You know enough to misinterpret him. Please do not make the mistake of glossing over the sins of your church which helped produce a Luther. The Roman Catholic church was in a real mess in those days and had been for centuries. Probably something to do with those second sons of European Aristocracy that held most of the church posts as a means to money and power rather than pious men drawn to service to God. (See Simony, Pluralism, Selling of Indulgences, etc.,)
Luther was a learned theologian. He knew the Greek well enough to be able to put the Bible into the Vernacular. It was from his studies that he found freedom in Christ from the bondage of his past. His personal confessor was actually a pretty decent guy. But the church hierarchy was quite corrupt. God called Luther out of Babylon and in the mean time healed Luther of his views of God as the harsh unpleasable disciplinarian (like Luther's father was) by showing to him through Scripture his grace, mercy, and love.
Luther did not encourage people to sin. He could be a raskal in making his points, but if you continue reading Luther, you realize he isn't really giving folks a license to just go sin uncontrollably. He is showing them that even if they were to commit horrendous sin, that Christ's sacrifice and grace was sufficient and we needn't worry about being cast out by our God. God's grace is sufficient, even when I have really blown it big time.
What that does is gets our focus off of doing enough works to please a hard to please God, or at least doing as little sinning as to avert his wrath to focusing on the grace and love of God towards us, the full extent of the atonement of Christ, and what we may do for him because we love him.
Again, you can't take Luther's "sin boldly" comment out of the context of Luther's thoughts. He said "sin boldly, but believe MORE boldly." Luther believed that the more you put your trust and devotion towards Christ the less you would sin. He also prayed to be protected from the evil one's seductive schemes. Luther did not wish to be a sinner, as no Christian would. He just said that WHEN we do sin, even if it is a lulu, we needn't fear coming back to the Lord and starting over again because Christ's sacrifice was sufficient.
Fair enough. I guess the same can be said for the Protestant side's knowledge of the Orthodox Church.
Please do not make the mistake of glossing over the sins of your church which helped produce a Luther
MY Church? In case you didn't see my tagline, I am Eastern Orthodox. I suppose you just proved my point above. I assure you that MY Church had done nothing to produce a Luther.
Luther set out to resist human failings and corruption among the clergy and ended up changing the theology to fit his lifestyle! It wasn't about human corruption that he was rebelling, but against the the 1,5900 years of the Apostolic and catholic faith of the Church.
For sure, he did not erradicate corruption, but not to worry, he was more interested in creating a church, if one can call it that, where committing adultery and muder a hundred times a day is okay as long as you love God.
Next thing you will tell me he didn't say that either.
Again, you can't take Luther's "sin boldly" comment out of the context of Luther's thoughts. He said "sin boldly, but believe MORE boldly."
And you see nothing wrong with that? I think that "Believe more bodly so that you may sin less (boldly)" would be the Christian thing to say.
"Please do not make the mistake of glossing over the sins of your church which helped produce a Luther. The Roman Catholic church was in a real mess in those days and had been for centuries. Probably something to do with those second sons of European Aristocracy that held most of the church posts as a means to money and power rather than pious men drawn to service to God. (See Simony, Pluralism, Selling of Indulgences, etc.,)"
I'm not Roman Catholic, Blogger. I'm Orthodox. Orthodoxy and Rome split about 500 years before Luther.
FWIW, there have always been sects that were in opposition to the RCC and EOC. It seems the most common reasons were a lack of discipline, a lack of reliance on Scripture, the type of church government, the lack of separation of church and state, and practices such as infant baptism. It is another obfuscation of truth to present the idea that Christian believers were united in one sect prior to the EO split and than the Reformation.
Let me address that, since it should have been addressed to a Catholic.
Much of the criticism of the Latin Church circa 1500 is valid. Much is a misunderstanging, or an exagerration, or outright calumny. However, I would postulate that at least the 95 theses were indeed valid criticism, and some of the later maneuvers of the Chruch with respect to Luther were underhanded or at least seemed to him underhanded, as there was a period when he was debating in good faith with St. Cajetan.
If the Reformers split over the conduct of Rome at that time, their position would have been analogous to the position of the Orthodox: a schism over authority, minor theological disagreements as the two Churches developed independently from the point of the schism onward, unity of the fundamental faith. However, they did not do that. They instead invented a set of theologies sharply dissonant with the doctrines of the historical Church of Christ. Rather than moving, like the Orthodox, largely in a parallel direction and retaining the deposit of faith elucidated by the Church of the Seven Concils, you moved centrifugally and continue to do so. Give you another couple centuries and you will be farther from Christ than Mohammed. That is a problem much larger than the Roman baroque opulence and the sale of indulgences.