In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the wall of the Wittenberg church, questioning the authority of the pope and leading to his turning from the Catholic priesthood to heading a Protestant movement, rejecting the efficacy and use of indulgences (paying money for sins), and calling for a return to the Bible with the motto, Sola Scriptura, the Bible alone.
Earlier, Martin Luther had several unusual experiences. He was struck by lightning and survived, joined a monastery, became a Catholic priest, and tried to live a severe life of deprivation, even self-beating, but he could not seem to conquer his guilt over his sin.
Later, while doing a penance at the Vatican by crawling up a set of glass-covered stairs on his knees while chanting, he thought of the Habakkuk verse that said, “the Just shall live by faith,” and he had a religious experience. After this, he began to study the Bible more intensely and gradually added commentary to Galatians and Romans that sounded similar to being saved by faith and he attacked selling indulgences and abuses within the Catholic Church.
He had meanwhile graduated with a doctorate in law, and became a professor at the local university. But by demand from Pope Leo X, he was called to meet the Catholic authorities at the trial of the Diet of Worms. While there, he explained his position and ended by exclaiming, “Here I stand. I can do no other!” Soon, excommunicated by the pope, he was declared an outlaw.
The authorities were perplexed because the Catholics were trained in Catholic dogma (the teaching of the popes, church fathers, church councils, apocrypha, and rituals) and this became their Tradition, equal in their mind or perhaps even superior to the Bible. The Bible was not taught or studied, but only Tradition. Pressured by authorities, they let Martin Luther go, and he was soon supported by the local princes of the area, and later by other princes and kings of Europe.
In 1522, Luther went into a protected hiding at the Wartburg castle, dressed as a junker or hunter with a beard disguise, where he translated the New Testament, and later finished the Old Testament (in 1534), the 19th Bible translated into German. Luther, like the later William Tyndale of England, had a good grasp of the German idioms of the common man spoken in the market, it was a good mix of the northern and southern German of his time, and his translation was done well overall.
It was based upon the Received Text of Greek and became the standard Bible of the German people and the foundation of the modern German language and literature, with 3,000 Bibles printed in the first edition. This Bible quickly spread throughout Europe, having an impact on the entire continent.
The Wartburg castle still houses a museum of Luther’s table, library, family paintings, and sword. While visiting this castle, this author saw a quote in the German language from Luther displayed with his sword and asked a Catholic priest what it said. He replied, “Kill every Anabaptist you can find.” When asked about this, the priest thought it was a good idea to continue even today to purify the church from any non-Catholic teaching.
During the summer, when Luther translated the Bible at this castle, four Anabaptist preachers were held in the Wartburg castle tower until they died. During their imprisonment, they wrote their testimony for Christ in their blood on the wall, and it is still visible and translated today.
This movement resulted in a war of armies led by Augustus the Swedish king, and where the army advanced in Germany is Lutheran today, and where it stopped the land is still Catholic. This was not a Reformation of revival, salvation, or faith, but a movement by the sword!
There were not a large group of people saved during this time, but a realignment of loyalty to Luther or to the Catholic Church. But by opposing the pope, corruption, and teaching to base his belief (even though inconsistently) upon the Bible, he is seen as a direct result of the influence of Wycliffe on Hus who impacted Luther, and many historians view this as the beginning of the Continental reformation.
Luther believed that salvation is not earned by good deeds, but eternal life is a gift of God’s grace, received through the believer’s faith in Jesus Christ as his Savior. He espoused the Bible as the only source of divine truth, promoting the Christian to believe the Bible alone, but he also inconsistently held other Catholic teachings.
While Luther abandoned some of the Catholic teachings, he wrote hymns and reintroduced congregational singing, yet he believed in the real presence of the body and blood of Christ for the Lord’s Supper (which he called a sacramental union), and he continued the Catholic Mass spoken in German (instead of Latin) with all the ritual. He married a nun named Katherina who was a great help to him, but Luther taught a confusing idea of salvation by grace through faith with a strong Augustinian (Calvinistic) bent. He thought that you could also do “works of grace” and earn salvation, and he believed in infant baptism and other false teaching and never officially left the Catholic Church.
Luther had attacked transubstantiation and other doctrines in his 95 Theses, although his view of consubstantiation is similar to the Catholic view of believing that both the actual elements are present with the actual body and blood of Jesus. He also had rejected four of the seven Sacraments, yet, he still believed in sacramental work (or a work of grace) in infant baptism, penance (confession of sin to a Catholic priest), and the Mass. He also believed in fighting anyone who disagreed with him (such as advocating killing Anabaptists).
Other former Catholic priests who also became reformers with slightly different views, especially related to salvation and to church doctrine, include John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Knox (founders of the Presbyterian and Reformed churches who also retained a Catholic Mass spoken in the local language of French, German, or Scottish with their rituals) and a variation of worship music.
This is an excerpt from “King of Books” by Dr. Lonnie Shipman.
