Can We Trust Luther?

Summary

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Thinking Fellows – "Can We Trust Luther?"

Episode Date: July 17, 2026
Hosts: Gale Keith, Adam Francisco, Bruce Hillman (Scott Keith absent)
Duration (Summary coverage): ~01:06–45:52

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Overview

This episode of Thinking Fellows dives into whether Martin Luther is a trustworthy source for Christian theology, especially given recurring Catholic online criticisms and psychoanalytic attacks on his character and motivations. The hosts challenge the idea that Luther’s moral or psychological state discredits his theological work or the Reformation itself. They consider psychoanalytic approaches, historical context, and the broader implications of critiquing theologians based on personal biography versus their doctrinal output.

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Key Points and Insights

1. The Question of Luther’s Trustworthiness

[01:29–04:01]

• Introduction of the topic: Can Luther be "trusted," especially in light of Catholic polemics that focus on his mental state and personal motivations for the Reformation.
• Adam Francisco: Emphasizes Luther is not to be viewed as a "14th apostle" or a prophet on the level of Muhammad; Luther’s trustworthiness is not rooted in his person but in the alignment of his teachings with Scripture.

"He's trustworthy insofar as...what he teaches accords with Scripture, you know, and it just so happens that he let scripture do the talking when it came to ordering his theology."
— Adam Francisco [04:01]

2. Luther’s Personality, Hyperbole, and Occasional Outbursts

[04:01–09:34]

• Because he was prolific, Luther can be made "into whatever you want."
• Highlights danger of pulling Luther’s quotes out of context—sometimes he uses hyperbole, especially in polemical or emotional situations.
• Cites an instance where Luther, in a period of anxiety, said "Muhammad almost becomes my prophet," demonstrating hyperbole rather than genuine conversion.

"He certainly was brash. He certainly was hyperbolic. He was not well, physically. And that always affects a person's temperament. That is to say, he was a human."
— Adam Francisco [08:45]

3. Catholic Polemics and Psychoanalytic Approaches

[09:34–15:09]

• Gale Keith: References Erik Erikson’s famous psychoanalytic work Young Man Luther and its lasting influence, especially outside Lutheran scholarship.
• Points out that historical psychoanalysis is a weak tool, and sets up the inconsistency of using moral or emotional instability as a basis to invalidate someone’s theology—highlighting numerous "problematic" popes and settled Catholic doctrine that separates personal morality from sacramental efficacy.

"If that was the case, you know, the Roman Catholic Church is in bigger trouble than Lutheranism because...the Papists have many...problematic historic figures who had authoritative teaching roles in the church."
— Gale Keith [12:31]

4. The "Luther Needed the Reformation" Argument

[15:09–19:23]

• Bruce Hillman: Even if Luther needed the Reformation for psychological reasons, that does not invalidate its claims; motivations alone don’t determine truth.
• Discusses the limits of psychological reconstruction from history—any real psychological profile would require direct interaction.
• Shares a personal academic lesson about assuming motives in historical figures.

"If you're strictly going by, say, the rubrics of logic, it doesn't invalidate it if his motivation is different than what some people wish it would be...The Reformation should really be judged on the merits of what it claims."
— Bruce Hillman [15:13]

5. How Much Do We Really Know About Luther?

[19:46–22:53]

• The hosts discuss the unprecedented amount of detail available on Luther, which invites psychoanalytic and narrative-based biographies.
• Cites differing biographical accounts: Kittleson (practical), Brecht (exhaustive), Hendrix, and Roper (psychological/polemical angle).

"Given enough writing and enough space, you can construct what you need to out of a person's works."
— Gale Keith [23:49]

6. The Limits—and Uses—of Psychoanalysis

[22:53–27:38]

• Recognizes why people seek psychological explanations: it's interesting, and plausible given Luther’s openness in his writings.
• Differentiates between describing someone’s behavior/emotions (legitimate historical work) and diagnosing motives or mental health (problematic).
• Emotional records can enrich the narrative of history, but do not alter its substance.

"These emotional outbursts...help with a more engaging retelling of history...it is very interesting and does give you a better retelling of the events of Augsburg if you’re going to teach it, for instance."
— Gale Keith [25:26]

7. The Danger of Ad Hominem Attacks

[27:38–28:49]

• Using psychological or biographical arguments as polemical weapons is not legitimate scholarly practice.
• Polemics often devolve into "playing hard and loose with the facts."

"The use of biography for an ad hominem type of attack—that’s where things get, I guess, inappropriate."
— Sam Schuldeis [27:38]

8. Is Luther a Reliable Guide? The Two Sides of His Personality

[30:24–34:01]

• Bruce Hillman explores the duality of Luther: extraordinarily pastoral and patient when teaching, but "nasty, insecure" when engaged polemically.
• Cautions that trustworthiness depends partly on temperament; Luther’s polemical side can be off-putting but does not negate his overall reliability when it comes to careful, exegetical work.

"If you only were to read his angry stuff, you wouldn’t come away with a nice guy...it almost feels like two different Luthers sometimes."
— Bruce Hillman [33:26]

9. Historical Context and Perceptions of Trustworthiness

[34:01–39:59]

• People around Luther did trust him, and it’s not credible to claim widespread delusion among peers/intimates.
• Makes a distinction between cult leadership and charismatic theological leadership; highlights Luther's discomfort with movements or labels centering on himself.
• The tumultuous nature of Luther’s era (plague, death, upheavals) explains some of the psychological stress present in his letters and writings.

"It doesn’t change the content (of Augsburg) but it’s very interesting...adds some flavor to the story of the Augsburg Confession."
— Gale Keith [25:51]

10. Luther’s Trustworthiness: Interpretation Above All

[40:17–45:45]

• Trust in Luther should be based on the quality of his biblical interpretation, not his personal following or moral perfection.
• Emphasizes reading Luther alongside Scripture, assessing theological claims on their merits.
• Discusses his reliance on patristic sources and the division of law and gospel as a sign of theological integrity.

"What makes Luther trustworthy is essentially that he’s a good interpreter, right? Because that’s where the trust in Luther needs to be."
— Bruce Hillman [40:18]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Scriptural Alignment:
  "He let scripture do the talking when it came to ordering his theology." — Adam Francisco [04:13]

• On Psychoanalysis:
  "Historical psychoanalysis is one of the worst kind of fake academic practices one could possibly engage in." — Gale Keith [11:48]

• On the Inconsistency of Character Attacks:
  "The Roman Catholic Church is in bigger trouble than Lutheranism because...the Papists have many, many dozens and dozens and dozens of troubled, problematic historic figures who had authoritative teaching roles in the church." — Gale Keith [12:31]

• On Luther’s Temperament:
  "He was not well, physically. And that always affects a person's temperament. That is to say, he was a human." — Adam Francisco [08:45]

• On Luther’s Letters and Humanity:
  "He chastises Melanchthon for his fear...and Luther also reveals...he’s going crazy in Coburg...that adds some flavor to the story of the Augsburg Confession." — Gale Keith [25:40]

• On Ad Hominem Use of Biography:
  "The use of biography for an ad hominem type of attack—that’s where things get, I guess, inappropriate." — Sam Schuldeis [27:38]

• On the Core of Trustworthiness:
  "What makes Luther trustworthy is essentially that he’s a good interpreter, right? Because that’s where the trust in Luther needs to be." — Bruce Hillman [40:17]

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Important Timestamps by Topic

• 01:29: Framing the episode: can we trust Luther—does character or psychology matter for theology?
• 04:01: Adam Francisco on Luther’s context-driven hyperbole and theological approach
• 09:34: History of Catholic psychoanalytic attacks on Luther (Erikson et al.)
• 12:31: Refuting “immoral leader invalidates movement” argument
• 15:13: Bruce Hillman on whether Luther needing the Reformation emotionally matters
• 20:09: Sheer amount of data on Luther invites psychoanalysis and polemics
• 25:26: Using Luther’s letters to enrich but not determine historical/theological judgments
• 30:24: Bruce on Luther’s dual personality: pastoral vs. polemical
• 40:17: Scriptural interpretation as the real test of any theologian’s trustworthiness

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Conclusion

The hosts agree: while Martin Luther’s personality was complex and sometimes volatile, none of this undermines his theological contributions when they are clearly rooted in Scripture and Christian tradition. They caution against both lionizing and demonizing historical figures based on character or supposed psychological motivation. Instead, readers should examine Luther’s (and any theologian’s) interpretations and teachings “with Bible in hand,” testing claims against the broader Christian tradition and scripture itself.

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Final Takeaway:
It’s legitimate—and often enriching—to explore the humanity and emotional states of historical figures like Luther. But attempts to dismiss or discredit theological reform on the basis of personality or armchair psychologizing are poor scholarship. Trust, in this context, is ultimately about doctrinal soundness, not biographical perfection.

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Transcript

[Sam Schuldeis]

What would happen if Aslan came bounding out of Narnia and began teaching your

[Bruce Hillman]

confirmation class or Bible study? What if Martin Luther could have traveled from Wittenberg through the wardrobe, all while

[Gale Keith]

writing the Small Catechism? Hi, this is Pastor Sam Schuldeis, author of the latest book from 1517, Luther

[Sam Schuldeis]

and the A Narnian Catechism. This book weaves together the imagination of C.S. lewis's the lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe, and the instruction of Martin Luther's Small Catechism. Two great authors, two classic books, one epic true story of good news for you in Jesus, the true untamed lion of Judah who is full of grace and goodness. You can order your copy today at 1517.org shop.

[Gale Keith]

Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows Podcast, part of the 15:17 podcast network. My name is Gale Keith and today I am joined by Adam Francisco and Bruce Hillman. My dad is still traveling or away from his desk or I think this time he lost his computer. I'm not permanently lost it, but his, his travels.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Have he failed to bring it with him unavailable.

[Gale Keith]

Yeah, but today we're going to podcast anyways. We're going to do it without him and we're going to talk about Luther, which we haven't specifically in a little bit. And I wanted to talk about this, the way I wanted to phrase this is can you trust Martin Luther now? I mean, I think good Lutherans know that he's not our Pope or, you know, the 14th apostle or something like this. And so it's a little bit of a facetious question in the ways that you need to trust him. But kind of what I'm thinking, thinking about is the increasing Catholic polemics against Protestants online, which are going back to sort of old, let's call it research. You can put air quotes around that depending on how far this goes about Luther and his mental state during the Reformation, his changing psychology and his true motivations for reforming, maybe his moral character. And that tells you basically everything you need to know about Lutheranism and the source of the Lutheran Reformation. Maybe those people would even acknowledge. Well, of course, Lutheranism isn't just the works of Luther, but the motivation to leave the church or to reform are so caught up in this problematic person and desires that you can't trust Luther and certainly you can't trust the Lutheran Reformation or any other Reformations that follow. So I wanted to have you guys talk about this. I'm really kind of curious about Adam here because Adam, I don't know your PhD is on Luther and Islam. But I mean, certainly you've had to deal with Luther and his writings. And I would guess Luther's sort of emotional outbursts about the state of things as well within those writings. I would guess he wasn't the most calm and collected person, always talking about the Turk or what's going on at home or things like that. And, and the question is, does Luther's personality, the style or the change that can be perceived in his writings, to what degree is that true? How is this, maybe for the audience we'll get to how this was popularized or used and then talk about what does that mean for Lutheranism today and sort of this anti Protestant or specifically sometimes anti Lutheran apologetic that Roman Catholics sometimes engage in.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Well, you know, I will say that because Luther wrote so much and he was very transparent, it's really easy to make Luther into whatever you want to make him, you know, Lutheran, Catholic polemics or apologetics or whatever you want to call it. But it's really rich when a tradition that has somebody like St. Francis who used to talk to birds and claimed he could communicate with them to call Luther crazy or something like, you know, so this is one of the sort of perennial things with, in Luther's studies is you gotta be really careful because Luther does have outbursts or uses hyperbole or, you know, the context. Because of the context, you gotta be careful with how you interpret him. So I will say, like I like how you put it. Well, I can't remember exactly how you put it, but Luther was not a sort of second Muhammad or something like that. You know, like he's not a prophet in the sense that Muslims regard Muhammad as a prophet. He's not another pope. He's trustworthy insofar as, like when it comes to theology, insofar as, and I'm not using that phrase to get at any sort of confessional thing here, but insofar as what he teaches accords with Scripture, you know, and it just so happens that he let scripture do the talking when it came to ordering his theology. Most the time. By most the time, I mean, there are places on the fringes of Christian theology when he's dealing with things where he, you know, he's, he's not off his rocker. But. And you can totally understand why he says or writes what he does. But I think of, I mean, you mentioned my dissertation, which everybody should not buy because it's $235, but the Turk at the door, which comes out any day now, they ought to buy for $12.99 or whatever. But anyway, I digress. For example, when Luther is interpreting Daniel chapter seven and that beast with the ten horns and then one pops up and displaces three for him, he really did believe that was the Ottoman Empire. Turns out is wrong. So there are things where, you know, like these peripheral issues that are context driven, where you got to, you know, take them with a grain of salt. But when he's dealing with like traditional Christian theology and it's done from the biblical text, he's a really great guide as long as you keep open the possibility, as he was always open to, that he was wrong. Like in the, if you read any good Luther biography, I think like Heiko Obermans is really good in this, in that Luther's always asking himself the question, am I alone wise? You know, like, am I. Why am I the only one who's seeing this right now? You know, and as it turned out, when he did his studies in church history, not formally, but as he's being inquisited by Rome, he goes and looks in church history to see if like what he's doing is like radically innovative or new, and finds that actually he's within the, the big tent of traditional Nicene Christianity. Right. So yeah, I mean, I could say a lot more, but if the question is can I trust Luther. Yeah, but you know, he is a, he's an interpreter of the text and when he's great, he is outstanding and very, very clear because the scriptures are clear and, or perspicuous. But when he's driven by the context, he can get a little wild. You know, there's one time this is, I mean, I'm just going to throw this out there, like 1526. So this is well into the Reformation. Well, you know, it's what, a half a decade in a little more. And Luther writes a little reflection on the Psalms. I forget which psalms in particular in 1526, just after the Ottomans had, had conquered Buddha and Pest and King Louis II of Hungary dies in that. And Luther is reflecting on an fektung and anxiety, especially in thinking about whether he was able to fulfill the law and so on. And he says something like, you know, it's in those moments, and this is a direct quote from here on out where Muhammad almost becomes my prophet. Right. So he can say weird things like that. And does that mean then you should sort of deduce that Luther was on the verge of becoming a Muslim? Well, if you, if you just chill out a bit, breathe in your nose and out your mouth, you know, you realize That's. That's just Luther using hyperbole. Was he. I'm monologuing. I apologize. But was he kooky, crazy, mentally ill, something like that? I mean, it's always dangerous to psychoanalyze anybody, historically, maybe even presently. I don't know. Yeah, he certainly was unique. He certainly was brash. He certainly was hyperbolic. He was not well, physically. And that always affects a person's temperament. That is to say, he was a human. So you just got to do your homework. When you're reading him, when you come across something that seems outlandish or unique or something, and he's the occasional theologian they like to say, that is, you have to read him in light of the occasion that he's addressing to really get him. So I don't know. That's probably too much. But does that kind of answer what you're. Did I tickle your ears there, Caleb? Say what you want me to say?

[Gale Keith]

Yeah, you said everything. You read the script perfectly, Adam.

[Bruce Hillman]

Perfect.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Thank you.

[Gale Keith]

Yeah, that was good. Yeah. I think this is. It's kind of an interesting. Especially this has been a habit of certain types of Roman Catholic polemics since the early 20th century, following Eric Erickson and various Catholic scholars jumped on this train. Erik Erikson has had a work, Young Man Luther, which talked about the anxiety, fear, anger, and then development of Luther throughout his life, and kind of tries to point out an arc of, like, anxiety and desperation at the early events of his life, a bit of a stabilization of Luther as the Reformation goes on, and then in his death, the return of these emotions. And it's a famous work of psychoanalysis and has tinged basically, like all Luther scholarship outside of what we would call, you know, the Lutheran theological space. And people kind of doing serious work there, certainly not only Lutherans. There are people who have, you know, managed to read the Luther outside of this psychoanalysis. I think maybe one of the strongest cases would be somebody that people are familiar with, like Alistair McGrath, for instance, who doesn't, you know, purely interpret Luther through this psychoanalysis thing. But certainly a lot of people have. And various types of Roman Catholic polemics have popped up since, like, the early, you know, like 1910s and continue to kind of resurge today as well. And one of the first interesting points about that is, you know, the Roman Catholics should be careful about, you know, getting rid of somebody's authority or position to speak on scripture based on their behavior or mental state. Given funny examples like you gave Adam. But we could say more serious examples, like the serious moral failings of various popes which are very public or actual theological controversy which is settled in Roman Catholic dogma, such as the Donatist controversy, where the, you know, the, the personal morality or maybe even future faithlessness of a priest does not determine the efficacy of your reception of the sacraments by that priest. So if you were baptized by a priest who then 20 years later rejects the faith for some reason or is defrocked for some extreme moral failing, your baptism isn't invalid. None of the preaching or absolution you received would have been invalidated as well. So this is settled Catholic doctrine. And so you could say the same thing is true of Luther then, which is maybe he isn't the most psychologically stable. Now I think that historical psychoanalysis is one of the worst kind of fake academic practices one could possibly engage in. But outside of like basic things like dispersion, person expressed their angry or expressed their anxious or expressed something, you know, in the historic writing itself. But it's not good grounds for invalidating what they say about the Bible as being true or how they interpret or apply the teachings of the Church from immediately being false. And if that was the case, you know, the Roman Catholic Church is in bigger trouble than Lutheranism because is our greatest troubled figure just, just Luther that seemed, who they seemed to bring up the Roman faith. The Papists have many, many, many dozens and dozens and dozens of troubled, problematic historic figures who had authoritative teaching roles in the church, including you know, an extreme handful of popes. So I would be careful with this if I were a Papist.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Yeah, one only needs a kind of look at some of the so called Renaissance popes, you know, Julius II or Leo the 10th and you know, see what their, what Was is Leo 10th? I think it's Leo X. He's like, that's Luther's Pope, right? Or not. You know, that's the guy who is Pope over at the time that Luther's inquisited from 1517 to 1521. And he famously said, or at least it's reported that he said that you know, let us enjoy the papacy, you know, and he did enjoy it in terms of just lavish parties and so on, but also in a very, you know, sensual way as well. Julius II before him I think was even more of a deviant. So and you just like you can take little snippets of the history of the papacy and you see that there's some pretty gnarly miscreants there because the Pope too is a person like Luther.

[Gale Keith]

One of the things you hear kind of after the Erikson young man Luther thesis is that Luther needed the Reformation sort of as a salve to these problems. I don't know, Bruce, you haven't said much yet, but maybe I'll throw this at you to like. To what extent can a word like that even be used when talking about a figure like Luther or something like this or invalidates the Reformation? If Luther needed the Reformation for psychological reasons or something like this.

[Bruce Hillman]

But you mean solve when you say the word?

[Gale Keith]

Yes.

[Bruce Hillman]

Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're strictly going by, say, the rubrics of logic, it doesn't invalidate it if his motivation is different than what some people wish it would be. Assuming for a second that the accusation is correct, which I don't think it is, but if you were to assume it was, that doesn't mean that what happened in the Reformation or the cause of the Reformation is in any way unjustifiable or less trustworthy, or that its claims are under attack for any reason. So it's a little bit of a strawman thing to throw out there, because the Reformation should really be judged on the merits of what it claims and what it's trying to correct and not based on whether Luther needs it or not. Maybe Luther does need it. I don't think so, but maybe. I mean, maybe he had a fighting spirit and he needed to have a fight. I got a friend who's just always looking for a fight. Maybe Luther needed a fight. That doesn't mean, when I got a friend who always looking for a fight, that he's not sometimes right in what he's willing to fight for. So I don't know. I just don't. I don't. It. I'm probably more in the middle than you guys in that. Well, I. I wouldn't throw the whole baby out with the bathwater with the psychological stuff, only because. And here's the only reason why I would say that FBI profilers are verifiably really good at picking out certain traits on criminals before we even know who the criminal is. So there's something to the science. I don't know if you can historically reconstruct it. I do think it's an important question, though, whether you use psychology or not, to say, is the person that I am supposed to entrust myself to at some level a stable, viable person? I think however you answer that question, that's still a viable question. It's the kind of question that people who join cults don't really thoroughly ask and then get in Trouble. So I don't think the question's out of bounds at all. But I think way too much is made of these kind of things. And any psychologist worth their salt will tell you that you can't psychoanalyze anyone, present or past, without spending significant time with the actual person. You can't. You can do a historical sort of guess, but it doesn't, doesn't hold up to the true scrutiny of the science anyway. And yeah, I think the. Erik Erickson's book was really fascinating. It was a breakthrough. If anything, it made people reconsider Luther. It probably put Luther on the map again in a way that he hadn't been before and to some extent still remains. But it is just at the end of the day, no different than him being a little facetious here, but like going onto the Myers Briggs test and pretending he was Luther and filling in the answers. I mean, it's like, okay, that's what you think Luther thought. But I'll just say one more point. I remember early in my, when I was getting my SDM degree, it was one of my first papers and I was writing a paper on Augustine. And I don't remember exactly actually what I was writing about at that point. I think it was about the Donatist controversy now that you had mentioned it, but I'm not 100% sure. And the professor gave me back a really critical paper which I thought was really, actually helpful for me. And I had assumed too much in Augustine's motives in my paper without evidence, which to me I was like, I had read so much Augustine. I knew Augustine from so many different sources and sermons and all these other stuff that I felt like I knew him. And so when I'd made whatever argument I made in the paper, I was kind of making this argument and she pushed back and she was like, you're psychoanalyzing this guy and you're not really following the evidence trail. Like you're fitting things in because you want it to be this way. So she told me I had to redo the paper. And I was actually really grateful for that because I think it made me a better paper writer. It wasn't fun to have to redo the paper, but it was a good lesson to have.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Yeah, too bad they didn't have chatgpt to generate your paper.

[Bruce Hillman]

Yeah, of course then it would have just. I would have had no issues whatsoever.

[Sam Schuldeis]

You could have rewritten it immediately.

[Bruce Hillman]

Yeah, we should have chat GPT, do something and ask it to be like Luther and see. See how it does with that, give me a. Give me a recipe for cookies as Martin Luther would write it.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Yeah. I will say like on this point about psychoanalysis or psychological evaluation of like a Luther or whatever, Erikson's work is famous. It is interesting. Like we kind of know, we know a ton about Luther's life. Right. You could.

[Gale Keith]

Compared to a lot of other figures in history. I guess that's one of the reasons that so much of this is accessible or comes up again is, you know, it's hard to name another list of people who wrote so prolifically about not just like theological tomes, not just word

[Sam Schuldeis]

count, but his life, bathroom habits. Yeah, he had so. But I mean we know so much and there's like tons of biographies. Like Kittleson's Luther the Reformer is a nice like matter of fact kind of approach. If you're like got a ton of time on your hand. Martin Brecht's three volume one is like you literally, it's almost like just a chronological year by year sort of of everything. Scott Hendricks has a new biography that is very much like that. It's really, really good. But there's, but I say I mention this because so we know so much about Luther. There's not a whole lot. I mean people debate like what he meant or like when certain, like doctrine justification, when that pops up like clearly and so on. But, but the psychoanalytical approach to Luther is, is it makes sense to me that people would do this because they want to know more now because we know so much. Right. Like what's driving this? If, you know, I'm putting air quotes around it and your dad would not like me doing saying I'm putting air quotes around it. But this great man from history, what, like what's. What really is driving so like wanting to get to like what psychologically, you know, how he's wired is. I think it's a legitimate question. Just how are you going to do that though for a guy who lived 500 years ago, is the problem. But I will say Lindell Roper's fairly recent biography of Luther, what is it? Renegade and Prophet, I think is the title.

[Gale Keith]

It's one of the biggest polemical pieces that's in this genre.

[Sam Schuldeis]

She constructs a biography where she draws especially from his personal letters and things. And it's really interesting. Like, you know, it's been some time since I read through it, but it's at least a little helpful to get a little more of a. Luther's not just some producer of theological polemical Literature, it's Luther the man. And so it's helpful for, like, if you're really in the basement of history and you're wanting to know warts and all, and it's at least a stab at it now, how are you going to assess that in any objective way? Like, just how truthful Erickson or Roper or Oberman's assessment is. Is, you know, a totally different question. So I wouldn't. Like, yeah, like, Oberon is a good

[Gale Keith]

example of somebody who is doing this kind of positively right, in a sense of, like, making a positive case for Protestantism based on the, like, the hero figure, Lutheran, you know, Roper being a Catholic who appears more neutral, but at the end of the day, too kind of, I do think, makes some political swipes for the church and stuff. It is interesting. Right. But I guess the problem is, you know, if we wrote as much as Luther wrote about the things that Luther wrote, you could come up. This is kind of like C.S. lewis's experiment in criticism. Right. Like, it'd be very easy to go. Caleb, Keith's a crazy person. Like, and he. From, you know, 2018 to 2026, his psychological shifts are just so unstable, you know, taking into account all the various things that have happened in the world. My life, personally, national politics, local politics, my church, churches around me, the broader Lutheranism career and things like that. If you wrote all of those ideas and changes and things out, I think it would be relatively easy to construct whoever you needed to construct out of a person, which is kind of CS Lewis's point regarding higher criticism as well, from a text that you can. Given enough writing and enough space, you can construct what you need to out of a person's works.

[Sam Schuldeis]

I mean, I do want to say it's okay to. I mean, because we know all the major contours and the details of Luther's life, it's okay to try to get into his head a bit more just for the sake of being. It's interesting, right? Yeah. And that's. I think, like, I. I think, Bruce, you thought I discounted this stuff too quickly.

[Gale Keith]

It was probably me.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Oh, yeah. But don't lump me in Caleb's group, because Caleb, you know. Caleb, come on. But. But it makes sense if you're gonna. Like, I. I've read quite a bit of Luther. I've not read everything he ever wrote, but there's stuff, because of my research and his stuff on Islam where I've. That he says. Says some wild stuff, and then asking the question, like, what's going on in his head that would lead him to say something like that. It's a, for a biographer, a totally legitimate question.

[Gale Keith]

I also think there is a sense in which these emotional outbursts or positions that he lays out actually do help with a more engaging retelling of history as well, like creating a narrative that has some accuracy to it. Because you do have Luther kind of doing a tell all a lot of the time. Like in the thing I just wrote about the Augsburg Confession for the website that people can go check out, one of the interesting things there is, I was reading a bunch of the letters that Luther was sending back and forth to the various people at Augsburg. I mean, he tells you how he's feeling and how he interprets that they're feeling through the letter, the letters there. You know, he. He chastises Melanchthon for his fear that he keeps expressing that things are going to go really wrong here and I'm not going to leave with my life kind of thing. And Luther also reveals in a lot of these letters that he's going crazy in Coburg. He's like, they're alone with like, none of his. All of his friends are up the road a couple days ride and he's. He's like freaking out. He's saying that the. The castle he's sitting in is haunted, that he's just like. And he's there for like four months just like, I'm stuck here and all I can do is write letters and wait for the messenger to come back and forth. And that adds some flavor to the story of the Augsburg Confession. When you see kind of the correspondence back and forth and the emotional states of the people involved. It doesn't change the content of the Augsburg Confession to know that things were not going well for Melanchthon and the others in Augsburg and that they were, you know, having some emotional troubles since like the day they got there. They realized that there were tomes of like 400 theses being published and sold to everybody in town about them personally before they even got there. And that it spooks them. You know, that doesn't, it doesn't change the content, but it is very interesting and does give you a better retelling of the events of Augsburg if you're going to teach it, for instance.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Yeah, I like Bruce's point earlier about the, you know, the Catholic polemics and Lutherans are guilty of this on the other side too. I mean, everybody's guilty of this to some extent or another, but, you know, they're sort of Ad hom. The use of biography for an ad hominem type of attack. That's where things. That's where things get, I guess, inappropriate, if you will. I mean, the scholars, historians like Lindell Roper or Erickson, I don't know what drove Erickson to do his research, but they're all just trying to get, I mean, best construction. They're trying to get closer to writing an account that corresponds to the actual person. And maybe they fail, maybe they're right. It's not something that we ought to just sort of like write off as silly or something like that. The problem though, like you said, Caleb, is when it all of a sudden is used as ammunition for polemics. Polemics always are, I mean, with some rare exceptions, I suppose. In fact, I know a few rare exceptions are always silly when it comes to facts. They play hard and loose with the facts to make a certain point. And that's a problem regardless of what you're dealing with.

[Gale Keith]

To cut off Bruce, one more time here and then go. I think there's a distinction between describing a person from their works or describing a situation or describing an emotion and diagnosis of an individual in this psychological sense. And I find that Erickson and a lot of the polemical work, as well as the armchair Roman Catholic polemics is very diagnosis based. It's not descriptive of the life and times and emotions and experiences of Luther that we have from biography. It's a diagnosis of the flaw. And I think that is harder to get at. And I think a part we're used to doing this because of like the explosion of psychology popularly and therapy popularly and everybody diagnosing or getting diagnosis about themselves, either professionally or just like through their friends, family and the Internet and the way we do it with historical villains. So everybody's used to psychologically diagnosing Hitler, for instance, or other major figures as crazed and mad and things like this. And so it's easy to do, to explain why somebody does something and then you do it to Luther. So instead of describing who Luther is, it's the explanation for why he does what he does.

[Bruce Hillman]

Yeah, I was going to say, I think to the question of is Luther trustworthy? Obviously is Lutheran. I think he's generally trustworthy, but I can see why he appears to be unstable. And the definition of trustworthiness is that you're reliable and truthful. And so if you perceive someone to be unstable, that is a sort of foil in that veneer. You know, you don't see too many other people online who have their own insulter page where you can just, you know, say, insult me again. And you can. There's just copious amounts of insults to his critics. And I always find reading Luther a strange thing. Like when I read Luther's sermons or I read Luther's works where he's teaching or talking about a subject, he's incredibly patient, he's pastoral, he's loving. He seems to be open to questions, he seems to revel in going deep. But get him on anything where someone is challenging him in a way that he doesn't like the challenge, and he becomes a nasty, nasty, insecure person. In my personal opinion, more times than not, not as good argument for his position as he does when he's calm. And I'll give you one example of that. I had done some research years ago on his hermeneutics, and whenever Catholic critics would bring up to him, well, how do you know that your interpretation is correct? He had a consistent answer. He had different answers, but his consistent majority answer was the Holy Spirit preserves the. The Holy Spirit preserves the truth of the Scriptures. It's not my interpretation. I'm not the one interpreting. It's the Holy Spirit that does. But then when they point out how you can have different interpretations even throughout time, where, like for periods of time this interpretation is the dominant one, and then other ones, he just has no time for it. He just goes to ad hominems and he just accuses them of being of the devil and the devil is speaking behind them, he doesn't actually address their argument almost ever. He just goes right to them. And so I find that when Luther is challenged by someone that he's either intimidated by or that he's just frustrated by because he doesn't want to go through this all again, or he doesn't think they get the presuppositions, or he assumes that they have a secret motive that's operating behind the scenes, I don't find him as trustworthy. I would be much more critical of what he says in those instances than when he's teaching, when he's giving a sermon, when he's methodical and really thinking things through. Now, there's different occasions. Like, for example, I think he does a really, really good job in Bondage of the Will, where he's also pretty nasty to Erasmus. But that's also well thought out. He's writing it down. He's interacting with actual things right in the moment. It's not kind of broad debates about different topics. So it's not always, but I think it's that strange contrast between someone who could be so pastoral and so patient and so open to discussing theology on the one hand, and then the sort of what I perceive to be like an insecure, just angry, yelling person on the other hand, that can make him off putting at times. Like, if you only were to read his angry stuff, you wouldn't come away with a nice guy. You'd probably be shocked to then finally read his pastoral stuff because it almost feels like two different Luthers sometimes.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Yeah, I like the nasty stuff and get bored with the pastoral stuff.

[Bruce Hillman]

I'm completely the opposite.

[Gale Keith]

I mean, there's kind of an interesting set of things going on there with the scripture. One, there is a point where he becomes very, as Bruce basically done with,

[Bruce Hillman]

he just doesn't want to deal with it.

[Gale Keith]

Types of attacks against perspicuity of scripture in Rome. And there's one time he takes it very seriously and that's with Erasmus in the bondage of will. As you said, the scripture thing, the how do you know you're right? Luther thing comes up and he deals with it very directly. But for a portion of that career he got very tired of, you know, these swipes at the perspicuity of scripture from the papists and yeah, just insults and things like that. One of the other things I think that happens with this is there's a bit of chronological snobbery, to borrow another term from Lewis, in that nobody at the time. There's kind of a thesis here surrounding this that the people around Luther at the time would not have recognized all this psychological untrustworthiness either that like people like who were close to him, like Melanchthon or Jonas or his electors wouldn't have detected something. And so then you also have to kind of add this like cult leader thing where, well, he was just so, you know, impressive or manipulative or whatever it was that normal people couldn't detect he was untrustworthy. And one of the things is like in these various letters he writes that have been collected into some volumes, many of which not translated, but there's a good, pretty thick translation of personal letters that Luther has written to people on specific occasions. Translated by Tappert. It's old at this point, but it's Luther's Letters of Spiritual Counsel. It's a great little collection, but what you see is the huge diversity. People who know Luther and ask for his advice, for both his preaching in his comforting in the scriptures, but also like, hey, my wife and I are having a hard time. What should we do? Or my dad's about to die and we didn't have a good relationship. Or these dozens of letters sent back and forth at Augsburg between him and five or six different people asking him to speak into an issue, or various political figures asking him to speak to things. I think finding him totally untrustworthy because of a particular psychological state or shifting of states would also require that all of these people's BS detector was broken. Like, everybody couldn't detect that this was really kind of a mad person. And the cult leader thesis, I think, falls short as well. Unless you think he's really faking it when he's, like, distressed by the fact that the movement becomes known as Lutheran, for instance. Unless you think that's part of his scheme to expand the cult of his power is by not having his name associated with it. You have to start buying a bunch of different presuppositions about Luther. Even saying things like, you know, if I were to die and this torch were to be carried on at Augsburg, for instance, that would be fine. Or if we were all to perish, but at least the gospel had been proclaimed and the spark will live on. You have to believe he's just saying those things, to say them like that. He doesn't genuinely believe them. And so then that's where psychoanalysis or his analysis of his behavior gets into making value judgments about plain things. Luther writes about his disposition, about the Reformation, about his hope, about his willingness to be involved in it or seen as a leader or some sort of ecclesiastical figure, and his fear of, for instance, being seen as Luther's Reformation or being seen as a pope or something like that, his deference to people like Melanchthon and Jonas on certain topics or works. I just think you see a complex figure who other people trusted, and thus you would just have to say that none of those people rightfully trusted him. Now, to be certain, for everybody who trusted Luther, there were a dozen people who thought he was nuts, too. But I think this went beyond Luther's personality. I think it doesn't invalidate the Reformation, because what Luther had was people who read his works and read the Scripture and then made these journeys to Wittenberg or these letters or these journeys to these debates, things like Leipzig, where there were, you know, loads of people in attendance kind of making judgments based on the teaching itself, who saw the flaws of Rome. And I think you could also say that the theological errors that were present were responsible not just for Luther's anxiety and sufferings and things, but for hundreds, if not thousands of people. Which is something that the Reformation picked up on. That robbing people from the true grace of God for manipulating the sacramental system, for preying on people for financial gain, with the power of the Christian religion and the papacy and the empire behind it was damaging people's lives. It was damaging them physically, monetarily, and emotionally in very significant ways. And to then say, well, Luther's illegitimate because he's one of these parties that's negatively affected by the immoral and bad behavior of particular papists, I just don't think is a very strong argument.

[Bruce Hillman]

Two things. One, can I just say that while the historical term used by the reformers to their interlocutors is papists, that that's not a great term today that we refer to Catholics by. So just to our Catholicism.

[Gale Keith]

Speak for yourself, Bruce.

[Bruce Hillman]

Yeah, but the second thing I would say is I think you nailed it, Caleb, when you. I'm putting it in my own words. But what makes Luther trustworthy is essentially that he's a good interpreter, right? Because that's where the trust in Luther needs to be. The trust in Luther doesn't need to be that he was a good husband or that he was a good professor or that he was. It's that Luther was a good interpreter of the Scriptures and that you can verify that he's trustworthy in that, because you can read the Scriptures and you can read what Luther says, and you can see that what Luther is saying is a good interpretation of the Scriptures, and you can see where indulgences would not be a good interpretation of the Scriptures. I would be hesitant to ground Luther's trustworthiness in the fact that he had people who trusted him. Like, I think we think occult leaders as people who are out to kind of take other people, which there are a lot of those, but there's a lot of cult leaders like Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite and what's his name, who started Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, who actually believed all the stuff that they said. You know, L. Ron Hubbard almost killed himself trying to get clear on a. On a. E meter, and the other two did kill themselves for. For what they believed. So I wouldn't want to ground Luther's trustworthiness in the fact that he had a big following on German Instagram at the time, but the fact that he's a good interpreter, and I think that's the Christian question of, like, well, how do I trust any theologian? I think always comes down to that, which is. And I think that's what Luther actually is. One of the heirlooms of Luther to determining a good theologian is their division of law and gospel. Are they able to interpret this word? And look, Luther's always bringing up, quote, the blessed Augustine. He's not, he's not just saying I'm right. He's building off of interpretations from the patristic era, as Adam had said and as you had said too, Caleb, like from earlier times in the church. So I invite people to not trust Luther because someone that they know says you should trust Luther or because some Lutherans on a Lutheran podcast say that you should trust Luther. But to actually go out there and read one, grab, grab his commentary on Galatians and read Galatians and see, I

[Gale Keith]

was, see there, I was not trying to appeal to his friendships, for instance, his deep friendships as authoritative for teaching theology or something, or trustworthy for teaching theology, but just that he's not crazy. You were saying that he's not so openly immoral that you have dozens of accounts of, we all know the town kind of crazy person around us, that nobody's lining up to see what he can do to help me in my marriage. Like, you know, this is Luther. At the very least, if you hear somebody say, because I hear this all the time, he was just a wacko and he was immoral and he just wanted to have all this illegal in the minds of the church, sex and stuff like this. Like, you don't get these pictures from the personal accounts that we have of him from other people as well. Does that make what he said true? Theologically? No, but I do think it helps give you a more well rounded person, which I think the final explanation to something like this is kind of what Adam said, which is then, so why is there so much material on this subject? Or why do people keep going back and back there? And I think the answer is he's human. He lived a kind of extreme and extraordinary life where his experiences, some of his internal monologues, many of his debates, his friends, his enemies were all recorded. And it was a diverse and tumultuous time. And so it's not surprising that the experiences of that individual are diverse and at times tumultuous. And so, you know, I think we would be shocked like a modern person would be shocked at like the conditions of the world around them too. We have such comfort compared to the times that Luther is living in when it even comes to plague and disease and death. How Luther and many of the close people around him all experienced the death of their own children in ways none of us experience now to then say that there's an emotional instability surrounded by all of these things. Like I was saying, when Luther's trapped in that castle during Augsburg, his dad dies. There's all sorts of things that you get as a letter eight days later that, hey, by the way, your dad died. No, you wanted to send him this one last thing, but he's dead. You know, this is. You don't. We just don't deal with stuff on this scale. And so to then create completely negative pictures of somebody from this, or suspicious pictures which say, hey, you can't trust the young Luther, but you can trust the mature Lutheran, but you can't trust the dying Luther, is sort of an extreme, I don't know, an extreme perspective that just doesn't take into account individual human stories as diverse. That made me sound really lame at the end there. I don't use words like stories and diversity very often, so.

[Sam Schuldeis]

Diversity is your strength, Caleb. You need more of it in your life.

[Gale Keith]

All right, well, good episode, gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining me. Thank you for joining us. If you're a listener, if you enjoyed this podcast, found it helpful or interesting, do remember to subscribe to the show if you haven't already. But also share it with family, friends, church members, people that you know. Word of mouth is the fastest way that podcasts grow, and we enjoy and appreciate your support in sharing this show and these conversations. Thanks very much. We'll catch you next time. Bye,

[Sam Schuldeis]

Sam.