Evangelism

Most people, even those with no interest the history of Christianity, know the story of the great Martin Luther and his revolutionary doings 507 years ago today on October 31, 1517.

The great reformer ignited a bomb that changed the course of history with the sparks from his protestant hammer as it drove a nail into the rugged wooden door of Wittenberg’s main cathedral. Second only to the nails driven into the cross of Christ, this hammer divides Western history into before and after.

But what most people believe happened on this date, now celebrated as Reformation Day, is actually myth. Simply put, it’s likely the famous door episode never happened. It certainly didn’t happen as portrayed in popular history and classic paintings.

A carefully researched history, published on the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation by Richard Rex, a noted professor of Reformation History at Cambridge, explains,

Bizarrely, there is almost no reliable evidence for this well-known story. There is no credible evidence that Luther actually went and nailed them [his 95 Theses] to the church door that day, and every reason to believe he did not.

Eric Metaxas echoes Rex’s take in his important book on Luther explaining on p. 111, “So the image in our collective minds of Luther audaciously pounding the truth onto that door for the world and the devil to see is a fiction.” He adds the picture of a fiery reformer signing his own excommunication with a hammer “is very far from the truth.”

Nearly all serious Luther historians agree on this.

The only posting Luther did was posting a letter to a bishop under whose authority he stood, dated October 31, 1517. He went to bed that night never having taken up a hammer nor approached any church door with a document and nail.

This letter contained his famous 95 Theses and a very personal cover letter, warning the bishops of the abuse of indulgences by the perversely extravagant proto-television evangelist Johann Tetzel. Luther himself clearly tells us his state of mind and heart when he dispatched his Theses,

I was then a preacher, a young doctor of theology, so to speak – and I began to dissuade the people and to urge them not to listen to the clamors of the indulgence hawkers; they had better things to do. I certainly thought that in this case I should have a protector in the pope, on whose trustworthiness I then leaned strongly…

Luther was certainly not full of thunder but simply being a dutiful pastor to the flock. As Metaxas explains, Luther, at this point, “was a faithful monk in the only church in Western Christendom.”

His letter to Archbishop Albrecht was not a fiery rebuke or correction riddled, but instead was riddled with lap-dog praises, greeting Albrecht as my “most reverend Father … worthy of reverence, fear, and most gracious,” and Luther’s “Most Illustrious Lord.” Luther contrasts himself mightily as “I, the dregs of humanity.” He meekly asks to be spared for having “so much boldness that I have dared to think of a letter to the height of your Sublimity” and that the good archbishop might “deign to cast an eye upon one speck of dust, and for the sake of your pontifical clemency to heed my prayer.”

Metaxas describes the letter as nothing less than “a model of cringing sycophancy.” This evidence shows the October 31st Luther was actually a purring kitten, while legend has him a roaring lion.

The great Reformer’s bold spirit arose sometime later. Luther’s initial warning letter of Tetzel’s abuses was of no effect. The financial scheme was greater than he imagined with Albrecht on the take, splitting the proceeds with the pope after giving Tetzel his hawker’s fee.

The Document and the Door

Some two weeks later, the Theses were likely posted on the doors of the Castle Church at Wittenberg as a proposal to scholarly debate, or disputation, as these typical exchanges were called.

Such invitations for debate were everyday business for professors and nothing worth noting in itself. To use imagery from basketball, this would have merely been Luther’s call for an intramural pick-up game. The debate never happened. No one responded to the invite.

And the posting of these academic invitations would not have been to only one door, the great Cathedral of Wittenberg. It was university policy that such invitations be posted on the doors of every church in the town of Wittenberg, which boasted at least six or more. So, the posting itself was not an event to be sure, but a mere administrative task.

And it was not Luther doing the posting with hammer and nail. Professors did not do such menial work.The person posting the document was most likely a custodian armed with a brush and pot of glue, or a modest tack at best.

But Luther’s Theses did indeed eventually bring great thunder to the world, launching nothing short of a civilization-changing movement. Few can dispute this.

However, it was not that mighty sound of a hammer upon a famous door, but the clackity-clacking of this new contraption called a printing press that was the detonation point.

It was here that his revolution really sparked.

His 95 Theses were printed and sold, without his knowledge or consent, by enterprising printers, their pamphlets spreading “throughout the whole of Germany inside two weeks” as Luther himself tells us.

Luther went viral before viral was cool, and the monk himself had little to do with it.

While Luther never mentioned any posting on a door in Wittenberg in any writings, it was his faithful friend Philip Melanchthon who is credited with launching this famous but mythical scene. He did so some years after Luther’s death and was certainly not an eyewitness to the supposed event.

Why make a point of all this on this day? Because truth matters in the mouths and traditions of Christians who follow Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life.

Of course, none of this takes anything away from the singular influence of the great Refomer, not only on Christian faith and practice, but on nearly every other sphere of human culture: politics, economics and industry, education, distribution of the printed word, art, the status of women, and the nature and significance of marriage and the family, just to name a few.

It’s simply impossible to construct a definitive list of Luther’s work’s total influence upon history and faith. But we must realize that the Reformation’s anniversary is more faithfully honored when we replace the myths surrounding it with facts.