“A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing; Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.” Here is the classic English translation of the first two lines of Martin Luther's famous hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.“ Indeed, it is famous among Christians who unashamedly identify themselves with the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, which until today continually inspires them to appreciate their roots in the ancient paths (Jeremiah 6:16) of biblical Christianity over against that which is only built on man-made traditions.
"My Mighty Fortress"
“That hymn is more than a piece of music; it is an event in European history,” says a church historian. But at a more personal level, it also reflects some of the major points of the life of this German Protestant reformer. In fact, the phrase “mighty fortress“ was on Luther's lips when he lifted up his voice to God in prayer early in the morning right before he faced the officials of the Holy Roman Empire at the Diet of Worms in January 1521. “My God, stand by me, against all the world’s wisdom and reason,“ he prayed in fear and trembling. “Stand by me, O God, in the name of Your dear Son Jesus Christ, who shall be my defense and shelter, yes, my Mighty Fortress, through the might and strength of Your Holy Spirit. Amen.”
"The Dark Night of Soul"
Prior to his writing of this hymn, Luther was struggling through what he called ”the dark night of the soul,” referring to his experience of serious periods of depression and physical ailments that baffled him in the middle of 1527, almost a decade after the publication of his 95 theses. These intensified all the more in August that year when a plague hit Wittenberg. The only professor left in the town, though probably unknown to many of his students who preferred to stay with him, he was at this point in time a lonely man, stricken by grief, overshadowed by great despondency.
He said to his close friend Philip Melanchthon. ”I spent more than a week in death and in hell,” he recalled, as if still in agony and excruciating pain. He even confessed to have actually believed he was ”completely abandoned by Christ.” Not only so, ”I labored under the vascilliations and storms of desperation and blasphemy against God.” Who in the world would think that the father of Protestant Reformation went through such a state of spiritual rebellion? His Roman Catholic opponents, maybe, but certainly not his fellow Protestant believers. This struggle, according to him, he had to endure in a matter of weeks.
But Luther was not really alone. Prayers and intercessions were then being offered before God on his behalf by his friends. “Finally through the prayers of the saints [i.e., those sinners justified and sanctified by faith in Christ alone, and not the saints in the Roman Catholic sense of the term],“ he later testified, “God began to have mercy on me and pulled my soul from the inferno below.” This was the occasion that inspired him to compose this hymn titled “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.“
"Our Ancient Foe"
He especially had Psalm 46 in mind when he wrote this hymn, a psalm that begins with a declaration of faith: "God is our refuge and strength." What came out of it was a brand new song from the heart of a wounded Christian soldier now announcing his faith in God, his Mighty Fortress, to the rest of the world. Unlike many other Christian hymns including some of his 36 others, it is particularly not a psalm of praise but a song of spiritual warfare.
It was clear to him that he had an enemy to do battle with and so he wrote, “For still our ancient foe [i.e., the devil] doth seek to work us woe; his craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel and hate.“ He had a vivid memory of facing this ancient foe during his 10-month stay in Wartburg translating the New Testament into German so that ordinary folks could read the Bible for the first time in their own native tongue.
"His Truth to Triumph Through Us"
Wartburg, by the way, was the place where the men of Frederick the Wise brought him after his historic face to face encounter with the political and religious hierarchies of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms. They kidnapped him at Frederick's command, for fear that he would be assassinated by his enemies. Right there and then at Wartburg, he knew he was in a real spiritual conflict with the devil, primarily because he was translating the New Testament into the German vernacular. The written Word of God translated in the language of the masses would be more than a double-edged sword to this archenemy of God. This was probably what Luther had in mind when he added another line to his hymn, saying, “We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.”
Luther had a first hand knowledge of how God's truth triumphed through him, as he gradually abandoned his allegiance to the uncontested authority of the pope, the Church councils and traditions. Like John Wycliffe and John Hus before him, he committed himself to the final authority of Holy Scripture alone, as the only reliable and therefore authoritative written record of God's Word to His people (i.e., historic Protestantism's commitment to sola Scriptura). From that time on he would find himself engaged in a series of heated debates with the defenders of the Roman Catholic tradition.
"The Body They May Kill"
Since then, Luther had been aware that God called him to take the road least travelled, namely the narrow and slippery road of martyrdom. So much so that he was able to add to the hymn, "Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill" Amazingly, the Protestant reformer was not killed as God providentially raised Frederick to protect His man, if only to lit the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ during this dark hour of Christian history. God spared him until he took his last breath, in February 18, 1546.
Shortly thereafter, his dear friend and now successor Melanchthon could be heard during his funeral, saying, “Some have complained that Luther was more vehement than need required.“ To which he did not hesitate to add, even quoting Erasmus, Luther's greatest theological enemy, “I will not dispute against any, but I answer thus, that Erasmus has often said about Luther, ‘God has given this last age a sharp physician because of the great diseases of the same.’”
Luther could therefore say with the apostle Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith“ (2 Timothy 4:7). It was from this great apostle of the Christian gospel that Luther got what later became historic Protestantism's battle cry: sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone), sola gratia (by grace alone), sola fide (by faith alone), solus Christus (through Christ alone), and soli Deo gloria (glory to God alone). God, indeed, and He alone, was his Mighty Fortress, and so of the rest of those who remain faithful to the battle cry of the Reformation.
Sources:
- David Calhoun. “A Mighty Fortress is Our God: The Life of Martin Luther“ in his lecture series Reformation and Modern Church History, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, Spring 2006.
- Heiko A. Oberman. Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992).
- Matthew Spinka. Advocates of Reform: From Wycliff to Erasmus (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1953, reissued 2006).
- Walther von LoewenichLuther: The Man and His Work, trans. Lawrence W. Denef(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986).
Edwin Vargas - Edwin joined the faculty of Conservative Baptist Seminary – Asia as lecturer in Systematic Theology and New Testament Survey after ...
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