The five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, marked by Martin Luther’s public disputation against papal indulgences (later known as the Ninety-five Theses) made on October 31, 1517, will certainly bring revived interest in the life and legacy of one of church history’s most influential figures. And justifiably so, for few have had as much impact on the world both inside and outside the church as Martin Luther. The Protestant Reformation that Luther set into motion ushered in the modern age, an age of world-changing developments. These include the Enlightenment, widespread literacy, the rise of the individual, and innumerable shifts in culture, education, and the arts. In fact, one cannot study literature (my own field) without at least a passing familiarity with Luther’s writing because his impact on the world, including the world of letters, is so far-reaching.
But until I read this fascinating account by Michelle DeRusha of Luther’s marriage to Katharina von Bora, I knew nothing about this central part of Luther’s life and work. It’s a shame, really, that when we study history, even church history, scant attention is usually given to domestic life. There are various reasons why that’s so, but one is our lingering embrace of a sharp—and artificial—division drawn in the nineteenth century between the public sphere and the private sphere.
Biography, whether the reading or writing of it, can go a long way toward correcting this error. The examination of a person’s whole life, one placed within the context of his or her work and times, offers a crash course in a myriad of subjects, as well as a powerful demonstration that one thing always touches on another. Public and private cannot be separated in a person any more than hydrogen and oxygen can be separated and still be water. A person’s public works are shaped and formed by his or her private life, and vice versa. This biography of a marriage, then, goes even further in reconciling the public and private parts of a life that has left such a legacy.
In the case of Martin Luther, marriage—both his theological views of the institution and his own marriage—was central to his work as a reformer. Luther’s decision to marry played a pivotal role not only in his private life, but in the public impact of his ministry in reforming the church and its teachings on marriage. For it is one thing to preach a doctrine; it is another to practice it. This truth is particularly applicable to Luther’s situation because he took considerable aim at the contemporary church’s teaching on sex, marriage, and celibacy. Luther’s controversial marriage allowed him to take a heretofore abstract doctrinal topic into the realm of lived experience. Luther’s marriage extended his efforts at reforming orthodoxy to orthopraxy. Simply by marrying, and thereby embodying the doctrine he was teaching, the power of Luther’s reforms was magnified. Luther’s theology of marriage, one refined by practice, changed the way Christians thought about marriage and thereby shaped the very institution of marriage in ways that continue today.
But it wasn’t just getting married that allowed Luther to influence the institution of marriage. As the account that follows in these pages shows, Luther’s decision to marry Katharina von Bora specifically also contributed to the Protestant understanding of marriage because of the particular ways these two particular people shaped one another and the life they created together. For one thing, Martin’s decision to marry out of obedience to God and service to the imperiled Katharina (as opposed to mere affection) serves as a model for us today, an antidote to our overly romanticized view of marriage as centered on personal compatibility and fulfillment. Martin and Katharina did find compatibility and fulfillment in their marriage—but only as these resulted naturally in their pursuit of marriage’s nobler offices.
It is these nobler offices of marriage, those for which God established the institution and still blesses it today, that shine so brightly in this story of one marriage formed so long ago. Those times were so very different from ours, and much about Katharina and Martin’s betrothal, wedding, and life together seems strange to twenty-first-century readers: convent life, heresy trials, a marriage bed of straw, the requisite eyewitness to the consummation, and the devastating hardships of labor, disease, and early death that were part of life in those days.
Yet, from within all this strangeness, an astonishing familiarity emerges. Strip away the veneer of the differences between the Luthers’ marriage and the typical modern marriage of today, and what shines forth is a picture of what God has always intended marriage to be: an obedience to him and to each other that glorifies him and is a picture of Christ’s relationship to the church.
In such a time as this—when marriage seems to be at once despised and idolized, both within the church and outside it, and when the very definition of marriage has been challenged, chastened, and changed—the radical marriage of Katharina and Martin Luther serves as a timely remembrance for the church. In both its strangeness and its familiarity to readers in a world five hundred years away from theirs, this story of a husband and a wife reminds us that marriage was designed to serve the other, not ourselves, and to advance the kingdom of God here on earth, not our personal kingdoms.
In other words, the biblical vision of marriage has always been radical.
Karen Swallow Prior
Professor of English
Liberty University