Posted on 06/30/2017 4:43:54 PM PDT by Gamecock
The year 2017 is the year of Martin Luther—or at least it should be. Nearly 500 years ago on October 31, 1517, Luther nailed (or “mailed,” for some historians debate this point) his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church.
Even so, Luther didn’t become a full-fledged protestor of the church in that single moment. It took him about eight years (1513-1521) to challenge and hammer out a more robust understanding of the gospel.
Have you ever wondered what Martin Luther was reading during this crucial time in his life? Maybe I’m just a nerd, but I thought at least someone else might be interested in what Luther was reading during his slow, but steady, transition out of the medieval church and into the world of reformation.
Remember, Luther’s goal wasn’t to invent or start an entirely new church. His goal was to reform the church and call her to repentance and faith in the abiding Word of God.
Here are four books Martin Luther read that made him question everything:
1. The Psalms Luther spent time studying and lecturing through the Psalms in the Bible. He began to realize that the Bible teaches we are not generally sinful, we are totally sinful. Here, Luther had the beginnings of what theologians later would refer to as “total depravity,” meaning that we are sinful in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
2. Romans After that, Luther lectured through Paul’s letter to the Romans. He came across Romans 1:17, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” The last part of this verse is a direct quotation from Habakkuk 2:4.
Luther began to see something that he never saw before. He began to see the doctrine of imputation—that we are declared right before God not by our own righteousness, but by the righteousness of another. He began to understand that the righteousness of God that was such a terror to him as a priest (because it told him that he was unholy and unworthy), was actually the righteousness from God that told him he was holy and worthy. God gives this right standing by faith alone. It is a righteousness that is received as a gift and not earned.
3. Galatians It wasn’t until Luther started lecturing through Galatians that he began to realize that faith does not justify us before God. Faith is merely an instrument that God uses. Faith is a tool by which we embrace Jesus Christ as he is offered to us in the gospel.
Faith is, as John Murry once said, “extrospective.” It looks outward—not inward—to embrace the God who gives himself. In other words, faith is only an empty hand. It justifies because it grabs hold of the Jesus who justifies (Rom. 3:26).
4. Hebrews The last book that turned a medieval priest into a true Reformer was the letter to the Hebrews. Luther began to embrace an entirely different understanding of how the Old and New Testaments relate to one another. He realized that the law is not simply the Old Testament and the gospel is the New Testament, but that the gospel of God can be seen as preached throughout both Old and New Testaments.
The same Jesus of the same gospel was offered freely to both Jew and Gentile alike, throughout the whole Bible. Sure, there was a greater and fuller proclamation of that message, such that it went out to the whole world instead of only Israel and their close neighbors—but the gospel was preached nonetheless!
In short, reading and studying the Bible is what ultimately made Martin Luther “protest” the medieval church. Luther was convinced that the Bible was worth listening to. So this year we celebrate the anniversary of a “recovery of the bright light of the gospel.” To God alone be all the glory (Soli Deo Gloria).
Ping
I am a Lutheran pastor, and as soon as I saw that headline, the first book that came to my mind was Romans. Second was Galatians. Third was Psalms. So I was pleased to see that those were the first three books mentioned in this article.
ping
And who made Luther smarter and more accurate than the persons Christ conferred authority on some 1,400 years prior?
Is Joseph Smith just as accurate? How about Henry8th? How about all the people who broke away from Luther and Henry in disagreement to start their own churchs?
Basic reality check: an opinion and it’s opposite cannot both he true.
Care to address the actual article or are you going to follow the RC M.O. of regurgitating talking points?
Good read.....thanks!
Working out really well for you with your mess of a pope that you believe Christ conferred authority on, isn’t it
It is popes like Francis that demonstrate the promise of authenticity and prevailing though the gates of hell assault.
Well, that's one way of putting it.
Luther was ordered on pain of excommunication to recant. Since he believed, on the points in dispute, that he was in the right, he regarded a forced and insincere recantation as perjury, a mortal sin. He refused to recant and was excommunicated.
As we might put it today, Luther didn't leave the church; the church left him.
anything you say...
Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History
I have a feeling that Martin Luther and James Carroll would have been at odds with one another and Luther would have saved his foulest scatalogical insults for any debate between them.
I read the article and marvel at fact Luther thought himself more important than those who had gone before.
Can you tell me why Luther more right than Henry or the multiple break off Churches’ founders?
Other than Jesus Christ, what human is a clean vessel? Certainly not the sordid line of Popes littering the centuries.
“the persons Christ conferred authority on some 1,400 years prior”
The persons - leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in 1517 - were neither the apostles, nor the disciples of Yeshua before or after the crucifixion, nor even Paul nor Paul’s contemporaries. “Tradition” does not “pass” “the authority” of Christ. Like salvation it is a gift received by faith.
There is no Christ chosen “vicar” of Christ. In is an institutional invention, invented by humans NOT to “maintain the faith”, only to maintain the domination of the institution. Faith had been purged from the church institution by its own corruption, corruption that was secular, venal and sinful.
Thanks for the ping!
Can you tell me what Martin Luther had to do with King Henry the 8th? Was he retained to write the King James Bible or something? /s
Basic reality check. The RCC of that era was astoundingly corrupt and not anything like something Jesus created.
Luther was right.
That is not to say that the RCC today carries the guilt of what they were doing back in that era. That would be completely unfair.
But the people you say Christ conferred authority on were no more legitimate than Luther. Honest people can debate about whether Christ conferred authority on anyone. But he absolutely did not set up a brutal feudal monarchy to be handed down through the years.
In math there is a basic principle. Look at the solution and see if it makes sense. You don’t need to know that 24 divided by 3 is 8, to know that 80 is wrong. The answer is absurd on its very face.
Look at the words, life and teachings of Jesus, then look at the papacy and the Roman Vatican HQ. That is the wrong answer on its very face and the near opposite of anything remotely associated with Jesus.
For example, he wasn’t wealthy. He never commanded military mercenary formations in the field. There is no basis to believe a building in his name should have jail cells.
Luther was a very bad dude in some ways, but he was right in leading a reformation. Islam really needs one.
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