The Life Of Martin Luther

The life of Martin Luther

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The life of Martin Luther

Introduction

Martin Luther was born at Eiseben and earned two degrees, baccalaureate and master’s in the shortest time that was allowed by universities statutes. He was given a nickname, “The Philosopher” in his early childhood. His life took a tragic turn in 1505, where he fought a thunderstorm when he was going somewhere on the road to Erfurt, where lightning struck the ground near him. It was the severity of the situation and intense pressure of fear that he screamed, “Help me, St. Anne. “I’ll become a monk”. After that, he fulfilled his vows, and he gave away all his earnings and possessions. He entered monastic life. In early sixteen century, a controversy came into existence that has two aspects from the Catholic point of view, Martin Luther was termed as a demon disguised as a man while his theology declares him as the only righteous being. In accordance with both, Protestants and Catholics point of view, Martin Luther was affirmed as a being who changed the framework of Western history for long.

Discussion

Luther was one of the most successful patrons being a monk. He obeyed all religious vows and obligations with obedience. He plunged into fasting, prayers, and other ascetic prayers. He was obeying and fulfilling all religious obligations without going to sleep; he endured bone-chilling without using a blank, even he flagellated himself. Once, he commented that “If anyone could have earned heaven by the life of monk that would be obviously I”. It is significant to note that he sought by these means to love God fully, he never faced any consolation. Side by side, he was equally fearful of the anger of superior power. “When it is touched by this passing inundation of the eternal, the soul feels and drinks nothing but is left with eternal punishment." He himself said young Luther could not live by faith because he knew that he was not righteous. There was a shift in his life when he was asked to opt for doctorate in the Bible and was asked to become a lecturer at the Wittenberg University. When he was giving lectures on the ideology of Psalms and Book of Romans, he found an option to see a way through one of the prominent dilemmas, “By the mercy of God, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous lives by a gift of the God named as faith. Here I realized that, if I were born again and I have entered paradise through the gates that had been flung open for me”.

The understanding of learned ideology makes him see the church, not as an institution that was defined by the apostolic succession, in fact, he views it as the group of those who had given faith. He asserted that salvation could not be attained by the traditional practices, in fact, it is the product of faith. He was of the view that the idea that human beings and the spark of goodness was not actually the foundation of theology in fact “it was just an idea that was taught by the fools. Humanity was no longer treated as a virtue in the act; it was termed as a necessary answer and reply to the gift of grace. It was inferred that faith is no longer something that consists of ideas asserting the teachings of the church, in fact, it is a paradigm of believing the promises that God has made and the merits of the Christ.

It was 1517 when Luther argued the way one of the preachers named as Johann Tetzel was selling indulgences. He commented that these are the documents self written by the church and bought by so as to release the dead from the punishment of sins. Luther also questioned the church’s actions in the matter of indulgences and initiated public debate of 95 theses. As a result of the theses, the issue got shifted from the matter of indulgences to the authority of the church. The issue was so highlighted that in 1519, in public debate in Leipzig Luther was threatened with excommunication when he shared that a simple layman with the scriptures was superior by both pope and councils. As a response to threat, he proposed three important treatises named as "The address to the Christian Nobility." "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church" and "On the freedom of a Christian”.

In 1521, Luther was called to an assembly at Germany where he was supposed to see Holy Roman Emperor. On reaching, Luther discovered that it was a trail on which he was enforced to recant his views. Although Luther argued by saying, “here I stand; I can do no other. God help me! Amen". Still, a convicted heretic was issued, and Luther escaped to Wartburg Castle. He came back to Wittenberg in 1522, where he entered into more disputes such as Peasants War of 1524-1525. He married a runaway nun and mocked fellow reformers by using vulgar language. It is said that the language was so vulgar that it could not be printed.

Conclusion

As Luther became older, he became more cantankerous. He said a lot of inappropriate things about religious stakeholders and theological enemies. Moreover, his least accomplishments included the translation of the Bible into German. He wrote a hymn titled, “A mighty Fortress of Our God," and published his Larger and Smaller Catechism which served as a guideline and a road map not just to his followers called “Lutherans” but many others.

End Notes

Althaus, Paul. The Theology of Martin Luther. Fortress Press, 1966.

McGrath, Alister E. Christian theology: An introduction. John Wiley & Sons, 2019.

Williams, Reggie L. "Christ-Centred Concreteness: The Christian Activism of Harriet Tubman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr." Journal of European Baptist Studies19, no. 1 (2019).