Luther alphabet - letter T

Photo: photocase/french 03The core question of theodicy (classical Greek: justification of God) is: Why does God, who is understood as being fair, loving and almighty, not prevent people from suffering? For Martin Luther, it is impossible – and, ultimately, meaningless – to really understand God's deeds or even to justify them. Straightaway, he turns this speculative question around: It is not God who has to justify himself before the thinking of human beings, but human beings must be justified before God.
 
God is, and remains, the measure of all things, the “regula omnium” (Latin: the law of all things; WA 18, 712, 32 ff.). What might appear to many as an intellectual impertinence, is indisputable for him: that God creates good, even through evil. (WA 56, 331, 27). The justice of God is incomprehensible and therefore can only be understood in a new world.

 

Photo: photocase/Birthe GerlachMartin Luther stood firmly in the present. He did not make philosophical observations about the essence of time. His understanding of time was shaped by the realisation that something had to happen during the decisive years of the Reformation. He phrases it, certainly not by chance, in the style of the apocalyptic preachers: “The time has come, do penance, Germany, at the time of mercy!”
 
As a man of the Middle Ages he was totally convinced that God's justice and mercy could be read from the events of the time. This reaches even into the experiences of everyday life. In his book “Die Theologie Martin Luthers – eine kritische Würdigung” (The theology of Martin Luther – a critical appraisal “), Hans-Martin Barth reports the event of Luther being “liberated from the unbearable pain of his lithiasis” when he was near Tambach. Relieved, Luther wrote to his wife that many intercessions had caused “that God opened the path of my bladder during that night. Everything has its time, one can never demand it from God”.