The Insanity of Luther

Before Luther ever studied theology, he had already distinguished himself with brilliance as a student of the law. And he took that sharply, acute, trained, legal mind and he applied it to the law of God. And then he would look at the law of God and its demands. He kept evaluating himself, not by comparing himself to other human beings, but by looking at the standard of the character of God, the righteousness of God. And he saw himself so awful in comparison to the righteousness of God that after a while he began to hate any idea of the righteousness of God. Was Martin Luther, the 16th century reformer, insane?

Some have suggested he was, or perhaps he understood the law of God and the demands of the law and just how far he fell short of it. This is the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind as we spend a week reflecting on God's holiness and marking the 40th anniversary of the publication of R.C. Sproul's landmark book, The Holiness of God. Today, R.C. Sproul considers Martin Luther, what led to his perceived insanity and then Luther's discovery of the good news as he read the book of Romans.

Here's Dr. Sproul. I'd like to begin this session with a question from church history. See if you can identify for me the famous theologian who was once described by a contemporary who had more authority than he did as a wild pig.

Well, by now obviously the name has popped into your mind. I'm referring, of course, to Martin Luther, and the one who referred to him as a wild pig was Pope Leo. In the papal bull that excommunicated Luther, the name of the bull was Exsurge Domine, which is taken from the opening lines of this papal statement that was sent from the Vatican, and the opening words mean this, Rise up, O Lord, defend your cause, for, as the pope goes on to say, there is a wild boar loose in your vineyard. According to legend, Pope Leo had other things to say about Luther after Luther had posted his Ninety-Five Theses and had created such a stir throughout Germany and that controversy had spread across Europe and had reached the Vatican in Rome.

When it came to the attention of Leo, Leo said, ah, he is a drunken German. He'll change his mind when he's sober, and I say that to call attention to the fact that in the sixteenth century, it was acceptable in theological disputation to discuss matters not in a genteel, polite form of dialogue, but rather in a rather exurbic form of polemical debate. And so if you read the writings of the sixteenth century on both sides of the controversy, it seems as though these people are ruthless in their attacks upon each other. But even in that crowd of ruthless debate, Martin Luther was in a class by himself.

He was so intemperate, so bombastic, so rude at times that people have even suggested that he suffered from a mental problem. That's what I'd like to consider in this session, the judgment from the perspective of twentieth century psychoanalysis that Martin Luther was in fact insane. And if you are a Protestant and that verdict is true, that means the roots of your own religious persuasion could be traced to that of a madman.

But what I want to ask is this, why? What would people see in Luther that would provoke them to think perhaps the man was out of his mind? I've mentioned already this extraordinary intemperance of Luther. We read, for example, his famous work on the bondage of the will, which is a response to the sophisticated humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, where Erasmus had written a work against Luther entitled The Diatribe. And when Luther responded to Erasmus, he would say things like this. He said, Erasmus, you fool, you stupid idiot. He said, why, why is it that I even take the time to listen to the flimsy arguments that you give? He said, oh, you, you are eloquent and your end is magnificent, he said. But reading the material that you have written, he said, is just like watching somebody walking down the street carrying gold and silver plates that are filled with dung. That's the way Luther would engage in theological debate.

I won't translate those words into the vernacular, but I think you get the idea. Not only was Luther intemperate in his speech, but he was clearly neurotic, particularly about his health. He was a hypochondriac. He suffered from nervous anxiety and a nervous stomach his whole life, and I can relate to that.

He had kidney stones, I can relate to that. He predicted his death six or seven times. Every time Luther got a stomachache, he was sure it was a fatal disease. And he was always looking over his shoulder thinking that the hound of heaven was about to pounce on him and visit him with some kind of judgment. And his phobias were many and legendary, and he had such a fear of the wrath of God that early on in his ministry, somebody put this question to him. Brother Martin, do you love God?

You know what he said? He said, love God? You ask me if I love God? Love God, sometimes I hate God.

I see Christ as a consuming judge who is simply looking at me to evaluate me and to visit affliction upon me. Imagine a young man preparing for the ministry declaring that he goes through periods of hating God, and that hatred was inseparably related to this paralyzing fear that Luther expressed that he had about God. We know that as a young man, his father had plans for Luther to be a distinguished lawyer, and old Hans Luther, who was a coal miner in Germany, saved his money to make it possible for his son to go to the finest law school on the continent.

And when Luther became a law student, he distinguished himself very quickly as one of the most brilliant young minds in the field of jurisprudence in all of Europe. But in the midst of that experience, he was coming home one afternoon, riding on horseback, when suddenly this storm arose without warning, and Luther found himself trapped on the road in the midst of a violent electrical storm. And the lightning was flashing, and the thunder was banging, and suddenly a lightning bolt came and landed so close to his horse that Luther was thrown from the horse onto the ground, and he had to feel his body to see if he was still alive. And there, what he did in the midst of that narrow escape from death, he cried out, Sveinan, help me, I will become a monk. And he took this narrow brush with death as a divine omen on his life and as a call to the ministry.

So to his father's everlasting displeasure, he dropped out of law school and enrolled in the monastery and began to take training to become a priest. Luther was driven to change his entire life, to enter into the monastery, to give up his career, not out of a love for God, but out of a phobic preoccupation with the wrath of God. Well, then the day finally came where Luther was to be ordained and to celebrate his first Mass. And finally, his father and family had somewhat made their peace with their son's precipitous decision, and Hans Luther decided to come and attend the celebration of the first Mass that his son is going to perform.

And as you know, Luther had distinguished himself in school as an outstanding scholar and as an outstanding speaker. And so people were waiting in eager anticipation for his presentation and performance of his first Mass. Now you have to understand this, that in the Roman Catholic Church, in the celebration of the Mass, the belief of the Roman Catholic Church is that in the midst of this observation, a divine, supernatural, immediate miracle takes place, where during the prayer of consecration, it can be offered only by one who has gone through holy orders and has been consecrated as a priest. During the prayer of consecration, the miracle takes place, the miracle that is called transubstantiation, where even though the appearance of bread and wine remains the same and no one can discern any change in these elements, nevertheless, Rome believes that there is a substantive change, an essential change in these elements that they call transubstantiation, that is that the substance of the bread and wine are changed into the substance of the very body and blood of Christ, while the accidents, that is the external perceivable qualities of bread and wine, remain the same. This is the miracle, and Luther had prepared himself in his training for this moment, when he would make this prayer over the elements, and the divine mystery would take place so that after the consecration happened, in the hands of this son of a coal miner would be not bread, not wine, not the common elements from the earth, but nothing less than the holy body and blood of Jesus Christ. And so the moment in the Mass came where the prayer would be uttered, and everyone waited for Luther to say the words of consecration, and he came to that point in the Mass, and this one who was so arrogant, so obviously capable of public speaking, he approached that moment and suddenly he froze.

He began to tremble, and his mouth opened, and his lips moved, but no words came out. And it's like the people sat in the congregation trying to will the words out of his mouth, and his father was hiding his face in embarrassment that his son couldn't even get through the simple celebration of the Mass that he had memorized a thousand times. And everyone thought he simply forgot the lines.

He didn't forget the lines. He finally just mumbled them and rapidly completed the Mass and left the chancel in profound embarrassment. It explained later that it wasn't a mental lapse, but rather he began to contemplate the idea that this one who was a sinful human being would dare have the audacity to hold in his filthy hands the precious body and blood of Christ. And Luther was so overcome with his unworthiness that he froze at that moment. Oh, there are other stories about Luther.

They say perhaps the thing that would most indicate his insanity is the apparent commitment to megalomania. I mean, how else can you explain a person being willing to defy every authority structure of this world and to stand utterly alone as a young priest against all of the authorities of the church? He debated with Martin Eck, he debated with Cardinal Cajetan, he got himself in trouble with the pope, and finally the whole discussion comes to a climax where Luther is invited to the imperial diet of Worms. And at Worms, Luther is on trial and he is going to be asked to recant of his writings.

And he's to be on trial not only before the ecclesiastical authorities, but also before the secular authorities. And Luther came into the hall and the inquisitor stood up and read the charges and pointed to the books that were on the table next to Luther and they said, Martin Luther, will you recant of these writings? That moment in church history when the question was put to Martin Luther, Martin Luther, will you recant? Do you know what he said?

He answered the question and nobody in the hall could hear what he said. They said, what did he say? What did he say? Speak up, Luther.

What did you say? Will you recant of these writings? He looked at the authorities and he said, could I have twenty-four hours to think it out? And he was granted the additional time and on the morrow when Luther returned to the hall at the Diet of Worms. And again the inquisitor put the question to him. He said, Brother Martin, will you now recant of these teachings? And again Luther hesitated for a moment and he said, unless I'm convinced by sacred Scripture or by evident reason, don't you see, I can't recant. My conscience is held captive by the Word of God and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can't do anything else. God help me. Megalomania? Visions of grandeur?

Maybe. One other point. In fact, the aspect of Luther's life that really makes people think he was nuts. It goes back to his years in the monastery. It was the function and the practice of every young priest in the monastery to go through the order and the rule of the monastery to give a daily confession to his father confessor. And as a matter of routine, the other brothers would come into the confessional and they would say, Father, I have sinned and hear my confession. They said, what did you do? They said, well, last night after lights out, I used a candle and I read an extra three chapters in the Psalms when I was supposed to.

Yesterday afternoon, I coveted Brother Henry's chicken leg at the lunch hall. I mean, how much trouble can you get in in a monastery? These guys would give their confession and the father confessor would say, say, so many Hail Marys, do these penance and send them back to their labors as monks. And then Luther would come to the confessional and he would say, Father, forgive me for I have sinned. It's been 24 hours since my last confession. And he would begin to recite the sins that he had committed in the past 24 hours. And it would take him not five minutes or 10 minutes, not a half an hour or an hour. But there were days after days where Luther would spend in the confessional reciting his sins of the past day. And it would take him two hours or three hours and four hours to the point that it was driving the superiors in the monastery crazy. And they complained to him and they said, Brother Martin, stop this preoccupation with peccadilloes. If you're going to confess something, make it a real sin. But all of it was doing all these small little things that there was and it began to feel that he was gold-bricking. They said, what is it? Do you like to spend your time here in the confessional?

You don't like to do the tasks that are assigned? He goes, the pre. But his confessor understood that Luther, whatever else, was earnest about this. And Luther revealed later that he would come out of the confessional after a three or four hour marathon. And he would hear the words of the priest saying, your sins are forgiven. And he would feel lighthearted and joyous as he returned to his cell until suddenly he would remember a sin that he had committed that he forgot to confess.

And all of the joy and all of the peace vanished. Now that's crazy if by modern psychiatric terms we understand that a person has normal built-in defense mechanisms to defend against our own guilt affliction. We are very, very adept at guilt denial and guilt justification as human beings. And they say sometimes that there's a thin line between insanity and genius and that those who are geniuses sometimes transverse back and forth across the line. And I suspect perhaps that's what happened with Luther because the thing that the psychiatrists overlook about this man is this, that before Luther ever studied theology, he had already distinguished himself with brilliance as a student of the law. And he took that sharply, acute, trained, legal mind and he applied it to the law of God. And then he would look at the law of God and its demands, the fullness of the demands of perfection, and he would analyze himself in light of the holy law of God and he couldn't stand the results.

He kept evaluating himself not by comparing himself to other human beings but by looking at the standard of the character of God, the righteousness of God, and he saw himself so awful in comparison to the righteousness of God that after a while he began to hate any idea of the righteousness of God. Then one night as he was preparing his lectures as a doctor in theology to teach his students at the University of Mittenberg in the doctrines and the teachings of the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans, as he was reading the first chapter and reading the commentaries and reading a passage that Augustine had written centuries later, he came to Romans 1 and he read these words, For the righteousness of God is revealed by faith, and the just shall live by faith. And suddenly the concept burst upon his mind that what this passage was teaching in Romans was that it was discussing the righteousness of God, not that righteousness by which God himself is righteous, but it was describing the righteousness of God that God provides for you and for me graciously, really, to anyone who puts their trust in Christ. Anyone who puts their trust in Christ receives the covering in the cloak of the righteousness of Christ. John Luther's, it broke into my mind and I realized for the first time that my justification, that my station before God is established not on the basis of my own naked righteousness, which will always fall short of the demands of God, but it rests fully and completely on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which I must hold onto by trusting faith. He said that when I understood that for the first time in my life, I understood the gospel, and I looked and beheld the doors of paradise swung open and I walked through. And it's like Luther said to the world from that day forward, to popes and to councils, to diets and to kings, the just shall live by faith, justification by faith alone, if God is holy, and I am not, if the article upon which the church stands or falls and I negotiate it with no one, because it's the gospel. Is that crazy? Ladies and gentlemen, if that's crazy, I pray that God would send an army of insane people like that into this world, that the gospel may not be eclipsed, that we might understand that in the presence of a holy God, that how we who are unjust may be justified is by the fact that God in His holiness, without negotiating His holiness, has offered us the holiness of His Son as a covering for our sin that whoever believes on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

And what good news that is. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and that was R.C. Sproul on Martin Luther from his series The Holiness of God. This series and its companion book have been used by the Lord over the decades to bring transformation and renewal as individuals and families have discovered who God is and heard the good news of the gospel.

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