Not Really Luther
We confess to referring to the quotation attributed to Luther, which
urges Christians to defend the truth of God at the point at which it is
facing attack. But, according to Douglas Wilson, it would seem that
Luther did not make that observation at all. Someone else did. It
turns out the original statement is even more compelling. [Ed]
There is a famous Luther quote that he actually didn’t say, and
which my son-in-law Ben Merkle recently tracked down. Here is the quote,
and it is a hummer.
“If I profess with the loudest voice and
clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely
that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment
attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be
professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the
soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is
mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
The source of the quote was Elizabeth Rundle Charles, in a book called T
he Chronicles of the Schoenberg-Cotta Family,
published in 1865. She was referring to Luther, but somewhere and
somehow, it was attributed to Luther himself and has been cited merrily
as such for some time.
That and, in my opinion, the one about the wise Turk and the foolish Christian. Somebody ought to track
that one down.
I am posting this under Retractions because I know I have mis-cited it before, and probably more than once.
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