Reformation Anniversary

It was 435 years ago, on October 31, 1517, that an Augustinian friar named Martin Luther posted 95 theses for theological debate on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Last week most Protestant churches throughout the world were celebrating this anniversary as Reformation Sunday. But, al. though Luther's act is almost universally regarded as the beginning of the Reformation, there is little unanimity, even among Protestants, about what he set out to do, and what he accomplished after the theses were posted.

One of the best guidebooks to the Reformer's works and their influence on modern times is Luther Now (Muhlenberg; $2.50), by Bishop Hanns Lilje of Hannover, the active and scholarly German prelate who this year was elected president of the Lutheran World Federation (TIME, Aug. 11). His book was written to put Luther "in clear historical perspective" for modern Christians.

Personal Thinking. "The so-called modern era in history," says Bishop Lilje, "begins as the personal experience of one man." Luther did not set out to destroy the unity of the Roman Catholic Church --it was 20 years after he nailed up his Wittenberg theses before he decided that the break with Rome was inevitable: "He had neither a cultural program nor world-encircling organizational plans. He was simply himself, going his own path, fighting his way through the problems of faith that were laid upon him." Lilje quotes Luther's own statement: "God has led me into all this 'like a blind nag.' "

What was Luther's experience? It was a conviction, coming from his own spiritual "anguish," that "God must reveal himself, if man is to find him." Luther had doubts, fostered by the bewildering changes of his world--the new discoveries, the rise of nationalism, and the incapacity of the 16th century popes to order Christianity as their predecessors had. These doubts "did not take the pale form of modern agnosticism, but [they were] the much more terrifying doubt whether God had forsaken him or no longer cared about this man, Martin Luther."

In his study at Wittenberg, Luther decided that the clanking hierarchy of the 16th century church did not help a man find God, but stood in his way. He found the way to salvation in "personal thinking" about God. The individual must seek his own salvation. Neither the church, as such, nor the decaying medieval society could find it for him. "We may shout into each other's ears," Luther once wrote, "but each man must stand on the ramparts alone."

Liberating the Spirit. Modern critics, following Protestant scholars of the igth century, have praised Luther because he "liberated the spirit" of science, "by freeing all areas of life from the supreme authority of the church." This compliment, says Bishop Lilje, "is probably undeserved." It comes principally from the wishful thinking of secular scholars who thought Luther felt the same way about religion as they did.

On the contrary, Bishop Lilje argues, Luther was above all a religious man, whose break with Catholicism was incidental to his own spiritual struggle. Luther was not a humanist, and he thought most Renaissance discoveries unnecessary because they were part of a "worldly" order. Says Bishop Lilje: "The Reformation gave the scholar independence from the hierarchy for his studies, but it never intended to release scholarship from it's ties to God and the God-given order." The reformers, just as the medieval scholastics, believed that "all scholarship is related to the supernatural."

Luther always accepted the church as a "divine institution." He differed from the Catholics in denying that its structure was a divine institution as well. He believed that the church exists "wherever Christ is preached and accepted in faith." Consistent with his religious attitude. Luther felt that the authority of nations also rested "upon a divinely instituted order" and not "upon a contractual agreement between the citizens." His political theory was pegged to the maxim: "Obedience is the supreme duty of the citizen."

Uncertain Existence. Martin Luther's "personal thinking" in religious matters, says Author Lilje, was the Reformation's great contribution to the modern world, and it paved the way for a new individualism in Western culture. ("An individual who knows that he stands in solitary responsibility before God learns to become independent of human authorities.")

In other more specific ways, says Lilje, the reformers helped construct a new world order. From Luther on, they sponsored popular education and the use of vernacular languages. Luther himself evolved a new theory of charity that prevented "a breakdown of the social order in the 16th century," when the medieval pattern of almsgiving for the good of the donor's soul fell into neglect. Luther told his followers that "the aim of charity is the independence of the individual; the helpless must be trained to help themselves."

Summarizing, Bishop Lilje compares the breakdown of the "optimistic world view" of the 19th century with the fall of the medieval world order in Luther's time. He writes: "His plight, like ours, is a profound sense of the uncertainty of human existence. We are not secure in this world, but in constant peril ... All human roads seek to avoid these deep valleys. It was Luther's experience that God purposely leads us through them in order to make us receptive to His Word."

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