Transcript:

Stop Saying THIS About Martin Luther

October 31st is a night for trick-or-treating and also for celebrating All Hallows’ Eve. But for many Protestants, it’s also Reformation Day, an informal holiday where they celebrate when Martin Luther allegedly nailed his 95 Theses on the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany, and kickstarted the Protestant Reformation.

In response, Catholics are quick to denounce Luther for his actions that helped tear Christendom apart.

And there is a lot that Luther can be justifiably criticized for. Protestants will even say his book On the Jews and Their Lies has only aged well in very dark parts of the internet, and most would disagree with Luther’s defense of punishing and executing Anabaptists for heresy.

But there are other cases where the allegations Catholics make against Martin Luther don’t hold up to scrutiny, and so they need to be retired.

In today’s episode, we’ll look at three of those allegations.

Starting with number one:

1. Martin Luther Removed Books From the Old and New Testaments

It’s true that Luther did not believe the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, like Wisdom, Maccabees, and Tobit, were inspired Scripture.

His 1534 Bible said in German:

“Apocrypha: These books are not held equal to Holy Scripture, and yet are useful and good to read.”

But Luther did include the deuterocanonical books in his Bible, so it’s not accurate to say Luther took them out or removed them.

He simply included them in a special appendix.

In fact, early Protestant Bibles like the King James Version still had the deuterocanonical books in them.

This changed in the 19th century, when groups like the British and Foreign Bible Society decided it would be cheaper to print Bibles without these books in an intertestamental appendix.

It’s also incredibly unwise to say something like, “Everyone believed the deuterocanonical books of the Bible had the exact same authority as every other book of the Bible for all of history before Luther, and there was no dispute about them until Luther tried to remove them in the 16th century.”

First, as we’ve seen, Luther did not try to remove them.

Second, there was dispute about their full canonicity and whether they could be used to settle doctrine, emerging from Jerome’s comments about them and persisting through the Middle Ages until the issue was settled at the Council of Trent.

Now, this Council of Trent—not the Counsel of Trent that you can support for as little as $5 a month at TrentHornPodcast.com.

I’m talking about the ecumenical council held in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.

The issue of the deuterocanonical books deserves its own episode, which I hope to address soon.

I would just say that it’s fair to say Martin Luther did not consider these books to be Scripture, or on par with other Old Testament Scripture, even though he did include them in his Bible.

It’s also not accurate to say Martin Luther tried to remove several New Testament books from the Bible, including the Letter of James.

Luther kept these books in his Bible, but he put Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation at the end of his New Testament, saying:

“Up to this point we have had to do with the true and certain chief books of the New Testament. The four which follow have from ancient times had a different reputation.”

Luther especially did not like the Letter of James.

He said:

“That Epistle of James gives us much trouble, for the papists embrace it alone and leave out all the rest. Up to this point I have been accustomed just to deal with and interpret it according to the sense of the rest of Scriptures. If they will not admit my interpretations, then I shall make rubble also of it.

“I almost feel like throwing Jimmy into the stove, as the priest in Kalenberg did.”

Luther was referring to an episode in the German village of Kalenberg, where a priest burned wooden statues of the apostles to provide warmth for a visiting duchess.

Luther’s temptation to burn the actual Letter of James reveals the conflicted relationship he had with this piece of Scripture.

His original 1522 preface for the letter derided it as an “epistle of straw,” and Luther did not consider it the writing of any apostle, though he later admitted that James promotes the law of God.

Luther did not think the Letter of James had the same status as a letter like Romans.

But he did not try to remove James from the Bible, and he did not say that it was not inspired Scripture.

And speaking of Romans, here’s myth number two.

2. Martin Luther Invented “Faith Alone” in Romans 3:28

Most Bibles render Romans 3:28 this way:

“For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.”

However, Luther’s translation included the word “alone” to say:

“For we hold that a man is justified by faith alone apart from works of law.”

Catholics often point out that any Greek word that could be rendered “alone” is not in Romans 3:28.

And that is true.

But that doesn’t mean Luther’s translation was unjustified or that he invented this way of understanding the passage, since there are several sources before Luther where the word “alone” was included in a summary, translation, or allusion to Romans 3:28.

In his commentary on 1 Timothy, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas said:

“Therefore, the hope of justification must not be placed in them, but in faith alone: we account a man to be justified by faith, without the works of the law.”

And Aquinas specifically references Romans 3:28.

The original Latin even uses the term sola fide.

Luther made this same reply to his critics in his own lifetime, saying:

“I am not the only one, nor the first, to say that faith alone makes one righteous. There was Ambrose, Augustine, and many others who said it before me.”

In his commentary on Romans, the Catholic priest Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer lists almost a dozen pre-Luther sources that use similar language.

Now, that does not mean these figures in the past believed in the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone just because they used the phrase “faith alone.”

Consider this patristic-era source:

“God justifies by faith alone, and because they thought that they were righteous by works of the law they did not keep, they refused to submit themselves to the forgiveness of sins.”

That sounds like it could come from Martin Luther.

But it actually comes from Pelagius, the heretical poster boy for works-based salvation.

Pope Benedict XVI even said:

“Luther’s phrase: ‘faith alone’ is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love.”

The word “alone” can be added if you have a robust enough concept of faith to incorporate a faith that is not mere trust, but also an allegiance to a person and a willingness to follow and love them.

That’s why mere citations of the phrase “faith alone” before the Reformation do not prove belief in the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

For more on the finer points of this debate, see my two chapters on justification in my book The Case for Catholicism, published by Ignatius Press.

But my main point is that Catholics should stick to the essence of Luther’s theology and not quibble about minor claims that can be disproven, like the claim that Luther invented the idea of having the word “alone” in an understanding of what is being said in Romans 3:28.

However, Luther may have published the first German Bible to use that translation in the actual text of Romans 3:28.

And on this point, it’s important to point out an example in the 1483 Nuremberg Koberger Bible.

Some Protestants say this translation included the word “alone” in Romans 3:28, but that’s not true.

Instead, something similar is found in Galatians 2:16.

This verse is usually rendered:

“A man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”

But in the Nuremberg Bible, the text says nur durch den Glauben, or “only through faith,” and not simply “through faith.”

Did Luther Compare Justification to Snow Covering a Dung Heap?

I’d also add that, when it comes to the topic of justification, we should not confidently say Martin Luther compared justification to the process of snow covering a dung heap.

Ironically, many Protestant resources, Protestant pastors, and even Protestant apologists make the same claim.

In James White’s 2001 book The God Who Justifies, White has a whole chapter called “Luther’s Dunghill,” and he writes:

“Luther once attempted to demonstrate the difference between justification and sanctification. He likened our sinful state to a dunghill: ugly and offensive. It has nothing in and of itself that would make it pleasing to anyone, let alone God.

“Justification, he went on, is like that first snowfall of the approaching winter, the one that covers everything in a blanket of pure white.”

However, nobody has been able to find a citation of Martin Luther actually saying this.

The closest that’s been found is when Luther says:

“I said before that our righteousness is dung in the sight of God. Now if God chooses to adorn dung, he can do so.”

But there’s no mention of snow covering the dung.

However, we can say that Luther believed in a theory of justification that is approximated by this imagery.

In his lectures on Galatians, Luther said:

“But God overlooks these sins, and in his sight they are as though they were not sins. God reckons imperfect righteousness as perfect righteousness, and sin is not sin, even though it really is sin.”

But this did not mean Luther was some kind of antinomian who believed it did not matter if we sinned.

Which brings us to the last allegation Catholics need to stop repeating.

3. Martin Luther Told People to “Sin Boldly”

Here’s the Luther quote Catholics like to share:

“Be a sinner and sin boldly. . . . No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day.”

This can make it sound like Luther believed in such a strong view of justification by faith alone that faith could save a person even if he lived the most depraved life imaginable.

But Luther did not believe our conduct had no effect on our salvation.

In fact, he argued against the antinomian heretics who believed Christians had no duty to keep the Ten Commandments.

Luther specifically said that salvation could be lost through sins like apostasy, or abandoning the faith.

He said:

“Through baptism these people threw out unbelief, had their unclean way of life washed away, and entered into a pure life of faith and love. Now they fall away into unbelief and soil themselves again in filth.”

Instead, the passage about “sinning boldly” comes from a letter Luther wrote to his like-minded friend Philip Melanchthon.

Here is the fuller context:

“Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world.

“As long as we are here in this world, we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

“It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.

“No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day.

“Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small?”

Protestant scholars recognize that Luther was being hyperbolic when he talked about sin being unable to separate us from God.

The context of the letter was to encourage Melanchthon in exercising his leadership role in Wittenberg and not to be afraid of making mistakes.

According to Luther biographer Eric Metaxas:

“Luther was hardly saying that Melanchthon should try to sin, as many have misinterpreted the quotation, but that he should forget about trying not to sin, because in the end this was not possible.

“He must understand that in all that we do, we will doubtless sin—because we are sinners—but if your faith is in Christ, who has already defeated sin and paid for our sins on the cross, we are redeemed.”

Obviously, this isn’t something Luther would say in one of his famous public disputes with Catholic theologians.

But it makes sense in the personal context of a letter to a friend.

Citing this to prove that Luther, Lutherans, or Protestants in general don’t care if people sin is just as careless as when Protestants cite effusive praise for Mary in an author like St. Alphonsus Liguori and use that as proof Catholics worship Mary as a goddess or something like that.

Be Careful With Anti-Luther Sources

Finally, if you’re going to talk about Martin Luther or other Protestant Reformers, be careful about the sources you use.

Avoid both sources that are too sycophantic and overlook these men’s flaws and Catholic sources that may be too critical and distort history to serve a polemical purpose.

Probably one of the worst examples of this I’ve ever seen is Patrick O’Hare’s 1916 book The Facts About Luther.

Its rhetoric is downright toxic while also not being backed up by solid research.

The book says of Luther:

“The evidences of his depravity are so overwhelming and convincing that they are forced to the conclusion that this shameless advocate of brazen prostitution could not be and was not a ‘messenger of the all Holy God.’”

But that’s incorrect.

Martin Luther was famous for demanding that brothels be closed down, and he contradicted St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, who tolerated legal prostitution in order to prevent uncontrolled lust from spreading.

If you’d like to learn more about common claims Catholics need to stop making about Protestants, check out my previous episode, “Catholics, Stop Saying This,” linked in the description below.

Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.