Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith
The Bible is filled with biography – one character after another parade across the pages. God loves to teach lasting lessons through the lives of individuals. With that in mind, Stephen Davey has undertaken a special biographical series illustrating biblical truths through the lives of contemporary believers. These ordinary men and women provide a wonderful legacy. They are influenced and influential because of their faith in God. They are Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith.
Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith
Katarina and Martin Luther: A Story of Resilience and Faith
Have you ever wondered about the unsung heroes who've shaped our world? Stephen Davey, the president of Wisdom International, takes us on a captivating journey to the time of the Protestant Reformation. We'll explore the fascinating stories of Katarina and Martin Luther, their transformative marriage, and their indelible impact on Christian families.
This episode reveals the courage and commitment of Katarina Luther, a young nun who risked everything for her faith. Discover the surprising story of her unlikely marriage to Martin Luther, a partnership rooted not in compatibility, but deep devotion. Together, they created a home that became a beacon of love, loyalty, and humility - values that still resonate in Christian homes today. Come along on this enlightening journey as we uncover the life and influence of these remarkable individuals, whose principles continue to shape Christian families centuries later.
music playing. Welcome to Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith. With Stephen Davie, I'm your host, Scott Wiley. In this series, Stephen explores the lives and legacies of ordinary people whose faith had a profound impact. Stephen is the president of Wisdom International. You can learn more at Wisdom International. In today's episode, you'll meet Katarina Luther. Katarina, the wife of Martin Luther, is one of the unsung heroes of the Protestant Reformation. She lived as a revolutionary role model for her time and ours.
Speaker 1:She and Martin established a godly partnership for the gospel, profoundly impacting the definition of Christian marriage.
Speaker 2:Well, it was Easter Sunday evening, april 5th 1523, when a brave merchant and his nephew drove a wagon load of empty fish barrels into the courtyard of a convent filled with nuns who were sleeping there in the convent nearby. Not all of them were asleep. A dozen were waiting for the signal, the sound, which they heard, and they took off running down the stone hallway of their sleeping quarters. Once outside, they were stuffed inside the barrels and they made their daring getaway. A day later they arrived at the doorstep of a monastery and they were greeted by a former monk who had helped plan their escape. One of those nuns was 24-year-old Katarina von Bora. Now I'm going to focus on her, but I need to give you a little background about her. She was taken to the convent following the death of her mother at the tender age of five. We have every indication that her father didn't really want her and he paid the lowest fee allowable for entrance. She was handed over to the convent to be raised Nine years later.
Speaker 2:At the age of 16, she officially what they called quote married Christ and officially became a nun. Evidently, she took her vows of obedience and chastity and poverty Seriously. She joined in with the others in their efforts of self-denial and self-sacrifice and self-deprivation of things like food and sleep. They were considered obstacles to holiness and so they would deprive themselves of food and sleep. She would rise with the other nuns at 2 am for prayers and then again at daybreak. Then throughout the day, their chores would be set aside for praying and readings and singing at 7 am, at 9 am, at noon, again at 3 pm, at 5 pm and finally at 7 pm. Talking was considered another distraction from holy living and, as you can imagine, friendships would be hard, difficult, nearly impossible to develop. Abstaining from particular foods, like meat, they believed, would enable her to suppress fleshly desires and also contribute to holiness and God's approval. Evidently she devoted herself to this lifestyle, taking her vows seriously. In fact the official records from the convent reveal that not one time while she was there was there a complaint or reprimand ever registered against one, caterina von Abura.
Speaker 2:But during those years news made its way in bits and pieces into those cloistered hallways. Sermons were smuggled in by way of delivery boys. During those years news reached inside that convent that there was a reformation of sorts taking place. Outside the walls there was revolutionary preaching. Somebody out there was the lightning rod who had chosen to defy the church and tradition. Preaching things like salvation being a gift from God for anyone who believed. Preaching that monasteries and convents were not a guaranteed pathway to heaven or holiness. After all, that preaching reach to ears. Preaching that forgiveness was not the result of penance or ritual or baptism or sacrament or self-denial. Preaching was reaching their ears inside the convent that the path to God was by faith alone in the sacrifice of God, the Son. This was revolutionary. Monasteries were being emptied.
Speaker 2:We don't know all the details of what she particularly heard in the convent. We don't know what specific doubts she struggled with as she attempted to earn holiness and approval with God. We do know from just a few words from her own pen that have been preserved for us and very little, by the way, has been preserved from her pen. But she quote prayed feverishly and diligently in the convent. We don't know what those exact feverish and diligent prayers were. We can be fairly confident that one of those feverish and diligent prayer requests would have related specifically to that Easter Sunday night, when she risks everything about her past and everything about her future. In fact, she was risking heaven itself by believing this preaching of the Reformation. So, at the age of 24, she's one of the 12 that run out of that convent. In fact, the only thing she owns and takes with her is the clothing on her backs, doesn't even take a pair of shoes None of them do so that they can run quietly down the hallway and escape, she climbs into one of those herring buckets and is driven away. Within 24 hours, she's going to meet the primary preacher of this radical Reformation movement by the name of Martin Luther.
Speaker 2:Now let me say just a word about him. He may be newer to the faith, and you need to know that he, like Catarina, knew very little of family love. Growing up, his father often beat him mercilessly, on one occasion to the point of Martin running away for a while. His mother beat him until he bled for stealing a nut to eat from the dining room table on one occasion. But he had been out one afternoon, though, preparing for law, and was surprised by a thunderstorm that came so suddenly, had no time to run, lightning crashing everywhere around him, and he prayed to St Anne that if he would survive that storm, he would leave a law and enter the monastery. And he survived, claimed. It was St Anne who allowed him to live.
Speaker 2:And he kept his word and joined the monastery, becoming a monk and, like Catarina, he became a very diligent, dedicated member of the monastery. In fact, he nearly drove his mentors crazy with his confessions. He would rarely let up. In fact, on one occasion he confessed for nearly six hours until his confessor begged for mercy, asked him to stop. He just couldn't rid himself of his guilt. And finally, after seven years of this, his mentor, yon Bonstapitz, put an end to his torment, released him from the monastery and assigned him to teach at the University of Edinburgh.
Speaker 2:He moved into a monastery inhabited by Augustinian monks who was called the Black Cloister because of the monk's black clothing unique to them, and he began teaching in the university. It would be his role and responsibility as well to preach several times a week, and he chose to begin preaching through the books of Romans and Galatians and selected Psalms. And of course he can't preach through books of the Bible without first studying them. At least that's the theory. And so he dove in and began to study the book of Romans and over the course of his study, romans, chapter one and verse 17, just sort of chased him down and changed his life forever. So take your Bible and let's look for a brief moment or two at that text Romans, chapter one, and we'll back up into verse 16 and get a running start.
Speaker 2:Romans, chapter one and verse 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it that is. The gospel is the power of God for salvation To everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the righteous man, the just, shall live by faith, not penance, not self deprivation, not pilgrimages, not austerity. By faith, in fact, luther would later write although I was an impeccable monk, I knew I stood before God as a sinner, troubled in my conscience. I had no confidence that my merit would satisfy God.
Speaker 2:But through his study of Romans and Galatians and other passages, and this text as well, he came to understand that this word righteousness and you could write in the margin of your Bible righteousness here, this theological, doctrinal truth, righteousness means right with God. How does a person become right with God? He came to understand it was by Sola Fede, that is, faith alone. And he believed the gospel and he would say that this scripture, he would write, took on new meaning. In fact, all of scripture took on new meaning and became inexpressibly sweet to me. And this particular text of Paul became to me the gate of the gospel, to me the gate to heaven. And quote, not the monastery, the gospel, this doctrine of Sola Fede. And Martin then would go on to preach about, you know, the authority of scripture having greater authority than popes and councils, and even, he dared to say, the church itself. Now, obviously, the church wasn't teaching this gospel, it wasn't teaching the soul of a day, but he risked everything about his past and his future and his heaven, on Soul of a day and he would teach it based on the authority of scripture, what he called Sola scriptora, that is, the authority of the scriptures alone. And if you stay alert, you'll see that phrase every so often around here.
Speaker 2:Now, if I could fast-forward the tape, here's 40 year old Martin Luther Standing at the doorway of the black cloister, welcoming a cart full of nuns who are hopping out of fish barrels Barefoot, owning nothing but the clothing on their backs, and he felt a tremendous responsibility Because he had been preaching, in fact writing, that the nunnery should empty, the monastery should empty. He wanted to settle them Fairly quickly. Three of them returned to their family homes. They were young. Eight of them he married off. In fact, he was called Martin the matchmaker. He, he, would marry them off to monks and priests and friends, and all that was then left was this one Nun without family. We know from history. She was effectively disowned. No, no family. No, no prospects.
Speaker 2:This 24 year old Catarina Von Bora, luther tried to marry her off to a friend of his that he thought would be a good match. The man showed interest that courted her for nearly a year and then, for some strange reason, nobody knows why, I ran off and married somebody else, and, and that just jilted her. Then he, well, he, knew of another eligible bachelor nearby. He thought of a pastor, friend of his, who had also Begun his, his involvement in the Reformation. He was intelligent, he was resourceful, he'd earned his doctorate in theology and was faithfully pastoring at church nearby and, most importantly, he was eligible. He seemed to Martin to be the perfect Husband for Catarina, with one glaring exception she didn't like him, and she let it be known that she didn't like him, in fact, and Luther was exasperated over this. You know this nun who evidently had a mind of her own.
Speaker 2:She sent a note back to him through a mutual friend to tell him to abandon his plans to marry Her to this pastor. And then she did something really startling and unusual. She ended the note by suggesting that if he, martin, sought her hand, she would not refuse. She essentially proposed to Martin Luther so get this picture. By the way, you don't do that. You didn't do that. Here's a. Here's a now 42 year old leader of the Protestant Reformation. He has single-handedly Challenge the structure and theology of the church. Now it's several years old. It's gaining incredible momentum. He's now a pastor. He's now written on God's clear design that church leaders Should not be, or don't have to be, celibate. They can actually be married. In fact, the qualifications for the elder would be that Fidelity and marriage would would qualify those who were married by their observation before the congregation is being faithful To their wives. He's written about this. He's married off dozens of monks and priests and nuns. He's written widely on the blessing of of children and the ideal of God's design through family life. He, by the way, has brazenly and openly ridiculed the church leaders, bishops and cardinals, along with a trepidate of priests for having their own mistresses. He's exposing this. He's written extensively on the obvious, obvious, created nature of God's delight for a man to find all woman and faithfully lover as his wife, but he's never conceived of the thought of marrying. It literally has not entered his mind. He's immersed in writing and preaching his life as this growing risk and threat. He assumes as he writes to friends he's gonna die a martyr At any, at any moment he's gonna die, if not that way, through one of the illnesses that he had he had several. Now he's just been proposed to by a 26 year old runaway nun. He's stunned and, and everybody else's as well, and there's no, there's absolutely no way he's gonna say yes. And Then he does. He reminded me of old Boas out there at the threshing floor. Remember his old bachelor. And young Ruth comes along and essentially Proposes to him and you know, when he wakes up after feigning he accepts well, that's Luther. He's shocked and then he's Smith. Later he'll write that he tongue-in-cheek. He's to tease her and everybody else, but he said that he married Katarina to make his father happy, who wanted grandchildren. I think it's a perfectly good reason for young people to get married, by the way, to give us grandchildren. So I'm all for that. He also wrote that he got married to Ryle up the Pope whom he hated. Everybody said I married to give the angels reason to laugh and the devils reason to weep. He would write as well that he wanted to practice what he'd been preaching and what he'd been writing about marriage and the home, so that he could become a living demonstration, with his wife, of the love of Christ for the church and the church for Christ. I gotta tell you, if you read the biographies of Martin or Katarina and I've read several of them this is a most unlikely marriage. This marriage has little reason to survive. What I want to do is kind of rehearse for you and I've read much more than I could ever give you but I've sort of boiled it down to three or four principles whereby we are in this study, observing godly believers and finding in their lives things to imitate, as the apostles encourages us to do. If you're visiting for the first time, this is a little unusual, but we're in between books of the Bible and our studies. So, as I kind of boiled out 21 years of marriage, let me give you some principles that are worthy of modeling. And before I give you the first one, let me have you keep in mind in the 16th century nobody had a church leader who was married. They didn't have that. If you were a church leader, you were then unmarried. They didn't see an example of a couple. They didn't see this kind of pastor and wife. They in fact. Philip Shaff, the historian, wrote that their marriage will become the standard for the Christian family for centuries to come. Nobody'd seen this before. In fact, if you think that people right now are watching the royal family in England and they are every time I go to the grocery store, the new tabloid shows the latest picture it's nothing compared to how the Western world watched Martin and Catarina and their marriage Principle number one let me give these to you fairly quickly. Number one marriage is not a matter of compatibility. It's a matter of commitment. The truth is they barely knew each other when they married. She'd been living with a believing family in town, had been courted for nearly a year by a guy that then ran off. They had had few conversations In the meantime. Martin is living the life of a bachelor in the black cloister. He's immersed in his studies and in his writing. When they marry, he will love books and he will love writing and she will love farming and organizing and cleaning, and let me emphasize cleaning. By this point in time, the monks had all left being reformed. It was only Martin living in the black cloister, and it was falling into disrepair. An older monk was living in an attached shed out back and that was pretty much it, and this house was filthy. In fact, one of the first things that she does is order two carts fulls of a lime and she will whitewash every wall in that monastery because it was so dirty. Now let me tell you this in a typical marriage of Luther's day, the bride brought her bed into her new home. It was usually handed down from mother to daughter, and along with her bed she would bring feather quilts that she had made, along with embroidered linen and pillows. And you can see how life's just going to get better here by the presence of a bride. But she didn't know any of that when he met her. She didn't know a pair of shoes, so she came with none of that. In fact, luther later revealed that their wedding night was spent on his bed and he had not changed the rancid straw for over a year. He just hadn't thought about it. There were a lot of things he evidently hadn't thought about. In fact. Luther would later write there is a lot to get used to. In the first year of marriage I guess there was a lot like changing your bed sheets. I'd be like sleeping on sheets that had been changed for a year. Some of you guys that they're going yeah, what's wrong with that? That works for me? He would write. When, sitting alone at the table, a married man now thinks well, before I was alone, now there are two of us. Or when he wakes up in bed he sees a pair of pigtails on his pillow and they weren't there before. Well, hello to married life and all the changes that would come. Luther would write as an older man. Marriage does not always run smoothly, but one must be committed, and they would demonstrate that in the most difficult of times that marriage doesn't work because you're compatible or it's easy, but because you are committed.
Speaker 2:Number two. Let me give you a second principle of marriage worthy of imitating. Marriage is not the pursuit of happiness, it's the pursuit of humility. Now, both Martin and Catarina, well, they loved each other. Love was part of it, but it wasn't the pursuit based on love of happiness, but humility. They were both strong-willed, opinionated, stubborn and extremely verbal. They spoke their minds.
Speaker 2:Luther would later admit the revelation of his own selfishness. After getting married, he would write good Lord, what a lot of trouble there is in marriage. Time has made a mess of our nature. And then he would write perceptively marriage is the school for character development. See, up until that day, the church was teaching that it was the monastery that was the school for developing virtue. You sequester away. You want to get holy? Get away from everybody. Luther did it and he found when he was alone that he was still living with himself and he would spend six hours confessing his sin. But sequester yourself away and you'll grow and develop in holiness. Luther will turn all of that now upside down and say no, no, no, no, no, no. You want a training ground, you want an education in humility. Marriage, god, peace, family it's going to demand change and humility and partnership. In fact one of the things that he wrote randomly, but it became such a telling distinction of his marriage and his commitment and hers and their humility In this day.
Speaker 2:Men did not get involved in domestic chores for the most part. Everything, including raising the children, was reserved for the women. But he wrote, interestingly, this he said men should not care if they are mocked for changing diapers or being seen publicly hanging them outdoors to dry after washing them. That was revolutionary, in fact. He wrote even if a man is mocked as an effeminate fool for changing diapers, god with all his angels are smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is exercising his Christianity. This is why we look back now and we talk about the Reformation of the Church and we easily miss the fact. This was the Reformation of the home and marriage and parenting. Luther would refer to it as the holy work of parenting.
Speaker 2:Keep in mind again the Reformation is going to make every vocation a sacred calling, because at that point in time the sacred calling was being a church leader. Unfortunately, protestants still don't get that right. The highest calling. There is no high calling of pastoring. It's a high calling and not the highest calling. Guess, what a high calling is Guess what a holy vocation is. Whatever you're doing you mechanic, lawyer, housewife, doctor, gardener it's a holy calling. They arrested that word vocatio. We know it as vocation, it means sacred calling, and Luther would even write that a milkmaid is milking that cow with the hands of God.
Speaker 2:But this was revolutionary and Catarina of course believed that even the mundane tasks were glorifying to God and she dove in, as it were. In fact her life never really slowed down. We know from her biographies that she maintained that regimen that she had spent so many years in and rising early. In fact she would rise typically around 4 am. Luther would sleep in and the nickname her tongue in cheek the morning star of Wittenberg. Life just kind of took off for them on their wedding night in fact, and never slowed down. After midnight on their wedding night knock on the door there at the Black Cloister and it was a pastor needing refuge. They welcomed him in and that sort of was telling and a predictive of what would happen in their lives.
Speaker 2:It wasn't long before all 40 rooms once occupied by monks would be occupied by professors and pastors and students and political refugees and religious refugees, other nuns and monks and priests who were abandoning the church. It took incredible humility on both their parts, especially Catarina, to serve her own home, her own children. They would have six of them, they would adopt four more Nephews and nieces, ten children, and all of this busyness, and they would literally invade their lives uninvited. Most of these guests would come and just show up. And, by the way, keep in mind that both Martin and Catarina are used to what they're used to years of quiet, solitude, monastic life. Now here they are, raising ten children, running a 40 bedroom hotel, a farm, a school and a church. It was self-sacrificing humility on display. The school of character was not the quiet of a monastery but the chaos of family and marriage. Number three marriage is not an antidote for suffering, it opens doors for suffering.
Speaker 2:And again, I'll hopefully just wet your appetite to read. I've had people, by the way, ask me. I'm not sure I've said it this hour or yet I tend to forget what I've said after three hours, but these sermons are posted online around Tuesday. You can watch them, you can read them and I have talked in there. My bibliography and all of my quotes are footnoted and so you can see the four or five biographies that I've read to prepare for this message, and I don't really have time to get into all the suffering that they experienced, but I want to focus on hers.
Speaker 2:She was the target of incredible vitriol. Everybody was against her, both on the Protestant side and the Catholic side. The Catholic side, of course, thought that she was disloyal to Christ. She violated her vows, essentially divorcing Jesus. The Protestant side believed she was a distraction to the Reformation. She was going to slow Martin down, she was going to get in the way, and that was. Those were the good rumors.
Speaker 2:Immediately after marriage, pamphlets by the church circulated throughout Germany that she was a traitor to Christ. In one she was accused of being quote a dancing girl who had seduced a monk in the marriage. You may know the name Erasmus. Catholic Church leader Erasmus accused her of being with child, forcing Martin to marry her even though the rumor would be dispelled because they'd have a baby 12 months after their marriage, their first child. He, erasmus, begrudgingly accepted that he'd been wrong, but the rumor still had been spoken and she never really did live that down. In fact, there's an engraving produced during their lifetime which depicts Martin and Catarina and their six children. This is sort of the forerunner of Olin Mills, they would do engravings and they have. You have Martin and Catarina and the six children, and lurking in the background is the seventh child.
Speaker 2:Even Henry VIII, who was living during this time, adds his own personal condemnation to the audacity of their marriage, as if he's got a leg to stand on to talk about marriage, having killed a few of his wives. A year after their marriage, two church officials wrote letters telling Catarina to repent and return to the mother church or suffer the torments of hell. Now, luther, for the most part, didn't respond to these particular accusations. But he did this time. He wrote back and he informed these officials that he had bound the two letters in a little booklet and he had given them to his servants to use as toilet paper. They're in the household and they were free to continue sending more. That's Martin Luther, even after Catarina's death.
Speaker 2:In fact, in an 800-page history of Martin Luther, published as late as 1904, continues to promote the rumor that the Reformation was actually started by Luther, who wanted to distract the world away from his fornication with Catarina. We can't imagine the impact of this malicious slander on her heart immediately starting out. 26 years old, she's the lightning rod of so much hatred and yet, with humility, served the Lord and stayed faithful to her husband. Let me give you one more principle worth observing. Number four marriage is not a distraction from ministry, it is an expansion of ministry. And I've said it before but I'll say it again, that their marriage would become a partnership that, especially in that world, would be a unique and just as radical as the Reformation which would expand the ministry potential, for instance. I'll give you a couple of quick illustrations.
Speaker 2:Martin could not organize anything I don't know about you, but I take great comfort in that fact and that was soon clear in their home. But what he did was really radical. He actually handed over the finances and the administration of their property, household purchases and all of that to Catarina, and it wasn't long before she had the family on solid footing. But again, this would be unique in this generation. In fact, he would even further and gave her the legal right to purchase additional property, which she did. And then she purchased more cattle and it isn't long before the household's actually making money, which they desperately needed. This was a revolutionary example. To set Another example, luther's most famous work is called Table Talks, which isn't really a book he wrote.
Speaker 2:It's a compendium of conversations that took place around his table at night. Every evening there would be a light supper. Catarina would fix it for all the guests and all the professors and all the students that would sit around the table and debate theology and ask Luther questions. We take that word supper, by the way. That's a derivative of the German word for sap or soup, and so in the evenings they have light soup which she fixed, and after they ate you'd have this debate and discussion ongoing. And, by the way, she didn't leave the room. Luther invited her to stay. She'd pull up a chair, she'd engage in the debating and she had her own questions which she could freely ask. Again, this is a reformation of a home that all of these guests are seeing almost accidentally. That would change the way they view marriage and the home, where the wife would be given over to the children and to the kitchen and the husband would engage in the debate of the day.
Speaker 2:A little known fact is that the gathering around the table at night was originally referred to by the students as Katie's table. This was Katie's table. She prepared the table, she made the soup, she allowed for the discussion to take place and one of the greatest works we have on the reformation by Martin Luther were discussions that took place at her table. Without Katie, there's no Katie's table. Without Katie, by the way, there's no soup either, and there they gathered.
Speaker 2:She is, frankly, one of the unsung heroes of the Protestant Reformation as she served him and, in unique ways, allowed both of them and Martin to serve these students and, beyond them, the world. What a revolutionary model for the home it's presented to these church leaders and these students and these professors, these pastors. Everything radical which would have included something like the woman handling the finances and Martin willingly giving that to her and Martin taking on a role which included changing and washing diapers, men and women, would leave the Luther home profoundly impacted by this couple, this household, this example, this reformation not only of the church and of true doctrine but of marriage and parenting, these principles of partnership and love and loyalty and commitment and humility, and by the design of God from their home it would spread literally around the world and more than we know, it's impacted your home and mine to this day.
Speaker 1:That was Stephen Davie, the president of Wisdom International. You're listening to his series Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith. If you enjoyed hearing the story of Katarina Luther, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening. Stephen has a website filled with resources to help you know what the Bible says, understand what it means and apply it to your life. Learn more at wisdominternational. I'm Scott Wiley. Thanks for listening to Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith and I'll see you in the next one.
