Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar locally famous for his zeal in selling indulgences, is said to have boasted that one of the new ones could obtain remission from sin even for someone who had raped the Virgin Mary. Even by the standards of the very corrupt sixteenth-century Church, this was shocking.
It brought him up against the absurdity of bargaining with God, jockeying for his favor—indeed, paying for his favor. Why had God given his only begotten son? And why had the son died on the cross? From this thought, the Ninety-five Theses were born. Most of them were challenges to the sale of indulgences. This was not a new idea.
Furthermore, it is not an idea that fits well with what we know of Luther. Pure faith, contemplation, white light: surely these are the gifts of the Asian religions, or of medieval Christianity, of St. Francis with his birds. As for Luther, with his rages and sweats, does he seem a good candidate?
Lest it be thought that this stern man then concluded that we could stop worrying about our behavior and do whatever we wanted, he said that works issue from faith. Like sola fide , this was a rejection of what, to Luther, were the lies of the Church—symbolized most of all by the indulgence market. Indulgences brought you an abbreviation of your stay in Purgatory, but what was Purgatory? No such thing is mentioned in the Bible.
Some people think that Dante made it up; others say Gregory the Great. In any case, Luther decided that somebody made it up. He preached, he disputed. Above all, he wrote pamphlets.
He denounced not only the indulgence trade but all the other ways in which the Church made money off Christians: the endless pilgrimages, the yearly Masses for the dead, the cults of the saints. He questioned the sacraments. His arguments made sense to many people, notably Frederick the Wise.
Frederick was pained that Saxony was widely considered a backwater. He now saw how much attention Luther brought to his state, and how much respect accrued to the university that he Frederick had founded at Wittenberg. He vowed to protect this troublemaker. Things came to a head in Leo gave Luther sixty days to appear in Rome and answer charges of heresy.
Reformers had been executed for less, but Luther was by now a very popular man throughout Europe. The authorities knew they would have serious trouble if they killed him, and the Church gave him one more chance to recant, at the upcoming diet—or congregation of officers, sacred and secular—in the cathedral city of Worms in He went, and declared that he could not retract any of the charges he had made against the Church, because the Church could not show him, in Scripture, that any of them were false:.
Since then your serene majesties and your lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, plain and unvarnished: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the scriptures or clear reason, for I do not trust in the Pope or in the councils alone, since it is well known that they often err and contradict themselves, I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything. The Pope often errs!
Luther will decide what God wants! By consulting Scripture! The knights spirited him off to the Wartburg, a secluded castle in Eisenach, in order to give the authorities time to cool off. During his lifetime, Luther became probably the biggest celebrity in the German-speaking lands.
When he travelled, people flocked to the high road to see his cart go by. This was due not just to his personal qualities and the importance of his cause but to timing. Luther was born only a few decades after the invention of printing, and though it took him a while to start writing, it was hard to stop him once he got going.
In the first half of the sixteenth century, a third of all books published in German were written by him. The majority of his writings were in Early New High German, a form of the language that was starting to gel in southern Germany at that time.
Under his influence, it did gel. The crucial text is his Bible: the New Testament, translated from the original Greek and published in , followed by the Old Testament, in , translated from the Hebrew. It was not the first German translation of the Bible—indeed, it had eighteen predecessors—but it was unquestionably the most beautiful, graced with the same combination of exaltation and simplicity, but more so, as the King James Bible.
Luther very consciously sought a fresh, vigorous idiom. This made his texts easy and pleasing to read aloud, at home, to the children. The books also featured a hundred and twenty-eight woodcut illustrations, all by one artist from the Cranach workshop, known to us only as Master MS.
There were marginal glosses, as well as short prefaces for each book, which would have been useful for the children of the household and probably also for the family member reading to them. These virtues, plus the fact that the Bible was probably, in many cases, the only book in the house, meant that it was widely used as a primer.
More people learned to read, and the more they knew how to read the more they wanted to own this book, or give it to others. The three-thousand-copy first edition of the New Testament, though it was not cheap it cost about as much as a calf , sold out immediately. As many as half a million Luther Bibles seem to have been printed by the mid-sixteenth century.
In his discussions of sola scriptura , Luther had declared that all believers were priests: laypeople had as much right as the clergy to determine what Scripture meant. With his Bible, he gave German speakers the means to do so. In honor of the five-hundredth anniversary, the excellent German art-book publisher Taschen has produced a facsimile with spectacular colored woodcuts.
Michael Knoche. Knoche himself ran out with the two volumes in his arms. Anyone who wants to give himself a Luther quincentennial present should order it immediately. The volumes lie flat on the table when you open them, and the letters are big and black and clear.
Among the supposedly Biblical rules that Luther pointed out could not be found in the Bible was the requirement of priestly celibacy. Well before the Diet of Worms, Luther began advising priests to marry. He said that he would marry, too, if he did not expect, every day, to be executed for heresy. One wonders. But in he was called upon to help a group of twelve nuns who had just fled a Cistercian convent, an action that was related to his reforms.
Part of his duty to these women, he felt, was to return them to their families or to find husbands for them. At the end, one was left, a twenty-six-year-old girl named Katharina von Bora, the daughter of a poor, albeit noble, country family.
She was the one who proposed. The Protestant Reformation was the 16th-century religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval that splintered Catholic Europe, setting in place the structures and beliefs that would define the continent in the modern era. In northern and central Europe, reformers Martin Luther King, Jr. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, Christianity is the most widely practiced religion in the world, with more than 2 billion followers.
The Christian faith centers on beliefs regarding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. While it started with a small group of adherents, many historians regard It remains one of the longest and most brutal wars in human history, with more than 8 million casualties resulting from military battles as well as from the famine and disease caused He famously married a series of six wives in his search for political alliance, marital bliss and a healthy male heir.
His desire to It was a stormy night and the weather was bad but the turnout was not. People had gathered to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. King knew that storms pass and that joy comes in Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.
Martin Luther Enters the Monastery But Hans Luther had other plans for young Martin—he wanted him to become a lawyer—so he withdrew him from the school in Magdeburg and sent him to new school in Eisenach. Martin Luther Questions the Catholic Church In early 16th-century Europe, some theologians and scholars were beginning to question the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
The 95 Theses Committed to the idea that salvation could be reached through faith and by divine grace only, Luther vigorously objected to the corrupt practice of selling indulgences. Recommended for you. Martin Luther King Jr. The Reformation The Protestant Reformation was the 16th-century religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval that splintered Catholic Europe, setting in place the structures and beliefs that would define the continent in the modern era.
In rejecting much of scholastic thought Luther rejected the scholastic belief in continuity between revelation and perception. Luther notes that revelation must be indirect and concealed. It is based not in speculation or philosophical principles, but in revelation. It is an allusion to Exodus 33, where Moses seeks to see the Glory of the Lord but instead sees only the backside. No one can see God face to face and live, so God reveals himself on the backside, that is to say, where it seems he should not be.
For Luther this meant in the human nature of Christ, in his weakness, his suffering, and his foolishness. Thus revelation is seen in the suffering of Christ rather than in moral activity or created order and is addressed to faith.
The Deus Absconditus is actually quite simple. It is a rejection of philosophy as the starting point for theology. Because if one begins with philosophical categories for God one begins with the attributes of God: i. For Luther, it was impossible to begin there and by using syllogisms or other logical means to end up with a God who suffers on the cross on behalf of humanity.
It simply does not work. The God revealed in and through the cross is not the God of philosophy but the God of revelation. Only faith can understand and appreciate this, logic and reason — to quote St. Paul become a stumbling block to belief instead of a helpmate. The proper role of philosophy is organizational and as an aid in governance. Reason can be an aid to faith in that it helps to clarify and organize, but it is always second-order discourse.
It is, following St. Anselm, fides quarenes intellectum faith seeking understanding and never the reverse. The two cannot be reconciled. Revelation is the only proper place for theology to begin. Reason must always take a back-seat.
Reason does play a primary role in governance and in most human interaction. Reason, Luther argued, is necessary for a good and just society. In fact, unlike most of his contemporaries, Luther did not believe that a ruler had to be Christian, only reasonable. Here, opposite to his discussion of theology, it is revelation that is improper. To confuse the two here is just as troubling as confusing them when discussing theology.
If forgiveness becomes the dominant model in government, people being sinful, chaos will increase. If however, the government claims the gospel but acts on the basis of justice, then people will be misled as to the proper nature of the gospel. Luther was self-consciously trying to carve out proper realms for revelation and philosophy or reason. Each had a proper role that enables humanity to thrive. Chaos only became a problem when the two got confused. Martin Luther — German theologian, professor, pastor, and church reformer.
Theology a. Theological Background: William of Occam The medieval worldview was rational, ordered, and synthetic. References and Further Reading a.
Pelikan and H. Of all the major works of Luther, this is the best edition in English. It will soon be out on CD-Rom. These are important because we begin to see themes that will eventually become the Theology of the Cross. The patterns of the Theology of the Cross become a bit more evident. Many scholars believe that Luther made his final discovery of the doctrine of Justification by Faith while giving these lectures.
The seminal document of the Reformation in Germany. These theses led to the eventual break with Rome over indulgences and grace. Summary of his position that righteousness is received rather than achieved.
A Christian is perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. A summary of the Law and Gospel. In a debate with Erasmus about human freedom and bondage to sin. A summary of Christian doctrine, to be used in instruction.
His anthropology, but also gives a glimpse of his understanding of the proper role of philosophy and reason. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, The most popular biography of Luther, it is readeable and very thorough. Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther. Three Volumes. Translated by James L. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, The authoritative biography of Luther. Cameron, Euan. The European Reformation.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, An excellent introduction to the Reformation era. Cargill Thompson,W. The Political Thought of Martin Luther. Edited by Philip Broadhead. Edwards, Mark U. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, One of the few books to focus on the older Luther. It is an excellent study in Luther after the Diet of Augsburg. Forde, Gerhard, O.
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, The Theology of the Cross is a fundamental doctrine in Luther. George, Timothy. Theology of the Reformers.
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