Nozipho mbanjwa biography of martin luther
Martin Luther
German priest, theologian and author (–)
Not to be confused with Martin Luther King other uses, see Martin Luther (disambiguation).
The Reverend Martin Luther OSA | |
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Martin Luther, | |
| Born | Martin Luder 10 November Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, Holy Roman Empire |
| Died | 18 February () (aged&#;62) Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, Holy Roman Empire |
| Education | University of Erfurt (Artium Baccalaureus, ; Artium Magister, ) University of Wittenberg (Biblicus Baccalaureus in Bible, ; Sententiarius Baccalaureus in Sentences, ; Theologiæ Doctor in Bible, ) |
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| Title | |
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| Theological work | |
| Era | Renaissance |
| Tradition or movement | |
| Main interests | |
| Notable ideas | |
Martin LutherOSA (LOO-thər;[1]German:[ˈmaʁtiːnˈlʊtɐ]ⓘ; 10 November [2] – 18 February ) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and Augustinian friar.[3] Luther was the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, and his theological beliefs form the basis of Lutheranism.
He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Western and Christian history.[4]
Luther was ordained to the priesthood in He came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, in particular the view on indulgences. Luther attempted to resolve these differences amicably, first proposing an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in Ninety-five Theses, which he authored in In , Pope Leo X demanded that Luther renounce all of his writings, and when Luther refused to do so, excommunicated him in January Later that year, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V condemned Luther as an outlaw at the Diet of Worms.
When Luther died in , Pope Leo X's excommunication was still in effect.
Luther taught that salvation and, consequently, eternal life are not earned by good deeds; rather, they are received only as the free gift of God's grace through the believer's faith in Jesus Christ. Luther's theology challenged the authority and office of the pope by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge,[5] and opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood.[6]Luther's translation of the Bible into German from Latin made the Bible vastly more accessible to the laity, which had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture.
It fostered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation,[7] and influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible.[8] His hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches.[9] His marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry.[10]
In two later works, Luther expressed anti-Judaistic views, calling for the expulsion of Jews and the burning of synagogues.[11] These works also targeted Roman Catholics, Anabaptists, and nontrinitarian Christians.[12] Based upon his teachings, despite the fact that Luther did not directly advocate the murdering of Jews,[13][14][15] some historians contend that his rhetoric contributed to the development of antisemitism in Germany and the emergence, centuries later, of the Nazi Party.[16][17][18]
Early life and education
Birth and early life
Martin Luther was born on 10 November to Hans Luder (or Ludher, later Luther)[19] and his wife Margarethe (née Lindemann) in Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, in the Holy Roman Empire.
Luther was baptized the next morning on the feast day of Martin of Tours.
In , his family moved to Mansfeld, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters[20] and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council; in , he was elected as a town councilor.[21][19] The religious scholar Martin Marty describes Luther's mother as a hard-working woman of "trading-class stock and middling means", contrary to Luther's enemies, who labeled her a whore and bath attendant.[19]
He had several brothers and sisters and is known to have been close to one of them, Jacob.[22]
Education
Hans Luther, Martin's father, was determined to see Martin, his eldest son, become a lawyer.
He sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfeld, then Magdeburg in , where he attended the Brethren of the Common Life, a school operated by a lay group, and Eisenach in [23] The three schools focused on the so-called "trivium": grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Luther later compared his education there to purgatory and hell.[24]
In , at age 17, Martin entered the University of Erfurt, which he later described as a beerhouse and whorehouse.[25] He was made to wake at 4 a.m.
for "a day of rote learning and often wearying spiritual exercises."[25] He received his master's degree in [26]
In accordance with his father's wishes, Luther enrolled in law but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law was an uncertain profession.[26] Luther instead sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel.[26] He was deeply influenced by two tutors, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen and Jodocus Trutfetter, who taught him to be suspicious of even the greatest thinkers[26] and to test everything himself by experience.[27]
Philosophy proved to be unsatisfying to Luther because it offered assurance about the use of reason but none about loving God, which Luther believed was more important.
Reason could not lead men to God, Luther felt, and he thereafter developed a love-hate relationship with Aristotle over Aristotle's emphasis on reason.[27] For Luther, reason could be used to question men and institutions, but not God. Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, leading him to view scripture as increasingly important.[27]
On 2 July , while Luther was returning to university on horseback following a trip home, a lightning bolt struck near him during a thunderstorm.
He later told his father that he was terrified of death and divine judgment, and he cried out, "Help!
Nozipho mbanjwa biography of martin luther Schulz and R. Luther also sent a copy to Archbishop Albert Albrecht of Mainz, calling on him to end the sale of indulgences. If he were forced to choose, he would take his stand with the masses, and this was the direction in which he moved. Priestly ordination.Saint Anna, I will become a monk!"[28][29] He came to view his cry for help as a vow that he could never break. He withdrew from the university, sold his books, and entered St. Augustine's Monastery in Erfurt on 17 July [30] One friend blamed the decision on Luther's sadness over the deaths of two friends.
Luther himself seemed saddened by the move. Those who attended a farewell supper walked him to the door of the Black Cloister. "This day you see me, and then, not ever again," he said.[27] His father was furious over what he saw as a waste of Luther's education.[31]
Monastic life
Luther dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession.[33] Luther described this period of his life as one of deep spiritual despair.
He said, "I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul."[34]
Johann von Staupitz, his superior, concluded that Luther needed more work to distract him from excessive introspection and ordered him to pursue an academic career.[citation needed] On 3 April , Jerome Schultz, the Bishop of Brandenburg, ordained Luther in Erfurt Cathedral.
Nozipho mbanjwa biography of martin luther the reformer Dickens cites as an example of Luther's "liberal" phraseology: "Therefore I declare that neither pope nor bishop nor any other person has the right to impose a syllable of law upon a Christian man without his own consent". Jerry Falwell. Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls Mark Doctrine and theology.The following year, in , Luther began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg.[35] He received two bachelor's degrees, one in biblical studies on 9 March , and another in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in [36] On 19 October , he was awarded his Doctor of Theology.
Later life, ministry, and the Reformation
University of Wittenberg
On 21 October , Luther was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg,[37] succeeding von Staupitz as chair of theology.[38] He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg.
In , he was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia, which required him to visit and oversee eleven monasteries in his province.[39]
Lectures on Psalms and justification by faith
Main article: Sola fide
From to , Luther lectured on the Psalms, and on the books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians.
As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways. He became convinced that the church was corrupt and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths of Christianity. The most important for Luther was the doctrine of justification—God's act of declaring a sinner righteous—by faith alone through God's grace.
He began to teach that salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus as the Messiah.[40] "This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification", he writes, "is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness."[41]
Luther came to understand justification as entirely the work of God.
This teaching by Luther was clearly expressed in his publication On the Bondage of the Will, which was written in response to On Free Will by Desiderius Erasmus (). Against the teaching of his day that the righteous acts of believers are performed in cooperation with God, Luther wrote that Christians receive such righteousness entirely from outside themselves; that righteousness not only comes from Christ but actually is the righteousness of Christ, imputed to Christians (rather than infused into them) through faith.[42]
"That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law," he writes.
"Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ."[43] Faith, for Luther, was a gift from God; the experience of being justified by faith was "as though I had been born again." His entry into Paradise, no less, was a discovery about "the righteousness of God"—a discovery that "the just person" of whom the Bible speaks (as in Romans ) lives by faith.[44] He explains his concept of "justification" in the Smalcald Articles:
The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans –25).
He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John ), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah ). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans –25).
Nozipho mbanjwa biography of martin luther king He also argued that the second wall, that only the pope can interpret scripture, was unfounded because all priests could distinguish what was right or wrong in matters of faith. Johann Eck, speaking on behalf of the empire as assistant of the Archbishop of Trier , presented Luther with copies of his writings laid out on a table and asked him if the books were his and whether he stood by their contents. While Erasmus and other humanists saw Luther as a tumultuous figure, radical spiritualists saw him as a "halfway" reformer. Sacramentarian controversy and the Marburg Colloquy.This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law, or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us&#; Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark ).[45]
Start of the Reformation: –
Further information: History of Protestantism and History of Lutheranism
In , Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money in order to rebuild St.
Peter's Basilica in Rome.[46] Tetzel's experiences as a preacher of indulgences, especially between and , led to his appointment as general commissioner by Albrecht von Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz, who, already deeply in debt to pay for a large accumulation of benefices, had to contribute the considerable sum of ten thousand ducats[47] toward the rebuilding of the basilica.
Albrecht obtained permission from Pope Leo&#;X to conduct the sale of a special plenary indulgence (i.e., remission of the temporal punishment of sin), half of the proceeds of which Albrecht was to claim to pay the fees of his benefices.
On 31 October , Luther wrote to his bishop, Albrecht von Brandenburg, protesting against the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences",[a] which came to be known as the Ninety-five Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire."[49] Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St.
Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"[49]
Luther objected to a saying attributed to Tetzel that, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory (also attested as 'into heaven') springs."[50] He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error.
Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.
According to one account, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg on 31 October Scholars Walter Krämer, Götz Trenkler, Gerhard Ritter, and Gerhard Prause contend that the story of the posting on the door, although it has become one of the pillars of history, has little foundation in truth.[51][52][53][54] The story is based on comments made by Luther's collaborator Philip Melanchthon, though it is thought that he was not in Wittenberg at the time.[55] According to Roland Bainton, on the other hand, it is true.[56]
The Latin Theses were printed in several locations in Germany in In January friends of Luther translated the Ninety-five Theses into German.[57] Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany.
Luther's writings circulated widely, reaching France, England, and Italy as early as Students thronged to Wittenberg to hear Luther speak.
Biography of john knox Augustine's Monastery in Erfurt on 17 July Quisquis ergo dicit, non citius posse animam volare, quam in fundo cistae denarius possit tinnire, errat. He enrolled in the University of Erfurt in when he was 17 years old. The meeting ended in a shouting match and initiated his ultimate excommunication from the Church.He published a short commentary on Galatians and his Work on the Psalms. This early part of Luther's career was one of his most creative and productive.[58] Three of his best-known works were published in To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian.
Breach with the papacy
Archbishop Albrecht did not reply to Luther's letter containing the Ninety-five Theses. He had the theses checked for heresy and in December forwarded them to Rome.[59] He needed the revenue from the indulgences to pay off a papal dispensation for his tenure of more than one bishopric.
As Luther later notes, "the pope had a finger in the pie as well, because one half was to go to the building of St. Peter's Church in Rome".[60]
Pope Leo X was used to reformers and heretics,[61] and he responded slowly, "with great care as is proper."[62] Over the next three years he deployed a series of papal theologians and envoys against Luther, which served only to harden the reformer's anti-papal theology.
First, the Dominican theologian Sylvester Mazzolini drafted a heresy case against Luther, whom Leo then summoned to Rome. The Elector Frederick persuaded the pope to have Luther examined at Augsburg, where the Imperial Diet was held.[63] Over a three-day period in October where he stayed at St. Anne's Priory, Luther defended himself under questioning by papal legateCardinal Cajetan.
The pope's right to issue indulgences was at the centre of the dispute between the two men.[64][65] The hearings degenerated into a shouting match. More than writing his theses, Luther's confrontation with the church cast him as an enemy of the pope: "His Holiness abuses Scripture", retorted Luther. "I deny that he is above Scripture".[66][67] Cajetan's original instructions had been to arrest Luther if he failed to recant, but the legate desisted from doing so.[68] With help from the Carmelite friarChristoph Langenmantel, Luther slipped out of the city at night, unbeknownst to Cajetan.[69]
In January , at Altenburg in Saxony, the papal nuncio Karl von Miltitz adopted a more conciliatory approach.
Biography of martin luther king: History of Lutheranism. In contrast to images of frail Catholic saints, Luther was presented as a stout man with a "double chin, strong mouth, piercing deep-set eyes, fleshy face, and squat neck. Luther's Works — Anti-Jewish polemics and antisemitism: —
Luther made certain concessions to the Saxon, who was a relative of the Elector and promised to remain silent if his opponents did.[70] The theologian Johann Eck, however, was determined to expose Luther's doctrine in a public forum. In June and July , he staged a disputation with Luther's colleague Andreas Karlstadt at Leipzig and invited Luther to speak.[71] Luther's boldest assertion in the debate was that popes do not have the exclusive right to interpret scripture, and that therefore neither popes nor church councils were infallible.[72] For this, Eck branded Luther a new Jan Hus, referring to the Czech reformer and heretic burned at the stake in From that moment, he devoted himself to Luther's defeat.[73]
Excommunication
On 15 June , the Pope warned Luther with the papal bull (edict) Exsurge Domine that he risked excommunication unless he recanted 41 sentences drawn from his writings, including the Ninety-five Theses, within 60 days.
That autumn, Eck proclaimed the bull in Meissen and other towns. Von Miltitz attempted to broker a solution, but Luther, who had sent the pope a copy of On the Freedom of a Christian in October, publicly set fire to the bull and decretals in Wittenberg on 10 December ,[74] an act he defended in Why the Pope and his Recent Book are Burned and Assertions Concerning All Articles.
Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X on 3 January , in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.[75] Although the Lutheran World Federation, Methodists and the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity agreed (in and , respectively) on a "common understanding of justification by God's grace through faith in Christ," the Catholic Church has never lifted the excommunication.[76][77][78]
Diet of Worms ()
Main article: Diet of Worms
The enforcement of the ban on the Ninety-five Theses fell to the secular authorities.
On 17 April , Luther appeared as ordered before the Diet of Worms