In October 1517, five hundred years ago, Martin Luther published his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", which is more commonly known as his Ninety Five Theses. The great work was written in Latin, but later translated to German and other languages. By the spring of the following year, it had spread all over Europe. These events marked the beginning of the end of absolute power by the Roman Catholic Church. Martin Luther believed that the rituals of the Church were unnecessary for salvation and that the Bible should be made available in the language of the common people, not in Latin. The Church didn't like these ideas of course and tried to use its power to stop the revolution that followed. Before long, the Bible was translated, into English, mostly by William Tyndale, who was greatly influenced by Luther. Tyndale was hunted, betrayed, imprisoned, and burned at the stake. When you read the Bible in English, most of the well known phrases were translations by Tyndale. Here are just a few: “under the sun”, “signs of the times”, “let there be light”, “my brother’s keeper”, “lick the dust”, “fall flat on his face”, “the land of the living”, “pour out one’s heart”, “the apple of his eye”, “fleshpots”, “go the extra mile”, “the parting of the ways” Martin Luther had his faults, but his influence changed the world for the better and because people were able to free themselves from the greedy clutches of the Church and read the Bible themselves, the control was lost. The worse fears of the Church leaders has been realized; competition from other Churches, the increase in education by non-religious authorities, the great advance in science and free thinking. Because of Martin Luther, you and I can criticize authority without fear and we can live our lives without worrying about HELL or how many years we'll have to spend in Purgatory after we die.
So there were about 1000 years of pope ruling and the church kept humanity in the dark. And the big blessing come with printing press.
This is true. Even those of us who were like me raised as Catholics and still follow the traditions, if not most of the beliefs, recognise the immense significance of the printing press and of Luther's challenge. It was the availability of books and pamphlets in the vernacular that gave the common people a means of thinking for themselves and not simply accepting what they were told. This facilitation of transferring ideas, and encouragement to think and question, helped the scientific revolution hugely. A less well-known effect of Luther was that his encouragement of congregational singing contributed greatly to Germany's later musical dominance, perhaps most clearly seen in church organs and the unparalleled work of J S Bach, who earned his living from the Lutheran church and composed his cantatas, passions and organ music for it. So, a constipated old sod, but a great man.
I'm not benevolent to a hateful anti-Semite who laid the groundwork for the holocaust. He was worse than Hitler.
What about the inquisition in Spain, Portugal, France. The Pogrom in Russia. I believe the Jewish community, flourished in Germany until 1930
No thanks to Luther, who flirted with the idea of burning down the synagogues, but then said that the Jews would still practice in secret, which was just as bad.
The question then is: If we are going to throw out church tradition, then why shouldn't the Bible be thrown out along with it? Without tradition, what reason is there to be Christian at all? I think that the Protestant Reformation might have had a hugely unintended consequence of giving impetus to the development of our modern secular sensibility. It was only a century later that we start seeing visible signs of deism, defined largely by its skepticism towards all forms of revealed theology, not only Catholic tradition but Biblical tradition as well. The only kind of theology that seemed fully credible to the deists was natural theology, the evidences of God that they believed were visible in the natural world. (Design most notably, but also the first-cause arguments and whatnot.) Then the influence of Darwin and many others led to deism transitioning into full-frontal atheism. I see all that as positive, but those who don't probably should blame Luther.
That's too much work for river... What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice: First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly and I myself was unaware of it will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know. https://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resou...e-history-of-the-relationship/273-luther-1543
I agree he changed the world for the better, but he was nuts all the same. He wanted to get rid of the Jews who wrote the Bible that he loved so much. That's got to be the very definition of nuts.
Luther was but one of several priest who tried to reform the catholic church. Hus tried that a century earlier and was burned. Luther had access to Hus' writings.
This post is ripe for reflection. My personal interest is 1st-3rd centery "Christianity". Is that true of pre Nician creed or post Nician creed? Did Martin hold the Filioque Clause of the Nician creed as truth? I guess it depends on if you followed the Latin or Greek translation of the day. That is what Martin introduced. Individual understanding as opposed to "traditional" understanding. His understanding was based on the rejection of "indulgences" and the Pauline philosophy that faith is stronger than James philosophy of works. Faults indeed, as we all have. I would argue that his philosophy gave rise to people like Jim Jones and re-introduced the ancient concept of gnostic Christian philosophy. The early 2nd century "heretic" known as Marcion did the same. His philosophy is considered by some the very reason the gospels where written in the 1st place. After all, Marcion was the 1st to canonized Pauls letters and what is now known as "A written Gospel". Before Marcion, everything was oral tradition.
