Many Christians who are not very familiar with the works of Martin Luther might be surprised to find how relatable he was. In addition to being the firebrand reformer, he was very much a pastoral theologian. To Luther, the Reformation was as much a crisis in pastoral care as anything else. Luther’s works are not the intellectual meanderings of an out-of-touch academic, nor are they merely hotheaded protests. The heart of his work concerns finding a gracious God and experiencing the consolation of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Martin Luther’s pastoral heart is nowhere more apparent than in his correspondence with people suffering from melancholy. His candor is itself instructive. Luther described his own struggles openly. He felt no need to hide them behind a pretense of pious perfection.[1]
While the late-medieval concept of melancholy is not identical to what modern medicine calls depression, the overlap is close enough to make Luther's reflections worth our attention. His counsel typically combined Scripture with very down-to-earth advice. Luther’s letters of spiritual counsel offer wisdom to anyone who cares for the wellbeing of the depressed or anxious person.
For Luther, melancholy rarely had a single cause or a single remedy. The holistic anthropology that underlies all of his thinking is clearly seen in his letters to suffering Christians. He understood the close integration of cognitive, emotional, and physical factors in mental health and the spiritual life. Human beings are embodied spiritual creatures, and it is notable how thoroughly this holistic vision undergirds Luther’s approach to pastoral care.
What Is Melancholy?
As a man of the sixteenth century, Martin Luther inherited the traditional understanding of health with its model of the four humors. Humoral medicine is an ancient theory stating that health depends on the balance of four bodily fluids called humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Physicians commonly associated melancholy or depression with an excess of black bile and regarded certain temperaments as naturally inclined toward sadness and gloom. Luther respected much of this framework. Yet his understanding of mental well-being was not limited to naturalistic explanations.
In Luther’s writings, melancholy often appears as a condition marked by fear, sadness, despair, and obsessive self-preoccupation. It can distort perception and magnify worries. Small problems can appear insurmountable, and God may seem remote. Melancholy, for Luther, was not merely feeling sad. It was a condition that could overwhelm a person’s entire outlook on life and endanger his relationship with God.
Mind: Intrusive Thoughts
To begin with, Luther’s most repeated piece of advice to the melancholic person is to examine his thoughts and not believe everything that comes to mind. Our minds, he observed, are often unreliable, and our negative inner dialogues are harmful when they fail to reflect reality. To one correspondent, identified simply as Mrs. M., he wrote straightforwardly: “You must not believe your own thoughts.”[2] He advocated a type of cognitive restructuring. He advised that instead of accepting every negative thought as it comes, a person should challenge and replace them with more beneficial, and usually more accurate, ones.
In this way, Luther anticipates aspects of what today we call Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), an approach that teaches people to identify the flawed interpretations, or cognitive distortions, they have about their experiences, and which cause negative emotions. Consider ideas such as: “I have sinned and cannot be saved.” “No one loves me.” “I am utterly worthless.” “God has abandoned me.” These claims create powerful emotions that, left unregulated, can become crippling. And they are inconsistent with the full testimony of Scripture. Recognizing that our understandings are often untrue or incomplete is the important first step toward overcoming depression. The second step is to substitute them with sound reasoning and with encouraging promises found in the Bible.
To the Reformer, our minds are a spiritual battleground. Luther’s full quote to Mrs. M. was: “You must not believe your own thoughts, nor those of the devil.”[3] Here we can see that while Luther makes a distinction between our own harmful beliefs and the direct lies of Satan, both may be equally at play. In fact, our own fallen minds and the old evil foe frequently work in tandem against us. One of the enemy’s favorite tactics is to magnify the troubles that you allow yourself to dwell upon. Luther wrote, “If you allow one thought to enter . . . [the devil] will force ten additional thoughts into your mind.”[4] When your mind and the devil work against you, Luther’s advice is always to return to the Word of God and the mutual consolation of Christian brothers and sisters.
Spirit: The Attack of the Enemy
In the New Testament, Peter warns us to “be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8, ESV). Luther saw melancholy as a form of spiritual warfare. Specifically, the devil assaults Christians by capitalizing on their weaknesses and falsely applying God’s law to their consciences. Ultimately, the enemy’s goal is to cause Christians to lose faith in God and despair of being saved. Luther states outright: “The devil hates you because you love Christ.”[5]
Guilt is one of the devil’s favorite weapons. The term Satan actually means “accuser,” and the Bible calls the devil “the accuser of the brethren” (Rev 12:10). This is forensic courtroom language, which Luther’s understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith alone adopts. Luther was deeply conscious of this activity of our adversary. By constantly reminding us of sins that God has forgiven, the evil one tries to get us to doubt God’s grace, question the work of Christ, and lose hope.
In typically sly fashion, Satan’s opening argument begins by making statements that, on the face of things, are true enough. “You have sinned,” he says to our hearts. No one could argue against that. But according to Luther, “[Satan] can fashion the oddest syllogisms[:] ‘You have sinned; God is wrathful toward sinners; therefore, despair.”[6] When Satan rests his case here, our Advocate, Jesus Christ, comes to speak for us. He offers himself as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, covering our guilt and winning our freedom. Thus, sinners are declared righteous by God for the sake of his Son. This is where Pastor Luther repeatedly points his people. By leaving off the second half of the story, Satan leaves us to ruminate in fear of curse and judgment.
The devil likes to use God’s own law against people. This is why Luther says that “when the devil attacks and torments us, we must completely set aside the whole Decalogue.”[7] In other words, when we are tortured with uncertainty about God’s grace, we should not focus on the curse of the law. The complacent sinner may indeed need to be jolted by the law’s threats, but when Christians remain terrified of God’s wrath, they should not focus on how they have missed the mark. When they feel that they deserve only death and hell, that is precisely the time when they must stopper the devil’s accusations with God’s gracious promises. To fight the accuser, they defy him with the word of grace. Luther wrote to one of his students, Jerome Weller, these words:
When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: “I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there I shall be also.”[8]
That line, “What of it?” can be a powerful rejoinder against the devil’s accusations about our sin. It is the first salvo of an internal dialogue that, similar to the strategy of modern-day cognitive behavior therapy, substitutes defeating thoughts with life-giving ones.
For Luther, one of the most important strategies for fighting off the enemy is an attitude of contempt towards him. He wrote: “This devil is conquered by mocking and despising him,”[9] and Luther even advised Mrs. M. to “spit on the devil,”[10] showing that Luther’s advice was often quite earthy. The Christian’s contempt for Satan is not childish defiance, however, or baseless bravado. Instead, it is the power of the Spirit and is based on God’s Word. Contempt for the devil’s lies reduces their power over us. But this attitude emerges from our recognition of the cross. Luther acknowledges the place of the law’s accusations, but instead of dwelling on our failures to live up to God’s standard, the Reformer enjoins us to boast in Jesus Christ as our Savior.
Body: The Clay of the Earth
Luther consistently remembered that mind, spirit, and body affect one another. He believed that physical well-being and spiritual well-being go together like a hand in a glove. For instance, he once wrote:
our adversary, the devil, walks about, seeking not only to devour our souls but also to weaken our bodies with thoughts of our soul in the hope that he might perhaps slay our bodies, for he knows our physical health depends in large measure on the thoughts of our minds.[11]
Heavy thoughts, he says, can take a physical toll on the body.
It is because the downcast spirit oppresses the body—rather, the whole person—that Luther’s advice often challenges the ascetic practices he knew in monasticism and that formed the basis for much medieval piety. Fasting and mortification of the flesh, for instance, are fitting when one is prone to over-indulgence, but the depressed person who has lost the ability to enjoy God’s creaturely gifts should be heartily encouraged to delight in food and drink and to do this precisely because they are gifts from God.
This reflects Luther’s understanding of the essential goodness of material creation and our embodied selves as part of it. Food and drink, friendship and laughter, music and wholesome recreation are all gifts from God, the Creator, which he means for us to enjoy with thanksgiving. And enjoying those things to their fullest is one of the best ways to offend the devil. Seeing people delighting in God’s provisions is abhorrent to the one who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). Thus, people can fight off spiritual depression with wholesome physical pleasures.
One of Martin Luther’s favorite daily pursuits was music. He saw it, like all of God’s gifts, as a weapon to defeat the evil one and to uplift our hearts. “Music,” Luther wrote, “is one of the fairest and most glorious gifts of God, to which Satan is a bitter enemy; for it removes from the heart the weight of sorrow, and the fascination of evil thoughts.”[12]
Also, staying physically active, Luther believed, is useful, because it keeps us from brooding. Being too sedentary allows the endless introspection that only feeds despair. “Do not dwell on your own thoughts,” he warned.[13] So, he advises Prince Joachim of Anhalt to ride and hunt and spend time being merry with his friends.[14]
Community: Life Together
Martin Luther stressed again and again that isolation is one of the most deadly aspects of melancholy. On numerous occasions he urged sufferers to seek companionship, conversation, communal worship, and friendship. He noted, “God created man for society and not for solitude.”[15] Writing to Jerome Weller, Luther was direct: “You must by all means, flee solitude.”[16]
One reason we need to spend time with others is because we are more likely to spiral downward when we are alone with our thoughts. Luther wrote:
Solitude produces melancholy. When we are alone the worst and saddest things come to mind. We reflect in detail upon all sorts of evils. And if we have encountered adversity in our lives, we dwell upon it as much as possible, magnify it, think that no one is so unhappy as we are, and imagine the worst possible consequences.[17]
This is a remarkably perceptive description of what psychologists today call rumination:
when we are alone, we think of one thing and another, we leap to conclusions, and we interpret everything in the worst light. On the other hand, we imagine that other people are very happy, and it distresses us that things go well with them and evil with us.[18]
People need to engage others in conversation. To Weller, he wrote that he should joke and jest. He also encouraged him to “play games with my wife and others. In this way you will drive out your diabolical thoughts and take courage.”[19]
This emphasis on the healing power of human interaction reflects Luther's broader theology, in which God often works through ordinary human relationships. This alludes to his doctrine of vocation. In this teaching, God calls people to serve others in a variety of ordinary capacities, such as parent, merchant, farmer, ruler, physician, and friend. By these means, the neighbor becomes an instrument of divine care. Sometimes God’s answer to suffering arrives through an ordinary conversation with an ordinary human being rather than a miracle. Christian friendship is a holy means of mercy.
Faith comes by hearing. So, Luther says, “Listen to other people. . . . Give close attention to what we say and let our words penetrate to your heart. God will strengthen and comfort you by means of our words.”[20] When people feel overpowered by doubt and despair and are unable to encourage themselves, they must listen to the people whom God sends to them. The Reformer says, “when good people comfort you . . . learn to believe that God is speaking to you through them. . . . [May God] enable you to believe them.”[21] God is so extravagantly rich in grace that he uses multiple ways to guide us. In the Smalcald Articles (III, 4), Luther lists the place for the mutual conversation and consolation of the brothers and sisters along with preaching, sacraments, and absolution.[22]
Rest in Christ
Every part of Martin Luther’s works of consolation ultimately returns to Christ’s completed work on our behalf. Luther combats despair not with positive thinking but with the gospel. He constantly points to God’s promises to save his children. “I shall not despair,” he wrote, “for Christ has taken away the sins of the whole world, of all who confess their sins. So it is certain that this sin of mine has also been taken away. Begone, devil, for I am absolved.”[23] This is the theological and pastoral center of how Martin Luther confronts his despondency.
Why Luther Still Matters
Martin Luther did not possess modern psychiatric knowledge. He knew nothing of neurotransmitters or evidence-based therapies, and certainly not all of his advice would pass muster today. Nevertheless, his pastorally motivated mental health observations still strike us as perceptive and relevant to contemporary ministry.
His assumption that the human person is an integrated unity of mind, body, and spirit—and one whom Jesus died to save—is what modern people still need to hear. Luther’s style of pastoral care was humane and centered on the work of God as Creator and Redeemer and Sanctifier. This was a message he often preached to himself. God’s creation is good in its original nature, though now it has been fatally corrupted by sin. Yet God’s Son became part of creation to reconcile, restore, and glorify it. And his Spirit purifies the church through our trials, preparing us for our own bodily resurrection, ascension, and reign with Jesus Christ (2 Tim 2:12).
To Luther, the good news for a melancholic person is profoundly down-to-earth, relational, and Christ-centered. He told the sufferer to eat well, sleep, make music, and stay active among friends, and in the same breath he pointed him to the saving work of Jesus Christ. Part of healing is to look outside oneself, a thing the melancholic person finds difficult to do. But our own minds, fallen as they are, are often the devil’s instrument to draw us away from God. This is why you will not read Luther telling people to listen to their hearts. He understood that our hearts are often unreliable guides, and that is why we should cling to the infallible Word that comes from God himself in Scripture and through the wise counsel of God’s people. These are the ways to overcome Satan and our accusing hearts (1 John 3:19–20).[24] This is how we spite death and hell. And this is what it means to choose life infused with the joy of knowing the living God.
References
[1] Martin Luther, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1955), 93, 115, and 117, where he refers to his problems.
[2] Martin Luther to Mrs. M, 1543, in Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, trans. Tappert, 103.
[3] Martin Luther to Mrs. M, 1543, 103.
[4] Martin Luther to Mrs. M, 1543, 97.
[5] Martin Luther to Mrs. Jonas von Stockhausen, 1532, in Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, trans. Tappert, 91.
[6] Martin Luther, The Familiar Discourses of Dr. Martin Luther, Commonly Called His Table Talk, trans. Henry Bell (London: 1818), 101.
[7] Martin Luther to Jerome Weller, 1530, in Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, trans. Tappert, 87.
[8] Martin Luther to Jerome Weller, 1530, 87.
[9] Martin Luther to Jerome Weller, 1530, 85.
[10] Martin Luther to Mrs. M, 1543, 102.
[11] Martin Luther to Prince Joachim of Anhalt, December 25, 1535, in Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, trans. Tappert, 99.
[12] Luther, Table Talk, s.v. “Music.”
[13] Martin Luther to Matthias Weller, 1534, in Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, trans. Tappert, 96.
[14] Martin Luther to Matthias Weller, 1534, 92–93.
[15] Luther, Table Talk, 95.
[16] Martin Luther to Jerome Weller, 1530, 85.
[17] Luther, Table Talk, 95.
[18] Luther, Table Talk, 95.
[19] Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel, 85.
[20] Martin Luther to Jonas von Stockhausen, 1532, 89.
[21] Martin Luther to Matthias Weller, 1534, 97.
[22] Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Fortress Press, 2000), 319.
[23] Kolb and Wengert, The Book of Concord, 102.
[24] “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”