Martin Luther and Literature

Just when I thought Martin Luther couldn't get any cooler (ok, I never really thought that), I find this quotation from a letter he wrote to a friend in 1523:

"I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters [literature] have declined and lain prostrate, theology too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists. . . . Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily."


Did you get that? Theology won't endure without literature, because it is through things like fiction that people begin to grasp deep truths which they otherwise might not pick up in systematic theology books.

If I knew how to insert a little heart, I would write I [heart] Martin Luther. But I can't, so I won't.