Luther as a monk and theologian. Church politics, the testing of personal allegiances, and a visit to Rome changed everything for him.

Next week we will look at just what happened to Martin that eventually resulted in his reformation breakthrough.

Note: If you’ve enjoyed these articles and want to know more about Martin Luther, I’ve been following the work of the remarkable Luther scholar, Heidi Obermann, in his book: Luther: Man Between God and The Devil. Also, in the weeks and months that follow I will introduce you, the reader, to other works by Luther scholars that I believe will help deepen your knowledge and appreciation for Luther’s life and work. Enjoy!

Rev. Donavon Riley is the pastor of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Webster, Minnesota. He is also the online content manager for Higher Things.

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Higher History

Who Was Martin Luther? Part 6

Martin Luther with tonsure

Rev. Donavon Riley

Later in life, Martin Luther remarked that he had entered the monastery in search of a gracious God. He was driven, he said, “by trembling and fidgeting.” He was worried, after two near-death experiences, that God would not allow him to enter into Paradise.

Reflecting on his time in the monastery, Martin said, “I did not think about women, money, or possessions; instead my heart trembled and fidgeted about whether God would bestow his grace on me… for I had strayed from faith and could not but imagine that I had angered God, whom I in turn had to appease by doing good works.”

Luther was taught that his sanctification, his holiness in relation to God, came by works. On the one hand, all monks believed their entry into a monastic life was a divine call and they had been ushered into the monastery by God’s grace. On the other hand, they believed if they didn’t fight the good fight of faith they would never achieve the prize of forgiveness, life, and eternal salvation. For Luther, and all monks, grace was both gift and obligation.

But Luther was also taught it was not his responsibility to walk alone into the Last Judgment. On the way, he would receive help from the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary and St. Augustine, and other saints. All of them who had gone ahead of Luther into heavenly glory were always ready to help him in his fight against temptation, sin, and the devil. The only question for him was, “Will you accept their offer and rely on them to direct you to your final, heavenly goal?”

It wasn’t until later, after he’d been shown the Gospel, that Luther recognized the devil’s pre-occupation with good works. But, for Martin, the devil, by attacking him in this way, had actually helped the young monk to rediscover the Gospel. Luther said, “I became a monk by driving my head through the wall: against the will of my father, my mother, of God, and of the devil.”

This “driving his head through the wall,” for Luther, is what eventually caused him to collide with the practice of selling indulgences. Also, after wearing the monk’s cowl for fifteen years, Martin was prepared to speak knowledgeably and articulately about life for a generation of monks and nuns. As he was drawn closer and closer to Gospel freedom, the burden placed on himself and his fellow monastics became an unbearable weight. It broke his back, and caused him to cry out, not to St. Anne this time, but to God, and in that he received the answer he had long searched for: good news about a merciful God—a God who was for him and was the One who led him to confess: “Christ is different than Moses, the pope, and the whole world. He is not just different, he is far more than our conscience…When the conscience attacks you, he says, ‘Believe!'”

Next time, we will look more at Luther’s life in the monastery, his trip to Rome, and his increasing conflict with the sale of indulgences.

Rev. Donavon Riley is the pastor of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Webster, Minnesota.