"Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding"

Martin Luther’s assertion that “Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding” reflects a profound view on the nature of religious belief and the limitations of human faculties when it comes to divine truths. His words evoke the idea that genuine faith transcends and even disregards the boundaries established by intellectual rationality and empirical perception. For Luther, faith is not an extension of logic or sensory evidence but belongs to an entirely separate plane, one that often demands a surrender of the very tools people typically use to measure truth and reality.

Such a statement emerges from Luther’s theological framework, wherein justification and salvation are achieved only through faith, not through works or rational affirmation. Human reason, according to him, is ultimately finite and frequently corrupted by self-interest and sin. It can lead one only so far, but there are mysteries concerning God, Christ’s nature, the sacraments, and salvation that remain impenetrable to logic. Attempting to use reason to master or verify these tenets risks reducing the divine to the mundane and undermines the transformative power of faith itself.

To “trample under foot” suggests an active, forceful renunciation of any allegiance to reason and sense as ultimate judges of truth in spiritual matters. Where Scripture or doctrine appear nonsensical, contradictory, or inaccessible, the faithful response, for Luther, is not skepticism or doubt but humble submission, a willingness to believe even, or especially, when belief defies all rational justification. This stance is both radical and paradoxical: it demands receptivity to the incomprehensible, the acceptance of truths surpassing evidence or rational certainty.

In effect, Luther elevates faith to supreme importance, acknowledging the limits of human intellect and affirming that divine revelation can, and sometimes must, shock the mind into a posture of surrendered trust. The believer’s path is not illuminated by logic but by an obedience that, paradoxically, makes room for the miraculous and the otherwise impossible.