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.
I think you need to be more specific than that. There are numerous denominations of Lutherans. As you suggest, Luther himself would be appalled at what some believe. He would also be appalled at some the actions of the priests within the Catholic Church today, too.
I have read extensively of Luther, both his own words and his actions. Luther did more in his lifetime to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the peasants in the Holy Roman Empire of Germanic States than the Papacy did for 1000 years in Christendom.
I have noticed that you have very carefully dodged telling me what you believe, while I have very clearly articulated I believe in the saving grace of Jesus Christ through faith alone. Rather you like to picture Luther as an evil monster. Could it be that you don't know what you believe? What do you believe?
False dichotomy.
You seem to be having a difficult time answering questions. It would seem to me that you do not know what you believe. So I will ask, "How do you think you will get to heaven?"
Difficulty answering? LOL, no.
I have no difficulty refusing to answer malformed questions, and I feel no compulsion to participate in a colloquy on your terms.
I did not think you would be able to tell me what your eternal salvation depended on, or give any other doctrine of the church might teach about salvation. Are you really being saved?
Ummmm, I think you need to read some history of the Catholic Church, if you really believe that.
But how to be perfect, inasmuch as all sin and fall short of the glory of God, every one? Perfection most certainly is not achievable through the exercise of the will or works of unregnerate man, nor by adhering to man-devised rules of conduct moderated by priests.
But how to be perfect, inasmuch as all sin and fall short of the glory of God, every one? Perfection most certainly is not achievable through the exercise of the will or works of unregnerate man, nor by adhering to man-devised rules of conduct moderated by priests.
Well then. Certainlt following an oathbreaker who advocates murder, arson and bigamy ought to be on anyones short list of conduct to avoid, dontcha think?
I guess we’ll never know exactly how much the decades of slavish RCC misunderstandings beat into Luther’s head (and back) resulted in this very bad perspective. What we do know is that the oppressive organization of Rome owns centuries of the wrong-headed theology of the papacy, the priesthood, indulgences, self-importance about the “keys” and the like.
AMEN!
Your facts are faulty. The Catholic Church owned that door.
That’s what I said.
No you did not.
Oh, yes, I did.
Plainly not true. Compare the posts, it’s obvious.
Herein lies yet another difficulty with the RCC. You guys have an axe to grind about the Organization. The True Church belongs to Jesus Christ and all of the believers worldwide in all time. The RCC has so departed from this Church that it might be said, that it’s official doctrines disqualify it from that True Church. So, sure Petronski, go off with the RC, the RCC, whatever you demand for initials. It will be interesting at the judgment when Jesus considers whether faith was in Him or in the Organization. I seem to recollect a phrase, “...depart, I never knew you.”
That is where I place my faith, in Jesus Christ through His Church, the Catholic Church.
The RCC has so departed from this Church that it might be said, that it’s official doctrines disqualify it from that True Church.
It might be said, but it it would be false.
It will be interesting at the judgment when Jesus considers whether faith was in Him or in the Organization.
There is no distinction. Faith in Him is faith in all that He provides for us, including His Church: the Catholic Church.
He has promised us the very gates of Hell--including those who insist on calling it childish, petty names--shall not prevail against the Catholic Church, though it is sad to watch the attempts.
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