Martin Luther once preached in a sermon:

This is what St. Paul meant when he preaches about love. ‘If I speak in the tongues of angels;’ and again: ‘If I had all faith so that I could move mountains, but did not have love, then I would still be nothing,’ etc. (1 Corinthians 13:1-2). If a person goes off securely in the thought that he has faith, and yet never experiences it, he must decay and dry up; his faith will be found nowhere at all when it comes to the point that it should be found.

The dear apostles certainly saw this, and we experience it. The world always either boasts falsely about faith, or wants to be holy without faith. If we preach about faith and grace, no one wants to do works. If we promote works, no one wants faith. Those who keep to the true middle course are very rare. Indeed, it is even hard for righteous Christians.

I confess for myself — and without a doubt others must also confess, that I lack the diligence and seriousness, which I should now much more than before; I am much more careless than I was under the papacy.

Nowhere is there now the seriousness with the Gospel which we saw previously among the monks and priests, when people established and built so much, and no one was so poor that he would not give something. However, now there is not one city which would support a preacher, and nothing except only robbing and stealing among the people, and no one restrains it.

Where does such a shameful affliction come from? They cry out: “From the doctrine they teach, that people should not rely on works!”  However, it is the devil himself who falsely blames this on the pure, saving doctrine; it is the fault of his and people’s malice who misuse this doctrine — as well as our old Adam who always wants to follow the forest trail to nowhere — and think that it is unnecessary, even if we do not do many good works and so become unintentionally lazy and negligent and stale, until we completely lose the strength and savor of faith.

I want to make it clear that Luther never said that the “Reformation” as a whole, or his notions of the gospel and justification by faith alone, were failures. That’s not at issue. But he did express quite a bit about how the new “Lutheran” Protestants were miserably failing in manifesting the superiority of their system over Catholicism.

He not infrequently directly connected Protestant teaching in some causal sense — and to some degree — to the negative results observed in his own lifetime, and unfavorably compared Protestant behavior to Catholic. I always contend that there are many different causes for any observable trend in history. To deny this is simpleton thinking. That said, I proceed to analyze the implications of Luther’s words.

In my opinion, the full historical truth expressed above makes his words all the more fascinating and even mysterious. Luther wants to — at least in part — blame it on the devil and those in his Lutheran party who corrupt his pure gospel and are bad examples (hypocritical, nominal folks that all religious groups contain). But that doesn’t totally explain this, precisely because he includes himself among those who aren’t living up to the ideal.

This is now 1532 or 1533, or 15-16 years after the Protestant Revolution began. Why is it that Luther — flush with all of his supposedly new discoveries about grace and Christianity — is wanting in the “diligence and seriousness” that he used to have as a Catholic, and is “much more careless” than he was before he decided to ditch Catholicism? Does that not imply that there is something deficient in the new belief system that he decided to follow? If not, what accounts for it?

It’s easy to blame the devil, but I think Luther failed to fully examine and consider why these things were as they were. Looked at from another angle, what is it that Catholics possessed that enabled them to — far and wide — be more diligent and serious and careful than Luther and the Lutherans were? Of what spiritual advantage was Lutheranism if this was its fruit?

Luther is not just saying that there are problems here and there with the new group of Lutherans, as there would be in any group at any time.  No; he says that “nowhere” is a serious adherence to the gospel seen among his party: the Lutherans. And to add insult to injury, the Catholics (who were supposedly so spiritually ignorant and less advanced than Lutherans) were doing much better spiritually than the Lutherans — even, indeed, the monks and priests, whom Luther often excoriated. How can this be? One wonders, then, how this is “reform” at all, with such miserable results “on the ground.”

Luther praises Catholics to the skies, over against the Lutherans. They “built” and “established” things. And even the poorest among them gave alms to others in more need. He asserts that not even one city would support a Lutheran pastor and that nothing is taking place except “robbing and stealing.” Why? Things improved later on among Lutherans and Protestants in general, but it must be asked why these sorts of things were the initial manifestation of the new religious movement.

To me, that is something to think about and reflect upon. One need not “hate” Protestants to do that. We’re simply wondering why this was, and taking Luther at his word, as to his report. This isn’t theological discussion or “anti-Lutheranism.” It’s historical and sociological analysis. I find it interesting and well worth pondering.