The Facts About Luther

It is an accepted conclusion nowadays among the best students of the Protestant Rebellion of the sixteenth century that there are "two Luthers—the Luther of panegyric, of romance, & fiction, and the Luther of history and fact. The former appears in the pulpit, in the Sunday school, and in partisan biographies; the latter may be discovered from a careful study of his writings and those of his contemporaries, but above all from his private letters, of which former devotees of Luther would only publish what they thought to his credit, garbling or suppressing the rest." These words, quoted from a rare little tract on Luther, written nearly thirty years ago by a Prelate of the Church, who was one of the foremost Reformation scholars of that day, may well serve as the keynote of this pre

There are many who still remember the interest and zeal evidenced by the Protestant churches throughout Christendom, when that fourth centenary was given a world-wide recognition. It was a celebration with far-reaching effects; with fatal effects, indeed, for the hero-worship so dear to Luther's followers. In Germany, especially, scholars and publishers vied with one another in acclaiming him as the man to whom the modern world owed most, if not all, of its present liberty. He was hailed as the restorer of the truer evangelical life, as the spiritual liberator of the human race; and from that time down to the present, no ordinary reader has been able to keep pace with the output of Lutheran literature.

Let us consider some of Luther's attitudes towards the Bible: "Of the Pentateuch he says: "We have no wish either to see or hear Moses." "Judith is a good, serious, brave tragedy." "Tobias is an elegant, pleasing, godly comedy." "Ecclesiasticus is a profitable book for an ordinary man." ... "Esdras I would not translate, because there is nothing in it which you might not find better in Aesop." "Job spoke not as it stands written in his book; but only had such thoughts. It is merely the argument of a fable. It is probable that Solomon wrote and made this book." ... "The book of Esther I toss into the Elbe. I am such an enemy to the book of Esther that I wish it did not exist, for it Judaizes too much and has in it a great deal of heathenish naughtiness." "The history of Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely incredible." ... He says: "The first three (Gospels) speak of the works of Our Lord rather than of his oral teachings: that of St. John is the only sympathetic, the only true Gospel and should be undoubtedly preferred to the others. In like manner the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul are superior to the first three Gospels." The Epistle to the Hebrews did not suit him. "It need not surprise one to find here," he says, "bits of wood, hay and straw." The Epistle of St. James, Luther denounced as "an epistle of straw." "I do not hold it," he said, "to be his writing, and 1 cannot place it among the capital books.'· He did this because it proclaimed the necessity of good works contrary to his heresy. "There are many things objectionable in this book," he says of the Apocalypse; "to my mind it bears upon it no marks of an apostolic or prophetic character .... Every one may form his own judgment of this book; as for myself, I feel an aversion to it, and to me this is sufficient reason for rejecting it."