Martin E. Marty (1928–2025)

From the Renaissance reading list. Since I am nominally still a Missouri Synod Lutheran, it seemed appropriate to read this “Penguin Lives” biography. Even though author Martin Marty is a Lutheran pastor, this is a straightforward biography without a lot of theology or speculation on Luther’s motivation. Luther’s early life was not that eventful – except his father, who was what would now be called a mining engineer, didn’t want him to go into the Church and Martin disobeyed him. show more While a monk, Luther was assailed by Anfechtungen, which Marty notes doesn’t translate well but which means, roughly “doubt in your salvation”. This prompted the initial break, with the denunciation of indulgences in 1517. If you’re not familiar with indulgences, they are linked with the concept of Purgatory; the basic idea goes back to the time of St. Gregory the Great in the 7th century and was formalized at various Church councils over the years. See Dante. “In” Purgatory (although technically Purgatory wasn’t a place so you couldn’t be “in” it) various sins were burned off to make the soul fit for entrance into heaven. “Indulgences” were originally things a person could do to reduce their “time” in Purgatory (again, technically, Purgatory, like Heaven and Hell, is outside of time); these things included reciting prayers, visiting holy sites, and, eventually, buying them. Luther could find no justification in the Bible for either Purgatory or indulgences. I remember in catechism class the words of Christ on the cross to the Good Thief – “I say to you today you will be with me in Paradise” – were quoted to refute Purgatory, since the implication was that the thief would go to Heaven “today”, without any waiting time; however it’s been pointed out that the original Greek is ambiguous – “I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” versus “I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise”. At any rate, at first it wasn’t the idea of Purgatory that Luther was opposed to, but the idea that you could buy your way out of it; Luther decided that the only way to get to Heaven was to accept the freely given Grace of God and no amount of good works on Earth could get you there. (I would note that all this discussion of indulgences and Purgatory is my own; Marty doesn’t explain either, which I consider to be a drawback. However, the “Penguin Lives” series are supposed to be very short biographies and I suppose something had to go.)


At this point (1517) Luther was still trying to work within the Church. His approach was to draw up a list of 95 Theses, mail them to his archbishop, and invite theologians and other interested parties to a debate at the local university in Wittenberg. (Marty notes that the famous story of nailing the 95 theses to the church door can’t be independently attested). These sorts of “monkish disputes” seem to have been fairly common; nobody showed up for Luther’s debate. If the Church authorities had left it at that, it’s likely nothing more would have been have been heard of Luther and his theses. However, the local indulgence peddler, Johannes Tetzel, was outraged and complained to Archbishop Albrecht and Pope Leo X. Tetzel was already annoyed because the local ruler, Elector Frederick the Wise, had a collection of holy relics people paid to see - and they could, of course, acquire indulgences for doing that - Frederick had banned indulgence sellers from his territory because they were the competition. The Theses thus became a local news item, and somehow printers got a hold of the Archbishop’s version (or maybe there really was a copy nailed to the church door) and began distributing copies of their own – essentially the 16th-century version of an Internet meme. During the next four years, there were verbal and printed attacks on Luther, but nothing physical; the Turks were threatening Europe again and the Holy Roman Emperor didn’t want to press the issue with his vassal Frederick. More and more people began converting to Luther’s ideas (it wasn’t called “Lutheranism” yet; instead the term Luther used was “Evangelicals”). From 1517 to 1521, Luther gradually expanded his objections to the Catholic church. At first he wasn’t opposed to the idea of a Pope, or bishops, or sacraments, but only wanted these purified and restored to what Luther thought was their original Biblical purpose; in particular there was no divine admonition to have a Church hierarchy but popes and bishops and priests were appointed by church members as administrators; and the only sacraments were those that delivered the grace of God, namely Baptism and Communion. Since priests had no special status in Luther’s view, any church member could act as one; I remember again from catechism class instructions for baptizing somebody in an emergency. I don’t recall any such instructions for administering Communion, though. Luther, like a lot of Christian theologians, seems to have gotten tied up in fine details over exactly what the bread and wine in Communion were. The crucial point came in 1521 when Luther was summoned to the Imperial Diet of Worms – he was formally granted a safe conduct by Charles V – where his only options would be to recant or not to recant. Here he made the famous statement “I cannot do otherwise, here I stand”. Except maybe not – Marty notes, like the nailing of the theses to the church door, this is not attested by all the witnesses. To be fair, though, as it became clear Luther wasn’t going to recant the Diet dissolved into shouting and chaos so maybe some didn’t hear it. At any rate, the Emperor declared Luther an outlaw – but only after the safe conduct expired. Thus Luther could make his way back toward Wittenberg in temporary safety. As he was doing so, however, he was abducted by a gang of masked “bandits”, blindfolded, and in High Gothic style carried off to an abandoned castle – where he was told to abandon his monk’s habit, put on knightly clothes, let his tonsure grow out, and user the name “Junker George”. Luther’s companions on the trip were apparently privy to this strategy but they never told him the details. While at Wartburg Castle – which wasn’t quite as abandoned as it originally seemed – Luther said he was “drunk with leisure”, which doesn’t seem that likely since he cranked out a prolific series of letters (Luther’s correspondents included various Catholic theologians, which implies the authorities probably knew where he was but had decided to leave him alone), books, and part of a translation of the Bible. (Luther showed his devotion to the idea of salvation by grace by translating a line in one of the Pauline epistles as “we are saved by grace alone” while the original Greek merely has “we are saved by grace”). He also noted around this time that some of the Bible was wrong – New Testament authors misquoted Old Testament passages and while the Old Testament never erred on spiritual matters it was sometimes wrong on temporal ones. He wasn’t sure if Chronicles, Esther, the Epistle of James, or Revelation should be considered canonical, and he thought the best books of the Bible were the Gospel of John and the Pauline Epistles.


He also developed some of his ideas on marriage at Wartburg; he decided to remain celibate himself but noted that it was not necessary for others (he did eventually marry an ex-nun). However, despite not considering marriage a sacrament he was vehemently opposed to divorce. This lead to some rather strange pronouncements later in his life. He suggested that if a wife refused sexual access to her husband, it was perfectly legitimate for him to use the housemaid or any other willing woman. The same freedom wasn’t granted to women, but if a wife wanted children and her husband was impotent she should secretly have relations with someone else – her brother-in-law if possible – and pass the resulting children off as her husband’s. I don’t remember any of that from catechism class. Henry VIII once explored the idea of divorce by contacting Luther through a third party, but Luther opposed it (alternate historians are invited to run with the idea of a Lutheran England); in an even stranger case, Philip of Hesse, an important Lutheran supporter, wanted a divorce from his first wife, Christina of Saxony, complaining that she was a drunkard and stank – although her smell didn’t prevent him from having ten children by her. He wanted to marry Margaret von der Sale and asked Luther if it wasn’t permissible to divorce Christina. Luther first counseled Philip to keep a mistress, then, if he had to have Margaret, to marry her without divorcing Christina – which is what Philip did. Marty reports this was damaging to Luther’s reputation.


As is often the case with revolutionary movements, Luther began to lose control of what he had started (to be fair, he never claimed he was any sort of church leader). Splinter groups included the Anabaptists, who believed that only adults who fully understood the process could be baptized and Antinomians, who took such an extreme view of salvation by grace that they didn’t believe in following any of the Old Testament laws, including the Ten Commandments. Luther at first tried debating – either in public or by letter – but then decided that more persuasive measures were necessary; since Anabaptists liked adult baptism so much, they should be drowned.


Luther’s writing and speeches can generally be described as “forceful” rather than “eloquent” (although one of his opponents described his Bible translation as “sweet”). He was often quite crude in personal matters, going into excessive details on his bowel problems and getting rather erotic in his advice on marriage. Although early in his career he had made remarks sympathetic to Jews, by the end of his life his heart had hardened and he became outright anti-Semitic, advising that synagogues be burned, Jewish houses be razed, Jewish wealth be confiscated, Jewish travel be prohibited, and Jews forced to become field laborers.


To be fair to Luther, despite noted flaws, he never aspired to any temporal power – unlike some of the Anabaptists, who at one point took over the town of Munster and set up a theological dictatorship that included confiscating everybody’s possessions – including their wives. And although he could be pretty crude about sex, he remained celibate most of his life and faithful once he married (he always spoke respectfully about his wife, and made her executor of his estate, a fairly unusual practice at the time.


Clearly one of history’s most influential personages, but with lots of shortcomings. Author Marty sometimes seems intent on portraying the flaws, perhaps rather more so than one would expect from a Lutheran pastor. The book has no illustrations or maps, but none are really necessary; a more serious flaw is there’s no index, which made it difficult to find some things. As mentioned, there could be some more discussion of Catholic doctrine at the start of Luther’s career, but they probably would have made the book too long for the series. show less

Great short biography of a complicated man. There is so much about Luther I love and so much that is utterly repugnant (i.e. patriarchy, politics, antisemitism, etc). Marty does a good job of giving the reformer his due without resorting to hagiography. Well worth the read.

A look at the history of utopian thinking from the perspective of three cultural critics --- Edward Rothstein, Herbert Muschamp, and Martin E. Marty. This is an interesting and lucid dissection of the results of noble thinking that often leads to disastrous consequences.

This is a very short biography of a complex man. Martin Marty is a Lutheran theologian, and his biography focuses primarily on Luther's evolving theology, without the fawning adulation of some earlier Lutheran biographers. Luther's theology contained internal contradictions and could become excessively abstract as he responded to the turbulent politics of his time with impulsive declarations of theological principles, then struggled to fit them coherently into the overall structure of his show more previous declarations. Marty does an admirable job of clarifying how and why Luther's theology developed. Other, longer biographies offer fuller information about Luther's personal life and more insights into his complicated psychology. show less