This page has been Archivied DO NOT EDIT THIS PAGE THE LIFE OF LUTHER
Introduction
Martin Luther was a man that grew Martin Luther
up long ago in the 1400’s. A monk, he dedicated most of his life to the LORD. But he was not like all the other monks. Because he created the Lutheran Church and is a role model to St. John’s, because we are Lutheran. At that time, he was a Lutheran in a Lutheran less world. He has written famous hymns such as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” But he didn’t get that way over night. Let’s take a look at his life, as well as some interesting facts about himself.
Life
Martin Luther, who lived from November 10, 1483 to February 18, 1526, was a German monk, theologian, and church reformer. He is the founder of Protestantism. Luther also challenged the authority of the Pope in his theology by pointing out the Bible as the one source of religious authority and that only through faith in Jesus can you obtain salvation, a faith unmediated by the church.
Luther also made the Bible vernacular so everyone could read it. This had an influence on the King James Bible, which is the Bible translated into English.
Early Years
Luther was born to Hans and Margarethe Luther on November 10, 1483. (earlier, their last name was Luder.) The next day he was baptized, an important beginning. They lived in Eisleben, Germany, then part of the Holy Roman Empire until they moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where Luther’s father worked as a lease holder of copper mines and smelters. Hans also was on the local council.
Martin had seven brothers and sisters. His father, Hans, moved them to Mansfeld because he wanted Luther to become a lawyer, so he sent him to many Latin schools in Mansfeld until sending him to Magdeburg in 1497. He earned his master’s degree in 1505 at Erfurt University. In accordance with his father's wishes, he enrolled in law school at the same university that year, but dropped out almost immediately, because he felt that law represented uncertainty. He decided to depart from his learning and become a monk, later attributing his decision to an experience during a thunderstorm on July 2, 1505. He was almost struck by lightning as he was returning to university after a trip home. Later telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, “Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!’’ This, to me, was the beginning of things to come He thought of his cry for help as a vow he could never break.
After leaving law school and selling his books, he entered a closed Augustinian friary in Erfurt on July 17, 1505.
Life As a Monk
Luther dedicated himself to monastic life, devoting himself to fasts, long hours of praying, pilgrimage, and confessing frequently. Luther tried to please God, but it just made him more aware of his sinfulness. "If anyone could have gained heaven as a monk, then I would indeed have been among them.” he would later quote. Luther said that this period of his life was one of deep spiritual despair. Johann von Staupitz, his superior, came to the conclusion that Luther needed more work to distract him from excessive introspection and made him pursue an academic career. So, he did just that. In 1507, he was taken into the priesthood, and in 1508 started teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg. He received a Bachelor's degree in studies of the Bible on March 9, 1508, and another one in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509. On October 21, 1512, he had been called to the position of Doctor in Bible for the rest of his career in Wittenberg. From 1513 to 1516, another important time, Luther focused on the Psalms, the books of Hebrews, Romans and Galatians. As he studied these parts of the Bible, he realized the use of terms such as repentance and righteousness by the Roman Catholic Church in new, different ways. He then came to view of the Roman churches inability to observe justification-God’s act of deciding if a Christian righteous by faith alone. He began to teach his beliefs.
The Beginning of Reformation
In the years of 1516-17, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and the Pope’s commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. According to the Roman Catholic Church, an "indulgence" is the remission of punishment because a sin already committed has been forgiven; the indulgence is given to a sinner by the church when the sinner confesses and receives the absolution. When the indulgence is given, the church extends the merit to a sinner from its Treasure House of Merit, an accumulation of merits it has collected based on the good deeds of the saints. These merits could also be bought and sold. Luther, as us, did not agree with this system. You cannot earn heaven through money or good deeds.
On October 31, 1517, the real beginning, where I say he became Lutheran, Luther protested against this to Albert of Mainz, enclosing the “95 Theses.” He then nailed the theses to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, thus sparking the Reformation. This also started Reformation Day, a Christian festival celebrated the same day as Halloween.
A replica of the Theses.
Albert of Mainz, obviously not a happy man at the time.
Response to Luther’s Acts
The response to his acts was slow but steady. It took three years for the Pope to right a response, but it was a very verbal warning. It was called Exsurge Domine. In this Papal Bull, he warned Luther that if he did not remove 41 sentences drawn from his writings and the “95 Theses” he would be exiled from the church. Luther did not comply. In fact, he burned the Pope’s letter in anger and sent him a letter on why he did on Dec. 10, 1520. I thought that was good idea. He was then exiled from the church.
The Diet of Worms
Because of his actions, Luther was ordered to attend an assembly happening January 28-May 25, 1521 called the Diet of Worms. Now, this title may sound like he had to eat worms, but is NOT what you think. Back then, a Diet was a general assembly, and Worms was the city it happened in. Trust me, that’s what I thought, too.
Luther attended, as ordered, on April 18, 1521. I think this was scary for Luther. A man named Johann Eck laid out some of Luther’s writings asked them if he created and stood by them. He agreed to authorship of the writings, but asked for time to think about his answer to the next question. He prayed, told friends and returned with a response. Quote: "Unless I shall be convinced by the testimonies of the Scriptures or by clear reason ... I neither can nor will make any retraction, since it is neither safe nor honourable to act against conscience.", unquote. He also added, "Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen." ("Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.").
For the next five days there was a private debate over what Luther’s fate were to be. Then, after much speculation, the emperor announced Luther an outlaw. He banned his literature and required his arrest. Anyone could kill Luther with no consequence. This stressed modern men, and probably terrified Luther.
The arrest of Luther was the last thing that Frederick III, Elector of Saxony wanted to see, so he secretly took him to Wartburg Castle by masked horseman, where Luther grew a beard and lived incognito for nearly eleven months, disguised as a knight named Junker Jörg.
To keep himself busy in a God-pleasing way, Luther translated the New Testament into The room where Luther did his translations.
German, and created doctrinal writings, including in October a renewed attack against Albert of Mainz, shaming him so much that he halted the sale of indulgences. He also wrote a letter to Melanchthon of 1 August 1521. It read:
“… let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides”.
In On the Abrogation of the Private Mass, during the summer of 1521, Luther widened his target from individual pieties like indulgences and pilgrimages to doctrines, focusing at the heart of Church practices. His essay Concerning Confession rejected the Roman Catholic Church's requirement of confession, although he stressed the value of private confession and absolution. In the introduction to his New Testament that was published in the September 1522 and selling 5,000 copies in just two months — he says that good works spring from faith; people don’t produce them.
Meanwhile, in Wittenberg, a man known as Andreas Karlstadt, later supported by the ex-Augustinian Gabriel Zwilling, created a divisive program of reform provoking disturbances, and included a revolt by their fellow monks against their prior, the smashing of statues and images in churches, and denunciations of the magistracy. After secretly visiting Wittenberg in the early December of 1521, Luther wrote “A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion”; but Wittenberg became more instable after Christmas when a band of visionary zealots, formally known as the Zwickau prophets, arrived preaching the equality of man, adult baptism, Christ’s imminent return, and other revolutionary doctrines. Luther decided that it was time to take a stand and act. He also claimed that during his time translating the New Testament into German he had battles with the “almighty foe”, Satan, who Martin was convinced was out to stop his God-pleasing writings. He claimed that he threw objects around the room when he would think Satan was there.
Return
About Christmas of 1521, Anabaptists from Zwickau came to Wittenberg Castle and caused many civil disturbances. Much opposed to their radical views and fearful of what they could cause, Luther secretly came back to Wittenberg on March 6, 1522. "During my absence," he wrote to the Elector, "Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I cannot repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word."
For eight days during the season of Lent, beginning on the day of March 9, the Invocavit Sunday, and concluding the following Sunday, Luther preached eight sermons, which are now known as the "Invocavit Sermons." In these, he hammered home putting first core Christian values such as love, patience, charity, and freedom, and reminded them to trust God's word rather than violence to bring about necessary change. He went on to say: “Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: ‘Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it.’ But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battle-field, then he shudders and shakes for fear.”
The results of Luther’s preachings were spectacular. After his sixth sermon, Jerome Schurf wrote to the elector: "Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin’s return spread among us! His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth." Luther next set about reversing or softening some of the new church activities and worked alongside authorities to restore order, signaling his reinvention as a force of conservation within his Reformation acts. After banishing the Zwickau prophets, who disrespected him as a new Pope, he now faced a battle not only against the mixed-up practices of the established Church but against those on his own side who threatened his new order by creating social disturbances and even violence!
Marriage to Katharina von Bora
Luther’s new wife. On the night of June 13, 1525, Luther married a young woman called Katharina von Bora, one a group of 12 nuns (female monks) that he had helped escape from the Nimbschen Cistercian convent in April 1523, arranging for them to be smuggled out in herring barrels! I thought it was good for him to marry. “Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far other thoughts," he wrote to his friend Link, "the LORD has plunged me into marriage.” His new wife was twenty-six years old, Luther forty-two.
A few other priests and former monks had already married, including Andreas Karlstadt and Justus Jonas, but Luther’s marriage set the seal of approval on clerical marriage. He was long committed to vows of celibacy on biblical grounds, but his decision to marry surprised many, not least Melanchthon, who said it was reckless since monks were not allowed to marry. Luther and Katharina moved into a former monastery, "The Black Cloister," a wedding present from a new elector called John Frederick, and embarked upon what appears to have been a good, happy and successful marriage. Between bearing six children, Katharina, whose entirely respected Luther, helped earn the couple a living by farming the land and taking in boarders. Luther confided to Stiefel on August 11, 1526: "Katharina, my dear rib ... is, thanks to God, gentle, obedient, compliant in all things, beyond my hopes. I would not exchange my poverty for the wealth of Croesus."
Matrimony had no softening effect on his temper, as Erasmus noted, and Luther soon found himself embroiled in further controversies and crises. By the time of Katharina's death, the surviving Luther children were adults. Hans studied law and became a court advisor. Martin Jr. studied theology like his father, but never was called to be a regular pastor. Paul became a physician. He also became father to six children and the male line of the Luther family continued through him to John Ernest Luther, but it ended in 1759. Margareta Luther, born in Wittenberg on December 17, 1534, married into a noble, rich Prussian family, to a man named Georg von Kunheim (Wehlau, July 1, 1523 – Mühlhausen, October 18, 1611, the son of Georg von Kunheim (1480 – 1543) and wife Margarethe, Truchsessin von Wetzhausen (1490 – 1527) but died in Mühlhausen in 1570 at the age of thirty-six, however, her descendants have continued to the present time, including President Paul von Hindenburg and the Counts zu Eulenburg and Princes zu Eulenburg und Hertefeld.)
Peasants’ War
Despite his victory in Wittenberg, Luther was unable to keep radicalism going further afield. Preachers such as Zwickau prophet Nicholas Storch and Thomas Müntzer — whose rallying cry was "let not your sword grow cold from blood" — helped start the Peasants' War in 1524, during which many atrocities were committed, often in Martin's name. This war was being followed by the peasantry in order to create a classless society with shared goods. In 1525, Müntzer eventually succeeded in establishing a short-lived communist theocracy.
There had been more insignificant rebellions by the peasantry since the 1400’s; many of the peasants now believed that Luther's attack on the Church and the hierarchy meant that the reformers would advocate an attack mainly on the upper classes, because of the close ties between the secular princes and the princes of the Church. Revolts broke out in Swabia, Franconia, and Thuringia in 1524, gaining support from unaffected people too, many of whom were in debt. Gaining momentum and a new leader in Thomas Müntzer, the rebellions turned into a war.
Luther sympathized with the peasants' grievances, as he showed in his response to the Twelve Articles in May 1525, but he reminded them to do what the temporal authorities say, and became enraged at the widespread burning of convents, monasteries, bishops’ palaces, and libraries. In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants (1525), he condemned the violence of the war as the Satan’s work, called for the nobility to put down the rebels like mad dogs, and explained the Gospel's view on the sharing of wealth: “Whosoever can, should smite, strangle, and stab, secretly or publicly, and should remember that there is nothing more poisonous, pernicious, and devilish than a rebellious man... the Gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who do of their own free will what the apostles and disciples did in Acts IV. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others - of a Pilate and a Herod - should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, would have other men's goods common, and keep their own goods for themselves. Fine Christians these! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants.”
The Augsburg Confession
On June 25, 1530, a document very important to modern Lutheranism was presented to Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. To me, this is one of the most important documents ever. It is called the Augsburg Confession, the main confession of the Lutheran Church. The first official edition (called Editio princeps) was edited by a professor at the University of Wittenberg named Philipp Melanchthon, a close friend of Martin Luther. With out it, we would have no specific way of confessing in a Lutheran way.
Death
In 1534 he finished his German translation of the Bible. This was a very important act to me. But dark times soon followed.
For years, Luther had suffered from many health problems like constipation and hemorrhoids. His problems gave him a very short temper. But all of that stopped on February 18, 1546. After many happy years of serving the LORD, he had a stroke which deprived him of his speech and he died shortly The house Martin died in.
after at 2:45 a.m. I think God should have let him live longer. His hands were cast and put in a tombstone at Wittenberg Castle. He will always be remembered as a Lutheran hero.
By Jake Glidden
Special thanks to Wikipedia and all its editors for the photos and proving me with information.
What does it mean to be Lutheran today? I think it means to fully serve the LORD.
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