
Luther nailing a list of his 95 Latin theses to the door of the church

The Dominicans of Saxony complained to Rome about this Augustinian monk, and managed to open the process against Luther on suspicion of spreading heresy. In early August 1518 Martin Luther was cited to appear in person in Rome for a hearing, but he made excuses not to go. It was agreed instead for Luther to meet with the papal legate, Cardinal Tommaso de Vio Cajetan, during the Diet of Augsburg, in October 1518. They met indeed, but “the audiences were doomed to failure. Cajetan came to adjudicate, Luther to defend; the former demanded submission, the latter launched out into remonstrance…. The legate, with the reputation of ‘the most renowned and easily the first theologian of his age’, could not fail to be shocked at the rude, discourteous, bawling tone of the friar, and having exhausted all his efforts, he dismissed him with the injunction not to call again until he recanted. … All efforts towards a recantation having failed, and now assured of the sympathy and support of the temporal princes, he (Luther) followed his appeal to the pope by a new appeal to an ecumenical council … which, … he again, denying the authority of both, followed by an appeal to the Bible.”²⁷ Over the next three years several other distinguished Catholic theologians met with Martin Luther and tried to dissuade him from his errors. The effect was opposite; Luther grew ever bolder in heresy. In one short work called “On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church”, Luther rejected “Communion under one kind, the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, transubstantiation, and confirmation, holy orders, extreme unction and matrimony as sacraments.”²⁸

Pope Leo X condemned him on these points in the bull “Exsurge Domine” in 1520. Luther was given 60 days to recant his errors, or receive the punishment of being excommunicated. He burned the Bull publicly. The “reformer” had become a rebel and an apostate. The next step, the enforcement of the Bull, was the duty of the state. The Emperor Charles V came to the Diet of Worms in the Spring of 1521, and there he met Martin Luther face to face. He placed Luther under the ban of the Empire, and ordered the destruction of all his works. Alas, this was not faithfully carried out. Martin Luther continued to have his writings circulated. To preserve his life, Luther’s friends “abducted” him soon after the Diet and helped him to remain hidden in the Castle of Wartburg for a year.

Luther publicly burning the Papal Bull

It is during that time, when he was both over-indulging in food and drink, and deprived of traditional spiritual help, that Luther experienced a great increase of his temptations of the flesh. These, his scrupulosity, and his doubts about the righteousness of his revolt against the Tradition of the Church, led to extreme anguish and bodily pains. There he also had personal encounters with Satan, whether true or self-delusions, we don’t know. Anyway, he claimed he vividly recalled them. Msgr. O’Hare writes: “In his work ‘The Mass and the Ordination of Priests’, he tells of his famous discourse with the ‘Father of Lies’ who accosted him at ‘midnight’ and spoke to him in a deep powerful voice, causing ‘the sweat to break forth’ from his brow and his ‘heart to tremble and beat.’ In that celebrated conference, of which he was an unexceptionable witness and about which he never entertained the slightest doubt, he says plainly and unmistakably that ‘the devil spoke against the Mass, and Mary and the Saints’ and that, moreover, Satan gave him the most unqualified approval of his doctrine on justification by faith alone.”²⁹ But despite these startling “confessions” from Luther, the event that will always be associated with his name, during this period in the castle of Wartburg, is the translation of the New Testament into German.

Luther and the Bible

There is a legend that people did not read the Bible until Luther translated it for them. In answer to this we must recall the level of education in Germany in the 1500’s. The Latin text of the Bible was read at Mass. “Those who could read Latin could read the Bible, and those who could not read Latin could not read anything.”³⁰ Those who could not read listened as it was translated to them, or read to them from a German translation. (There were 17 translations of the entire Bible into German before Luther made his translation, in addition to translations of the New Testament or psalms alone.) It must be added, though, that none of these earlier translations were completely satisfactory. They tended to be slavish translations, sticking closely to the Latin phraseology, and hence they were sometimes harsh or unclear. It is to the credit of Martin Luther that he produced an “easy to read” translation. “Luther’s translation was genuinely German in style and spirit. … At that time dialects were many and various, so that people living only a short distance apart could scarcely understand one another. Though Luther did not create the German language, he laboured in conjunction with the Saxon Chancery to reform, modify, and enrich it. …He had a large, full and flexible vocabulary that he used with force in his translation, where it displayed the whole wealth, power and beauty of the German language. …We cannot deny that his translation surpasses those which had been published before him in the perfection of language, but while we admit this, we cannot but regret that he failed with all the beauty of his diction to give what his predecessors valued more than all else – a correct, faithful and true rendition of the undefiled Word of God.”³¹


Luther at the Diet of Worms (1521)

Luther’s translation was good German literature, but not a good translation. Jerome Emser, a learned doctor of Leipzig, accused Luther of more than a thousand faults in the first edition. Luther was angry about this criticism, yet “in his cooler moments, the Reformer availed himself of Emser’s corrections and made many further changes to his version.”³² The errors in Martin Luther’s work are largely explained by the speed with which he made his translation. Judging by admissions in letters to his friends, Luther translated the New Testament in a little more than ten weeks. That is a short time in which to make an accurate translation, especially when it is claimed that Luther made his translation directly from Greek. However, a likely solution is that Luther did not make an independent translation; he never claimed that he did: it is later admirers who made this statement to enhance the glory of the Reformer. It is now thought that Luther made his translation, with reference to the Greek, but primarily relying on the older German translation called “Codex Teplensis”. This is proved by the “deadly parallel.” A verse-by-verse comparison of the two texts reveals their connection. However, the old Codex was an accurate translation of the Vulgate; Martin Luther took deliberate liberties with his translation. A few examples will prove this. Luther renders the expression “full of grace” in the Annunciation as “thou gracious one.” Romans 4:15 states: “the law worketh wrath”; Luther translated it as “the law worketh only wrath”, thus changing the sense. Again, Romans 3:28 states: “We account a man to be justified by faith without the works of the law”; Luther changed this to state: “We hold that a man is justified without works of the law by faith alone.” “His answer to Emser’s exposition of his perversion of the text was: ‘If your Papist annoys you with the word (Faith “alone”), tell him straightway: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so: Papist and ass are one and the same thing. Whoever will not have my translation, let him give it the go-by: the devil’s thanks to him who censures it without my will and knowledge. Luther will have it so, and he is a doctor above all the doctors in Popedom.’ Thus Luther defends his perversion of Scripture and makes himself the supreme judge of the Bible.”³³

When Martin Luther eventually published a translation of the entire Bible he separated some books from the Old Testament and labelled them as Apocrypha, “or books profitable for pious reading, but no part of the Sacred Text, because not inspired by the Holy Ghost. The catalogue in the edition of 1534 gives as ‘Apocrypha,’ Judith, Wisdom, Tobias, Ecclesiasticus, the two books of Maccabees, parts of Ester, parts of Daniel and the prayer of Manasses.”³⁴ This is the biggest difference between Catholic and Protestant Bibles. Moreover, throughout Luther’s writings, there are derogatory comments even about the books he chose to retain. Most famous is Luther’s comment on the Epistle of St. James: Luther called it “an epistle of straw.” A brief reading of the second chapter of this Epistle is enough to cast grave doubts about Luther’s teaching; it is amazing that Luther retained it at all. Indeed, Chap. 2 verse 24 says: “Do you see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only?”

Martin Luther was the first “Reformer” to do away with the Church’s authority over Sacred Scripture. By his example and some unguarded words he led others to follow his example. Zwingli, Calvin and a host of others claimed the same power and authority as Luther, to interpret the Bible. The idea became common that every man, woman, and child was capable of judging the meaning of the inspired text for himself. Luther did speak out, severely berating those who put into practice this private interpretation of the Bible. “This one,” he says, “will not hear of Baptism, that one denies the Sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day: some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that: there are about as many sects and creeds as there are heads. No yokel is so rude but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet.”³⁵ These outbursts, however, were not a return to submission to the Catholic Church, they were simply outbursts of anger against those who adopted interpretations opposed to the wisdom of the great doctor Martin Luther.


	Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531)

By its very nature, the private interpretation of Sacred Scripture leads to a multitude of contradictory opinions. But there can only be one truth, and thus only one true religion revealed by God. The Church safeguards this revelation that Christ established – the Roman Catholic Church. For 1500 years before Martin Luther, the Catholic Church taught with authority the true meaning of the revelations of God. This authority sifted opinions, and heresies were condemned. The very books of the Bible were selected from among other writings and given to all Christians with the guarantee of inspiration. Our Lord Jesus Christ promised to send the Holy Ghost to guard and protect the Church from error (cf. Luke 24:44-45; John 14:26). He is the Spirit of Truth, and time and again He has intervened to preserve the Church from errors in explaining the Bible. Her infallible interpretation guarantees certainty in all matters of faith and morals, so that peace and unity may prevail among Catholics. Outside of this Church there is no divinely constituted authority to teach the Word of God.

The Denial of Free Will

Another teaching of Martin Luther is his theory denying free will. Most people do not associate this idea with Lutheranism, but rather with Calvinism. In fact, Luther was teaching this heresy long before Calvin, although less consistently. It appears to be something that developed logically from Luther’s other heresies, but he is not known to have denied free will until after his censure by Pope Leo X. As a reply or response to his excommunication, Luther wrote his “Assertions”, in which his first denial of free will appears. It caused some scandal, and Erasmus was pressured by Pope Adrian VI, among others, to write a defence of free will. This was also a defence of Erasmus’ orthodoxy, since it was commonly said “Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched.” So, in 1524 Erasmus published a discourse called “A Diatribe or Sermon Concerning Free Will.” It is a calm and logical piece, full of wit and examples. It is clearly written against the errors of Luther, but the goal seems to be peace through toleration or even compromise. Luther, however, would make no compromise. He was committed to his heresy, and the logical conclusion of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone is the denial of free will. He responded to Erasmus with a long book entitled “The Bondage of the Will.” In later years Luther described this book as one of the best expressions of his thought.


	John Calvin (1509-1564)

It mattered not to Luther that the majority of mankind has always accepted free will, and that it is the teaching of the Catholic Church. He read the Bible for himself, and claimed to find a different teaching there. Moving along the old lines of his distaste for good works, he came to exaggerate the wounds of Original Sin. Concupiscence is one of these wounds, whereby our short-term passions easily get out of control and urge us to seek pleasures which are not truly for our good. Luther considered that our nature is so corrupted by Original Sin that concupiscence cannot be resisted and, thus, the freedom of moral choice is obliterated. Here are some quotations from Luther on the subject of free will: “Everything happens of necessity”; “Man, when he does what is evil, is not the master of himself”; God “decrees all things in advance by His infallible will”, including the inevitable damnation of the reprobate. (36) We have seen that these assertions logically follow from the heresy of Justification by faith alone: Since faith alone is important for salvation, all other human actions are unimportant. If these actions appear to be evil, it is only a false appearance. No blame will be attached to the sinner for these actions, so long as he has justifying faith. And, lastly, any action in which there is no possibility of praise or blame, is an action that was inevitable and is not the result of a free choice.


Pope Adrian VI (1459-1523)

The connection between justification by faith alone and the denial of free will was such that the Council of Trent condemned both errors with reference one to the other: “Canon 4. If anyone says that man’s free will moved and aroused by God, by assenting to God’s call and action, in no way cooperates toward disposing and preparing itself to obtain the grace of justification, that it cannot refuse its assent if it wishes, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive, let him be anathema. Canon 5. If anyone says that after the sin of Adam man’s free will was lost and destroyed, or that it is a thing only in name, indeed a name without a reality, a fiction introduced into the Church by Satan, let him be anathema.”³⁷

Erasmus had pointed out, in 1524, that Luther’s doctrine was a revival of the ancient heresy of Manichaeism, according to which two great spirits, one good and one evil, contend for control over each man. Far from abandoning his principle under this criticism, Luther adopted it in the form of a parable to explain his teaching. “Man is like a horse,” Luther wrote in his discourse on “the Bondage of the Will.” “Does God leap into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it. Does God throw the reins? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes, and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider. The will cannot choose its rider and cannot kick against the spur that pricks it. It must go on, and its very docility is a disobedience or a sin. The only struggle possible is between the two riders, who dispute the momentary possession of the steed, and then is fulfilled the saying of the Psalmist: ‘I am become like a beast of burden.’ Let the Christian, then, know that God foresees nothing contingently, but that He foresees, proposes and acts from His internal and immutable will. This is the thunderbolt that shatters and destroys free will. Hence it comes to pass that whatever happens, happens according to the irreversible decrees of God. Therefore, necessity, not free will, is the controlling principle of our conduct. God is the author of what is evil in us as well as what is good, and, as He bestows happiness on those who merit it not, so also does He damn others who deserve not their fate.”³⁸


	Erasmus (1466-1536)

Non-Catholics, as a rule, are not aware of Martin Luther’s degrading opinions about human liberty. If they are familiar with some of Luther’s sermons, they may even quote passages where he seems to teach that Christians are free, with the help of grace, to work out their salvation. It is true; there are inconsistencies in Luther’s teaching, but his clearest statements are those that declare the servitude of the will. But one of the principal perfections with which humans are endowed is free will. It is a vivid spiritual truth. We can like or dislike, act or not act, choose or reject a multitude of things in a multitude of ways, at almost every conscious moment. Erasmus adequately defined free will as “the power of the human will whereby man can apply to, or turn away from, that which leads unto eternal salvation.”.³⁹ This is a definition according to the last end of man. St. Augustine spoke of free will in a similar style when he said that God created man without man’s cooperation, but He will not save man without man’s cooperation. The role of God’s grace is also important to this question, but, as St. Augustine remarks, “Free will is not destroyed because it is assisted by grace; it is assisted because it has not been destroyed.”⁴⁰ It is this that Luther refused to accept.

Luther’s Intolerance

Many thought that when Luther freed himself and his followers from the duty of obedience to Rome and proclaimed the principle of private judgement, that it would have guaranteed real freedom of thought in matters of belief. Yet, inconsistent as it may seem, Luther and almost all of the reformers imposed their heresy on Catholics and on each other with even more strength than what the Church had once used to enforce true doctrine. “The tyrannical and intolerant character of Luther, the father of Protestantism, is a fact admitted by all candid Protestant writers.”⁴¹

A terrible example: German peasants, following Luther’s exhortations to social disobedience, started revolting against bad economic conditions, only to hear the same Luther call the Princes to: “…slaughter the offending peasants like mad dogs, to stab, strangle and slay as best one can, …Heaven being the reward.”⁴² This was in 1525. While 100 000 peasants were therefore being slain, Luther “married” Catherine Von Bora, 26, a run-away Bernardine Nun, and enjoyed a comfortable honeymoon!

The “Wedding” Of Luther And Catherine Von Bora

Among the other victims of Luther’s intolerance we may name: “Strigel, who was imprisoned for three years for maintaining that ‘man was not a merely passive instrument in the work of his conversion’; Hardenberg, who was banished from Saxony for having been guilty of some leaning towards the Calvinistic doctrines on the Eucharist; and Zwingli and the Sacramentarians, who, Luther declared, ‘were heretics who had broken away’ from him, and ‘ministers of Satan, against whom no exercise of severity, however great, would be excessive.’ Luther not only persecuted individuals, but also large bodies of dissenters who organized themselves to resist his authority and disseminate doctrines opposed to his. Prominent among these rebels from the Lutheran ranks were the Anabaptists, who received their name from their custom of baptizing again those who had been already baptized in infancy. … Luther could not endure this new sect, which his teaching on private judgement bought into being. He manifested his opposition toward it in a synod convened at Hamburg on the 7^th of August, 1536, composed of deputies sent by all the cities that had separated from the Mother Church. … The [intolerance] of this synod is manifested in one of its decrees, which runs as follows: ‘Whoever rejects infant baptism … shall be punished with death…. As for the simple people who have not preached or administered baptism, but who were seduced to permit themselves to frequent the assemblies of the heretics, if they do not wish to renounce Anabaptism, they shall be scourged, punished with perpetual exile and even with death, if they return three times to the place whence they have been expelled.’ Not a single protest was raised against this cruel decree. It received the unanimous approbation of the assembled delegates.”⁴³

At the beginning of his rebellion, Martin Luther rejected all authority. This led, soon, to total rebellion, and, as we can see, Luther was not an advocate of total democracy. He believed in the need for ecclesiastical authority, and took upon himself the authority to teach or proscribe doctrine. This led some of Luther’s contemporary Protestants to call him the Pope of Wittenberg.

The Last Years

Strangely, Martin Luther lived with his concubine at Wittenberg, in his former Augustinian monastery. The civil authority gave him this, after his “marriage” with Catherine. Six children were born to him there. It must have been odd; perhaps the constant reminder of his days as a monk stirred Luther up to continued hatred of the teachings of the Church and especially of its Supreme Visible Head, the Pope. As early as 1520, Luther branded the Papacy as “the most poisonous abomination that the chief of devils has sent upon the earth.”⁴⁴ Martin Luther has for centuries been the Papacy’s bitterest foe. He made opposition and hatred of the Papacy an essential element of Protestantism. Even today the question of authority is the great barrier between Catholics and Protestants, sometimes obscuring the questions of doctrine.

Luther’s last literary work (if it deserves such a name) was “Against the Papacy established by the Devil.” (1545). It is a torrent of insults and abuse. To make it understandable to the common man, unable to read, the volume was accompanied by nine caricatures of the Pope by the artist Lucas Cranach, with verses by Luther. These have been called “the coarsest drawings that the history of caricature of all times has ever produced”.⁴⁵ Fortunately, Martin Luther died before the work was completed; Luther’s friends suppressed it.

In the winter of 1545-6, Luther went on a journey to settle a dispute between two petty Counts in his native region. He was a sick man, and by the time he reached Eisleben, the city where he was born, he spoke of his approaching death. During the night of February 17-18 he suffered an attack of either apoplexy or pulmonary congestion. Doctors were called, but to no avail. “At three in the morning, Luther gave up the ghost, having assured his disciples who questioned him that he persevered in his doctrine. …On the wall near his bed, however, one of his doctors discovered the following inscription, scrawled by the dying man: ‘Pestis eram vivus, moriens ero mors tua, papa.’ (‘I was your plague while I lived; when I die I shall be your death, O Pope!’) This was the heresiarch’s final insult, his last gesture of supreme defiance.”⁴⁶

Luther’s Death

Conclusion: The Protestant Spirit

If one mark is chosen to identify the heresy established by Martin Luther, it is defiance. From the first this was widely recognized. Luther was opposed to the ancient teachings of the Catholic Church, and was not willing to submit to the authority of the Pope. His misunderstanding of true Catholic doctrine, his temptations and scruples - following his abandoning the contemplative side of his monastic life - his pride, that led him to seek his own solutions to his problems, all these elements explain his revolt against his Church. He was seen by many a tepid Catholic as a liberator, and was imitated in his disobedience and immorality. When the Emperor tried to re-establish peace in Germany at the second Diet of Spiers in 1529, ordering that no new doctrine should be preached until a general council was held and that no one should be prohibited from hearing Mass, six Princes and the rulers of fourteen cities protested against this decree and thereafter were called “Protestants”. The Protestants remain, and they continue to identify themselves with Martin Luther. Perhaps Luther’s teachings appeal to those who want a subjective religion, without the necessity of believing Catholic dogmas. But Luther’s doctrines, mainly his “Justification by Faith only” and “Scripture as only – and personal – Source of Revelation”, although seemingly giving man a greater dignity by freeing him from good works, the Sacraments, and the authority of the Catholic Church, reduce him to being like a straw tossed here and there by contradictory winds. Instead of one Pope, the Protestants have many, and they have diverse interpretations of the Scriptures. They are deprived of any sure access to Revealed Truth, of any sure guidelines for their morality, of any source of strength against their passions (the Sacraments), and of a sure way to pay here below their debts to the Almighty (the Indulgences). We must pity these poor souls, many of whom are of good will and great zeal, and we must pray for their coming back to the unique fold of Jesus Christ. We must also thank God for His mercy towards us, despite our tepidity and coldness.

References:

27 . H.G. Ganss., The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 9, Luther, P. 443, Robert Appleton Co., New York, 1910.

28 . John A. O’Brien, Martin Luther, The Priest who Founded Protestantism, P. 16-17, The Paulist Press, New York, 1953.

29 . Msgr. Patrick k O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 130, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

30 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 182, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987. The inner quotation is taken from Mons. Vaughan.

31 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 199, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

32 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 200, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

33 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 201, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987. The inner quotation from Luther, doctor above all doctors is taken from Amic. Discussion, 1, 127.

34 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 202, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

35 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 208, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987. This quotation is originally from De Wette III, 61.

36 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 259, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

37 . Decrees of the Council of Trent, Sess. 6.

38 . Martin Luther, De Servo Arbitrio, in op. lat. 7, 113 seq. The quotation is taken from Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 266-7, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

39 . Erasmus - Luther, Discourse on Free Will, ed. Ernst Winter, P. 20, Fredrick Ungar Publishing Co., Inc., New York, translated 1961.

40 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 258, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

41 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 282, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

42 . Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, page 450.

43 . Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, P. 286-7, TAN, Rockford, Illinois, revised ed., republished 1987.

44 . Karl Adam, The Roots of the Reformation, P. 72, Sheed and Ward, New York, 1951.

45 . H.G. Ganss., The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 9, Luther, P. 457, Robert Appleton Co., New York, 1910.