Bibliology - Week 8 - Martin Luther & The Centrality of the Bible

Intro

Today, in our Sunday School class, we are going to take a slightly different approach from our previous lessons. Up until this point, we have talked about the different categories of theology that pertain to the Bible. We have talked about:

Overview/How to Use the Bible

Revelation

Inspiration

Inerrancy

Canonicity

Preservation

Translation

So for our first 7 lessons, we have been primarily focusing on the theology of the Bible. Our next two lessons (today and next week) will be focused on the history of the Bible. And then, our last 3 lessons will be on the interpretation and use of the Bible. And that will bring us to the end of November.

For today, we are going to shift gears a bit, because October 31, 2017 (this Tuesday), is a very special date. It marks the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther his famous 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. These were Luther’s formal protest against the Church’s practice of selling indulgences. And in order to understand indulgences, you have to understand the Roman Catholic teaching of purgatory.

In Catholic theology, the majority of people do not go directly to heaven when they die. Instead, they go to a place called Purgatory, where souls are cleansed of any unforgiven sins before entering the presence of Christ. In Luther’s day, the Church began to sell slips of paper, known as indulgences, which ‘guaranteed’ that a deceased relative would be released from Purgatory for a certain number of years. In this way, the Church began to ‘sell’ salvation. These indulgences originally were sold as a fund-raiser for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, but soon they became a snare to the people, as many believed that the purchase of a slip of paper could grant forgiveness of sins to themselves or to loved ones. Martin Luther immediately recognized this as heresy, and wrote 95 points, or arguments against this practice.

What were indulgences? In Catholic theology, the majority of people do not go directly to heaven when they die. Instead, they go to a place called Purgatory, where souls are cleansed of any unforgiven sins before entering the presence of Christ. In Luther’s day, the Church began to sell slips of paper, known as indulgences, which ‘guaranteed’ that a deceased relative would be released from Purgatory for a certain number of years. In this way, the Church began to ‘sell’ salvation. These indulgences originally were sold as a fund-raiser for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, but soon they became a snare to the people, as many believed that the purchase of a slip of paper could grant forgiveness of sins to themselves or to loved ones. Martin Luther immediately recognized this as heresy, and wrote 95 points, or arguments against this practice

The established church at the time, led by the Pope, did not listen to Luther. And so this event is often marked as the start of where Luther would eventually break from the Catholic church, and ultimately spark a larger movement, led by many others, which would be known as the Protestant Reformation. While Luther did not have his theology fully formed at the posting of the 95 Theses, some major themes that ultimately arose from this event were:

Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”): The Bible alone is our highest authority.

Sola Fide (“faith alone”): We are saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ.

Sola Gratia (“grace alone”): We are saved by the grace of God alone.

Solus Christus (“Christ alone”): Jesus Christ alone is our Lord, Savior, and King. Salvation is found only in Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria (“to the glory of God alone”): We live for the glory of God alone.

While Luther didn’t coin these terms, you can see these ideas resonate throughout his life and works. And since this is a course on the Bible, I thought it would be worthwhile for us to talk about Luther’s views on Scripture, and how they paved the way for the Protestant view of Scripture today.

The Leipzig Debate

At the Diet of Worms in 1521, Martin Luther declared his conscience captive to the Word of God. But that declaration did not mark his decisive theological break with the Church of Rome. That had happened two years earlier, in July 1519, at Leipzig.

At the Diet of Worms in 1521, Martin Luther declared his conscience captive to the Word of God. But that declaration did not mark his decisive theological break with the Church of Rome. That had happened two years earlier, in July 1519, at Leipzig.

Luther’s opponent in the Leipzig Debate was an accomplished professor at the University of Ingolstadt, John Eck. In German, Eck means corner, and he boxed Luther into one. He forced Luther to admit that popes and church councils could err, and that the Bible alone could be trusted as an infallible source of Christian faith and teaching.

Under duress, Luther articulated what would come to be the formal principle of the Reformation: all church teaching must be normed by the Bible. The following year, in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther stated: “What is asserted without the Scriptures or proven revelation may be held as an opinion, but need not be believed.” Late medieval theologians placed Christian tradition alongside the Bible as a source of church doctrine. Luther emphasized instead the primacy of Scripture.

However, Luther did not reject tradition outright. He respected the writings of the early church Fathers, especially those of Augustine, and he considered the universal statements of faith, such as the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, binding on the church in his day. But all creeds, sayings of the Fathers, and decisions of church councils must be judged by—never sit in judgment upon—the “sure rule of God’s Word.”

For Luther, the church does not take priority over the Bible; instead, the church is the creation of the Bible. It is born in the womb of Scripture. “For who begets his own parent?” Luther asked. “Who first brings forth his own maker?”

Arguably, Luther’s greatest contribution to the Reformation was his translation of the Bible into German. He wanted common people—the farm boy and milkmaid—to “feel” the words of Scripture “in the heart.”

Luther held a high view of the inspiration of the Bible, calling it once “the Holy Spirit book.”

Luther’s Quotes About the Bible

Its Inspiration

“Let the man who would hear God speak, read Holy Scripture.”

“The Holy Spirit himself and God, the Creator of all things, is the Author of this book.”

Its Supremacy

“The Word of God is the greatest, most necessary, and most important thing in Christendom.”

“The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me… A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a cardinal without it.”

“I’d like all my books to be destroyed so that only the sacred writings in the Bible would be diligently read.”

“These are the Scriptures which make fools of all the wise and understanding, and are open only to the small and simple, as Christ says in . Therefore dismiss your own opinions and feelings, and think of the Scriptures as the loftiest and noblest of holy things, as the richest of mines which can never be sufficiently explored, in order that you may find divine wisdom which God here lays before you in such simple guise as to quench all pride. Here you will find the swaddling clothes and the manger in which Christ lies.” - Luther’s Works, vol. 35: Prefaces to the Old Testament, 236.

“Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason--I do not accept the authority of popes and councils for they have contradicted each other--my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. Amen." - Luther at The Diet of Worms

“Take me, for example. I opposed indulgences and all papists, but never by force. I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word: otherwise I did nothing. And then, while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my friend Philip of Amsdorf the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it. I did nothing: the Word did it all. Had I wanted to start trouble…. I could have started such a little game at Worms that even the emperor wouldn’t have been safe. But what would it have been? A mug’s game. I did nothing: I left it to the Word.” 

On Temptation

“Nothing helps more powerfully against the devil, the world, the flesh, and all evil thoughts than occupying oneself with God’s Word, having conversations about it, and contemplating it.” - Luther, The Large Catechism, p. 187, in Krey, Luther’s Spirituality.

“I have learned by experience how one should act under temptation, namely, when any one is afflicted with sadness…. Let him first lay hold of the comfort of the divine Word.” - Nebe, Luther As Spiritual Adviser, pp. 175-176.

“If you now attempt, in this spiritual conflict, to protect yourself by the help of man without the Word of God, you simply enter upon the conflict with that mighty spirit, the devil, naked and unprotected. Such an endeavor would be worse than David against Goliath—without God’s supernatural power helping David. You may, therefore, if you so please, oppose your power to the might of the devil. It will then be very easily seen what an utterly unequal conflict it is, if one does not have at hand in the beginning the Word of God.” - Luther, Commentary on Romans, pp. 179-180.

On our Confidence Before God

“Let us learn, therefore, in great and horrible terrors, when our conscience feels nothing but sin and judges that God is angry with us, and that Christ has turned His face from us, not to follow the sense and feeling of our own heart, but to stick to the Word of God.” - Luther, Commentary on Galatians, pp. 333, 126.

The Power of the Word to Save

“So we also labor by the Word of God that we may set at liberty those that are entangled, and bring them to the pure doctrine of faith, and hold them there.” - Luther, Commentary on Galatians, pp. 333, 126.

“Be assured that no one will make a doctor of the Holy Scripture save only the Holy Ghost from heaven.”

On Translating the Bible

“We are now sweating over the translation of the Prophets into German. O God, what a great and hard toil it requires to compel the writers against their will to speak German! They do not want to give up their Hebrew and imitate the barbaric German. Just as though a nightingale should be compelled to imitate a cuckoo and give up her glorious melody, even though she hates a song in monotone.” (Dr. Martin Luther's Sämmtliche Werke in beiden Originalsprachen, Briefwechsel, Volume 6 [Stuttgart, 1895], Nr. 1348; 14. Juni 1528, Luther an Wenc. Link in Nürnberg.)

On Reading & Studying the Bible

“For a number of years I have now annually read through the Bible twice. If the Bible were a large, mighty tree and all its words were little branches I have tapped at all the branches, eager to know what was there and what it had to offer.”

“The Bible is a remarkable fountain: the more one draws and drinks of it, the more it stimulates thirst.”

The Luther Bible

Luther wanted a vernacular Bible that was accessible to common people. From 1521 to 1522, he translated the New Testament into German from Greek, using Erasmus’s recent edition of the Greek New Testament. With the help of other colleagues, Luther finished the translation of the entire Bible in 1534. His translation was significant because he desired to use the spoken language of the German people, rather than the more formal German used by the wealthy.

Watch Luther’s Bible Video, from The Museum of the Bible (opening on Nov 17, 2017 in Washington DC.)

So that is the Luther Bible. And you can still buy copies of the Luther Bible today. I have it included in my Logos Bible Software program on my computer, though it really isn’t of much use to me, since I don’t speak German. But as the video said, Luther’s Bible wasn’t the first in German. But it was the first to use the original Greek New Testament as its source, rather than the Latin Vulgate. When Luther and his colleagues translated the Old Testament, there is very funny quote that is attributed to him about the process: