Metaxas and Luther

During the decade of the sixties I was appointed to read Holy Scripture in an Ecumenical Service in Fort Worth, TX. As fate would have it; that service was hosted by a Roman Catholic Church. Many times since then, I have pondered that unique experience and thanked God for the distinctive privilege. Through the years, I have continued to weigh the significance of the Protestant Reformation. I have now added to that cumulative experience Eric Metaxas and Martin Luther, the man said to rediscover God and change the world (MARTIN LUTHER / Eric Metaxas / Viking / NY / 2017).

What I found were 480 pages that can be readily read, and even understood, by both artisans in the Academy as well as most ordinary readers. Eric Metaxas, and a staff of editors, have artfully sorted fact from fiction and they offer readers from every level of reading skill a very readable  and authentic text—a superbly well-written book, with notes, bibliography, and index—every bit as good as Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce (earlier Metaxas offerings).

Metaxas reveals Luther as a highly complex man and he leaves us with an historical super hero of epic proportion; yet a humble man with an identifiable devotion to his Creator, a man with an unmistakable intellect, a man occasionally human enough to still be a German blockhead.

In Luther, we find a man that walked in common shoe leather, who by the grace of God left our common humanity a free marketplace where democratic ideas and ideals could thrive and take root in a new future. We see a man who desired above all to reform a Papal Institution from the inside out that he loved. Although he seemingly failed in that effort, he left that Institution redefined and changed by a transforming legacy of Scriptural authority and Scripture Reading with congregational participation, and expanded forms of worship and liturgy.

In helping the reader sort out numerous issues of faith, this author shines a spotlight that brightens our understanding of some of our faith’s most significant points of social and religious conflict during the Reformation, understand their historic value, and see the true worth of what Dr. Martin actually contributed to all of our lives.

Luther’s struggle with Rome reminds one of ancient Abraham artfully pleading with God over the destruction of Sodom (Genesis 18). Once Luther raised a dissenting voice in defense of Scripture’s authority over human institutions, there was no stopping place, no turning around, no changing course. He was on a journey whose end he could in no way measure. Wanting only to spotlight needed corrections, this humble monk was swept up in a tsunami of social, political, religious, even technological changes no one understood at the time and that we are still processing today.

Luther’s best intention of being helpful as a dedicated and loyal servant of the church quickly evaporated, as a quote quickly illustrates:

              The Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all churches has become the most

              lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death

              and hell so that not even the Anti-Christ, if he were to come, could devise any addition

              to its wickedness” (189).

The authority of the Scriptures as the Word of God, affirmation of the priesthood of Believers (as opposed to a segregated priesthood defining the church), the free church tradition, the right of dissent, separation of church and state; all find reaffirmation via the coalescing Reformation whose long roots ranged far and wide throughout history, from Wycliffe to Wesley. Luther, aided and abetted by an opportunistic printer that saw a chance to make a “quick buck” only provided the catalyst when he nailed his 95-Theses to the door of the Wittenburg Church for in-house academic debate.

Some books you read for pleasure, others you read for information, or perhaps other reasons. For me, this book is timely to the world my two grandsons have entered as young Christian adults-- not just to celebrate an event that happened five-hundred years ago, but to better understand the signs of the times in which we are now engaged.

The single-most important issue for me is the conflict of theocracy (religion united with absolute power). Luther sheds God’s light on conscience and dissent as well as truth divorced from power and the possibility of dissent (or another church).Metaxas suggests, “By freeing truth and the ideas of the Bible from the institution of the church, Luther enabled these things to enter the entirety of the secular world, such that every good agnostic and atheist today knows that caring for the poor and the marginalized is a measure of our humanity” (445).

Finally:

“In the past, we lived in a world where might actually made right, where truth was the power of the sword. Or where there was no actual right, so that the appearance that might made right held sway completely. The Catholic church was in those days the Christian church, and in those days the church much like the Turks and the Ottoman Caliphate battled with guns, not with competing truth claims. So just as today radical Islamists may believe there is no truth but the sword—that they can enforce their views through torture and death—the church once did this too.

“But today we live in a world where even if someone can do that, there are voices that will rise up and say that is wrong. We live in a world where even though someone might be right and know he is right, he also knows that to try to force his views is as bad as holding the wrong views. That is the revolution that is the father and mother of all other revolutions” (443 bold and italicized mine).

This is my primary take-away from Metaxas and Luther—

walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

*OFF THE RECORD WITH LUTHER records quotes and sayings from the Luther's dinner table. They kept student boarders whose quotes of Luther were oft-repeated and eventually published. This is an expanded translation of here-to-fore untranslated work, until this version by Charles Daudert with forward by Luther expert Dr. Paul Maier. More of this book later.