When Luther is charged with immoral conduct, and the specific facts
together with the documentary evidence are not submitted along with the
charge, little can be done in the way of rebuttal. One can only guess at
the grounds on which the charge is based. For instance, when Luther is
said to have disgraced the Church by a notoriously wicked and scandalous
life, the reason is most likely because he married although he was a
monk sworn to remain single. Moreover, he married a noble lady who was a
nun, also sworn to celibacy. According to the inscrutable ethics of Rome
this is concubinage, although the Scripture plainly declares that a
minister of the Church should be the husband of one wife, 1 Tim. 3, 2,
and no vows can annul the ordinance and commandment of God: "It is not
good that man should be alone." Gen. 2, 18. Comp. 1 Cor. 7, 2, and
Augsburg Confession, Art. 27.
When Luther is said to have reviled, hated, and cursed the Church of his
fathers, the probable reason is, because he wrote the _Babylonian
Captivity of the Church_ and _The Papacy at Rome Founded by the Devil_.
In these writings Luther depicts the true antichristian inwardness of
the papacy. By so doing, however, Luther restored the Church of his
fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers in Christ down to the first
ancestor of our race. Luther's faith is none other than the faith of the
true Church in all the ages. Luther's own father and mother died in that
faith.
When Luther is said to have taught Nietzsche's insanity about the
"Superhuman" (Uebermensch) before Nietzsche, to have put the Ten
Commandments out of commission for Christians, and to have preached
against good works, the reasons most likely are these: Luther taught
salvation in accordance with Rom. 3, 25: "We conclude that a man is
justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law." Luther taught that a
person is not saved by his own works, and if he performs good works with
that end in view, he shames his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the
end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom. 10,
4), and he falls under the curse of God for placing his own merits
alongside of the merit of the Redeemer's sacrifice. In no other
connection has Luther spoken against good works. He has rather taught
men how to become fruitful in well-doing by the sanctifying grace of God
and according to the inspiring example of the matchless Jesus.
Concerning the Law, Luther preached 1 Tim. 1, 9: "The Law is not made
for a righteous man," that is, Christians do the works of the Law, not
for the Law's sake, but for the sake of Christ, whom they love and whose
mind is in them. They must not be driven like slaves to obey God, but
their very faith prompts them to live soberly, righteously, and godly in
this present world (Tit. 2, 12). But Luther always held that the rule
for good works is laid down in the holy Law of God, and only in that;
also that the Law must be applied to Christians, in as far as they still
live in, the flesh, and are not become altogether spiritual. Luther's
public activity as a preacher began with a series of sermons on the Ten
Commandments, and this effort to expound the divine norm of
righteousness was repeated several times during Luther's life. Luther's
expositions of the Decalog are among the finest that the world
possesses. Moreover, Luther wrote the Small Catechism. Hand any Catholic
who talks about Luther having abolished the Ten Commandments this little
book. That is a sufficient refutation. What Luther teaches in this book
he has given his life to reduce to practise in himself and others. He
says in a sermon on Easter Monday, 1530: "When rising in the morning, I
pray with my children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's
Prayer, and some Psalm. I do this because I want to make myself cling to
these truths. I shall not suffer my faith to become mildewed with the
imagination that I am above these things (_dass ich's koenne_)." His
sermon on the First Sunday in Advent in the same year he begins thus:
"Dear friends, I am now an old Doctor, still I find every day that I
must recite with the children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the
Lord's Prayer, and I have always derived a great benefit and blessing
from this practise." (12, 1611. 1641.)
Luther is charged with mendacity, that is, he is said to have lied. The
reasons that will be given for this charge, when called for, will
probably be these: Luther at various times in his life gave three
different years as the year of his birth, three different years as the
year when he made his journey to Rome, and advised somebody in 1512 to
become a monk when he had already commenced to denounce the monastic
life: It is true that Luther did all these things, but it is also true
that Luther believed himself right in each of his statements. He was
simply mistaken. Other people have misstated the year of their birth
without being branded liars on that account. Sometimes even a professor
forgets things, and Luther was a professor. What Luther has said about
the rigor of his monastic life is perfectly true, but it was no reason
why in 1512 he should counsel men to become monks. He had not yet come
to the full knowledge of the wrong principles underlying that mode of
life. To adduce such inaccuracies as evidence of prevarication is itself
an insincere act and puts the claimant by right in the Ananias Club.
Luther is said to have been a glutton and a drunkard. "Let us examine
the facts. What is the evidence? Luther's obesity and his gout. Is that
evidence? Not in any court. It would be evidence if both conditions were
caused, and caused only, by gluttony and tippling. But this notoriously
is not the case. Obesity may be due to disease. A man may even eat
little and wax stout if what he eats turns into adipose rather than into
muscular tissue. As for gout, it is the result of uric acid diathesis.
Now uric acid diathesis may be, and very often is, caused by high
living, but often, too, it is due to quite different causes. Just as in
the case of Bright's disease. I do not deny that Luther drank freely
both beer and wine. So did everybody else. People drank beer as we do
coffee. . . . Moreover, in the sixteenth century alcoholic beverages
were prescribed for the maladies from which Luther suffered much--kidneys
and nervous trouble. We now know that in such cases alcohol proves a
very poison; but this Luther could not know. But intemperate . . . in
his use of strong drink Luther was not. Neither was he a glutton. Before
he married, he ate very irregularly, and often completely forgot his
meals. When he could not get meat and wine, he contented himself with
bread and water. . . . Melanchthon tells us that Luther loved the coarse
food as he did the coarse speech of the peasantry, and even of that food
ate little, so little that Melanchthon marveled how Luther could
maintain strength upon such a diet.--It is further a noteworthy fact
that, when we read the sermons of the day, we find nobody who so
frequently and so earnestly attacks the prevailing vice of drunkenness
as does Luther. Now, whatever Luther may or may not have been, hypocrite
he was not. Had he himself been intemperate, he would not have preached
against it in such a manner. Furthermore, Luther was under constant
espionage. His every move was noted. People knew how many patches there
were on his undergarments. Think you, think you for a moment, that the
Wittenbergians would have listened meekly to Luther's repeated assaults
upon the wide-spread sin of intemperance, had they known him for a
confirmed tippler? It is too absurd.--But the best evidence for the
defense comes from a mute witness--Luther's industry. He wrote more than
four hundred books, brochures, sermons, and so forth, filling more than
one hundred volumes of the Erlangen edition. There are extant more than
three thousand of his letters, which represent only a small proportion
of all that he wrote. Thus we know, for example, that one evening in
1544 Luther wrote ten letters, of which only two have been preserved. He
was, furthermore, in frequent conference with leaders in both Church and
State. He preached on Sundays and lectured on week-days. Now, a man may,
it is true, perform a considerable amount of manual labor even after
overeating and overdrinking, but every physician will admit the
correctness of my assertion, it is a physiological impossibility that a
man could habitually overindulge in food or liquor, or both, and still
get over the enormous amount of intellectual work that Luther performed
day to day" (Boehmer, _The Man Luther,_ p. 16 f.)
Most shameless have been the charges of lewdness and immorality against
Luther. His relation to Frau Cotta has been represented as impure. Think
of it, a boy of sixteen to eighteen thus related to an honorable
housewife! Illegitimate children have been foisted upon him. A humorous
remark about his intention to marry and being unable to choose between
several eligible parties has been twisted into an immoral meaning. The
fact that he gave shelter overnight to a number of escaped nuns, when he
was already a married man, has been meaningly referred to. Boehmer has
exhaustively gone into these charges, examining without flinching every
asserted fact cited in evidence of Luther's moral corruptness, and has
shown the purity of Luther as being above reproach. Not one of the
sexual vagaries imputed to Luther rests on a basis of fact. (Boehmer,
_Luther in Light of Recent Research,_ pp. 215-223.)
When the modern reader meets with a general charge of badness, or even
with the assertion of some specific form of badness, in Luther, he
should inquire at once to what particular incident in Luther's life
reference is made. These charges have all been examined and the evidence
sifted, and that by impartial investigators. Protestants have taken the
lead in this work and have not glossed anything over. Boehmer's able
treatise has been translated into English. Walther's _Fuer Luther wider
Rom_ will, no doubt, be given the public in an English edition soon.
Works like these have long blasted the claim of Catholics that
Protestants are afraid to have the truth told about Luther. They only
demand that the _truth_ be told.