Luther: The Most Misunderstood Man of the Reformation

Bob Hiller:
But Luther does believe that the law has a positive impact on the Christian life. I don’t think that’s going too far. Just read his catechisms, where you’ve got the law as the very first portion of the catechism. The Ten Commandments lay out what life should be. We should do this and we shouldn’t do that. And then he says, if you read the large catechism, he says, “And because it’s impossible for us to keep this law perfectly, we have the creed to show us how we are righteous on account of Christ Jesus and his work for us and what God does for us. Then, to aid us in keeping the law, he’s given us…” And then we get the Lord’s Prayer as the third part of the catechism, which is given to us so that we can pray for God’s help to keep the law.

So Luther does have this positive view of the law, even in our own confessional documents. So these accusations of antinomianism are really coming from a perspective that sees the law and the gospel as having different roles. For Luther, the gospel is always predominant. It’s always the main word. The goal of the law is the gospel; that’s where we’re going. It’s to get us back to Christ Jesus. That’s always his main emphasis.

But that doesn’t mean that the law doesn’t have something to say about how we live.

Bob Hiller:
Around here at the White Horse, we’ve noticed there are a lot of misunderstandings about our various Reformation traditions. So, over the course of the next few episodes, we’re going to address a number of these misconceptions and see if we can’t bring some clarification. My name is Bob Hiller, and I am here with my friends Mike Horton, Walter Strickland, and Justin Holcomb. Today, we’re going to start by talking about the most misunderstood man — I don’t know about the history of the world, but certainly in the Reformation — Martin. Poor old Martin Luther and the Lutheran Reformation. So the way this is going to work is we’re going to just lob some questions out there, and each of us will address these from the perspective of our tradition and hope to bring some clarification.

Gentlemen, what do you want to do? Who wants to go first?

Justin Holcomb:
Okay. So one of the things that have been said about Luther is that he started the Reformation because of psychological distress from his upbringing. Victor Vieth, who I serve on the board of — Godly Response to Abuse in Christian Environment — wrote a book about the Lutheran tradition and protection of children. And Walther, some great stuff about C.F.W. Walther, about this and how he is just a huge advocate for children in his ministry. So that’s a whole other line. But Luther had a lot of… He did suffer. He wrote about being beaten by his father until blood ran down his back.

There’s some of those stories, and then some of the other psychological things that he was dealing with regarding guilt. So I’m not just saying his upbringing, but just the psychological dimension. Sometimes people look at that and say, “He’s kind of off his rocker. He’s really bummed out. Maybe he kind of went sideways because of this internal psychological thing.” I’ve seen it kind of used to dismiss or undermine his influence. So you can go with that however you want.

Bob Hiller:
Well, actually, that’s almost exactly how I’d want to go at it — to say, you know what, maybe there’s something there, that his psychological upbringing impacted the way he was living and reacting to things going on around him. But I also think I hear this so often as a sort of dismissal of the validity of his position: “He was just a guy who had daddy issues. And so this is why he reacts to the institution of the church and to the Pope and to his father and all of this.” Actually, there’s a lot more going on there with his dad, which we could probably get into here in a little bit. But I would say this: Luther started the Reformation because he had questions about the way the Bible was being interpreted. Now, maybe his upbringing impacted the way he went about going after those questions. But at the end of the day, regardless, it’s really bad to do theology and history from a psychological standpoint. You’ve got to address Luther from the arguments he’s making. You’ve got to deal with him with the stuff he’s laying down on paper. Because what you find is that maybe Luther did start this because of a psychological issue, but a lot of other people apparently at the time had the same psychological issue because they started getting on board, saying this is actually bringing us freedom and we’re reading the Scriptures and realizing what we’re seeing in the church doesn’t actually add up to what we’re reading here. And so, Luther…

Justin Holcomb:
Can I jump in on that point?

Bob Hiller:
Yeah, please do.

Michael Horton:
That’s really important because God’s so creative and sovereign that he can use different intentions, motivations, for really wonderful purposes. The whole dismissal has to be either it came out of a pure, holy, wonderful, holistic, integrated intention, or it’s not; it gets dismissed. So I do think that — I love the way you said that — that was really helpful. Maybe it influenced how he responded and maybe it did instigate some of these questions. But regardless, God’s creativity and sovereignty is involved.

Michael Horton:
Well, Erik Erikson is the sort of father of this modern idea that the young Luther was acting out of his psychological morass. But look at the way John Calvin, who didn’t have an issue with his father, that we know of, John Calvin told Cardinal Sadaleto, “You know, the problem with you guys is you’ve never had a crisis of conscience.”

Bob Hiller:
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Horton:
He says, “Until you have a crisis of conscience where you feel damned, you know, you stand under the judgment of God, you don’t even ask the questions that we’re raising.” Is that psychological? Well, of course it is. Is it theological? Well, of course it is. Is it scriptural? Of course it is. It’s all bound up together, and that’s why the Reformation happened. A lot of people had a crisis of conscience.

Walter Strickland:
Just riffing off this a little bit — if you look at the character of Joseph in the Bible, he was sold by his brothers, he was forgotten about in prison, he was lied about by Potiphar’s wife. I mean, just the list goes on. Just imagine the sorts of psychological turmoil that he would undergo, yet still he forgave. Are we going to invalidate his forgiveness by saying he was psychologically traumatized to the point of offering forgiveness? And everyone knows, you might have been aware of this climactic verse in Genesis 50, verse 20.

“As for you, you meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” And so there was good that came out of it. So all I have to say, I think that came to mind, Bob, as you were talking about Luther and even the accusation of his daddy issues nullifying the result of his theological engagement.

Bob Hiller:
I mean, I’m very hesitant to read a lot of Luther and say, “Yeah, he didn’t have psychological things going on,” — he very much did. But he’s also an incredibly clear thinker, a great arguer, and he’s coming from the Scriptures. Here’s the other thing I want to think about: so often when I hear these conversations about, “Oh, the Reformation started because of Luther this and Luther that,” we really do need to take a look at what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church during the time of the Reformation. So, Luther is also called — I would say it’s more pastoral than psychological. He’s sent off by his confessor, by Staupitz, to become a professor of theology of the Bible. Then he’s given the task of teaching the Bible there in Wittenberg, and he’s given the task of being the town preacher, which means he’s basically pastoring this town.

And what does he see? He sees Tetzel coming in and fleecing the German peasants so he can make money for an Italian basilica and pay off somebody’s bishopric. He’s seeing this happen. He’s seeing false teachings taking place that are getting people off the hook for being Christians. He’s watching the church just smile and nod at it. He’s mad at bad pastoral practice and cruel work from the papacy. At first, he’s actually giving the benefit of the doubt to the papacy. He’s not reacting against the papacy and the fatherhood or whatever. He looked at the papacy and he’s like, “Boy, if the Pope knew what was going on here, he’d be furious, man.” Probably he’s right, because Tetzel wasn’t making enough money. 

So, I mean, he starts to… This thing doesn’t come about because of psychological daddy issues. It comes about because he’s concerned for what this Italian Pope is doing to the German people, the way in which the Word of God is being undermined, and how people are being drawn away from a faithful life of Christianity. And even at this point, he’s… By faithful life, he’s referring to Roman Catholicism. So I just think it’s a cheap dismissal, and it gets you out of actually having to deal with the arguments in the situation.

Michael Horton:
Yeah, and I think too, it’s bound up with the accusation that he was a profligate monk who wanted to have sex, and so he, you know, started this thing called the Reformation. And we forget that long before Luther actually understood justification as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to sinners, the Reformation got kicked off really by the doctrine of repentance.

Bob Hiller:
Yep, that’s right.

Michael Horton:
So the first of the 95 Theses is, “The whole life of a Christian is a life of repentance.” Not “We are justified by grace alone,” or “through faith alone, in Christ alone.” The whole thing was repentance. At first, his concern was, “You’re cheapening God. You’re turning God into a mercenary. So you’re blasphemous. And you are basically people who are antinomian. They can go to the brothel right after they buy an indulgence. You’re basically encouraging people not to repent. You’re cheapening God. And this has got to stop.” There was no “justification by grace alone, through faith alone” in that document. It was really about repentance and taking God seriously.

Bob Hiller:
And repentance, even at this point, is penance. Again, I’ve talked about this before, but for Luther, his early theology is this negative theology that is all about how I have to suffer enough to earn my way into God’s righteousness — because he believed it was self-hatred. Christ hates sin, so I need to hate sin as much as Christ hates sin. And I find that I’m a sinner, therefore Christ must hate me, therefore I will only be righteous when I finally find myself suffering in hell. And now that I’m suffering in hell, I’m pleasing enough to God. And so when someone comes along and says, “Well, there’s that, or you could just throw a couple coins in the coffer and you’ll be fine,” Luther’s like, “You’ve got to be kidding me, man. You’ve made it too easy.” Mike, you make a really interesting point. His reaction, therefore, is against antinomianism. The Reformation kicks off against this antinomian bent within the Roman Church that they’ve systematized — I mean, they’ve turned it into a very lucrative system. 

So this is a problem for him, and it’s another one worth addressing, that Luther did this just because he was, you know, he wanted to drink and have sex so he could get married. And then he found Katie, who was a good brewer, and look at this. Luther didn’t want to get married. The Reformation started, he said monks should get married. He becomes like the Wittenberg matchmaker. He’s having a great time, and Katie, he can’t seem to marry off to anyone else. She finally says, “Well, I could marry you,” and he’s like, “Yeah, you don’t want to do that,” because he knew he was a marked man. I mean, he said, “Look, they’re trying to kill me for money. You don’t want to marry me.” I think she was his equal in that sort of good German stubbornness, and she convinced him. You start to read the way they had this relationship — it was a beautiful relationship. Luther loved her dearly, and I think marriage was one of the greatest things that ever happened to him. It infuriated… I mean, it looked like an act of rebellion to everyone else, but if you look at the history, Luther wasn’t aiming for this.

He really didn’t think it was wise because of his life being sort of always at risk. 

So he didn’t do it just for that. That Luther was this drunk antinomian monk. He was a pretty pious guy. He rails against drunkenness. He enjoys beer. Who doesn’t enjoy beer? I don’t know, maybe some other people don’t, but he — and especially in a world where water was borderline poisonous, you’ve got to do something to drink. Well, so of course he liked beer, and Katie made good beer, and he liked having beer with his friends, which is a joyful thing to do. But he wasn’t a drunk. He was a pretty pious guy, and he rails against the abuse of these things.

Michael Horton:
And also, there’s this antinomian controversy that bubbles up, and Luther coined the term antinomian. So the antinomian controversies were not raised by Luther and his orthodox colleagues; it was Luther and his orthodox colleagues who opposed antinomianism and made that a swear word.

Bob Hiller:
Yeah, you guys will help me if I get this wrong. But Luther has a number of good friends who help him start the Reformation. Melanchthon is his greatest friend, and he thinks Melanchthon is the greatest thing since sliced bread — I don’t know if they used that phrase. But then he had another friend named John Agricola, and Agricola is great. Early on in the Reformation, he and Luther are going to battle together. It’s a wonderful thing. But Agricola gets to the point where he says there’s no need for the law in the life of a Christian anymore. “We are so righteous that we no longer need the law.” And so he begins to gear preaching, and he writes a catechism that just basically removes any form of law from the Christian life. Luther responds with the antinomian disputations, and he says, “Look, you can’t. There’s no such thing as a person who’s so perfect that they don’t need the law. We’re all still sinners. The law still needs to be preached to Christians. It’s going to be a guide to the Christian life.” 

I do think Luther never… It’s hard to find, like, a ‘third use of the law’ in Luther, at the same time, like by name. But Luther does believe that the law has a positive impact on the Christian life. I don’t think that’s going too far. Just read his catechisms, where you’ve got the law as the very first portion of the catechism. The Ten Commandments lay out what life should be: we should do this and we shouldn’t do that.” Then he says, if you read the large catechism, he says, “And because it’s impossible for us to keep this law perfectly, we have the creed to show us how we are righteous on account of Christ Jesus and his work for us and what God does for us, then to aid us in keeping the law, he’s given us…” And then we get the Lord’s Prayer as the third part of the catechism, which is given to us so that we can pray for God’s help to keep the law. So Luther does have this positive view of the law, even in our own confessional documents. 

So these accusations of antinomianism are really coming from a perspective that sees the law and the gospel as having different roles. For Luther, the gospel is always predominant. It’s always the main word — the goal of the law is the gospel. That’s where we’re going; it’s to get us back to Christ Jesus. That’s always his main emphasis.

But that doesn’t mean that the law doesn’t have something to say about how we live.

Michael Horton:
Yeah, it’s interesting. In Reformed circles, sometimes you hear people say that Lutherans don’t have the third use of the law, which is what you’re talking about: to guide the Christian life.

Bob Hiller:
Guide the Christian life, yeah.

Michael Horton:
And it’s ironic because actually they say Calvin coined the third use of the law and so forth. Actually, Calvin got it from Melanchthon.

Bob Hiller:
Right.

Michael Horton:
Melanchthon put it in his Romans commentary two years before Calvin wrote it in his Romans commentary. And it’s in the Book of Concord. So it’s confessional. There’s a tremendous misunderstanding. We actually get the third use of the law from the Lutheran tradition.

Bob Hiller:
You can correct me on this, Mike, but I think in the Lutheran tradition, our third use still has more of a… It’s not as positive as it is in the Reformed tradition. Is that a fair statement? Because we’re still saying the reason we need the third use is because of the simultaneously sinner and saint, because the old nature doesn’t go away. Is that how you guys would speak of it too?

Michael Horton:
Sure.

Bob Hiller:
Okay.

Michael Horton:
Yeah. We divide our Heidelberg Catechism in the same way. “And what three things do you need to know to live and die in this comfort? How great my sin is, how great my salvation is in Christ,” and “what is my life of gratitude?” And so Berkauer, one of our theologians, said, “Grace is the essence of Reformed theology. Gratitude is the essence of ethics.”

Bob Hiller:
Interesting. Okay. Okay.

Walter Strickland:
That’s good.

Bob Hiller:
Yeah, interesting. You have this sort of tendency in Luther to see the law very… I mean, and this is where it kind of comes from. Luther does see the law in a very sort of primarily accusatory function. That’s the main thing the law is going to be doing in the majority of Luther. But he does still see this third use. That is a positive thing for the Christian.

And even if… Let me say this, this is something worth thinking about: Even if Luther doesn’t have a third use of the law, it doesn’t mean there’s not a third use of the law, which is something we Lutherans ought to keep in mind from time to time. And I’m looking in a mirror when I say that. Luther is not the touchstone of theology for us. It’s the Scriptures. It’s the Word of God.

Walter Strickland:
Yeah. So, Bob, there’s a misunderstanding, or some might say that Luther broke away from Rome to start a new church. To what degree is there some truth in that? To what degree is it false? And just sort of clarify that for us a little bit.

Bob Hiller:
Yeah. Luther does not see himself as a schismatic or an enthusiast or something like this. In fact, Luther thinks the whole time what he’s doing, at least the initial part of the Reformation, is, “Guys, we’ve got to get back to what the Scriptures were saying.” And we look at the way the institution is running right now; it’s so far afoul of what we see in St. Paul and what we see in the writings in the Gospels that he says, “We’ve got to get back to this.” And Rome says, “You need to stop talking. We’re not interested in what you have to say.”

And Luther says, “Look, you guys…” Rod used to say the biggest mistake Rome ever made is they made Luther a teacher of the Scriptures, because he understood them. And so he starts teaching them, and he believes he has not just an appointment from the Church, but this is his call from God to be a preacher of the Scriptures and to defend the truth of the Bible. That’s his vocation, and so he’s going to do his vocation faithfully. He says, “Rome, you’re teaching stuff that’s out of line with the Bible. We’ve got to get back to this.” 

Now, it starts with the whole penance thing, but that then drives Luther further and further in.

You start to see the way in which Rome starts to engage Luther — like when Cajetan comes and has an interview with him, and Luther leaves that interview, saying, “The Church has put itself above the Bible. We can’t have the Pope above Scriptures. This is nonsense. The Scriptures are the word. This is the word of God. We’re all subject to it.” So from here, Luther starts saying, “We’ve got to subject ourselves to the Word of God and not to popes and councils.” And this is what gets him in trouble. But Luther says…

Michael Horton:
Which is what Thomas Aquinas said!

Bob Hiller:
Well, yes, and Luther says, “To establish this, we should have a council. We need to get the Church together.”

Michael Horton:
A lot of people were saying, “We should have councils over popes.”

Bob Hiller:
And so this is nothing new. But popes who like to write laws that say you can’t have anyone above the Pope, they don’t like this. So they get Luther there at the Diet of Worms and they kick him out. To say Luther went and started a new church is just historically inaccurate. He’s kicked out by Rome.

Michael Horton:
With a price on his head.

Bob Hiller:
That’s right. So he’s not seeking to start anything new. He’s just trying to — and this is why the term Reformation is really important — he’s trying to reform the Church to be what we were given in the Scriptures. He’s trying to subject the Church not to the sect of Lutherans, but to the Word of God, and the popes just won’t have this sort of thing, so they kick him out. At this point, then Luther says — and I suppose we can debate this — but at this point Luther says, “Then they aren’t the true church, because anyone who makes an institutional case that they are above the Word of God or alongside the Word of God — which always means above the Word of God — if they believe that they are there and then they’re undermining the actual preaching of the Gospel, this isn’t the church anymore. The Word is not the product of the Church. The Church doesn’t make the Word efficacious. It’s the Word that creates the Church. And we have the Word,” Luther says, “therefore we have the Church.” 

He has this wonderful line in one of our confessional documents called the Smalcald Articles, which is kind of one of his last wills and testaments. In there he says, “What is the Church but sheep who hear the shepherd’s voice?” And that’s it. It’s not bishops and institutions. It’s where the Word is preached and the sacraments are administered rightly. The sheep are gathered; that creates the Church. So Luther says, “Look, you might not like that definition because it’s not associated with Roman Catholicism as such, but that church doesn’t base itself on the Word. It bases itself on an institution. Therefore, we don’t trust it. The Word alone is our authority, and therefore the Word creates our Church.” So he doesn’t start something new; he’s just trying to get us back to where we were.

Our confessions will even say this: We’re fine with a pope. If they want to have a bishop in Rome, they should have a bishop in Rome — it’s great. If he’s influential, that’s fine. Here’s the problem: He doesn’t get to be God of the Church, and he doesn’t get to rewrite doctrine. That’s not his job.

And that’s what we’re reacting against. Does that answer the question?

Walter Strickland:
Yeah, certainly. I mean, I would even say, I’m empathetic to reform movements, you know, both in Germany and in England that we’ll talk about in a couple of episodes. So I appreciate that distinction of him being, I mean, kicked out and then starting another church. But that idea of reform — I appreciate that.

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Justin Holcomb:
So, I don’t know if this is a misconception or not, but aren’t Lutherans Eutychian?

Michael Horton:
You went right there, huh? All right, let’s go.

Justin Holcomb:
This is a bigger one. Let’s talk about the misconception. So for listeners, what we mean by that is — Christ, this is the hypostatic union — teaches that Jesus Christ is the one person of Christ with two natures: a divine nature — fully God — and human nature — fully man. They’re united in the one person, which raises questions. That’s why you had two different heresies, actually. You had the Eutychian heresy, which said that really it’s a hybrid: one person, one hybrid divine human nature. Then you had Nestorius, who said, “Well, basically there’s really two people  the divine one—“ So they had two natures; they were so encouraged that they were really in practice two different persons. And so Chalcedon comes along and says, “Well, let’s give the boundaries.” There’s a hypostatic union: one person, two natures. Those natures can’t be blended or divided, which is looking at the Eutycheans and saying, “Don’t do that.” And the natures can’t be separated and divided — Nestorians. So it kind of put both heretics and heresies and, you know, gave the boundaries.

Bob Hiller:
Right.

Justin Holcomb:
And so what ends up happening is, historically, Lutheran Christology tends toward what Reformed folk would say is an over — perhaps blending of the two. And then Lutherans will fire back, sometimes playfully, sometimes not, and say, “No, no, you Reformed folk are all Nestorian.” So, I’d love to talk about Christology, but also how does that inform sacraments and presence of Christ?

Bob Hiller:
The best place to go, if you like to use the Internet, Rod Rosenblatt, who I’ve referenced an awful lot, former White Horse host — one of the great men of the faith that I’ve ever known. He has a great lecture series over at 1517 on the two natures of Christ. The book is The Two Natures by Martin Chemnitz. This was Rod’s dissertation, I believe, and he does this great, very long series with all sorts of hilarious anecdotes about Mike Horton.

So, you guys gotta go check that out.

Michael Horton:
So people know, Martin Chemnitz was so important in the Lutheran tradition, he’s called “the other Martin.”

Bob Hiller:
Yeah, the second Martin. So I’m going to say one quick thing and then move back to your question. Justin, earlier I said we’re not just following Luther as Lutherans. If you want to know what Lutherans actually believe, be careful picking up Luther, though he’s a lot of fun to read. Pick up our confessions, and the last confessional document we have is called the Formula of Concord.

In there we talk about how we describe or deal with the two natures in Christ. Chemnitz is the master of this, and he builds a lot on Luther as well. So I’ve heard it described this way, that Calvinists like to emphasize the distinction in the two natures, and Lutherans like to emphasize the unity in the person, so that it’s not properly Nestorian or Eutychian, but the emphAsis is on a different syllAble. All right, there’s my Rod-ism for the day. So, what we will say is that when you see Jesus Christ — and I think we all agree on this — when you see Jesus of Nazareth, you are seeing God in human flesh. So Mary gives birth to God — the Theotokos.

Now, it’s not that God is created in the womb of Mary, but God is in the womb of Mary, fully incarnate, 100% God, 100% man. So, God doesn’t get hungry, but when Jesus is hungry, the divine man is hungry — something like that. We can all agree with this.

Justin Holcomb:
And Theotokos is Chalcedonian. Right. So I am being played because I’m not claiming you’re a heretic. Yeah, thank you for that, Theotokos. And then the other one in Chalcedon is like the Acts passage, “the blood of God.” I mean…

Bob Hiller:
Yes, right.

Justin Holcomb:
It is amazing language. Go ahead.

Bob Hiller:
So, what we will say is one of the… And I think this is where our differences lie, and you guys can clarify this for me. But we will say that there is no confusion and there’s no change in the natures. But we will say that the divine nature does share its attributes with the human nature. So, it doesn’t go the other way, but the divine nature will share attributes with the human nature, so that Christ can be present on every altar in bread and in wine with his actual body. And I believe the response is something like, “Well, human bodies can’t be in multiple localities at the same time.” We say, “No, no, human bodies can’t — unless the divine nature is sharing its properties with the human body.” So Jesus can be wherever he wants, and so he puts himself in bread and wine, and we physically then eat the body and blood of Jesus in a mysterious way.

Justin Holcomb:
So that’s the difference.

Bob Hiller:
That’s where the rubber hits the road.

Justin Holcomb:
Correct language.

Bob Hiller:
Right.

Justin Holcomb:
And I think that is the difference, because I think you all are saying that the nature, the attributes of the nature, from the divine nature, go to the human nature. And there’s a nuance here of saying the attributes go to the one person. So, the distinction is very helpful because that is where it comes — and I just wanted to confirm, because the fact that you did make the connection to… That’s what I want people to hear, is the sacramentology. The view of the sacraments isn’t because Lutherans, correct me on this one: this is going to be a misconception, “is because y’all are just trying to be as Roman Catholic as possible and you’re just trying to hold on to things.” Actually, the Lutheran view of sacraments is coming from their Christology, correct? Not only, “Well, this is what the church has done — I guess we’ll just kind of keep as much as we can.”

Bob Hiller:
And I would say that the Christology is coming from Luther’s theology, almost just of the Word — and not Luther, but the Lutheran theology of the Word — which says the Word’s going to define everything for us. So if Jesus says, “This is my body, this is my blood,” we have to figure out how the Christology fits into that promise. Anything that tries to take that promise away… This is why Luther just cannot agree with Zwingli on the sacrament because he’s saying, “Look, you’re taking the words away with the way you’re doing Christology, and we just can’t go with you on this, because otherwise we have to reinterpret what Jesus is giving here.” These words are gospel, they’re promise, they’re words. We bow the knee to these words. We don’t try and figure out how to make them fit our system — is how I think we would say it in the Lutheran Church.

So, our Christology and the way we speak of the two natures needs to work alongside the Words of Institution and that sort of thing. Does that make sense? Am I just rambling?

Justin Holcomb:
Yeah.

Walter Stickland:
I appreciate it.

Michael Horton:
That was a great defense of monophysitism.

Bob Hiller:
Well, listen…

Justin Holcomb:
Wow, Justin, was he anti-Semitic because of his Christology?

Bob Hiller:
Oh, man…

Walter Strickland:
Well, actually, I guess we’re… We’re there.

Michael Horton:
Yeah. We might as well go to the criticism that he was anti-Semitic because…

Bob Hiller:
That’s the only thing anybody thinks about now, is this.

Michael Horton:
Yeah.

Bob Hiller:
So, the first thing you’ve got to say when it comes to Luther’s view of the Jews — we’re not going to call it anti-Semitic, because Luther was not a Nazi. His contention against them is not biological or ethnic. 

I want to be very careful with how I speak here, because in a certain sense you don’t find a lot of 16th-century people who are “pro-Jew.” It’s in the air they’re breathing. There’s a lot of work done against the Jews in the 16th century. So you have to know the whole story of Luther. Luther is now becoming a scholar of the Bible and he’s actually teaching the Old Testament, and he’s finding — I think it’s Melanchthon’s uncle, a guy named Rochlein — who is doing all this work with the Hebrew and in contact with a bunch of rabbis. There’s positive stuff happening here. And so Luther wants to see this work keep going. So he writes a tract in the early 1520s called “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew.” In that, he argues that we’ve got to be more generous and kind towards the Jews, because after all, we worship one. 

Luther makes this case here, and he’s also under the delusion — to say it that way — that, because we’ve now recovered the gospel, everyone’s going to start believing and the Jews are going to start coming in — like, “This is going to be great! They’re going to see the freedom from the law; they’re going to hear the good news of what Jesus has done for them; they’re going to see how the institution of Rome was a problem all along, and they’ll hear the straight preaching of the Word and they’ll believe.” He actually has interaction, if I understand correctly, with some rabbis. Turns out—

Michael Horton:
In fact he says that one of the reasons in that tract — he says that one of the reasons Jews haven’t come to faith is because of the gospel, but also the way they’ve been mistreated by the Roman Church.

Bob Hiller:
He says, the line is — I hope I get this line right — the line is something like this: “If I were a Jew and I was treated the way the Jews have been treated by the Pope, I’d rather become a swine.”

Walter Strickland:
That’s dramatic!

Bob Hiller:
Yeah, Luther’s got a flair for the dramatic, so he’s positive towards this. However, you start to read him, even early on, he is not kind towards the Jews because of their rejection of Jesus. That’s really what it comes down to. His frustration with them is primarily theological. Then he starts hearing rumors that Jews are trying to convert Christians to Judaism—convert them away from Jesus, which is, if you know anything about Judaism, they’re not concerned with conversions. This is not their concern. So this is just false stuff that Luther doesn’t seem to mind worrying about the facts on, but he capitalizes on it.

He hears that the Jews are now gaining influence: they’re getting converts, they’re murdering children. Luther says, “Enough with the Jews.” One very prominent rabbi writes to Luther at one point asking if he can have safe access through a German region. Luther has no ability to actually grant him this, but he has great influence. Luther writes him back and says, “As much as I’d love to help you, I fear that you would spread your Judaism, so I’m not going to do it.” So it puts them in a bad spot. 

At one point, he’s had enough towards the end of his life, and he writes a little book called “Against the Jews and Their Lies.” You can imagine from that title that it’s not as positive towards the Jews as his previous writings. He writes this thing, and it’s terrible. “We should burn their synagogues; we should exile them.” He never calls for murder or killing of them. I have a theory about that, but I have to test it and it requires more work from me — but I have a theory, and I’ll throw it out there, and if someone wants to correct me or help me, I’d appreciate it. I think, by the end of his life, Luther is convinced, along with a lot of people, that he is somehow a prophet of God. If you read the way the prophets talk to wayward Israel, it’s pretty violent — it’s exile, it’s Babylon, it’s curses. I think Luther violates… Eric Gritsch writes some of this stuff; it’s pretty helpful. He says at this point, Luther violates his own biblical standards, and he starts speaking where God hasn’t spoken. He starts acting as this sort of prophet who believes that these sort of violent acts towards the synagogues and kicking them out will drive them into exile.

My theory is that Luther thinks this will now wake them up and drive them to repent, just like it did in Babylon. That is the most generous reading of Luther you can possibly have on this, because frankly, what he writes is sinful, it’s evil, it’s abysmal, but it’s also despised by pretty much everyone. I think Bucer had written some stuff against the Jews and so had Eck, but Luther takes what they did and just ramps it up like crazy.

Michael Horton:
Yeah.

Bob Hiller:
Everyone says, “Don’t — we cannot publish this.” There’s some Jews who actually appeal to their princes and say, “You cannot publish this,” and the princes agree.

Michael Horton:
Isn’t it important — you already have, but to just reinforce the point — that it’s works righteousness. He had such high hopes for the conversion of the Jews to the gospel, and now those are dashed, and now he just lumps them together with Rome. But he says things about the Jews that are more violent than he says about Rome and the Pope. What you can’t say is that he was anti-Jewish — he was anti-Judaism, he was anti-works righteousness. Judaism was the highest expression of legalism to him.

Bob Hiller:
So, the real issue for us, then, with this is that this is not published everywhere. It’s not agreed to by very many people, I think, except for a few princes who are looking for an excuse. By and large, it goes away. Like, this thing just — it’s not something people, throughout the next 400-500 years, are looking back, saying, “This is defining.” They’re reading Bondage of the Will, they’re reading the catechisms, they’re reading the first tracts he’s writing in 1520 — that’s where they go, until someone discovers it, you know, around about 1930. And sure enough, Luther, who is the German champion, even still — he’s a folk hero in Germany — Hitler gets his hands on it and says, “See? Luther’s on our side.” Though Luther didn’t do himself any favors with this tract, he was certainly not a Nazi. I’m not trying to justify what he wrote, but I am saying he is not thinking of concentration camps, and he’s not thinking of the horrors of the Holocaust. His mind isn’t working quite that way. Nonetheless, I wish to God he’d never written it, it’s awful.

Michael Horton:
Luther himself would tell us, wouldn’t he? “You guys, don’t treat everything I’ve written as — I’m just all commentary on the only authoritative scripture…”

Bob Hiller:
This is interesting — yes, he does; but a great book, Brand Luther. If you haven’t read Brand Luther, that is one of the great insights into the Reformation — fantastic book. Andrew Pettigree — 

Walter Strickland:

Pettigrew?

Bob Hiller:
Pettigrew, thank you. Luther says, “Here’s what you read: read my catechisms, read the Bondage of the Will — those are the only books of mine I want kept.” I don’t even know if he believes about Bondage of the Will as much as he just wants to dig at Erasmus. But, you know, he liked Bondage of the Will, he liked the catechisms.

But he works pretty hard to make sure his book publications look pretty nice when they’re sent out. He has no problem saying, “Only read two of my books, but you can purchase the rest of them for $19.99.” He’s writing prefaces to his works. He says in his preface to his works, “Don’t read anything I wrote but the catechisms and the Bondage of the Will.” Isn’t that a fascinating thing to write in an introduction to all of your work? I think that’s where he said it; I want to check.

I say this kind of tongue in cheek, but Luther is a master of the new technologies, and this is why the Reformation takes with a guy like him and not like Huss, for example, because Luther knows how to work the system.

Michael Horton:
But what comes with that? Think about us today — we can react so quickly that we spit out nonsense on social media and stir up controversies because we haven’t deliberated and been thoughtful and used wisdom. Well, that already began with the printing press. Now, Luther, taking command of that new technology, was writing all kinds of occasional treatises in the heat of the moment. He said, “I chop down the trees, and Melanchthon stacks the wood.” Well, people weren’t reading Melanchthon the way they were reading Luther, and Luther just… There’s all kinds of hyperbole there.

Bob Hiller:
There was a book fair — I forget where it was. There’s some big book fair, though, in the 16th century, and Luther’s stuff is just flying off the shelves because it’s short, it’s accessible, he’s got… Oh, who’s his friend down the street who’s the artist?

Michael Horton:
Cranach.

Bob Hiller:
Cranach, yeah, Cranach. Cranach’s doing the artwork for the books, and you’ve got the theologian, you’ve got one of the greatest artists of the century, and you’ve got this very efficient printing press, all within like three houses of each other. This is just fantastic.

Michael Horton:
And he knew how to talk to the common person.

Bob Hiller:
Oh yeah. And so they loved it. This is ultimately then what gets him in trouble with the peasants, because they think he’s an everyman — and that’s, well, that’s a conversation for another time. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating read — that Brand Luther — how he worked this thing for the sake of the gospel, which is, look, that’s what we’re trying to do with podcasting. White Horse Inn — one of the great things about White Horse Inn and its history is that you guys were on the radio doing good theology in an accessible way long before podcasting, when everybody and their mom was trying to do it, right?

This is something that, if you get in early, you can have a really significant impact. That’s what Luther did, and I think it’s a pretty cool thing.