You wrote:
“As I consider the Reformation split, remember, Luther was a monk in good standing, nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenburg door (a common practice for theological debate in those days), and was excommunicated.”
No. 1) Luther was a heretic. He had been a heretic for years BEFORE Oct. 31, 1517. He was nominally in good standing because he had not made his heresy public in a way that caught the notice of authorities.
2) Luther was not excommunicated until YEARS LATER. He was excommunicated in 1521.
“So he did not leave, I think, but got kicked out, along with many in good conscience who supported him.”
No. Luther left the obedience he owed the pope as a Christian already in 1520 as shown by the fact that he published a tract called “Why the Pope and his Recent Book are Burned and Assertions Concerning All Articles.” Luther burned the papal letter threatening him with excommunication. Already in 1520 he was bringing the nobles to his side by urging them that they should be the masters of Church property rather than the various monasteries, dioceses, and so forth which actually owned the property. LUTHER LEFT.
“Some were killed, of course. Luther got the death sentence.”
From whom? You mean the Diet of Wittenberg - the civil assembly of German princes headed by the secular emperor? and how many people died in the war of the peasants encouraged and then abandoned by Luther’s own actions?
“I think if you read a summary of Luther’s 95 theses you might find yourself in agreement with many of them.”
Been there, done that. The problem is that Luther himself was simply wrong and violated his own word:
“AMONG those monstrous evils of this age with which I have now for three years been waging war, I am sometimes compelled to look to you and to call you to mind, most blessed father [Pope] Leo...Wherefore, most excellent Leo, I beseech you to accept my vindication, made in this letter, and to persuade yourself that I have never thought any evil concerning your person; further, that I am one who desires that eternal blessing may fall to your lot, and that I have no dispute with any man concerning morals, but only concerning the word of truth. In all other things I will yield to any one, but I neither can nor will forsake and deny the word. He who thinks otherwise of me, or has taken in my words in another sense, does not think rightly, and has not taken in the truth.” http://bartleby.com/36/6/1.html
As soon as Luther realized that Pope Leo wouldn’t fall for his flattery and heresy, he started attacking him.
“They are very biblical. The Pope was wrong to excommunicate him and his supporters, and wrong to kill all those people.”
Pope Leo X didn’t kill anyone among Luther’s cohorts. Luther’s heresy is not biblical.
“Pope Leo X didn’t kill anyone among Luther’s cohorts. Luther’s heresy is not biblical.”
The Pope killed no one with his own strength, so far as I know. Yet death sentences were common and many were killed for the crime of heresy. I understand it was up to him who got a death sentence and who did not.
Heresy included such things as denying the infamous indulgences where people were pressed to give money to spring their loved ones from purgatory. I am not sure how you can defend that horrible practice.
The first six of the theses:
1. When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said “Repent”, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
2. The word cannot be properly understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, i.e. confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.
3. Yet its meaning is not restricted to repentance in one’s heart; for such repentance is null unless it produces outward signs in various mortifications of the flesh.
4. As long as hatred of self abides (i.e. true inward repentance) the penalty of sin abides, viz., until we enter the kingdom of heaven.
5. The pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties beyond those imposed either at his own discretion or by canon law.
6. The pope himself cannot remit guilt, but only declare and confirm that it has been remitted by God; or, at most, he can remit it in cases reserved to his discretion. Except for these cases, the guilt remains untouched.
Nothing to kill a man over. But I have gone and done it, I stand before you all a thread hijacker.