The Protestant reformation was started by a monk/parish priest named Martin Luther. He studied the various teachings of the Catholic Church and found many of the church’s teachings false and heretical. The Catholic Church based the belief of salvation on works and the following of the rules. Martin Luther, after reading various scriptures and studying various writings, found that one is saved by faith alone, rather than works. He then wrote a document titled the 95 Theses. It basically stated all the problems in the Catholic Church, according to Luther, and the doctrine they taught as well as the practices they were doing. Since no one had ever dared to question the authority of the Catholic Church hierarchy, this caused much tension in the church.
When the church leaders heard about Luther’s questioning of the Catholic Church’s doctrine, they were filled with rage. Even though the Church hierarchy was furious with Luther, his 95 Theses were copied and published throughout all of Europe. Pope Leo X condemned Luther’s teachings as heresy. Luther was then called to the Diet of Worms on April 17th, 1521. He was to either recant his writings or to reaffirm them. On April 18th, Luther gave a speech saying that he would not recant his writings for that would go against his conscience and scripture. Sadly, Luther was declared an outlaw by the Emperor (Here I Stand).
Although this seemed like the end, it was not. It was only the beginning. Luther began to do more teaching and writing in the favor of Protestantism. Even after Luther, there were many other great theologians, pastors, teachers, etc. that carried on the reformation and continued to reform the already reformed church.
One of the fascinating things to me is that typically we paint Luther as wanting to start the reformation, wanting to break away from the Catholic church. That was never his original intention - he loved the Catholic church and merely wanted to correct the practices/beliefs he noticed. I wonder what the world would look like today if the leaders had listened to him or even just accepted some of his proposals.
ReplyDeleteI just don't get it if Luther was teaching the right things then why would the church want to stop him and get rid of him. to me Luther was doing the right thing and the church was just being stupid. if the churches motive was to bring people to God then they should see that Luther was doing them a favor.
ReplyDeleteMcnutt you're exactly right. Its actually sad when you think about the fact that Luther thought when he raised these concerns to Pope Leo X, that he would agree with Luther and stop the selling of indulgences. Sadly that was not the case, the corruption went all the way back to the Pope. The only way he could have saved the church, was by splitting away from it, even though that was never what he wanted to do. And it would probably be very different. I wonder if there would even be denominations? I guess there probably would be, because this debate over doctrine has been going on even long before the protestant reformation. People like Pelagius and Augustine. It would be very interesting to see though.
ReplyDeleteMike, you're looking at this wrong. The church's goal was not to truly bring people to the Lord or to serve the church and the Lord by educating it's members. It was simply to make money. The church had gotten so corrupt that it was no longer about doing God's Will, but making money and building an empire. Also, most of the clergy truly believed what they were teaching, so when Luther spoke out against their doctrine, even though it was the truth, they did not believe it as truth because they had been taught and been teaching false doctrine (transubstantiation, indulgences, works based salvation, purgatory, etc..). Again, Luther really hoped this was small scale and when he took it to the higher power, he thought they would agree with him, but he found the church had been corrupted from the core. Its pretty sad.