Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and former Augustinian friar. 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.
Born in Eisleben, Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507. He came to reject various teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, in particular the view on indulgences and papal authority. Luther initiated an international debate on these in works like his Ninety-five Theses, which he authored in 1517. In 1520 Pope Leo X demanded that Luther renounce all of his writings, and when Luther refused to do so, excommunicated him in January 1521. Later that year, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V condemned Luther as an outlaw at the Diet of Worms. When Luther died in 1546, his excommunication by Leo X was still in effect.
Luther taught that justification is not earned by any human acts or intents or merit. He preached it instead is received only as the free gift of God's grace through the believer's faith in Jesus. Luther held that good works were a necessary fruit of living faith, part of the process of sanctification. Luther's theology challenged the authority and office of the pope and bishops by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge on the Gospel, and opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptised Christians to be a holy priesthood. Those who identify with these, as well as Luther's wider teachings, are called Lutherans, although Luther insisted on Christian or Evangelical, as the only acceptable names for persons who professed Christ.
Luther's translation of the Bible into German 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, and influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible. His hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches. His marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry.
In two of his later works, such as in On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther expressed staunchly antisemitic views, calling for the expulsion of Jews and the burning of synagogues. These works also targeted Roman Catholics, Anabaptists, and nontrinitarian Christians. While Luther did not advocate the murder of Jews, some historians contend that his rhetoric encouraged antisemitism in Germany and the emergence, centuries later, of the Nazi Party.
Early life and education
Birth and early life
Martin Luther was born on 10 November 1483 to Hans Luder and his wife Margarethe in Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, in the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was baptised the next morning on the feast day of Martin of Tours.In 1484, his family moved to Mansfeld, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council; in 1492, he was elected as a town councilor. The religious scholar Martin E. 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.
Luther had several brothers and sisters and is known to have been close to one of them, Jacob.
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 1497, where he attended the Brethren of the Common Life, a school operated by a lay group, and Eisenach in 1498. The three schools focused on the so-called "trivium": grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Luther later compared his education there to purgatory and hell.In 1501, at age 17, Martin entered the University of Erfurt, which he later described as a beerhouse and whorehouse. He was made to wake at 4 a.m. for "a day of rote learning and often wearying spiritual exercises." He received his master's degree in 1505.
In accordance with his father's wishes, Luther enrolled in law but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law was an uncertain profession. Luther instead sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel. 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 and to test everything himself by experience.
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. 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.
Monastic and academic career
There are two stories told of Luther's sudden decision to become a monk: Melancthon's story is that Luther was shocked by the sudden death of a university friend, Hieronimus Buntz. The cause of this death has been variously speculated as lightning, plague, pleurisy, or even that Luther killed him in a duel.The other story is that on 2 July 1505, 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! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!" 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 1505. 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. His father was furious over what he saw as a waste of Luther's education.
Augustinian friar
Luther dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession.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." Johann von Staupitz, his superior and frustrated confessor, concluded that Luther needed more work to distract him from excessive introspection and ordered him to pursue an academic career.
On 3 April 1507, Jerome Schultz, the Bishop of Brandenburg, ordained Luther in Erfurt Cathedral.
University of Wittenberg
The following year, in 1508, Luther began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg. He received two bachelor's degrees, one in biblical studies on 9 March 1508, and another in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509. On 19 October 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology.On 21 October 1512, Luther was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg, succeeding von Staupitz as chair of theology. He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg.
In 1515, he was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia, which required him to visit and oversee eleven monasteries in his province.
Later life and the Reformation
Lectures on Psalms and justification by faith
From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, and on the books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, partly with Desiderius Erasmus' new annotated translation, 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. "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." Luther's use of justification by faith has been called his "macro-hermeneutical presupposition for biblical interpretation and theological construction."
Luther came to understand justification as entirely the work of God. This teaching by Luther was clearly expressed in his 1525 publication On the Bondage of the Will, which was written in response to On Free Will by Erasmus, who believed Luther's early teaching on the necessity of evil was unbiblical. Against the Catholic and Orthodox teaching that the righteous acts of believers are performed in with God's preceding grace, Luther wrote that Christians receive such righteousness entirely from outside themselves. Taking Erasmus' earlier Latin translation choice to an extreme, he taught that righteousness not only comes from Christ but actually the righteousness of Christ, imputed to Christians through faith,
"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." 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 lives by faith. 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. He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 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. 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.