AP

BECOMING LUTHER (part 2): A Spiritual Diary

The Break with Rome (1518-1525)

February 28, 1518 – Wittenberg

The 95 theses have spread across Germany like wildfire. I wrote them in Latin for academic debate, but someone translated them into German and sent them to the printers. Now even peasants are reading them.

What strikes me most forcefully: I have said nothing Augustine did not say, nothing that contradicts Scripture, yet I am treated as if I had invented a new religion. We have become so accustomed to earning God’s favour that receiving it as free gift seems revolutionary.

I think often about the relationship between words and reality. When I wrote these theses, they were merely propositions. But once released into the world, they became something else. They became performative. They did not merely describe a situation; they created one.

God’s word works the same way. “Let there be light”—and there was light. The word created the reality it named. Perhaps this is why I cannot remain silent. The truth, once seen, demands utterance.

October 20, 1518 – Augsburg (After Meeting with Cardinal Cajetan)

I have fled Augsburg in the night. My meeting with Cardinal Cajetan was disastrous. He simply demanded recantation: “Revoca!”—Recant!

When I asked what I should recant, he pointed to two things: my claim that the treasury of the Church’s merits is not what indulgence bulls describe, and my teaching that faith is necessary for the sacrament to be efficacious.

“Do you not know the pope is above councils and Scripture?” he nearly exploded.

“I know no such thing,” I said. “Show me where Scripture teaches this.”

He could not, of course. Because it does not.

Friends warned me that despite the safe-conduct, I would be arrested. So, I withdrew, publishing an appeal to the pope, declaring that though I had submitted to be tried by Cajetan as legate, I had been so injured by him that I must appeal to His Holiness’s judgment.

I ride now in darkness toward Wittenberg. Will I be declared a heretic? Arrested? Burned? It matters less than I thought it would. The truth is the truth whether I live or die.

April 18, 1521 – Diet of Worms

They asked me to recant. The Emperor Charles V himself sat in judgment, along with princes and bishops arrayed in their finery like peacocks. And I—I am but one monk, standing alone.

“Do you recant?” they asked.

My mouth was dry as dust. I could hear my own heartbeat. And then words came—not eloquent words, not the words I had prepared—but these words: “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason—for I do not accept the authority of popes and councils alone, since they have contradicted themselves—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

Was it I who spoke, or Another through me?

Tonight, alone in my chamber, I tremble. Not from fear of consequences—though there will be consequences—but from the awesome weight of standing before authority with nothing but naked conscience.

The Trinity presses on my thoughts tonight. Father, Son, Holy Spirit—three persons, one essence. How can this be? Aristotle’s categories shatter against this mystery. Substance cannot be divided and remain one substance, yet God is not divided though He is three. Is this not like consciousness itself—simultaneously one and multiple, the I that thinks and the I that observes itself thinking?

Philip (Melanchthon) visited earlier. We spoke of free will. I confessed my growing conviction: the will is bound. Not by external chains, but by its own nature. A stone cannot fly, not because something prevents it, but because flying is contrary to what a stone is. So too the human will—it cannot choose God because choosing God is contrary to what the fallen will is.

“This troubles me,” Philip said. “It seems to make us puppets.”

“No,” I replied. “It makes us honest. Show me the man who has chosen God without God first choosing him. You cannot, because such a man does not exist. God is the actor; we are the acted-upon. But in being acted upon by Love, we become freer, not less.”

May 4, 1521 – En Route to “Captivity”

We were “ambushed” today in the Thuringian forest—arranged by our good Elector Frederick, though I feigned surprise convincingly. Masked horsemen surrounded our cart, seized me, and carried me off while my companions protested loudly.

In truth, I am being taken to safety—to the Wartburg, a castle high in the hills where I can shelter until the fury dies down. The Elector, with wisdom born of political necessity, can now say truthfully that he does not know where I am.

As we climbed toward the castle, I thought of Moses fleeing into the wilderness. Sometimes faithfulness looks like flight. Sometimes wisdom requires retreat.

November 3, 1521 – Wartburg Castle

I’m excited because I have in my hands Erasmus’ Greek New Testament (1516) so my translation progresses. I have reached John’s Gospel, which presents unique challenges.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Logos—word, reason, meaning, principle. How to capture this in German? Das Wort is too flat, too simple. Yet German has no equivalent for logos that carries its full philosophical weight.

This passage takes me back to Augustine’s reflections on language. He asked: If God is outside time, how can He speak? Speech requires succession—one word following another. But in God there is no succession, only eternal presence.

Augustine concluded that God’s Word is not successive but eternal, complete, perfect. The Son is the Father’s perfect self-expression, the Word that contains all words.

And this Word became flesh. The infinite became finite. The eternal entered time. The unsayable was said.

God chose to speak in the vernacular—in Hebrew, in Aramaic, a simpler grammar and vocabulary, the tongue of peasants and fishermen, not the complex grammar of pure Greek and Latin of philosophers.

This emboldens me in my translation work. If God lowered Himself to speak in common human language, who am I to insist that Scripture remain locked in scholarly Latin? The gospel belongs to ploughboys and milkmaids, not just to priests and professors.

Yet I must be careful. Translation is interpretation. Every choice I make shapes how Germans will understand God’s Word.

February 26, 1522 – Wartburg

I am leaving tomorrow. I must return to Wittenberg, despite the danger.

The Elector sent word begging me to remain hidden. “Your life is in peril,” he wrote. “The Edict of Worms is still in force.”

I wrote him this reply: “I am going to Wittenberg under a far higher protection than the Elector’s. I have no intention of asking Your Electoral Grace for protection. Indeed, I think I shall protect Your Electoral Grace more than you are able to protect me.”

I cannot remain hidden while souls are in danger. Carlstadt means well, but his severity alienates the very people we hope to win. Someone must preach the gospel with clarity and grace.

The New Testament is nearly finished. When Germans hold God’s Word in their own language, when they can read for themselves what Scripture teaches, then the Reformation will no longer depend on one monk’s voice. The Word will do its own work.

June 13, 1525 – Wittenberg

I have married. Katie von Bora, the escaped nun, is now my wife. The whole world laughs—the monk and the nun making a marriage! My enemies call it proof of my heresy.

But here is what I know: Katie is fierce, practical, and utterly without pretense. She manages our household with efficiency that borders on miraculous. This morning, she scolded me for leaving books scattered everywhere. “Martin,” she said, hands on hips, “I am not your servant!” I laughed and told her she was quite right—she is something far more important. She is my partner in this strange journey.

At dinner tonight (which she insisted I actually attend), she asked about predestination. “If God has already chosen who will be saved,” she said, slicing bread with decisive strokes, “then why preach? Why do anything?”

I marveled at her mind. Here was the very question that has troubled theologians for centuries, arising naturally from her practical wisdom.

“Because,” I told her, “preaching is the means by which God calls His elect. We do not preach to change God’s mind, but to be the instruments through which His purposes unfold. The Word creates what it proclaims. When I preach Christ, Christ becomes present.”

She nodded, considering. “So, we are both free and not free?”

“Exactly! We are free in worldly matters—to eat or not eat, to marry or not marry. But in spiritual matters, we are bound until God frees us. And in being freed by God, we become truly free for the first time. The will in bondage to sin chooses sin inevitably. The will liberated by grace chooses good spontaneously, like a tree producing fruit according to its nature.”

Later, lying beside her in the darkness, I heard her gentle breathing and thought: this is grace made tangible. Not abstract theological grace, but warm, breathing, flesh-and-blood grace.

Marriage is not a lower calling than celibacy—it is the proper calling of most Christians. The monks lied about this, exalting virginity as if the body was evil. But God created both body and soul, and called them both good.

– Nicos Kaloyirou