Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 08:1 (Winter 1999)
Article: Martin Luther: The Man And His Mind
Author: Robert Kolb

RAR 8:1 (Winter 1999) p. 11

Martin Luther: The Man And His Mind

Robert Kolb

His lectures on the Psalms were engaging the mind of a young professor at the new University of Wittenberg in 1519. He had begun a new stage in his career as a professor of the Bible by lecturing on the Psalter six years earlier. Thereafter, in 1515, he had turned to the Epistle to the Romans. “I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans.” His ardor, however, stood under a shadow because

a single word in chapter one, “in it the righteousness of God is revealed,” had stood in my way. For I hated the words “righteousness of God,” which—according to the use and custom of all the teachers—I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner.1

Such fears about being justly stricken by God for his sins continued to haunt Martin Luther as he instructed his students on the letters to the Galatians and the Hebrews before returning to the Psalms in 1519.

A quarter century later, in an autobiographical glimpse back at the early development of his theology, Luther acknowledged that during his second set of lectures on the Psalms his meditation brought him to understand the meaning of Paul’s citation of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans

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1:17: “The righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith.” With a joy that had not diminished over twenty-six years Luther wrote in 1545, “Here I felt that I was altogether born again and did enter paradise itself through open gates. There a totally different face of the entire Scriptures showed itself to me.”2 Although scholars have debated the nature and the timing of Luther’s “evangelical breakthrough to the gospel,” Luther himself saw the content of that breakthrough in his distinction between two kinds of righteousness in God and two kinds of righteousness in the human creature.

But Luther discovered that God is really
God when He shows His steadfast mercy to
His people. His divine righteousness—
being God in the true and right way—
consists in this demonstration of His
immutable love and compassion.

As Luther explained in the preface to his Latin writings of 1545, it dawned on him as he reflected upon You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
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