The Reformers, Their Wives, and Their Homes

Transcription

1 The Reformers, Their Wives, and Their Homes Week 1: Martin and Katie Luther Dr. John and Carolyn Hannah THEOLOGY OF THE REFORMATION A Protestant View of Church History The Three Fundamentals of Protestant Reformation Teaching MARTIN LUTHER: EARLY LIFE St. George s Latin School, Eisenach Hans & Margaret Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1527 Luther s House, Eisleben St. Peter and Paul s Church, Eisleben KATHARINA VON BORA: EARLY LIFE

2 Page 2 LUTHER S CALL TO MINISTRY Lightning Monument, Stotterheim Erfurt University Gate of the Augustine Monastery at Erfurt: Luther employed in menial tasks after teaching physics and philosophy at University. Merle d Aubigné, J. H. (Jean Henri), St. Mary s Cathedral, Erfurt Augustinian Monastery, Erfurt St. Peter s Basilica Lateran Basilica, Sacala Sancta

3 Page 3 Wittenburg Castle Church FIGHTING FOR REFORM Man Street, Wittenburg The Door Luther s Rose Luther s Oak: Burning the Papal Bull Debate at the Diet of Worms Wartburg Castle, where Luther went into hiding Luther s study at Wartburg Castle MARTIN AND KATIE S MARRIAGE Katie s door Katie s wedding ring The Black Cloister, Wittenburg where Luther and Katie made their home

4 Page 4 The table where Luther held his Table Talks and Katie s window box AFTER MARTIN S DEATH St. Mary s interior Katie s home in Torgau St. Mary s Church, Torgau Katie s grave in Torgau LUTHER S LEGACY Pulpit Hartenfels Castle, Torgau The world s first Protestant Church in Hartenfels Castle, designed by Martin Luther (pulpit on right) DR. JOHN D. HANNAH is Distinguished Professor of Historical Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. He has authored numerous books including Our Legacy, History of Christian Doctrine, The Kregel Pictorial Guides to Church History and most recently the 2-volume Invitation to Church History: The Story of Christianity to be released in January, He serves on the boards of several organizations. His wife Carolyn is founder of and advisor to DTS Seminary Wives In Ministry organization. Together they lead annual trips emphasizing biblical and church history in Israel and Europe. CHRIST CHAPEL BIBLE CHURCH

5 Heiko Oberman (Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. New York: Image Books, 1992) poses an interesting question: Would Luther, given his worldview, personality and prejudices, be acceptable on a modern university faculty? What kind of job would he be suited for? Oberman s discourse on the question is thought-provoking and insightful. Dr. John Hannah Luther Today: A Test Were there still a university at Wittenberg (it merged with the University of Halle in 1815), he would not likely be offered a professorship there; nor would it be any difference in Heidelberg or Marburg. It is the Erasmian type of ivory-tower academic that has gained international acceptance. If there were a chair somewhere, whether in Harvard or Holten, it would be futile to look for his name on the list of applicants-one must follow a call, be driven against one s will. Should he nonetheless be shortlisted by a department of religion, the problem would arise of what subject Luther should teach today. The professor of biblical theology would probably be best suited for the present-day field of practical theology. But for that he would be far too conservative and far too pious, as well as being too Catholic in approach and too strongly committed to the Middle Ages-in short, he would not be up-to-date. He would be an indisputably successful teacher, but as a colleague he would be irksome and unwilling to bow to majorities. The modern trend toward ecumenism would cause him particular problems because he would not be prepared to suppress those questions that divide Christians. He was driven by singular notions about the Devil and the Last Judgment. With respect to the Devil he had not yet experienced the Enlightenment and would seriously have to let himself be asked this question, what would he have done without the Devil, without the possibility of attributing the grotesque and embarrassing contradictions in his personal history to Evil personified? How strange his answer would sound, that he would be even worse off without the Devil, for God, too, would then have become remote! Whether the discoveries of modern psychology would have changed his mind cannot be determined; he distrusted solutions that were self-evident and learned to see contradictions as proof of the proximity of truth. He would certainly be an unpredictable ally in faculty politics. He might take an interest in curricular reforms, as he had in the autumn of 1517, and even present comprehensive plans that would be popular among the students who filled his lecture halls to the point of overflowing. But if, as in the summer of 1520, a great many of these students started fighting, as they had with journeymen painters, and caused a riot, he would preach publicly against them and even leave the meeting angrily when the rector and senate of the university tried to defend the students. He would be biting and sometimes overly rough toward colleagues with whom he disagreed. Where generalized judgments were concerned, he would outdo anyone, working himself up to furious tirades. He would rant against papists, Jews, lawyers, and high officials because he felt all of them strangled him life with suffocating laws that undermine the common good. He would hardly have bowed to anything like a minister of education-he was not politically reliable. A psychiatric analysis would rob Luther of whatever chance he had left of teaching at the present-day university. The diagnosis would be persuasive-paranoia reformatorica-but the grounds for the grounds for it must remain irritatingly uncertain, ranging from neurosis to psychosis, from Oedipus complex to mother fixation. Fear of the Lord and abhorrence of the Devil are indicators of disturbed childhood development. And disturbing is what they really are. Of course, there is an objection to this conceptual experiment of attempting to hire the sixteenth-century Luther at a modern university: a child of his time cannot simply be transplanted to an era centuries later. The distance between the dawn of the modern age and the twentieth century is vast. Historically we are separated by the Enlightenment, politically by the American (1776), French (1789), and Russian (1918) Revolutions, and socio-politically by the Industrial Revolution. Nevertheless, there is something to be learned from trying to imagine Luther as our contemporary because it is his personality and character that are at issue. Our anachronistic test is so illuminating because questions regarding his commitment cannot simply be shunted aside in an analysis of his person. The man and his cause are so intimately linked that any separation of the two will be at the expense of both. Even this speaks against offering Luther professorship in our time, which prefers objective scholarship to a personal commitment and vision (313-14).