Theological Origins of Modernity

4 Luther and the Storm of Faith
As he made his way back to the university aft er a visit home, the strapping
twenty-fi ve year old had good reason to be satisfi ed with himself. He had
completed his master’s degree in January, and he had already begun his
study of the law. His father was proud of him, and a path to a better life
stretched out before him. It was the second day of July, the exact middle of
the year 1505, and except for a few clouds on the horizon there was little to
trouble the spirits of the vigorous young man. And yet the clouds on the
horizon seemed to be growing and the wind was clearly picking up. He
looked about for cover but there was none, and he knew he would soon get
wet. Little did he suspect that those clouds and the storm they carried with
them were bringing not only wind and rain but a storm of such magnitude
that it would engulf and transform all of European civilization. Nor did
he realize that the bolts of lightning, the rolling waves of thunder, and the
torrents of rain that seemed to descend on him and him alone were in fact
only precursors of the fl ashes of cannon, the roars of armies, and the tears
of millions that lay just beyond his horizon. What he did see by the end
of the day was that he must leave his promising, secular life and turn to
God, whose mighty power seemed to him both his greatest torment and
his only refuge. He went into that day as a child of humanism; he left it
the future father of a reformed Christianity and one of the founders of the
modern age.
Luther’s attempt to renew what he believed was the central message of
Christianity was the second great eff ort to answer the fundamental problem
raised by the nominalist God. Luther was born in an age of immense
change. Th e discovery of the New World and a new order in the heavens,
along with the rediscovery of the ancient world, were vastly expanding
horizons that previously had seemed quite near. Tied up with these remarkable
events was the development of a new secular culture and social