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).
The post in question can’t even seem to get history right.
The 95 Theses were the start of the Reformation and when Luther was still trying to get the Catholics to return to the Biblical faith.
If he wanted an actual declaration of faith to attack, he’d want to look at the Augsburg Confession, many years later.
This on top of the previous post in this thread, in which I excoriate the gentleman above for not even knowing what Lutherans believe regarding good works.
It’s amazing the strawmen they’ll set up. If there’s a real Biblical and Apostolic argument for Romanism, you’d think that the detractors on this thread would have posted it by now.
Instead it’s a combination of ‘WE WUZ FIRST!’ and ‘LUTHER IS HITLER!’
Thanks be to God, but I misspelled “there” as “their.”
And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (Ephesians 1:22-23)
For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:29-32)
For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:13)
That sounds familiar:
In his Introduction to Romans, Luther stated that saving faith is,
a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]
This is what I have often said, if faith be true, it will break forth and bear fruit. If the tree is green and good, it will not cease to blossom forth in leaves and fruit. It does this by nature. I need not first command it and say: Look here, tree, bear apples. For if the tree is there and is good, the fruit will follow unbidden. If faith is present works must follow.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:340-341]
“We must therefore most certainly maintain that where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.” [Martin Luther, as cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963], 246, footnote 99]
All believers are like poor Lazarus; and every believer is a true Lazarus, for he is of the same faith, mind and will, as Lazarus. And whoever will not be a Lazarus, will surely have his portion with the rich glutton in the flames of hell. For we all must like Lazarus trust in God, surrender ourselves to him to work in us according to his own good pleasure, and be ready to serve all men.. And although we all do not suffer from such sores and poverty, yet the same mind and will must be in us, that were in Lazarus, cheerfully to bear such things, wherever God wills it.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:25]
“This is why St. Luke and St. James have so much to say about works, so that one says: Yes, I will now believe, and then he goes and fabricates for himself a fictitious delusion, which hovers only on the lips as the foam on the water. No, no; faith is a living and an essential thing, which makes a new creature of man, changes his spirit and wholly and completely converts him. It goes to the foundation and there accomplishes a renewal of the entire man; so, if I have previously seen a sinner, I now see in his changed conduct, manner and life, that he believes. So high and great a thing is faith.”[Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:341]
“For it is impossible for him who believes in Christ, as a just Savior, not to love and to do good. If, however, he does not do good nor love, it is sure that faith is not present. Therefore man knows by the fruits what kind of a tree it is, and it is proved by love and deed whether Christ is in him and he believes in Christ...” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:40]
“For if your heart is in the state of faith that you know your God has revealed himself to you to be so good and merciful, without thy merit, and purely gratuitously, while you were still his enemy and a child of eternal wrath; if you believe this, you cannot refrain from showing yourself so to your neighbor; and do all out of love to God and for the welfare of your neighbor...." [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:101]
...if obedience and God’s commandments do not dominate you, then the work is not right, but damnable, surely the devil’s own doings, although it were even so great a work as to raise the dead......Peter says the grace and gifts of God are not one but manifold, and each is to tend to his own, develop the same and through them be of service to others.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:244]
You forget that, like as with Scripture and tradition, church history only means what Rome says it does, as Manning essentially argued in order to deal with contrary testimony:
t was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.
Nonsense...Overseers, elders were apointed in all the churches to teach...We do not need Paul to come to our churches to explain his writing to us...
1Co_2:1 And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
1Co_2:4 And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:
1Co_4:19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power.
2Co_3:12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
Apostolic authority (whatever that is) is NOT the church...There is not any magicsterical authority in the church...God taught the Apostles and disciples...They taught us the same things God taught them...
You noted Corinthians...
1Co 1:1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,
1Co 1:2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:
You'll notice that the letter is addressed to the church of God at Corinth...It is NOT addressed FROM the church of God to Corinth...
I'm one of the few non Catholics here who will agree with you...So if you follow that law you will be judged by that law...If you break one law, you will be considered guilty of all of them...And your judgment will be at the end of the Millennial reign of Jesus on earth...
What's interesting tho is the rest of the bible; especially Paul's letters to the church is a complete mystery to you...It is foreign...You don't appear to know why Jesus died nor the result of his death...And you reject every attempt that we make to enlighten you on the rest of the 'God breathed scriptures'...
Indeed. It is a painful tautology. The whole phrase you quoted from the Cardinal boils down ultimately to, “We’re right because we’re right.”
No one defends ANYONE'S anti-Semitism - not Luther's, not Hitler's, not the Arian Brotherhood and not the Roman Catholic church's (lest you forget that history which is unescapable). Additionally, there were many others fundamental to the Reformation beside Luther - both before and after him. And, lest we forget, the Reformers were about restoring the Christian church back to the tenets that had been held always, everywhere and by all from the deplorable condition it was in during that time - conditions even Catholic theologians such as Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged.
To make the very words of the Messiah to none effect, one must both ignore the context AND the whole of His words in Scripture as revealed through the Holy Spirit. Kind of like those who constantly forget that the sheep and goats parable ISN'T preaching a works-based salvation.
Interesting theory. The only problem is there's not one scintilla of biblical evidence for it.
“You’ll notice that the letter is addressed to the church of God at Corinth...It is NOT addressed FROM the church of God to Corinth...”
Gotta leave a smoldering mark on the false claims you responded to...
Doesn’t have to be.
It clearly demonstrates that people who claim to follow God - and especially leaders - can forget what God declared.
We have a record from God. I posted it.
I’m grateful God raised up Blessed Father Luther, a faithful Catholic priest who was open to the voice of God.
“...but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,”
I Cor 1:27
So where's your evidence?
As for conflating Luther's 95 theses with the Solas: Mea Culpa, for all the good it does you.
So you are okay with sweeping assertions of what God is doing (taking the name of the Lord) without biblical mandate?
Then why did Paul have to correct them?
They taught us the same things God taught them...
YOU are not a first century Christian. Ignoring the fundamental cultural differences is simply being obdurate.
And don't forget the derogatory use of "thumpers" to label all of us who DO hold to the sufficiency of Divinely-inspired Scripture - of all things!
Now, now, can’t be messing up their rhetorical, strawbaby Luther!
So where's your evidence?
Are you serious? Do you really want to contend, or think you are able to, that writings of God could not be ascertained as such without Rome or an infallible magisterium, and thus thus a body of such had been established as authoritative by the time of Christ, which the NT church invoked as such? And that Scripture does not refer to a closed canon therein.
This is can be abundantly and easily evidenced by the grace of God, but I want to clearly hear from you that you actually think any of these points are even debatable, for i am incredulous that you would.
As for conflating Luther's 95 theses with the Solas: Mea Culpa, for all the good it does you.
You mean you actually are finally admitting error on a clear historical statement as part of your psychohistory after twice being called on it, but imagine it does your argument and credulity no harm? What's one more torpedo?
Well, Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) criteria, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares. How dare you try to disrupt this merry-go-round.
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