MARTIN LUTHER
Protestant Reformer or Devout Catholic
After reading the two selections which follow, consider if Luther was a Protestant and rebel, as
the existing church claimed or was he a devout Catholic as he claimed until his dying day.
THE PROTESTANT LUTHER
Luther had an uncanny ability not only to surrive but to build around himself a new politicalreligious community vital enough to maintain itself. Both during the 16th century and today, the
image of Luther is based upon the incredible quality of his writings--tracts, treatises, sermons,
commentaries, translations, disputations, hymns and letters---nearly a 100 modern volumes,
certainly Luther was a voluble and expansive man.
He rejected clerical celibacy along with the other doctrines of the old church. His kitchen table
served not only his own family but became the center of the Protestant world. His table always
had visitors and after dinner when the table was cleared, and beer steins passed, he and his friend
would talk about what became the theology of the reformation. The results of these
conversations were writtne down in Luther's "Tabletalk."
Consider the following which expresses the views of Luther, the Protestant Reformer:
"In short, as a monk I experienced such horrors; I had to experience them before I could fight
them. I almost fasted myself to death, for again and again I went for three days without taking a
drop of water or a morsel of food. I was very serious about it."
"When I was a monk I was unwilling to omit any of the prayers, but when I was busy wiith
public lecturing and writing I often accumulated my appointed prayers for a whole week, or even
two or three weeks. Then I would take a Saturday off, or shut myself in for as long as three days
without for and drink, until I had said the prescribed prayers. A Christian was taken to be nothing
but a fool. I know priests who said six or seven masses while I said only one. They took money
for them and I didn't."
"It is necessary to have life, salvation, and grace before good works. Infants who have no works
are saved by faith alone, and therefore faith along justifies. If the power of God can do this in
one person it can do it in all."
THE CATHOLIC LUTHER
The writings which follow focus on the last years of Luther the Catholic (pre 1517), and the
years he spent at Wittenberg when he was a young professor of theology. Theory says that
Luther was a bad Catholic then not a solitary figure fighting against the "terror of the Holy." He
was said to be a rebel willfully distorting the rules of his order and arrogantly preferring his own
interpretations of scripture and tradition to that of the Church. He is accused of being
overbearing and selfish, and neglectful of his proper religious duties.
The Church claimed Luther had become a mystic. The Church has always been sort of mystical
anyway but Luther seems to have gone overboard. His opposition to good works opened his
mind to a false conception of the doctrines of those books of the mystical life. The Church
claimed tried to transform all theology into what he called a "theology of the Cross." He would
recognize only the highest motives, namely reasons of the greatest perfection for himself as well
as for others. Fear of devine punishment and hope of devine reward were to be excluded.
The Catholic proof against Luther stems from a letter to a friend in which Luther writes:
"I do hardly anything all day but write letters. I am at the same time preacher to the monastery,
have to preach in the refectory and am even expected to preach daily in the parish church. I have
to provide for the delivery of fish from Leitzkau pond, I am lecturing on Paul, compiling an
exposition of the Psalter... It is seldom that I have time for the recitation of the Divine Office or
to celebrate Mass, and then, too, I have my peculiar temptations from the flesh, the world and the
devil."
It was his duty (as it was the duty of every monk) to arrange his affairs as to be able to comply
with these obligations. The saying of Mass is the central obligation of every priest. If Luther did
not know how to observe due moderation in his labors, if he were derelict in the prioncipal duties
of the spiritual life, it was to be feared that he would gradually drift away from the religious
state.
Now, is Luther a rebel or a loyal churchman?
http://thecaveonline.com/APEH/Lutherprotestantcatholic.html