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Brother Martin on public health:
Persons who fail to protect themselves against the plague ... are murderers
Martin Luther, never one to mince words, recognized an individual’s responsibility for community public health. Not taking precautions against the plague and thereby infecting others would make people “responsible before God” for their neighbor’s death.
 Brother Martin Part of the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1529 “Others ... are much too rash and reckless, tempting God and disregarding everything which might counteract death and the plague. They disdain the use of medicines; they do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent they are. They say that it is God’s punishment; if he wants to protect them he can do so without medicines or our carefulness. This is not trusting God but tempting him. God has created medicines and provided us with intelligence to guard and take good care of the body so that we can live in good health.
“If one makes no use of intelligence or medicine when he could do so without detriment to his neighbor, such a person injures his body and must beware lest he become a suicide in God’s eyes. By the same reasoning a person might forego eating and drinking, clothing and shelter, and boldly proclaim his faith that if God wanted to preserve him from starvation and cold, he could do so without food and clothing. Actually that would be suicide. It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have. He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over.”
Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 43: Devotional Writings II: “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague,” ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 119–38. The entire letter is presented online with the permission of Fortress Press at various websites including The Lutheran Witness.
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