Eric Metaxas author of Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World greets me over the phone; “Yiasou Patritha”, (health to your homeland), Greeks carry ‘homeland’ on our shoulders.

Eric Metaxas is a New Yorker of Greek German background.

“I loved your An Atheist in Greek Easter,” he says about an old piece I had sent to him in the lead-up to this interview.
“I’m cultural Orthodox but a non-believer,” I say. “In Greek Orthodoxy all become Christian at baptism and thus you’re not compelled to be a Christian anyway,” he responds.
“Yep, Greek first,” I add and he laughs.

Metaxas’ biography of Martin Luther, the man who took on the Catholic Church in the 16th century and transformed society, is indispensable reading. Luther’s activism ignited much reform in western Europe including anti-slavery and many of the world’s social justice movements. The book unfolds like an epic historical drama; each chapter compels you to the next.

Luther begins with a retelling of how an ‘African-American pastor’ Michael King from Georgia, made a ‘trip of a lifetime across the Atlantic Ocean’ to the Holy Land then to Berlin in 1934. Michael King was so inspired by Martin Luther’s struggle against Rome’s injustice that he took on his name. Martin Luther King renamed his son Martin Luther King Junior.

Like Luther taking on Rome, Dr King Junior peacefully sought to dismantle the system of racial segregation under the Jim Crow (racial segregation) laws in the US’ deep south. A cause he ultimately paid for with his life 50 years ago.

Luther starts as an irritating young priest. He is obsessed with denying himself. So much so, that he drives his superiors nuts as he confesses for every thought. This theology wonk, through enquiry, transformed into a major intellectual force, a prolific writer, and a leader in the charge against a corrupt Catholic empire.
If not for some good burghers in Germany and progressive lords, Rome would have burned Luther on the stake very early.

“Luther also tapped into an emerging German identity, under the yoke of the Catholic Church,” says Metaxas.

Luther, a provincial German priest, appealed the Pope in 1517 to stop the practice of squeezing ‘indulgences’ from parishioners as ‘down payments’ on heaven.
Describing Tetzel, a Dominican priest selling ‘indulgences’ Metaxas reveals pure graft: “And so Tetzel now arrived in Jüterborg, just 20 miles from Wittenberg, to set up his papally-sanctioned medicine show. What he was selling now made snake oil cure-all portions seem like fresh fruits and vegetables. Indeed it was so fabulous and so extraordinary that people hauled themselves from many miles around to hear him and not just to hear him but to throw money at him, that they might get something if a what he was offering, which, to cut to the chase, was heaven itself.”

Catholic officials added new indulgences by which parishioners could petition God to limit the time their dead loved ones spent in purgatory. This was the last straw for Luther, and in response he mailed his Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences to the two bishops who were responsible for indulgences in 1517.

“He had no idea what he unleashed.
“He wanted to respectfully bring to the attention of the Pope corrupt and non-authentic practices,” Metaxas says.

Luther’s petition in Latin Vulgar (common speech)was translated into German. Gutenberg’s invention, the printing press, ensured pamphlets in German would be distributed to many ordinary people.

“No copyright protection meant Luther himself had no idea how far his polite protests to the Pope had reached, nor how they were being translated,” adds Metaxas.
“The printing press was the social media in its time, it was a revolution in communications,” he says.

Luther’s revolution is, to me the beginning of secularisation, the spark that separated the church and state.

“It could be argued that once people are free to believe without needing a priest [that] can lead to secularisation.
“This the price of free will,” Metaxas says.
“You are now free to make the wrong choice, and you use the freedom to do the right things,” says Metaxas.

Catholic hierarchy was locked onto Aristotelian rationalism, a hindrance for Luther.

“Luther, an expert in Greek philosophy, didn’t like that Aristotle implies that truth is something we can reach through reason alone.
“Luther’s view of the Bible is that the truth of God stands behind reason, reason only takes [us] so far,” says Metaxas.

The question that became evident to Luther was ‘does one need a priest to mediate between God and themselves?’ This was heresy to a Catholic Church that insisted that only the Pope and his priests could interpret God’s word and the Bible.
Metaxas, in our polite tit-for-tat over Aristotle, points to communism as a system that is an outcome of “extreme rationalism” that “created an ideology that wrought the deaths of millions over the last century.”

“An ideology that made all guilty even those once leaders of what began as a social justice vision could [get] excommunicated from academia and media and transported tons to the Gulag,” he adds.

In the book, Luther frees a group of nuns and ends up marrying one of them. He melds the material and ‘spiritual’ in to create possibly the first healthy view of sex since pre-Christian times.

“True Christian and Judaic thinking is that the body is good and our bodies will be good, our bodies will be redeemed,” says Metaxas.
“The Catholic Church, the theocratic state, is about abstaining, it’s about control of the body, sex, and life, and Luther was all human.
“The Orthodox do get that right,” he says, “priests can marry, the idea that sexuality is at odds of faith is wrong.”

I ask if it is difficult to have agreement on morality, virtue, and reason between theists and atheists.

“No, when both agree on the outcome of an ethical society,” he states.
“A society where women and men are equal, where the flesh and the notion of spirit or mind are not a duality, a society where a person’s skin pigment, [and] faith do not hinder their access to the economy, education and freedom, and most profoundly on the righteousness of free will above all else, they were Luther’s aims,” Metaxas says.

It is difficult in the West to understand how theocratic rule worked once, or works now in some non-Western nations.
In Catholic Europe of the 1500s, a non-mediated expression of free will could see one burned on a post.

Not that Luther’s followers did not have authoritarian attributes; Thomas Müntzer, a pro-Luther Christian and mystic, sought bloody revolution, he led the burning of Catholic churches, murder of lords, and wholesale destruction. Metaxas writes: “When Müntzer was in Zwickau, his screw had become sufficiently loose that his sermons were often downright disturbing.”

Müntzer saw Luther as too close to those in authority. His mob of violent peasants committed atrocities across the German landscape.

“Luther was against Müntzer and his call for the destruction of churches, lords, and princes,” says Metaxas.
George Wilberforce the 18th century Evangelist English politician behind the abolition of slavery was led by “his profound of his Christian convictions” but loathed the bloodletting of the French Revolution according to Metaxas.

“Wilberforce asked, ‘For how can we endure slavery as real Christians?'” Metaxas says.
“He led the Abolitionists yet was unconvinced by the bloodletting in the French Revolution,” he says.

This idea that we are “all equal in the eyes of God, and we are held to the same standard,” was the most radical idea borne by Luther.

Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World is an important addition to anyone’s library. It is also impressive in its detail of life in medieval Europe: the travel on foot over miles, beer and food, gender roles, sexual mores, new German progressive barons, and divisions of class and faith. One of the most notable chapters is when Luther visits Rome as a Catholic priest and witnesses a sort of Catholic Las Vegas for Christian tourists.

Metaxas even details the intense effect haemorrhoids and constipation had on Luther when he faced the Catholic inquisition in the 1521 Edict of Worms.

The book is not a hagiography. Metaxas does highlight the contradictions in Luther, especially a small number of anti-Semitic texts later in his life which, we are told, he regretted.

The apotheosis of Luther is most evident in 20th century works of Martin Luther King Jr and of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, a priest and anti-Nazi dissident, served as a double agent helping Jews escape the Nazis and became a part of a plot to overthrow, and assassinate Hitler.

I end our discussion with Metaxas going back to the desire for secularism; do we need God to achieve an open and equitable society? I realised in the end that you never win against someone with faith. Luther did not impose faith, which is great for atheists like me. He sort of developed a new contract between God and citizen, which fostered a great secular and ushered in the modern world.