MARTIN LUTHER: Theologian of the Cross
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By Chuck Collins
February 18, 2026
Martin Luther died in his home town of Eisleben, Germany on February 18, 1546 at the age of sixty-two. It’s impossible to overstate the impact he had on the Christian church, including the Church of England.
His theology of the cross (theologia crucis) drove all the aspects of his life and thinking. Luther wrote that there are two stories: the glory story and the cross story. The glory road is our default setting as human beings which involves climbing the morality ladder to gain the necessary merit to eventually arrive at glory. Chin-up and determination (working the spiritual disciplines and trying harder) will get us to where we need to be, as our god-coach yells instructions from the sidelines.
The theology of the cross, on the other hand, begins with “no one is righteous, not even one.” And, because we are dead in our trespasses and sins, we don’t need a coach, we need a Savior with power and authority to bring dead people to life. Theologians of the cross know that faithfulness follows faith in a perfectly faithful God. Jesus is true to his promises: I came to seek and to save the lost.
Luther succinctly reminds us:
The law say “do this,” and it is never done.
Grace says “believe this,” and it is already done.
(Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 26)
The English Reformation began as a purely Lutheran reformation (“sister reformations”), sharing the same passions to bring the church back under the authority of Holy Scripture. Germany was slightly more concerned with doctrinal matters, while England more with political concerns (including the divine right of kings), but Luther profoundly influenced every early English reformer in the 1520s and 1530s.
After the English Lutheran reformer Robert Barnes died in 1540, closer ties began developing between the English church and the Swiss Reformers. This didn’t mean, however, that Lutheranism died a strange death in England as Alec Ryrie mistakenly claims, but rather, “the spirit of Luther’s religion and theology began to settle on Elizabethan England like a London fog…it just seeped into the atmosphere” (William Clebsch).
Although there was gradually a Calvinist consensus in the Church of England especially around how “justification by faith” relates to the sacraments, this only added to our Lutheran grounding. Lutheranism continued to influence the English church, one example being that about half of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (Anglican’s confessional statement) are heavily indebted to the Augsburg Confession and other Lutheran documents.
The Church of England owes very much to Martin Luther. His teaching is evident throughout the Anglican formularies: the Bible is the only God-inspired authority, the central doctrine of Scripture is justification by grace through faith alone and this is the governing rubric for corporate worship, the unfree human will (The Bondage of the Will, thought by Luther to be his most important writing), and our understanding of the distinction between law and gospel (the topic of Luther’s The Heidelberg Disputation, 1518).
The 16th century Reformation and the Edwardian and Elizabethan Settlements established the Church of England once and for all to be thoroughly biblical, theologically reformed and confessional, pastorally generous, and liturgically beautiful. And behind this were the writings and teachings of the German monk and priest, Martin Luther.
Dean Chuck Collins is a reform theologian who regularly writes on Anglican issues. He resides in Texas.