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Luther's Strange God
Clements, Keith W.
Clements, Keith W.
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n205-_luther_Part_1.pdf
Adobe PDF, 116.95 KB
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"Five years ago I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a week in East Germany on an ecumenical study-visit. One day I absented myself from the official tour and took the train from Erfurt to Wittenberg, determined to see for myself the birthplace of the Reformation. Since Luther's time, Wittenberg has taken its fair share of destruction and restoration in the tides of warfare that have swept back and forth across the north German plain,· but its buildings and its atmosphere are still essentially late medieval. The University in which Luther was professor, roughly like a single small Oxbridge college, is an obvious focal point of pilgrimage; with its rooms in which Luther lectured, and ate and drank- and talked- around the table. So also of course is the Castle Church, to the door of which on that fateful day in 1517, Luther fastened his 95 theses. Inside lies Luther's tomb. As I stood there, two Russian soldiers were also sight-seeing. lt was impossible not to feel that whereas I, a pilgrim from the Christian Protestant west was coming home to pay tribute to the spiritual grand-parent of my tradition, this place must have seemed almost meaningless if not completely foreign to them. What could be more antipodal than a British Baptist and a Red Army soldier? Protestant pride and possessiveness rose in my breast as . their wondering glances tried to take in the reason for the seeming importance of this building"
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1983
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With permission of the license/copyright holder