Posted on 10/18/2008 8:20:43 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
A few weeks ago, in the historic Castle Church of Wittenberg in Saxony, Lutherans from all over the world opened the “Luther Decade,” celebrations that coincide with Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) arrival in Wittenberg 500 years ago in 1508 and commemorate the achievement and global significance of the German reformer. Nine years later, on 31 October 1517, Luther not only castigated the abuses of indulgence sellers with his “95 theses” but also offered a new understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. Ushering in the modern age, Luther held that the individual, not the institutional church, stood at the center of God’s relationship with humankind.
According to his friend Philipp Melanchthon, Luther posted his sharply profiled theological arguments on the door of that same Castle Church. This signal event in Luther’s life took place while he lectured as a brilliant interpreter of the Bible in Wittenberg University, living together with other monks in the local Augustinian monastery and serving as pastor and father confessor in local churches.
Wittenberg and its university were places of pride for the leader of Electoral Saxony, Prince Frederick the Wise. This Saxon ruler also protected Luther and kept him alive during the early and uncertain years of the Reformation, enabling the movement for reform to gain momentum.
New Religious Insight
I visited Wittenberg shortly after the reunification of Germany and saw the monastery in which the reformer lived together with his wife Katharina von Bora, a former nun, and their family. The city still exhibited the drab grey colour into which all East German cities and villages appeared to be dipped during the Communist period. Earlier, in that monastery, Luther had experienced his so-called “breakthrough,” the insight that individuals could not be saved by their own merits but only by the grace of God.
Meditating on a passage in the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, “The righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith,” Luther finally made the connection between faith, grace, and justification and found an answer to his troubling question: How could he, a sinner, ever be accepted by God? Up to that point, Luther had seen God’s righteousness as a punishing judgment of sinners. Now he read the text of Paul in an entirely different light as a hopeful answer to a very personal problem, that righteousness was a gift of God “by which the merciful God justifies us through faith.”
This new understanding of God’s acceptance of the sinner through the gift of his grace changed for Luther the whole face of Scripture and set the Reformation in motion. Luther would remain in Wittenberg even after his defiant stand before emperor and nobles at the Diet of Worms and subsequent seclusion in the Wartburg castle, where he also translated the New Testament into German.
Fallible Individual
Although Luther became a global icon of Protestantism and in recent years has once more won recognition as the “most famous German,” his work and persona are not without dark shadows. Luther remained a thoroughly fallible individual, whose advice to princes and lords was not always without guile. His intemperate, even hateful language against Jews provided some of the building blocks of 19th- and 20th-century anti-Semitism. Any appreciation of Luther has to recognize these limitations and failures. That there remains enough worth celebrating is demonstrated by the recent commemorative events.
Newfoundland Lutherans
In Newfoundland, Lutherans have never been a strong presence. An organized Lutheran congregation existed in St. John’s from 1956 to 1976, composed primarily of Latvians and Germans, most of whom had followed Joey Smallwood’s beckoning call to save the province economically through industrialization. The controversial figure of Alfred Valdmanis, Smallwood’s director general of economic development, was a driving force behind the early Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Saint John’s. The congregation erected a modern A-frame church building on Logy Bay Road that closed its doors in 1976 and is now the home of the Vera Perlin Society.
The peasants had misunderstood Luther's reforms. They thought it was a secular reform. He was setting the record straight, telling them that his reform was of a more everlasting one. A spiritual one. One that would draw them closer to Christ.
Yes. The only sin that can tear me away from Jesus Christ, once I belong to him, is the sin of denying Christ. In Christ, ALL MY SINS ARE FORGIVEN.
I was not aware that the Catholics had changed their position on this. Which Council made this change official? Have they also tossed out Macabees I and II from their version of the Bible? Is it possible that Luther had some impact on the Catholic church?
Thank God we Catholics are spared these problems.
“As to the common people, ... one has to be hard with them and see that they do their work and that under the threat of the sword and the law they comply with the observance of piety, just as you chain up wild beasts.”
Luther thought highly of the peasants. He was deeply concerned about their spiritual well being that had atrophied under years of domination of the Papacy. He translated the Bible into the vernacular so the peasants could understand it. Luther wrote a Large and Small catechism so that peasants could learn the Christian faith. (In fact, the faith of the peasant was so bad that he named his first catechism, "A catechism to the Pagan Germans.") He destroyed the Canonical Law -- enabling people to focus on Christ, not on the church's edicts which were not tied to the Bible. He also went around to each church and ensured that there were pastors who were trained to preach christ -- not just collect money for the church. He set up a method to train pastors so that the peasants could be spiritually cared for.
Take your time with an answer.
Way to go, Guys...purge us while the Islamofascists sit back and lick their chops...
and laugh at your silly a$$es!
That's a good starter list.
“Luther thought highly of the peasants.”
You clearly have not read Luther in his own words. Sad.
Thanks for the response. I think we are getting to the heart of the debate, instead of debating temporal issues
Luther was very clear to the sacrament of baptism and communion, and there are Bible passages to support these.
What sacraments do the Catholics believe in (I could list them, but it carries more weight when it comes from a Catholoic) and what are the Bible passages to support these being a sacrament?
Thanks.
This presumes a false prerequisite: sola scriptura.
Luther was very clear to the support of Bigamy as well. And he used Scripture to support this odd view. Ditto the death and destruction of Jews.
I did not notice that anyone else pointed this out, but Robinson is not Lutheran.
By golly you are right. Protestant and therefore the clear ‘fruit’ of the Lutherian rebellion but not actually Lutheran. The Lutheran sect has women Bishops and clergy and has a large and vocal faction arguing for ‘non-celibate’ gay clergy but hasn’t quite yet gone as far as their brothers in heresy.
You paint with a rather large brush.
Look at the damage wrought by heresy. The swath of promoters of sin is wide. The Path of Truth is narrow.
And that is one of the chief differences between most Catholics and most protestants. St. Paul warned against the gnostics. Yet there are many religions that believe in gnosticism. I did not realize that Catholocism was one of them. What else besides scripture do Catholics believe is the word of God?
Where did I say any such thing?
You are correct in that Luther supported bigamy -- once. You no doubt are aware that Luther once told a Margrave to marry a mistress whom the Margrave had impregnated. The Margrave was severely distraught, and nothing Luther could say would ease his conscience and ensure that he was still loved by Jesus Christ. It seems that the Margrave thought that because of what the Catholic Church had taught him, he had to do something to make his sin of adultery go away. The Margrave believed that faith alone was sufficient for Christ grace, but he was still troubled. Luther realized that the false doctrine he had fell prey to was the cause, so he said it was best to marry the mistress to clear his conscience.
Luther was a master at working with people regardless of where they were in their spiritual walk with Christ. He took people as they were and brought them closer to Christ.
Until Ambrose derived from scripture that a family consisted of one man and one women plus their offspring in the fourth century, there were many bigamists in the church. Once the church squelched bigamy, they became very intolerant of it. This intolerance was one reason that kept them from effectively evangelizing people in other cultures. (To be fair, there have been some succes, both by protestants and Catholics.) Japan was lost to Christianity because the Catholic church would not accept a leading war lord who was a bigamist. This war lord was not going to divorce all but one of his wives, for he believed that he had a moral obligation to take care of them. So he helped to remove Christianity from Japan. Imagine how history might have turned out if Japan had been a Christian nation.
Luther clearly was against all religions that did not believe in the saving grace of Jesus Christ and did not believe that faith alone would get a person to heaven. This includes the Jewish religion as well as many others. Luther never lifted a finger against a Jew, although his words against false religions were very biting.
What do Catholics today believe regarding salvation? Is it by faith alone, or some other way?
So it appears you do believe that the scripture alone is the word of God. Correct?
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