The Unsettling Implications of Martin Luther’s Teachings: What Protestants Are Never Taught

— A chapter from a book I’m working on about Catholicism, Protestantism, Truth, Typology, The Eucharist, and More…

At times, it can be difficult to ascertain what Martin Luther actually said. I’ve read several versions of several of his writings, and everyone who translates his works is biased either for or against him. They often translate him in the most charitable way possible or in the least charitable way possible in order to further their opinion of him. This is difficult territory to navigate as someone who does not know German.

But, I couldn’t just leave the topic alone. Luther is misunderstood by the vast majority of Christians, and some things he said, even taken in the most charitable fashion, are despicable and antithetical to Christian thought and the clearest biblical teachings. This topic is necessary for any Christian taking a serious look at Protestantism and Catholicism historically and objectively. I quote Luther many times here, and I took these quotes from both Catholic and anti-Catholic sources, attempting to get the most objective translation of each. There are many, much worse quotes I had to take out because I could not confirm their authenticity and could only find them in Catholic sources.

I just ask that you try to perceive what I have included in the most charitable fashion you can, as the philosophical principle of charitable interpretation recommends. It would be dishonest for me to provide these quotes without this recommendation. I also urge you to visit the “Beggars All Reformation and Apologetics” blog in order to study their authenticity. Even with the most charitable interpretation, which the writers of that blog will always argue for, I think you will be at best unsettled at some things this so-called “Christian hero” said and taught.

Luther and the Church

Most Protestants consider Luther’s 95 theses the beginning of the Protestant Reformation as if he had all of his anti-Catholic views figured out by that point in time. This is what I was taught and took as self-evident until my research on the topic began. In reality, Luther still claimed to be a Catholic priest for a while afterward, and for a while even affirmed the existence of purgatory (th. 25–29), indulgences (71), and other things he later rejected. In his theses, he said: “Let him be anathema and accursed who denies the apostolic character of indulgences” (71). The 95 theses acknowledge the office of the pope 20 times and acknowledge it as being instituted by Christ. Even at this point in 1517, Protestantism as we know it was unknown and foreign to its founder.¹ Luther’s teachings gradually depart more and more from Catholic teaching as time goes on, which, by the way, is exactly what you’d expect from a man-made religion — change. St. Paul calls this infantile, being “tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery, from their cunning in the interests of deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14). On the other hand, the Catholic Church fits the description of a religion which was set into place by an all-knowing, unchanging Being — its doctrines have no need to change because they were correct in the first place.

It should be noted that while there were indeed indulgences being “sold” by some members of the church, such instances demonstrate a departure from the official teaching of the Church, not a representation of it. I say “sold” in quotes because they were never outright sold, but it was a sort of blending between “do this charitable penance and you’ll get an indulgence,” and “donate money as a charitable act for penance for the building of an important Church building,” which inevitably led to some believing they were just being sold. The line is small — and that is why indulgences involving money are not even allowed anymore (a disciplinary rule). The Catholic Church has never taught and will never teach that indulgences can be sold, because they can’t be. Also, as most Protestants don’t realize, indulgences only remove temporal punishment of already forgiven sins, that is, they take away time in purgatory. This means that precisely what indulgences do are excuse those who receive them from the punishment they rightfully deserved, and needed, for the state of their soul to be cleansed to a holy state ready for heaven — a classic example of God’s grace. As Paul explains, the Church and its priests are the “stewards of the mysteries (referred to by the early Christians as sacramentum in Latin) of God” — the sacraments! God’s priests are the ‘dispensers’ of His grace (which is His eternal life itself poured out to us) here on Earth. Indulgences are not “tickets to heaven.” Catholicism has never taught that they were. This nuance should illuminate the simple fact that most Protestants simply misunderstand what Catholics are even supposed to believe. One who goes to purgatory is already definitely going to heaven. Purgatory means you’re on your way. Whether you think this is biblical or not, it cannot be denied that this is substantially and drastically different from what most Protestants think purgatory and indulgences are.

In July 1518 Luther is summoned to Rome. While campaigning his new views on indulgences he claims “The Roman Church has always maintained the true faith and that it is necessary for all Christians to be in unity of faith with her.”² Even at this point, though his views differ from Catholic teaching, he still affirms the authority of the Church as guardian and keeper of the truth. This is, of course, contradictory, but that’s how Luther was. This shows that at this point he was still not Protestant. He also stated at an interview while talking to a cardinal who was trying to show him his errors in the Fall of that same year, that “as far as he could remember he had never taught anything against Holy Scripture, the doctrines of the Church, the Papal Decrees, or sound reason, but as he was a man subject to error, he submitted himself to the decisions of the Holy Church, and to all who knew better than he did.” So once again we see that he is still affirming the authoritative nature of the Church’s official decisions.¹

Only months later, Luther decided that the pope was the antichrist. Around this same time, Luther appeals to the decision of a general council of the pope, in effect exercising the authoritative nature of a council’s decision while at the same time pronouncing the leader who participated in them the antichrist. This of course directly contradicts not only what he had been arguing at the time, namely that the pope is the antichrist and that Luther’s teaching was right, opposed to the Church’s position, but it also directly conflicts with Luther’s proclamation of Sola Scriptura. Appealing to a council is appealing to the Church’s Tradition and the pope’s authority. Through this and the overall progression of Luther’s Reformation we can easily see how he was a casualty of a slippery slope consisting of his initial disagreements on a few issues — indulgences and justification mainly — and consequently abandoning much of what he and the entire Church had believed for centuries. To match what he thought the Bible taught on these few issues, he had to change many more. We can see how his entire journey was based on confirmation bias: he got an idea in his head, and instead of noticing it was wrong based on all the evidence the Church had compiled over the years, and even the authoritative decision of the Church he believed had the authority, he instead changed everything he had to to get the rest to match his bias.

One example of this is the idea of what the Church is in the first place. Until Luther, the idea was always that the Church was universal, and that we all shared our beliefs in a unified way. This ultimately changed with Luther, when everyone started interpreting Scripture how they wanted and the Church divided further and further into denominations. Though Luther did not see this coming, he eventually saw the fruit of his reformation and was distressed over being the cause of its chaos. But one can see how what happened would be the logical results of what he was teaching. He rejected the ancient beliefs of the Church in favor of his interpretation, and then called for others to do so. It’s not surprising that that’s when other sects based on others’ interpretations started to show up.

1 Timothy 3:15 teaches that “The church is the pillar and foundation of the truth.” So what is the church? Biblically, the only time Jesus says ‘church’ is when He founded His Church, upon Peter (Matt 16:18), and when he refers to it only two chapters later as the authority upon which one should rely if a believer should sin. Not coincidentally, this happens directly before the revelation that what the disciples bind and loose on earth shall be bound and loosed in heaven, clearly talking about their newfound authority (Matt 18:18:15–20). But this doesn’t tell us how to know what ‘the church’ really is in order to know where the foundation of truth is that we should look to.

The Catholic definition of the church, since the time of the Nicene Creed (381 A.D.) at least, had been the following: It matches the four marks of the Church, being One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. The new Lutheran definition of the church, according to the Augsburg Confession of 1530 is a “congregation of saints in which the gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered. This begs the question “who decides what is rightly taught gospel interpretation or right sacrament administration? The actual answer to that question can only be Luther. He makes himself the new pope, under the guise of saying the Scripture holds the authority, while in reality, his authority in interpretation is the one he wants people to submit to. This new definition also brings the concept of “a church” that is not “the church” into the equation. Up until this point, except for the Eastern Orthodox Church, “the Christian Church” was literally just one set of beliefs, officially. It has always been believed that God’s presence is anywhere where believers are gathered, as the New Testament says. But the idea that a congregation of believers constitutes an entirely new church, and that this is acceptable to God’s plan for Christianity — this is truly a new concept. I don’t know about you, but if we’re concerned with the original format that Christianity was supposed to manifest itself in, new is not exactly the quality you’re looking for in a belief. Quite the opposite is what you’d want.

Of course, the Catholic definition seems to beg some questions as well. The difference is the Catholic Church can be proven to fit those four marks, while Luther’s definition must be based upon subjective opinions on what the sacraments are, what makes a person a saint, what the correct gospel is, etc. The Catholic Church is the only one that fits those four marks, while Luther’s definition, without an ultimate authority to say “this church meets these requirements more than the rest” is up to each individual to decide. This, in a similar spirit to Sola Scriptura, results in disagreements that can never be resolved absolutely. But, the Catholic Church stands alone as the one church which can say it holds Apostolic teachings as well as their line of ordained authority, is Catholic (universal), is Holy (set apart; many churches may fit this criterion, but not in conjunction with the other 3; besides, the Catholic Church is clearly set apart from all the rest of Christian churches), and is One (unified in thought, mind, spirit, ethics, doctrine, etc). This is merely one example of Luther flipping an ancient belief upside down according to his own ideas, and calling it ‘reformed,’ when in fact there is no evidence of his radical beliefs being found anywhere in ancient Christianity, as well as no evidence that the beliefs he ‘reformed’ needed to be reformed at all. In short, Luther’s reformation wasn’t bringing anything back to its original, pure or even “intended, but never actualized” state. It was removing things from their ancient but well-preserved state and changing them into something entirely new and man-made. It was rejecting the cornerstone of belief that Christ put into place.

Luther wrote in 1525, “There are nearly as many sects and creeds now as there are heads,”³ lamenting about how many people are interpreting the Bible in their own way resulting from his Sola Scriptura doctrine. “We live in Sodom and Babylon,” wrote Luther towards the end of his life. “Affairs are growing daily worse.”⁴ According to historical theologian Dr. Paul Thigpen, Luther reported during this time literal agonizing assaults by the devil, which left, as he noted ‘no rest for even a single day.’ His nightly diabolical encounters exhausted and martyred him to such an intensity that, as he put it, he was ‘barely able to gasp or take breath.’”⁵

“Of all the assaults, none were more severe than those about my preaching. With the thought coming to me, ‘all this confusion, caused by you,’ he wrote.⁶ This could have been the devil. It more likely was Luther’s conscience and mental illnesses haunting him for all the guilt he had for causing a schism in God’s Church unlike any other. Probably both.

He also wrote “The German people are 7 times worse since they embraced the Reformation (p. 24),”⁷ and “With this doctrine, the more we go forward, the worse the world becomes…it is clear enough how much more greedy, cruel, immodest, shameless, wicked the people are now than they were under popery.”⁵ Of course, Luther enjoyed employing symbolic and graphic language, so as a theologian, he probably didn’t use the number 7 on accident. He would have known that the number 7 is a special number in Christianity, and thus he used it to describe the indescribable confusion and hopelessness that surrounded the Christian people now that they had rejected their rational, historical, and traditional roots.

“It was while in this torment of body and mind that his lifelong inevitable coarseness reached its peak in his anti-semitic and anti-papal pamphlets. One was called Against the Jews and Their Lies, another Against the Papacy Established by the Devil. We should note here in passing that his writings, even theological, were shot through with vulgarity and obscenity, far beyond the admitted crassness of many others in his day. Luther seems to have had a startling, or even a pathological fixation on the bodily excretory system. He also spoke openly and crudely about sex in general, and about his sexual relations with his wife, in public, to her great embarrassment.”⁵ As Dr. Thigpen notes, “His championing of private interpretation without the guidance of the church led others to claim the same authority for Scripture interpretation that he claimed for himself. This surprised and disgusted him. ‘How many doctors of theology have I made by preaching and writing. Now they say, be off with you, go off with you, go to the devil, thus it must be. When we preach they laugh, when we get angry and threaten them, they mock us, snap their fingers and laugh in their sleeves.’⁸ ‘There is no smearer but when he has heard a sermon or read a biblical chapter in German, makes a doctor of himself and crowns his ass and convinced himself that he knows everything better than all who teach him.’⁹ ‘Noblemen, peasants, all classes understand the gospel better than I, or St. Paul. They think themselves wise, and more learned than all the ministers.’¹⁰ ‘When we have heard or learned a few things about Holy Scripture, we think we are already doctors and have swallowed the Holy Ghost, feathers and all.’¹¹ ‘This one will not hear of baptism, that one denies sacraments, another puts a world between this and the last day, some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that however rude a yokel may be when he has dreams and fancies he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and that he must be a prophet.’¹² Severely depressed by what he saw, he said ‘in the life of these developments, there will be the greatest confusion. Nobody will allow himself to be led by another’s doctrine or authority. Everybody will be his own rabbi; hence, the greatest scandals.’¹³ The great irony of course, is that all these criticisms describe Luther himself [and the non-denominational future of Christianity] perfectly (paraphrased).”⁵

Luther’s Teachings on Sin:

Avoid the Ten Commandments; Sin More & Fight Satan With Feces Instead

Another surprising example of Luther’s teaching is his blatantly anti-biblical teachings on sin. They are radically opposed to the entire theme of the Bible as a whole. Luther says not only that sin doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of our salvation, but that sometimes it may be necessary to sin. On the other hand, 1 John 2:1–6 says the following: “My children, I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. He is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world. The way we may be sure that we know him is to keep his commandments. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, the love of God is truly perfected in him. This is the way we may know that we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to live as he lived.”

Before you think I’m digging myself into a hole by saying Luther being a bad man excludes him from being able to be used by God for ‘great things,’ I must emphasize my point here: Not only does Luther not follow God’s commandments, which the Bible does clearly express is a good test of whether a person currently “has the truth in him,” is “in union with Him,” or “knows Him,” but his teachings are contradictory to them. Even Christ recognized that leaders can be corrupt, but so long as their teachings are sound, we should listen to them (Matt 23:3). We all sin. I would never claim that to listen to somebody’s teachings, they have to be perfect. Nobody is perfect. But, noticing that Protestants listen to this man’s interpretation of the Bible when it comes to the Sola’s, and accept that the entire millennia-old paradigm of Christian thought should be overthrown in favor of his version of the teachings, it only follows to assume that the rest of his teaching should be accurate — not infallible, but at least accurate and clearly on the same page as Scripture.

His interpretation, to be reliable, should be in union with what the Bible teaches. But this is not what we find. We find that his teachings include central ideas which are wholly contrary to the Word of God, and therefore we cannot trust that other interpretations by him should be held as trustworthy, especially when it is clear that he was not only mentally unstable and contradictory but also extremely prideful, even going so far as to say that “I do not admit that my doctrine can be judged by anyone, even by the angels.”⁵ Of course, each argument needs to be taken by itself and judged on its logic. But the reputation of a teacher cannot be ignored when his authority, trustworthiness, and exegetical practices change everything about what he taught. Luther was clearly unable to understand the simplest and most explicit teachings of the Bible at times.

Theology is difficult. Humans make mistakes. However, someone who asserts doctrines against the entire message of the Bible, such as asserting that sin should sometimes be committed, cannot be trusted when it comes to the more nuanced areas of Scriptural interpretation, because that person is missing the overall theme of the Bible and therefore will place that initial understanding on his method of interpretation and everything will be tainted from then on. Would not a believer in full predestination look at everything else with a predestination-lens? At the very least, one who does this should not be taken as the default view; it should be obvious that one person changing the views of a two-thousand-year-old Church should be the one with the enormous burden of proof upon them. To be reliable, Luther would have had to somehow prove that his interpretations were more accurate than those of the earliest Christians such as St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus, St. Ignatius of Antioch, etc., yet he never does this. In fact, it is impossible to do so. History and rationality are not on his side.

Now, we shall get to what Luther actually said about sin. I urge you to deeply ponder what kind of man says things like these and think about if you would trust him to change your belief system at this point in your life, with the foundation you already have, or teach a friend who is new to Christianity.

“This shall serve you as a true rule, wherever the Scriptures ordain and command to do good works, you must understand that the Scriptures forbid good works.”¹⁴

“If we allow the 10 commandments any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of all evil, heresies, and blasphemies.”¹⁵

“A pure heart, enlightened by God, must not soil itself with the law, thus let the Christian understand that it matters not whether he keeps the law or not, yes he may do what is forbidden, and he may leave undone what is commanded, for neither is a sin.”¹⁶

“It is enough, that we confess through the riches of God’s glory the lamb who takes away the sins of the world, from Him, sin will not tear us away, even if thousands and thousands of times a day we fornicate or murder.”¹⁷

“Men’s works, even though they always seem beautiful and probably good, are mortal sins. If you would not sin against the gospel, then be on your guard against good works; avoid them as one avoids a pest.”¹⁸

“Oh if only I could find a good sin to make a fool of the devil, to make him understand fully that I do not recognize any sin, and that my conscience does not reproach me with any. We who are thus attacked and tormented by the devil must put away from our eyes and our spirit the entire 10 commandments.”¹⁹

“Seek out the society of your boon companions, drink, play, and talk bawdy and amuse yourself. One must sometimes even commit a sin out of hate and contempt for the devil, so as not to give him a chance to make one scrupulous over mere nothings. If one is too frightened of sinning, one is lost” (ibid.).

These last two are particularly demonic in nature. The idea that one should sin in order to show contempt for the devil is not only illogical, because getting us to sin is a demon’s goal, but it is exactly the kind of sneaky, backwards things demons often convince us of. This makes sense when one realizes how often Luther reported himself to have had actual conversations and fights with Satan. One time he even reported having thrown his feces at Satan during a fight. His priest brothers confirmed when his walls were covered in feces afterward. Either Luther was right, and he was actually talking to Satan or a demon, and in that case was probably very easily convinced to sin, because demons are much smarter than us — or, Luther was crazy and delusional, and was not actually seeing the devil. He was either the conduit for demonic teachings as well as God’s, was just a conduit for demonic teachings, was a crazy person, or any combination of the three. None of these options bodes well for Luther’s credibility as supposedly-God-ordained-doctrine-corrector.

Now, we’ll compare Luther’s ideas to more of what the Bible says about sin:

First, sin was not there in the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, before the Fall of Man, when God said everything there was good, there was no sin. Sin was introduced by man, and obviously had a big impact on us, as it constituted the “Fall of Man.” Sin has been called ‘the supreme problem,’ which makes salvation the ‘supreme solution’ to the worst problem there has ever been. It is a fact that we simply do not know what was there in the Garden, when everything in existence was as it should be. But the one thing we know for a fact wasn’t there is sin. Yet that’s what Luther suggests we do.

“What then shall we say? Shall we persist in sin that grace may abound? Of course not! How can we who died to sin yet live in it?” (Rom ‭6:1–2)‬ ‭

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom 6:16)

In Psalm 119:133, the psalmist asks God: “Steady my feet in accord with your promise; do not let iniquity lead me.” It is quite telling that he equates not being in sin to being steady. This obviously implies that to be in sin (iniquity), one’s foundation will be shaky and unstable. This is easily seen in Luther’s life and teachings.

“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Lk 6:45) How interesting it is to meditate upon this passage just after writing all the quotes by Luther about how we are to sin, talk about sexual things, disregard the ten commandments, etc.

Ephesians 5:11 tells us to “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness.”

And in Ephesians 5:3, St. Paul tells us “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.” Luther tells his listeners to arouse themselves as they please, and to ignore such passages which command us to avoid sexual immorality, claiming that even thousands of acts of fornication a day would not affect our relationship with God.

“Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.” (Rom 8:8)

“The wages of sin is death.” (Rom 6:23)

“Sometimes a way seems right, but the end of it leads to death!” (Prov 14:12)

Obviously we could go on and on, as the Bible is wholly and obviously against sin in all cases. In a way, the Bible can be seen as being written for the sole purpose of combating sin. This clear and central fact being lost on Luther and his theology shows how he was gravely mistaken in his understanding of Scripture. Logically, one can see where he seemed to go wrong. While Luther, because of his extreme anxiety over his own sin and losing his salvation (scrupulosity), overcorrected and decided sin didn’t actually matter towards one’s salvation at all, the Bible teaches an opposing view of what one ought to do when faced with challenges. Luther went into despair and changed his theology because of his fears, but the Bible teaches that we are not only meant to and called to suffer, but that God does not allow us to be tempted beyond our means. 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us “God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.” Luther gained no consolation from this, (possibly because the “way out” the Paul recommends directly after this is the Eucharist, which Luther rejected) and instead of trusting in God, he changed his beliefs according to what his feelings told him.

Reason and Free Will

He later rejected reason as evil, because reason would unveil the inconsistencies of his beliefs, which were not logical, but emotional. He wrote: “Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore, by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom… Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is, and she ought to be, drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets… Reason is contrary to faith.”²⁰ Luther hated reason so much that he resorted to profaning sacred rites of Christianity such as baptism in foul language about drowning “the whore reason” in baptism, as if baptism relieves us of the supposedly evil human reason. Jesus Christ would surely disagree with this. He is identified as “the Logos” by St. John, which was a philosophical term of the Greeks referring to a divine consciousness which is the source of all logic and reason. God gave us our reason as one of the defining characteristics separating us from the lower animals, and without our reason, we would have no use for a theological book such as the Bible. Yes, we need faith, but without reason to guide it, what is faith? Can chimpanzees utilize faith and get to Heaven? No, because they don’t have understanding, which requires reasoning. God does nothing contrary to reason, because reason leads to the truth, which Christ prioritized as a defining reason He came to Earth to die for us. If Christ prioritizes the truth, and reason necessarily leads to the truth, then reason is undoubtedly a good thing and Luther is wrong to reject it.

He even denied human free will, because he thought he was being tempted beyond his means, and didn’t want to take responsibility for his actions. If we don’t have free will, how can we be punished for our sins? And if we don’t have free will, why not commit all the sins we want? It wasn’t ultimately up to us anyway. At that point, logically, one would have to believe that God was causing him to sin. If we don’t have free will, then God causes literally everything we do, even sin. This is what Luther believed.

He wrote: “God is the author of what is evil in us as well as what is good.”²¹ Logic tells us otherwise. Isn’t the thought nice, though? If God caused all of our sins, then we don’t have to feel guilty or responsible for any bad thing we may do, because nothing is our fault. It’s the perfect “out” for people with scrupulosity. It may seem nice at first, but in reality, this idea comes with many logical complications which ruin the entire biblical schema. Logic reveals that God is, and must be, all-good, and that by His nature, no evil can flow from Him. Evil is the absence of good, which God is in its perfection. He allows free will, which is where evil comes in — the rejection of Him, which is good. He cannot cause evil though. If we don’t have free will, then God really is a tyrant who expects us to be perfect, but does not allow us to be with His all-powerful hand. Furthermore, He would be the direct cause of all the suffering that is in the world. If we do not have free will, we cannot be held accountable for our actions, because they really aren’t our actions, but merely our hands doing what God, like a puppeteer, forces us to do. Free will is the only thing that can really reconcile the existence of Hell and a God that is good. How can we expect a God that punishes man for eternity based on what He forced the man to do, to be just or good at all? That is evil. Hell only works as a concept in conjunction with a good God if Hell is our choice.

Luther said “He who wished to uphold free will in man and to maintain, however restrictedly, that in the spiritual order it is capable of anything and can give it support, that man denies Christ. I hold to that and know that it is the very truth.”⁵ “Whoever sets up free will cheats Christ of his merit, whoever advocates free will brings death and Satan into his soul.”⁷ Again, this is not logical. Luther says he who affirms free will denies Christ, but logic, and the Bible, tell us that we have free will, and if we were to deny it, we would deny God’s existence as all-good, and Christ’s redemption for us as a freely-given sacrifice of a 100% man, 100% God being. Isn’t it plain and obvious that for Christ to be a man, His sacrifice would be forced upon him and thus meaningless unless men had free will? Luther misses this plain fact entirely and asserts the opposite, that somehow affirming free will cheats Him of His merit.

The man who denies that sin has bearing on our salvation here contradicts himself by condemning the soul of any man who commits what Luther sees as a sin — affirming free will. For a man who ultimately started his reformation to bring freedom, what could be more ironic than to eventually deny human free will?

Luther and the Antichrist

One simple thing that points to the extremity and instability of Luther is his charge that the pope of his time was the antichrist. He wrote, “I charge the pope and all the papists that unless they lift their own laws and traditions, and restore to the churches of Christ the liberty which is theirs and see that this liberty is taught, they are guilty of all the souls that perish in this miserable captivity, and the papacy is nothing but the kingdom of Babylon and the true Antichrist.”²² First of all, he was clearly wrong. The antichrist, whatever that really means, has not come. Second, the assertion that any pope would be the antichrist is ludicrous, as 1 John 2:22 says that “Whoever denies the Father and the Son, this is the antichrist” — and no pope has ever denied the reality of the Trinity.

This simple point makes it clear that even in the minutia of things, Luther simply was not a rational man. A quick fact-check would suffice to disprove his theory that the pope was the antichrist, yet, though he was a Bible scholar and a priest who should know better, he said things like this anyway. The most feasible reason I can think of for this is that he was overcome with emotion because of his scrupulosity, and pride that his ideas were the only true ones, that his judgment was clouded enough to make such statements. His scrupulosity, likely caused by his horribly abusive childhood, had Luther convinced that God was a God only of wrath and vengeance, always waiting for Luther to sin so He could smite him. Luther looked over his shoulder for Hell at every moment. When he discovered the love of God, as well as His grace, by rejecting the possibility that sins had any effect on his salvation any longer, he overreached, forgetting all about God’s perfect justice and only focusing on His grace from that point on.

The two extremes Luther experienced as the truth were both wrong. This is a sign of theological immaturity. Maybe if Luther had placed any value on reason, he would know based on the writings of Augustine and Aquinas who came hundreds of years prior, that the idea of God that he entertained was a juvenile one. Luther was just another casualty of bad catechesis, maybe, as millions of others who leave the Church are… he didn’t know what he was supposed to believe, so he rejected his false idea of it as so many do. Martin Luther, ironically, is the ultimate example of why Catholicism is right. Luther shows why we must be united in an intellectually rational belief system and study theology seriously, or else we are doomed to act out the naive, prideful objections we have toward beliefs that really are true.

Luther: Self-Appointed Prophet and the Judge of Your Soul

Luther went so far as to condemn many people straight to Hell, of his own judgment. He wrote, “Like the mules who won’t move unless you perpetually whip them with rods, so the civil powers must drive the common people — whip, choke, hang, burn and behead and torture them, so that they may learn to fear the powers that be,” commanding the slaughter of peasants who were taking his teachings to their logical extremes, and were driven to riot because of the confusion caused through them.²³ He wrote against the papal ‘bull,’ basically a document issued by the pope against him: “I maintain that the author of this bull is Antichrist. I curse it as a blasphemy against the Son of God. Every Christian who accepts this bull will suffer the torments of hell. Where are you, emperors, kings, and princes of the earth that you tolerate the hellish voice of Antichrist. Leo X and you, Roman cardinals, I tell you to your faces: renounce your satanic blasphemies against Jesus Christ.”²⁴ Finally, he preached in December 1521, a few weeks before he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, “If you do not separate from Rome, there is no salvation for your souls.”⁷ Just for clarification, if it is needed, excommunication is not a spiteful or evil thing. It is a biblical concept taught by Paul to be a thing necessary for the good of both the heretic and the church (Gal. 1; 1 Cor. 5). If someone needs correction and refuses to accept it, they are left out of the life of the church until they recognize their fault and repent. This is so that the church is not influenced by their wrong teaching (1 Cor. 5:13), and so that their soul can be saved (1 Cor. 5:5), because it is in fact, dangerous to one’s soul, to be sinful and teaching heresies to others, even if they were previously part of the church.

Even the Catholic Church, who actually has a legitimate reason to believe she has the actual authority of Christ, doesn’t condemn people as Luther did. Dr. Thigpen reflects on Luther’s attitudes and teachings, “Throughout the words and actions of Luther cited, there runs a thread, more like a brazen cable of arrogance: Luther’s voice is the voice of Christ, Luther is the master of Scripture, Luther’s predecessors and opponents are all ignoramuses and worse. No one, even the angels, may judge Luther. No wonder then, that Luther could not foresee the consequences of his doctrines and actions; could not see what we see so clearly in the abundant ironies of the man. His pride blinded him to it, as it does so well. Luther nevertheless considered himself a prophet, and once made a prediction that perfectly reflects both his arrogance and blindness. “If my gospel is preached for but two years, then pope, bishops, cardinals, priests, monks, nuns, bells, bell towers, masses, rules, statues, and all the vermin and riff-raff of the papal government will have vanished like smoke.”⁷ Through this, we can easily see that Luther was, in fact, a false prophet, as he claimed to have the truth, and prophesied a future that still, 498 years after it was supposed to come true, has not come.

Deuteronomy gives us criteria for what a false prophet is: “But if a prophet presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. Should you say to yourselves, “How can we recognize that a word is one the Lord has not spoken?” if a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the word does not come true, it is a word the Lord did not speak. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not fear him” (Deut 18:20–22). At the very least, even if Luther is not understood as having considered himself a prophet, he has been shown to have said many very silly and easily-disprovable things which do not line up with the Bible. We may compare this, to, say, St. Pope Paul VI, who accurately predicted in Humanae Vitae the evil implications of contraception use (even in marriage) in our society despite the Church’s (ignored) teachings about them. It is also helpful to look at Galatians 1 again for advice from Paul on false gospels. He talks about receiving a false gospel and peoples’ quickness to turn to them. He says that even an apostle or angel who teaches a gospel different than Christ’s should be accursed (1:8). This prophecy of Luther’s is in direct contradiction to Christ’s in Matthew 16. Christ promises that the Church will not be prevailed against, yet Luther calls for just that in his prophecy. Perhaps that is why the Church did not vanish as Luther predicted. It is a common trope of “great men of history” that those who become famous for being a hero of something often end up being revealed as an enemy of that same thing. This is true most of all in regards to Luther and the Bible.

Luther’s Dismembering of the Bible

Luther, the so-called defender of Scriptures against man-made tradition, eventually had to tear the Bible apart to fit his beliefs, his gospel. This manifested in both changing the words of Scripture and even removing books of the Bible altogether. Fr. O’Hare explains Luther’s translating methods:

“The errors in Luther’s version were not those of ignorance, but were a willful perversion of the Scriptures to suit his own views. A few examples will suffice to prove our contention. In St. Matthew 3:2, he renders the word, “repent, or do penance,” by the expression “mend, or do better.” Acts 19:18, “Many of them that believed came confessing and declaring their deeds.” Lest this should confirm the practice of confession, he refers the deeds to the apostles, and renders “they acknowledge the miracles of the apostles.” These errors were afterward corrected by his followers. The expression “full of grace” in the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, he renders “Thou gracious one.” (Rom 4:15); “the law worketh wrath,” he translates, “the law worketh only wrath,” thus adding a word to the text and changing its sense. Romans 3:28, “We account a man to be justified by faith without the works of the law” he renders by the interpolating of a word, “We hold that a man is justified without works of the law by faith alone” His answer to Emser’s exposition of his perversion of the text was: “If your Papist annoys you with the word (alone), tell him straightway: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so: Papist and ass are one and the same thing. Whoever will not have my translation, let him give it the go-by: the devil’s thanks to him who censures it without my will and knowledge. Luther will have it so and he is a doctor above all the doctors in Popedom.” (Amic. Discussion 1, 127.) Thus Luther defends his perversion of Scripture and makes himself the supreme judge of the Bible.”⁷

Church historian Johann Baptist Alzog notes how Luther skewed biblical passages which clearly affirmed free will by assuming God was being sarcastic:

“There were Scripture texts plainly against his theory of the inherent slavery of the human will: but even these he set aside by an ipse dixit, distorting them from their natural sense and obvious meaning, by blasphemously asserting that God in inspiring the passages in question, was playfully mendacious [lying], secretly meaning just the reverse of what He openly revealed; and that the apostles, when speaking of the human will and actions, gave way to an impulse of unseemly levity and used words in an ironical sense.”²⁵

Is Luther following his own rule of taking the Scriptures as they so plainly apparently are? Evidently not. Luther saw himself as above his own teachings, and above God’s. He emotionally decided upon an idea and changed the Scriptures’ meaning to fit the idea at all costs, even resorting to accusing God of lying (something He is not capable of). These changes he made were not small or inconsequential. They totally change the sense and meaning of the Scripture in many cases. That was the point. You don’t add to inspired Scripture because you don’t think it’s good enough; you add to change it because you think you’re better than it.

Luther hated works so much that condemned Moses for his role in bringing God’s law to His people. When he couldn’t distort Bible passages to his liking, he threw them out or condemned them. This is shown in many things Luther did and said. I hope you are as shocked as I was when I heard what Luther had to say about this great hero of the Old Testament: “We have no wish either to see or to hear Moses. He and his books should be looked upon with suspicion, as the worst heretic, as a damned and excommunicated person, yes worse than the pope and the devil.¹⁵ “To the gallows with Moses,” he preached.⁷ What Luther fails to realize here is that he is teaching against himself. He cries for Sola Scriptura, then condemns the Scriptures. He calls himself a prophet, yet condemns the prophets who were called so by God.

The deuterocanonical books (the first seven books he removed — books which were included in the canon of the Bible since it was originally recognized at the councils in the 4th century) were not the only books that Luther did not think belonged in the Bible. He first removed those, and sent others, such as Jude, Revelation, and Hebrews to an appendix at the back, but others still he condemned.

He said John was the ‘only true gospel,’⁷ and that it and the Epistles of Sts. Peter and Paul were superior to the other three.⁷ He said of the book of Esther: “I toss into the Elbe River. I am such an enemy to the book of Esther that I wish it did not exist.”⁷ Esther isn’t my favorite book of the Bible either, but this kind of talk is not acceptable about God’s Word. I can’t imagine after hearing this, any Christian could still call Luther a role model, or trust him to change the belief system of the entire Christian Church with his “reformation.”

He found ‘bits of wood, hay, and straw’ in Hebrews and called the Epistle of St. James an ‘epistle of straw’ altogether, dismissing it.⁷ “I do not hold it to be his writing, and I cannot place it among the capitol books,” he said of James.⁷ “Of Revelation he said: “There are many things objectionable in this book, to my mind it bears upon it no marks of an apostolic or prophetic character, everyone may form his own judgment of it, as for myself I feel an aversion to it, and to me this is sufficient reason for rejecting it.”²⁶ He rejects the book because he feels an aversion to it. Sola Scriptura Indeed.”⁵

The Protestant idea that may come up at this point is that Luther, even being a horrible man, could have been used by God for His plan, as many other horrible men have been used by God. I think the difference, again, is that Luther continued to teach things opposing God’s already-revealed and widely understood plan. I don’t see how anyone can rationally think God would choose a man who condemns many books of the Bible to uproot the entire Christian Church of the time. Surely He would know that Christians who are serious and knowledgeable about their faith would not trust a man like that to change their belief system without very good reason, which again, Luther does not provide.

I think the overarching dilemma here can be summarized by this: Either God is wavering or Luther is. Which is more likely? On a larger scale, this is the same sort of dilemma which Protestants must face if they are to seriously consider the likelihood of Protestantism as a general concept being potentially true: Either God is wavering, allowing the entirety of His Church to be led into error for thousands of years(after He promised it guidance and protection), only to bring it out of the darkness into truth in the 1500’s, or one man interpreted the Bible wrong and many others have since been convinced by his interpretation. The answer should be clear: God is perfect and unchanging. Luther was neither of those things.

In Sum (tl; dr):

1. The “Reformation” and the “reformed” doctrines that came with it did not happen all at once, but gradually, as Luther changed more and more of what he believed.
2. In Luther’s earlier writings, including the 95 theses, he acknowledges the apostolic status of the papacy and indulgences, saying that anyone who rejects that ought to be cut off/excommunicated.
3. Because of his scrupulous anxiety, Luther began to doubt the Church’s teachings on the gravity of sin and how it affects one’s salvation. He began to believe that his actions could not have any effect on his salvation because he couldn’t seem to control his actions enough to satisfy himself and feel ‘right with God.’
4. He then started teaching these errors and following through with some of the implications of them — namely that the Church did not have the authority to correct his mistakes, and that they were wrong on other things, too. He condemned the pope as the antichrist and declared war on the Church.
5. In his writings, he talks about frequent literal battles with the devil, including fights which included the hurling of his feces at satan. He also spoke openly and crudely about sexual experiences with the nun he married after they both rejected their vows of chastity.
6. He wrote biblical commentaries and debated others on doctrine. He posited that several books of the Bible needed to be removed, “because he felt an aversion to them,” and he did so in his own translation. Others, he added to an appendix at the back. “John is the only true gospel,” he wrote. He changed the words of the Bible to fit his ideas, even adding words which were not there at all in the first place.
7. He denied free will and recommended that Christians sin often “to spite the devil,” and disregard the 10 commandments. He condemned Moses to the gallows and said that he should be looked at “with suspicion.” He condemned anyone who rejected “his gospel” to Hell.
8. He spoke and changed doctrine by following his emotion, rejected reason as “the devil’s greatest whore,” and burned the works of Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher-priest whose works have helped millions gain a better understanding of Christianity, reason, and the nature of God.
9. He prophesied that after two years of “his gospel” being preached, the Catholic Church would fall. This did not come to pass. Instead, riots broke out and new churches sprouted, dividing more and more as time went on. Meanwhile, Luther called for the murder of thousands.
10. He eventually realized the consequences of his actions and noticed that Christendom would be forever negatively changed because of what he had done. This distressed him greatly, and depressed and aware of the fruits of his doctrine, he wrote how the German people had become “7 times worse since they embraced the Reformation,” and admitted that “it is clear enough how much more greedy, cruel, immodest, shameless, wicked the people are now than they were under popery.”
11. Christ promised, in no uncertain terms, and on multiple occasions, that His Church would be divinely protected from doctrinal corruption for the entirety of its existence on Earth (I prove this here). Luther’s teachings, along with every other denomination whose theology depends on an apostatized early Christian Church (which is all of them besides Catholicism), directly oppose this sentiment. In the same way that Christians oppose the Mormon’s belief in an early church apostasy, they must reject the idea of a 1500’s-era-apostasy, too, to consistently believe in the truth of Christianity in the first place.
12. The problem of the Reformation comes down to this: If Martin Luther was right (in his assumption that the Church needed a doctrinal reformation, and that his doctrines were the correct ones), then God abandoned His Church for over one thousand years, effectively condemning billions of Christians who had no reason to believe that what the Catholic Church taught them was incorrect. If Luther was wrong, then God kept His promises to the Church, Luther is just another heretic, and Catholicism is true.

Sources

1. “Some Facts About Martin Luther, the Originator of Protestant Christianity.” www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com, Most Holy Family Monastery, 2009, www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/luther_denominations.pdf.
2. Pastor, Ludwig, Freiherr von, 1854–1928. The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages. Nendeln/Liechtenstein :Kraus Reprint, 1969. Print. Vol. 7, p. 366.
3. WA 18, 547
4. De Wette V. 722
5. Thigpen, Paul. “Martin Luther — Deep in History Talk Featuring Paul Thigpen.” YouTube, The Coming Home Network International, 16 Mar. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROhumu2OlgQ.
6. Sämmtl. W., LIX, 296; LX, 45–46; 108–109, 111; LXII, 494
7. O’Hare, Fr. Patrick. The Facts about Luther. General Books, 2009. — Some quotes by Luther that don’t have direct citations to Luther’s actual works come from this book. I can’t access the primary source because it is not available in English, but these quotes come from O’Hare, who cites the German translation of Luther’s Latin works by Johann Georg Walch. Refer to the first section of the Luther chapter to understand how these quotes are to be understood. https://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2005/12/master-index-luther-quotes-from-ohares.html
8. Walch VII. 2310
9. Walch V. 1652
10. Walch XIV 1560
11. Walch V. 472
12. De Wette III, 61
13. Lauterb. 91
14. Walch 1740–1753
15. Luther, Martin. Commentary on The Epistle to the Galatians
16. Walch 1740–1753
17. Luther, Martin. Letter to Philip Melanchthon, August 1, 1521
18. Jena. ed. 1. 318 b.
19. De Wette, I V. 188
20. Maritain, Jacques. Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau. Scribner, 1929. Pgs. 33–34.
21. De Servo Arbitrio in op. Lat. 7, 113 seq
22. Luther, Martin. A Prelude On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church
23. El. ed. 15, 276
24. Luther, Martin. Against the Execrable Bull of Antichrist
25. Alzog. Vol. III, p. 227
26. Sammtliche Werke, 63, 169–170