When Luther is charged with immoral conduct, and the specific facts together with the documentary evidence are not submitted along with the charge, little can be done in the way of rebuttal. One can only guess at the grounds on which the charge is based. For instance, when Luther is said to have disgraced the Church by a notoriously wicked and scandalous life, the reason is most likely because he married although he was a monk sworn to remain single. Moreover, he married a noble lady who was a nun, also sworn to celibacy. According to the inscrutable ethics of Rome this is concubinage, although the Scripture plainly declares that a minister of the Church should be the husband of one wife, 1 Tim. 3, 2, and no vows can annul the ordinance and commandment of God: "It is not good that man should be alone." Gen. 2, 18. Comp. 1 Cor. 7, 2, and Augsburg Confession, Art. 27.
When Luther is said to have reviled, hated, and cursed the Church of his fathers, the probable reason is, because he wrote the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and The Papacy at Rome Founded by the Devil. In these writings Luther depicts the true antichristian inwardness of the papacy. By so doing, however, Luther restored the Church of his fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers in Christ down to the first ancestor of our race. Luther's faith is none other than the faith of the true Church in all the ages. Luther's own father and mother died in that faith.
When Luther is said to have taught Nietzsche's insanity about the "Superhuman" (Uebermensch) before Nietzsche, to have put the Ten Commandments out of commission for Christians, and to have preached against good works, the reasons most likely are these: Luther taught salvation in accordance with Rom. 3, 25: "We conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law." Luther taught that a person is not saved by his own works, and if he performs good works with that end in view, he shames his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom. 10, 4), and he falls under the curse of God for placing his own merits alongside of the merit of the Redeemer's sacrifice. In no other connection has Luther spoken against good works. He has rather taught men how to become fruitful in well-doing by the sanctifying grace of God and according to the inspiring example of the matchless Jesus. Concerning the Law, Luther preached 1 Tim. 1, 9: "The Law is not made for a righteous man," that is, Christians do the works of the Law, not for the Law's sake, but for the sake of Christ, whom they love and whose mind is in them. They must not be driven like slaves to obey God, but their very faith prompts them to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world (Tit. 2, 12). But Luther always held that the rule for good works is laid down in the holy Law of God, and only in that; also that the Law must be applied to Christians, in as far as they still live in, the flesh, and are not become altogether spiritual. Luther's public activity as a preacher began with a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments, and this effort to expound the divine norm of righteousness was repeated several times during Luther's life. Luther's expositions of the Decalog are among the finest that the world possesses. Moreover, Luther wrote the Small Catechism. Hand any Catholic who talks about Luther having abolished the Ten Commandments this little book. That is a sufficient refutation. What Luther teaches in this book he has given his life to reduce to practise in himself and others. He says in a sermon on Easter Monday, 1530: "When rising in the morning, I pray with my children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and some Psalm. I do this because I want to make myself cling to these truths. I shall not suffer my faith to become mildewed with the imagination that I am above these things (dass ich's koenne)." His sermon on the First Sunday in Advent in the same year he begins thus: "Dear friends, I am now an old Doctor, still I find every day that I must recite with the children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, and I have always derived a great benefit and blessing from this practise." (12, 1611. 1641.)
Luther is charged with mendacity, that is, he is said to have lied. The reasons that will be given for this charge, when called for, will probably be these: Luther at various times in his life gave three different years as the year of his birth, three different years as the year when he made his journey to Rome, and advised somebody in 1512 to become a monk when he had already commenced to denounce the monastic life: It is true that Luther did all these things, but it is also true that Luther believed himself right in each of his statements. He was simply mistaken. Other people have misstated the year of their birth without being branded liars on that account. Sometimes even a professor forgets things, and Luther was a professor. What Luther has said about the rigor of his monastic life is perfectly true, but it was no reason why in 1512 he should counsel men to become monks. He had not yet come to the full knowledge of the wrong principles underlying that mode of life. To adduce such inaccuracies as evidence of prevarication is itself an insincere act and puts the claimant by right in the Ananias Club.
Luther is said to have been a glutton and a drunkard. "Let us examine the facts. What is the evidence? Luther's obesity and his gout. Is that evidence? Not in any court. It would be evidence if both conditions were caused, and caused only, by gluttony and tippling. But this notoriously is not the case. Obesity may be due to disease. A man may even eat little and wax stout if what he eats turns into adipose rather than into muscular tissue. As for gout, it is the result of uric acid diathesis. Now uric acid diathesis may be, and very often is, caused by high living, but often, too, it is due to quite different causes. Just as in the case of Bright's disease. I do not deny that Luther drank freely both beer and wine. So did everybody else. People drank beer as we do coffee. . . . Moreover, in the sixteenth century alcoholic beverages were prescribed for the maladies from which Luther suffered much—kidneys and nervous trouble. We now know that in such cases alcohol proves a very poison; but this Luther could not know. But intemperate . . . in his use of strong drink Luther was not. Neither was he a glutton. Before he married, he ate very irregularly, and often completely forgot his meals. When he could not get meat and wine, he contented himself with bread and water. . . . Melanchthon tells us that Luther loved the coarse food as he did the coarse speech of the peasantry, and even of that food ate little, so little that Melanchthon marveled how Luther could maintain strength upon such a diet.—It is further a noteworthy fact that, when we read the sermons of the day, we find nobody who so frequently and so earnestly attacks the prevailing vice of drunkenness as does Luther. Now, whatever Luther may or may not have been, hypocrite he was not. Had he himself been intemperate, he would not have preached against it in such a manner. Furthermore, Luther was under constant espionage. His every move was noted. People knew how many patches there were on his undergarments. Think you, think you for a moment, that the Wittenbergians would have listened meekly to Luther's repeated assaults upon the wide-spread sin of intemperance, had they known him for a confirmed tippler? It is too absurd.—But the best evidence for the defense comes from a mute witness—Luther's industry. He wrote more than four hundred books, brochures, sermons, and so forth, filling more than one hundred volumes of the Erlangen edition. There are extant more than three thousand of his letters, which represent only a small proportion of all that he wrote. Thus we know, for example, that one evening in 1544 Luther wrote ten letters, of which only two have been preserved. He was, furthermore, in frequent conference with leaders in both Church and State. He preached on Sundays and lectured on week-days. Now, a man may, it is true, perform a considerable amount of manual labor even after overeating and overdrinking, but every physician will admit the correctness of my assertion, it is a physiological impossibility that a man could habitually overindulge in food or liquor, or both, and still get over the enormous amount of intellectual work that Luther performed day to day" (Boehmer, The Man Luther, p. 16 f.)
Most shameless have been the charges of lewdness and immorality against Luther. His relation to Frau Cotta has been represented as impure. Think of it, a boy of sixteen to eighteen thus related to an honorable housewife! Illegitimate children have been foisted upon him. A humorous remark about his intention to marry and being unable to choose between several eligible parties has been twisted into an immoral meaning. The fact that he gave shelter overnight to a number of escaped nuns, when he was already a married man, has been meaningly referred to. Boehmer has exhaustively gone into these charges, examining without flinching every asserted fact cited in evidence of Luther's moral corruptness, and has shown the purity of Luther as being above reproach. Not one of the sexual vagaries imputed to Luther rests on a basis of fact. (Boehmer, Luther in Light of Recent Research, pp. 215-223.)
When the modern reader meets with a general charge of badness, or even with the assertion of some specific form of badness, in Luther, he should inquire at once to what particular incident in Luther's life reference is made. These charges have all been examined and the evidence sifted, and that by impartial investigators. Protestants have taken the lead in this work and have not glossed anything over. Boehmer's able treatise has been translated into English. Walther's Fuer Luther wider Rom will, no doubt, be given the public in an English edition soon. Works like these have long blasted the claim of Catholics that Protestants are afraid to have the truth told about Luther. They only demand that the truth be told.
4. Luther's Task.
One blemish in the character of Luther that is often cited with condemnation even by Protestants deserves to be examined separately. It is Luther's violence in controversy, his coarse language, his angry moods. All will agree that violence and coarse speech must not be countenanced in Christians, least of all in teachers of Christianity. In the writings of Luther there occur terms, phrases, passages that sound repulsive. The strongest admirer of Luther will have moments when he wishes certain things could have been said differently. Luther's language cannot be repeated in our times. Some who have tried to do that in all sincerity have found to their dismay that they were wholly misunderstood. What Jove may do any ox may not do, says an old Latin proverb.
Shall we, then, admit Luther's fault and proceed to apologize for him and find plausible reasons for extenuating his indiscretions in speech and his temperamental faults? We shall do neither. We shall let this "foul-mouthed," coarse Luther stand before the bar of public opinion just as he is. His way cannot be our way, but ultimately none of us will be his final judges. The character of the duties which Luther was sent to perform must be his justification.