Why read Martin Luther today?

Innovative ideas around identity shaped the world around him.

Robert Kolb

Robert is professor emeritus of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

A head and shoulder painting of Martin Luther against a red background

Luther, by Cranach the Elder.

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tensions build as the German election approaches. Money is flowing, bargaining going on behind the scenes. (We are talking the election of 1519 here). There is the favorite, Karl—they called him Carlos in the Spanish dominions he had inherited from his maternal grandparents, Ferdinand and Isabella—, grandson of the German emperor, Maximilian of Austria, and there is the challenger, the King of France, Francis I, and there is the wild card, the duke of Saxony, one of the seven electors who would elect the next emperor, Frederick, called the Wise. Frederick had no imperial ambitions, and he tipped the election to his distant cousin, the then young man we call Charles V. Two years later, that gave Frederick the leverage to win a hearing for his most prominent professor at the pride of his heart, his new university in Wittenberg, Martin Luther.

Charles regarded this Augustinian friar, who had been excommunicated at the beginning of 1521 by Pope Leo X, as a dangerous heretic. He wanted to declare Luther a criminal, open for execution on the open road by whoever might find him and run him through. Frederick advised the young emperor not to treat a German subject like that, so Charles arranged for Luther to come to the imperial diet in Worms in May 1521 to recant. Luther explained to the emperor that he really could not recant since his writings contained many truths. He continued, “I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.” Later reports say that he added the words, “I cannot do anything else. Here I stand. God help me!” Whether he said “here I stand” or not, that is what Martin Luther did at Worms and continued to do for the next quarter century until his death.

Upon what was he standing? As a “doctor in Biblia,” a “teacher of the Scriptures,” Luther had taken up the latest methods of the so-called humanist movement for exploring ancient texts in their original languages. Jurists turned to Justinian’s Code in sixth century Latin. Physicians were reading Galen’s medical advice in ancient Greek. Theologians immersed themselves in the Bible in Hebrew and Greek. Luther had put the tools of these methods to use as he lectured in the 1510s on the Hebrew Psalms, and then the apostle Paul’s letters to the Romans and to the Galatians. There he found a new way of viewing himself, the God whom he found speaking to him in the pages of the Bible, and his fellow human creatures. He used the world “righteousness” in the way we might use “personal identity” today. He heard from the biblical writers a different way of identifying who he was at his core by listening to God’s regard for him.

Just as our DNA is a gift, not something we have to work to earn, so Luther’s core identity came from outside himself.

Luther certainly did not deny that human performance helps give each human being a variety of identities as we go about what he saw as callings from God in our exercise of responsibilities in our homes, in our economic life, in our societal networks and political structures. He believed that in these spheres of life we are active in shaping the way other people view and identify us. But at his core, Luther found the person behind the masks of his everyday life to be unable to perform everything that would make him the good person he wanted to be, the good person he thought God wanted him to be. Just as our DNA is a gift, not something we have to work to earn, so Luther’s core identity came from outside himself. It came as a gift from God, his Creator. He received it passively, and his trust in the God who gave him this passively bestowed identity set his entire life in order. Because he trusted God to be his support and to justify who he was, he felt freed to perform his responsibilities toward other human creatures actively.

Luther believed that on his own he had not been able to trust God, to love him and give him proper respect. Like the modern psychiatrist and philosopher, Erik Erikson, Luther believed that trust forms the basis of human personhood and personality. He saw that his trusting some Absolute and Ultimate formed his character and enabled him to function as a human being. He recognized in the God presented by the Old Testament prophets of Israel and the New Testament evangelists and apostles the ultimate and absolute person, who approached the human creatures who had turned their backs on him by becoming one of them as Jesus of Nazareth. In the mysterious ways of the Creator, Jesus’s death covered the transgressions and offenses, the mistakes and failures, of all human beings, and in his resurrection God gave new life, a new identity, true righteousness to those who trust in him.

Luther found that message liberating. It freed him from being imprisoned in a cycle of always insufficient attempts to be the person he wanted to be to please his Creator. He rested in the unconditional love of this Creator, who had come face to face with humankind as the rabbi from Nazareth, crucified but back from death itself. That freed Dr. Luther to be bonded to those within his reach who needed his care and love. He need not manipulate them by doing them the good he needed to make himself look good in God’s sight and feel satisfied with himself. He now could do them the good that they truly needed. That gave his tempestuous spirit a sense of joy and peace.

He lived out a rather peaceable life under the ban of church and empire, but safely ensconced in the lands of his Saxon electors. Family life brought him much joy. His judgment that God had given human beings the gift of sexuality for companionship and support as well as procreation made him uncomfortable with his own vows of celibacy, but not so uncomfortable that he would have married had not a nun named Katharina von Bora, who had left the cloister, laid claim to him. Together they created a bustling household with their six children being raised in the cloister where Martin had lived as an Augustinian Brother, large enough to house students and guests from places far from Wittenberg. Katharina served as his counsellor and theological conversation partner as well as the efficient manager of this ever-changing parade of co-inhabitants of their home.

Music filled their home. Luther’s firm tenor voice and his lute and his flute led family and visitors in evenings of song, sometimes giving voice to hymns he had written. His sense of tone and rhythm coupled with sensitivity to the fine points of spoken and written speech made him a scholar of great skill and a translator who “looked into the mouths” of the people in the marketplace and render the Bible in their tongue. His curiosity stimulated or at least supported colleagues at the university across the disciplines, including a botany instructor who took students the woods to look at leaves and colleagues in mathematics and astronomy who were playing with the new calculation of the heavens by Nikolaus Copernicus.

Luther’s lively engagement with life and his dramatic search for peace in the pages of the Bible produced a man who enjoyed life despite his struggles with “melancholy,” a widespread disease of his time, and the threats of violence to his person that never disappeared. His robust wrestling with the biblical texts provides even today stimulating, even provocative reading for anyone, who is looking for the heart of the matter, the matter of self and life.

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Explainer

Addiction

Creed

Eating

3 January 2024

5 min read

When indulgence and inhibition are on the menu

As the time of feasting concludes, and resolutions start to crumble, Ryan Gilfeather takes some lessons on how and when to say 'no more'.

Ryan Gilfeather

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

Two stuffed cheeseburgers are carried on a tray.

Peter Dawn on Unsplash.

Advent and Christmas are heroic culinary seasons. They are times of abundant feasting on foods from rich and varied traditions. However, despite the enthusiasm many of us share in this overindulgence, we are, as a society, fairly ambivalent about the pleasures of food.

Recently, Tim Hayward wrote a vigorous defence of gluttony, claiming that the Church labelling it a sin, because it defied the practice of self-denial in hope of future reward that he claims the Christian faith is predicated upon. Here, Tim represents a prominent belief in our culture, that taking pleasure in an activity cannot be wrong if it doesn’t have negative consequences on others.

However, despite the prominence of these views, diet culture is still powerful and pervasive. Many of us, perhaps guilt ridden and ashamed, will resolve in the New Year to cut out the pleasures of food in order to drop a few waist sizes.

This encouragement to say no to the pleasures of food, is an invitation to learn the habit of denying our inner yearnings, if they will lead to emptiness.

Over the years, Christians have also toyed with the question of what pleasure we are to take in food. They are certainly far more cautious than the hedonists among us would like. However, they give us a way to navigate between the Scylla of unrestrained indulgence and the Charybdis of starving ourselves entirely.

Gregory of Nyssa, a Fourth Century bishop and theologian, argued that indulging the desire for the pleasures of food can replace our pursuit of those things which are truly good in life. Here, Gregory makes a similar point to Graham Tomlin in a recent article for Seen & Unseen. Gregory gives particular insight into the psychological experience of addiction to physical pleasure. In his biography of Moses, he likens the pursuit of physical pleasures to an enslaved person making bricks. The brick maker is entirely consumed, both in mind and body, with filling the brick cast and baking it. But, as soon as the brick is finished, the cast is empty again, and the process must be repeated. We dedicate our thoughts and our actions to achieving physical pleasures, but as soon as we attain them, they disappear. It is a futile process.

Crucially, some people develop a kind of addiction to pursuing pleasure, they are stuck in the loop of dedicating their minds and bodies to achieving it again and again. They begin to experience emotional turbulence if they can’t attain pleasure, like anger, greed, or anxiety. This pattern of behaviour absorbs these people’s thoughts so much that it replaces their capacity to pursue those things in life which will truly make them flourish. Therefore, this encouragement to say no to the pleasures of food, is an invitation to learn the habit of denying our inner yearnings, if they will lead to emptiness.

The most salient and pervasive examples of this today are digital content and social media. We tend to think of addiction in clinical terms, an extreme form of behaviour associated with people whose habitual consumption of drugs, alcohol, or gambling has run their lives off of the track. However, some psychologists argue for a broader definition of addiction. One which includes the habituation to compulsively consuming social media, the news, and other forms of digital media. For many of us, our compulsion to consume these kinds of content will occupy a great deal of our time and energy, which we could otherwise spend on activities which would make us thrive. Such as nurturing our relationships with God and with others, creative endeavours, and spending time in nature.

A well-crafted meal, especially one received from a long culinary tradition, reveals the power of human creativity, which in turn shows us a glimmer of God’s creative act.

Importantly, Gregory does not suggest that we ought to starve ourselves. A key aspect of learning to say no to the pleasures of food, is learning to say yes to that which our body needs. He explains that our minds are capable of determining how much is sufficient, but our inner yearnings are not. If they are left unchecked, they will cause us to desire to never stop eating. For those of us who are privileged enough to afford it, the solution is to neither punish nor destroy our bodies, but simply to stop when we have had a sufficient amount.

Admittedly, this vision of eating does not sound like much fun. Food and wine certainly afford me great pleasure, not so much in their quantities but in their qualities; what room is there for people like me in Gregory’s vision of the kingdom of God?

In his interpretation of the Song of Songs, a book in the Hebrew Bible, Gregory discusses two kinds of pleasure. He says that there are pleasures of the body, which, as discussed, consume our minds and bodies, replace our pursuit of those things which will help us truly flourish and give us turbulent emotions. However, there are also spiritual pleasures. These are experiences which lift our minds up to God and give us a kind of spiritual ecstasy. Although Gregory does not make this connection, I suggest that food can afford us these spiritual pleasures. The occasional feast can point to the abundance of God’s generosity to us. Fine fresh fruit on a summer's day can teach us something about the goodness of God’s creation. A well-crafted meal, especially one received from a long culinary tradition, reveals the power of human creativity, which in turn shows us a glimmer of God’s creative act.

In this way, Christians have a way of thinking about the pleasures of food which walks the narrow path between the pitfalls of unhealthy overindulgence and mutilation of the body. It is cautious about a pattern of life given over to the pursuit of pleasure instead of those things which will make us thrive. However, it recognises those times in which food can lift up our minds to the divine. So, this New Year, don’t resolve to starve yourself in pursuit of a certain waistline, and certainly don’t give up on discipline altogether. Instead, focus on moderation, and the capacity to say no to unhelpful desires. Let this discipline open up space in your life to say yes to those things which will make you truly flourish.