Martin Luther (1483-1546) and the Tower Experience (Turmerlebnis)

Compiled by the Editorial Team, ECT Bible Research Institute

1. Historical Background: The Tower in Wittenberg and a Professor in Anguish

1) Time and place: This event took place while Luther was living at the Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg (the Black Cloister), in the second-floor study (the “heated room”) of the tower located on the south side of the monastery building. Scholars date this period to between 1515 and 1519, when Luther was lecturing on the Psalms, Romans, and Galatians, and estimate the experience itself occurred around 1519 in particular.

2) Luther’s spiritual and physical condition (Anfechtung): At the time, Luther was undergoing an intense spiritual trial known as Anfechtung. Though he held a doctorate in theology and was a professor of biblical studies, he perceived God not as a merciful Father but as a strict Judge. To make matters worse, he was also suffering greatly from physical ailments, including chronic constipation and hemorrhoids. The study in the tower was the fierce battlefield where he endured physical pain and spiritual struggle at once, immersed in the study of Scripture.

3) The theological dilemma: Medieval scholastic theology (grounded in Aristotelian philosophy) taught the righteousness of God as a distributive justice that repaid each person according to their deeds. By this standard, sinful humanity could never be saved. Luther despaired before this God of justice, and shut himself up in the tower, wrestling with Paul’s epistles.

2. Martin Luther’s Confession: The Tower Experience (a full reconstruction)

(The complete account of his conversion, as recorded in the preface to the 1545 edition of his collected Latin works)

At that time I was lecturing once again on the Psalms at the University of Wittenberg. Having already finished my lectures on Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, I had confidence, and I was seized with a burning desire to understand the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans still more deeply. But one phrase at the very opening of Romans chapter 1 stood in my way and blocked my path. It was the word found in Romans 1:17.

“For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17)

The problem was the phrase “the righteousness of God” appearing in this verse. I hated this phrase. For according to the customary usage that all the doctors of that time taught, I understood it philosophically — that is, the formal or active righteousness they spoke of meant that God, being righteous, punishes unrighteous sinners.

Though I lived as a blameless monk under the strictest discipline, before God I was still nothing but a sinner with a troubled conscience. I had no confidence that any satisfying deed of mine could please God.

And so I did not love that righteous God who punishes sinners. No — to speak honestly, I hated Him. Though I stopped short of blasphemy, I murmured violently within myself and raged against God, thinking: Is it not enough that we poor sinners, ruined by original sin, are already crushed under every kind of calamity by the law of the Ten Commandments — must God now, even through the gospel, add sorrow upon sorrow, confronting us even within that gospel with His righteousness and His wrath?

I was driven nearly to madness by this raging and troubled conscience. And yet, in spite of everything, I did not leave Paul’s side. I kept knocking there, persistently, driven by a single burning resolve to find out, once and for all, what Paul meant by Romans 1:17 — clinging to it like a thirsting animal. Day and night I meditated, and meditated again. Then, one day, God at last had mercy on me. As I meditated day and night on the Word, I began to pay attention to the connection of the words in their context — namely, that “the righteousness of God is revealed… as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”

In that moment, the Word became clear to me. I understood that the righteousness of God spoken of here is not the standard by which God punishes sinners, but rather that righteousness by which the righteous person lives, given to us by God’s grace through faith.

That is to say, the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is a passive righteousness. It is the gift of God by which the merciful God, through faith, reckons us righteous. This was the true meaning of what Scripture declares: the just shall live by faith.

The moment I grasped this truth, I became an entirely different person. I felt as though I had been born again, and had entered paradise itself through wide-open gates. At once, every word of Scripture wore an entirely different face before me. The very words that had once felt to me like a crushing burden every time I read Scripture now came to me as comfort and joy.

I ran through the Scripture passages I remembered in my mind, and I found this same analogy in other words as well: the power of God is the power by which God makes us strong. The wisdom of God is the wisdom by which God makes us wise. The salvation of God, the glory of God — these too were our salvation and our glory.

Until then, the phrase “the righteousness of God” had been, to me, the most terrifying and hateful phrase in the world. But now that phrase became, to me, the sweetest and most beloved of all. For me, this passage of Paul’s truly became the very gate into paradise.

Afterward, I read Augustine’s work On the Spirit and the Letter, and there I discovered that he too had interpreted the righteousness of God in a similar way — teaching that God makes us righteous by giving righteousness to us. Although Augustine’s explanation did not perfectly account for imputation by faith, it agreed with my own realization on this point: that the righteousness of God is not something we offer to God, but something God gives to us. Strengthened by this, I pressed ever more deeply into the Scriptures.

Reference

Martin Luther, “Vorrede zum ersten Bande der Gesamtausgaben seiner lateinischen Schriften (1545),” in D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 54 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1928), 185-86.