Posted on 06/30/2017 4:43:54 PM PDT by Gamecock
The year 2017 is the year of Martin Lutheror 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 didnt 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 Im 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, Luthers goal wasnt 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 Pauls 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 imputationthat 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 wasnt 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 outwardnot inwardto 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 neighborsbut 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).
Are... are you serious? Did you...?
You did.
Oh. My. Gawd. YOU DID.
You...
You...
YOU INVOKED GODWIN’S LAW!
SWEET MERCIFUL JEEBUS YOU COMPARED LUTHER TO HITLER!
That. Is. HILARIOUS!
That is an epic loss if I do say so myself. Great job buddy; if you had to lose this argument THAT badly, at least you did it in style!
I’m gonna be smirking about this the rest of the night.
So again, it doesn’t say what you claim, just like I didn’t say what you claim, and just like the Bible doesn’t say what you claim.
I have no doubt of your desire to disengage from me. It mustn’t be easy to have ones credibility shredded over and over again by someone else using nothing but ones own words.
So it's not a matter of the Catechism saying what you allege, it's matter of you refusing to accept the definition of "collaboration" in favor of an unbiblical doctrine that can not integrate verses like James 2:17 into the Thumpers self-serving definition of "grace."
The Hebrew name for Judah, Yehudah (יהודה), literally "thanksgiving" or "praise," is the noun form of the root Y-D-H (ידה), "to thank" or "to praise."[2] His birth is recorded at Gen. 29:35; upon his birth, Leah exclaims, "This time I will praise the LORD," with the Hebrew word for "I will praise," odeh (אודה) sharing the same root as Yehudah. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_(son_of_Jacob)
See how much you could do to educate others if you could only let go of the knee-jerk animosity?
I have no interest in speaking to you any more. Leave me alone or I report you.
2027 No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life, as well as necessary temporal goods.
The Catholic frequently changes definitions so that one cannot EVER know assurance of his salvation. They call that the "sin of presumption".
Of course they do.
Gotta keep the money coming in, after all.
I see, so your propensity to rely on mind-reading extends into psychohistory. Quite fitting.
He DESIGNED it to resist scrutiny by the real Church, just like every other cult.
And which "real Church" declares itself as impossible to err in official teaching due to unique special protection in order to resist scrutiny in the light of the real supreme standard, just like every sola ecclesial-type cult. And which presumed premise certain RCs hide behind in avoiding such actual examination.
I am an ex Catholic. I was taught salvation by works.
From Peter F. Wiener's "Martin Luther: Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor," a Literary Feud Revisited:
In 1945, a literary feud put the theme "Luther and the Jews" into the limelight. One year earlier, a British teacher of German and French, Peter F. Wiener, published a book contending that Luther was Hitler's spiritual ancestor. It is sheer propaganda with the intention to show that Luther's radical anti-Semitism made him "one of the darkest figures history has yet produced." This is "proven" by a chain of historical distortions: Luther tolerated Jews in order to gain their support in his struggle against the papal church, but turned against the Jews when they did not join him; his demonic anti-Semitism was not grounded in theology because his "religion" was a "Teutonic anti-Christian faith." Wiener misquotes, misinterprets, and intentionally misunderstands . His work "is nothing but a historical forgery based on ignorance and malice." [so says Gordon Rupp].
The British Luther scholar Ernest Gordon Rupp offered a devastating, yet elegantly executed critique. One cannot win the peace, Rupp observed, by reviving the propaganda of Joseph Goebbels, the late but unlamented Minister of Nazi Propaganda. "The Nazi uniforms which Mr. Wiener has put on Luther fit very oddly on the facts: they were not made for him, nor he for them. Whatever be the truth about Luther, it is not Mr. Wiener's caricature." [Eric Gritsch, Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism: Against His Better Judgment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 118-119].
Far as I can tell, it goes like this.
Luther: Salvation by grace.
Evangelicals: Salvation by grace.
Protestants: Salvation by grace.
Greek Orthodox: Salvation by grace.
St. Paul: Salvation by grace.
Jesus: Salvation by grace.
Catholics: Salvation by works. Oh, excuse me, “merit.”
o/’ One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong. o/’
I think, when I get a day off, I’ll make a meme on the subject if I can find a good gif for it.
But Imma be honest here, when a man Godwins, he's beyond truth or logic. The only real response left is to point and laugh.
Like so!
...Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal
So just how is this a refutation of the charge that Rome shed more blood than what you attribute to Luther?
And would you agree that Catholic salvation is by works, in that one is justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God, being accounted to have truly merited eternal life by these very works he did in God (meriting salvation by grace)? And that being formally justified and made holy by his own personal justice and holiness (causa formalis) means that one must actually become good enough in character to be with God via the torments of RC Purgatory, unless he has attained to the state by the time (and maintains to the time) he dies?
But I'm going to take the chance to post some more memes about it at least, and grin the whole time.
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