Luther – the wild boar
Last week’s
issues:
Wycliffe – Definition
of the Church, RCC’s greed & corruption, Authority?
Huss – spoke
out against the Crusades, Indulgences
Amazingly
all of this comes back up about a hundred years later in ML’s time…
Nuances: for
now I’m not going to debate any of Rome’s ideas but as you may not know them
already here is a crash course to make since of ML’s objections…
Indulgences:
started back in the Crusades, the Church promised people forgiveness for Swords
in Service of the RCC. In Luther’s time, Pope Leo X’s greed was shown in
using the poor’s money (Indulgences) for repair / reconstruction of St Peter’s
Basilica even though he was personally filthy rich & more of a banker than
a priest. Indulgence =partial forgiveness & Plenary = whole
forgiveness
RCC position
2 kinds of sin: major which = permanent hell & minor which = temp.
Purgatory
Purgatory (which became a doctrine as late as the
13the Cent.) is a temp. time of punishment between death & heaven where the
filth of sin is burnt off the human soul in preparation for the glory of
heaven. Now this temp. time could be 1000s & 1000s of years but still temp.
Think of it as the eventual burning off of moss covering off a lump of solid
gold.
So Indulgence
is granted by the hierarchy of the RCC if enough good works are done to off set
the punishment you deserve in purgatory. Included in these “good works” would
be charity like alms for the poor & indulgences. So from a Protestant view,
both you & Christ atone for your sins – not just you or not just Christ.
How? = the
Treasury of Merit, because the RCC defines the Church as unified group of
believers then the “merit” of 1 can be applied to another member (living or
dead) so goodness of Christ, Mary, the Saints, can be applied to you your dead
mom or your starving baby. Also because of RCC’s idea of Apostolic succession
of Peter, it is RCC & only the RCC that has authority to withdraw
merit from treasury & dispense it to believers in this life or in Purgatory
to atone for some or all of your minor sins. This will explain why it was sooo
serious to be excommunicated or declared a heretic because if the Church
officially rejected you how could you be saved from either Hell-fire or even
Purgatory-fire?
RCC
doctrines are derived
from their own tradition rather than direct from Scripture, RCC only accepts
Scripture as part not whole of its authority. In my opinion all of this
error is due to a mistranslation of “do penance” instead of repentance for
Salvation.
@@@
Issues: Protestantism answered 4
questions. How are people saved? Where does
religion’s authority lie? What is the
church? What is the essence of Christian
living? Though Protestantism
generally agrees on most issues, answers to these questions emerged from the burdened
soul of a burly German theologian and his personal conflict with Rome.
For Luther and his family his goal
was to grow up to be a lawyer. 1 day he
was caught in a violent thunderstorm and a lightening bolt nearly killed
him. With that, he made a vow to become
a monk if kept safe and he did join an Augustinian monastery.
**He declared, “I kept the rule so
strictly that I may say if ever a monk got to heaven by his sheer monkery,
it was I. If I had kept on any longer, I
should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, readings & other works.” Luther racked his own health for the rest of
his life from fastings & austere blanket-less German winter nights,
suffering for God.
Luther was sure of 2 things: 1 the
unutterable majesty of God & 2 a profound sense of his own sinfulness.
The troubled monk found the soothing
balm of grace in his study of Scripture.
2 things brought this to pass 1st Christ’s words from the
cross: my God, my God why has though forsaken me? Luther himself felt forsaken
of God because of his sin but why would Christ? Luther decided it had to be due
to Christ identifying with a sinful humanity?
2nd Romans 1:17, the righteousness of God revealed, that the
just live by faith…Night & day he would ponder these words till he made
this connection. A connection between the justice of God and living by faith, meaning
that the justice of God became the righteousness (or justification) by which
God justifies us by faith.
**ML said, “There upon I felt myself
reborn & to have gone through open doors to paradise.”
Luther saw it clear now: Man is
saved by faith in the Merit of Christ’s sacrifice for him. To Luther the cross, alone, could remove
men’s sin & save him from the grasp of Satan, (institutionalizing the doctrine of justification
by faith alone). This was contrary to
Rome’s doctrine of justification by faith & works: like demonstration of
faith through virtuous acts, acceptance of church dogma & participation in
church ritual.
The implications were ENORMOUS
enough to change the very face of Europe, politics, religious institutions,
education & the every day life of normal people.
Luther had no idea where his
thoughts on Salvation would lead but it took the flagrant abuse of church
finance to lead him to his position on papal authority.
Sale of Indulgences –
introduced during Crusades, Indulgences remained a favored source of papal
income. In exchange for a meritorious
work – like contribution to a worthy cause or a pilgrimage to a shrine – the
church granted an exception from penance pulled from an imaginary treasury of
merit, which comes from both Christ’s sacrifice & good deeds of the lives
of Mary & the Saints.
Nuance: Too often the sellers of indulgences (Tetzel)
downplayed the condition of a person’s soul & it became just a transaction $ for forgiveness, or not even you so if you’d just stop being a cheapskate &
cough up some $ means you could free your child or parent or friend from 1000s
of years of painful suffering in purgatory.
Tetzel’s
pimping of indulgences in Germany lead Luther on Halloween to nail his 95
thesis to the Wittenberg church door which sparked the Protestant Reformation,
11-31-1517. ML’s intent was only to debate but German printers due to the
new printing press mass marketed his writings & ML’s ideas became
widespread, within 2 weeks all of Germany was talking of ML’ ideas & within
2 months it was all of Europe.
**As Luther debated his new ideas
with Roman theologians he said, “A council may sometimes err. Neither the church nor the Pope can establish
articles of faith. These must come from
Scripture.”
Here Luther moved from 1st
issue Salvation by faith to 2nd issue Authority. Scripture not Popes or councils had to
be recognized as the final authority for Christian faith & life as the
standard for Christ-like faith & behavior.
Making Luther sound just like Huss & Wycliffe before him.
Submitting to this Biblical
Authority then ML wanted to edit Rome’s 7 sacraments (Baptism, Eucharist, Penance, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders,
Anointing the Sick – which used to be Last Rites) to 2 sacraments only:
Baptism & Lord’s Supper
This idea also lead from view of
church as a hierarchy headed by the Pope & returned to something more like
Baptists & the Early Church to a view of a community of Christian believers
in which all believers are priests called to live lives as spiritual sacrifices
to God. Think NT Church book of Eph, for the assembled Christians in Eph…or
Philippians or so on.
**On Good works & the gospel -
“God works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works.” Me:
“Christians do good works, good works don’t make one a Christian.”
As he was on the verge of
excommunication from Roman Church, Luther rejected monastic life defining
worship of God as living separated lives in service to God, but instead serving
God through one’s calling: serving one’s neighbor. * This relates back to something Daniel was
saying which is RCC worship is show God you are serious you are & Prot.
Ref. worship is love your neighbor because
you love God & in loving your neighbor you do worship God.
After his excommunication from the
church and condemnation as a heretic Luther was saved from execution by Prince
of Saxony, Duke Frederick the Wise, ML was disguised as a minor noble man
called “Junker George” & hid in Wartburg Castle where he translated the NT
into German falling in line with Wycliffe. The Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V presented the final draft of the Edict
of Worms on 25 May 1521, declaring Luther an outlaw,
banning his literature, and requiring his arrest: "We want him to be
apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic." It also made
it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food or shelter & it
permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence.
Surviving this ordeal in hiding were
he translated the Bible into German much like Wycliffe did into English…Luther
lead pastors to marry, he married a former nun named Katherine Von Bora, & he
translated the liturgy or Church’s order of Worship from Latin into
German. Changed communion from just
bread to bread & wine and changed the emphases of the service from the
mass to the preaching & teaching of God’s Word. His ideas even changed the face of politics
& economics in Germany, and not only Christianity but all of Western
Civilization.
ML: 1st Salvation? Not by works or even faith + works, but by
faith alone
2nd Religious
authority? Not in the visible
institution of the Roman Church headed
by Pope but in the Word of God
3rd What is the
church? The whole community of Christian
believers.
4th Essance of Christian
living? Serving God in any useful
calling whether ordained or
laity
**ML words @
diet of worms (get gummy worms)
“Since then
your sere Majesty & your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in
this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony
of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the Pope or
in Councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred &
contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted & my conscience
is captive to the Word of God. I cannot & I will not recant anything, since
it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.”
At the end of this speech, Luther
raised his arm "in the traditional salute of a knight winning a bout."
Renaissance historian Michael Mullett considers this speech as a "world
classic of epoch-making oratory."
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