Was Martin Luther Wrong?

antithesis.com ^ | 10/31/01 | R. C. Sproul

[AnalogReigns]

Being the 484th anniversary of Brother Martin's nailing the 95 Theses on the Wittenburg door...I thought such a posting appropriate.

Sola Fide! Sola Gracia! Sola Scriptura! Sola Christos!

[zest for life]

Martin Luther, helped usher in the Reformation, translated the Bible into German, & focused the church on the Grace of God. He was used by God. But he was also used by the devil. At the end of his life he let bitterness consume him. The Bible says to bless the Jewish people. But Luther wrote, "...set fire to their synagogues..to be done in honor of our Lord and Christendom..I advise their houses also be razed and destroyed..all money and treasure be taken from them."

It is written we are to give no room to the devil. But Luther gave the devil not only room, but a country. The evil fire of anti-semitism would grow through his words, untill Nazis republished his tracts, his words against the jews, to ultimately lead to the death of 6 million men, women and children. Luther let satan have a foothold. It was all the devil needed to accomplish his genocide of the children of Israel. Do not allow a satanic foothold in your life. All it leads to is holocausts.

[BplusK]

I have no doubt that Martin Luther was right in what he believed and taught. However, another question may come to our minds: Was Martin Luther right when he "pushed" his views so strongly that he created a new division in the Church? Someone may speculate that if Martin Luther did not defy the Pope, "maybe" the Roman Catholic church could have eventually accepted Luther's views or at least a certain Reformation. (but I am skeptical!)

[Jim Noble]

>>Whatever happened to the Reformation? Was Martin Luther wrong, after all? Or does it really matter?<<

I was raised in a "mainline" reformed church. The Reformation project does not seem to be going well lately to me.

I have seriously considered (to the point of going through RCIA) and rejected, for now, Roman Catholicism (my wife and daughters are RC, and I wish I could join them).

But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the fruits of the Reformation, as manifested by the tide of apostasy and heresy in American and European Protestant churches, are sour and getting rapidly worse.

Unlike you, I am not at all sure what to do.

[RaceBannon]

Martin Luther was just a man. The reformation was necessary, but the Baptists never needed to be reformed, they had it right all along.

[hsszionist]

Martin Luther was wrong in that his hatred of the jews stopped him from attaining a greater rejection of the false Roman doctrine that grew from the conquest of the Roman emperior Constintine.

[mo'shea]

Ole' "Brother Martin" checked at the doorway of faith the notion that God loves us so much that he gifts us with a free will, to believe in His Son or not to, and even if believing in His Son, to nevertheless reject the salvation that His Son's blood offers. Sola Scripture unfortunately teaches in effect that believing by definition means relinquishing one's free will. It also utterly ignores Jesus' many exhortations to do good, among the most powerful being the parable about the damned and the exalted, who respectively ignored and took care of "...the least of their brothers."

Martin Luther was plagued by scrupulosity, and his narrow, erroneous theological "by faith alone" finding was simply an unfortunate remedy to keep himself out of the nuthouse.

[Publius]

Someone may speculate that if Martin Luther did not defy the Pope, "maybe" the Roman Catholic church could have eventually accepted Luther's views or at least a certain Reformation.

Read The Fixing, by Kingsley Amis.

[txzman]

"Rome saw justification as meaning "making just," based on the Latin roots for the word justificare (Justus and facio, facere), which in Roman jurisprudence meant "to make righteous." For Rome, God only declares to be just those who have first been made just...

Well, this should change soon anyway as soon as the RCC declares it was Mary after all who forgives. As an ex-Catholic I will never be able to re-accept that the RCC thinks of itself so magnificently as to stand in the sunlight of God - between me and God, and claim to be able to interpret and re-interpret His love for me and how God will accept me again.

Purgatory, indulgences, sinlessness of Mary, her deathless entry into heaven, baptism at birth, works required for slavation, confession only to a priest, the infallibility of the Pope, the Pope's ability to speak to me as would Christ - just a few of the many problems one has in accepting RCC's version of what I read with my own eyes in the Bible.

Luther's discourses with Erasmus concerning "sola fide" are wonderful. Even Erasmus could not spin his way out of Luther's burning arrows directed at the RCC's corrupting of the Word.

[Timmy]

And let us not forget the great John Wyclif (the "Morningstar of the Reformation") and John Hus, who set the stage 150 years before Luther. In fact, it could be argued that had the printing press been invented at the time (it came along about 1450), the Reformation would have occurred then.

[JmyBryan]

Having been raised a Lutheran, I would say a discussion of Luther without mention of the sale of indulgences, would miss a big point.

Whether Luther was wrong - for you literalists - he called the Epistle of James the "Epistle of Straw".

[Claud]

...as long as we remain outside of Christ we are continually heaping up judgment against the day of wrath. The only way an unjust person can escape the day of God's wrath is to be justified.

Unjustified = remaining outside of Christ.
Justified = proclaiming faith in Christ.

Proclaiming. Hmmmmmm......

Sounds like a "work" to me.

[zest for life]

There is an old poem, "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. For poems are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree." There is much truth to this. Everything we do on our own strength ends up flawed and empty. It's a big mistake trying to find the value of your life by achieving things. That's why working for God's Love never works. The truth is: God is a poet. And you are His poem. As it is written in Ephesians, "We are His workmanship." In Greek the word for workmanship is "poi-ema," from which we get the word "poem."

Nothing you can do in your own strength can ever be as beautiful or as precious as who you are in God. In salvation, you are God's workmanship--- His poem. Stop struggling in your works and start learning how to be His work. Rest from your works, and rejoice in His works. You are the very poem of God. Get that right and your life will become beautiful poetry.

[AnalogReigns]

Luther's anti-Semitism is often brought up when his other ideas are discussed. By any standard, certainly Martin Luther was anti-Semitic...however by medieval European standards, he was by no means unique. Remember the Roman Catholic Inquisition began a generation before Luther (targeted at Jews and heretics) with many hundreds killed and tens of thousands exiled (and that NOT for the most part in Germany)...Anti-Semitism is an historically European sin...of which Luther never on earth recovered.

Also Luther's statements against the Anabaptists and of course the Roman Catholics were every bit as inflammatory as those he said against the Jews--all based on his theological certainty that their beliefs were leading them--and others--to eternal hell.

The Nazis were profoundly anti-Christian (and therefore anti-Luther) however--atheistic in full, and we cannot blame their holocaust on Luther, they only used what was convenient for their own godless hatred. As many or more Roman Catholic Germans (and Austrians etc.) participated in murdering the Jews as did Lutherans.

We shouldn't let Luther's zealous overstatements cloud the clear and wonderful things he found in scripture about the gospel of justification by faith in Christ alone.

[Claud]

Whether Luther was wrong - for you literalists - he called the Epistle of James the "Epistle of Straw".

Yeah he ran up against this:

James 1:22-25 (KJV)

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

[AnalogReigns]

Whether Luther was wrong - for you literalists - he called the Epistle of James the "Epistle of Straw".

This quip...from a letter to a friend, is often taken out of context. He was comparing the book of James to Romans, I believe. Having actually translated both books from the original languages, I think he felt a right to comment upon them in a personal letter...Luther never preached the book of James as unworthy. Contra popular (Catholic) belief, Luther also never removed James from the New Testament, which he translated.

About indulgences--while this was the proximate cause for the Reformation--Luther, and all the other Reformers, didn't see it as central, it was merely a symptom of deeper corruptions of doctrine within the Roman Church.

[AnalogReigns]

Martin Luther was just a man. The reformation was necessary, but the Baptists never needed to be reformed, they had it right all along.

Show me a credible history that Baptists even existed as churches before the Reformation (or really even before the 1700s in England). Sorry, with the exception of the persecuted Jews, Western Europe was entirely Roman Cathoic before 1517--otherwise you got burned at the stake.

I know its hard to say (for Baptist and non-Baptist alike...), but Baptists are Protestant too...

[Claud]

Western Europe was entirely Roman Cathoic before 1517

Well, not entirely. There were heretics. There were always heretics.

But they were heretics for a reason.

They were wrong.

[AnalogReigns]

James 1:22-25 (KJV)
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

It's amazing to me that the accusation against Protestants is repeated again and again after hundreds of years. Faith as the FOUNDATION for works, not mingled with works, is what Luther and orthodox Protestants have always taught.

Think about it historically--are the historically Protestant people-groups somehow more libertine than Roman Catholic? The USA has historically had a majority of Protestants--are we somehow less moral in our lifestyle than say France, or Italy? As James is saying, REAL faith always brings works along with it...but the foundation and starting place for good works is faith alone in Christ' works alone.