Faith Works 5-6-06
Jeff Gill

Was Luther a Lutheran?

On the Eve of All Saints’ Day, 1517, Martin Luther uploaded his blog to the internet.
Er, he got a full page ad in the Wittenberg, Germany area Gannett newspaper.
No? Well, maybe he sent a direct mail flier with his detailed list of concerns to a targeted group of opinion shapers in the local zip code?
Of course none of that is correct; many of you know that the soon-to-be former Augustinian monk and priest and professor nailed his 95 theses, or points of dispute with Roman Catholic theology and practice, to the door of Wittenberg Church, next door to the Castle.
Nailing your thoughts to a church door sounds dramatic and picturesque, but for Martin Luther’s time and place, with Gutenberg’s printing press still an innovation and communication the province of the wealthy and influential, the best way to let average Joe, or Johannes, to get in on the debate was to post your theses on the public square. There they’d be next to the list of the banns, or who proposed to marry in the next few weeks, the property transfers, and memorial notices.
Sounds like the first few pages of the Advocate, doesn’t it? And that’s the point: many read the paper daily to see who’s getting hitched (or un-), who bought what parcel of land, and if their name is in the obituaries. As some of us say, if we aren’t listed in the "Death Notices," then we can have breakfast and move on.
So Martin Luther wanted to be on the editorial board, and write an Op-Ed, and even wanted feedback. "Hier stehe ich," as he was later to say, "Here I stand," "Ich kann nicht anders," – "I can do no other."
A movie was recently in theaters which starred Joseph Fiennes, who played the title role in "Shakespeare In Love." Titled simply "Luther," the viewing is worth it if only for the sight of Alberto Molina, actor with Diego Rivera and Doctor Octopus to his credit, playing Johannes Tetzel, a Dominican monk who is often and maybe even fairly blamed for precipitating Luther’s break with Rome.
Including the dramatic if ahistorical line "every coin in coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs" (it was used, but not by Tetzel), you see the hard-sell fund raising techniques used by those working to build a new St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. You’ve heard of church splits over building fund campaigns? Well, this was the mother of all campaigns, and it began the mother of all Christian divisions, the Protestant Reformation.
Luther did have much to protest about abuses in the organized church of his day, but his original desire was to reform, not revolt. Likewise, the Catholic Church needed reformation, and soon embarked on a renewal campaign called the
Counter-Reformation, with many bishops and cardinals agreeing at the Council of Trent that their church must change.
But by then it was too late for those changes to be negotiated between the factions, for reasons both theological and political. The involvement of the infamously named "Holy Roman Empire" (as Gibbon noted, neither holy, nor Roman, and not even an empire) precipitated open warfare, and Luther’s conviction that priests should marry and the people should not only read scripture in their own language but – oh, the horror! – sing in worship, created a communion that was no longer in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
Were they Lutheran, though? Well, that’s what we call them, though it would no doubt sadden Martin. The German Church, with bishops of their own people and a separate but cooperative relationship with the civil authority, was reformed by Luther in a way that was different than his neighbor to the south, in Geneva, Switzerland, organized church and state. The rise of John Calvin and his Reformed Church helped cement the idea of "Lutherans" and "Calvinists" within the Reformation, each protesting in their own way.
Thirty years of warfare resulted in a stability Luther was never to see in his lifetime, with Catholicism resurgent in the south, especially around Munich.
The form of state Protestantism known as Lutheran spread north to the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, and much of the Baltic region. Many Lutheran churches in this country have a strong ethnic component from one of those countries.
There are also some well known faith communities in this country springing from groups that protested the protesters, when the Lutheran Reformation became the official state church. We’ll look at those next week, in part four of this series.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at disciple@voyager.net.