LUTHER : In Real Time--Episode 1

 

Today is the opening day of the audio theater Luther: In Real Time that I have been commissioned to write by Ligonier Ministries. I have written an episode every week for the six months leading up to Luther's cosmic stand before the emperor at the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521. Please listen and share with everybody! 

It has been a delightful process working with such great folks, especially with Producer/Director Barry Cooper. You can listen wherever you listen to your podcasts. For more information visit ligonier.org/luther-in-real-time/.

I thought you might like to see an early version of the script for episode 1 of the series. So, here it is:

LUTHER—In Real Time Podcast: Episode 1--Damnable Heresy

SFX: fist hammering on wooden door; indistinct shouting 

It’s October 10, 1520. At the behest of Pope Leo X, his agents pound on the wicket door in the gate of the Augustinian Priory in Wittenberg.

SFX: latch turning and door creaking open

The agents thrust an official legal document from the Holy See in Rome into the hands of Martin Luther.

The Pope’s leaden seal was attached to the document with a coarse hemp rope; Luther weighed it pensively in his hand, turning it over; Apostles Peter and Paul on one side, and Pastor Pastorum Leo X—Shepherd of Shepherds—on the reverse side.

He’d seen it pressed in wax before this—a decade before, while on pilgrimage in Rome.

Cloaked in his black Augustinian cowl, Luther had travelled from Erfurt, Germany over the Alps to the Eternal City in Rome—walking all 639 miles on foot.

Bone-weary in Rome, Luther had dutifully crawled up the Scala Sancta, all twenty-eight cold, marble steps on his knees.

SFX: Pater noster murmuring crowd

The Sacred Stairs were papal-certified to be the very ones Jesus ascended to face his trial before Pontus Pilate, the same twenty-eight steps Christ had then DEscended when condemned and led out to his flogging and crucifixion.

SFX: indulgence hawker inflection, words indistinct.

When Luther finally reached the top, a Dominican friar thrust a wooden coin box toward him, shaking it impatiently.

SFX: coins ringing in a wooden box

Luther dropped a florin into the slot in the money coffer. In a careless monotone, the friar hastily promised him forgiveness of his sins…

SFX: Friar muttering absolution in Latin “Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat… Deinde, ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

…handing him a papal letter of indulgence: the promise that his pilgrimage, the scaling of the marble steps on his knees, had somehow lessened the time he would have to spend in purgatory, paying for his sins.

LUTHER: “But what if it is not so?”

Luther trembled as he turned the document over in his hand.

LUTHER: “What—if—it-is-not-so?”

As time passed, Luther’s doubts about indulgences only deepened.

Watching notorious indulgence peddler Johann Tetzel parading outside the Elster Gate of Wittenberg as if he were a prince or a pope, troubled Luther. Hawking forgiveness of sins for a quarter florin? It had to stop.

TETZEL: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs!”

Seeing Tetzel fleece Germany’s working poor with promises that HIS indulgence, bearing the papal seal, was their passport to paradise, enraged Luther. Later, he would comment:

LUTHER: “I find nothing that promotes work better than angry fervor. For when I wish to compose, write, pray and preach well, I must be angry. It refreshes my entire system, my mind is sharpened, and all unpleasant thoughts and depression fade away.”

LUTHER: “If you want to change the world, take up your pen and write.”

So Luther did.

He took up his goosequill and, one by one, he compiled a list of 95 reasons why his beloved Church must stop exploiting God’s people by selling them forgiveness.

LUTHER: “…if the Pope knew the exactions of the indulgence-preachers he would rather that the basilica of St. Peter’s should burn to ashes than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.” 

When the ink was dry, Luther, strode through the archway from the courtyard of his home at Wittenberg’s Augustinian monastery, the black folds of his Augustinian habit billowing behind him.

He turned left onto the cobblestones of the Collegienstrasse, past the Stadtkirche, the Town Church where he preached to the peasants, and across the market square. 

SFX: donkey braying, cartwheels clattering.

Side-stepping the filth oozing between the cobblestones, Martin walked past the studio workshop of Lucas Cranach the famous Renaissance painter.

Some of his students fell into step behind him, eager to see what their favorite professor was up to. A block and a half farther on, Luther halted before the door of the Castle Church, took out his 95 Theses…

SFX: hammering and church bell tolling ominously, background street noises

…and posted them on the Duke’s church door. It was October 31, 1517, All Hallow’s Eve.

For 16^th Century scholars, nailing a document to the church door was not uncommon – it was a way to invite debate.

But some close to Luther were afraid. His outspoken criticism of indulgences also reflected negatively on the practice of venerating religious relics as a way of gaining God’s favor. 

The church Luther had chosen belonged to Duke Frederick The Wise. An avid collector of relics.

The Duke had commissioned Lucas Cranach to illustrate a catalogue of his relics, which in 1517 included more than 5,000 bits and pieces of the saints. By 1520, it numbered 20,000.

A piece of straw from the manger, a tooth from St. Jerome, four hairs from the head of Jesus’ mother, a hair from Jesus’ beard, and, his most prized relic, a thorn certified by the Pope to have pierced the Savior’s brow.

SFX: mealtime table sounds: wooden utensils, indistinct voices, laughter—under narration: 

LUTHER: “What lies there are about relics!” 

SFX: beer stein clonking on wooden table

LUTHER: “One claims to have a feather from the wing of the angel Gabriel, and the Bishop of Mainz has a flame from Moses’ burning bush. And how does it happen that eighteen apostles are buried in Germany when Christ had only twelve?”

SFX: young men laughing hilariously, back slapping 

 Luther’s friends feared that if he lost the Duke’s support, he might lose everything—including his life.

But Luther was resolved.

LUTHER: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that really matter.” 

Over the next three years, the developing fracture between Luther and Rome became a chasm.

In the years since posting his 95 Theses, his pen had not been idle. With that pen, Luther had started a fire that had spread to the highest levels of power in the European world; to kings and queens, to knights and bishops, even to popes and emperors.

 

SFX: fist pounding persistently on wooden door

And so. On this day, October 10th, 1520, Luther’s hammering on the door of the Castle Church had come back to haunt him. Now agents of the Pope were hammering on HIS door.

 

SFX: Papers being turned over in the hand.

 

Luther looks at the opening lines of the document. It is an official legal document from the Pope himself, entitled Exsurge Domine, “Arise, O Lord…”

 

LUTHER: “Condemn—reprobate—heretical”

 

The most powerful single individual in the European world, Pope Leo X, is declaring Martin Luther a damnable and pernicious heretic.

 

LUTHER: “—scandalous—offensive to pious ears – excommunicate --”

 

Without a complete recantation, Luther will be excommunicated, cut off from the Church, his body and soul condemned to the fires of hell.

 

SFX: incoherent angry shouting, sounds of burning under the narration

 

The agents of the Pope had wasted no time. They were already hurling Luther’s books into the flames. How long before they would do the same to Luther himself?

 

SFX: the fires reach a crescendo, then sudden silence.

 

There is no way of escape.

 

Luther has sixty days to recant.

 

The clock is ticking.

Douglas Bond is author of thirty-one books, including his latest release The Hobgoblins, a novel on John Bunyan, The Resistance set in enemy occupied Normandy, and many others. He is two-time Grace Award book finalist; he directs the Oxford Creative Wraditing Master Class, is an award-winning teacher, podcaster, speaker at conferences, and leader of Church history tours in Europe. He is currently reading Luther In Love aloud on his podcast. Visit his website bondbooks.net 

REFORMATION ROMANCE: Part 2, Marriage Luther and Katie's Way

[Read Part 1]

Bond travelers at Augustinian cloister, Wittenberg

SACRAMENTAL CORRUPTION OF MARRIAGE

Pause with me in our narrative of Luther and Katie’s life together. How had marriage gotten so corrupted by the Medieval Church? In one of his influential pamphlets, “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” Luther made a frontal assault on the “foul contagion” of the entire sacramental system of Rome.

He decried making transubstantiation, indulgences, pilgrimage, baptism, marriage, monasticism, and penance into means of earning salvation. Even baptism and the Lord’s Supper Rome had mangled and distorted until they bore no resemblance to the two sacraments Jesus had established. “What Rome has done with the sacraments,” declared Luther, “I compare to a lie, which like to a snowball, the longer it is rolled the greater it becomes.” Luther wanted to restore a biblical understanding of justification that comes not of works or sacraments, but by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Chief among the trumpery of Rome’s sacerdotal system was the garbling of marriage into a sacrament. According to canon law, monasticism and priestly celibacy were the higher order sacraments, but for the secular vocations marriage had been morphed into a sacrament, a means by which the lower order of society might have a better chance at achieving salvation. To Luther this was yet another instance of doctrinal bilge water spewing from Rome.

Far from having a lower view of marriage, however, Luther wanted to restore marriage to its rightful place in God’s economy of grace. Just as there was no inherent grace in taking monastic vows of celibacy, so there was no salvific grace to be gained in marriage. Moreover, it was doubly scandalous when men who had taken vows of chastity so shamelessly violated those vows. Alexander VI, the pope of Luther’s youth, kept several mistresses and fathered numerous illegitimate children; on his pilgrimage to Rome in 1510 Luther witnessed priests consorting with prostitutes at specially sanctioned brothels reserved exclusively for clerics.

Master of the invective insult, Luther declared of the pope: “You were born from the behind of the devil, are full of devils, lies, blasphemy, and idolatry; are the instigator of these things, God’s enemy, Antichrist, desolater of Christendom, and steward of Sodom.” Due to the stranglehold such abuses had on the common man, Luther felt justified in resorting to such vitriol. Later, however, upon more sober and gospel reflection, Luther said, “I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.” Nevertheless, he was called in violent times to decry unsupportable abuses. Rome itself he declared, “the most licentious den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels…”

If marriage was not a sacrament, however, what was it? “Marriage is the God-appointed and legitimate union of man and woman in the hope of having children or at least for the purpose of avoiding fornication and sin, and living to the glory of God.  The ultimate purpose of marriage is to obey God, to find aid and counsel against sin; to call upon God; to seek, love, and educate children for the glory of God. To live with one’s wife in the fear of God and to bear the cross; but if there are no children, nevertheless, to live with one’s wife in contentment; and to avoid all lewdness with others.”

Though at first adamant in his refusal to marry, it was only when Luther moved from writing theoretically about marriage to entering into the covenant of marriage itself that he came to see it as a lovely school of character, an ordinary means, gifted by a gracious God, whereby a husband and wife might grow in grace together and in the knowledge and love of Christ.

MATRIMONIAL TRAIN WRECK... Part 3

Douglas Bond is author of LUTHER IN LOVE and more than twenty-five other books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours in Europe. Watch for his forthcoming book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To); preorder a signed copy of God Sings! today at bondbooks.net and receive a free copy of Bond's New Reformation Hymns album.

REFORMATION ROMANCE: Love and Marriage Luther and Katie’s Way, Part 1

Apostate monk marries apostate nun

“He’s merely a monk who wants a wife,” so the pope dismissed Martin Luther when first he heard of the Saxon monk’s decrying of the papacy. But then in 1521, during his compelled sequester in the Wartburg Castle, Luther began hearing of many former priests taking wives. “Good heavens!” he retorted. “They won’t give me a wife.” Even his colleagues Carlstadt and Melanchthon had married. But Luther was, at first, adamant, no one was going to give him a wife. Not that he was a sexless stone, but it made no sense for a man under the sentence of heresy, the stake looming, to marry—only to leave his bride a widow. 

Perhaps the matrimonial news prompted Luther to set aside his German translation of the New Testament (and dozens of other writing projects) and write his great treatise on Christian marriage. “This will empty the cloisters,” a prophetic friend observed. Overnight Luther’s treatise circulated widely.

Even into nunneries. Luther received a letter, a passionate appeal for his counsel from more than a dozen nuns who desperately wanted to flee a nunnery near Wittenberg. Though escaping from a monastic cloister in 16^th century Germany was a capital offense, Luther gave them a theological argument for why non-biblical vows are not binding. These girls wanted out, but they needed help. As if in a romantic comedy, Luther and his merchant friend Leonard Kopp cooked up a scheme to smuggle the apostate nuns out of the nunnery, by some accounts, in pickled herring barrels. “A wagon load of vestal virgins has just come to town,” said one of Luther’s students at the news, “all more eager for marriage than for life. God grant them husbands lest worse befall.”

The night before Easter in 1523, lest worse befall, Luther put on yet another hat: Matchmaker, the roaring, German, beer-swilling, pugilist version of Jane Austen’s Emma. He felt duty bound. After all, he had started the barrel rolling by decrying false doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church, including the unbiblical teaching about clerical celibacy. He had to finish it.

Setting to work with his illimitable zeal, Luther soon had suitable circumstances arranged for all but one of the runaway nuns, spunky twenty-six-year-old Katharina von Bora. After several failed attempts—choosy Katharina turned down more than one offer of marriage—she laughed off an aged candidate with the quip that she would rather marry Luther than Dr. Glatz. All in jest.

A jest, however, that began its work on Luther. After a visit home wherein he shared his problem of finding a husband for an apostate nun, his father, with Teutonic bluntness, told Luther to marry the girl and give him offspring. Finally Luther was resolved. He would do it, “to please his father, to spite the pope and the Devil, and to seal his witness before martyrdom.”

[To be continued--what does Katie think of the idea?]

Douglas Bond is author of LUTHER IN LOVE and twenty-seven other books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours in Europe (Rome to Geneva Tour, 2020). Watch for his forthcoming book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To); preorder a signed copy of God Sings! today at bondbooks.net and receive a free Rise & Worship cd.

Writing Better Than Our Literary Heroes--Inkblots

Writing like Victor Hugo tonight

INKBLOTS

New writers on board this evening. Welcome to you all. 

Sixteen-year-old Maya leads off with her French Revolution era historical novel. Protagonist a young apprentice in Versailles.Rain falling like the verse of Milton or Spenser. Wonderfully read, so appropriately inflected. All is wrong with the world, and then personified. Enter our story… Is your narrator a participant in the story? Maya writes like a 19^th century novelist, a Dickens feel or maybe Stowe. Our solemn young man, whom we have attempted to sketch. I am assuming that the narrator is not the apprentice (no apprentice would likely have that level of vocabulary). They were desperately in love. Show this by subtle looks, by gestures, a hand placed, an act of service and show the devotion. Let the reader say to himself, they were desperately in love. The more I listen, the more I want to guess who Maya’s favorite author is. My guess, Jane Austen, or Charlotte Bronte. Rich narrative. But the narrator tells us what to think about many things; I would like to hear them talk, draw conclusions from observation.

Maya critiqued herself and said she feels like it is too much description.  But John liked the narrative but wondered if she uses any dialogue. This was the opening chapter. Patrick described how he had written extensive narrative like this but after critique went back and altered 90% of what he wrote, and it was significantly better. There is a tendency to feel that as a writer we have to show how well we can write. Telling rather than showing. We talked about the intrusive narrator. This creates an unreality for the reader. We don’t have someone at our shoulder telling us what to think about everything we are seeing. All description has to drive the plot forward and develop the character. We did not have a point of view to care about. Maya could create a first person narrator who is involved in the story, invested in it. Then the higher register language makes sense, given the 18^th century setting. Maya, who is sixteen, writes with the vocabulary, the syntax and verbiage, of a well-read, mature literary enthusiast.

Sydney, Maya’s older sister, reads from her blog, sounds like a favorite genre. When God Writes Poetry. She proceeds to contrast propositions and poetry. Propositions are the voice of objective truth… poetry drapes beauty. Its power. We need both, propositions and poetry, God is the source of both. We are variously drawn to one or the other, but both tendencies are in error. We need logic and wonder. She creates a parallel with the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. Entire world is a poem. We are not merely mater, and we are not simply disembodied spirits. This world is the ultimate proposition draped in poetry. I think the subheadings are helpful in a blog. Remarkably mature writing in this piece, appropriate language, and use of poetic devises embedded in and ably demonstrating her point. 

I would suggest a leading sentence at the end of one subsection that connects to the topic sentence beginning the next subsection, a sort of passing of the baton. Good use of appropriate quotations, Lewis, Piper. Spurgeon makes an argument for using imaginative devices, entertaining characteristics in our writing, commenting that another writer’s work was “most reliable, but dull.”

Jonathan reads, “This is weird,” he warned us, sort of sci-fi. Detonation Chamber, short story title. Jonathan begins medias res, a tense moment, a man with a gun in one hand, his other hand a fist poised over a red button. Why “the madman” rather than a name? Maybe I will answer that as I listen more. Dr. Hume’s asexual offspring is the madman. Got it. I’m not so sure that the backstory came in too early (though others commented that it came too early), but I do think it could have been trickled out in the midst of the tension of the moment, augmenting the suspense.

I have many literary heroes, authors that have shaped me in significant ways, whose writing inspires me, or something about their life and struggles prods me, goads me onward. I used to attempt to imitate them, their verbiage, syntax, imaginative comparisons, everything about them. I am learning, however, to glean all I can from what my literary heroes do well, but I have stopped trying to write like them. In fact, I intentionally try not to write like they do. That was Shakespeare, or Milton, or Chaucer, or Sutcliff, or O'Conner, or Bunyan. Not. Bond. Imitation is good just as crawling and toddling are good and appropriate--for infants and toddlers, but not for grown ups. We heard some amazing writing at 'Blots the other night. My advice to all of us, and all aspiring writers: Write with appreciation for your literary heroes, but press on to find your own voice. 

I was recently heavily edited, more so than I have ever been in my writing career, by an eager young editor. The result? I didn't even recognize the piece I had written. It was no longer my voice. It was the editor's voice, vigorously writing over mine. I'm not a good writer, but I am improving as a re-writer, presumably one of the reasons why I had been asked to write the piece for the magazine. 

My latest release: rewind 500 years with this one

My newest book, adult novel on Martin and Katharina Luther, is now available, free shipping, signed by the author, at bondbooks.net. I don't think you will be disappointed. Here's what one reviewer wrote about it:  “Luther in Love is a lovely book, a pleasure to read, a creative and astute project, a page-turner, faithful to Luther’s voice as a Reformer, a preacher, a theologian, a son, a friend, a father, and a husband.”

AIMEE BYRD, author of Housewife Theologian, Theological Fitness, and No Little Women

June 6 will be, DV, our next INKBLOTS meeting.

Can't Find it Grind it--Writing to Love Your Neighbor (Inkblots)

I'm off today to spend the week with 8 writers in Oxford

Six bludgeoned 'Blots this rainy evening (Patrick told us a horrible story, not fiction, about being attacked and beat with a rock. I hope he mines this in his book nearing completion). Alisa shared with us about the final work on Swiftwater, final editorial work and some frustration and final revisions, but light at the end of the tunnel. The buck stops with the author in an author consortium publishing venture, so we want to see this as an opportunity, one that makes the final book all that much better. Heaps of deleting and rewriting going on around here. and brainstorming. And we discussed stream of consciousness writing (Ulysses) and how much Jonathan and Patrick do not like it. Rachel reads:

Rachel's Russian cheese-smuggling yarn, fascinating and deeply hunger-inspiring. Rachel reads her work so well, with such feeling and unique character and voice. Does the simile of the barrel of a rifle following its target work? Not sure, but worth discussing. On further reflection, I think it is a similar problem as active passive voice, where the subject is receiving action instead of doing it. Rifles don't act. Shooters of guns act. Rachel drops the bomb that guys do stupid things for girls all the time. Mark is bitter, but Trusov just wants his cheese. John commented on the rifle simile, that the hunter should be following. Ingrid is a stick-to-the-man type character. Patrick suggested that Ingrid needs to have leverage on Mark and he is motivated by self-interest, but the leverage conveys to the reader that this is authentic.

Jonathan told us about a book called Story Grid, compiled from an editor's blog posts, from a successful editor. Every story has three acts, using the Silence of the Lambs, which morphed into a movie so easily and needed virtually no change from book to screen (not an endorsement). Patrick shared with us about "finishing" the book and some of the revisions he made and why he made them. His rewriting is like a case study on himself, where he was when he wrote the first draft and where he has progressed. The two biggies that Inkblots returns to (I hope more than these, but certainly not less than these), showing and not telling, and remaining in character point of view. If you fail to do the latter the reader is confused, disoriented, halting and uncertain about whose world they are supposed to be in, which character are they supposed to care most about? An important part of loving your neighbor as an author is loving and respecting your reader; jolt them all over the anthropological map and you are not loving your neighbor. We don't want to read like a young man who asked me to teach him how to drive a stick shift. "Can't find it, grind it" only works on somebody else's clutch; mine was burned up. We do this to readers when we don't write with point-of-view integrity.

It is possible to shift points of view, but it must be done with care and conventionality. All that to say, Patrick discovered that he did not have a clear perspective soon enough for the reader to get immersed in the yarn. Lewis does the shift from Peter back to Lucy, to Susan and Edmond, but even at that there is a dominant character and every reader knows it, Lucy. Tolkien-era Arthur Ransom does it with the siblings in Swallows & Amazons. But beware. The cliff looms precipitously when you do.


Patrick reads from the revised Adam & Steve yarn, a parody on same-sex marriage, in which he creates a sense of the actuality of having the technology to impregnate one of the two males, using elaborate and costly medical research, heavily funded by federal dollars, no doubt, forcibly extracted from gullible brow-beaten taxpayers. I wonder if Patrick gives too much away with the superlatives he uses to describe the monstrous process to pull off this Frankensteinian genetic fiasco. Patrick clearly has had a ball writing this bazaar reality scenario. Be sure to play up the bold social experiment and let the reader feel sick. Humor is a two-edged sword, and if you're not careful you will expose your hand too soon in the story, and the ones you want to prod may see through the ruse and bolt deeper into the wastelands if you are not careful.

John reads some of his rewrite after last Thursday's major revision and critique work with Editorial Director Mary Lynn Spear in the Scriptorium last week. John launched right into the major rewrite. Avoid writing "obviously in thought"; instead show the posture of obvious thought, in facial expressions. This is a weighty discussion between a daughter who is pregnant and has considered taking her own life. It feels a bit over written, too much actually said that would be better conveyed in some thoughts, some inferences, conclusions drawn from the uncomfortable mannerism of the mother or the daughter. Can you show development to the relationship between the mother and daughter, beginning with awkwardness and gradually, with fits and starts, becoming more congenial. I feel like it is too congenial and over stated at least in places. I'll just be in the kitchen if you need me. Kill the word just, seemed, and the other qualifying verbal tics. It is tough writing this kind of conversation. There has to be more circular avoidance, then move in, and blurt it out. Even though the family is undergoing change, good changes, going to church together, nevertheless, everything isn't all okay. It doesn't work that way in a broken world. Show genuine change, yet with the realities of the habits of life, and the reality of abiding sin, still with hope, but not oversimplified, everything is all okay now.

Advance copy of LUTHER IN LOVE just arrived!