December 12, 2025 Show with Angus Stewart on “How Katie Helped the Reformation”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday. On this 12th day of December 2025,

I'm thrilled to have back a returning guest that I truly love interviewing.

His name is Angus Stewart. He is pastor of Covenant Protestant Reform Church of Ballymena, Northern Ireland.

And today we're going to be addressing how Katie helped the Reformation, the unusual courtship and union of Martin Luther and Katie Luther, the most significant marriage of the

Reformation considered 500 years later. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Angus Stewart.

Lovely to be back with you again, Chris. We've got a great subject to discuss tonight. Amen. First of all, tell our listeners about Covenant Protestant Reform Church of Ballymena, Northern Ireland.

The Covenant Protestant Reform Church, or the CPRC, or just Covenant Church, is a faithful congregation in Northern Ireland that holds to the

Reformed Confessions with some lovely godly saints. We're busy spreading the word and seeking to serve the

Lord Jesus Christ. We have a website, CPRC .co

.uk, with lots on there, especially of late, Urdu, the official language of Pakistan.

We're organizing a conference in a castle in Northern Ireland in connection with the

British Reformed Fellowship. The first week in August. The theme is

Know Your God on the subject of the glory of God, his persons, his trinity.

And we're going to welcome guests from all around the world. And if any of your listeners tonight are interested, they can look up the

British Reformed Fellowship, do a search for it. They'll come to the website. There are some details about this conference, and we'll be getting out the booking form,

Lord willing, within the next month. And you offer, if I'm not mistaken, on your website, the

Three Forms of Unity in many different languages, absolutely free? Yes.

We give out free copies of the Three Forms of Unity and a little pink book.

And then we have online copies in dozens of different languages. Some of them, we have the

Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession, and Khans of Dort. All three in a particular language. Some we've won or some were two.

We've two. A friend from Pakistan, hopefully I was talking with him today, he hopes to get us fairly soon the

Urdu translation of the Khans of Dort. So it's continually growing. It's a lovely resource.

Well, I've got to let a member of my own congregation here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who is from Pakistan, I've got to let him know about that.

So I will do so the next time I'm speaking with him, which will probably be this

Lord's Day. Very nice. Alrighty. Well, I love the theme that you have chosen for today.

I can't recall ever doing an entire program focusing on the marriage of Martin and Katie Luther with special emphasis on Katie.

And if you can tell us when this fascination of your own began with this couple.

That's a very good question. I could approach that one from several angles. My wife is in the room with me and she's just looked over and grinned.

So that's made up my mind which angle. Well, Mary and I got married on the 475th anniversary of Martin and Katie Luther.

He got married, they got married on Tuesday, the 13th of June, 1525.

And Mary and I got married on the 13th of June, 2475 years later.

And it was also a Tuesday. We didn't know it at the time. You may have realized,

Chris, that I'm very interested in history. So when I became a Christian, I was learning Christian history.

I looked up my own birthday and was rather disappointed that nothing, nothing significant happened on that day.

But Mary helped me again with this one. When we got married, we had the same marriage day as Martin and Katie.

So that was really special. And then, Chris, this one, you might think I'm stretching a point, but I assure you it's true.

On the 500th anniversary, so we got married on the 475th anniversary, 13th of June.

On the 500th anniversary, a man in our church, Timothy Spence, and his wife from Singapore, Huiyi, they got married on the 13th of June, 2025.

So they actually got the 500th anniversary, which was a rounder number than us, 475. But they didn't get the right day of the week.

They were married on a Friday. And there was a reason for that.

Tim, like us, wasn't thinking of Martin Luther's wedding day. He was thinking, ah,

Friday the 13th, I want to get married. I need to book a hotel for the reception. And because of, sadly in Northern Ireland, we have superstitious people too,

Friday the 13th being unlucky. So then he could get the hotel of his choice on Friday the 13th because they were all clear.

It was also very convenient for me personally, because then

I could say to Mary that as a special treat on her 25th wedding anniversary,

I'd take her somewhere special to the hotel that my friend and church member was paying for, which would have been a whole lot nicer than the two of us would have made otherwise.

So we had a lovely day all round. I've got to keep that in mind in case I could get a discount here sometime when

I need to book a hotel if it's going to be near Friday the 13th.

I'm assuming that may be as similar as a case here in the United States, except I'm sure the hotels in Salem, Massachusetts will be booked.

It seems that a lot of witches and wannabes make pilgrimages to Salem, Massachusetts, and that might be a very popular day with them.

I don't know. But one question that comes up every time

I do a program on Martin Luther, and in this case, it's

Martin and Katie. Every time Lutherans who see that I am a

Reformed Baptist and that my guests very often are Calvinists, I do sometimes have

Lutheran guests on the program as well. But when my guest is a Calvinist, they are puzzled as to why

I am giving honor to Martin Luther. Sometimes it's just a pleasant surprise, and sometimes

I'm treated with an indignant, hostile attitude that I should be minding my own business and staying out of their history and their church because they think that we manufacture false things about Luther to make him resemble

Calvin more than in their minds than he actually did resemble

Calvin. But tell us why you as a Reformed pastor have a great admiration for Luther to begin with.

That's a good question. Before I answer it, I could give an interesting example of how a

Lutheran body asked me to write a piece about Martin and Katie Luther.

Unfortunately, Chris, you know how this goes. Sometimes you get a request where you're just really, really busy.

That was one of the few requests in my life as a minister that I ever actually turned down. They wanted just a few words for quite a scholarly, prestigious

Lutheran periodical and quite a liberal one too, which really shocked me.

I don't get too many offers to write in scholarly theological journals from liberal

Lutherans. I'd written a bit about that before, and I had some ideas as to why this marriage was important, but as I say,

I had to decline it. With regard to Luther himself, there are so many ways we value

Luther. One is at a purely human level, his amazing personality and courage.

You've got to admire a man. He was so much fun, the personal struggles he went through. Then, of course, there was the great discovery by God's grace of justification by faith alone.

I've written a paper and given speeches on Luther, on his doctrine of God saving righteousness, which was a great blessing to me.

Of course, there's Martin Luther's bondage of the will, 1525, the 500th anniversary of which is also this year.

And Katie Luther, she said to Martin, because Martin was wondering, should he respond to Erasmus promoting the heresy of free will?

And sometimes he thought he shouldn't. He said, the book is so poor, it's hardly deserving of a response.

And we as Christians all experience that. Someone writes something that's false and you say, boy, do

I have to refute this one more time? Even somebody who's spiritually blind could almost see through this nonsense that the guy's writing.

But Katie was the one who pushed him to write that. So Luther himself, I love him to bits.

Mary and I went to Germany in 2012 and had a fantastic holiday in the eastern parts of Germany.

We were in Eisleben where Luther was born and died. We went to the

Wartburg where he translated the New Testament to German. We walked through Wittenberg.

Mary and I would love to go back. So many good reasons, such a great figure.

But I better stop there because I could eat up the whole two hours talking about how much we love Martin Luther. Maybe our

Lutheran friends won't accept it or believe it, but we are genuine. We have our differences with Luther, but we do admire him.

And a lot of these discoveries, as you referred to it when he discovered justification by faith, a lot of these discoveries came about while he was translating the

New Testament into German, having the freedom to do so, no longer being under the yoke of Rome, right?

Yes. And Luther, as he translated the Bible, as he preached, as he defended the truths, and in the early days, he expected the

Pope and the leaders to come to agree with what he was saying in Scripture. Think, for instance, of the priesthood of all believers.

What a wonderful truth that is. And no one can write as persuasively and beautifully on such a theme as Luther.

His courage in translating the Bible, getting it out to the people, and even this issue of Mary and Katie, getting her out of the nunnery.

That provoked him to look, and others coming out of the nunnery, to look at the issue of monastic vows, the third commandment.

Then marriage, he had to look at, is marriage a sacrament? One of the seven sacraments of Rome, as she has stated it in more recent times.

One thing led to another thing. And in his views of eschatology, I mean, the whole package, a great struggle.

Fantastic man. Well, how did Martin and Katie meet?

There was a merchant called Lenhard Koppa, and Koppa came to deliver herring to the nunnery.

He had gotten a message somehow or other to these ladies, and on the

Saturday, the day before Easter in 1523, they managed to climb inside or around or behind the empty, the now empty herring barrels on the back of the cart of Lenhard Koppa.

And this was sort of like the Reformation's great escape. Right. Colditz Castle, where a number of Allied prisoners escaped in World War II, isn't that far away.

So there was the great escape from World War II camps, but there was also the great escape 400 years before World War II.

And the to be Mrs. Luther was one of the 12. And then later on, just a few days there, she made it to Wittenberg.

Three of the 12 then left, but nine of the 12 made it there.

And then Luther met these nine ladies when they were brought to Wittenberg, and he met her, and then he wrote a defense of this great escape.

Luther realized that the Roman Catholic Church would have made hay of this. And he wanted to, well, we would say in the 21st century, he wanted to get ahead of the news.

So he wanted to get out there first, a track defending the escape of these ladies. And in there, we have his first reference to her because he lists her among the ladies who had escaped from the monastery.

And so, but we don't know definitively whether or not she was actually in the herring barrel.

She may have just been hiding behind some barrels. Yes. One of the more recent biographers,

I think it was Eric McTaxis, he reckons that there's been a certain amount of embellishing about putting him in the herring barrels.

But it's hard to be definitive on a question like that.

There was a big risk to it, escaping from this monastery, because it was a criminal offense for the ladies to escape and for anyone to aid and abet.

And then this cart or its passage from Nimshin Monastery to Torgau, where Capa lived, they had to go through the territory of Duke George, who hated

Luther with a passion. And had they been caught on that part of the journey, there would have been a great deal of grief for all parties concerned.

Do you think they would have been executed or how severely would it have been? It's very possible that various things could have been done.

Capa would have been in trouble. He had a couple of men who helped him and helped the ladies get down from the wall.

The ladies themselves, I mean, the worst, the least that would have happened would have been sent back.

But who knows what way the judges would have decided. Maybe they wanted to make an example of it.

There really had been monks escaping, but this was the first from the monasteries, but this is the first recorded instance we have of nuns.

And Martin Luther was a great man for firsts, that he had had the first great escape of a bunch of nuns.

And then the students, they said, they said, we've got 12 Vestal virgins escaped from the nunnery and they're all keen to get married.

Now, how quickly did

Katie and Luther acknowledge some kind of an attraction to each other?

And who was the first to reveal that truth to the other one?

That's interesting. When the nine ladies came to Wittenberg, they made to find homes for them, jobs, spouses.

And eventually, Katie was the only one left. After two years, she was the only one left.

And then the question is, you know, who's this lady going to marry? And then there were a couple of men who wanted to marry her.

One was an alumni at the university. And another one was a

Christian pastor at Dr. Glatz. And neither of these worked out.

And then she said to Nicholas von Amsdorff that she would be open to a marriage proposal from either

Amsdorff himself or Dr. Luther. So as far as we know, she was the one who started it.

So Martin Luther, he can initiate the Reformation under the grace of God and his good problems, but he wasn't the first or pride mover in his own marriage.

Do you know what his initial reaction to this was? He was learning this.

Luther's own attitude towards marriage in general was sort of ambivalent.

He thought it would be a good idea to marry to be a good example. But it may bring the

Reformation to disrepute because the papacy and the ardent Roman Catholics are just going to claim, oh, here we go again.

They discovered these doctrines in order to get out of their vows, in order to get married because they wanted a woman.

And then there was the issue of the peasant's revolt. So this was a bad time. But then

Luther thought that his position, I'm giving you the pros and cons, his position was a bit contradictory because he was saying that these women should marry.

And he was saying to his friends that they should marry. And then they were saying to him, well, why don't you get married yourself? But their marriage union was very, very unusual because some people marry for different reasons, and these reasons vary over the ages.

Like some people get married for money or to maintain their social standards or to form alliances between one country and another country.

But Luther himself mentions that he got married to Annoy the

Pope, Confuse the Devil, and to make good on his father's desire that Martin have children so that his father could be a grandfather by him.

Because when Luther went into the Augustinian monastery in the first place, his father had spent a lot of money on his education.

He was going to be a lawyer. Then Luther was almost struck by lightning in Stotterheim in 1505.

He took an oath, a sinful oath, as it turns out, in the name of St. Ann, that if he was spared, he would go to a monastery.

And his father was furious. I spent all that money on you. Now you're going to be a poor monk. You're never going to get married.

I'm not going to have any grandchildren. And then as Luther began to understand the scriptures, he thought, well, if I get married and if God gives us children, my father,

Hans, will be delighted. Luther himself tells us that he didn't love

Katie when they got married. He cherished her. But he married her because she thought she needed a wife.

He respected and valued her. But the two of them, we would say, grew into love.

And they really loved each other very, very deeply. It was a wonderful union. Yeah, that is very reminiscent of a very dear personal friend of mine,

Richard Bennett. I don't know if you're familiar with the late Richard Bennett. He was a

Roman Catholic priest who was saved after an automobile accident.

I think it was a Jeep accident. And eventually became a

Reformed Baptist evangelist and author, founder of Berean Beacon Ministries.

But he also, when he got married, said that his wife and he did not initially love each other, but they just thought it was a wise thing to do.

And that's what they did. And do you know if Katie was at all insulted by the fact that a primary reason

Luther was marrying her was to infuriate the

Pope? Well, there are worse reasons for getting married than that.

Katie herself was a very spirited lady. And I think it was as well, because Martin had such a big personality.

If she'd have been a wallflower, she could have been completely overpowered by him.

She also had a sense of humor and Martin Luther had such a hold on people's hearts that I really don't think she was or even would have been annoyed.

By the way, we have a listener already in Moundsville, Alabama, and he says, and I don't know what particular time reference he's talking about, but Ted in Moundsville, Alabama, says,

I thought Luther fell down some steps. I don't know what he's referring to.

I'm not sure either. I'm wondering, is he talking about Luther's conversion? I do have a story involving the two of them that I'm for sure involves falling down.

And it ties in a little bit with what you mentioned about Richard Bennett. Katie Luther herself actually had a sort of car accident that led to her death.

Obviously, didn't have cars in the 16th century. But when she was moving to Torgal, where Leonard Coppa was from, the guy that brought her out of the nunnery, her coach hit a rut or something.

And then she was thrown from the carriage into some sort of shuck or trench.

She got wet. It was in December or at least late in the year. She died in the 10th of December of that year.

And then she caught pneumonia and died. So that's at least a fall and that tied in a little bit with Richard Bennett.

But since I don't know exactly what the question means, it's always hard to come up with an answer to it. Yes. Ted just clarified that he was talking about Richard Bennett, not

Martin Luther. Well, Ted, how am I supposed to know that unless you put that in the comment?

Okay. Don't get snippy with me, pal. As far as I remember,

Richard Bennett was in an automobile accident. But you may want to verify that yourself.

There is no doubt an article and a video of him giving his testimony.

And perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps my memory is faulty. It won't be the first time. But I thought for sure it was a

Jeep accident that he was in. But like I said, I could be wrong. Anyway, we are going to our first commercial break.

When we return, we'll get some more details from you about their marriage.

And then we will try to focus more on how

Katie blessed the Reformation. This may be entirely new information for me, and I'm dying to hear it with bated breath.

But if anybody else has a question for us, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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And we're now back with our guest today, Pastor Angus Stewart of Covenant Protestant Reformed Church in Ballymena, Northern Ireland.

And we are talking about how Katie helped the

Reformation, the unusual courtship and marriage of Martin and Katie Luther.

And this is, according to my guest, the most significant marriage in the

Protestant Reformation. If you have any questions of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. You may have said this already, but how long after their meeting when she either climbed out of the herring barrel or out from amongst the barrels, how long after that did they get married?

It was two years and about two months.

Okay. And tell us something interesting about their actual marriage, some things that our listeners might not know about them, how they interacted and how their gifts came to blend together in that sacred union of theirs.

There's so many things I could say there, but what I'll begin with, Chris, if you permit, is some features to how they came together.

And I want to add for the sake of our listeners, especially for parents and parents with youngish children, is that though Martin Luther was a great example in so many things.

He is atypical in other things. And I'm quite happy with Martin Luther doing it, but I wouldn't recommend that other people do this.

For instance, the two of them had a very short courtship. Now, when you're as godly and busy as Martin Luther, that's permissible.

But for most mortals, that's not a good idea. Another thing is that Katie's parents didn't approve of the wedding.

Katie's parents, the ones who put her in the monastery in the first place, were, so far as all

I've been able to read, ardent Roman Catholics. Wow. Did they remain that way? They were really upset that she left the monastery, that she became a

Protestant Christian, and then that she married Martin Luther. I mean, Martin Luther to 16th century

Roman Catholics was probably worse than Arius, the heretic.

So, I mean, from their perspective, this is what you do not want your daughter to do. Ordinarily, we would say to young people that, you know, you want your parents approval.

Well, she emphatically didn't have the approval. Then Martin Luther himself, his friends didn't really approve of it either.

Katie had a strong personality. When it got out that he was going to marry her or had married her, out of the nine that had made it there, his friends uniformly said, oh no, not that one.

They were pushing him to get married, but just not her. Yes. And then when he got married on the 13th of June, he didn't tell

Melanchthon, his co -laborer at the university, his main co -laborer and quite possibly his best friend.

So he got married without even letting his best friend know. But Luther knew Melanchthon, and Melanchthon was more timid and cautious.

And so what Luther did, and there's a time for this, for wise, mature people to do it.

Sometimes you do something that you know is right and you present people with a fait accompli.

And that's what he did with Melanchthon. And then he basically said to Melanchthon, well, I got married. I had my reasons and they were good reasons.

Now we're married. You can't stop it anyway. Now get used to it. Now, did he not invite

Melanchthon because it was a very, very tiny gathering for his wedding ceremony or what was the reason?

That was part of it, but he kept the thing close under wraps. There were just, besides him and Katie, there were five others there.

And one of them was the pastor who performed the ceremony, Johannes Bougenhaven.

And then two others were the people, Lucas Cranach, the famous portrait painter, and his wife, with whom

Katie was staying at the time. But he didn't invite

Melanchthon to that meeting because he thought Melanchthon was just too cautious and Melanchthon would have urged, you know, don't do it.

And especially Melanchthon would have said, look, we're in the midst of the Peasants' Revolt. It was 1525.

It was in the midst of the Peasants' Revolt. Now is not a good time. Now, you mean...

Sorry, another thing is the two of them got engaged and married in one day.

We don't recommend that for our Christian young people either. So that was a pretty short courtship.

And then they engaged, they got married, and it was all over. So those two years after they met, they were not courting.

No, no, they were not. They were not courting. They got to know each other more in the latter days.

Once she was interested in him and then he changed his mind, they would have bumped into each other.

You know, he knew her name. She was staying with people. She stayed in two different homes that Luther knew, and especially the

Cranachs. He would have visited them. But, yeah, it wasn't a long courtship.

And then, of course, she also sort of made the first move. Normally, that isn't a good thing.

But there are some men out there who are perhaps so slow, dim -witted, that sometimes a girl might need to, you know, give him a hint.

So unusual, but not altogether outside the boundaries. And Luther's in -laws,

Katie's parents, who hated this marriage because they were devout Roman Catholics, did they ever come to the truth of the gospel and the

Reformation? Not according to any of the sources

I've read. And the best source really on Martin Luther is a three -volume biography of Martin Brecht.

And he, being a German, as you would expect, is incredibly thorough.

So it's a fairly recent biography. And I'm pretty sure he would have mentioned that.

But there's no evidence that they did come around. Her maiden name was Von Bora, right?

Yes, Von Bora. And that Von indicates that she was sort of minor nobility.

And the monastery that she went to in Nimshin, the Cistercian monastery, it was a monastery for nobility, minor nobility.

But her family was socially, economically, a little bit on the way down. That may have been part of the reason, probably was, why they sent her to a monastery.

One less dowry to pay. Martin Luther came from a more peasant backdrop in his ancestry.

But then his father was a minor and operating on a smaller scale. And they were moving up in the world.

And that was part of the reason why Luther was to study law. More upward nobility, mobility.

And then Luther went to the monastery. Father's hopes dashed. Luther came out of the monastery. Luther gets married.

And then Luther eventually has six children, he and Katie, that were born. And the father comes totally on side.

And his father and mother professed the faith and were godly believers. But it didn't happen on her side of the family.

Well, reason for rejoicing on one side and reason for sadness on the other. I should also add,

Chris, before I forget. Martin Luther was 15 years older than Katie. And a disparity of age like that can work.

But normally we wouldn't recommend it. They get married when she was 26 and he was 41.

But it didn't seem to bother them, I'm assuming. She was the one that initially let it be known that she was interested in him.

In him as far as the husband. Yes, it didn't bother him.

It didn't bother her. Luther himself said many of the things I've been saying to you, you know, you need consent.

If at all possible, get your parents consent. Marry with ages closer to each other.

And then Katie found out, especially as the years rolled by, as a number of younger women who marry older men.

That she sort of turned out. I mean, Luther wasn't a. What's that?

What's the word for somebody? No, not until it was somebody sort of lets on they're sicker than what they are.

Anyway, he he wasn't like that, but but she ended up being his nurse. And she was actually a very good nurse.

And one of their sons turned out to be a doctor. And he said he learned half of what he knew from his mother. Wow. So that's that's what younger women who marry older men often find out that they're that they're not only making the bed and many of the things that women are especially good at cooking and so forth.

But but but nursing, nursing, you know. Now, did all of the six children survive to adulthood?

That's a very good question. Sorry, the eldest girl. The eldest girl,

Elizabeth, died after just eight months. And Katie also, after they had six children, she had a she had a miscarriage that we know of.

But the six children were born, three boys, three girls. The second girl, Magdalene, is probably the most moving story from their children.

Because she was born to the very day, one year after Elizabeth, the first girl died.

And then the family saw her as a sort of divine replacement. And she had a lovely personality.

She was a very godly, meek, gentle girl. And then she died when she was 13 years old in her father's arms.

And both of them were devastated. And it took a long time to recover from this.

Probably, Martin, even even more so. His heart broke over his daughter. Well, unless you have some unique things about their marriage, their romance and that kind of a thing.

Let me know when you want to move on to how she specifically had a positive impact on the

Reformation itself. Oh, yes. You asked that question. Then I got a little bit of went round circles a bit there,

Chris. She helped in various ways. I mentioned her prodding

Martin Luther to write the 1525 Bondage of the Will. That's in the first year of their marriage.

Wow. I mentioned that the book on monastic vows, 1521, before they get married, helped him come to this right view.

And then the release of the Twelve, the escape of the Twelve, led to Luther writing this book about how it is proper and right to leave a monastery.

So there's some publication issues that are related to her. One of the most famous stories involving

Katie relates to Luther's Anfechtungen, his sort of periods of darkness, sadness, inner turmoil and grief.

Luther was not one of these people who thinks, you know,

I'm right. I never entertained that I could be wrong. What Luther sparked,

Zwingli was around these early days too, and there were others who came on board, but he was the main figure.

What Luther sparked caused a great deal of self -questioning in him. Am I right?

Is the whole church wrong? Could I really be right? Is this what scripture is saying? Who am I to think that I've got this?

And then the devil tempted him and so forth. So Luther went through these deep periods. And he was also quite an emotional man.

But one of the ways that she helped him was that she dressed all in black, a very famous story.

And he said, why are you going around moping? He said, well, haven't she said, well, haven't you heard?

God is dead. And Luther said, you stupid woman, what are you talking about?

God is dead. And he said, well, I thought the way you were getting on, that the

Almighty had died. She's using sarcasm. Yes.

And she managed to come around. So she helped him with his infecting him, especially in that very famous story.

There's another occasion where she actually saved his life. Luther was invited to go to his friend

George Spallatin's wedding. And Katie said, you know, there are a lot of people out there who want to kill you.

I really don't think you should go, dear. And he argued that she should go. And she prevailed upon him.

And then Spallatin, after the wedding, wrote back to Luther. And I quote here.

It has been discovered that four young noblemen were lying in wait for you because you rescued their sisters from the

Nimshin convent. And the brothers, as a consequence, are now having to support and endow them.

Therefore, my friend, kiss your Katie's hand and thank her for, under God's guiding, she has kept you from danger.

And then, of course, she was his nurse, helped him through all sorts of occasions.

There were more than once he thought he was going to die. And I could talk about her various skills and other roles that she had.

Would you like me to do that, Chris? Yeah, sure, definitely. Sure. This woman, she was

Martin Luther's masseuse. Luther was a very hardworking man.

I think that's a very creditable skill. I mentioned that she was his nurse.

She was also his treasurer. And sometimes there are great Christian leaders who are just so generous, they would give everything away when they meet a ne 'er do well.

And she would have to try and rein him in. There was a famous occasion where Luther wrote that he was going to send a vase over to help this person because the person was short of money.

And then he wrote that Katie had seen the letter. And then he wrote, P .S., Katie has hidden the vase.

She looked over his shoulder, saw what she was writing, and kept it safe. She was his brewer.

She even had a license to brew beer. Not that we're out of drunkenness here, but in those days especially, the water was so bad that beer, drink beer for health reasons.

And she was an amazing hostess. There are loads of pastors' wives that have people over.

But Katie Luther, in this big Augustinian monastery, sometimes there'd be 30 to 40 people there.

They took on boarders for the university, which Martin Luther taught.

They looked after orphans, family orphans, and others. Then she had six children at different times there.

And then they had royal dignitaries and nobility staying. Thankfully, of course, they had some servants to help out.

Luther reckoned that the main guy, Wolfgang, was a bit lazy, and some of the maids should have been a whole lot more careful and thorough in their dusting.

But that's always the way. So she helped in a whole host of ways. And she was a really good farmer. They had a whole host of trees, various fruit trees.

And they had a fish pond with about five or six different types of fish in there. And she bred livestock, geese and chickens and pigs and cows.

And then they would butcher them, and then they would sell them. So she had a massive portfolio.

Amazing woman. Just like the woman of Proverbs 31. Good strong arms.

Well, you have probably given some ideas for people who own micro breweries in our audience to start a new kind of beer or ale called

Katie Von Beer. But anyway, we have to go to our midway break right now.

And if anybody else wants to join us with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address to send in a question to Pastor Angus Stewart as we continue our conversation on Martin Luther, Martin and Katie Luther and their marriage and its impact on the

Protestant Reformation. We do have, let's see,

Ruby in Plano, Texas has a question for you, Pastor Angus.

Ruby wants to know, did you ever see the 2004 movie called

Martin Luther, the movie starring Joseph Faines?

I believe it was a spectacular movie, but I was wondering if it was faithful to the historical events that took place in the film.

Did you ever see that movie? No. I did.

I actually love the movie. It's actually called Luther, the movie. And my friend,

William Webster, who is a Reformed Baptist pastor and historian, he saw it as well.

And he said it was remarkably accurate to history. The only thing that he can remember from my last conversation with him about the film was there was a scene when

Martin Luther was preaching in his church and people were seated in pews.

And he said in that day and age, people stood to hear the preaching in a church.

There were no pews that they would be sitting in. But that was the only thing that he could recall that he disagreed with.

He might have said something that was of secondary or tertiary importance.

Anyway, well, I agree with you, Ruby. It was a great movie. Let's see. We have another listener.

We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, you described

Katie earlier as a very outspoken woman. Did she ever develop any theological differences with Martin?

I'm not aware of any of the sources mentioning it.

And I think the literature I've read would have. So I can conclude in all probability the answer to that question is no.

But, I mean, someone out there may be aware of something. Katie was a fairly well -educated lady for her age.

As I said, she came from minor nobility. She received a better than average education as a young girl at the monastery.

She read the scriptures. And Luther promised to give her a certain amount of money if she would complete the

Bible reading by a certain stage. So she would have had intellect and sources.

But I'm not aware of any differences she had with him. Well, before we go to any more listener questions, pick up where you left off.

If you have anything further to add about the impact on the Reformation that Katie had.

Okay. There's various things we can talk about their love, but I want to get this out for sure.

The significance of the marriage itself. Then it takes two people, of course, one man and one woman for a marriage.

In the 16th century, this was an amazing thing. A monk and a nun get married.

Not just a monk leaves, then he marries someone else or a nun leaves and marries somebody else. But a monk and a nun.

And the Roman Catholic authority said that this was sure proof that Martin Luther was of the devil.

And that it could be that a monk marrying a nun, if they had a child, that that child would be the

Antichrist. Wow. Such an evil union. And, of course,

Martin Luther responded to that saying, well, if the

Antichrist was going to be born of a monk and a nun, he would have come years ago.

Yeah, I heard that when Martin Luther made his pilgrimage to Rome, he was shocked by the immorality going on.

Yes, yes, he was. It was a big jolt and massive disappointment to him back then. Then when

Luther got married, this goes back to someone mentioned earlier about the unraveling of the Roman Catholic theology because it wasn't biblical.

Then he had to revisit the issue of a sacrament. Is marriage a sacrament?

Based upon a wrong translation of the word mystery, the mystery of Christ and his church, the mystery of marriage, two becoming one.

Jerome in the Latin Vulgate said sacramentum. So a monk and a nun get married.

The idea of marriage as a sacrament begins to fall away. The idea that celibacy is a higher state than marriage, that begins to lose out now because this larger than life figure has gotten married to a nun.

And then with the idea of monks and nuns breaking their vows, only it was a proper thing to do.

Westminster Confession 22 mentions this, that unlawful vows are a hindrance to godliness.

And then the idea of a higher standard of life and merit falling by the way.

And then, of course, this fits perfectly with the gospel of the free forgiveness of God and the imputed righteousness of Christ, salvation by grace alone.

And then the idea that Christian ministers need to be celibate. 1

Timothy 4 calls that a doctrine of devils. But the fact that the first most ebullient reformer and this lady get married, and then they set up a

Christian home with six children. And now they're living joyfully the union.

And Martin Luther said that he was more blessed than any cleric in the last thousand years by God.

Because he could lawfully and in good conscience marry a fantastic woman and enjoy their union.

And that none of the popes, with all their merit, were good enough for it. Wow. And was

Katie any unique source of encouragement during times of depression for Martin or times of, you know, pessimism, perhaps?

Maybe his feeling let down that the Reformation perhaps wasn't turning into what he had envisioned?

Yes, she was. And her personality, she was a strong personality, as I said earlier, so was able to stand up and be an equal.

But also her faith. Luther was more given to questioning.

Can I really be right? Her faith was a simpler, clearer faith, not vexed with the same questions of intricate theology.

And she was able to offset him and she was able to encourage him.

And then she was also able to help him with these things because she was so energetic, capable, that she freed him up to get on with his work.

And as far as the bondage of the will, was there anything else that came from Luther's pen that really was a result of her urging him to get that done?

I don't recall so, but the main place where she crops up is in his letters.

Luther mentions Katie a lot in his letters. And he makes quite a lot of references to her skills and so forth.

And it's in his letters that he mentions the special names that they had together.

He calls her Lady Luther, Lord Luther.

Lord Luther. Was there sarcasm involved in that?

Yeah, teasing and humor. He would sign some of his letters, your dutiful servant,

Martin. Most famously, he called her his rib after Genesis chapter two.

And then he named his favorite book of the Bible, Galatians, which was of such great help to him in the battles with the righteousness of Rome.

He called his favorite book of the Bible after his wife. He said that Galatians was his

Katie, his rib, his beloved wife, that he was married to that book just as he was married to her.

I don't recall any other reformer naming a biblical book, so to speak, after his wife.

And then Katie was also involved in his table talk.

And the table talk, Luther had a big table. He was an outgoing character.

He would talk with students, other theological faculty, visiting dignitaries. But it was pretty much a meal preserved.

But Katie, she came in. She made her own remarks.

She made her questions. She stood her ground. And so Katie was included, which is quite an honor in the 16th century for a woman to do that.

We have Bella in Winter Garden, Florida. And Bella wants to know, from what

I understand from Luther's history, the saddest period of his life that many people are uncomfortable even to repeat was his years of anti -Semitic rants and very disturbing writings.

Do you know if Katie supported him in these unbiblical and sinful ideas or tried to dissuade him from speaking and writing in such a way?

I don't have any information on that point. Luther, regarding the

Jews, Luther had hoped that once the gospel of God's free grace came out, that this would remove the stumbling block through the false doctrines and corruption in the

Western church. It didn't happen. He had thought that through writing to some of the people and contact with those who are teaching

Hebrew, he was disappointed.

He spoke those things. He's a man of his age. It was wrong. We look back at that and say, yeah, that was one of the mistakes of Luther.

Not his only mistake. With respect to our Lutheran brethren, his view of the

Lord's Supper, while better than that of Rome, he's a step in the right direction.

It isn't the full, correct biblical view. We have

Alan in Dublin, California, who has a question. Alan says, and this kind of hinges on what you were just saying, other than the teaching on the sacraments that Luther had, was there any significant difference that he had with John Calvin in matters of theology?

How close was he, for instance, on unconditional election and limited atonement?

The Luther of the commentary in Romans, and especially on the subject of the bondage of the will, he clearly teaches unconditional election and reprobation there.

And there are statements, with some on the CPRC .co .uk website, from Luther that say on the surface of it, particular redemption only for the elect alone.

So on those issues, yes. Another point of difference is the subject of church government.

Luther, in part because of the peasant revolt, but Luther vested too much hope in the nobility, and he gave the state too large a role in the government of the church.

And with time, that's not biblical teaching, and with time, it's easy now, 500 years later, to see the problems that that caused.

The same mistake, of course, was made in Anglicanism, with the state having an unbiblical role in church government and therefore in doctrine.

So those are some of the areas of difference. Calvin and Luther taught the same biblical doctrine of assurance, justification by faith alone.

Luther is probably more moving, profound, in my personal view.

Calvin is more systematic, he develops it, just speaking of justification by faith alone.

But in general, this is true of all the areas in which Calvin built upon Luther.

Calvin spoke of Luther with the highest of esteem and refers to him in various places, including actually in Psalm 57, where he mentioned that the righteous are taken away sometimes so that they won't see the awful things that are going to happen.

And he said that's what happened with Martin Luther. He would have been appalled at some of the things that happened after his death, and God removed him, showed mercy to him, even in that too.

Now, would you say that Luther demonstrated inconsistency because of his clear belief that would be in total agreement with the

Calvinist branch of the Reformation in his bondage of the will, and also his firm belief in justification by faith alone?

How would that, especially the latter one, coincide with baptismal regeneration?

That seems to be quite mystifying to me and to many people that are theologically

Reformed who also love Luther. Yes, yes. The doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

And again, there are some Lutherans that say we disagree with it on biblical grounds.

And you're right to mention that one, because that's a significant one. Luther, in some ways, is explained because of the fact that he's a first generation

Reformer. God gave him ability to search the scriptures, to translate, sharp mind, a heart that was greatly exercised in the things of God.

It's amazing to me that Luther got so much right after a thousand years. Take someone even like Augustine, a thousand years before.

Augustine also taught baptismal regeneration. How did he fit that with the perseverance of the saints, with unconditional election and reprobation?

There's places where he tries, but this was a problem. So he was a first generation theologian.

That explains it to some degree. He wasn't as systematic as Calvin and later men were.

I don't know if he joined the dots and put things together quite the same. Another explanation is that Luther, many of his stronger statements on sovereign grace are made in the earlier days.

And to this extent, I think Melanchthon was a bad influence on him. Melanchthon found a place in his changing theology for free will.

And Luther usually wasn't behind the door and telling someone that they were wrong.

It should have been sharper and clearer, I think, with Melanchthon. Prove to him that what he was teaching by saying that the will of God not resisting salvation has a role.

There's a role in salvation by the non -resisting will of man. Or it could have wished that Luther had brought

Melanchthon in, discussed it with him and won that man around. Yes.

Correct me if I'm wrong. But I have heard that Melanchthon was responsible after Luther's death for really changing the theological trajectory of the

Lutheran church to be more harmonious in some ways with Rome's view of the nature of man and so on.

That it was far less resembling

Calvinistic theology. Not that Luther would ever say that he was intending to resemble

Calvin, because Calvin was a new kid on the block compared to Luther.

But was Melanchthon really the cause of why we see today so many

Lutherans who don't resemble sovereign grace -believing churches too much, other than the primary pillars of the faith, of course, we agree upon.

But I'm talking about the soteriologically. I would say yes.

Luther was aware that Melanchthon was too soft.

And personality, doctrinally, he was more open to concessions. And there were times when

Luther had to admonish Melanchthon, including in his colloquies with Roman Catholics.

He would say, you know, Melanchthon, don't give things up so easily. Don't sell out here.

Then when Luther died, Melanchthon was able to go a lot further.

The sad thing is for us that Luther was correct on sovereign grace.

Melanchthon was correct and agreed with Calvin, who didn't put his head too far above the parapet on the

Lord's Supper. But unfortunately, Lutheranism took the Melanchthon view of God's grace, the wrong direction, and Luther's view of the

Lord's Supper. Now, I admit this is a reformed perspective. The Lutheran brethren are not going to be terribly happy with it.

But we say our views respectfully. And we can't put our light under a bushel either.

Yes. In fact, I have interviewed quite a number of very conservative

Lutheran pastors, scholars, theologians, most of which from the

Missouri Synod here in the United States. And most of the men that I have interviewed who are

Lutheran do not have fond things to say about Melanchthon either. Okay, that's good.

Another thing I'd like to mention about Luther is his views of eschatology are good.

Strong amillennialism, which has stood the Lutheran church in good stead.

Now, what would have been the competing views back then? Back then, probably the number one competing view was millennialism.

The Anabaptists were typically millennialists and really the

Peasants' Revolt as a stream of that, and then the Munster debacle of 1535.

And Lutheranism has been strong against that. It's also been strong against charismaticism, and there's some good statements on it too.

And millennialism in the 16th century, would that be closer to today's premillennialists or postmillennialists?

It would be closer to premillennialism. Wasn't it also called

Chileanism back then? Yes, yes. The word millennial comes from the

Latin, and then Chileanism comes from the Greek word for a thousand. So they're basically the same thing, but our

English words are formed one from the Greek and one from the Latin. Okay, let's see.

We have Gertrude from Baltimore, Maryland, who said,

Who passed on into eternity with Christ first, Martin or Katie?

And how did the survivor deal with grief and mourning over this? That's a very good question.

Martin Luther died first in 1546.

This left Katie devastated. One of the nice things about Katie in this regard is, she said, that she personally had suffered an awful blow, but she appreciated too the awful loss this was, in God's providence of course though too, for Wittenberg, for the churches, and for the world.

Another difficulty she had, besides the loss of her dear husband, was the penury poverty that afflicted her, because the

Emperor's forces fought against the

Smolkovic League of Lutherans, and she had to flee, and others of course had to flee

Wittenberg too. And then she lost the support, people couldn't reach her quite the same, her farm was ploughed over and devastated.

And then Luther, being such a generous hearted man, he never received a penny for any of his books.

So now his widow has no source of income.

People have to support her. But then with the war coming in, the farm has been ruined, and taxes go up.

So the people who could help her can't reach her, because she's sort of on the run, but the people who could help her too are also paying high taxes.

So her life was in much reduced circumstances after the loss of her husband.

And of course there was the big funeral, which she was the chief mourner, and then Luther was buried in the castle church beneath the pulpit.

She lived on for six more years, dying in Torgau, as I said earlier.

One thing we should mention too was Martin Luther's last will and testament.

According to Saxon law, if he died intestate, all the money would have gone to the children.

But Luther said that he would give the little that he had, all of that little he had pretty much, to his wife, because she was such a wonderful woman, and he didn't want, much as he loved his children, he didn't want his wife to be dependent on the children.

And that too set a good example in the church.

And Luther's example carried a lot of weight in these things. And how old would his children have been at the time of his death?

Oh, now we've got to do some math. Well, they would have been adults, right? Or math. Yes, some of them were adults.

Of course, by this stage, two have died. Some were adults, and then there were two,

I think, that were still with Katie. And then various, the older ones were sort of married or at university.

Did any of the Luther's sons become ministers?

He had, of the three sons, there was Hans and Martin and Paul.

One studied law, Hans, and became a court advisor. The second,

Martin, who was named after his father, of course, he studied theology. He died,

I think, when he was about 32, someone like that. But he actually never became a pastor. And then the third,

Paul, he studied medicine, so law, theology, medicine, and he became quite a noted physician.

I should have mentioned, actually, the third daughter, the one who lived to maturity, she actually became an ancestress of Paul von

Hindenburg. Wow. For the Germans, of course, he was a great military hero of World War I, and he became the president of Germany from 1925 to 1934.

And then Hitler got elevated, and then when he died, then

Hitler pushed his whole regime of overthrowing constitutional government and became a totalitarian.

Now, did Luther's father live to see the day when one of his grandsons became a lawyer, which was his dream for Luther, Martin?

I hadn't thought of it that way. Martin Luther's father pre -deceased him.

So I'm going to have to—I don't have that date of his father's death in mind here.

I could find it if I page quickly. My thinking, though, is that—no, no,

I don't think so, the father, the son. But if there's a break,

I'll write a note to myself. Yeah, we're actually heading into our final break right now.

So if anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisorenson at gmail .com. Submit your question immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence, chrisorenson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back. I'm Dr.

Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

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trbccarlisle .org. And we are now back with my guest,

Pastor Angus Stewart of Covenant Protestant Reformed Church in Balamina, Northern Ireland. We have been talking about the marriage of Martin and Katie Luther, and with a special emphasis on Katie.

Before we run out of time, Brother, I want to make sure that you highlight the most important things about Katie's contribution to the

Reformation that you want to say before we run out of time. Thanks, Angus.

To answer the question just before the last break, Martin and Katie Luther got married in 1525.

Their first son and child, Hans, the one who became a lawyer, was born in 1526.

Martin Luther's father died in 1530. His mother died in 1531.

So Hans, the 4 -year -old, wasn't a lawyer back then. He was precocious, but not so much.

I wanted to tidy that up. I think one of the best ways to sum up,

Chris, would be to say a word about the important role of the pastor's wife.

Amen. Because that's what Katie Luther really was. Her role in child rearing and Christian education and the discipline of their children.

Her participation in the home life with devotions. Martin recommended that she memorize

Psalm 31, and that was a great comfort to her after her death. The family singing together, singing in harmony.

The godly conversation in the home. And the amazing hospitality. Chris, you'll like this one.

The first year of their marriage, Martin Luther, with all the guests that he had stay, he had Karlstadt stay,

Luther's companion who went off the rails and who attacked Luther. And then she had to put him up in her house.

This lady, she would get up at 4 o 'clock in the morning or 5 o 'clock in the morning, work accustomed to speak of John Wycliffe as the morning star of the

Reformation, a great precursor. Well, Luther called her the morning star of Wittenberg because she got up so early to do all her work.

And if I'm allowed a personal word here on the importance of the minister's wife, one of the elders in our church,

Chris, said to me, you know, Pastor, with you as our minister, we get three pastors for the price of one.

Well, I said to him, I'm very pleased to hear you say that,

Ivan. I was there with Mary and I said to him, I know which of the two of us, me and my wife, he thinks worth two pastors.

And he nodded and said, yeah, Mary. So a word for any minister's wife out there, he thinks that she's being neglected or their work isn't important.

Absolutely crucial. And Katie Luther is a great example of the influence of a godly woman and her key role in Reformation.

By the way, I have to quickly tell Ted in Moundsville, Alabama, you are right.

Somebody from Berean Beacon corrected me. And for some reason,

I don't know where I got the idea that Richard Bennett, the late Richard Bennett, came to Christ after a

Jeep accident. I don't know where that came from in my mind. But he said that Richard Bennett, while a

Roman Catholic priest, did indeed fall down a set of stairs and his injury and recovery from the injuries was something

God used to lead him to true saving faith in Christ. So you were right, Ted.

Well, before we run out of time, I want you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

I think it worthwhile just to tie Katie Luther into the 16th century

Reformation as an important wife. William Farrell, an associate of John Calvin in French -speaking

Switzerland, he, as a 69 -year -old, married an 18 -year -old.

Wow. Not a good idea. It was embarrassing. Calvin was embarrassed.

Even back then, it was embarrassing, huh? Yes. Then there was Ulrich Zwingli, who married a godly woman,

Anna. But the Roman Church said, well, you kept it secret for a while before you came out.

And then he had a concubine before he came to the Reformed faith. So they were able to dismiss his example.

We're on sounder grounds with Iliet de Boer, the converted Anabaptist widow.

Calvin and she had a wonderful marriage for the nine years that God gave them together. She was the companion of my life, he said.

But I think of them all, and without wanting to disrespect any of those ladies, Katie is the most helpful one.

And if we want a really stark comparison in the 16th century, we could think of King Henry VIII with his six wives, some of whom he hastened to their graves.

And so you have some Reformation wives, and she was the most outstanding of them all.

And then we have her life in stark opposition and contrast to the foolish, wicked behavior of Henry VIII.

Those were interesting days for important wives. Amen. I want to thank you for being such a spectacular guest today.

I look forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Angus. And to repeat your website, it's cprc .co

.uk. That's C -P -R -C, which stands for Covenant Protestant Reformed Church, .co

.uk. And thank you so much. I want to thank everybody who listened.

I want everybody to have a very safe and joyful and Christ -honoring weekend in Lord's Day.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater