Posted on 10/16/2019 5:53:55 AM PDT by Gamecock
Legend has it that on 31 October 1517, a German friar named Martin Luther (1483–1546) nailed a statement of criticism of the Roman Catholic Church on the doors of Wittenberg church. It is not known for sure whether he really nailed his protest to the doors or sent it directly to the local Archbishop. But one thing is certain: his ‘95 theses’ shook Europe to the core and led to a great cultural revolution.
It encouraged the German Peasants’ Revolt of 1524–25, in which the rural poor raised an army of 300,000 to fight the feudal order, and later still the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). Both resulted in appalling death tolls and widespread destruction of Church property and artworks. A third of the peasant army was massacred and during the Thirty Years’ War the modern equivalent of 40 million people died.
Luther’s ideas, and those of the Reformation, did not just fall out of the sky. There had been earlier critics of the Church’s corruption. However, Luther’s protest occurred at a time when the feudal system in Germany was unravelling. Not only were the plebians fed up with exploitation and taxes but towns and cities were developing with a class of merchants and industrialists being held back by the old feudal order. Luther was also supported by some among the aristocracy – the secular princes – who were more than happy to confiscate and seize Church property in the name of a higher principle. The Church owned a third of the land.
Luther’s dissent was able to gain much ground thanks to the Gutenberg printing press, technology that allowed for books, pamphlets, posters and cartoons to be printed in large numbers. Not everyone could read but there were gatherings at which the latest subversive works would be read to those assembled and, within a decade, half of Germany was ‘Lutheran’.
As with other events that turned the world upside down, such as the English barons’ revolt and the struggle for Magna Carta in the thirteenth century, Luther had no idea what he was unleashing. He thought he was just provoking a debate over issues that outraged him, such as the Church’s practice of selling Indulgences to raise money for the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
An Indulgence was a certificate issued by the Church and sold by priests with a guarantee that it would ensure passage to Heaven. They were very costly at about half a year’s wage.
In the 95 Theses, Luther asked: ‘Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?’
Perhaps Luther’s most subversive and radical idea was his belief that the Bible, not priests and popes, was the central religious authority. Back then, Bibles were in Latin – a language of the priests – and usually chained up in churches. Luther’s translation of the Bible into the language of the people – vernacular German – had revolutionary implications.
Essentially, Luther challenged and overturned the idea that the relationship between the individual and God requires the mediation of priests representing an institution headed by a theologically infallible source of divine authority, the Pope.
Luther is best described as an ‘accidental revolutionary’, someone who opposed actual revolution. When the peasants took up arms against the Church and other landlords, he immediately opposed them and supported their suppression; for him, liberty was purely spiritual. It has been said that Luther liberated Germans from feudal Catholicism but bound them to state power.
In asserting the individual nature of the relationship with God, and in translating the New Testament from Latin to German, he was creating the conditions for individuals to think for themselves and to doubt and criticize what had been ‘common sense’ for the previous thousand years.
By all accounts, Luther was not a nice person. He was a fanatic, obsessed with guilt and sin. He constantly prayed, confessed, fasted and flagellated himself for long periods. By today’s standards, he was an extreme fundamentalist, and anti-Semitic to boot (as were many Catholics back then).
What could such a person and his rebellion against the Catholic Church possibly have to do with democracy? Why is it that around the world millions will not just commemorate, but celebrate, his act of defiance of 500 years ago?
I do not have space in this post for the complicated detail but, again, the essence of his challenge was that the connection to God was an individual one, that faith was what mattered, not actions such as rituals and Indulgences. From this perspective, every baptised person was a pope: ‘the priesthood of all believers’. Such insights laid a basis for progress toward democracy. The free Christian eventually became the free citizen – but only when philosophy caught up with and digested the still unfolding changes occurring on the ground, changes reflected by the displacement of religion in the C18th with the Enlightenment.
In a ‘papal bull’ issued in June 1520, Pope Leo X called for Luther’s works to be burned. Luther responded in December by publicly burning the bull. In January 1521, the Pope excommunicated him and Luther responded by calling the Pope ‘the Anti-Christ’. Christianity was split in two, and then further fragmented.
When, nearly two centuries later, John Locke's ‘Letter concerning Toleration’ (1690) argued that the church was a voluntary association based on individual conscience, he was presenting a key Reformation idea that one's religious confession is a matter of individual choice rather than institutional imposition.
Today, freedom of conscience owes much to the forces unleashed 500 years ago at Wittenberg. In fighting the tyranny of Rome, Europeans learned to fight tyranny of every kind. The ‘priesthood of all believers’ was a vital precondition for the much later secular democracy of all citizens.
More articles for reflection as we apprach Reformation Day, 2019.
In before the Protestants bashing begins...
They are a little slow on the keyboard this morning!
This was a peculiarly Western European/Roman Church problem, no? Take the example of Sts. Cyril and Methodius (9th c.) in the east --the apostles to the Slavs.
St. Cyril not only translated everything for the Slavs, he even created an alphabet in order to do so. Hence the Cyrillic alphabet.
My understanding is that throughout the Orthodox Christian world, texts have always been made in the native language of the people --- whether it be Greek, Syriac, or whatever.
GREAT summary. Luther was in many ways similar to the description of a man I worked under. Someone said “he is a man with TREMENDOUS strengths and GLARING weaknesses.”
Crooked sticks, straight lines, lest we forget who we are worshiping here and make an idol of men. I love Luther because I can relate to him in his pathetic brokenness.
Thank God for blessed saint, father Martin Luther.
Flawed as every man God chooses, Luther recovered the Gospel of Grace and the authority of God’s inspired Word.
Even today, he lives rent free in the heads of many who post on this forum.
A fitting tribute to see them still upset and unable to see beyond their religion.
Not bashing, but he has no idea what an indulgence is.
An Indulgence was a certificate issued by the Church and sold by priests with a guarantee that it would ensure passage to Heaven
Completely mistaken.
(in the Roman Catholic Church) a grant by the Pope of remission of the temporal punishment in purgatory still due for sins after absolution.
In other words, some penance is done to move through Purgatory faster. It has nothing to do with guaranteeing acceptance into heaven, if you are in Purgatory, you are going to heaven.
1. They simply don’t work. The modern-day evidence for this is that there are more than 40,000 “Christian” sects. There may as well be a million, once you acknowledge that there can be more than one.
2. A democratic approach to faith does not have any basis in history or Scripture. Not only that, but Judao-Christian history as documented in Scripture is a clear, compelling case AGAINST the silly notion that “democracy” has any place in Christianity. Scripture is an endless litany of stories of open rebellion against God among the masses, and admonitions warning people AGAINST a broad acceptance of popular sentiments in the world.
Scripture reference please. Actually several of them. At least one purgatory, one for indulgences, and one for selling forgiveness for monetary gain? I’m sure such important doctrines are well supported by Scripture....
This is a most interesting subject and this is a timely period to review it.
The Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world gave to Peter the keys of The Church. This church that Peter had taken over for The Lord grew for a number of reasons but I think mostly because of the promise that The Savior made, that wherever two or three were gathered in His name there would He be also. So when the saints gathered many of them could feel the presence of the Holy Ghost.
In the early church the doctrine we now call the doctrine of The Trinity as certified at the council in Nicaea and refined a few times after that was not universal and so many saints felt that The Holy Ghost allowed them to communicate with God by delivering their prayers to Jesus.
After Nicaea the church priesthood inserted another layer into the mix, the local priest. Luther blew this up and his doctrine established what was had some 1500 years earlier thus decimating the need for a priest.
I personally believe that Luther was no more wrong than those bishops who prior to 325AD preached a wide variety of Christian doctrines.
After the apostles especially Peter died off or were murdered there was a paucity of central authority, there was no one who could say “thus saith The Lord”. With the keys gone, with central authority gone Constantine came along and did what the Apostles would have done had they been there.
I believe what Constantine did was wrong but not evil he was just trying to do a good thing on his own. He was kind of like a non-levite trying to keep the Ark from falling, well intentioned but without authority. I put Luther in the same category, he did something that needed to be done but without proper authority.
We owe much to both Constantine and to Luther. I believe both were well meaning and both did much good but both made many mistakes because they relied on their own wisdom.
Were it not for Constantine who knows what we as individuals would know about The Savior and our relationship to Him. Without Luther who knows how much freedom from Church and State we would have. I will honor both of them.
And how many sects are there of catholicism and orthodox? at least all you romans are united as one behind your pope!
I think Luther is indispensable in the cause of human freedom.
Uh oh. You did it again. You said the Luther word. For all his flaws one thing ai appreciate about Luther was his ability to shred the pompouswith one phrase. He would have been a good poster here.
A democratic approach to faith does not have any basis in history or Scripture . . . . .
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I would strongly disagree. The Lord Jesus Christ or the God of The Old Testament never compelled anyone to believe or follow. Man has always had what might best be described by the word “agency”. That is not to say there weren’t punishments for making the wrong choice, just ask the people who made the golden calf while Moses was on the mountain. There are consequences for choice. Good choices generally have much better consequences.
Popcorn time!
How are a number of denominations evidence that “they don’t work?”
I’m not getting into a ridiculous waste of time argument, so waste someone else’s time. I just pointed out that the first thing he speaks of (indulgences) is absolutely wrong, he doesn’t even know what one is.
You probably have no idea either.
Why not tell me how my statement was wrong Ms Authority?
:: any religious institution with a “democratic” foundation ::
I agree that “democracy” has no place in Christianity. But, I must point out here, that you posit a common “pre-supposition” upon the works of the Reformers; Hess, Luther; Calvin; Zwingli. Democracy is the ^outcome^ of the Reformation which birthed /individual/ liberty (critical thought) to all willing to assume it.
Faith is first, foremost and singly a personal relationship with God, not a consensus of those with whom you associate.
The Church is the Bride of Christ, not a governing agency working on behalf of “president” Jesus, or for that matter any “vicar of Christ”. We, as sentient human beings have fallen upon a /democratic/ governing structure to facilitate the churches existence here on this side of Heaven. The Church Fathers, the Reformation Fathers nor Jesus Himself required a democratically run church no more than the Apostles espoused a socialist construct during their post-Ascension ministry.
Yet, as I have always written, without the Reformation we would not have the United States of America. To say we are not a Christian nation (Ovomit) is to say the individual has no Faith in God, no hope. Hebrews 11:1
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