Kim Gentes

Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel  is a collection of Martin Luther’s pastoral letters sent to a variety of people, reflecting on as wide a variety of topics as life has to offer. What one notes most poignantly about the letters is their constant pastoral voice, intense compassion for grief-stricken people, and his wisdom and wit in any situation.

The book is arranged in categorized chapters based on the  main theme of the letter. A reader from the present day will be immediately affronted by the dim nature of the topics, which range from comfort, consolation, counsel and instruction for the sick, dying, bereaved, anxious, despondent, doubting, needy, troubled and more. This is not light reading. The weight of the pastoral office of the 16th century European church is pressed into the pages of these letters. This provides us not only with wise counsel for our current churches, but a harrowing picture of the people and time in which Martin Luther’s reforms were birthed.

I must admit, I approached this book initially ready for a barrage of theological treatise, each one restated in particular application for a life situation. I expected the theologian that demarcated the single biggest change in the history of the Christian church to be heady, angry and oozing with profundity. To my surprise, I came away realizing that Martin Luther was a man who cared first for the flock to which had entrusted him to care.  He wasn’t applying theology to an ugly, rude world, in which his meanderings meant nothing to the real people.  He was caring deeply, loving deeply, and hurting deeply with the literal scores of people around him which were broken, dying or in unfathomable pangs of grief.

Yes, he writes letters to princes and elites, administrators and bureaucrats. He tackles government, policies and the profound failures of a power rotted church structure. But at his core, he is a pastor, and these letters don’t let you stop seeing that, over and over again.  All around Luther, family, students, friends, children are all dying or becoming sick of a myriad of diseases from deadly tuberculosis to the dreaded black plague. There is not just sickness and death, there is a permeating sense of fear and a gnawing hopelessness that he seems to be trying to combat with each letter.

 
On of Luther’s prime methods of facing such daunting pain and weakened humanity is to speak boldly of the pain, sickness and death.

When, therefor, I learned most illustrious prince, that Your Lordship has been afflicted with a grave illness...I cannot pretend that I do not hear the voice of Christ crying out to me from Your Lordship’s body and flesh saying, “Behold,  I am sick.” This is so because such evils as illness and the like are not borne by us who are Christians but by Christ himself...1

Luther didn’t see ministry to people as doing something for the ill, poor or broken. He saw it as ministry to the Lord directly, and he used this as his foundation for a theology of suffering. In such a society filled with pain, Luther saw Christ’s suffering as the necessary fellowship to which we are engaged in while on earth.  But Luther brought with his stark vision of pain a transcendent enraptured vision of Christ, when he said, “God is immeasurably better than all his gifts.”2 Such a picture of God is not only beautiful, but necessary, when “his gifts” seemed to come few and far between for the beleaguered parishioners Luther was guiding.

The letters of Luther are not just wise rebukes to a dismal world. His fiery spirit and even humor rise to the top occasionally, giving us a glimpse of wisdom that is embedded in reality. He says of a friend whom he was counselling against being drawn into the falseness of spiritual pride:

Whenever the devil pesters you with these thoughts, at once seek out the company of men, drink more, joke and jest, or engage in some other form of merriment. Sometimes it is necessary to drink a little more, play, jest, and even commit some sin in defiance and contempt of the devil in order not to give him an opportunity to make us scrupulous about trifles. We shall be overcome if we worry too much about falling into some sin.3

As you can see, Martin Luther had an unquenchable belief in the power of the community. This so guided him, it is doubtless that one of the driving currents of his reformation doctrine.

The papists and Anabaptists teach that if you wish to know Christ, you must seek solitude, avoid association with men...This is manifestly diabolical advice...[rather] God wishes that His name be proclaimed and praised before men and spoken of among men rather than that one should flee into a corner... [and] teaches us to do good to our neighbors, and hence we must not be segregated from them. This advice [papists and Anabaptists] is also destructive to the family, economic life, and the state, and it is at odds with the life of Christ, who did not like to be alone and whose career was one of constant turmoil because people were always crowding around him. He was never alone, except when he prayed. Have nothing to do, therefor, with those who say, “Seek solitude and your heart will become pure.”4

Martin Luther had such a strong value of community and companionship that he prescribed it for almost every condition of the body and soul. He was constantly reminding husbands and wives to encourage one another, for people to not be alone when struggling with temptation, depression or illness. Above, he even recognizes that not only is it a teaching against Christ and his body to avoid the community, but it actually destroys families, harms economic viability of individuals and communities and even threatens the state stability. What a brilliant understanding of the power of community.

Product Link on Amazon: Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel

Review by
Kim Gentes

[1]Martin Luther, “Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel”, translated Theodore G. Tappert (Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 1955), Pg 22

[2]Ibid., Pg 54

[3]Ibid., Pg 86

[4]Ibid., Pg 120