王盈方醫師瘋狂之旅 Dr Yvonne Wang's Blabberings

Summary of Martin Luther's life

• Iconic figure in the church’s history of Protestant Reformation during the 1500s through the famous ‘Ninety-five Theses’ and his breakthrough on justification by grace alone

• Born into a peasant family 10 November 1483, Eisleben Germany

• Unhappy childhood: parents Hans and Margarethe Luther religious and extremely severe

• Father ambitious: determined to see Martin become a lawyer: enrolled in law school but dropped out almost immediately

• During a thunderstorm on 2 July 1505, a bolt of lightning knocked him to the ground. Struggling to rise, he cried in terror, “St. Anne help me! I will become a monk.” Parents very disappointed.

• Devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession

• Ordained to priesthood 1507. First mass: gripped by terror where he felt unworthy of God’s love, God seemed to be a severe judge like his father and teachers

• Disillusioned: his superior took a bold step in ordering him to teach Scripture at the new University of Wittenberg between 1513-18

• Books of Psalms and Romans: reading in the tower and felt the force of the Pauline text ‘the just shall live by faith’ such that he proclaimed ‘I felt as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered paradise’

• Composed ninety-seven theses in 1517 to attack several of the main tenets of scholastic theology: no response

• Same year: ‘Ninety-five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences’, translated into German and circulated in an inexpensive edition, created massive stir

• Expensive Renaissance age: Roman administration living beyond its income, risk of bankruptcy

• Pope Leo X, one of the most corrupt popes, had to raise money for building St Peter’s church, through the sale of indulgences

• Outrageous claims on efficacy of the indulgences: ‘cleaner than when coming out of baptism,’ ‘cleaner than Adam before the Fall,’ ‘as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.’

• Three main points: a denial of the powers of the pope over purgatory, an objection to indulgences, and a consideration of the welfare of the sinner.

• Thesis 5: The pope’s power of forgiveness is restricted to the canonical order.

• Theses 27-40: whatever their value, they had no efficacy in the life hereafter. every truly repentant Christian has the right to full remission without indulgences

• Devaluate indulgences by contrasting them with the works of charity (theses 41-61), and with the teaching of the gospel (theses 62-68): he who does works of mercy and gives to the poor is better than he who receives a pardon

• Thesis 62 “The true treasure of the Church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.”

• Blasphemy to suggest that indulgences have equal worth with the Cross of Christ

• Conclusion: sarcasm that to assert that the pope can deliver souls from purgatory was absurd: if he could do so, then he was cruel not to release them all, and why not build the church with his own money since he was so rich

• 1520: Pope Leo X had enough of this “wild boar from the forest”, issued a bull threatening Luther with excommunication. Luther publicly burned it, and got excommunicated in Jan 1521.

• March 1521: summoned by Emperor Charles V to Worms to defend himself. During the Diet of Worms, Luther refused to recant and on May 8th was placed under Imperial Ban.

• Condemned and wanted man: hid out at the Wartburg Castle until May of 1522 when he returned to Wittenberg. Continued teaching. Left the monastery 1524.

• Married Katharina von Bora 1525 (a nun convinced by Luther’s arguments and sought his help in escaping from the convent).

• From 1533 to his death 18 February 1546: Dean of the theology faculty at Wittenberg