Christian History Home > Issue 39 > From the Editor: The Forgotten Years of Martin Luther
From the Editor: The Forgotten Years of Martin Luther
KEVIN A. MILLER | posted 7/01/1993 12:00AM
Martin Luther forgotten? The giant of the Protestant Reformation, the man who even in his day was called “The angel whom God has sent to mankind”? How could he be overlooked?
Actually, only half of Luther has been neglected: his later years.
One biography of Luther that crossed my desk devotes just one chapter (out of fourteen) to the final twenty-three years of his life. Another biography can muster only twenty-three pages to those busy years. That’s one page per year.
In those years, apparently, not much was happening: Luther only married (and fathered six children), intervened in a massive peasants’ war, translated the Old Testament, preached a couple thousand sermons, created a new approach to Christian worship, developed catechisms, settled political squabbles, wrote scores of influential treatises, and composed hymns we still sing today. That’s all.
As one scholar has said, “The older Martin Luther was, if anything, even livelier than young man Luther.” Yet we know hardly anything about ... To view this item, you must be a member of ChristianHistory.net.
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