A Brief Introduction to Martin Luther

Steven Paulson

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781611647846
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther started a reformation movement that revolutionized Europe and the history of the Christian faith. His far-reaching reforms of theological understanding and church practices dramatically changed both church and society in Europe and beyond. In honor of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Steven Paulson provides an engaging, concise introduction to Martin Luther's life and the major themes in his theology.

Chapter One

In the Beginning . . . a Preacher:
What Is Proclamation?

And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?

(Romans 10:14)

Inside Out

Since the time of Socrates, thinkers have begun with what they do not know and from uncertainty have tried to gain some sure knowledge of “that which does not change.” Skepticism is the main engine of knowledge, making sure that one does not build on a false foundation. Doubt alone may be able to discover truth (depending on how skeptical one becomes), but it should at least destroy untruth. This method always begins deeply inside a person who sets aside the many outside influences and gets to work on what seems real—“the examined life,” Socrates called it. Descartes called it his “meditations,” when, exhausted by religious wars with no end in sight, he one day put his feet up on the warm woodstove and began to wield his instrument of doubt.

Theology typically works this way too. It goes inside people and tries to find some power in them that it calls an “image of God” or “vestige of the Trinity” that is somehow not overthrown by sin—something that we just couldn’t possibly doubt—and then it builds its system of thought by adding God’s “revelation” from Scripture to complete what it found. Theologians have joined philosophers in identifying the one true thing inside people as “free will.” But for Luther this was not just a bad place to begin thinking; it was the source of every single sin, the fashioner of every single sinner, and the direct opponent of God. He called it “enthusiasm,” God within-ism, which refuses to start with the word from a preacher sent by God and so cooks up some peculiar religion of the self. Adam and Eve did it, and so it is the original sin. It is also the sin that is repeated in ever-evolving mutations of the same basic problem. It is theology curved in upon itself that only succeeds in declaring to the world what one finds while gazing at one’s own navel.

Luther began outside a person, where certainty can only be received. He began with the Holy Spirit, whom he said “delights in assertions,” meaning a “constant adhering, affirming, confessing, maintaining, and an invincible persevering.”¹ Adhering is to stick like glue to something outside. Persevering is hanging on for dear life. Already this is strange language for truth, but it gets stranger. The Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies”² sinners who cannot save themselves or relate properly to God, Luther wrote in his famous Small Catechism. For that matter, sinners cannot really know anything but the sinking feeling that the world is completely messed up and we are caught in the mess. So the Holy Spirit enlightens us not by working with what is already inside of us, as if we had the truth hidden in seed and it only needed to be nurtured by a talented guru or delivered by Plato’s midwife.

Outside In

In truth, Luther thought, the Holy Spirit sends a preacher. Preachers are sent with God’s word as if from a far country bearing the message over the mountains by their “beautiful feet,” as the preacher Isaiah once put it. They do not bring advice, or a spiritual method of getting in touch with God, or the idea that “the truth is already in you” and you just need to get in touch with your inner light. The preacher announces “news.” News is “new” to you. News is not an idea or problem or riddle; it is an announcement of what God has already done. In other words, it announces a decision. Surprisingly, the news of this decision comes in the form of two historic events. The first is that God has judged the world and you in it and found it trapped under evil with no way out. The “day of the Lord,” as the Bible describes the final judgment, has already arrived when the preacher comes. That is “bad” news. But God’s preacher says more. Apart from this judgment, God did a new thing by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. He forgives you, because of his Son Jesus Christ’s victory over death. The Holy Spirit sends a preacher to give you Jesus Christ as forgiveness of sin and the promise of new creation. That is good, albeit unexpected, news.

If this particular sort of preacher does not come, you are lost inside yourself, racked by doubts and skepticism, since all is apparently “relative” to the peculiar insides of whoever is speaking. It is true we can control the confusion this skepticism causes by practicing toleration for others and their differences. But if toleration is all we have, then in the end it is just like the wise man said: “Vanity of vanities, . . . all is vanity” (Eccl. 1:2). The apostle Paul used stronger language yet. For without a preacher God gives up humans to what is within them: lusts, degrading their bodies, exchanging truths of God for lies, and becoming so confused about worship (giving God his due) that everything gets turned upside down—so we worship creatures and manipulate God for our own ends (Rom. 1:24–25).

For Luther, truth is more like hanging on for dear life to the preached word than it is searching within and weighing different possibilities while we suspend final judgment. Truth is trust and a right relationship with the real God, who is decidedly outside ourselves but has come near in preaching. If we have anything to say to each other beyond our own likes or dislikes (our “tastes” or “perspectives”), then what we say must come from God’s word that interrupts us—breaking us out of our caves with an external promise that comes into the heart. For example, take this powerful promise from Scripture: “Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved” (Joel 2:32). Now reason backward from this, as the apostle Paul did: “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” Then Paul concluded with what became Luther’s theology in a nutshell: “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:14–17).

Beginning something, Luther liked to say (whether beginning a theology or one’s own life), is always beginning again. So we begin with God’s word as law and gospel but never advance beyond it. Yet the Spirit’s work is to see not only that a preacher is sent but that hearers trust the announcement as belonging to them. In this way, Scripture is abundantly clear about what God promises, to whom such promises apply, and by whom they are rightly given. By this means, Luther undoes mere methods of interpretation of Scripture and existential theories of meaning because the Holy Spirit sends a preacher to you with words that fit—words that you could never have come up with no matter how long you stared at your navel.

God’s Permanent Interruption

Two of the most famous phrases from the Bible begin with “In the beginning.” The first is Genesis 1:1 (the first line of the Bible): “In the beginning God created. . . .” The second is the first line of the story of Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word.” Martin Luther understood that God not only started and preserved the world’s course by speaking but interrupted it by speaking a new word. God makes no apology for the abrupt interruption and speaks out of anger and determination in light of what humans have done to creation. The interruption is decisive with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. Precisely what God says by way of the interruption tears open the world, revealing it as old (and coming to an end) in the light of his new creation already begun with Christ: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” The world’s powers, divided every which way among themselves by culture and personal taste, nevertheless unite to oppose Jesus Christ’s message: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).

Only the weak and cast-off, the terrorized, unclean, powerless, prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners generally have any ear for Jesus—since they have almost nothing left to lose and a terrific amount to gain if he really can forgive sin and conquer death. So, for the present, God’s interrupting words are held in faith by God’s sinners. Faith means the words are hidden to sight but will be seen on the final day of Christ’s victory over “this evil world” (Gal. 1:4). That victory is for the sake of the Holy Spirit’s new creation when the mighty are brought down from their thrones and the lowly are lifted up (Mary sang that in Luke 1 and Miriam in 1 Samuel 2). That means that God’s words are always distinguished as two kinds: judgment of what is old, not right, and without any future, and promise that establishes Christ’s new world of forgiven sinners as right, new, and eternally alive. Theology and life itself must be understood entirely according to this distinction of old and new. When it comes to us sinners, that means, “the Lord kills and brings to life” (1 Sam. 2:6).

Admittedly this description sounds odd to most anyone on first hearing—or second for that matter. It is a peculiar type of what theologians call “eschatological” (having to do with last things) or even “apocalyptic” (having to do with God’s final judgment). Yet the real problem this poses is not those unusual words. Luther understood that God’s decisive interruption of this life opposes basic beliefs that are tiresomely outmoded:

•That the world is progressing toward a higher goal;

•That people are what they do;

•That humans are continually existing, independent subjects actively transcending themselves (reaching higher, climbing the ladder, pursuing their dreams, or every day in every way getting better and better);

•That freedom either means creating our own destinies or is just dumb luck (fate and chance);

•That God rewards chosen people with prosperity and punishes the undeserving losers (merit system);

•That death can be overcome with good behavior (following the golden rule) or mystical participation in God’s being (falling like a tiny drop into the great ocean of life)—if not at first then on repeated tries (such as in reincarnation).

More often than not, following these little rules of life is what we mean by living a “good,” “moral,” or “spiritual” life. In glaring contrast to this, Luther saw that the world deludes itself with dreams of progress while it violently opposes God’s own words, and that humans are not continually existing subjects who become right and holy by gradually doing greater works of the law. Instead, God’s word reveals the world’s evil and darkness, not because creation’s material “stuff” is evil, or even its laws or offices or powers are evil (old Manicheism), but because the world’s faith is put in the wrong place. Luther understood that all those who come after the death and resurrection of God’s only Son are in “the latter days,” in which faith alone holds Christ as “right” and “certain,” while awaiting the last day. On that day all will be seen that is now held in faith. But for now, everything in theology must be marked by the struggle between old and new in this world.

Luther then asserted that faith is constantly under attack by the powers of this old world: the devil, the world, and our sinful selves. He observed, to the horror of many, that God himself (outside of his words, outside Christ) attacks us, “cooking and roasting his saints,” as he once said, so that faith in Christ’s promise of forgiveness given for you by a preacher remains your only deliverance from death to life. That is what it feels like to be in these “latter days,” in which we either wait perilously for the other shoe of judgment to drop (by fate or chance), or with eager anticipation await seeing what now is held only in faith—that God is right in declaring his opponents forgiven on account of Christ. We can get a start on the theological fun ahead when we begin to pose Luther’s contrast to the world’s dreams this way:

•The world is not progressing; it is ending and being created new.

•People are not what they do, but what God calls them.

•Humans are not continually existing subjects of self-transcendence but are passive before God. They are killed and raised, and so they never advance beyond baptism.

•Freedom is not creating our destiny (even with God’s help) with free will but is trust given by the Holy Spirit in Christ that makes us lords of everything and servants to all.

•Jesus was a loser among “winners” and put to death for it; yet the cross became a new kind of victory over self-righteous sinners.

•Death is not overcome by wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. In the Beginning . . . a Preacher: What Is Proclamation?
• 2. Law and Gospel: God’s Two Words
• 3. Justification by Faith Alone
• 4. The Simple Sense of Scripture: Letter and Spirit
• 5. For God, to Speak Is to Do: Pastoral Care of Souls
• 6. What Theology Is About: I, the Sinner; God, the Justifier
• 7. Bound and Accused: Human Will and the Law
• 8. God, Who Forgives Sin: The Gospel
• 9. At Great Cost: How Christ’s Cross Saves Sinners
• 10. This Is My Body: God’s Means of Grace
• 11. Freedom of a Christian
• 12. Fame and the Cross
• Notes
• For Further Reading
• Index