I was recently thinking about Martin Luther’s concept that we are saved by faith alone. He came up with the concept while reading bible passages. What I am wondering is why did he conceive this? The Catholic Church has never taught nor believed this, so why would he go there? It seems as though he thought the Church did teach this, so where did it come from?
Subrosa
A certain spirit taught Luther in an appropriate place, the toilet over a cesspool. He wrestled with devils, slung feces to protect himself. He fancied himself the prophet Isaiah. And this is heralded founder of the New Christian with a new truth?
When Doctor Justus Jonas had translated the book of Tobit, he attended Luther therewith, and said: “Many ridiculous things are contained in this book, especially about the three nights, and the liver of the broiled fish, wherewith the devil was scared and driven away.” Whereupon Luther said: ”‘Tis a Jewish conceit; the devil, a fierce and powerful enemy, will not be hunted away in such sort, for he has the spear of Goliah; but God gives him such weapons, that, when he is overcome by the godly, it may be the greater terror and vexation unto him. Daniel and Isaiah are most excellent prophets. I am Isaiah—be it spoken with humility—to the advancement of God’s honor, whose work alone it is, and to spite the devil. Philip Melancthon is Jeremiah; that prophet stood always in fear; even so it is with Melancthon.” Martin Luther (1483-1546), William Hazlitt, Esq. (Translator), Table Talk, p24.
Grisar suggests that Luther was pathological considering himself a prophet, the prophet of Saxony.
The time spent in the Wartburg brought him his final conviction in his calling as a prophet and his divine commission, but if we are to understand Luther aright we must not forget that this conviction was a matter of gradual growth (cp. vol. iii., xvi. 1). Hartmann Grisar, SJ., Luther, vol. 3, P 92
“No one save a prophet could dare condemn the whole of the past in the way he was doing”. (ibid, p93)
It is my opinion that Martin Luther wasn’t ‘all together collected’ nor was his theology. Irony is an epiphany flushing Christian insight into a new era where men see themselves as the Everyman-is-the-New-Prophet-John-the-Baptist. Hours of sitting in anguish brought fourth a special illumination for Luther.
And like all good prophets, he fought the devil single handily defeating him with a single handful of sh**.
For Luther the bathroom was also a place of worship. His holiest movements came when he was seated on the privy (Abort) of the Wittenberg monastery tower. It was there, while moving his bowels, that he conceived the revolutionary Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. Afterward he wrote: “these words ‘just’ and ‘justice of God’ were thunderbolt to my conscience… I soon had the thought [that] God’s justice which justifies us and saves us. And these words became a sweeter message for me. This knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy in the tower”
Well, God is everywhere, as the Vatican conceded four centuries later, backing away from a Jesuit scholar who had gleefully translated explicit excretory passages in Luther’s Sammtiche Schreften. The Jesuit had provoked angry protests from Lutherans who accused him of “vulgar Catholic polemics.” Yet the real vulgarity lies in Luther’s own words, which his followers have shelved. They enjoy telling the story of how the devil threw ink at Luther and Luther threw ink back. But in the original version it wasn’t ink; it was “Scheiss” . Feces was the ammunition Satan and his Wittenberg adversary employed against each other. This is the Wittenberg faculty colleague Philipp Melanchthon: “Having been worsted…the Demon departed indignant and murmuring to himself after having emitted a crepitation of no small size, which left a foul stench in the chamber for several days afterwards.”
Again and again, in recalling Satan’s attacks on him, Luther uses the crude verb bescheissen, which describes what happens when someone soils you with his Scheiss. In another demonic stratagem, an apparition of the prince of darkness would humiliate the monk by “showing his arse” (Streiss). Fighting back, Luther adopted satanic tactics. He invited the devil to “kiss” or “lick” his Steiss.
A man who had battled the foulest of fiends in der Abort and die Latrine was unlikely to be intimidated by the vaudevillian Tetzel. Yet Luther’s reply to the jubilee agent was not as dramatic as legend has made it. He did not “nail” a denunciation of the pope on the door of Frederick’s Castle Church. In Wittenberg, as in many university towns of the time, the church door was customarily used as a bulletin board; an academician with a new religious theory would post it there, thus signifying his readiness to defend it against all challengers. William Manchester, A World Lit Only By Fire, The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance (Boston, 1992), pp.139-140
books.google.com/books?id=Ku2PNGO5Y6sC&dq=William+Manchester%2C+A+World+Lit+Only+By+Fire%2C+The+Medieval+Mind+and+the+Renaissance&q=Luther+adopted+satanic+tactics#v=snippet&q=Luther%20adopted%20satanic%20tactics&f=false
We can deduce that Luther’s “Evangel” was likely hallucinogenic aberration induced by carbon monoxide. This becomes evident understanding old roman castle architecture, along with the knowledge that Luther’s privy was located above the hypocaust. In a cold winter, most of the castle’s inhabitants would have been, well, just a bit loony.
And, this is the der führer, the new prophet?
JoeT
