Typical out-of-context, rabid attacks from Roman Catholics who care more about attacking Protestants than speaking up for the truths of the Christian faith.
From http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2005/12/luther-said-christ-committed-adultery.html:
No. 1472: Christ Reproached as Adulterer Between April 7 and May 1, 1532
[Martin Luther said,] “Christ was an adulterer for the first time with the woman at the well, for it was said, ‘Nobody knows what he’s doing with her’ [John 4:27]. Again [he was an adulterer] with Magdalene, and still again with the adulterous woman in John 8 [:2–11], whom he let off so easily. So the good Christ had to become an adulterer before he died.”
Well how does one respond to this? The quote is indeed appears outrageous.
First, the quote has no context. One does not know what exactly Luther had in mind. Was he kidding? Was he summarizing someone else's argument? Was he using hyperbole? It's really hard to say. If taken literally, it certainly is at odds with his other statements about Christ. Thus, even though one can't know exactly why he said this, we can have a strong assurance he didn't mean it literally.
The editors of Luther's Works include a footnote for this comment of Luther's, and they offer the following speculation:
If you run across a Roman Catholic citing these words against Luther (or any obscure comments from Luther's Table Talk) I commend to you also these words by Roman Catholic Scholar Thomas O’Meara:
I always caution Roman Catholics to be careful with Luther’s Table Talk. The Table Talk is a collection of comments from Luther written down by Luther’s students and friends. Thus, it is not in actuality an official writing of Luther's and should not serve as the basis for interpreting his theology. Even anti-Luther Catholic historian Hartmann Grisar has pointed out,
“Of course, it must not be overlooked that the Table Talks are ephemeral—‘children of the moment.’ While they correctly and vividly reproduce the ideas of the speaker, minus the cool reflection which prevails in the writing of letters and still more of books, they contain frequent exaggerations and betray a lack of moderation. The lightning-like flashes which they emit are not always true. The momentary exaggerations of the speaker at times beget contradictions which conflict with other talks or literary utterances. Frequently humorous statements were received as serious declarations. Humor and satire of a very pungent kind play a great part in these talks” [Hartmann Grisar, Martin Luther: His Life and Work (Maryland: Newman Press, 1950), 481].
No one knows if Luther actually said this. The critical apparatus in the Weimar Ausgabe reveals the textual and grammatical problems in this supposed quotation. Schlagenhaufen recorded only a portion of what he remembered Luther to have said that day (and after how many beers?). No context is given.
Scholars know how difficult, if not impossible, it is to link the lapidary "table notations" of Luther's friends to Luther's own views. The editors of the American Edition speculate in a footnote that the "probable context is suggested in a sermon of 1536 (WA 41, 647) in which Luther asserted that Christ was reproached by the world as a glutton, a winebibber, and even an adulterer" (LW 54:154).
A more probable context is Luther's account of the atonement. One of his basic assertions is that our sins become Christ's and Christ's perfect righteousness becomes ours by faith. This idea of "the happy exchange" is found in many Luther texts. Given his central soteriological and christological concern, the theological irony in Schlagenhaufen's remembered notation becomes clearer: The "godly" Christ becomes or is made a sinner through his solidarity with sinners, even to the point of dying as a God-forsaken criminal on the cross. This is how Luther understood Paul's statement, "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).
So Christ "becomes" an adulterer, though he does not actually commit adultery with Mary or anyone else. He puts mercy front and center, and rejects the legalism which demanded that the woman caught in adultery be killed and the woman at the well and Mary Magdalene be shunned. The holy one becomes the sinner by putting himself into the situation of sinners, by loving and forgiving them, and ultimately by taking their sins on himself. For this gospel reason, Luther could also remark that God made Jesus "the worst sinner of the whole world," even though he also acknowledged that the sinless, righteous Christ actually committed no sin himself.
Trapped in a literalistic approach to Schlagenhaufen's contextless note, some readers have missed the metaphorical character of the remark, which Luther may have made, if he made it at all, with a twinkle in his eye. I'm confident that Luther would not be a fan of The Da Vinci Code--except perhaps with a beer in hand and that twinkle in his eye.
“it might be important to note this word of caution by E.G. Schwiebert in his exhaustive biography Luther and His Times:
. . . Copied by twelve table companions over a period of twenty-some years the Table Talks are often unreliable, of uneven quality, and written at varying periods of time. Certainly little, if any, of the material was copied in the Reformer’s presence. Rather, the copyists later recorded in their rooms their recollections of the evening’s conversations. These recordings, purported to be the exact words of Luther, were often invented and embellished, and additional errors crept in later when the table companions began to copy stories from each other. In time it was difficult to know by whom and when the original might have been made. Melanchthon on one occasion warned some of the table companions as to the hazardous nature of such practice, realizing that posterity would read meaning into these conversations that Luther had never intended. Furthermore, where every topic imaginable was discussed and the conversation was spontaneous, it is difficult to distinguish jest from serious statement. It is hardly fair, then, to hold Luther responsible for all that has come to us in the Table Talks. Obviously, a careful checking against evidence from Luther’s own writings and additional sources is absolutely essential. (http://www.lutherquest.org/discus/messages/13/13063.html?1060604822)
To which Armstrong states,
I am in agreement with this, insofar as one certainly cannot deduce Luther's views from the Table-Talk alone (the last sentence in particular is a crucial point).
He also records the comments of a poster Ehamilton, 8/11/03:
It's not as if we don't have an enormous body of evidence to support the orthodoxy of Luther's Christology, and there is good anecdotal data corroborating his absolute hostility toward blasphemy of any sort. It just seems so hard for me to believe that there isn't some deeper logic behind the remark. Granted, Luther being Luther, it may be rather convoluted and idiosyncratic logic. But I don't think anyone with even a modest familiarity with the vast corpus of Luther's work (and that's all I'd claim for myself) would want to dump it in the trash simply on the basis of some random weird quote dredged up from who knows what context. There is no question what Luther's formal opinion of Christ's sinlessness was-- i.e., that Christ was sinless by nature, but "made sin" by imputation-- since his whole theory of the atonement hinged crucially on that point. Quoting here from his Galatians commentary:
Christ is personally innocent. Personally, He did not deserve to be hanged for any crime of His own doing. But because Christ took the place of others who were sinners, He was hanged like any other transgressor. The Law of Moses leaves no loopholes. It says that a transgressor should be hanged. Who are the other sinners? We are. The sentence of death and everlasting damnation had long been pronounced over us. But Christ took all our sins and died for them on the Cross. "He was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." (Isaiah 53:12.)
All the prophets of old said that Christ should be the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, blasphemer that ever was or ever could be on earth. When He took the sins of the whole world upon Himself, Christ was no longer an innocent person. He was a sinner burdened with the sins of a Paul who was a blasphemer; burdened with the sins of a Peter who denied Christ; burdened with the sins of a David who committed adultery and murder, and gave the heathen occasion to laugh at the Lord. In short, Christ was charged with the sins of all men, that He should pay for them with His own blood. The curse struck Him. The Law found Him among sinners. He was not only in the company of sinners. He had gone so far as to invest Himself with the flesh and blood of sinners. So the Law judged and hanged Him for a sinner.
In separating Christ from us sinners and holding Him up as a holy exemplar, errorists rob us of our best comfort. They misrepresent Him as a threatening tyrant who is ready to slaughter us at the slightest provocation.
I am told that it is preposterous and wicked to call the Son of God a cursed sinner. I answer: If you deny that He is a condemned sinner, you are forced to deny that Christ died. It is not less preposterous to say, the Son of God died, than to say, the Son of God was a sinner.
John the Baptist called Him "the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Being the unspotted Lamb of God, Christ was personally innocent. But because He took the sins of the world His sinlessness was defiled with the sinfulness of the world. Whatever sins I, you, all of us have committed or shall commit, they are Christ's sins as if He had committed them Himself. Our sins have to be Christ's sins or we shall perish forever. (Chapter 3, pp. 106-135 )
Luther loved wild talk and hyperbole. That was just his nature. To some extent it was a symptom of the era in which he lived. To some extent it was a conscious imitation of the Scripture-- Christ telling everyone to "hate his family", or promising to tear down the temple, were most certainly viewed as bizarre behavior by the Jews. Whatever Luther was trying to say, I feel reasonably confident that he did not actually intend to teach that Christ committed adultery.
By the way, I'm not a Lutheran, and I don't feel much need to defend his formal theology, which I reject on several important points. Morever, I think there's plenty of room to criticize him ad hominem for, say, his botched handling of the Peasant's Revolt, or his anti-semitism. I just don't think that a "Luther as blasphemer" angle is likely to impress many Lutheran scholars as a serious-minded critique.
To whom Armstrong concludes,
This is not a cut-and-dried case. That makes for good discussion, because one must get the gears in their head going round, to figure out wonderfully-intellectually-stimulating things like plausibility structures...(http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2004/05/did-martin-luther-believe-that-jesus.html)