The world into which Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, was in great turmoil. The 15th and 16th centuries were a period of transition from the Middle Ages, an "Age of Faith," to the modern era. Medieval man's worldview underwent radical change in response to new discoveries in every area of life. By the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and Columbus had discovered the New World. Renaissance humanists freed scholarship and the arts from Church sponsorship. In so doing, they not only rediscovered the individual but also challenged the blind acceptance of authority and encouraged the individual search for truth through reason. In 1543, just three years before Luther's death, Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, suggested that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. Man, once the glory of God's creation, was becoming a solitary figure on an insignificant planet revolving around one of an unknowable number of similar suns.

In such an atmosphere of change, the Luthers were a very typical medieval family. They "reared their son," writes historian Peter J. Klassen, "in an atmosphere of rigorous discipline, devout piety, and a generous dose of medieval superstition." Pious, uncultivated, and of peasant background, Hans and Margaret Luther had great hopes for their gifted and studious son. Young Martin excelled as a student. In 1501, he enrolled at the University of Erfurt, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Germany. Within four years, he earned both the B.A. and M.A. degrees. In 1505, he had just begun the study of law and was on his way to a career in service to the Church or one of the many German princes, when he abandoned the university for the disciplined life of the monastery.

Returning to the university from a visit with his parents on July 2, 1505, Luther was caught in a thunderstorm. Frightened when lightning struck nearby, he cried out to his patron saint: "Save me, Saint Anne, and I will become a monk." Just two weeks later, Luther entered the cloister of the Eremites of St. Augustine in Erfurt, "noted for its strict discipline and academic vigor." Within a year, he took his final vows, was ordained, and performed his first Mass.

But Luther was no ordinary monk. He was a deeply troubled individual. The medieval church taught that the institutional church stood as an intermediary between the individual and God. The Church ministered salvation to repentant sinners through the sacraments, most notably the Mass, or Holy Eucharist. Also, the Church taught that the individual could, indeed must, by his own free will, love and serve God so as to merit (earn) the favor (salvation) of God. In short, the individual participated in his own salvation through good works. Although such teachings brought comfort to many, for Brother Martin, in his words, "day and night there was nothing but horror and despair."

Luther's problem was that no matter how hard he "worked" at earning his salvation, he could not find any peace with God. All his efforts to appease God led only to physical and emotional exhaustion. Later, in 1538, he wrote of his years as a monk:

I was indeed a pious monk and kept the rules of my order so strictly that I can say: If ever a monk gained heaven through monkery, it should have been I. . . . I would have martyred myself to death with fasting, praying, reading, and other good works had I remained a monk much longer.

Luther found the answer to his spiritual problem sometime during the fall of 1515. By then he was a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg and the overseer of 11 monasteries. He was studying St. Paul's epistle to the Romans for a series of lectures on the Pauline epistles (letters, or books of the New Testament). According to his own account, Luther was in his study in a tower of the monastery pondering the meaning of Rom. 1:17: "For it is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith." In that little verse was contained the heart of Luther's spiritual problem, as well as the answer.

Luther was perplexed by the two phrases, "the righteousness of God" and "The just shall live by faith." In accordance with the teaching of the medieval church and the scholastic philosophers, Luther understood "the righteousness of God" as "the formal or active righteousness according to which God is righteous and punishes sinners and the unjust." Such a view of God both terrified Luther and caused him to hate the God he knew he should love. "Not only did I not love," he later wrote, "but I actually hated the righteous God who punishes sinners." Then, as he meditated over the verse, its meaning broke through:

Then, finally, God had mercy on me, and I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that gift of God by which a righteous man lives, namely, faith, and that this sentence--The righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel--is passive, indicating that the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: "The righteous shall live by faith." Now I felt as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered Paradise. In the same moment the face of the whole of Scripture became apparent to me.

Luther's discovery was more revolutionary than the Copernican (i.e., Scientific) revolution that followed in 1543. It was the medieval church and its worldview that held the medieval synthesis together. And if salvation was by faith alone, a truth discovered in the Bible, not the teachings of the Church, then the whole edifice of the institutional church was unnecessary. For if salvation is not dispensed by the priests through the Mass and other sacraments, then the whole clergy, from pope to parish priest, was also unnecessary.

Luther did not immediately challenge the Church hierarchy. What spurred him to action in 1517 was the appearance outside Wittenberg of a monk peddling indulgences. Albert von Hohenzollern, at age 23, the archbishop of Magdeburg and administrator of Halberstadt, had "purchased" the recently vacated archbishopric of Mainz. To pay back the funds that he borrowed from the Fugger bank in Augsburg, Albert was authorized by Pope Leo X to sell indulgences in Germany.

The indulgence system was based upon the belief that Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the many saints had stored up in heaven a vast treasury of surplus merit. The Church (i.e., the pope), by virtue of possessing the keys to heaven and hell, could draw upon that surplus merit and apply it to repentant sinners. An indulgence was "the remission of part or all of the temporal penalty imposed for sins already forgiven." It meant, in effect, time off from purgatory.

The abuse of the indulgence system was evident in the aggressive sales tactics of John Tetzel, who appeared outside Luther's door in October 1517. He alleged that indulgences could be purchased for relatives already dead, or for sins one might commit in the future. "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings," Tetzel claimed, "the soul from purgatory springs."

Luther Posts His Theses at Wittenberg

Luther felt impelled to respond to the obvious misuse of indulgences. On the eve of All Saints (October 31, 1517), he posted his "95 Theses" on the church door at the University of Wittenberg. He meant them as an invitation to his colleagues to debate the doctrine of indulgences, but they soon appeared throughout Germany, thanks to the recently invented printing press.

Pope Leo X did not move immediately to silence Luther. He was distracted by imperial politics surrounding the choice of a new Holy Roman Emperor. Luther's prince, Frederick the Wise, was one of the seven electors who would choose the next emperor. Leo X wanted Frederick's support for his candidate, and, since Frederick was protecting Luther, Leo X felt it wise not to offend him.

Luther got an opportunity to debate his theses in July 1519 at the University of Leipzig. There he confronted Johann Eck, one of the leading theologians of the day. In the course of the debate, Luther appealed to Scripture as his authority, thus denying the authority of the pope, church councils, or other temporal authorities where they conflicted with Scripture. In so doing, he identified himself with the teachings of Jan Hus, condemned as heretical by the Council of Constance a century earlier. Luther in effect admitted that according to the Church, he was a heretic.

During the course of 1520, Luther wrote extensively. In the treatises and commentaries that appeared during that year, the basic doctrines of the Reformation began to emerge: the Bible is the final authority (Sola Scriptura); and salvation is by faith (Sola Fide) through God's free grace (Sola Gratia). Every man or woman was his or her own priest. Thus, the necessity of the institutional church as an intermediary between the individual and God was removed. In its place stood the doctrine of a priesthood of believers.

In June 1520, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull formally condemning Luther as a heretic and excommunicating him. When a copy of the bull reached Wittenberg, Luther publicly burned it. But the most dramatic and significant event in Luther's career, and a turning point in European history, came on April 18, 1521, in the little Rhineland town of Worms.

Luther was summoned to Worms by the newly elected Emperor Charles V. Only 19 years old, the emperor yielded to the persuasion of his uncle, Frederick the Wise, to grant Luther a hearing before the assembled princes (Diet) of the Holy Roman Empire. Charles V granted Luther a safe conduct. He wanted only to give Luther the opportunity to recant. Luther meant to defend his views.

Several accounts of what Luther said before the diet have come down to us. No one knows for certain what were his exact words. But scholars agree that the following concluding lines of his speech, taken from Luther's collected writings, are true to the spirit of, if not the very words, he spoke:

Since then your serene Majesty and your lordships request a simple reply, I will give it without horns and hoofs, and say: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by plain reason (for I believe in neither the pope nor in councils alone, for it is well-known, not only that they have erred, but also have contradicted themselves), I am mastered by the passages of Scripture which I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant, for it is neither safe nor honest to violate one's conscience. I can do no other, Here I take my stand, God being my helper. Amen.

Acting in the name of the emperor, the diet declared Luther to be an imperial outlaw and placed him under a sentence of death. Frederick the Wise had Luther kidnapped and hidden at Wartburg castle, one of his residences near Eisenach. There, during the next 11 months, Luther translated the New Testament into German. By 1534, he had completed a translation of the entire Bible.

Protestant Sects Proliferate

The Protestant movement began to fragment almost immediately. The Bible may be the final authority, but every believer is his own priest, his own interpreter of what the Bible says. Hence, the proliferation of Protestant sects that continues, even in our own day.

All that happened after the Diet of Worms was anticlimactic. Upon his return to Wittenberg in March 1522, Luther tried to halt the radicalism of some of his followers. But fragmentation, not unity, was to characterize the future of the Protestant churches. In 1530, Philipp Melanchthon, Luther's closest associate, drafted a confession of faith. Both he and Luther hoped that it might provide a basis for unity between the new faith and the Roman Catholic Church. Rejected by the Diet of Augsburg, the "Augsburg Confession" became the doctrinal statement of the Lutheran churches.

Luther introduced a number of reforms in the form of worship. Many were merely a rediscovery of practices lost by the medieval church. They included an emphasis upon preaching and teaching of the Bible, rather than the sacrament of the altar, or the Mass. Also, Luther, himself a fine musician, reintroduced music and congregational singing. He published a hymnbook in 1524, and even wrote the music and lyrics for one of the best known hymns of Protestantism, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" (1528).

Although Luther wrote extensively, and on many diverse subjects, he was not a systematic theologian. Some of his pamphlets reflected his peasant background and remain controversial even today. Under imperial ban, and with a price on his head, Luther remained in Wittenberg, where he continued to preach and teach.

In 1525, Luther married Katherine von Bora, a former Cistercian nun. They had six children, some of whom died early, and adopted 11 more. By all accounts, their home was a happy one. "My beloved Katie," as Luther was fond of calling his wife, was a great source of strength for him. Their home, writes Reformation scholar, E.G. Rupp, "became a more effective apologetic for marriage of the clergy than any writing and the prototype of a Christian minister's household."

In January 1546, Luther journeyed to his boyhood home of Mansfeld to arbitrate a dispute between two brothers, the counts of Mansfeld. On his return journey, he stopped off in Eisleben, where he was born, to preach his final sermon on February 14, 1546. Becoming ill afterwards, he died four days later. According to contemporary accounts, he repeated John 3:16 three times: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." He then breathed his last breath. His body was taken to Wittenberg, where it was laid to rest in the church on whose door he had posted his "95 Theses" on October 30, 1517.