Hercules Germanicus

A Review of James Reston, Jr. (2015) Luther's Fortress: Martin Luther and His Reformation Under Siege (Philadelphia: Perseus Books)

© 2015 Edward Moore

Holbein, Hercules Germanicus (Luther represented as rampaging Hercules)

What a fine idea it was to place Luther's ten months spent in what amounted to house arrest at Wartburg Castle under a microscope, as it were. The period is fascinating, and Reston does a fine job of making a ripping good yarn out of it. And I mean this as high praise. The book is a page-turner, and I read it in one sitting. Of course, I am deeply interested in the various transformations of Christian theology as they occurred over the centuries; but one of my deepest interests is the art of translation, and the manner in which translation shapes dogma, and vice-versa. Martin Luther was a man of many talents -- and many masks. I do not mean to imply that he was insincere. But like any survivor -- and he was a master at keeping his head, literally -- his performance under "examination" showed that he knew when to use humility as a powerful shield against the destructive, sub-literate forces arrayed against him. As a writer and translator myself (of Anglo-Saxon poetry, rather different from Luther's translation of what was, in his time, a living and speaking text, to be handled with the greatest care -- poetic license being a big no-no) I can only contemplate with wonder Luther's burdensome task -- understatement is necessary here, as no proper words spring immediately to mind -- of translating the Holy Bible while isolated, in hiding, in a small, opaque-windowed room high above the Thuringian forest, waiting for the announcement -- which could have come at any moment -- that imperial forces were arrayed outside to arrest the "heretic." Yet he prevailed, and even though his translation contains examples of doctrinal, if not poetic, license, it is nevertheless a transformative achievement, rendering an ancient text into a German language which was, at the time, a salmagundi of mutually incomprehensible dialects. "I have so far read no book or letter," says Luther in the preface to his version of the Pentateuch (1523), "in which the German language is properly handled. Nobody seems to care sufficiently for it; and every preacher thinks he has a right to change it at pleasure, and to invent new terms" (quoted in Philipp Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7, ch. 4, § 63 [1888]). This occurs today, not only in contemporary translations done by committees of the various denominations, many of which subtly alter the text to make it say, or at least imply, what they (the guardians of their own doctrine) wish it to say.

The Jehovah's Witness translation, ironically labeled the "New World Translation," adds an indefinite article in John 1:1, producing the translation "... and the word was a god" (my emphasis). The Greek of all versions reads: ... kai Theos ên ho Logos. With the definite article ho we get, "... and God was the Word" (as rendered in the 1996 Apostolic Bible Polyglot, edited by Charles Van der Pool); in contemporary idiomatic English, of course, it is "... and the Word [Logos] was God." Driving home recently with a JW friend, we debated a bit about this irresponsible toying with language (as I saw it, and see it) for the sake of maintaining what is, from a mainstream Christian perspective (and, indeed, from a contemporary scholarly, atheistic perspective -- that of Yours Truly), an heretical theological position. Christ was not -- according to all of the Church Fathers from Justin Martyr, Clement, Origen, and Athanasius, on through the Cappadocians, Augustine, Maximus the Confessor, and Aquinas (to name just some of the big guys) -- "a god," He was / is the God (if one wants to use that unnecessary definite article). That most difficult of Christian theological constructs, the Holy Trinity, is impossible to explain in a half-hour car ride -- indeed, it was impossible to exlain over the course of several centuries of earnest (again, an understatement) theological debate, sometimes at the end of a sword, or a set of hot pincers. Luther himself, however, who was heroically unconcerned with his physical safety, did not require rigorous scholastic debate nor piles of hair-splitting theological tomes to help him craft a translation that spoke to the German people of his age -- a translation which would, through the mediation of Tyndale's English, serve as a foundation for the great King James Version.

Luther went about his work in a spare cell, with no spirit-lifting view of the romantic countryside about the Wartburg. He had no library to consult, as Reston tells us, only the Greek and Hebrew texts he managed to carry with him on his sham abduction. "It would be easy to romanticize the process [of translation]," Reston tells us.

But a more realistic vision involves sweat and frustration, long hours, and a feeling of being overwhelmed. He approached the assignment with awe. Later, he would call it 'a great and worthy undertaking' and say that, given the unsatisfactory Bibles then available to the common person, 'the people require it.' But the language of the Bible dazzled him. He truly believed that he was dealing with the very words of God. (p. 141)

This is all well and good; reverence for a text that one is translating and / or interpreting is, indeed, a prerequisite, I believe, for the task. "A translation is an interpretation. Absolute reproduction is impossible in any work" (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, ibid.). But there is such a thing as "uncanny" interpretation, in which eisegesis -- i.e., reading into the text what one wants to find there -- becomes a temptation too powerful to overcome. Luther's struggles with his sinful nature -- well-attested in Reston's book, though not sensationalized -- especially the carnal aspect, led him to fall in love with the notion of sola fide ("faith alone"), and to translate Romans 3:28 (not 3:23-24 as Reston mistakenly cites on p. 214) as "daß der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werke, allein durch den Glauben," where the original Greek reads: ... pistei dikaiousthai anthrôpon khôris ergôn nomou. The phrase "without the deeds of the law" did not mean, as Catholics argued, good works accomplished in the course of one's life, but rather works pertaining to the Mosaic law, which Jesus fulfilled through the all-encompassing commandment of love. Indeed, the Greek reads quite clearly, khôris ergôn nomou. James 2:24 ("by works a man is justified"), which the Catholics cited to uphold their doctrine of charity and civic responsibility (at least ideally), led Luther to denigrate this letter as an "epistle of straw," but the Catholics, theologically, were in the right. After debating the issue for months, the Roman prelates finally proclaimed that "the believer is justified by the good works he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ" That is, not by circumcision and the observance of Judaic purity laws. "In short," as Reston sums it up, "good works purified and perfected faith, and the combination of the two led to salvation" (p. 215).

Luther himself was aware of this, but he felt the need to push his sola fide (and sola scriptura) doctrine to its logical -- many thought and said illogical -- conclusion. That this conclusion involved the destruction of centuries-old works of art was not Luther's doing. The great reformer called for moderation; indeed, he wanted a painfully slow transition from the old religion to the new Protestant form of worship, so as not to upset those whose faith was rooted in the old visually-oriented style of worship. Those were, of course, the many illiterates, who relied on preaching and especially artworks to help them understand the meaning of scripture. This is why so many drawing by Lucas Cranach were included in the editions of Luther's bible. Some of these were so incendiary -- like the Whore of Babylon wearing a papal tiara and riding, drunken and disorderly, on the back of a dragon -- that they aroused "more passionate umbrage among Catholic commentators than any other part of the translation" (p. 211). These "cartoons," as they were called, were quite effective, and many Catholics crossed sides and became Lutheran. The consequent closing of minds, resulting from the belief that the bible is the only book worth reading, and that no effort to better oneself through education or other liberal and liberating endeavors amounts to a scintilla in the scheme of salvation, did more than the 1527 sack of Rome to put the final nail in the coffin of the Renaissance. Thankfully, England, at that time still a rather isolated little kingdom, was slow in receiving the graces of the Renaissance; while "the Turkish juggernaut stood before the gates of Vienna" (p. 230), Sir Thomas Wyatt, Surrey, and other stars of Tottel's Miscellany were lifting English verse out of the alehouse and into the courtly realm, where it would blossom in the magnificently nimble lines of Sidney, Dyer, Spenser, and later the superlative Shakespeare -- and we must not forget Tyndale, Coverdale, and the grand cadenza of the scriptural concerto, the King James Bible of 1611. My concern of course is with language, my greatest love. And Luther took a rag-tag language and shaped it into a majestic vehicle for some of the most influential words ever written. "Und wenn ich alle meine Habe den Armen gäbe und ließe meinen Leib brennen, und hätte der Liebe nicht, so wäre mir's nichts nütze" (1 Corinthians 13:3). To put his life on the line so that every person should become a priest, and follow his or her own conscience; to preach to the repressed masses that sexual desire is not sinful, but a gift from God; to declare that love of Christ and faith in His all-embracing divine humanity is sufficient for salvation, was indeed to show a powerful love of his own that makes him one of the supreme champions of personalism. However, Reston displays admirable scholarly honesty by not ending his story there, but by telling us just enough about the dark legacy of Luther and Lutheranism to temper our admiration.

Luther was an anti-Semite, there is no way around it. Toward the end of his life he published two pamphlets, "On Jews and Their Lies," and Von Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi ("Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ"). In the former text, Luther wrote:

Here in Wittenberg, in our parish church, there is a sow carved into the stone under which lie young pigs and Jews who are sucking; behind the sow stands a rabbi who is lifting up the right leg of the sow, raises behind the sow, bows down and looks with great effort into the Talmud under the sow, as if he wanted to read and see something most difficult and exceptional; no doubt they gained their Shem Hamphoras from that place ...

Reston does not shy away from discussing, albeit briefly, the use put by the Nazis to Luther's disgusting anti-Jewish onslaughts. This discussion is relegated to an "Author's Note," which is understandable, since the subject of the book is admittedly Luther's time at the Wartburg and the subsequent impact of his return to Wittenberg. As an atheist, I find religious figures interesting only insofar as they contribute something positive to the furtherance of personalism. Luther was rather inconsistent here, as one readily sees in his shameful backing of the nobility during the Peasant's Revolt, for example. Yet such error is mitigated by his devotion to an ideal -- indeed, an ideal that was born of great personal suffering, both physical and existential. He was, in a way, the Hercules of Germany. But he was a suffering and very human Hercules. No son of Zeus was he. His fear that God would abandon him, and his continual struggle against the Devil, made for a life of trials that cannot be compared to the mythical tests of Hercules. The son of Zeus might have placed Cerberus in a headlock, but Luther threw a pot of ink at Satan. That takes balls.

Luther's Fortress is not only a valuable contribution to Luther scholarship, it is an introduction to the way a sincerely religious thinker can become -- as Harold Bloom said of John Milton, William Blake, and Emily Dickinson -- a sect of one. In whatever area of life we find our intellectual and emotional outlet we should remain unique, a great I AM; for the crowd, as Kierkegaard said, is untruth. Luther cared not for the crowd, which is an agglomeration of people; he cared rather for the community of persons which, if each person remains unique and unrepeatable through a vibrant intellectual life of his or her own, each person has the ability to become a member of a society, that is, a commonality that is a conscious sharing of moral and ethical ideals, not a blind devotion to externality, or the bugaboo of authentic existence, as Emerson would say, conformity.

Finally, as a musical enthusiast, I was pleased to encounter, at the end of the book, some words about Luther's musical compisitions. I have always been moved by Bach's arrangements of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and Mendelsohn's Reformation Symphony never fails to raise my mind to lofty things, and even to regret , as did Sartre, my inability to believe in God. I think Luther would applaud my sincerity and, if he had the power, place me in Dante's first circle, where I would be able to spend eternity gabbing with Socrates, Plato, and other great "Christians before Christ."