Frank Dietz: Soldier’s face, gentle heart (1939 - 2021)

I can still see him, hands on his hips, standing in the entrance hall of the large house in Wassenaar, Holland, where about fifteen of us were living: ‘OK, let’s mobilise’. Gravelly, a North West Pacific accent, the voice had authority. So did the face. The skin was weathered, pockmarked, rough. In that face you could sense the wind and sun and dust that his German forefathers had stood up to as they built their farms in the new homeland. There was a toughness there. It was a face that you would expect to see in a trench, a dug out, or a sentry post. It was a soldier’s face, and it made perfect sense that he would be a pioneer in a Christian movement called, ‘Operation Mobilisation.’ (OM)

 Strictly I should not have been in that house back in January 1977. It was the venue for a mid-year new recruits conference, and, somehow, I had got there, even though I was not a committed Christian. The first few days were a conference blur of meetings and meals. However one thing I remember: we were told that the main leader was not there. He was coming. And when he did arrive, it was obvious why he was the main leader. There was something deeply settled about his inner self. He arrived during the day, and he spoke to us in the evening. There were no theatrics, no hysteria, no emotionalism. There was a report, followed by measured and clear preaching. He believed every word he was saying.

 This was Frank Dietz. Already he had pioneered India for OM and been director of the first ship, M.V. Logos. After these few months in Holland he would go on to take charge of OM’s second ship, M.V. Doulos, and that would lead him to become a prime-mover in bringing the South American church into modern mission. Along with that soldier’s face was a military discipline that had kept on obeying the command he had heard as a young man while angry with God for allowing two of his siblings to die in a car crash. The command was in the Bible: Preach the Gospel to the nations. He obeyed, and through OM ships and their work in India hundreds of millions have indeed heard the Gospel. 

 I became a Christian during that conference, and once this was discovered, some leaders – quite rightly – might have said, ‘OM isn’t a place for new Christians.’ I could easily have soon been on my way home. Frank must have been involved in a gracious decision. The other new recruits were sent to join teams in Europe. I was to stay in Wassenaar with Frank’s team till the summer. There was nothing I could offer them. It was just kindness, a desire to help me start my Christian life.

 Every morning, even when it was still dark, I would meet Frank in that large hall and we would go running. He believed in physical fitness. On our return it was time for our own personal prayer time, and after breakfast there was a two-hour prayer meeting. In the afternoon Frank would send me and a young Italian man out for door to door evangelism among the super-rich of Wassenaar; in the evening there would either be meetings or free time. Once a week there was a half night of prayer. Frank believed in prayer. And I believe he prayed for me, wanting me to grow as a Christian.

 There was talk of Frank visiting Switzerland for some church meetings. He wanted to take me and a young Filipino man. The Filipino would play the guitar. I could do nothing. It was again sheer kindness. Frank drove us all the way there and we stayed in the house of the then leader of OM in Switzerland. During the day Frank would draw the Filipino and I aside for a Bible study on the Sermon on the Mount. I can still remember his opening point: ‘Jesus saw the crowds…and did something’. And so we worked through the beatitudes. It is not so much what was said, but the fact that while this man had been used to preaching to hundreds if not thousands in India and on the Logos, here he was making it a priority to study the Bible with just two of us.

 Frank stayed in touch with me when I went to university later that year, and after I had graduated invited me to join him on the Doulos. And that was the plan in September 1982; but at a much larger new recruits conference my mind was changed and I went to Pakistan. Thankfully we never lost contact and I know he prayed for my ministry in the Iranian church. He had a very personal connection to Iran. He married a Finnish lady, Anneli, in Tehran in 1967. 

 Frank was certainly a tough soldier; but he had a gentle, caring heart. This was on full display in the last years of his life when this man of intense action gave himself up entirely to nursing Anneli when she suffered a stroke. 

I am deeply grateful that all those years ago that kindness thought it was worthwhile giving time to a nineteen year old taking his first steps on the Christian journey. 

Was Jean Calvin repulsive?

Calvin can cause severe reactions. I once read this: ‘The less said about that repulsive person the better.’ Repulsive is a very strong word to use for a respected preacher and theologian. One wonders if it can have any justification. 

There is nothing remotely repulsive about Calvin’s life-style. He rose at 4.00 a.m every morning for prayer. There was also prayer at lunch-time and at night. There was also a lot of fasting. He spent the day studying, dictating letters, or attending meetings, or writing. He wrote a lot. From 1550 till his death in 1564 it is estimated 100,000 of Calvin’s words were printed every year. And of course every week, he was preaching. There is no scandal in his domestic life. In the summer of 1540 he married the widow of an Anabaptist, Idelette de Bure, and we know they had one son, who died shortly after his birth. When Idelette died in the spring of 1549 Calvin wrote to his close friends, William Farrel and Pierre Viret, ‘I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life, of one who, had it been so ordered, would not only have been the willing sharer of my indigence, but even of my death.’ Calvin never married again, but lived with his brother Antoinne who, with his wife, looked after the house and any family business affairs. Like many intellectuals Calvin was not a man partial to small talk, as one biographer says, he had a ‘restless urgency’ about him. However he did enjoy a glass of good wine in the company of close friends. It is suggested that the ‘restless urgency’ was because physically Calvin was frail, suffering from migraines and stomach and bowel disorders. He sensed his life could be cut short at any time.

If the word repulsive finds no home in Calvin’s personal life, perhaps its explanation rests in a strong reaction to his teaching. For many would recoil from Calvin’s views on predestination, indeed Calvin shrank from it himself, calling reprobation that ‘horrible’ decree’. It is of course unfair to shrink Calvin’s massive contribution as a writer and preacher to Christendom to this one teaching. The topic barely appears in the 1536 edition of his ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’, and there is only a shortish chapter in the 1559 edition. Moreover Calvin warns his readers not to pry too much into this mystery. It is impossible to think that any fair-minded man would call another repulsive for having a view on predestination, especially when such a view is connected to the teaching of Jesus Christ, and St Paul and St Peter.

Another reason for disliking Calvin’s personality is his reputation for enforcing a strict version of Christianity on Geneva. This happened through the Consistory, a morality committee which Calvin dominated. He was very committed to the Consistory for he saw discipline as being the heart-beat for a successful Christian and church. So Jeffery Watts writes:

 ‘…this towering intellect dedicated the better part of at least one day a week to listening to the mundane and at times even petty stories about Genevans’ quarrels, insults, blasphemies, illicit affairs, marital disputes, and superstitions.’

To this list one can add drunkenness, dancing, gambling, laziness, luxurious clothing, celebrating Christmas, truancy from church, a family’s sleeping arrangements – even choosing a non-Biblical name for your child.

Watts estimates that during Calvin’s time over 5% of Genevans were summoned before this morality court. Often those summoned would be admonished to mend their ways, to be reconciled to an enemy, to forgive, and so have a clear conscience. If the Consistory were not satisfied they could exclude someone from the Lord’s Supper. There is nothing controversial here. If someone claimed to be a Christian, then it was the church’s duty to bring discipline when needed. Moreover visitors noted the positive impact Calvin’s Consistory on Geneva. John Knox famously called the city, ‘the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the apostles.’ And the German pastor, Valentin Andreae, visiting in 1555 wrote:

 “There is in that city as a special ornament, a moral discipline which makes weekly investigations into the conduct and even the smallest transgressions of the citizens. All cursing and swearing, gambling, luxury, strife, hatred, fraud, etc. are forbidden, while greater sins are hardly ever heard of. What a glorious ornament of the Christian religion is such a purity of morals!”

There was though a punitive side to the work of the Consistory, and this was more than banning someone from the Lord’s Supper. For the Consistory worked very closely with what was known as the ‘Small Council’, which ran Geneva. Calvin had particular influence over this council because in 1541 they had invited him back to Geneva to lead the church there. They believed that Calvin’s clear vision for what a godly society should look like would benefit the city more than what Calvin’s more worldly enemies were offering. On his return Calvin got the ‘Small Council’ to agree to his ordinances for church life in the city and so a close partnership began.

That partnership meant the ‘Small Council’ punished people after an investigation by the Consistory. This is where for modern readers reading about Calvin becomes difficult. At the instigation of the Consistory we read of humiliating rituals of apologies, whippings, prison on bread and water, exile, even executions. Sadly there is no shortage of examples. In August 1546 Amied Chappuis wanted to call his son Claude, the name of a popular Roman Catholic saint. but the priest called the baby Abraham. An enraged Chappuis pulled the infant out of the priest’s arms before the ceremony was completed. Calvin’s Consistory, which had initiated the campaign against the use of non-Biblical names, wanted action. Despite a lot of popular pressure the magistrates came down on their side and Chappuis had to spend a few days in prison and publicly confess his errors. Jerome Bolsec, an ex-friar, was appalled at Calvin’s teaching on predestination, calling it ‘scandalous’ and ‘heretical’. That did not go down well with the Consistory and in December 1551 Bolsec was banished from Geneva for life. Pernette Bresson unwisely gave her views about conception to two daughters of ministers. She told them that if you wanted beautiful children you should either look at a beautiful picture or think of a good-looking person, her example was Theodore Beza, Calvin’s protégé and successor. Bresson was already on the Consistory’s radar because she was meeting a lot with a married man which was causing gossip. In May 1562 she was whipped and banished from Geneva.

Fornication could be easily proved if a wife became pregnant too soon after the wedding. The usual punishment for this in the 1540s was three days in prison. Later this increased to six days. For adultery the punishment was much more severe. So in 1562 a rural labourer, Jacques Lombard, was whipped through the streets till he bled. Sometimes adulterers were also banished. And a few were executed. In August 1560 Anne Lemoine and Antoine Cossenex were found guilty of having an adulterous affair. She was drowned; he was beheaded. In January 1561 Nicolas Lenepveaux was beheaded for adultery with several women. In July the same year, Bernadine Neyrod was found guilty of again committing adultery. She was drowned. Her lover, because it was his first offence, was whipped and banished from the city for life.

Execution for adultery: and in two cases, execution for heresy. Jacques Gruet, son of a notary, first got into trouble with the Consistory in 1546 for dancing. He spent some time in prison for this. On June 27^th the next year a threatening note complaining of too many masters was left in Calvin’s pulpit. Suspicion immediately fell on Gruet, and his house was searched. From his papers it was clear he was no fan of Calvin (arrogant, ambitious, sneering), and he held unorthodox religious views. Christianity was a fable, and all the laws were  made for the pleasure of man. Calvin acknowledged that the hand-writing of the note was not Gruet’s – but now there was something perhaps more serious. Heresy. Calvin urged the authorities to be vigorous in their investigation. Gruet was tortured and pleaded guilty to both heresy and writing the note. He was sentenced to death, and beheaded on July 27^th.

The other man to be executed for heresy is better known. This was Michael Servetus. He and Calvin had history. The polymath Servetus had long held colourful theological views, and back in 1534 had asked to meet Calvin to discuss them. Though Calvin travelled to Paris, at some risk, Servetus did not turn up. Later the two had some correspondence which then Calvin shut down, writing to his close friend William Farel that the Spaniard’s ideas were ‘delirious fancies’. In actual fact there were only two aspects of Servetus’ teaching which were against orthodoxy: denials of original sin and the Trinity. He was also against predestination and infant baptism, but that opposition cannot be termed as ‘delirious fancies’. He also believed that the papacy was Satanic and the world would end in the 16^th C. While these might be fanciful, this was fairly standard fare at the time. Calvin continued his letter to Farel, damningly, with this:

 ‘He offers to come here if I agree. But I am unwilling to pledge my word for his safety, for if he does come, and my authority is of no avail, I shall never suffer him to depart alive.’

It has been suggested that Servetus had some sort of obsession about Calvin, for perversely in 1553 he did come to Geneva, even to the very church where the reformer was preaching. He was recognised and arrested. Calvin then drew up a document outlining all of Servetus’ teachings, and later appeared in court as a witness. After consulting the other Swiss cities the magistrates unanimously sentenced Servetus to be burned at the stake. This happened on October 27^th.

For a defender of Calvin to say these draconian punishments were not directly his responsibility is disingenuous. They were part and parcel of a system he had created, all the evidence points to him supporting the harsh sentences, and, moreover, it is clear Calvin could be active behind the scenes, as with Gruet, if he thought a more robust approach was necessary.

We will come to what all of this means for how we view Calvin the man, but first there are two unpleasant character flaws to consider: self-righteousness and vindictiveness. Most of the cases that came before the Consistory were the humdrum conflicts of domestic life and the aim of Calvin and his colleagues was to try and bring reconciliation, and an emphasis on their proceedings was that both sides had to bring an apology. Historian Jeffery Watts has this comment regarding Calvin and this issue of making an apology:

There was an important exception to the Consistory’s usual assumption that all parties likely contributed to disputes and accordingly should apologize and forgive one another: whenever Calvin himself was involved in a disagreement, the fault was entirely the other party’s. In more than twenty years of Consistory registers, there is not a trace of Calvin ever issuing an apology, but there were several instances in which the reformer demanded reprisals against anyone who besmirched his reputation or challenged his authority.

Of course it might be there was no genuine need for Calvin to apologize over these twenty years, but given his tendency to have ‘spasms of anger’ it is extremely likely that he sometimes fell below the Scriptural standards of ‘letting everything be done in love’ (1 Cor 16:4)and showing 'perfect courtesy to all men’ (Titus 3:2) It is not unreasonable to conclude that perhaps some self-righteousness was at work.

Watts also refers to the treatment given to those who challenged his authority. This points to Calvin perhaps having a vindictive streak. Watts gives the example of Pierre Ameaux who had called Calvin an ‘evil foreigner’ amongst other insults. The city officials demanded a public apology from Ameaux, but only in front of their assembly, known as the Council Of Two Hundred. This was not enough for Calvin. He went to the Small Council and said he would refuse to preach until Ameaux had done public penance. And this is what happened. Ameaux had to walk through the streets bareheaded, carrying a torch, and kneeling to ask God for forgiveness. In his biography of Calvin, Bruce Gordon, tells the story of Henri de la Mare, a minister, who in Calvin’s eyes had not been completely loyal. So Gordon writes that Calvin never missed an opportunity ‘to make the man’s life a misery…He was moved from a parish in the city to the countryside’, his house and even church building were not properly maintained; his allowance was never raised. Then for his sympathy with Ameaux he was imprisoned and dismissed. It would seem that both men were victims not of sensible Christian discipline and forgiveness, but Calvin’s personal vindictiveness. Self-righteousness and vindictiveness are not pleasant qualities. However very few of us are unacquainted with their shadows. Given all of Calvin’s strengths and talents it would seem churlish to write him off as repulsive solely over these character flaws, especially when we are looking on from such a distance.

We are still left though with Calvin’s close involvement in those draconian punishments. If one envisages Servetus being led in silence to the execution pyre with Calvin’s lieutenant, William Farel, at his side, and then to hear the shriek of horror as the fire was lit, the word ‘repulsive’ is surely not out of place. It was a repulsive sight – deemed so by many others across Europe at the time. Indeed the whole idea that a Christian minister, preaching God’s love for sinners, should also be involved in meting out punishments such as whippings, imprisonment, exile, and execution is surely repugnant. 

But I am not sure they make Calvin himself repulsive.

For Calvin was acting wholly within the cultural norms of his own day. One would have hoped that this man steeped in the Bible would have been able to have raised his vision beyond those cultural expectations. But he wasn’t able to. Nor was Philip Melanchthon, nor was Frederick Bullinger – both supported the execution of Servetus. The irony is that John Calvin, the great opponent of the Roman Catholic church, was unable to escape the influence of this church when it came to heresy. In Calvin’s mind to tolerate heresy and blasphemy was to be their supporter. That was exactly the logic of the Roman Catholic church and their inquisition. This line of thinking finds no place in the New Testament. Here the horrors are inflicted on Christians. There is not a whisper of a minister of Christ seeking to inflict them on others and Calvin is wholly wrong when he tries to argue that the incident concerning Ananias and Saphira in Acts 5 supports Christians using the death sentence. The root of this thinking goes back not to Jesus, but to Augustine who believed that people should be ‘compelled’ to enter the church. In the Medieval period this cemented into what historian Paul Johnson calls the ‘Total Society’. This is the world Calvin was born into. Everyone, except the Jews, were Christians. The idea that people could choose to be Christians was not on his radar. Moreover he and the other reformers were ferociously hostile to those who opposed infant baptism, which ensured the continuation of the ‘total society’. Augustine and to a certain extent Luther accepted that once forced into the church, the wheat and the tares would grow together. For Luther the important issue was that people understood that salvation was by faith. Calvin though put the emphasis on discipline, hence his commitment to the Consistory and all that followed from that, including, when necessary, to apply severe punishments to serious sin and heresy. In this he was diligently sincere. Calvin believed that if Genevans followed Christian standards, this would create a happier society, and, more importantly, be pleasing to God.

This vision was of course, to use his own words about Servetus, full of ‘delirious fancies’, not least because Jesus taught that most people will take the broad road, not the narrow one. However it was a fanciful vision held by nearly every Christian leader – Protestant or Catholic – in Europe. Hence my hesitation to use the word repulsive about Calvin as a man because of these severe punishments. In our day many believe it is right for a woman to be able to execute her unborn baby. I and many others find such a deed repulsive, however I would never dream of calling the woman who takes that fatal step, or the doctor who signs the execution warrant as being repulsive as people. I accept they live in a different moral paradigm. If we rightly hesitate to call repulsive those in our own day who act differently to our own mores, how much more should we hesitate when looking back on those who lived in a different age.

While we should perhaps use kinder words for Jean Calvin, nevertheless we should eschew the tendency of some preachers in the Reformed tradition who refer to the Frenchman as if he was a perfect saint whose every word is almost on a par with Scripture. And we should never forget why the word repulsive is used by his critics. It was because he wanted to impose his morality on an entire society. 

This is a doomed venture. That is the lesson of history. Think 17^th England; or the prohibition in 20th USA.  It is also the lesson of the New Testament. The new Jerusalem is in the future; not now. So whenever we see this oft failed vision raising its head, as it has done recently in America, sensible Christian leaders need to call it out for what it is – delusional fancy. And they need to call Christians back to what the New Testament asks them to do – preach the Gospel of God’s love to sinners and serve the poor. If only Calvin had stayed with that mandate and left the running of Geneva to the Caesars of his day then nobody in their right mind would ever think that such a derogatory word as repulsive could have any connection with Calvin. That though was not the sort of world Calvin was engaging with. Church and state were not separate, and with that reality in mind, we should be temperate in our language about Jean Calvin.

 

Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) – a man to hate?

I once heard a gentleman say, with some vehemence, ‘I hate Luther’.

There is plenty to hate about Luther’s Reformation – the ripping apart of Christendom, the religious wars, and, worst of all, the vicious Antisemitism. 

There is also plenty about Luther that makes it almost impossible to hate him – his vulnerability, his genius, the herculean output.

A man to hate or not? It is not an easy question. We will start with why it is difficult to hate him; and then move to the dark shadows that might mean, especially in today's climate, that we should campaign for his forty plus statues to be torn down. 

Vulnerability

Reading about Luther it is difficult not to feel sympathy. His early days as a monk were difficult; he was plagued by depression; he was the underdog who challenged an establishment that burnt its enemies; and he was a father who buried two of his own children.

Difficult start

Luther believed in hell and did not want to go there. So, when nearly struck by lightning in July 1505, his fragile mortality laid bare, Luther vowed to become a monk. This was the surest way to save your soul from the eternal fires. He abandoned his legal studies and entered the Augustinian monastery in July 1505.

His father, Hans Luther, a miner from peasant stock, was enraged, leaving Luther very disturbed. The day a monk celebrated his first Mass was a joyous occasion: not for Luther. It started well. His father arrived with twenty horsemen, and Hans made a generous gift to the monastery. Luther was hopeful for a reconciliation, so at the celebratory meal after the Mass he turned to his father and asked about his father’s opposition to his monastic call. One biographer, Roland Bainton, writes: ‘This was too much for old Hans…He flared up before all the doctors and the masters and the guests, ‘You learned scholar, have you never read in the Bible that you should honour your father and mother? And here you have left me and your dear mother to look after ourselves in our old age’. Stunned Luther reminded his father of his heavenly calling. Hans said this could have been the apparition of the devil.

It is hard surely not to feel some sympathy here for the young Luther – his fear of hell, facing the opposition of his parents, the hope for a kind word from his father.

Depression

Before that first Mass Luther had a terrible attack of nerves. He was petrified he might make a mistake. Later he wrote, ‘Who am I, that I should lift up my hands to the divine Majesty? At his nod the earth trembles. And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say I want this, I ask for that?’

This emotional intensity often turned into what we call depression, but what Luther called, anfechtung. This comes from the German word fechten which means to 'fence with'. It is battling with your own thoughts, the devil and his demons. This was hell for Luther, or, as another biographer Eric Metaxas says, 'a widening hole of sheer hopelessness, an increasing cacophony of devils voices accusing him of a thousand things.' 

Luther's inner unrest soon showed itself in the monastery. He was a conscientious monk. As he put it colourfully – ‘If ever a monk got to heaven through monasticism, I should have been that man’. But he was never sure if he had done enough. ‘My conscience could never give me certainty: I always doubted and said ‘You did not do that correctly’. This meant he spent a lot of time in the confession box, so much so that his confessor, the kindly Johann von Staupitz, eventually became frustrated. He told Luther, ‘‘If you expect Christ to forgive you, come in with something to forgive – parricide, blasphemy, adultery – instead of all these peccadilloes.’

At times Luther’s depression became so severe he would wake up in a cold sweat – feeling wholly abandoned, facing only the wrath of God. It was despair. In 1518 he wrote, ‘God appears horrifyingly angry and with him the whole creation. There can be no flight, nor consolation either from within or from without, but all is accusation…the soul cannot believe that it can ever be redeemed.’

It is likely that it was Luther’s inner battles that led him – now as a Professor of Theology at the new university of Wittenberg – to study the Bible obsessively and to re-discover the doctrine of justification of faith where the believer in Christ can be sure of God’s favour.

One would then perhaps expect Luther’s battle with depression to end. It didn’t. During his time in hiding in the fortress of Wartburg (1521-22) he endured insomnia and nightmares. According to another biographer, Vivian Green, Luther felt the devil everywhere: ‘He heard him rattling the hazel nuts in a sack; he listened to him scuttling down the stairs, making a great racket of it as his cloven hoofs hit the stone.’

In 1527 his anfechtung was ferocious. On the morning of July 6^th he woke with overwhelming feelings of sadness and his own unworthiness. He stumbled through that day, and in the evening, tormented in his spirit, was convinced he was going to die. He did not die, but for the next two weeks he could neither read or write. The depression lingered on into the autumn. In August he wrote to his friend and colleague, Philip Melanchthon. ‘I have lost Christ completely and have been shaken by the floods and storms of despair and blasphemy.’

It is normal to feel sympathy for those who endure this grim malady. Even more so when a man prone to depression is ready stand up against an all-powerful establishment.

The underdog on trial at Worms

There is nothing in Luther’s background that speaks of wealth or power. So, watching him appear before the assembled might of the state and church at Worms in April 1521 has all the drama of all the David and Goliath stories ever told.

If Luther had been the clever poor man out to make a mark on the world, a Thomas Wolsey (the son of an Ipswich butcher) or a Thomas Cromwell (the son of brewer in Putney) perhaps we might feel less sympathy. But Luther had no ambition to become a heroic leader. It was only when many of his Wittenberg parishioners travelled just twenty-five miles to Juterborg in the spring of 1517 to buy indulgences from Johan Tetzel that he felt bound to act. Today many are disgusted with indulgences – a piece of paper promising forgiveness of sins – because it was a vulgar money-making scam; however for Luther the issue was pastoral and theological. He was appalled that his parishioners would be deceived into thinking they had booked themselves a place in heaven for mere money, without any repentance or faith in Christ.

Luther’s response was the normal one for a priest and academic. As a priest he preached against indulgences and wrote to the Archbishop of Mainz; as an academic he posted an invitation to discuss 95 theses about indulgences on the Wittenberg university notice board – the door of the cathedral. The theses were in Latin, they were for his colleagues, not the ordinary man. Luther was not wanting to start the Reformation; he wanted to iron out the theological issue of indulgences.

So if the church had ignored Luther there might well have been no Reformation, for Luther was not at all interested in a confrontation with Rome when he posted his theses. But the church did respond. When Tetzel heard about the theses the former inquisitor said he would soon be throwing Luther to the fire. He meant it literally. Tetzel went onto frame the debate solely as Luther standing against the Pope’s authority, and so when eventually the matter reached Rome, even the ‘polished dilletante’ Leo X felt obliged to act. This eventually led to Luther being summoned to appear before the Emperor, the young and orthodox Charles V, at the Diet of Worms to defend his teaching.

It is hard not to like Luther travelling the long road from Wittenberg to Worms in early spring 1521. On the way he taught his companions from the Book of Joshua; or he played the lute for them. And when he received a message to turn back because he faced certain arrest and execution, Luther’s resolve was not shaken: He wrote to his friend Spalatin, the secretary to the Elector of Saxony, who had sent the warning: ‘Christ lives and we shall enter Worms in spite of all the gates of hell and the powers in the air’.

And it is hard not to like him as he enters what for him was a criminal court room full of some of the most powerful people in the world. Metaxas paints the scene well:

‘The seven electors themselves were there, plus innumerable archbishops and princes and dukes and other nobles, all decked out in their sumptuous and bejewelled best, replete with gaudy golden chains and befeathered hats, and all of them stood agape at the curious spectacle of this humble monk waking into their midst.’

Luther messed up as soon as came into the Emperor’s presence. He saw a friend and greeted him cheerfully. For this he earned a rebuke from the marshal. He was only to speak when spoken to. An eye witness at the Diet wrote this about Luther:

He was ‘about forty years old, somewhat more or less, robust in physique and face, with not especially good eyes and lively features which he frivolously changed’

This seeming frivolity also irked the Pope’s nuncio who wrote in a letter: 

‘The fool entered with a smile on his face and kept moving his head back and forth, up and down, in the presence of the emperor’.

There is a simple reason for Luther’s demeanour. He was nervous. This is confirmed when he is shown the books he has written and asked whether he is the author. An observer noted this about Luther’s reply.

‘He spoke with a subdued, soft voice, as if frightened and shocked, with little calm in his visage and gestures, also with little deference in his attitude and countenance.’

We now know how this part of story ends. Luther was condemned by Charles, but managed to leave Worms and shortly after was kidnapped by friends and taken to hide in a castle in Wartburg.

But Luther did not know this.

When he entered his court-room he was the heretical underdog standing before an all-powerful master and ecclesiastical establishment. The choice he was facing was to either recant, or be burnt at the stake.

The natural human emotion to such a situation is sympathy, not hate. Indeed to hate Luther in this scene, whatever your religious beliefs, would be akin to hating David before Goliath, or Paul before Agrippa – or Jesus before Pontius Pilate.

Burying his children

Most of us feel not just sympathy but acute pain when we meet someone who has had to bury one of their own children. It is true that until recently this was common, but that does not take away the agony of the experience.

Luther had to bury two of his children.

The ex-monk Luther married the ex-nun Katherina von Bora in June 1525. They had six children, and also brought up four orphans. Their first son Hans was born a year later, and in December 1527 Luther had his first daughter, Elizabeth.

Luther was apprehensive about the delivery because in August the plague had come to Wittenberg. Other university staff had moved with their families to Jena, Luther felt duty bound to stay and care for the sick in their home. During this time the wife of Luther’s secretary, Hanna Rorer, had given birth to a still born child, and she herself then died of the plague. Luther writes, ‘I am concerned about the delivery of my wife, so greatly has the example of the Deacon’s wife affected me.’ Worse his first son was struck down and for several days was unable to eat.

Hans survived, Katherine had a normal delivery and Elizabeth came into the world – for a little while. She died eight months later. Katherine thought it was because of the plague, so implying that if the family had moved with others out of Wittenberg their daughter might still have lived.

She wrote: The good Lord gave me a little girl, the sweet little Elisabeth. Here, the plague is dead and buried. However, it seemed as if the terrible scourge had marked the child, even before she was born. After eight months, the sweet little Elisabeth said goodbye to her father and her mother to go to Christ.’

Luther was overwhelmed by grief:

‘It is amazing what a grieving, almost womanly heart she has bequeathed me. Never would I have believed that a father’s heart could feel so tenderly for his child.’

Some light filtered into this sadness the next year when Katherine gave birth to a baby girl, Magdalena. The little girl was known as, Lenchen, which means the shining or torch. All was healthy and well in her childhood but when she was thirteen, in the autumn of 1542, she suddenly fell ill with a high fever. Her brother Hans, away at a boarding school, was fetched back, and the family gathered for Magdalena’s last days. She died in Luther’s arms at 9.00 a.m. on September 20^th. When she was placed in the coffin Luther said, ‘Go ahead and close it’. As the coffin was carried out of the home he said, ‘Do not be sorrowful. I have sent a saint to heaven’. Then he paused, remembering Elizabeth, ‘In fact I have now sent two’.

Luther’s words were brave, but grief knifed his heart. ‘How strange it is to know that she is at peace and all is well, and yet to be so sorrowful.’ And while he knew the sovereignty of God to be true, his heart struggled. He wrote, ‘I am angry with myself that I am unable to rejoice from my heart and be thankful to God’. We have no words from Katherine, but it is reported that she wept uncontrollably for days.

To hate this very vulnerable man in this scene stripped bare by the reaper is barely possible.

There is no doubt more in Luther’s story which points to his vulnerability, but in these scenes of him as a young man longing for the approval of his father, as a victim of depression, as a heretic on trial before the emperor, as a father burying his children I find it hard to understand how we can hate him.

Luther was a vulnerable man; he was also exceptionally talented.

Genius

Unless a gifted man is a complete monster – a Pol Pot, a Himmler – then the normal emotion most people feel for talented people is admiration. We will come to whether Luther was a monster, but first it is worth reminding ourselves that he was a genius.

There is Luther’s genius as a theologian. He joined the monastery in Erfurt in 1505 and by 1508 he had been awarded his doctorate. As the Professor of Theology at Wittenberg Luther’s classes were very popular with students, the output impressive. In total he lectured on twenty-five books of the Bible, still at work just a few months before his death. He is still read today, his achievement of making the Bible (not Aristotle or any other philosopher) the major text for the church still felt around the world.

There is his genius as a translator. The intensity of his work is astounding, as any one with any experience of Bible translation will happily acknowledge. Metaxas here has a colourful comment about his translation of the New Testament: ‘That Luther managed to pull off the entirety of this project in eleven weeks has boggled the mind of scholars for half a millennium’ The New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament in 1534. Luther translated directly from the Hebrew, but to get the right German phrase he made secret visits into towns, listening to the language of the street. Of course there are now many German versions of the Bible; but the German Bible is Luther’s.

Luther was also a brilliant communicator. Printers made a lot of money out of his writings for he never took any payment and he was a sensational best seller. The printer Melchio Lotter printed 4,000 copies of Luther’s ‘To The Christian Nobility of the German Nation’. In two weeks it had sold out. Lotter went on to sell ten more editions.

Luther’s genius impacted church life radically. He devised a complete liturgy in German, and encouraged music and hymn singing. The only singing heard by most Christians in the Middle Ages was the chanting of the Psalms in Latin by the clergy or monks. The congregation never sang.  Luther changed all that for he was an ardent enthusiast for music:

He wrote, in his usual robust style:

‘I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the devil and makes people gay (happy); they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology I give to music the highest place and the greatest honour.’

And so it stands that Luther is the father of congregational singing.

It is probably Roland Bainton who best sums up Luther as a man to admire:

‘If no Englishman occupies a similar place in the religious life of his people, it is because no Englishman had anything like Luther’s range. The Bible translation was the work of Tyndale, the prayer book of Cranmer, the catechism of the Westminster divines. The sermonic style stemmed from Latimer; the hymnbook from Watts. And not all of these lived in one century. Luther did the work of more than five men. And for sheer richness and exuberance of vocabulary and mastery of style he is to be compared only with Shakespeare.’

Bainton has another telling comment: ‘In the course of three hundred years only one German ever really understood Luther, and that one was Johann Sebastian Bach.’

There is of course much more that could be said about Luther’s genius and his achievements. The question here is whether in the midst of all these formidable achievements, the word hate for Luther makes any sense.

As said, only if he were a monster; otherwise the normal emotion must be admiration.

Monster Shadows

But there are serious, even monster like shadows. There is Luther’s connivance at bigamy; the invective of some of his writing; the violence of his tract against the peasants, and, worst of all, his vicious stance against the Jews.

The Reformation became a reality because Luther and his colleagues were protected by two German princes – Frederick of Saxony and Philip of Hesse. The latter had an unhappy arranged marriage and had developed a tendency to commit adultery. This disturbed his conscience and kept him from the sacrament. Philip’s answer was that he should be allowed to marry a second wife, following the example of the patriarchs in the Old Testament. When he first approached Luther with this idea in 1526 it was politely rejected. Philip’s adultery continued, but in the late 1530s, possibly fearing death, he was determined to square the circle and demanded permission from the religious leaders to be allowed to marry the lady in waiting to his sister. Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and Martin Bucer, the revered stars of Reformation, gave their reluctant permission as long as the second marriage was kept secret.

Keeping such a business secret was wishful thinking. The whole of Europe soon knew and the cause of the Reformation rightly sullied. For this was a cowardly surrender to a powerful man who wanted to both sin and have the church’s blessing. In a letter to his own prince, the Elector of Saxony, Luther said his ‘concession was on account of the great need of his conscience’. This is a weak and devious argument. The concession was not granted because of the need of conscience, for if that was the case, then Luther would have to allow any Protestant tired of his first wife to marry a second wife. Protestantism and bigamy would have become synonymous. The concession was made because Philip was a Protestant prince but was threatening to ally himself with the Catholics if his wishes were not accommodated.

Like John the Baptist who denounced Herod for marrying his brother’s wife, so Luther and his colleagues should have stood up to Philip of Hesse and demanded he respect the sanctity of marriage. No man, not even a prince, is above the law in this matter.

It is understandable to feel aversion for such connivance; but should we hate Luther for taking part in this unpleasant business? That seems too strong a stance. With hindsight one wishes Luther would have had the faith to have acted with courage in regard to Philip’s adultery, leaving the consequences with God. He did not. Instead he took part in an unsuccessful cover up. It is a very human story. If though one was to hate every leader who has failed when confronted with a determined and powerful political patron, there would be a lot of hating to do.

Another shadow is that some of Luther’s vast literary output was vitriolic and crude, usually illustrated with wood-carvings to match the tone. For example in one tract he calls the pope’s officials ‘a crawling mass of reptiles.’ In another he castigates the pope for letting Rome become ‘the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death and hell so that not even Antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness.’ Nor was Luther shy of using vulgar language, a particularly bad example was in one of his later tracts where he told the pope that indulgences were ‘an utter shitting’, that Pope Paul was an ‘ass pope’ who not only worshipped Satan, but ‘licked his behind’.

There is much more. Luther was a polemicist. Once he picked up his pen, perhaps like a Tertullian or an Augustine, he was not content until his opponent was bruised and bloodied in the corner.

Unpleasant, but given the thousands of words Luther wrote and spoke that edified, it would seem extreme to hate him for this vulgarity. Not least, because as Roland Bainton explains, vulgarity and rudeness were a part of the culture in the 16^th C. After a detailed description of the debate at Leipzig between Luther and Johan Eck, a German Catholic theologian, Bainton records a minor incident. The duke hosting the proceedings had a one-eyed court fool and to provide some comic relief the two theologians were asked to debate whether the man should have a wife or not. Eck was against and ‘was so opprobrious that the fool took offense; and whenever subsequently Eck entered the hall the fool made grimaces. Eck retaliated by mimicking the blind eye, at which the fool ripped out a volley of bitter profanity. The audience roared.’ Bainton tells this story to illustrate ‘the coarseness and insensitivity of that whole generation.’

The tone then can perhaps be overlooked, but there should be a pause over some of the content of Luther’s writings. In 1525 the German peasants erupted and after a year were brutally put down. Initially Luther tried to steer a middle course, but as the rebellion spread his position hardened and he wrote a tract, ‘Against he murdering and thieving hordes of peasants’. Luther believed in the divine authority of the state. So in this tract he urged for the princes to crush the peasants without mercy. It is not difficult to quote sections of this tract that give the impression that Luther is a blood thirsty authoritarian, for example: ‘Their ears must be unbuttoned with musket balls till their heads jump off their shoulders’. However if you read the whole tract Luther has a serious argument. Anarchy has broken loose in Germany, plundering and murder is marching over the land, and – crucial to Luther’s shift in position – the peasants had refused to negotiate. The first duty of any government is to provide law and order, indeed, as Luther wrote, this is commanded in Romans 13, hence the peasants must be dealt with.

When the street erupts Christians take different positions, and sometimes change their views. From peasant stock, Luther knew what his class chafed under, hence his initial refusal to condemn them, but when anarchy spread he gave the authorities his full support, using his usual robust style. It is possible to disagree with Luther here, but it is hard to see this as a reason for hating him.

There are other aspects of Luther that cast shadows rather than light. One would be his coldness towards Ulrich Zwingl, the Swiss Reformer, who admired Luther and sought his friendship. In 1529 Philip of Hesse  convened the Marburg conference, to bring agreement among the Reformers over Christ’s presence in the bread and the wine. Luther believed in the literal presence, Zwingli the symbolic. It is said that Luther was so antagonistic and cold to Zwingli that the latter was reduced to tears.

Another issue is Luther’s subdued support for the repression of the Anabaptists. However given the calamitous outcome when some of their number took over Muntzer in Westphalia (polygamy and endless executions), it is not surprising Luther moved against them, albeit with a plea that severity be tempered with mercy.

None of the above pushes Luther into the monster category. They do not make pleasant reading, but most great leaders also make terrible mistakes.

In all of these shadows there is one that brings death-like darkness. It stands like a high prison wall, covered in barbed wall, daubed with large letters that spell, ‘I hate Luther’. On this wall the graffiti makes sense; and rightly forbids any easy exit.

Sadly some have tried to side-step or, worse, ignore Luther’s virulent anti-Semitism. Roland Bainton spares just a few pages to the topic, asserting strangely that Luther’s position was ‘entirely religious and in no respect racial’. Eric Metaxas oddly calls Luther’s book against the Jews an ‘outlier’, when there are in fact three books about the Jews who are also denounced in Luther’s sermons. Vivian Green ignores the whole issue. A.G Dickens, former Emeritus Professor at the University of London, edited a book of documents on Luther, and chose to exclude all the material against the Jews.

This approach is regrettable. It neither does justice to the amount of time Luther gave to the subject; and, much worse, it does no justice to the millions who have suffered because of the policy Luther was advocating.

The wall has to be faced. The hate question treated as valid.

Luther thought deeply about the Jews all through his life. He took a clear position on them in his first set of lectures on the Psalms given between 1513 – 15; and they are in his thoughts in a letter to his wife just three weeks before his death.

There is though sharp zig-zagging in Luther’s views. In those first lectures the Jews ‘were an exemplar of God’s wrath, guilty of Christ’s death, and thus dishonoured among all nations.’ This was typical negative Medieval fare. However in the early days of the Reformation, there is a radical departure from the church’s normal hostility to the Jews. In his commentary on the Magnificat in 1521 Luther says that Christians ‘should not treat the Jews unkindly.’

And then in 1523 came Luther’s call for toleration in his book, ‘That Jesus Christ Was Born A Jew’. This was the most supportive treatise in its attitude to the Jews that had ever been seen in Medieval Christendom. It went through ten German editions, and Luther’s friend Justus Jonas translated it into Latin for an international audience. While the book’s main emphasis was an appeal to Jews to see that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the prophesies of their Old Testament, Luther also castigated the Roman Catholic church.

‘For our fool the popes, bishops, sophists and monks, all stupid donkeys, have treated the Jews in such a way that anyone who was a good Christian would have been apt to want to become a Jew.’

There is more in this vein and for a while Luther’s name was connected to a kindly attitude towards the Jews. Indeed Luther’s Catholic enemies used this against him. When the Reformer, Andreas Osiander, spoke out against the execution of thirty Jews for the murder of a nine-year-old boy in Pressburg, the cry from Johannes Eck, an arch Catholic opponent of the Reformation, was that Osiander was a ‘protector of the Jews’ and a ‘Lutheran scoundrel’.

This radical season did not last long. As early as 1526 in a sermon on Psalm 109 Luther said that Jews ‘Simply think that Christ was a wicked scoundrel who was crucified with other scoundrels because of his wickedness.’ Then he says that ‘Satan has blinded their eyes because, despite the proof of Scripture, they remain obdurate. They are simply impossible to convert’.

Luther’s anger at the Jews rejection of Christ continued to rise. In 1537 he was told that Jews in Bavaria were circumcising Christians. They called themselves Sabbatarians. Luther was enraged and wrote ‘Against the Sabbatarians’ where the words ‘flew across the page’. The book was not about legal minded Christians determined to keep the law, it was an attack on the Jews for not turning to their Messiah, and a warning to Christians to keep away from them.

This tract did not sell well, but Luther was not through with the matter. In the autumn of 1542 he picked up his pen again to write about the Jews. The result was a 288 page book, entitled, ‘On The Jews And Their Lies’. Here he claimed that the Jews twisted the Old Testament; mocked Christ and Mary in private; and wanted to convert Christians. Luther believed the Jews threatened Christian society and must be dealt with. The actions he proposes are shocking: their synagogues and homes should be burned; their wealth taken; the Jews should be made to live in barns to work the land; and all religious worship banned on pain of death. This was harsh segregation. By the end of his life Luther wanted the Jews to be expelled from Christian lands. This is clearly seen in that letter to his wife just three weeks before he died. On the 28^th January 1546 a journey to Eisleben Luther became dizzy and broke out into a cold sweat. It was likely he was having a minor heart attack. His immediate diagnosis though was less medical.

‘I felt my strength leave me just outside Eisleben…if you’d been there you would have said it was the fault of the Jews or their God. For just outside Eisleben we had to go through a village where a lot of Jews live and perhaps it was they who blew on me so hard.’

Then later in this same letter he writes: ‘I have to get on with expelling the Jews’.

There is nothing of the ‘outlier’ here. This is a man with a hateful mind-set which is there for all to see on his final journey before he died.

What though had turned the man famous in Europe for befriending the Jews into the man whose name is now synonymous with anti-Semitism?

Thomas Kaufmann in his book ‘Luther’s Jews’ draws attention to the fact that in Luther’s famous plea for tolerance in 1523 there is a qualification: ‘until I can see what effect I have had.’ Kaufmann argues with some persuasion that Luther and his colleagues, especially Justas Jonas, believed they were living in the last days which meant there would be a turning of the Jews to Christ. So Luther’s work was written for that expected harvest. This was an invitation from God’s prophet in Wittenberg for the Jews to believe what was irrefutable, that Jesus was their Messiah, and so become Christian. However the invitation was temporary, the prophet was concerned about the effect. The implication being that if the invitation was spurned, so Luther’s approach would darken. There was no response, and Luther’s approach certainly darkened. It reverted back to his former hostility - with a vengeance.

Given that the Nazis constantly used Luther’s writings to lay the foundation for the Holocaust it is difficult not to accept Luther the man should be hated. He is responsible for the words he has written. He could have stepped back, re-read the Sermon on the Mount, realised his words were deeply offensive to Christ’s Gospel of love, thrown his last book away, and written an apology to the Jews for his ‘Against The Sabbatarians’ and any other hateful words he had directed at them.

But he did not. Indeed just three weeks before his death he was writing about ‘expelling the Jews.’ To hate Luther is understandable.

Wiser to hesitate

However perhaps it is wiser to hesitate when one considers two fixed pillars in the world Luther grew up in. One was anti-Antisemitism, the other that Medieval society was what the historian Paul Johnson calls a ‘total society’.

Everyone in Luther’s Europe was anti-Semitic. The Jews were Christ’s murderers, visibly enduring God’s wrath for this heinous crime. We associate the name of Erasmus with the New Learning and the man who wanted the ploughman to be singing the Psalms. But he, like Luther, was deeply anti-Semitic. While defending Reuchlin, the Hebrew expert, against charges of heresy, Erasmus wrote to Hochstraten, Reuchlin’s opponent, and said he was not at all interested in the Kabballah and agreed that the Jews had seductive powers – and, he then asks this question and gives his own answer, an answer which scorns Roland Bainton’s assertion that there was nothing racial in the church’s attitude to the Jews.

‘Who is there among us that does not sufficiently detest that race of men? If it is Christian to hate the Jews, we are all Christian enough in this regard.’

This racism raged among the erudite in the universities, in Europe’s palaces and markets, in her villages and towns. It was garnished with venomous rumours: the Jews desecrated the host, poisoned wells, murdered children.

Luther grew up soaked in this thinking. Moreover as a young teenager he would have heard of how in the 1490s Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and nearby Nuremberg had expelled all their Jews. England had done so much earlier.

Once the Jews did not respond to the proof set out in the Old Testament regarding Christ, Luther’s position returned to what was normal for Erasmus and everyone else in Medieval Europe, except now his hostility had the tone of a rejected suitor. It was sharper, more personal, especially as Luther believed his Catholic enemies were sending Jewish spies to poison him.

In the 1530s Luther read a book by an insider that darkly confirmed all his suspicions about the Jews. This was ‘The Entire Jewish Faith’ by the Jewish convert Antonius Margritha. It went through six editions. While there was immense detail about all the Jewish rituals and ceremonies, the dominant empahsis was that the Jews were the virulent enemies of Christians. Everything in their prayers were directed against the church; on Passover Day they cursed Christ; they were longing for their Messiah who would annihilate all Christians. Meanwhile they were doing secret deals with the Turks to bring about the overthrow of Christendom. Margritha sounds similar to Muslim converts to Christianity today who make a living out of frightening Christians with how Islam is planning on wold domination. Then as now it is the fact that they are converts that persuades usually sensible people of what is no more than a vacuous conspiracy theory. Sadly it is clear that Luther was persuaded.

And as a church leader Luther had a responsibility to give guidance about the Jews. This brings us to the second pillar that was fixed in Luther’s world: the total society. All was under the power of the state and the church, who ruled a society which was homogeneous.

In this system a leading church-man such as Luther had a duty to work with the state to ensure that society remained intact. Hence, he could not ignore the issue of the Jews. Their presence challenged the total society, both racially and religiously, and books like Margritha’s turned them into a dangerous fifth column. The total society had just three options for the Jews: conversion; segregation; or expulsion. Since the Jews had rejected conversion, Luther first advocated segregation, and then, just before his death, he was calling for the Jews to be expelled. It is worth noting though that Luther never advocated murder.

These two fixed pillars in the Medieval world – anti-Semitism and demand for total homogeneity – were so firmly rooted that Luther was unable to escape their shadow when it came to thinking about the Jews. Interestingly Luther himself was aware of how difficult it was to shake off one’s background. This is what he told his students in 1531 about Catholicism:

‘We old men soaked in the pestilent doctrine of the papists which we have taken into our very bones and marrow…cannot even today cast that opinion out of minds. For habits acquired in tender years cling with the utmost persistence.’

If this was true for residual Roman Catholicism in Luther’s mind, it was equally true for anti-Antisemitism. It was in his bones and marrow, and once the Jews rejected his 1523 invitation, that pestilent prejudice broke out. He should have seen that the very Scriptures he was translating forbade persecuting the weak, that the Christ Luther loved was a friend to the outcast and alien. But those ‘habits acquired in tender years clung with utmost persistence.’

None of this alters that fact that what Luther wrote was dreadful; but it makes me hesitate to hate him as a man. Rather I have to accept that Luther, like most of us, was unable to see beyond the paradigms of his own times, but that does not mean rendering honour where honour is due and leaving his statues in peace. 

I hesitate, but I can understand why some, without hesitation, are ready to say ‘I hate Luther’.

I though prefer the conclusion of G.R Elton, another great historian of this period, who underlines the fallibility of the human condition. 

‘Being a man, he (Luther) had both served and harmed mankind; and since he was a great man, both the service and possibly the harm were beyond the ordinary.’

 

Adoniram Judson (1788 – 1850): an uneasy voice for modern Christians

I was sitting around with a few English Christians and mentioned I had just finished a biography of Adoniram Judson. Every face was blank.

It would have been different if I had been in America. Judson was the first Protestant missionary to leave their shores.

And it would have been very different in Burma. When he arrived there in 1813 there were no Protestant Christians; when he died there were about seven thousand. Today there are over three million Protestant Christians in Burma, over half are Baptists, the denomination founded by Judson. Fittingly the Christians in Burma have a Judson day; a Judson church; a Judson College.

And a Judson Bible. He translated the whole Bible, almost single-handedly. This is a translation that won wide respect for its accuracy and style when first published. It is still used today[1].  

This is an impressive legacy.

Reading about his life[2] there are three fixed points in his way of looking at the world that form the foundation of this legacy: a conviction about the Gospel; a single-minded focus; and an acceptance of suffering as a part God’s good will for his life.  

One: Conviction about the Gospel.

During nearly forty years of ministry in Burma, Judson made just one visit back to America. Not surprisingly the churches were packed for his meetings.

At the Baptist Church in Morrisville, North Carolina, the people were disappointed. They were expecting to hear of his exotic adventures in Burma; instead he spoke, ‘with simplicity and pathos of what the precious Saviour had done for His people.’

Asked about why he did not share about his adventures in Burma, Judson replied:

‘I gave them a story – the most thrilling one that can be conceived of…the wondrous story of Jesus’ dying love.’

Judson continued to answer his critic:

‘My business is to preach the Gospel of Christ and when I can speak at all I dare not trifle with my commission. When I looked upon those people today and remembered where I should next meet them, how could I stand up and furnish food to vain curiosity – tickle their fancies with amusing stories, however decently strung together on a thread of religion. This is not what Christ meant by preaching the Gospel.’

Judson believed the Gospel with all his heart. He believed that sin, the wrath of God and hell were sober realities. He believed the atonement on the cross was a glorious reality. The Gospel saved people from hell and brought them to heaven.

That was his conviction.

One reason Judson was so gripped with the Gospel is because he had not always been a believer. Though from a devout Christian home, the fiercely intelligent[3] Judson abandoned the faith of his parents when he was a student at Brown University in Providence, Massachusetts.

Here Judson became close friends with the charming and clever Jacob Eames – a student one year his senior. Eames was a sceptical Deist[4], and soon Judson shared his doubts. Judson’s father, the Congregational minister in Plymouth, was angry; his mother distraught. After graduating with distinction, life at home was tense, so Judson left for New York. Here he joined a troupe of actors. These were Judson’s wild weeks.

‘We lived a reckless, vagabond life, finding lodgings where we could and bilking the landlord where we found opportunity.[5]’

Judson soon tired of this life-style. He left the actors and decided to travel Westwards. He did not get far. Taking a room in a tavern one night, the land-lord apologized to Judson for the groans coming from a dying man in the next room. Judson had a restless night. Death was near, and Judson’s new-fangled beliefs weakened. He stared at eternity and wanted to know about his own soul.

In the morning Judson found out the man had died. Then came the shock. Asking if he knew who the man was, the land-lord replied:

 ‘Oh yes, a very fine fellow. His name was Eames. Jacob Eames.’

Judson was stunned: his scepticism at sea, his soul without an anchor. In a state of confusion he gave up his travel plans to the West and returned home. Though not a Christian, he enrolled in a new seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, seeking to resolve his crisis of faith. Slowly light dawned. A friend wrote:

‘He was prayerful, reflective and studious of proofs; and gradually faith, trust in God, and finally a hope though the merits of Christ, took possession of his soul, he scarcely knew how; and from the moment that he fully believed, I think he never doubted. He said he felt as sure that he was an entirely new creature…’

Judson’s conviction about the Gospel was not head knowledge; it came from this painful crisis of faith that he had lived through. For the rest of his life he never had a more beautiful story to tell than that of the dying Christ who saves men and women from the wrath of God.

Judson was not shy about the word hell or the fate of the unbeliever. Seeking permission from his future father in law to both marry and take his young bride overseas for missionary work, Judson was blunt about the risks:

 ‘Can you consent to her exposure…to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death?’

And he was equally blunt about one of the reasons for taking such risks:

‘Can you consent to all this…for the sake of perishing immortal souls?’

This conviction about hell remained throughout his missionary career.

When questioning baptismal candidates he would ask: ‘’Do you believe then that none but the disciples of Christ will be saved from sin and hell?’

If they answered no, he would not baptize them.

Without this conviction there would have been no legacy. This raw belief that without Christ men and women are destined for hell undergirded all he did.

Two: Single-minded for life

In June 1810 Judson, aged twenty-two, presented himself for missionary service with three friends before the annual conference of the Congregational Church of Massachusetts. In a speech that moved many to tears[6], this is what he said:

‘After examining all the information which they can obtain, they (the four students) consider themselves as devoted to this work for life, whenever God in his providence shall open the way.’

This was not just the idealism of a young man. He meant it. Judson left America in 1812 and gave the rest of his working life to mission in Asia.

Such commitment was challenging because mission to Asia was not the norm for Christians in the early 19^th C in Massachusetts.

With his father a Congregational minister and he a seminary student, Judson’s future was obvious. He would become a Massachusetts clergy man. And if there would be any mission work, this would be to the native Indians in America, the only mission work Americans were engaged with at that time.

News though of the British missionaries in Asia was reaching the American churches. William Carey in India, and Robert Morrison in China were particularly well known.

Then at seminary Judson read the transcript of a sermon given by an English clergy-man who had served as a chaplain with the East India Company. The sermon was titled: ‘The Star In The East’. It was a call for Christians to go to India where people were ready to respond to the Gospel. Judson did not consider the sermon as being ‘peculiarly excellent’, but it had a great impact on his mind. A strange excitement filled his heart, and ‘it left a strong desire to prosecute my inquiries and ascertain the path of duty.’ The sermon directed Judson to India. He then read a book called, ‘An account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava.’ This was all about Burma and it left Judson fascinated. Mission to the East for Judson now meant either India or Burma.

Judson’s new interest in mission was immediately challenged by his peers. He wrote that he was ‘condemned by all and not infrequently ridiculed and approached.’

There was a dearth of encouragement, yet Judson kept on praying and asking God: ‘Should I become a missionary?’ He soon reached a settled decision:

‘It was during a solitary walk in the woods behind the college, while meditating and praying on the subject, and feeling half inclined to give it up, that the command of Christ, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature was presented to my mind with such clearness and power that I came to a full decision, and though great difficulties appeared in my way, resolved to obey the command at all events.’

This decision was immediately tested – by his own family.  His father had been talking to his friend Dr Edward Griffin who wanted Judson to be his assistant at Park Street Church in Boston, the largest church in the city. After telling his son about this offer, his mother added, as only a mother can, ‘And you will be so near home’. When Judson told his parents and sister of his missionary plans, his mother, predictably, burst into tears.

The tears failed to dissuade Judson. His determination and passion resulted in the Congregational Church forming a Mission Board and on February 6^th 1812 Judson and four others were ordained as missionaries. Two weeks later, Judson and his young wife, Ann, were on their way to Calcutta. When the new American missionaries arrived they were welcomed by William Carey, but they were almost immediately ordered to return to America by the East India Company, resolutely hostile to Christian mission. Either they had to find another country to go to, or they would be forcefully deported.

The other country that Judson most wanted to go was Burma – the population was immense; there was no Bible in Burmese and translation was a task much suited to Judson’s fine intellect; moreover, going back to his days in seminary, this was a country he had always felt called to.

So it was that on July 13^th 1813 Judson sailed into Rangoon. Within Burma Judson lived in different cities; but he never shifted his attention to another country. His whole work life only had one item on the agenda: bringing the message of Christ to the Burmese. He gave himself initially to learning the language, labouring often for twelve hours a day.

Once he had learned the language he immediately set about translating the Scriptures. He finished the New Testament in 1822, less than ten years after arriving in Rangoon. He finished the whole Bible in 1834. This was a monumental achievement for one man. And it was no mediocre translation. A colleague said ‘It was the best translation in India… free from all obscurity to the Burmese mind. It is read and understood perfectly.’

The Scripture was translated to be given out for Judson was a committed evangelist. His preferred method was to build a ‘zayat’, familiar buildings in Burmese culture. Here men would talk, and a religious teacher would teach. This is exactly what happened in the ‘Zayats’ Judson built. Seekers would come and Judson would sit with them, sometimes for a whole day, talking about faith in Christ, giving them a Scripture portion, or a tract he had written himself. It was through this Zayat evangelism that the first converts came to faith in Rangoon.

As well as Rangoon, Judson took teams of Burmese Christians for evangelism to other cities. One was Maulmain from where he got involved in the evangelism of the Karen people who are now solidly Christian[7]. Judson kept his printer busy[8] – especially when there were large Buddhist festivals. Thousands would come into the streets, and Judson liked to be ready with Christian literature.

Though in his last years Judson gave a lot of time to a Burmese-English dictionary which he saw as crucial for missionary success, he never gave up his preaching and increasing pastoral duties. He remained faithful to one of his many resolutions: ‘Go and preach the Gospel every day’

Judson was single minded in his work - and in his private life. All that strengthened his mission or relationship with God was cultivated; all that undermined them was ruthlessly cut out. 

Judson believed fervently in private prayer. To a friend he writes -

‘Arrange thy affairs if possible so that thou canst leisurely devote two or three hours every day…to the very act of secret prayer and communion with God. Endeavour, seven times[9] a day, to withdraw from business and company, and lift up thy soul to God in private retirement.’

Judson combined with prayer with self-denial. Here is some of his advice:

‘Use no intoxicating liquor as a beverage … Be content with the plainest diet…fast often…dress in course and poor apparel…discard all finery…occupy a poor habitation…allow no amusements…get rid of the encumbrance of worldly property; sell what thou hast and give to the poor.’

Judson was certainly sacrificial when it came to money. In 1828 he gave all his savings[10] to his mission, ‘or rather to Him “who loved us”; and in 1829 he asked the board to reduce his salary by a quarter.

Judson’s social life was also strictly curtailed. With his proficiency in Burmese, Judson had access to the elite of those in the British administration, indeed he was a friend of General Archibald Campbell, the victor of the Anglo-Burma war. However in 1828 Judson cut himself off from all Westerners. This was not because he was shy or uncomfortable in fashionable society; to the contrary he enjoyed educated company. His son, Edward, talks of his ‘thoroughly genial nature of his sociableness’. The issue was time and the calling on his life.

The same strictness was applied to his intellectual life: ‘Read no book in English that has not a devotional tendency’. Newspapers were firmly rejected: ‘Indulge in no foreign – that is English or American, newspaper reading, except a regular course of some one religious paper and sometimes an occasional article from other papers.’

Some might assume that with this strict intellectual diet Judson was a dire conversationalist. To the contrary, his third wife Emily, who had a vivacious intellect, wrote this about Judson after a year of marriage: ‘I never met with any man who could talk so well, day after day, on every subject, religious, literary, scientific, political…’[11]

Judson was keenly aware of the desires of the flesh for recognition which would mar life with God. To deal with this he took robust action that to many seemed to verge on the excessive. In 1828 he asked Brown University to withdraw a Doctor of Divinity degree they had awarded him five years earlier. He himself burnt the letters of thanks he had received from Sir Archibald Campbell for his work on drawing up the treaty ending the First Burma War. And, fearing fame after his death, he gave these severe instructions to his sister:

‘My request is that you will entirely destroy all my old letters which are in your and mother’s hands.’

The letters were destroyed; but of course, such was his achievement, recognition was inevitable.

Judson’s achievement is impossible to ignore because he was single minded. Single minded in his calling to live and die in Burma; single-minded in his ministry – Bible translation, evangelism, and church planting; and single minded in his private life, every moment of every day was to be used either for worship or work.

Judson’s legacy is built on conviction, single-mindedness. And a lot of suffering.

Suffering

Reading about Judson it is impossible not to be struck by the amount of suffering he endured. Some affliction came from the government, suspicious of any foreign faith. However the distress caused by this official hostility to the new church is slight compared to the personal misery that was Judson’s constant companion. It seems that almost on every other page a close colleague or family member is either desperately sick, or dying.

.

Judson adored his first wife, the vivacious and attractive and intelligent Ann Hasseltine. He met her when she was twenty. She was so beautiful the man of many words was struck silent. When Judson later proposed, he offered Ann both his hand, and a life overseas in mission. Ann, a keen Christian, accepted both, indeed she was more than ready ‘to carry the Gospel to the distant, benighted heathen.’ Ann and Judson were extremely well suited. They were nearly the same age; both voracious readers; both keen language students, both committed to mission.

Ann’s happy marriage to Judson though was marked by suffering. In her first year abroad Ann’s close friend and missionary colleague Harriet Newell died at sea, a few days after giving birth to her first baby who had also died.

Ann also gave birth to the Judsons’ first child at sea on the way to Rangoon. The baby was stillborn; and there were serious fears for Ann’s life too. She survived; and in September 1815 gave birth to a healthy boy, Roger Williams. He gave Judson and Ann, ‘unspeakable joy’. The joy was short-lived. In May 1816 the baby had coughing fits and a fever. Ann sat up with him t into the early hours of May 4^th. Laid to rest in his cot, Roger Williams at last settled down to sleep. He never woke up and was buried that same afternoon. Ann and Judson, overwhelmed with grief, were again childless.

Ann’s own health was vulnerable. She suffered from a liver ailment and in August 1821 the decision was made that she needed to return to America. Judson would not accompany her. Writing about the oncoming separation Judson wrote: ‘I feel as if I was on a scaffold, and signing, as it were, my own death warrant.’ The separation lasted well over two years. And because some post was lost at sea, for over a year Judson received no letter. At times he gave up hope he would ever see the love of his life again, indeed according to Ann on ‘the very day I arrived, he had in despair yielded all hope of my existence.’

Anne came back in December 1823, just six months later a very cruel separation struck the missionary couple. As the British waged war against Burma, Judson was accused of being a spy and arrested and dragged off to prison. Here he was fettered with about fifty other prisoners in a dark airless hall. The stench was appalling. At night ‘the prisoners’ feet were raised by a pole until only their shoulders and heads rested on the floor’. They were being tortured. And there were barbaric executions. These always happened at three o’clock in the afternoon. A gong would sound and the prisoners knew one of them was to be executed; but nobody knew who. This was psychological torture. For throughout the time of Judson’s imprisonment there were constant rumours that the government were going to execute all the foreigners as Burma was losing the war against the British. The foreigners would be offered up as a sacrifice to please the gods of war. During transfer from the first prison to another, Judson, weak with fever and bloodied feet, ‘ardently longed’ to end his life by throwing himself over a bridge into a river thirty feet below. He restrained himself because of the enormity of the sin of suicide, and because he was tied to another prisoner whose life he would risk.

During this dreadful trial, which eventually ended in December 1825, Ann was again pregnant. Indeed she gave birth to a daughter, Maria, while Judson was still in prison. When he came home to his wife and daughter it was not joy though that met him, but misery.

At first, he did not recognise his new daughter, a scrawny dirty baby cradled in the arms of the Burmese servant.

As for Ann:

‘The face was of a ghastly paleness…and the whole form shrunken almost to the last degree of emaciation’.

Ann was desperately sick with cerebral spinal meningitis. Soon after Judson came home she lost consciousness and fell into a raging fever. The doctor expected her to die, but, somehow, she recovered and both she and Judson were able to enjoy a respite from suffering as guests of the English.

The respite did not last long. In early October 1826 the fever returned. At first the doctors were hopeful of another recovery, but it was not to be. Judson, away from home, received a letter with a black seal on it. Ann had died on October 24^th. She was only thirty-six. Judson had lost his soul-mate and the wife of his youth. He was utterly devastated, with ‘bitter, heart-rending anguish, which… would admit of no mitigation’.

One would think that Judson had already tasted enough of the mystery of suffering, that now there would be a pause. There was not. In early April his only daughter, Maria, became ill with a bowel complaint. She was taken to the doctor, but there was nothing medicine could do. Maria died on April 24^th 1827 aged just two years and three months.

Two months later in June there was more news for Judson of the reaper’s work: in November the previous year his father had died. At least he had had his three score years and ten. Not so for his brother Elnathan. He was only thirty-eight when he died in the spring of 1829. Judson had been very concerned about the spiritual state of Elnathan, and was deeply relieved when he learned that he had cried ‘Peace, peace’ on his death bed.

It was Ann’s death of course that caused the most anguish. Two years after her death he wrote of his ‘desolation’ and the ‘grief for the dear departed’. The grief also gnawed at his faith. He wrote to Ann’s sisters on the third anniversary of her departure, and coming from the pen of this great pioneer missionary, the words have a shadow hanging over them:

‘Have either of you learned the art of real communion with God…? God is to me the Great Unknown. I believe in him, but I find him not.’

Happiness in Judson’s personal life returned seven years later in 1834 when he married Sarah Boardman, a missionary widow. The two had had some formal contact. Judson had immediately written to Sarah when her husband had died – ‘You are now drinking the bitter cup whose dregs I am somewhat acquainted with’; and she had written to fulsomely congratulate Judson on completing the translation of the Bible into Burmese: ‘I am delighted with the graphic style of the narrative part; and think many of the doctrinal passages are expressed with a force and perspicuity entirely wanting in our (English) version. She ended that letter with, ‘Yours affectionately’, so perhaps Judson sensed he would be welcomed as a suitor.

The marriage was a very happy one, especially as Sarah brought with her a step-son, George. However there was still suffering. As soon as Sarah arrived in Judson’s home town, Maulmain, her health sank with an attack of dysentery which brought her ‘to the brink of the grave’. For weeks she lay in bed, with Judson sometimes carrying her from their bed to a couch so she could enjoy a small change in the scenery. Sarah recovered, but soon there was a new trial. This was the sending of George, aged six, to America for his education. Sarah wrote, ‘I shall never forget his looks as he stood by the door and gazed at me for the last time...his little face red with suppressed emotions…it was not till he had turned away…that he burst into floods of tears.’

In October 1835 a daughter was born to Judson and Sarah, Abigail Ann; in April 1836, a son, Adoniram Brown; in July 1838 another son, Elnathan; and in January another 1839, another son, Henry.  At last there is a sense of normal, happy family life. To his sisters Judson proudly wrote that Abigail was pretty fluent in Burmese; and with obvious delight he wrote this about his first son – ‘When he is brought into the chapel, and sees me in my place, (he) has the impudence to roar out Bah (as the Burmans call father) with such a stentorian voice that his nurse is obliged to carry him out again.’

In 1841 the shadow of sickness and death returned. In March that year Sarah gave birth to a stillborn son; Sarah was struck down with dysentery; and all four of their children suffered from whooping cough. The translator and evangelist became a full-time nurse. Sarah and the elder children got better; but the two younger ones grew weaker. Henry, a sweet toddler, died aged just one year and seven months on July 30^th.

After this tragedy, the shadows stayed away for three years, and the Judsons had

two other sons, Charles (born December 1842) and Edward (born December 1844). But then the shadows returned. Early in 1845 Sarah went down – again – with dysentery. The doctors were unanimous that she would have to return to America to survive, and Judson considered it ‘savage inhumanity to send her off on her own’. However, this meant leaving three of their children alone in Burma, a separation that ‘wring out bitterer tears from the heart’s core, than any can possibly conceive.’

On the voyage West Sarah’s health, after an initial recovery, deteriorated. She never made it to America. She died on board their ship off the coast of Virginia, near Jamestown on September 1^st, 1845. Again Judson was a widower. Again he had to drink the bitter cup, the dregs even harsher because Sarah had been the mother of his children.

Judson’s first visit to his home-country after thirty years thus began in grief.

‘For a few days, in the solitude of my cabin, with my poor children crying around me, I could not help abandon myself to heart-breaking sorrow.’

Even in America the reaper gave Judson no peace. In August he learned his young son Charles, left in Burma, had died. He was nineteen months old.

Out of this blackness, Judson was surprised by joy. As were many others. Judson married the successful story writer Emily Chubbuck in June 1846. She was twenty-eight; he fifty-seven. Despite this age difference, and Emily’s very different career, the marriage was happy and Emily proved to be a true mother to Judson’s children. She also bore Judson a daughter, Emily Frances.

However, as with Ann and Sarah, Emily soon became acquainted with Judson’s constant companion - suffering. In 1847 there was a severe shortage of food in Rangoon, so much so that Emily wrote that she was ‘within an inch of starvation.’ She was so weak she could hardly walk across a room without falling over. Then during the difficult rainy season sickness swept through the whole city. Emily wrote, ‘We seem to be hemmed in by death.’ Judson fell ill with dysentery; and both of his young sons were also struck down by sickness. Edward’s was particularly alarming. His face was covered with purple spots and he had ‘an abscess in his forehead and the acrid matter has eaten back into the bone.’

Judson’s young wife was ill; his children in Burma were ill – and he was separated entirely from three of his children and a step-son who were in America. There was a brief year after the birth of her daughter that Emily’s health was stable; but again in 1849 her health sank.  There was a fear it was consumption and Judson would be facing the departure of his third wife. However it was not consumption, it was congestion of the liver and with the correct treatment Emily recovered.

Now it was Judson’s turn.  

In September 1849 Judson suffered a violent attack of dysentery accompanied by a burning fever. He would suffer severe pain for several hours every day. Emily wrote that ‘his wan face was of ghastly paleness’ and that ‘his groans would fill the house’. Right to the end Judson’s suffering was extremely intense. He told a friend, ‘No one could conceive the intensity of his sufferings. Death would have been a glad relief.’

The relief finally came on April 12^th, 1850. Judson was sixty-one.

Here then is a life of suffering. The two great loves of his life, Ann and Sarah died; seven[12] of his thirteen children died; severe life-threatening sickness was usually near; and as well as the official intimidation of the new church, there was the terrible trial when Judson was imprisoned as a foreign spy.

And just in case we had not noticed this theme in Judson’s life, he had to endure six months of intense suffering before his final departure.

Judson was no Stoic when suffering swept into his life. He wept, he grew despondent, even tempted to commit suicide.  However Judson refused to question God’s ways. As storm after storm crashed into his days, so the anchor of God’s sovereignty secured his soul.

We are given a clear glimpse into Judson’s approach to suffering in a letter to a friend on hearing that many of his possessions had been lost in a fire.

‘Why has this grievous interruption been permitted, and this precious time lost? And why are our houses and property allowed to be burned up? And why are those most dear to us, and most qualified to be useful in the cause, torn from our arms, and dashed into the grave, and all their knowledge and qualification with them? Because infinite wisdom and love will have it so. Because it is best for us, and best for them, and best for the cause, and best for the interests of eternity, that it should be so.’

Judson bowed under the inscrutable will of God and accepted the river of suffering that flowed into his life as being for the best.

Without such a faith it is unlikely he would have left the legacy he did.

Unease

It is sad that Judson’s name is not that familiar among Christians in the UK. He was a remarkable man who has left a remarkable legacy.

And yet, looking at the fixed points in Judson’s outlook that shaped his life and left such a legacy, his voice carries unease for modern Christians.

There is unease over hell; unease over a radical single-minded focus; and certainly unease over a willingness to accept suffering as the good will of God.

It would be easy to explain this unease by saying our generation of Christians is indecisive, feeble, and faithless.

We are indecisive over what happens to a man or woman when they die without faith in Christ.

We are feeble when it comes long-term commitment and radical self-discipline.

We are faithless when it comes to suffering. We are quick to question God’s goodness. Indeed vast swathes of the church teach that suffering is from the devil and must be resisted

Unease is usually an invitation to for some thorough examination. So we need to examine ourselves for any needless indecision, indulgent feebleness and resentful faithlessness.

However it would be unwise though to let this unease follow through to become a blanket condemnation. Moreover it is surely wise to not to be too dogmatic on some matters. Hell is real; but we should not presume to know who is there. And it is important to have balance when it comes to our ministry and our spiritual lives, especially for our families. Extremism can cause immense hurt. And while Judson accepted the sovereignty of God, the valley of depression was not unknown to him.

Judson’s life should be known by Christians. His life will no doubt stir some unease in our hearts. Let that be a call to a healthy examination of our hearts from which we emerge stronger and fitter for the work God has called us to do.

Tom Hawksley

December 2019

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[1] Just google Judson Bible available and you can download the PDF - https://www.bible.com/versions/386-bjb-judson-bible

[2] This article is based almost wholly on the excellent biography ‘Adoniram Judson: Devoted For Life’ by Vance Christie, published by Christian Focus, 2013. All quotations are taken from this book.

[3] Judson learned to read when he was three; he entered Brown University aged 17 and was the top of every class.

[4] The belief in a supreme being as the originator of the universe whose qualities can be discerned by reason. Divine revelation in the Bible is rejected.

[5] After Judson became a Christian he made a point of seeking out those land-lords and settling up his debt.

[6] ‘Grey hairs were all weeping’ one eye-witness related.

[7] The Karen have faced severe persecution from the Burmese government in recent years

[8] Judson would write long robust letters to his printer urging more output when his supplies ran low.

[9] The seven comes from Psalm 119: 164. It develops in the monastic tradition as the seven watches: 6.00. 9.00, 12.00, 15.00, 18.00, 21.00, and 24.00.

[10] About $6,000

[11] It is said that C.S Lewis barely glanced at the headlines of the newspapers. He too was a charismatic conversationalist – as well as being one of the greatest Christian writers of the 20^th C.

[12] All three of his children with Ann died, the first was still-born, Roger Williams and Maria died when toddlers. Three of his children with Sarah died, one was still born, Henry and Charles died when toddlers. His second child with Emily, Charles, died after one week.