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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 61, Martin Luther:
May 24, 2004:
While looking at Sir Thomas More, we noticed in passing that the English Parliament took the Church of England away from the pope. They made crazy Henry the head of the English Church. That was a pretty solid blow to the Church of Rome, but it was limited to England. Now we get to the guy who upset the pope's applecart in Europe and caused a real brouhaha. Without really meaning to, Martin Luther (1483-1546) broke Rome's European monopoly on religion.
In thinking of this guy I find there exists what I believe to be a misconception about what he did and what he was. We tend to think of him as being a religious revolutionary. In fact, he was nothing of the sort. Luther was a reformer. He believed fully in the church and in the Christian religion. He believed all of the teachings of the church. His departure from the establishment was not on theological issues, but on behavioral issues. He opposed the wealth and corruption of the pope and his cronies.
He did not start out to be a reformer. Early on, he studied law, but somehow he experienced some kind of religious conversion and entered a monastery at Erfurt. When he made the priesthood, he was assigned to the University of Wittenberg. His boss sent him to Rome for some reason and he saw the corruption of the in crowd first hand. We can imagine how this would shock an old fashioned central European conservative.
This caused him to fret a great deal and to seriously study his Scriptures. After what he had seen he was concerned for his own salvation. He found what he needed in St. Paul. He discovered a God who cared enough to grant salvation on the basis of faith alone, no great works required. That was a big relief for Luther personally, but he had the other issue of the church corruption.
In particular he protested against the sale of indulgences. This was a widespread practice of prelates at the time, being, as it was, a dandy way to create revenue. In particular, he protested against one John Tetzel. This was a rather simple minded German monk who was sent to Saxony to raise money through the sale of indulgences.
Finally, Luther had enough and he posted his famous 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Some of the local folks approved, but you got to know it did not sit well with the crowd in Rome. They saw it as a challenge to the church. It seems there were some attempts at negotiation, but Luther just upped the ante. He continued to write against the excesses of the church and insisted on widespread reforms. He also demanded German control of the German Church. Oh, oh! Shades of Henry VIII.
Well, that got Luther an Exsurge Domine, a formal bull of condemnation from the pope. This guy had guts. He took the bull and burned it in public. With that, there were no options left. Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X. Then he was summoned to appear before the Diet of Worms. That may sound like a pretty awful lunch menu, but it's not that at all. Worms is just a town in Germany and the Diet is just an assembly of the Holy Roman Empire. So, the Diet of Worms was a meeting of an assembly at Worms.
It may behoove us to understand what the Holy Roman Empire was. This was not the Church of Rome. It was actually a political entity consisting of a loose federation of European states with an emperor. When Luther was excommunicated the emperor was Charles V. However, Luther was under the protection of Frederick of Saxony who refused to take action against him.
This called for negotiation and the upshot was for Luther to appear with a guarantee of safe-conduct from Charles V himself. So Luther showed up to defend his beliefs. He admitted that the books entered into evidence were written by him. Then he was asked to repudiate them. He took a day to decide, and then refused to do it unless they could prove he was wrong. He insisted that they show him errors or disagreement with scripture in his work. Of course, they could not do that because there were no errors or inconsistencies.
That broke up the meeting and Luther, being no fool, took off. He went into hiding. He was a hero to the German people, but he was a heretic to the church and the empire. Soon, the Diet passed the Edit of Worms which named Luther an outlaw and a heretic. He was to be captured and turned over to Charles V. Furthermore, his writings were forbidden to the people. The Edit was never enforced, but it had the effect of making Luther a prisoner confined to Saxony and the protection of Frederick.
He continued to write and translated the New Testament and other parts of the bible into German. Later he returned to Wittenberg to spend most of the remainder of his life. With Luther's direction and sanction a fellow named Philip Melanchthon wrote a Lutheran confession of faith. This was the so called Augsburg Confession, presented at the Diet of Augsburg to the emperor Charles in 1530.
The church theologians did not accept the entire confession, objecting to some of the articles. There were some attempts at negotiation to no avail. Nonetheless Luther confirmed the Augsburg Confession, effectively establishing the Lutheran Church. The split was complete.
The thing that started all of this was that darn 95 Theses
Luther posted on the door of the Castle Church. Looking at them,
I see nothing that would justify the response of the church or
the criminalizing of Luther. It seems to be a great noise over
nothing much. Luther really wanted nothing more than papal integrity
and reform. What he got instead was the classic reaction of dishonest
bureaucrats caught in the act. They blustered and bluffed and
finally blamed the whistle blower. For those interested in the
detail, the 95 theses are posted in the History and Evolution
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