I was reading a bit about Luther the other day. I really admire him. I was especially struck this time by the intensity of the struggle that preceded his so-called “tower experience” in which he came to understand the doctrine of justification by faith from Romans 1:17. I cannot figure out whether this experience came after his posting the 95 theses in October 1517 or before, but it does seem to have come after a great deal of struggle and courage. I’m researching and writing much about Anselm these days, and I’m also struck by the intensity of the struggle he…
Category: Luther
Sucking up Cares Like a Leech
I’ve heard my Dad reference this Martin Luther quote several times, and just saw it again in an article by my brother Eric on I Kings 19. I love the attitude of cheerful optimism amidst difficulty. “I pray for you very earnestly, and I am deeply pained that you keep sucking up cares like a leech and thus rendering my prayers vain. Christ knows whether it comes from stupidity or the Spirit, but I for my part am not very much troubled about our cause. Indeed, I am more hopeful than I expected to be. God, who is able to…
Justification (4): True Righteousness
When we were in Rehoboth I read Martin Luther’s Concerning Christian Liberty as part of my study on justification. As I read I kept noticing two themes: First, it is justifying faith apart from works that yields true obedience, because only justifying faith results in grateful love to God, which is the spring of all true obedience. Justification by works ultimately says, “I will obey God in order to get something.” But that is not love. That is not true obedience. Second, it is justifying faith apart from works yields glory to God, because it gives credit to God for…
The Centrality of Luther’s Question
This is a provocative statement, but nevertheless a good caution, it seems to me, on the danger of getting so caught up in corporate-narrative-biblical categories that we lose sight of the urgency of Luther’s struggle, that of the individual sinner in his guilt seeking peace with a holy God. “In recent years, great strides in biblical theology and contemporary canonical exegesis have brought new precision to our grasp of the Bible’s overall story of how God’s plan to bless Israel, and through Israel the world, came to its climax in and through Jesus Christ. But I do not see how…
Luther on predestination, hell, and divine justice
I have been reading Timothy George’s Theology of the Reformers, and I was deeply struck by George’s summary of Luther’s defense of the doctrine of predestination against the objection that it impugns the justice and goodness of God on pp. 77-78. Luther, like Calvin, believed in a strong and unflinching doctrine of double predestination: God has eternally decreed some to everlasting life, and others to everlasting death, to the praise of his glorious grace and justice. He calls this doctrine “strong wine, and solid food for the strong.” Luther defends his view of election against the criticism that it makes…
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