lecturer – Higher Things

Rev. Donavon Riley

Martin Luther received his license to enter doctoral studies in 1512. He swore on oath on the Bible to teach true doctrine and stand strong against false teaching. Then a wool cap was set on his head and a silver ring was slid onto his finger. Luther began lectures on Genesis three days later.

Outside his responsibilities as a teacher (which began at 7:00 a.m.), Luther was also busy writing letters to friends and colleagues, preaching at the monastery, reading Bible devotions at meals, preaching in parishes around Wittenberg, serving as a student advisor, supervising eleven monasteries, lecturing on St. Paul’s letters, and preparing a commentary on the Psalms. At that time, Luther said to a friend that he was so tired by the end of the day he would collapse on his bed and immediately go to sleep.

But, for all that, Martin was still focused on reviewing and revising everything he had been taught about the righteousness of God. He said, “I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search deeper for it, where my temptations took me.” Everything Luther did was in service to eliminating anything and everyone who stood between him and Jesus crucified for sinners.

Luther’s turn away from the theology he had learned while a boy, that was instilled in him at university and as a young monk, did not happen all at once. Instead, he grew slowly and through much temptation and struggle. Then, finally, it was during Martin’s biblical lectures that things began to lock into place for him. It was in the classroom, as a lecturer, that Luther worked out his questions. Though nothing remains of his first Genesis lectures, one can read his evolution as a theologian from the first Psalms lectures, through Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, then through another go ’round in the Psalms.

Through his lectures on the Psalms, Luther came to a startling conclusion almost unheard of in former commentaries and lecture halls. From Psalm 72, he taught the students that God did not have one, but two kinds of righteousness. Martin had only been taught the second one. God’s righteousness on the one hand was a righteousness by which He found sinners guilty of disobeying the commandments. Then, and here is where Luther began to break free of Late Medieval theology, God’s other kind of righteousness—God’s primary righteousness—was a righteousness by which He declared believers righteousness for Christ’s sake, that made them acceptable in His presence. This was a new teaching, unheard of by anyone at that time. Luther was beginning to tear down—one theological brick at a time—the wall that separated sinners from God’s grace and mercy in Christ Jesus.

Next time, we will look again at Luther’s time as a lecturer and the personal and professional consequences of his teaching.

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

Who Was Martin Luther? Part 9

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.