DR. MARTIN LUTHER

. AND

THE BIBLE - BUBBLE

BY

Rev. Joseph L. O’Brien, S.T.D.

Rector ^

The Bishop England High School

BISHOP ENGLAND HIGH SCHOOL SERIES No. 3

CHARLESTON, S. C.



DeacMM



DR. MARTIN LUTHBR AND THE

BIBLE BUBBLE
** •* I

HE BIBLE,” says a famous Protestant
d'v’ne, “is the Protestant religion”

“The Bible is the Word of God—the
sole rule of faith. We have the Word

of God; what more need we?” In some such words

the Bible refrain runs through the writings of

orthodox Protestant writers ever since the days of

Dr. Luther. These orthodox Protestant writers

frankly defend their system in their protestation

against the “errors of the Roman Catholic Church”

and proclaim emphatically the Holy Scripture as

their only rule of faith and practice. To them,

“the Holy Scriptures of the old and new Testament

are the Word of God and the only certain rule of

faith and obed
:

ence.” For them “Holy Scripture

containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that

whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved

thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it

should be believed as an article of faith, or be

thought requ
:

site or necessary to salvation.” Thus

declare their catechisms and works of discipline.

From such professions and statements it is evident

that one is taught to walk the road of salvation with

the B’ble as his infallible guide ; that in reading Holy

Writ, in explaining it, in formulating one’s life



2 Dr. Martin Luther and

upon its instructions, the Protestant is to be guided

solely by his own private judgment and his own

laws of interpretation
;

that he is authorized to

follow his own individual opinion even though in

that opinion he should stand alone.

This principle of Scripture interpretation is the

great foundation principle of Dr. Martin Luther.

From the days of the break in Church unity,

brought about by Luther’s revolt in the 16th

century, that principle has been the corner stone of

Protestant independence. And yet at the same time

it was the root of the progressive disintegration in-

herent in Protestantism. Luther himself had

struggled in vain to hold back within his ranks the

rising tide of dissension which he clearly discerned.

He gave “the Bible to the people.” He

dethroned the Pope. He made the Bible the

universal authority of the Christian world. He

substituted the mute page of a book for the living

voice of a constituted tribunal. He sowed the wind

of dissension. In his footsteps, his followers have

reaped the whirlwind of confusion.

It was all very well for Luther to proclaim that

the Bible was to be interpreted according to its

simplest meaning. But who was to point out just

what the simplest meaning was, he never determin-

ed; nor has it ever been determined by Protestant

commentators who in ever growing numbers refused

to
1

take Luther's explanation as either simple or



3The Bible Bubble

infallible. Progressive disintegration has been the

most outstanding mark of historic Protestantism.

This mark has been exemplified nowhere more

emphatically than in Germany, the land of Luther,

and there at the present time the principles of' his

revolt are being carried to their bitter end by the

leaders of the pagan revival. All the leaders of

Protestantism, in the wake of Luther, started from

the Bible. Each was able to deduce from what he

found there'n something adapted to his system.

Lutheranism Method* sm.' Episcopalianism. Presby-

terianism, and all the other isms, formal and in-

formal. that have sprung up. all were justified by

Holy Writ. Evidently the simplest meaning of the

Sacred Text was not so simple to discover. There

must be something radically different in each system

claiming to have discovered that simplest meaning,

else why all the multiplication of sects resulting

from Luther’s principle? Why all the pride and
prejudice, the labor and expense, to propagate minor

differences, if the fundamental difference between

the sects is slight? Luther’s principle of religion

failed from the very beginning. Surely we can’t

picture an all-wise, an all-loving, and an eternal

Father revealing His law to confuse His children.

Yet out of His blessed revelation we have to-day

all about us a Babel of doctrines which confuses

poor man and amuses the powers of darkness.

A century after the death of Luther, a contem-



4; Dr. Martin Luther and

porary writer listed one hundred and eighty Protes-

tant sects. How many could be enumerated to-day
is a matter of conjecture. Sects, to-day and yester-

day, are like so many particles in a storm of meteors

;

each burns brightly for a while and then dies out

into the all-embracing darkness. Though many of

these sects to-day are numerically small and of

passing importance, all taken together are the

source of turmoil and confusion in Christian

thought. Each contributes its share to the pro-

gressive disintegration of Protestantism which has

ever been the Nemesis of Luther’s principle.

Among the Protestant sects, Lutheranism oc-

cupies, so one would judge, the seat of the mighty.

The Lutherans glory in the name of their founder.

They read his Bible. They learn his catechism.

They sing his hymns. They profess his doctrines.

They magnify his life and works. He did give

them something to which they have clung and which

the orthodox proclaim without subterfuge. Next

to Jesus Christ, they acknowledge him as the father

of all they hold worth while in their religious life.

With Luther they stand or fall.

But to-day Luther is a legend more than an

historic figure. Even in his lifetime the legend was

well under way. Before his death he had become

a myth unto himself. With the passing years, the

legend grew and the myth took on more vivid hues.

For four centuries, Luther has been covered with



. The Bible Bubble 5

such an aura of virtue and learning, of majesty and

might, that his followers in Germany and their co-

religionists in other lands have come to believe that

he stands first in the German Hall of Immortals,

—

the precious gift of God to the- nation. The

German mind has been fed and nourished, not on

the real Luther, but on a Luther glossed, over,

varnished, toned down, and sanctified — a Luther
which even Luther himself would have much ado

to recognize. But the legend is now reaching the

twilight zone. The myth has been catalogued and

labeled. Under the cold analysis
, of the historical

school of criticism, Luther’s historical status has

been properly determined, and. in the light of

scriptural research his vaunted prowess as a Biblical

scholar has been blasted.
_
And strange to say, this

debunking of Luther has been carried on not by

Catholic scholars, but by Non-Catholic German

scholars, and by the Doctors of Divinity and the

Doctors of Philosophy from other, lands who studied

the method in the German universities — Protest-
tants, many of them, in name, and most of them of

Protestant forebears. Catholic scholars, long, ago

evaluated Luther as a theologian and a -religious

leader at his face value. But by a strange trick of

fate, scholars of the German tradition have now

etched a clear cut picture of the “man of flesh and

blood, the man of moods and impulses, of angulari-

ties and idiosyncracies which dominated his career.”



6 Dr. Martin Luther and

He stands exposed by the scholars of critical

research as a destructive genius of mighty force.

That he was a tireless worker, a forceful writer, a

powerful preacher, a master of the German language

of his day, they do not deny. That he possessed a

keen knowledge of human nature and grasped every

opportunity to entrench himself by any means at

hand, all grant. That he was the victim of a

nature at once despotic and uncontrolled, they clearly

show. But at the same time they have pointed out

that the rights Luther assumed to himself in the

matter of liberty of conscience, he imperiously

denied to all who differed from him. His will, and

his alone, he dogmatically set up as the only standard

he wished to be recognized, followed, and obeyed,

despite his “open Bible”. Historical investigation

and impartial criticism have unearthed and exposed

the shortcomings and weaknesses in the character

of a man who set himself up as the prophet of

Protestantism. There was something titanic about

him — and diabolical.
Luther has shrunk in size according to the

exhaustive studies of historical investigators. His

merits have shriveled up. Protestants believed that

they owed to him a spirit of toleration and liberty

of conscience. Not the least! They recognized in

his translation of the Bible a masterpiece stamped

with the impress of originality. They may be happy

now if it is not plainly called a plagiarism. They



7Thb Bible; Bubble;

venerated him as the father of the popular school

system. A plainly fictitious greatness which they
have no right to claim for him. And these conclu-

sions have been handed down by Protestant scholars.

Reliable historians give book and page for them.

And what is more amazing, those Protestant histor-

ians continue to speak of Luther in tones of

admiration in spite of the admissions which a ‘dove

of truth” compels them to make. Looking upon the

results thus gathered together one is forced to ask :

What, then, remains of Luther?

Such is the tone of a lament gleaned from a

Protestant writer in a Protestant Review. True

indeed is it that historical research has plucked jewel

after jewel from Luther’s crown and has made the

praises chanted to him by ranters of all times sound

hollow in honest ears attuned to truth. The echo

of the chants may deceive the illiterate, the pre-

judiced, the emotional. But the inquirer who goes

to the source, who reads what Luther has to say

of and for himself, smiles a wistful smile of sadness

when the myth fades out in the light of unquestion-

able facts.

Any student of Luther’s life knows that he never

did find peace for his “tortured soul”, either’ in the

Word of God or out of it. To the end of his life
i •• . — - j

he was a “tortured soul” hounded by the spectres

of disillusionment. To his last days he was a

“tortured soul” belching forth vituperation in a



8' Dr. Martin Luther and

torrential deluge for which “no pen much less a

printing press should ever have been found”.

Foul-mouthed and scurrilous at the begining of his

career, foul mouthed and scurrilous he was to the

end. In one of his last works, in order to ease his

“tortured soul” were printed the “coarsest drawings

that the history of caricature has ever produced”.

So inexpressibly vile were they that a common

impulse of decency demanded their summary sup-

pression by his friends. “How can you speak good

things, whereas you are evil? For out of the

abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh,” is

the text of Holy Writ to which this man of “tor-

tured soul” never gave much thought.

“Luther was not an ideal sponsor of a new

religion; he was a master, of billingsgate and the

least saintly of men. At times in reading Luther,

one is drawn to say to him what Herrick, the

English poet, so frankly says of himself

:

‘Luther, thou art too coarse to love!’

“Had Luther been a brave soldier of fortune, his

coarseness might have passed for a sign of the

times; but one likes leaders of religion to be

religious
;
and it is hard to reconcile coarseness and

self-will, two leading notes of Luther's character,

with even rudimentary religion. To want to be your

own Pope is the sign of the heresiarch, not of the

Christian.” And so it is that with the passing of



The; Bible; Bubble 9

the years, grinding slowly but surely the rocks of

error, Luther's ultimate place will be with the great

heresiarchs — not with the saints and scholars of
Christian history.

Luther brought to light the Word of God, that is,

the sacred Scriptures, so the myth says. Luther

brought forth not the Word of God but the word of

Luther. So historical research says. Luther had

convinced himself that he was an inspired teacher —
the prophet of a new day — that his word was law.
Of himself he says:

“I have not received my gospel from men, but

from heaven through Jesus Christ, so that I desire

henceforth to be called an Evangelist .... Whoever

teaches differently from what I have taught or who

soever condemns, he condemns God and must

remain a child of hell I will not have my

doctrine judged by anyone, not even by angels . ..

so that he who refuses my doctrine may not be

saved ..... I have set men's consciences at rest

concerning penance, baptism, prayer, crosses, life,

death, and the sacrament of the altar, and so order-

ed the question of marriage, of secular authority . . .

that all know how to live and how to serve God

according to one's state I have floored and

overcome all my foes on the sure ground work of

Holy Scripture ... By His Grace, God has revealed

this doctrine to me I have it by revelation,

that I will not deny . . . By God’s revelation I am



10 Dr. Martin Luther and

called to be, a sort of antipope .... The Holy Ghost

bestowed it on me .... I received the evangel, not

from man, but from heaven ... I have divine

majesty on my side; therefore I care not in the least

though a thousand Augustines and a thousand

Harry-Churches (Henry VIII still Catholic) should

be against me.”

Yet with all this divine help on his side, with all

this spirit of infallibility to serve him, with all his

acquired inspiration, the best he could do was to

produce a translation of Holy Writ which is “one

of the most inaccurate” ever printed, with “three

thousand passages which call for revision”.

Scarcely any of the followers of Luther who have

written on Luther's method of translating the Holy

Bible have gone beyond mere generalities. They

are satisfied with dishing up again and again, more

or less skillfully, Luther's principles. And his

principles brought about the many thousand variant

readings which we meet with to-day in the German

Bible and in Bindseil’s critical edition. Luther,

under the delusion of his divine mission, wilfully

deviates from the text of Sacred Scripture, and, out

of respect for his authority and infallibility, his

false renderings have been retained in the Lutheran

Bible even to the present day.

German Biblical scholars, in the wake of Luther's

principles, have left nothing of the Sacred Scripture

but a lifeless skeleton. Baur and Strauss, Paulus,



Ths Bible; Bubble; 11

Bretschneider, Weiss, and Holtzman, and a host

of learned scholars, who knew Luther's language,

who loved Luther's Germany, and who were

devotees of German Kultur have carried Luther's

first principles of Biblical translation and Biblical

interpretation to their logical conclusions — the
destruction of the Bible as an inspired book. In

their ripened scholarship they were bound by no

law but their own fancies, some more, some less

extravagant, but the general tone and tendency of

their teachings is as follows

:

That in the New Testament we shall find only

the opinions of Christ and the apostles adapted to

the age in which they lived, and not eternal truths

;

that Christ himself had neither the design nor the

power of teaching any system that was to endure;

that when He taught any enduring truth, as oc-

casionally He did, it was without being aware of

its nature
;
that the apostles understood even less of

real religion; that the whole doctrine both of Christ

and the apostles, as it was directed to the Jews alone,

so it was gathered from no other source than Jewish

philosophy
;

that Christ Himself erred and the

apostles spread His errors and consequently not one

of His doctrines is to be received with authority
;

that, without regard to the authority of the books

of Holy Scripture and their asserted divine origin,

each doctrine is to be examined according to the



12 - Dr. Martin Luther and

principles of right reason before it is allowed to

be Divine.

Such is the result of the higher criticism. To

Luther, the inspired Word of God was inspired only

insofar as Luther was able to square it with his

distorted ideas.. My word is the Word of Christ;
my mouth is the mouth of Christ, was his conviction.

Zwingli, Calvin, Beza, and a host of others took

to themselves the principles of Luther and each

claimed for himself the same power and authority

as Luther. Each became an infallible mouthpiece

of the Sacred Scriptures.

And so even in the early days of the revolt "so

great were the corruptions, falsifications, and scan-

dalous contentions, which like a fearful deluge

overspread Europe and afflicted, disturbed, misled,

and perplexed poor, simple, common men not

deeply read in Scriptures, that one was completely

bewildered as to what side was right and to which

side he should give his adhesion.” ...
Let us, then, look on the Luther that is held up to

our contemplation by those who cherish the Luther

legend and hallow the Luther myth. Let us for the

time forget his egotism. Let us overlook his

vulgarity, his obscenity, his billingsgate. Let us set

aside for the time being, his intolerance, his supersti-

tion, his heterodoxy. Let us leave for future

consideration his irascibility, his mendacity, and his

contentiousness. But let us keep in mind his



The: Bible; Bubble; 13

canoirzation as a scriptural scholar. Genius he

had. The genius of turning Holy Writ into a pan

of soap suds into wh :ch he dipped his bubble pipe.

He blew forth shining bubbles, sparkling and

ir’descent for the moment. They quickly burst and

he was forced again and again and ever again to

blow bubbles of a d
!

fferent hue. Others dipped their

p^pes into his pan. They, too, before awestricken

followers, blew bubbles beautiful but evanescent.

And into the pan of private interpretation, bubble

blowers are still dipping their pipes, and the bubbles

come forth, shimmering, to burst and vanish into

the void of measureless space. Christ did not build

His Church upon a bubble pan. He built it on &

Rock.

Martin Luther is the outstanding example in

modern European history of the slave-mind at its

worst. The slave mind is characterized by supersti-

tion, intolerance, egotism, vacillation, vituperation,

bombast, and morbidity. Of such a mind is Luther,

the name the Luther myth would breathe with

Augustine and Chrysostom, Jerome and Basil,

Gregory and Aquinas, Newman and Von Kettler —
men who at the altar of Jesus Christ learned the

religion of Jesus Christ — a religion in which
patience and humility, urbanity and gentility,

charity and peace, sanctity and scholarship are rank-

ed as virtues.
r

:



14 Dr. Martin Luther and

But, one objects, look at Luther’s success. Yes,

look at his success. And look at the success of Arius

and Nestorious and Donatus and Mrs. Eddy and

Mohammed. They also succeeded in wresting Holy

Scripture to their own ends, and ensnared their

followers in their delusions. Look at Calvin, and

Melanchthon, and Zwingli, and Rutherford. They

all have succeeded in a way. All blew Bible-bubbles

and lured a following in their train. “The children

of th
;

s world are wiser in their generation than the

chddren of light”. And finally look at modern

Protestantism. What is left of the old school?

Where are the creeds of yester-year? They have

been revised, revamped, and re-edited. Protestant

scholars in increasing numbers, in Germany, in

Great Britain, and in the United States, this century

back have been adjusting year by year the Protes-

tant religion to “progressive thought” and poison-

ing the wells of Sacred Scripture by destructive

criticism. They have substituted the service of man

for the worship of God. They have sacrificed the

gift of faith for the practice of good works. In

emphasizing the ‘here’, they have lost sight of the

‘hereafter’. And they labeled the result religion.

Many of these scholars were churchmen
;
same were

in positions of importance. At the turn of the cen-

tury attempts were made to stay their ravages; but

to no avail. To-day higher criticism of the Bible

and the evolutionary school of religious history have



15The: Bible: Bubble:

found their places in the curricula of institutions of

higher learning, even within the Protestant fold.

Many pastors in the more influential urban churches

are well versed in, and open advocates of a modern-

ism and rationalism which have reduced almighty

God to a minimum, stripped Jesus Christ of divinity,

robbed the Church of authority, and Holy Writ

of reliabflity. And on all sides, the sum total of

this destructive system of rationalistic-modernism

is today evident. It is evident in the indifference

to religious truth, in the vagueness of religious

teaching, and the negation of eternal values which

are characteristic of present day thought among

the wise men of our generation who sit in the

chairs of learning. It is evident in the youth who,

sit at the feet of these wise men and drink in some-

thing about everything except the one thing worth

while.

Luther’s greatest contribution to the modern

world, we used to be told, was the mighty spirit

of German Kultur. Luther’s greatest crime, now

we are taught, was the destruction of European

unity. The armistice of not so many years ago

buried the German Kultur of the golden age of the

'me and God’ ideal under a blood-soaked soil. The

story of the evolution of German thought from

Luther through Kulture to Bismark to Kaiser to

war-madness to Hitler to the return of the Nordic

heathen gods is now written in large letters across



16 Dr. Martin Luther and

the pages of German history. He who runs may

read. Luther, for the past four hundred years, has

been Germany’s super- man. And now, the Protes-

tantism born of Luther, has at long last entered

upon its final stage of progressive disintegration

not only in Germany but in all the lands of the

Protestant tradit ;on. In acadenrc circles it is only

a pale spectre of its former self. It lies shattered

as a cultural force. Twilight gently shrouds it in

her falling shadows.

Luther taught Irs followers and imitators how

to blow Bible bubbles. Some were sincere, some

deluded; some learned, some ignorant; some rich,

some poor; some powerful, and some weak; but all

were in error, vainly seeking Truth in vanishing

spectres.

Fifteen hundred years ago, Saint Augustine gave

an answer to the B‘ble-bubble-blowers of all ages.

Without qualification, he declared; “I would not

bekeve the gospel unless moved thereto by the

authority of the Catholic Church.”

And that answer holds good today. Where the

Rock is, there is the Church.



'

.*T;