Luther: From Speculation to Expectation

Martin Luther and Aristotle,
by Simone Passaro.

“As he [Martin Luther, 1483–1546] wrote to his old professor Joducus Trutfetter, ‘I believe simply that it is impossible to reform the church if the canons, the decretals, the scholastic theology, the philosophy, and the logic as they are now are not uprooted and another study installed’ (WABr1, § 74). Luther at Wittenberg did just that.” ~ Robert Rosin, from The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther's Theology, 102.

Luther's Lectures on Romans (1515-1516) is a great example in support of the quotation above. There is a lot that can be said about Luther's attitude towards philosophy, that is, to the philosophy of his time (see the entry "Philosophy" in What Luther Say; Part 2 of The Oxford Handbook to Martin Luther's Theology; Christine Helmer, The Trinity and Martin Luther; and my Luther's Augustinian Theology of the Cross, for what it is worth). I will mention only a few things about that here, and I refer the reader to the sources just mentioned for more detailed discussions.

The passage I am interested in is Luther's commentary on Romans 8:19: "For the expectation of the creature waits for the revelation of the sons of God." (Rom. 8:19). The Reformer begins commenting on this verse as follows. I am quoting from Luther's Scholia in Luther's Works: Vol. 25, pages 25:361-362 (W, LVI, 370-373), with the help of Giancarlo Pani's and Franco Buzzi's respective Italian editions.

The apostle philosophizes and thinks about things in a different way than the philosophers and metaphysicians do. For the philosophers so direct their gaze at the present state of things that they speculate only about what things are and what quality they have, but the apostle calls our attention away from a consideration of the present and from the essence and accidents of things and directs us to their future state. For he does not use the term “essence” or “activity” of the creature, or its “action,” “inaction,” and “motion,” but in an entirely new and marvelous theological word he speaks of the “expectation of the creation,” so that because his soul can hear the creation waiting, he no longer directs his attention to or inquires about the creation itself, but rather to what it is awaiting (LW 25:360-361).

With "essence or activity of the creature, or its action, inaction, and motion," Luther is referring to Aristotelian metaphysics in general, or at least the way it was thought and interpreted at his time (for more on this, see James Atkinson, "Introduction" to Disputation against Scholastic Theology, in Luther: Early Theological Works, 251-265). He studied Aristotle's logic, ethics, and metaphysics while he was a student at Erfurt before entering the monastery, and he lectured at Wittenberg on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation: 1483-1521, 92-93). Luther came to the conclusion that focusing too much on this and similar studies had to be avoided inasmuch as they indulged the mind in speculating about the structure and essence of created things, rather than looking at them teleologically and eschatologically as the apostle Paul does. In fact, says Luther, Paul produces "an entirely new and marvelous theological word" (nouo et miro vocabulo et theologico), that is, the expectation of creation. 

But alas, how deeply and painfully we are ensnared in categories and questions of what a thing is; in how many foolish metaphysical questions we involve ourselves! When will we become wise and see how much precious time we waste on vain questions, while we neglect the greater ones? We are always acting this way, so that what Seneca has said is very true of us: “We do not know what we should do because we have learned unimportant things. Indeed we do not know what is salutary because we have learned only the things that destroy us” [Epistuale, 45.4] (LW 25:361).

Then, Luther adds a warning. C. S. Lewis’ words resemble Luther’s words: “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy must be answered” ("Learning in Wartime," from The Weight of Glory, 58). Luther’s words, however, are more negative. Luther calls for a significant decrease in time spent studied metaphysics and for an increase in the study of Christ and Him crucified.

Indeed I for my part believe that I owe to the Lord this duty of speaking out against philosophy and of persuading men to heed Holy Scripture. For perhaps if another man who has not seen these things, did this, he might be afraid or he might not be believed. But I have been worn out by these studies for many years now, and having experienced and heard many things over and over again, I have come to see that it is the study of vanity and perdition. Therefore I warn you all as earnestly as I can that you finish these studies quickly and let it be your only concern not to establish and defend them but treat them as we do when we learn worthless skills to destroy them and study errors to refute them. Thus we study also these things to get rid of them, or at least, just to learn the method of speaking of those people with whom we must carry on some discourse. For it is high time that we undertake new studies and learn Jesus Christ, “and Him crucified” [1 Cor. 2:2] (LW 25:361).

Then, the Reformer reiterates the importance of looking at creation in the right way, that is, teleologically and eschatologically.

Therefore you will be the best philosophers and the best explorers of the nature of things if you will learn from the apostle to consider the creation as it waits, groans, and travails, that is, as it turns away in disgust from what now is and desires that which is still in the future. For then the study of the nature of things, their accidents and their differences, will quickly grow worthless (LW 25:361). 

Luther then makes a pointing comparison between those who focus on essences and accidents and an imaginary man who marvels at the elements and materials that a builder intends to use and ignores the end of the building.

As a result the foolishness of the philosophers is like a man who, joining himself to a builder and marveling at the cutting and hewing and measuring of the wood and the beams, is foolishly content and quiet among these things, without concern as to what the builder finally intends to make by all of these exertions. This man is empty-headed, and the work of such an assistant is meaningless. So also the creation of God, which is skillfully prepared for the future glory, is gazed upon by stupid people who look only at its mechanics but never see its final goal (LW 25:361-362). 

Luther goes on to reveal the tragicomic nature of such fixation with this king of metaphysics. He says that "the things themselves reject and groan over their own essences and actions and inactions," however "we praise and glorify the knowledge of that very thing which is sad about itself and is displeased with itself." In other words, creation itself is unhappy with and groaning for the way it is now, having been subjected to the curse and vanity of sin. Some, however, glorify in and are satisfied with discovering the nature of something which considers itself (so to speak) corrupt and that longs for being different and renewed by God's deliverance. It is a "happy science" that focuses on "a sad creation."

Thus are we not completely off the track when we turn our thoughts to the praises and glories of philosophy? Look how we esteem the study of the essences and actions and inactions of things, and the things themselves reject and groan over their own essences and actions and inactions! We praise and glorify the knowledge of that very thing which is sad about itself and is displeased with itself! And, I ask you, is he not a mad man who laughs at someone who is crying and lamenting and then boasts that he sees him as happy and laughing? Certainly such a person is rightly called a madman and a maniac. Indeed, if only the rude common people foolishly thought philosophy was of some importance and did not know how to interpret the sighing of the natural order, it would be tolerable. But now it is wise men and theologians, infected by this same “prudence of the flesh,” who derive a happy science out of a sad creation, and from the sighings they laughingly gather their knowledge with marvelous display of power (LW 25:362).

Luther continues (perhaps a bit too harshly now).

Thus the apostle is right in Col. 2:8 when he speaks against philosophy, saying: “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition.” Clearly if the apostle had wanted any philosophy to be understood as useful and good, he would not have condemned it so absolutely (LW 25:362).

So, what to make of Luther's words? Luther was the right man to give a necessary blow to an ecclesiastical and academic situation that needed reformation. However, as Helmer has said about Luther's doctrine of the Trinity (The Trinity and Martin Luther, xi-xiii) Luther was not afraid to "speculate" and use philosophical terms and concepts in order to convey his message. Otherwise, it would have been rather inconsistent from Luther to comment Romans 12:1 the way he has done after his "anti-speculation" comment on Romans 8:29. In the following passage, not only Luther use Scholastic categories, but he also claims to understand those terms better than they usually were at his time. Granted, "all these terms are derived from Aristotle, though they cannot all be found in one specific passage of his writings. Luther depended upon the medieval handbooks of physics" (W. Pauck, Luther: Lectures on Romans, 322). But the point here is Luther's eclectic appropriations of Aristotelian(ish) and Scholastic categories that he uses, not in a metaphysical framework, but according to his theological, ethical, and existential purposes, first of which is to express the soteriological and anthropological doctrine of man as simul justus et peccator. This is a passage that I particularly like, and that has had a great impact on me (actually, the entirety of Lectures on Romans is very close to my heart).

Martin Luther as a monk,
by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553).

Just as there are five stages in the case of the things of nature: nonbeing, becoming, being, action, being acted upon, that is, privation, matter, form, operation, passion, according to Aristotle, so also with the Spirit: nonbeing is a thing without a name and a man in his sins; becoming is justification; being is righteousness; action is doing and living righteously; being acted upon is to be made perfect and complete. And these five stages in some way are always in motion in man. And whatever is found in the nature of man—except for the first stage of nonbeing and the last form of existence, for between these two, nonbeing and being acted upon, there are the three stages which are always in movement, namely, becoming, being, and acting—through his new birth he moves from sin to righteousness, and thus from nonbeing through becoming to being. And when this has happened, he lives righteously. But from this new being, which is really a nonbeing, man proceeds and passes to another new being by being acted upon, that is, through becoming new, he proceeds to become better, and from this again into something new. Thus it is most correct to say that man is always in privation, always in becoming or in potentiality, in matter, and always in action. Aristotle philosophizes about such matters, and he does it well, but people do not understand him well. Man is always in nonbeing, in becoming, in being, always in privation, in potentiality, in action, always in sin, in justification, in righteousness, that is, he is always a sinner, always a penitent, always righteous. For the fact that he repents makes a righteous man out of an unrighteous one. Thus repentance is the medium between unrighteousness and righteousness. And thus a man is in sin as the terminus a quo and righteousness as the terminus ad quem. Therefore if we always are repentant, we are always sinners, and yet thereby we are righteous and we are justified; we are in part sinners and in part righteous, that is, we are nothing but penitents (LW 25:433-434).

This points both to traces of continuity but also (and perhaps, especially) to a radical difference. To give a better picture, it is perhaps helpful to refer to some of the theses from Luther's Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, specifically theses 35-53. It has to be kept in mind that these theses focus not so much on metaphysics (as the passages from Lectures on Romans examined here) but on soteriology and ethics.

So, did Luther hate philosophy and speculation? On the one hand, no. When they served the Scriptures and the gospel (rather than vice-versa) they were permissible and even useful. This seems to be true especially for theological subjects such as the Trinity (see Helmer) and the doctrine of the two natures in one person of Christ (see Luther's Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, and Dennis Ngien's helpful exposition of those sermons). 

On the other hand, it is also true that Luther, from his early career, came to view the nature and purpose of philosophy in a new way, a new way that was not necessarily limited by the Scholastic method and that was both motivated and characterized by genuinely spiritual and ethical purposes and concerns, with the radical fallenness of creation and mankind, the cross of Christ, and the eschatological promise of future renovation as pillars of his philosophy.

To give a full picture, it would be necessary to touch many complicated issues (e.g., realism and nominalism), but that will make this blog post excessively long (and, perhaps, too boring). Much more can also be said on the relationship between the passage in question and Luther's most important theologia crucis. For more information, see the references I made in the second section above. I simply conclude quoting Luther's last words from his commentary on Romans 8:29, for completeness' sake.

Therefore we conclude that whoever searches into the essences and actions of creation rather than its groanings and expectations is without doubt a fool and a blind man, for he does not know that creatures are also a creation of God (LW 25:362).

Guilt – A Parable

Detail of Mountain Landscape with Rainbow,
by Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840).
From Wikimedia Commons.

I woke up, not knowing where I was. I was lying down on damp soil, but dampened by something that did not look like rain. I got up with an unbearably heavy heart, which became even heavier when I discovered with horror the origin of that liquid. The ground was wet with my own sweat and tears. Overwhelmed by a sense of being lost and by the unknown nature of my situation, terror gave me the final blow when I looked ahead of me. Before me, there was the unmovable mountain of my past, the fixed peak of my life, inhabited by the shapeless monsters of my misdeeds. A sense of guilt joined the horror, trying to destroy me, infusing into me a feeling of shame and hopelessness which were as vague as intense.

“I will climb the mountain to the top. I will own it! I will win it! I will triumph over it!” I decided. “I can find my way out of this misery by my own strength, I can fix myself with my own hands. This will bring me glory, and it will deliver me from this suffering. Not a cross, but glory!”

I started climbing that heinous height. Initially, it appeared to be easy and satisfactory, and my early progress replaced guilt and shame with self-satisfaction and enthusiasm that contributed to nothing but to increase my suffering when the creatures of the mountain appeared. Each of them was the herald of my past sins. Their shape was as indescribable as my guilt and amorphous as my shame. They battled for the closest place to my inward being, clinging to me, and making themselves as present as possible, because my memory gave them existence and my imagination gave them strength. Their very life depended on talking to me, they gorged on me by describing themselves to me as representatives of the dark actions of my past, gaining their essence from my memory and their existence from my imagination which magnified and distorted their appearance to unreal and otherworldly proportions.

I pressed on as long as I could, but no amount of rationalization and realistic self-talk could defeat any of them. I collapsed on the ground, far from the top of that mountain of aberrations. I must have fainted for a few minutes, and I was awakened by my own blood, copiously flowing from my forehead into my eyes. I was at the bottom of the mountain. The creatures had pushed me there. They were gone, but I could see them laughing at me from above, satisfied after their cruel meal, knowing that the poison of the mountain in me, that already was in me, that has always been in me, would draw me there again. But I was tired, exhausted, wanting to die. I did not make any effort to stand up. I closed my eyes. “All I see around me is nothing but death,” I thought. “I shall leave this land of Thanatos for the realm of Hypnos. If I sleep, everything I will see will be sleep.” With my very last energies, I whispered, “Lord, help me.” I fell asleep, hoping to enter into a never-ending sleep.

I do not know how long I slept. It might have been a long time, but it felt like a few seconds. Something was poking my chest, exactly at the point where my heart is. I opened my eyes, and I saw a man. A shepherd. He was poking me with the bent end of one of those old shepherd staffs. There was nothing beautiful or great about his appearance, and he did not attract me. He kept poking me, but when I looked at him, and when he saw from my eyes that I had no intention to stand up, he struck me in the hand where my wound was. Taken by surprise, I quickly sat up. Contrary to my expectations, my wound stopped bleeding. He was smiling. 

“Why?” I asked.

He bent on his knee, placed his right hand on my shoulder, and said, “Follow me.”

He immediately started climbing the mountain. His command was irresistible, but the paroxysm of indecision assailed me. I knew what I wanted to do, but in another sense, I did not want to do it.

“You want me to follow you there? You want me to follow you to my demise!”

“This is not your demise. Your real demise has been taken care of.” And he kept going.

I did not know what he meant. Everything around me communicated powerful monstrosity and mighty deadness. Contrarily, the Shepherd looked quite common, a man like any other. I started following him, split between debilitating terror and the awareness I was doing the right thing.

He went on, and because he went on, I went on. No creature approached me, but all shrank away in fear, crying out the name of the I AM. As we climbed, the mountain changed its constitution, and olive trees, almond trees, and lilies blossomed across.

We reached the top. As I looked over the horizon, I saw an unimaginable number of mountains among all nations, tribes, and tongues, of all different sizes and shapes, but all covered with the same vegetation of peace. 

“You conquered my mountain,” I said.

He said nothing, but pointed at the sky toward something that in the past I always took for granted, but something that I had forgotten and that filled me with hope. The sun was brightly shining.

“You see how all the mountains are pointing heavenward. The true Sun, the Sun of Righteousness, conquered your mountain. It is his mountain now. He owns you, your past, your present, and your future. He declared them, and you, for what they are, redeemed by His blood. You are a new creature, redeemed by his blood.”

The shepherd pulled some of the lilies, grabbed some soil, and showed it to me. The ground was saturated with blood. I stepped back, scandalized.

“Do not let the foolishness of the cross be a stumbling block for you. It’s the blood of the Lamb that made your mountain to be reborn.”

I looked at the sun, and then at him.

“Are you Him?”

“I am a messenger. I did not conquer anything. The Sun conquered for me as well as for you. That is my mountain.” He said pointing to one direction.

Hope and strength slowly came back to me, and also something that I recognized only after a few minutes, and that I thought I lost forever. Happiness. The happiness of belonging to the End of all things. As I meditated these things, the shepherd pointed at the sun again. Like a stellar explosion, it became bigger and bigger, only to suddenly shrink. It assumed the shape of a son of man, looking like a man in all things, but nonetheless so different. He approached, and everything was burning in flames of judgment. The mysterium tremendum encompassed my whole being, but the shepherd placed his comforting hand on my shoulder. Everything was being set aflame, but all that belonged to Him was being purified. Including myself. The fire of His purging rays enveloped me and the shepherd. Divine security filled us.

Then, an omni-pervading light, followed by the sound of a trumpet that reached the very end of the cosmos. I woke up, in my bed, soaked in sweat, with my mind filled with awe, and my heart filled with unnatural light.

by Marco Barone

Copyright © Marco Barone. All Rights Reserved.

Inattentive Existence

“Due to our anxiety over the future and our guilt over the past, we ignore and flee the present. Our lives are so bound up in living falsely toward the past and falsely toward the future that the momentous gift of the present is unreceived. We experience an inattentive, absentee existence, which disregards the promise of the now ... Receive each moment afresh as a new arena for value actualization. This is what our time should be filled with: receiving and creating contextual values. But instead we are ‘bored’ with this now. Because of our preoccupation with the dead past and the possible future, our ears are dulled to the address of reality in the moment. Instead of experiencing the fullness of time in the present, as if now were eternity entering time, we feel on our hands the slow emptiness of time. Instead of understanding this moment as the only moment we actually ever live, we feel that this moment is perhaps the dullest, least interesting of all. It is only some past moment that we cherish, or only some future moment which we idealize as fulfilling for us. So we play a game with time, pretending a glorious past and a promising future, but no present. Although it is a fantasy, we take the game with a certain absurd seriousness. In our romanticism we dream of those good old days, and in our messianism we dream of the great deliverances to come; but in the meantime we live as if the present had no being, or as if its being had no value. Real values and meanings lie behind us and before us in time, but certainly not now. Like the characters in Waiting for Godot, we wait for something that is constantly meeting us. The one we wait for visits us every day, but we do not recognize him, since we cannot believe he could be so near.” ~ Thomas C. Oden, The Structure of Awareness, 188.

Kierkegaard on Christ and the Ethics of Helping

Søren Kierkegaard,
by Luplau Janssen  (1869–1927).

"With Him [Christ] is rest, and He makes no difficulties, He does but one thing, He opens his arms. He will not first (as righteous people do, alas, even when they are willing to help)–He will not first ask thee, ‘Art thou not after all to blame for thy misfortune? Hast thou in fact no cause for self-reproach?’ It is so easy, so human, to judge after the outward appearance, after the result–when a person is a cripple, or deformed, or has an unprepossessing appearance, to judge that ergo he is a bad man; when a person fares badly in the world so that he is brought to ruin or goes downhill, then to judge that ergo he is a vicious man. Oh, it is such an exquisite invention of cruel pleasure, to enhance the consciousness of one's own righteousness in contrast with a sufferer, by explaining that his suffering is God's condign punishment [John 9:2], so that one hardly even dares to help him; or by challenging him with that condemning question which flatters one's own righteousness in the very act of helping him. But He will put no such questions to thee. He will not be thy benefactor in so cruel a fashion. If thou thyself art conscious of being a sinner, he will not inquire of thee about it, the bruised reed He will not further break [Matt. 12:20], but he will raise thee up if thou wilt attach thyself to Him. He will not single thee out by contrast, holding thee apart from Him, so that thy sin will seem still more dreadful; He will grant thee a hiding-place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners: When it is question of a sinner He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, ‘Come hither;’ no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes–yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman. He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners." 

~ Søren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, 1.1.2, pp. 19-20.

Abraham Kuyper on the Necessity of Philosophy

Abraham Kuyper
(1837-1920).

"The need of philosophy is a necessity which arises out of the impulse of the human consciousness for unity, and is therefore of equal importance to those who stand outside, as to those who are in the regeneration. To say that a Christian is less in need of philosophy is only the exhibition of spiritual sloth and lack of understanding. The more the enlightening restores harmony in our consciousness, the stronger must be the awakening of the impulse after an unitous (einheitlich) organic knowledge. While, on the other hand, the richer the data at our service, the better the hope of success in this. Philosophy which reckons only with natural data will always vibrate between a pantheistic, deistic and materialistic interpretation, and will never do more than form schools, while Christian philosophy, whose theistic point of departure is fixed, is able to lead to unity of interpretation within the circle of regeneration. But for this very reason theology will be able to go hand in hand with a Christian philosophy. It is the task of philosophy to arrange concentrically the results of all the other sciences, and if non-Christian philosophy ignores the results of theology, as though it were no science, theology is in duty bound to enter her protest against this. If, on the other hand, the philosopher himself is regenerate, and is historically and ecclesiastically in union with the life of palingenesis, then of course in his studies he includes the results of theology, together with the results of all the other sciences; and it is his care, architectonically to raise such a cosmological building that of themselves the results of theology also find their place in it."

 ~ Abraham Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 614-615.

Herman Bavinck on General and Special Revelation

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921)

Nowadays, the truth of the sufficiency of Scripture is often used as a catchphrase that is supposed to sound biblical and devout. Scripture is sufficient, but sufficient for what? For absolutely every single thing, activity, and work in life? If we don't qualify what does it mean that Scripture is sufficient, if we don't qualify for what Scripture is sufficient and that Scripture is sufficient for what is meant to be sufficient (see 2 Tim. 3:16-17), we may sound pious and spiritual but we are being illogical; we may sound like honoring Scripture as the Word of God, but we are actually misunderstanding its purpose and abasing it to the level of an instruction manual. Herman Bavinck seems to have known this quite well. 

"Does special revelation swallow everything that lies before us in nature and history, such that, in order to know everything about it (nature and history), we need to do nothing other than to investigate the Scriptures? There are indeed those who theoretically reason this way, but at the same time they contradict the practice in their own life. After all, they go to school, receive instruction in the subjects that they need for life, and permit themselves to receive training for that trade or calling which they wish someday to practice in society. Agriculture, animal husbandry, business, industry, etc.—they are all learned from nature in school and in life. This instruction, too, comes to them from God, but they do not receive this instruction from Scripture, but from nature. God instructs them in the way they must act through the nature of things; and this also comes from the Lord of hosts who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working (Isa. 28:23–29)." ~ Herman Bavinck, Biblical and Religious Psychology (Jenison, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2024), 8.

That said, although Scripture does not say everything that can be said about everything, Scripture still says something about all things, in one way or another. Therefore, Scripture plays a vital role in all disciplines and activities practiced by mankind.

"But on the other side, are the Scriptures so detached from nature that they never in any way concern themselves with, never speak of, and shed absolutely no light on it? Is Scripture alone a light on the path to heaven, and is it in no respect a lamp for our feet as we walk in the paths of this earth [Ps. 119:105]? This is equally contrary to reality, because Scripture by no means limits itself only to purely religiousethical and heavenly things; but each moment it also deals with those matters that concern earthly life. As you know, it tells of the creation of heaven and earth, the origin of man, of man’s sin and misery in this life. In its first chapters, Scripture takes the whole of humanity into consideration; it lets special revelation flow forth through the prophets and in Christ to the whole of humanity, and it ends with the prediction that one day there will come a new heaven, but also a new earth in which righteousness dwells [2 Pet. 3:13]. And in the unfolding of this rich and broad history, it descends again and again to all kinds of particulars, to phenomena in nature, to events in general history, to chronologies and genealogies, to definite expressions about the nature of man, about his soul [ziel], his spirit [geest], and his heart [hart]. On all sides, special revelation penetrates deep into the natural life of humanity." ~ Bavinck, Biblical and Religious Psychology, 8-9.

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Updated: March 5, 2024

Luther's "Shocking" Realization of the Need for a Reformation

Dawn: Luther at Erfurt,
by Joseph Noel Paton.
From Wikimedia Commons.

The following passages are taken from Martin Luther's Sermons on John (2:23-24), in Luther's Works, Volume 22, Sermons on Gospel of St John Chapters 1-4. Luther mentions the deep pains and intense struggles that he experienced when he gradually started to realize that some of the teachings of the Church Fathers, some of which were developed and officially accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, were in contradiction with the Scriptures. Luther briefly describes the slow and painful realization of the desperate need for a Reformation of the church, a Reformation to which Luther was called to contribute, as an appointed preacher and lecturer in the church. Of course, these words do not tell the entire story. Nevertheless, they offer a personal picture, depicted by Luther himself, of Luther's own theological and existential struggles, and it is a picture that is in contradiction to some anti-Protestant propaganda that sees Luther as a careless revolutionary and deconstructionist.

No one will believe how great an ordeal it is and how severe a shock when a person first realizes that he must believe and teach contrary to the fathers, especially when he sees that so many excellent, intelligent, and learned men, yes, the best of them taught thus, and that the majority of the people in the world shared their views; among these were so many holy men, like Saints Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. I, too, have often experienced this shock. But in spite of all this, that one man, my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, must have greater weight with me than all the holiest people on earth put together. Yea, He must also outweigh all the angels in heaven (Gal. 1:8) if they teach anything at variance with the Gospel, or if they add to or detract from the doctrine of the divine Word. And then when I read the books of St Augustine and discover that he, too, did this and that, it thoroughly appals me. And when, over and above this, the hue and the cry is raised: ‘The church! The church!’, this dismays one most of all. It is truly difficult to subdue one’s own heart in these matters, to deviate from people who are so highly respected and who bear such a holy name—indeed, from the church herself—and no longer to have any confidence and faith in the church’s teaching. I mean, of course, that church of which they say: ‘Lo, the church has decreed that the precepts of Saints Francis and Dominic and the orders of monks and nuns are proper, Christian, and good.’ This truly bewilders and dismays a person. But after all is said and done, I must say that I dare not accept whatever any man might say; for he may be a pious and God-fearing man and yet be mistaken and err. Therefore I shall not trust myself to them all, as the Lord, according to this text, did not trust Himself to man either. And in another passage, found in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ earnestly warns us to beware of false prophets who will appear and not merely declare that they are Christians, but will also ‘show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect’ (Matt. 24:24). ~ Pages 256-257.

I remind you how difficult it is to break down the barriers and to realize that holy men such as St. Augustine and others might be mistaken. It distressed me greatly for approximately twenty years; and I debated, struggled, and wrestled with myself before I pressed through to the conviction that not everything the pope says is to be believed, that the church may err, and that I should not follow the fathers blindly. ~ Page 259. 

Therefore we must remember that these holy men may have been saved, but it was Christ who died for us. We must place our trust solely on Him as our only Saviour, and on no other, not on ourselves or our own opinions, however good they may be. Do not trust yourself to your own opinions, but take them to Christ and see whether they are in conformity with the faith (Rom. 12:7) and the Word of the holy Gospel ... It is essential for the heart of a Christian to be firmly convinced that Christ's innocent life, His holy blood, and precious death are our salvation, that we, together with all the saints, must cling to christ alone, and that no saint in heaven ever relied on himself and his own righteousness. ~ Page 272.

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