Another Roman Catholic Straw Man argument that has been trotted out lately.
Here is the rest of the story.
I would like to suggest that all this finger pointing between religious groups is part of an organized effort to get us fighting each other.
This is getting silly!
No offense, but I couldn’t care less if ML believed in the immaculate conception. I only care what God’s letter to us (the Bible) says.
The scripture says “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”, not “all but Mary have sinned...”.
Even if Martin Luther believed in Mary’s immaculate conception, the Reformation does not suffer loss. Neither myself nor the Lutheran church considers Luther to be an infallible source of either interpretation or revelation.
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Exactly, that is why God left us His precious word, to be Bereans and search the scripture daily.
“Jesus came upon a small crowd who had surrounded a young woman they believed to be an adulteress. They were preparing to stone her to death.
To calm the situation, Jesus said: “Whoever is without sin among you, let them cast the first stone.”
Suddenly, a woman at the back of the crowd picked up a huge rock and lobbed it at the young woman, scoring a direct hit on her head. The unfortunate young lady collapsed dead on the spot.
Jesus looked over towards the lady and said: “Mom! You stay out of this!”
Check Patrick Madrid on the subject. He disagrees with your article, BTW.
Actually, if Luther held simultaneously held the understanding Mary’s purity inherited from the Church before the division of East and West and the Augustinian understanding of Original Sin (he certainly embraced the latter, though not in such a big way a Calvin), Luther would (like the Latin church) have been stuck believing something like the later-formulated Latin doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the BVM.
We Orthodox object to the Immaculate Conception because we see it as fixing a non-existent problem: Augustine’s view of the Fall and its effects are too extreme (look up a description of the Orthodox doctrine of Ancestral Sin to see what we hold to be the truth of the matter), and so we have no problem with the classical understanding of Mary’s purity and virtue without a jury-rigged fix to make sense of it in the context of Blessed Augustine’s speculations.
One point that is always good to remember: even if Luther did believe this, it makes no difference to Protestants. Luther wasn’t the “Pope of the Protestants”, pronouncing doctrine that we all follow. He could believe whatever he wanted about Mary, but if he could not support it with Biblical evidence, then nobody has any compulsion to join him in his belief.
Oh, shoot. I read it too quick and thought it said “Martin Luther King”.
Luke 11: 27, 28
As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.”
He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
From a biological perspective (which nobody knew at the time), females are born with all the eggs they will ever have in their lives. They are not created at any later time.
Therefore, part of Christ’s genome for his earthly body could not be made from anything but a supernaturally immaculate conception.
It wasn’t dogma then. Many good Catholics didn’t believe in it at the time.
Luther did have a much higher view of Mary than most modern Lutherans do.
Catholics are only interested in his thought because Protestants are interested in his thought.
My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich He has sent empty away.
He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen
Magníficat ánima mea Dóminum,
et exsultávit spíritus meus
in Deo salvatóre meo,
quia respéxit humilitátem
ancíllæ suæ.
Ecce enim ex hoc beátam
me dicent omnes generatiónes,
quia fecit mihi magna,
qui potens est,
et sanctum nomen eius,
et misericórdia eius in progénies
et progénies timéntibus eum.
Fecit poténtiam in bráchio suo,
dispérsit supérbos mente cordis sui;
depósuit poténtes de sede
et exaltávit húmiles.
Esuriéntes implévit bonis
et dívites dimísit inánes.
Suscépit Ísrael púerum suum,
recordátus misericórdiæ,
sicut locútus est ad patres nostros,
Ábraham et sémini eius in sæcula.
Glória Patri et Fílio
et Spirítui Sancto.
Sicut erat in princípio,
et nunc et semper,
et in sæcula sæculórum.
Amen.
She became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed on her as pass man’s understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in heaven, and such a Child . . . Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God . . . None can say of her nor announce to her greater things, even though he had as many tongues as the earth possesses flowers and blades of grass: the sky, stars; and the sea, grains of sand. It needs to be pondered in the heart what it means to be the Mother of God.
(Commentary on the Magnificat, 1521; in Luther’s Works, Pelikan et al, vol. 21, 326)