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BECOMING LUTHER (part 3): A Spiritual Diary

September 4, 1525 – Wittenberg

The Peasants’ Revolt has ended in catastrophe. Thousands dead. My tract against the murdering hordes has brought universal condemnation upon my head.

What could I do? The peasants were murdering, burning, pillaging—all in the name of the gospel I preached. They claimed Christian freedom meant freedom from earthly authority.

But this is not what I taught! Christian freedom is spiritual freedom—freedom from sin, death, and the devil. It does not abolish earthly order. Paul himself wrote: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.”

Yet I see how they misunderstood. When I proclaimed freedom from papal tyranny, when I taught that conscience is captive only to God’s Word, did I not plant seeds that would sprout into political revolution?

I wrote harshly against the peasants because their violence threatened to destroy the Reformation itself. But I see now that my words were too harsh, too absolute. I condemned the sin but failed to show adequate compassion for the sinners.

Many were poor, oppressed, driven to desperation by unjust lords. Their cause had merit even if their methods were wrong.

This is the burden of words. Once written, they cannot be recalled. They take on lives of their own, judging me as I judged others.

December 25, 1525 – Wittenberg

Christmas, and Katie is with child. God willing, we shall have a son or daughter next year.

The thought fills me with wonder and terror. What kind of world will this child inherit? One divided by religious war? One where neighbour suspects neighbour of heresy?

Yet there is joy too. In Wittenberg, at least, the gospel is preached purely. People hear God’s Word in German, receive communion in both kinds, sing hymns in their own tongue.

This is what reformation looks like in practice: not theological treatises but changed lives. Families sitting together hearing Scripture. Workers finding dignity in their callings, knowing that shoemaking is as holy as saying Mass—if done faithfully.

At dinner tonight we sang hymns. Philip brought his lute. Justus Jonas and his wife came, and Amsdorf, and several students. We sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” the hymn I wrote from Psalm 46.

Katie laughed to hear them murder the notes, but their enthusiasm made up for lack of skill. This is what the Church should be—not a hierarchy of priests and bishops, but a priesthood of all believers, gathered around Word and sacrament.

As I watched them sing, I thought of the Trinity again. Three persons, one God—distinct yet unified. So too the Church: many members, one body. Each person unique, irreducible to the others, yet bound together by the Holy Spirit into organic unity.

This unity does not require uniformity. Katie and Philip are utterly different in temperament, gifts, callings. Yet both are essential members of Christ’s body.

July 6, 1530 – Coburg Castle

Terrible news from Philip Melanchthon at Augsburg. He is presenting the Augsburg Confession to Emperor Charles V at the Diet. He is on the verge of collapse. The pressure at the Diet has broken his spirit. He writes of making compromises, of finding middle ground with Rome.

I wrote to him immediately:

“Grace and mercy in Christ! I have received your letter, full of anxiety and worry, and I tell you honestly, it angers me greatly. What does all this worrying accomplish? If the cause is unjust, let us recant. If it is just, why do we make liars of God by doubting His promises?

“Christ is not asleep but watches over His own. Do you think I am not also anxious? But I will not add to Christ’s passion by my doubt. The gospel does not need our anxiety—it needs our faith.”

Philip’s anxiety springs from the same root as his brilliance—he sees too much, calculates too many possibilities, foresees too many dangers. His mind is a gift and a curse.

My own temperament is different. I am perhaps too ready to fight, too quick to see issues in black and white. Philip sees infinite shades of gray and is paralysed by them.

Together we make one theologian—my courage compensating for his timidity, his wisdom restraining my rashness.

October 18, 1531 – Wittenberg

A dispute has erupted with the Swiss reformers over the Lord’s Supper. Zwingli insists it is merely symbolic—the bread represents Christ’s body but is not truly His body.

I cannot accept this. Christ’s words are clear: “This IS my body.” Not “This represents my body.” IS.

We met at Marburg two years ago to discuss this. I wrote on the table in chalk: “Hoc est corpus meum”—This is my body. Zwingli tried every argument. I remained unmoved.

The problem is metaphysical. Zwingli assumes that a body can only be in one place at once, that Christ’s ascended body in heaven cannot simultaneously be present in the bread. But this applies natural limitations to the glorified body of God incarnate.

After the resurrection, Christ appeared in locked rooms, vanished and reappeared. Clearly the resurrection body transcends our ordinary categories of space and location.

This is where Aristotle’s metaphysics breaks down. His framework assumes ordinary substances in ordinary space. But Christ’s body after resurrection is no ordinary substance.

I do not claim to understand how this works. It is a mystery. God is beyond our intuitive comprehension and cannot be dissected, analysed, approved or disproved. But I will not explain away Christ’s clear words to fit my philosophical preconceptions.

September 20, 1542 – Wittenberg

My daughter Magdalene is dead. She was thirteen years old.

I held her as she died. I said to her: “Magdalene, my dear little daughter, you would gladly remain with your father here, but you will also go willingly to your Father in heaven?” She said yes. Yes, she would go willingly.

But I am not willing. I am her father, and I am not willing. The flesh rebels against death even as the spirit submits to God’s will. Is this not the very essence of human consciousness—this division, this war between what we know to be true and what we feel to be unbearable?

Philip came and spoke to me of the love of God. He said that if parents love their children so deeply, how much more must God love His children. This should comfort me. It does not comfort me.

I think of atonement. Christ bore our sins, our sorrows, our deaths. Did He bear this death, this particular death, this specific agony of watching my child cease to breathe?

She lies in her coffin now, and I look at her and say: “Ah, dear Lene, you will rise again and shine like a star, like the sun!” I believe this. The resurrection is not metaphor but promised reality.

What is consciousness that it can hold such contradictions? I am joyful in spirit but sorrowful in flesh. Can both be true simultaneously? Yes. They must be.

November 10, 1545 – Wittenberg

I am old now and sick, and short-tempered. Katie scolds me for my rudeness at table. She is right to do so.

But here is what I have learned in all these years: Theology is not speculation. It is not the art of answering clever questions. Theology is the Word of God applied to human life—to birth and death, to marriage and work, to fear and hope and love.

The doctrine of justification by faith alone—sola fide—is not an abstract principle. It is the answer to the question: How can I, a sinner, stand before a holy God? And the answer is: Not by your own merits, but by Christ’s merit given to you. You contribute nothing. You receive everything.

At table tonight, young Johannes asked me about predestination and free will. I told him: “In worldly affairs, you have free will. Choose to study or not study, to marry or not marry. But in spiritual matters—in the matter of salvation—your will is bound to sin until God frees it.”

“But isn’t that unfair?” he protested.

“Fair?” I asked. “If God were fair, we would all be damned, for we all deserve damnation. What we receive is not fairness but mercy. Mercy by definition is unfair—it gives us what we do not deserve.”

He went away troubled. Good. Better to be troubled by truth than comforted by lies.

The snow falls outside my window. Soon enough I will be under it, sleeping the long sleep until the resurrection. I am ready. Or rather—I am not ready, but Christ is ready for me, and that suffices.

Katie brought me warm wine with spices. “Drink,” she commanded. I obeyed. After twenty years of marriage, I have learned: when Katie commands, Luther obeys.

My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I can do no other. This is how I began, and this is how I will end.

God help me. Amen.

February 17, 1546 – Eisleben

My last entry.

The counts have made peace. Thank God for that. Now I can go home.

But I feel death approaching. It is not frightening—not anymore. I have preached it so often, proclaimed the resurrection so many times, that now, facing it myself, the words sustain me.

“We are beggars,” I said today. “This is true.”

Beggars before God. We bring nothing, deserve nothing, earn nothing. All is grace.

The righteousness that saves is not mine but Christ’s. The faith that justifies is itself a gift. From beginning to end, salvation is God’s work, not ours.

I regret much. I spoke too harshly at times, judged too quickly, let anger master me when I should have mastered it. I failed often in charity, in patience, in kindness.

But the gospel I preached—that was not mine to corrupt. God preserved His Word despite the flawed vessel carrying it.

Katie, my love, forgive my leaving you. Philip, my friend, continue the work. Students, remember: truth is not ours to create but ours to serve.

My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I can do no other. This is how I began, and this is how I will end.

God help me. Amen.

EPILOGUE

On February 18, 1546, Martin Luther died peacefully in Eisleben, the town of his birth. His last words, spoken in response to the question “Do you die steadfast in Christ and the doctrine you have preached?” were simply: “Yes.”

His body was returned to Wittenberg and buried in the Castle Church, on whose door he had nailed his theses twenty-nine years earlier.

The Reformation he began continued, splitting Western Christianity but also renewing it. The Bible he translated shaped the German language itself. The theology he recovered—of grace alone, through faith alone, in Scripture alone—remains a living tradition five hundred years later.

Luther was a human being—flawed, passionate, brilliant, stubborn—who believed he heard God’s voice in Scripture and could not remain silent. Let us follow his example.

– Nicos Kaloyirou