A Word from Bob: Today’s post is Part 3 in a week-long blog mini-series on Reformation Week and the life and ministry of Martin Luther. You can read Part 1 here: How Do We Find Peace with a Holy God? You can read Part 2 here: Luther’s Spiritual Separation Anxiety. This blog mini-series is taken from chapters 1 and 2 of my book, Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life.
Luther’s Anfechtungen
Always the astute soul physician, Luther supplied a spiritual diagnostic label for his spiritual trials: anfechtungen (the plural form of the German word anfechtung). No single English word can translate anfechtung, but an image captures the idea:
An angry, finger-wagging, judgmental, harsh, condemning, aloof, holy God.
Anfechtungen paints the image of a hopeless sinner in the hands of an angry God.
With anfechtung, Luther pictured the opposite of the father in the parable of the prodigal son:
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).
Anfechtungen are spiritual doubts that we could ever be forgiven and welcomed home as the Father’s son or daughter. They are spiritual doubts that we could ever find peace with God, ever have a relationship with a forgiving Father. Luther used anfechtung to picture God as angry with and incensed against him:
“When I was in spiritual distress [anfechtung] a gentle word would restore my spirit. Sometimes my confessor said to me when I repeatedly discussed silly sins with him, ‘You are a fool. God is not incensed against you, but you are incensed against God. God is not angry with you, but you are angry with God.’”[i]
Luther obsessed about how to calm his terrified conscience and was desperate to know how he could find rest for his soul. The Reformer felt hopeless as he faced the eternal dilemma of not being able to satisfy God at any point. He asked:
“How can I face the terror of the Holy? The words ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness of God’ struck my conscience like lightning. When I heard them I was exceedingly terrified. If God is righteous I thought, he must punish me.”[ii]
Anfechtung was Luther’s label for his:
“Grinding sense of being utterly lost. By it he intended the idea of swarming attacks of doubt that could convince people that God’s love was not for them.”[iii]
Anfechtung is the experience of always falling short and never measuring up because our human balance sheet always shows a deficit before a perfect God.
Luther was always asking the questions, Where can I find peace with God? Despairing of any hope for finding peace, Luther lived constantly haunted by the ultimate fear of estrangement from God—spiritual separation anxiety.
But what was Luther to do? Before he discovered Christ’s gospel of grace, he did what everyone in his day did: he sought peace through works.
In Superhuman Effort, Luther Sought a Holy Standing Before a Holy God
In his dread and despair, Luther trusted in his own human wisdom and his own human works. Instead of clinging to the sufficiency of Christ and Scripture, Luther attempted to cure his soul through the self-sufficient methods common in the medieval church of his day.
Luther entered the monastery to quiet his soul and to find peace with God. It did not work. The occasion of saying his first mass was like another thunderstorm—this one in his spirit:
“When at length I stood before the altar and was to consecrate, I was so terrified of the words aeterno vivo vero Deo [to Thee the eternal, living, and true God] that I thought of running away from the altar and said to my prior, ‘Reverend Father, I’m afraid I must leave the altar.’ He shouted to me, ‘Go ahead, faster, faster!’ So terrified was I by those words!”[iv]
Luther reported that at these words (to Thee the eternal, living, and true God), he was utterly stupefied and terror-stricken. He thought to himself:
“With what tongue shall I address such Majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Majesty? The angels surround him. At his nod the earth trembles. And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say ‘I want this, I ask for that?’ For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal and the true God.”[v]
Since Luther did not believe that he could appear before the tribunal of a holy God with an impure heart; he must become holy. Thus he had a great thirst for spiritual purity but unanswered questions about where he could find it. Luther’s quest for a fellowship-through-holiness took him through the path of the spiritual disciplines.
In the religious atmosphere of his day, where better to stalk holiness than in the monastery? As Luther preached in a sermon on June 24, 1524:
“The greatest holiness one could imagine drew us into the cloister…. We fasted and prayed repeatedly, wore hair shirts under woolen cowls, led a strict and austere life. In short, we took on a monkish holiness. We were so deeply involved in that pretentious business that we considered ourselves holy from head to toe.”[vi]
In the monastery, one found heroic, spiritual athletes who rigorously attempted to take heaven by storm. One of the privileges of monastic life was that it freed the sinner from distractions and allowed the monk to strive to save his soul by practicing the spiritual disciplines: charity, sobriety, love, chastity, poverty, obedience, fasting, vigils, and mortifications of the flesh. Luther became a monk among monks:
“Whatever good works a man might do to save himself, these Luther was resolved to perform.”[vii]
Luther’s own words highlighted his obsessive dedication. If the apostle Paul could say that he was a Hebrew among Hebrews, then Luther could certainly proclaim that he was a monk among monks:
“I was a good monk, and I kept the rules of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery it was I. All my brothers in the monastery who knew me will bear me out. If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading, and other work.”[viii]
Luther later reflected on how “I almost fasted myself to death, for again and again I went for three days without taking a drop of water or a morsel of food. I was very serious about it.”[ix]
Despite Luther’s desire to find peace with God, all the rigors of the ascetic life could not quiet his conscience:
“I was very pious in the monastery, yet I was sad because I thought God was not gracious to me. I said mass and prayed and hardly ever saw or heard a woman as long as I was in the order.”[x]
Luther could not satisfy God at any point.
The Rest of the Story
In Part 4, we learn that Luther was not yet ready to surrender to Christ. Instead, he turned to the merits of the saint instead of to the cross of Christ.
Join the Conversation
Like Luther, in what ways have you depended upon your own efforts and works instead of upon Christ alone?
[i]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, p. 15.
[ii]Ibid., 193.
[iii]Kittelson, p. 56.
[iv]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, p. 156-157.
[v]Bainton, p. 30.
[vi]Quoted in Hendrix, Martin Luther, p. 27, from WA 17:1, p. 309.
[vii]Bainton, p. 34.
[viii]Ibid.
[ix]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, pp. 339-340.
[x]Ibid., p. 95.
