“Martin Luther” by Eric Metaxas

I was raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran. That meant that, when I was 12 and 13, I spent every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from 4 to 5 p.m. during the school year in Pastor Nelson’s office with 10 to 15 other students my age, being taught from the Small Catechism of Martin Luther. The point of all of those classes was our confirmation, which happened during Sunday worship services in late May of our second year in catechism.

Part of confirmation was being quizzed by the pastor – in front of the entire church. It was always helpful to have a large confirmation class, because then you would get only one question at most. Mine was the smallest they’d ever had, before or since – four of us, and I was the only boy. That was a great relief to the three girls because they knew Pastor Nelson would ask me the hard questions, including the one every person in every class dreaded because the answer was so long – explaining the “Jesus section” of the Apostles Creed. They were right to be relieved. That was one of my questions. Somehow, I was confirmed in spite of my answers.

What I didn’t know then was that what I learned those two years in catechism became my theological framework. While I might change somewhat or adapt or add or subtract over the years, what I learned from Luther’s Small Catechism is still inside my head more than half a century later.

So it was with some curiosity and then considerable delight that I began to read Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World by Eric Metaxas. I knew some of the basics about Luther (circa 1483-1546), and had even visited Erfurt in Germany, where he attended seminary. But the Luther I found on the pages of Metaxas’s book was not the myth but the living, breathing reality. In fact, I knew I was in good hands when the first thing Metaxas did was to enumerate and sweep away the myths that have grown up about Luther over the centuries.

No, he didn’t come from a family of peasants. No, he didn’t have a hardscrabble upbringing. No, there was no literal bolt of lightning that led him to become a monk (although there was a thunderstorm involved). No, his trip to Rome did not convince him of the need for a reformation. No, he didn’t literally hurl a pot of ink at the devil. No, the nun who eventually became his wife didn’t escape the convent hidden in an empty herring barrel. And no, he most likely did not nail his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg on Oct. 31, 1517. That probably happened two weeks later. What he did do on Oct. 31 was to send a letter to the Archbishop of Mainz, and it was that letter that officially began the process we came to know as the Reformation.

Perhaps the most critical thing Metaxas tells us about Luther is that he was a passionate reader of the Bible – and he was in a tiny minority, because most people, nobles, priests, archbishops, cardinals, and popes did not read the Bible. And it was his understanding of Scripture that framed the Reformation. The church’s practice of selling indulgences (allowing people to pay for time off in purgatory, for themselves and departed family members) was the flashpoint, but it was Luther’s knowledge of Scripture that propelled what could only be called the most significant revolution in human understanding and development of the last 500 years. And perhaps longer.

The church had become comfortable with the teachings of Aristotle. Luther, who also knew his Augustine, saw the inherent contradictions the church had either missed or glossed over.

The church taught that only the priests could drink the wine in communion. Luther made the startling claim, based on the Bible, that all people were equal in God’s eyes, and all people should partake of both the bread and the wine. That shocking idea of the equality of all people would find political expression more than 250 years later in a document called the Declaration of Independence.

Luther articulated the ideas of each person being free, subject to none, and each person being a servant, subject to all. He understood that anyone could understand Scripture – it wasn’t only church officials who could read and interpret. And to that point, as he stayed hidden in the castle of Wartburg while church and state looked high and low for him, he translated the New Testament into German. He did it in 11 weeks, and it was such a good translation, Metaxas says, that it is still used as the basis for new German translations today.

Eric Metaxas

Metaxas tells this story of Luther extraordinarily well; the man has a gift for storytelling. Never would I have imagined that I would become fascinated with the account of the theological debate between Luther and Johannes Eck at Leipzig in 1519, but I was – and that’s due entirely to how well the author tells the story.

Metaxas is the author of four New York Times bestsellers and the host of the Eric Metaxas radio show, broadcast daily to more than 120 cities. A Senior Fellow and Lecturer at Large for the King’s College in New York City, he is the author of numerous books, including Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery (2007); Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2011); Miracles: What They Are, How They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life (2015); 7 Men and Their Secrets of Greatness (2016); 7 Women and Their Secret of Greatness (2016); and If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty (2016).

Martin Luther is not only an outstanding biography. It is an incredible reminder of what one man accomplished, often in the face of great personal and professional peril. And it is a reminder that the Reformation was only something that happened 500 years ago, but something that is still happening, and needs to continue to happen, especially in our own hearts.

Related:

My review of If You Can Keep It by Eric Metaxas.

I Feel Like I Lost a Friend – Mark Sutherland on Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas.

Top photograph: Memorial statue Martin Luther, Marktplatz, Lutherstadt Wittenberg in Germany, via Wikimedia Commons.

“If You Can Keep It” by Eric Metaxas

When I was in college, Free Speech Alley was held every Wednesday from noon to 1:30 p.m. outside the student union. The space was literally an alley, but it was open and wide, with aggregate benches to sit and listen to (or talk about) virtually anything. It was a no-holds-barred kind of event, and I can remember David Duke speaking frequently – wearing his Nazi uniform and armband. The far left was also well represented, and in fact was far better represented than the right (this was the early 1970s, after all). Anything went, and usually did. Sometimes the discussion degenerated into screaming matches, but usually there was rather lively debate.

Vietnam, President Nixon, the environment, race, religion, the military draft, corporations, the need to protest something – any topic was allowed. As crazy as it could get, it did serve one purpose – most of us could figure out who was legitimate and who was a kook.

Today, the kind of speech that happened at Free Speech Alley back then would be shut down immediately by college administrations. The weekly event in no way resembled anything like a “safe space,” and the wild discussion that happened then would undoubtedly offend a multitude of groups and individuals today. We used to be citizens. Now we’re all victims.

Writer and radio show host Eric Metaxas is a hopeful man. He believes this republic we call America can be saved. And he believes Americans can find it within themselves to save it.

Metaxas is perhaps best known for his biographies of the German Lutheran pastor and Nazi victim Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Wilberforce, the man who dedicated his life to ending the slave trade and slavery in Britain and its colonies. Metaxas also caused not a small amount of outrage when he posted this past summer an article on why Christians should vote for Donald Trump (a lot of Christians disagreed, not to mention non-Christians).

In If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty, Metaxas makes his case for the idea of America. He describes where the idea came from, and includes an extended discussion of Great Awakening of the late 1730s and 1740s and the role played by George Whitefield and his friends Charles and John Wesley. He talks about venerating heroes and the heroic. He tells stories about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Nathan Hale. He considers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” – which few self-respecting poets would consider reading today (after all, it actually rhymes).

Eric Metaxas

He makes a case – a solid one – for the “golden triangle of freedom:” freedom requires virtue; virtue requires faith; and faith requires freedom. Force faith into some tiny little box, reduce its influence, ridicule it (much like the British upper classes did during Wilberforce’s lifetime) – and you just may destroy freedom in the process.

He explains the need for moral leaders. He points out that America was the first country to be founded on the basis of an idea, and idea that has inspired the world for 239 years. He talks about the idea of American exceptionalism, and what it really means (and it’s something different from what we today from both the right and the left). And then he finishes with a discussion about how we citizens can love America – not in a blind, “my country right or wrong” way, but in a loving way, including tough love.

And I should point out that he is not ignorant of the problems this country has and has often caused.

If You Can Keep It is about what we have lost, and what we can regain. Metaxas is a realist, but he is also an optimist. And he makes a good case for hope. If you believe this country and the idea of it is worth keeping, this is the book to read.

Top photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Guest Post: “I Feel Like I Lost a Friend”

Mark Sutherland is a friend and colleague at work, who’s been known to wear kilts (but only on special occasions). A native of Scotland, Mark has lived in the U.S. since the 1980s. He recently wrote a children’s story, Why Do We Celebrate Easter, that I reviewed here back in February. Someone dropped the link to the review in Stumble Upon, and page views took off (more than 500 at last count).

Mark mentioned that he had just finished reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas, and sent me what is not so much a review but more of a meditation on how moved he was by the book. Mark said it was OK to share it, and here it is.

I Feel Like I’ve Lost a Friend

On a rare occasion I get so involved in a book that it becomes real to me. The characters come to life. The story envelops me with its mental imagery and emotion. And when you finish, it’s like emerging from another world that existed for only a short while.

And on an even rarer occasion, a book about real people does the same.

Yesterday, I finished reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. Yesterday, I lost a friend who I won’t meet until eternity.

Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany, prior to and during World War II. He was an outspoken critic of the Nazis, and his criticism—and ultimately his actions—were driven by his understanding of Scripture and his convictions about God. He saw great evil in Hitler and his crew, even before Hitler came to power. And as Hitler destroyed the Germany Bonhoeffer loved, Bonhoeffer spoke against Hitler. He spoke and acted in defense of the Jews. He spoke and acted in defense of a biblically-based Church. He spoke and acted against the heretical church of the Third Reich.

And you can’t help but ask yourself the question about what would you do.

Are you passionate about God’s Church, to the point of standing against a tyrannical church-state partnership that wishes to redefine what you believe?

Are you so in love with the Word of God that you will stand against the popular, acceptable claims as to what it means, or are you willing to speak against those who twist God’s Word to fulfill their own desires and plans?

And are you so secure in your stand before God, that is based upon faith alone in sovereign plan of God that existed before time began that you would calmly face your execution in a way that impacted those who witnessed it for decades to come?

While you may not agree with everything Bonhoeffer stood for, his life is an example to us all. And his life, and death, should force us to go to Scripture to answer these questions and more.

I look forward to meeting Pastor Bonhoeffer when God calls me home. In the meantime, we have to be satisfied with an incredible biography that grips you like a novel and won’t let you go until you say goodbye to your new friend.

Thank you, Eric Metaxas, for writing this book. And thank you, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for living it.