Changes

==Trouble Brewing==

Outwardly Luther was building up a successful monastic and academic career but inwardly he was troubled by a conviction of sin that his diligence in monastery life could not relieve. John Staupitz, his vicar-general, proved to be a good counselor at this period. And Luther also read widely in Augustine, Tauler, and the German mystics collected in the volume called German Theology. He also received help from the work of contemporary French theologian Lefèvre d’étaples on the Psalms. His biblical reading, especially in preparation for his classes on the Psalms (1513–1515), Romans (1515–1516), and Galatians (1517) proved to be the decisive factor. It was probably during this period, perhaps in 1514, that he had the famous Tower experience when he came to realize that God’s righteousness in Romans 1 is not the justice that we have to fear but the positive righteousness that God gives believers in Christ—it is a righteousness they receive by personally trusting in Christ.

Luther might easily have held and taught his new understanding of justification without interference or vital reforming impact. His colleagues at Wittenberg both on the theological faculty and in the monastery supported him, and church life went on undisturbed. In 1517, however, Luther was aroused when just across the border from Saxony John Tetzel preached an indulgence in which crude theology was accompanied by the crassest materialism. In protest Luther rapidly drew up ninety-five theses for debate, which he posted on the door of the Castle church on October 31, 1517. When translated and widely circulated, these theses brought an explosion of anti-church feeling that wrecked the indulgence. Given practical application in this way, Luther’s theology could no longer go unnoticed, and he came at once under ecclesiastical pressures ranging from attempts at intimidation to promised favors for compliance.

==The Rift==

Luther refused to be silenced. He won over many Augustinians at the Heidelberg disputation in 1518. He argued, not incorrectly, that he was defying no dogmatic definition of the church. Pressed by Eck at the Leipzig disputation in 1519, he claimed the supremacy of the authority of Scripture over all ecclesiastical authority. Continuing his own preaching and teaching, he defended the theses in his Explanations (1518) and showed how the righteousness of sinners lies in the alien righteousness of Christ in his Two Kinds of Righteousness (1518). When Charles V, the newly elected emperor, stepped up the pressure, Luther responded in 1520 with three powerful works that have come to be called his primary treatises. In the Address to the German Nobility he appealed to the princes to throw off papal oppression. In the Babylonian Captivity he attacked the current sacramental system. In The Freedom of a Christian Man he expounded the complementary theses that the Christian is both a free lord subject to none and also a servant subject to all. The writings of this period also include his Treatise on Good Works, which shows how faith finds expression in works, and his Sermon on the Mass, which teaches the priesthood of all believers.

By the middle of 1520 papal patience was at an end, and a bull was drawn up ordering Luther’s recantation and the burning of his works. Protected by the elector Frederick, Luther denounced the bull, and the theology faculty solemnly burned a copy at a ceremony on December 10, 1520. Early in 1521 a stronger bull of excommunication was prepared that, if carried out, would have deprived Luther of civil rights and protection. Before its execution Charles V agreed to give Luther the chance to recant at the diet to be held at Worms. Here Luther made his resounding confession before the emperor, princes, and other rulers: “My conscience is captive to the Word of God . . . Here I stand, I can do no other.”