Laughing with Luther

The Protestant Reformation that began on Oct. 31, 1517, often seems distant from us—but the concerns Martin Luther voiced 500 years ago are still very much with us. The medieval Roman Catholic Church tried to structure life and death in a way that seemed eminently fair. We’d go to heaven or hell based on our deeds, and many people would end up in a purgatorial middle for a long time, but by giving money to the Church we could lessen our own time in purgatory (and that of parents or other loved ones as well).

Luther busted apart that illusion of control. Westminster Theological Seminary professor Carl Trueman’s Luther on the Christian Life (Crossway) shows that “the tragedy and the comedy of fallen humanity is that we have such a laughable view of ourselves: one that would aspire to tell God who and what He must be.” The following excerpt, reprinted by permission of the publisher, shows how Luther taught that God is God, and His supposed foolishness is far wiser than our wisdom. —Marvin Olasky

Conclusion: Life As Tragedy, Life As Comedy

We are beggars: this is true. —Martin Luther

Over twenty years ago, I was being interviewed for what would prove to be my first tenured appointment at a university. Halfway through the ordeal, one of the interviewers asked me, “If you were trapped on a desert island, who would you want with you—Luther or Calvin?” My response was rea­sonably nuanced for a reply to an unexpected question: “Well, I think Cal­vin would provide the best theological and exegetical discussion, but he always strikes me as somewhat sour and colorless. Luther, however, may not have been as careful a theologian, but he was so obviously human and so clearly loved life. Thus, I’d have to choose Luther.” Later that day, I was offered the position of lecturer in medieval and Reformation theology.

Whether my answer to that particular question played a key role in the panel’s decision, I know not. But that was the moment when I started on a career of teaching Luther’s theology to generations of students on both sides of the Atlantic, and this story seems an appropriate segue into this conclusion. Writing this book has not quite been as traumatic as being marooned on a desert island with the man from Wittenberg, but there are similarities. As a Presbyterian, I do not have any friends who share quite my passion for Luther’s theology; and I have realized as never before that his theological writings can be as infuriating as they are enlightening and entertaining.

Having spent my entire professional life reading and teaching Luther, I think it appropriate to close by reflecting on what I have learned in writing this particular book that has surprised or impressed me and has signifi­cance for the church today.

The first of these is Luther’s great stress upon the priority and objec­tivity of God’s revelation. When one reads Luther intensively, one is inevi­tably struck by his vision for the priority and awe-inspiring power of God as he acts in his Word. The Word is powerful, creative, destructive, and re-creative. The human response is as nothing before the Word’s dramatic and powerful priority over all being. Whether the topic is God’s spoken word the moment he suddenly brought the vast created cosmos into being from nothing, or the Word spoken from countless pulpits last Sunday, the objective power of God stands at the very heart of Luther’s theology and indeed his view of reality. Only after one has grasped this does so much of his thought start to make any sense. This objectivity of God’s action comes to its dramatic climax on the cross at Calvary. There, in the God who is clothed in human flesh and who dies cursed upon the tree, we see not only God’s grace toward fallen humanity revealed in all its glory, but also every human thought and word about God brought into judgment and turned on its head. Power becomes weakness and weakness becomes power. The di­vine love, which we assume is responsive, is shown to be creative. Salvation is shown to be not an act of cooperation between God and the Christian but a sovereign act of God himself.

This objectivity of God undergirds those basic elements of the Chris­tian life: the reading and preaching of the Bible and the reception of the sacraments. Indeed, Luther is careful to frame his understanding of the church and of church power strictly in light of the way God gives himself in, with, and under the forms of Word, water, bread, and wine. The church service is not a response of sinners to God’s prior grace; it is itself an ex­ample of that grace in action. Church is a creature of God’s grace; Christians are creatures of God’s grace; and the life of the believer is marked out by the means of God’s grace.

In an age marked by incredible confusion over the exact role of pastors, Luther provides clarity.

For the contemporary Christian, there is much to delight and encour­age here. In an age marked by incredible confusion over the exact role of pastors, Luther provides clarity. If God comes first, if God decides how he gives himself to his people in grace, then pastors are to look to him as he shows himself in his revelation in order to know what their task is. And it is simply this: to let God be God, and therefore to proclaim in Word and sacrament that he has come in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ to deal graciously with those who will grasp him by faith. Therefore, the pastor need not fret overmuch about many things. The Word, after all, is not pow­erful because the preacher is godly; and while a certain clarity of speech is important, the real effect of the sermon derives not from the preacher’s eloquence but from the God who really speaks the Word to the people. And when the preacher administers the Lord’s Supper, he is not simply going through some empty ritual: he is giving the people Christ, God manifest in the flesh, and he should therefore be confident that the people will benefit through faith.

In an era when we are increasingly obsessed with technique and with the uniqueness of every individual person’s problems and crises—with their own special Anfechtungen, we might say—Luther’s God is disarmingly general. Human beings all face the same dilemma: they wish to stand be­fore God in their own righteousness; and they all need the same solution—God manifest in the flesh, given to them in Word and sacrament, received by humble, contrite, dependent, childlike faith. Word and sacrament define the task of the pastoral office in simple, beautiful, and powerful terms.

If the pastoral office receives clear definition because of the objectivity of God, then so does the life of the Christian. Despondent? Flee to Christ. In despair? Flee to Christ. Struggling with sin? Flee to Christ. For Luther, the answer to life’s Anfechtungen is not introspection but looking outward once again to the means of grace. Again, there is liberation for the Chris­tian today. As alluded to above, we live in an age where everyone is taught to consider themselves unique. The downside of that is that every problem we face is thus unique and can be solved only by addressing matters of the person, individual circumstance, or biography. That is not the world ac­cording to Luther. Yes, the one who struggles with relationships may well be told by Luther, as by some Freudian psychologist, to look right back into childhood for the answer, but this would not be some attempt to unlock forgotten traumas; rather it would be to seek the significance of that mo­ment of entry into the church: baptism, where Christ is first presented to the individual. And that will lead the individual to the promise attached to baptism, to Scripture, and to the regular reading and preaching of the Word in church.

Thus, as I reread Luther, I was struck both as pastor and as Christian believer by the immense confidence he had in the objective action of God in Christ and the objective reality this gives to both Word and sacrament. Yet Luther did not swallow up the whole of history in the cross of Christ. I was also impressed once again at the individual care this man had for the flock, whether in the touching and helpful treatise on prayer he wrote for Peter the Barber or in the misguided marital advice he offered to the troubled Landgrave of Hesse. The latter was a public relations disaster and fundamentally wrongheaded; but it is nonetheless testimony to a man who cared how people thought and acted in their individual concrete circumstances.

Even more, I was impressed at the way in which he outlined the existential struggles of life: joy, sorrow, illness, marriage, pain, and death. Luther saw God’s hand in the particularities of life, and even as he understood them against the backdrop of the great objective actions of God, he gave them their due. Death was the gateway to resurrection, but he knew it was painful and heartbreaking. The funeral of his child was no place for one of those frightful “celebrations of life” that this present glittering, desperate age has developed as a means of lying about the one facet of human existence that remains stubbornly immune to our ambitions of control.

And this leads me to my last thoughts on Luther. One of the most striking things about the man is his sense of humor, and one cannot possibly write a book on his understanding of the Christian life without reference to this. In general terms, of course, Protestant theologians have not been renowned for their wit, and Protestant theology has not been distinguished by its laughter. Yet Luther laughed all the time, whether poking fun at himself, at Katie, at his colleagues, or indeed at his countless and ever-increasing number of enemies. Humor was a large part of what helped to make him so human and accessible. And in a world where everyone always seems to be “hurt” by something someone has said or offended by this or that, Luther’s robust mockery of pretension and pomposity is a remarkable theological contribution in and of itself.

One of the most striking things about the man is his sense of humor.

Humor, of course, has numerous functions. It is in part a survival mechanism. Mocking danger and laughing in the face of tragedy are proven ways of coping with hard and difficult situations. Undoubtedly, this played a significant role in Luther’s own penchant for poking fun. Yet I think there is probably a theological reason for Luther’s laughter too. Humor often plays on the absurd, and Luther knew that this fallen world was not as it was designed to be and was thus absurd and futile in a most significant and powerful way.

Thus, he knew that life is tragic. It is full of sound and fury. It is marked by pain and frustration. The strength of youth must eventually fade into the weakness of old age and finally end in the grave. We believe ourselves to be special, to be transcendent, to be unique and irreplaceable. And yet the one great lesson that everyone must ultimately learn in life is that they are none of these things, however much we want them to be true and however much we do things to trick ourselves into believing our own propaganda. We are fallen, finite, and mortal. We are not God. And because God is and has acted, because in incarnation, Word, and sacrament he has revealed and given himself and has thus pointed to the true meaning of life, our own pretensions to greatness are shown to be nothing but the perilous grandstanding of the absurdly pompous and the pompously absurd.

Indeed, in light of the fact that God is God and has revealed himself in the foolishness of the cross, the tendency of us all to be theologians of glory appears in all its risible futility. That we who cannot even escape our own mortality would assume that God is like us, that we are the measure of all things, including the terrifying and awesome hidden God who rides on the wings of the storm and calls all things into being by the mere Word of his power—that we poor, pathetic, sinful creatures would be so arrogant as to assume such a thing is surely the greatest and darkest joke of all. Luther knew that the tragedy and the comedy of fallen humanity is that we have such a laughable view of ourselves: one that would aspire to tell God who and what he must be. As humans are at once both righteous and sinful, so human existence is at once both heartbreaking and hilarious. Luther cites Psalm 2:4 on numerous occasions to make precisely this point: the tragedy of humanity is that God laughs at our ridiculous attempts at autonomy.

This is where I leave you with Luther. While the world, even the Christian world, remains populated by the self-important and the self-righteous, the figure of Luther, with his rumbustious theology and his cutting humor, will not cease to be relevant. Many of his writings have a refreshing and appropriately irreverent style to them, tearing down the pompous and the self-assured. They offer a breath of fresh air amid a forced and stale piety. And his emphasis on the objectivity of the action of God in Christ puts all things in perspective and exposes our lives outside of Christ for what they are, acts in a silly farce played out in the shadow of the beckoning grave.

Above all, Luther points us consistently toward God as he really is, the one who does not find but creates that which is lovely to him. The foolish­ness of God truly is greater than our highest wisdom.

Content taken from Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom by Carl R. Trueman, ©2015. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.