1.      Luther’s Impact

Martin Luther stands above all others in the German Reformation. He is one of the outstanding figures in all of history and second only to Calvin in the Reformation era as far as impacting Western culture is concerned. His ideas transformed Western culture from medieval to modern. His importance and unique place in history can be seen in Roland Bainton’s first two paragraphs of his celebrated biography of Luther, where he says:

  In  a  sultry day in July  of  the year 1505 a  lonely traveler  was trudging  over a parched road on the outskirts of  the Saxon village  of  Stotternheim. He was a young man, short but sturdy, and wore the dress of a university student. As he approached the village, the sky became overcast. Suddenly there was a shower, then a crashing storm. A bolt of lightning rived the gloom and knocked the man to the ground. Struggling to rise, he cried in terror, “St. Anne help me! I will become a monk.”

  The man who thus called upon a saint was later to repudiate the cult of the saints. He who vowed to become a monk was later to renounce monasticism. A loyal son of the Catholic Church, he was later to shatter the structure of medieval Catholicism. A devoted servant of the pope, he was later to identify the popes with Antichrist. For this young man was Martin Luther.[1]

Luther, better yet, the principles Luther stood for, shook Germany and Europe to the core and changed the face of history.

2.      Luther’s Early Life

Martin Luther was born into a peasant home on November 10, 1483. His father, Hans, was a common laborer who worked himself up to a well-to-do mining operator.[2] Domestic rules were strictly enforced which had a lasting impression on Luther.  In later life, Luther is reported to have said:

My mother cained me for stealing a nut, until blood came. Such strict discipline drove me to the monastery, although she meant it well. …My father once whipped me so that I ran away and felt ugly toward him until he was at pains to win me back. …[At school] I was cained in a single morning fifteen times for nothing at all.[3]

3.      Luther’s Education

Luther was well educated, preparing for a career in law. However, due to concerns about the state of his soul, Luther entered the Augustinian monastery in 1505. Hillerbrand rehearses Luther’s decision making process and his father’s reaction for us.

  On 16^th July, St. Alexis Day, Luther observed: ‘Today is the anniversary of my entrance into the monastery at Erfurt.’ Then he began to relate how he had made the vow. Two weeks earlier while traveling near Stotternheim, not far from Erfurt, he was so frightened by a flash of lightning that he exclaimed in terror: ‘Help me, St Anne, I will become a monk!’ He continued: ‘Afterwards I regretted this vow and many counseled me against it. None the less, I remained steadfast. … My father was also very angry about my vow, but I persisted in my decision.  …’

  He became a monk altogether against the will of his father. When Martin asked him, at the occasion of his first mass, why he was so angry about his decision, he received the answer: ‘Do you not know that it is commanded to honour father and mother?’ Martin reasoned that his terror in the thunderstorm had forced him to become a monk, but his father remarked: ‘I hope it was not the devil.’[4]

He was ordained into the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1507. In October of 1512 he received his doctorate in theology and in 1513 took a teaching post at Wittenberg.

4.      Luther’s Marriage and Home-Life

Several years into the Reformation movement, in June of 1525, Luther married Katherine von Bora, an apostate nun. Katherine had arrived in Wittenberg in 1523 seeking asylum. She had been smuggled from her convent by a man named Leonard Kopp. Bainton continues the story:

Some sisters in a neighboring village sought his [Luther’s] counsel as to what they should do in view of their evangelical persuasion. He took it upon himself to arrange their escape. This was hardy because the abduction of nuns was a capital offense, and Duke George exacted the penalty. …Luther clandestinely enlisted the aid of a respected burgher…a merchant who from time to time delivered barrels of herring to the convent. …he bundled twelve nuns into his covered wagon as if they were empty barrels. Three returned to their homes. The remaining nine arrived in Wittenberg.[5]

     Luther was to be married on Thursday, June 27, 1525. As was the custom, he sent out many invitations. “To Leonard Kopp, who organized the escape of the nuns” he said, “I am to be married on Thursday. My lord Katie and I invite you to send a barrel of the best Torgau beer, and if it is not good you will have to drink it all yourself.”[6]

     Marriage brought many challenges to Luther’s life. Luther testifies to this when he says, “Before I was married the bed was not made for a whole year and became foul with sweat. But I worked so hard and was weary I tumbled in without noticing it.”[7] Bainton adds bluntly, “Katie cleaned house.”[8] Katie was also like Luther’s physician at times. 

  Looking after him was the more of a task because he was so often sick. He suffered at one time or another from gout, insomnia, …hemorrhoids, constipation, stone, dizziness, and ringing in the ears… Katie was a master of herbs, poultices, and massage. Her son Paul, who became a doctor, said his mother was half one. She kept Luther from wine and gave him beer, which served as a sedative for insomnia and a solvent for the stone. And she brewed the beer herself.[9]

She gave him a stable home and children. They had six children of their own, four orphans and many university students. “The household would number as many as twenty-five.”[10] It was to this household that Luther gave his famous Table Talks. 

     Concerning marriage and family life, Luther was very frank and down to earth. He said, “The first love is drunken. When the intoxication wears off, then comes the real marriage love.”[11] He acknowledged that the mother bears the bulk of the domestic pressure yet counseled the father to hang out the diapers even though the neighbors laugh. “Let them laugh.” Luther said, ”God and the angels smile in heaven.”[12]

     There   was tenderness in his heart toward his wife and children. When his daughter Magdalena was about to die Luther could not find it in his heart to thank God. He prayed, “O God, I love her so, but thy will be done.” Holding his daughter in his arms as she passed on, Luther said, “…you will rise and shine like the stars and the sun. How strange it is to know that she is at peace and all is well, and yet to be so sorrowful!”[13] Luther himself died on February 18, 1546.

[2] Hillerbrand, The Reformation, 20.

[3] Bainton, Here I Stand, 17.

[4] Hillerbrand, The Reformation, 23-24.  See also Bainton, Here I Stand, 31-32, for a fuller account.

[5] Bainton, Here I Stand, 223.

[6] Bainton, Here I Stand, 226.  The authenticity of this invitation is questioned.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 228. Concerning Luther’s drinking Bainton comments: “A word may be said at this point also about Luther’s drinking. He imbibed and took some pride in his capacity. He had a mug around which were three rings. The first he said represented the Ten Commandments, the second the Apostles’ Creed, and the third the Lord’s Prayer. Luther was highly amused that he was able to drain the glass of wine through the Lord’s Prayer, whereas his friend Agricola could not get beyond the Ten Commandments. But Luther is not recorded ever to have exceeded a state of hilarity” (Here I Stand, 233).

[10] Ibid., 229.

[11] Bainton, Here I Stand, 235.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., 237.

Richard Barcellos

Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.

Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.