Page 70 - History of Christianity - Student Textbook

The convergence of all of these factors created a growing demand for reform in the Church and especially in the
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papacy. At the beginning of the 16 century (1500- 1599) Europe was a powder keg in which a seemingly small
incident could ignite an explosion that would forever destroy the unity of the Roman Church – even such a small
incident as an obscure German priest protesting the sale of indulgences by posting his complaints against the
Church on a door in Wittenberg Germany.

Martin Luther, 1483-1546

Martin Luther was born in 1483 into a strict German Catholic family. His parents
intended him for a law career, but he became a monk and a theology professor
instead. A sensitive soul, he struggled mightily with a guilty conscience and an
intense fear of God and hell until he realized the doctrine of "justification by faith"
while studying the book of Romans. This doctrine, with his conviction that the Bible
should be the basis of religious life and available to all, became the theological
foundation of Protestantism.

Luther was not the first or the only churchman to come to these conclusions, but
arrived in a time of rising nationalism and, thanks to the recently invented printing
press, unprecedented written communication. With his 95 Theses against the abuses of indulgences, Luther
unwittingly sparked religious and political reform in Germany and founded the Lutheran branch of
Protestantism. On October 31, 1517 Luther defiantly nailed a copy of his 95 Theses to the door of the
Wittenberg Castle church.

With a strong and often abrasive personality, Luther took up the weapons of pen and pulpit against the
corruptions of Catholicism on one side and the extremes of the Radical Reformation on the other. He spoke out
against clerical celibacy, papal abuses, the denying of the scriptures and the communion wine to non-clergy, the
cult of the saints, salvation by works, and other Catholic doctrines. Yet Luther retained many traditional and
liturgical elements of the church that other reformers rejected.

Strongly influenced by the writings of Augustine, Luther stressed humanity's sinfulness, God's grace, and the
sufficiency of faith in Christ for salvation. He translated the New Testament into German and formulated
catechisms in the vernacular, making a major contribution to the development of written German. History
remembers Martin Luther as the "Father of the Reformation."

Luther is much less admired for his violent anti-Jewish sentiments, which were later used as anti-Semitic
propaganda by the Nazis and have been formally denounced by number of Lutheran bodies.

Martin Luther’s views about Jews

There is no doubt that Martin Luther has played an important role in the formation of Protestantism. Sadly, his
great contributions are also hampered by his unwarranted and unbiblical hatred of the Jewish people. In 1523,
Luther advised kindness toward the Jews in that Jesus Christ was born a Jew, but only with the aim of converting
them to Christianity. When his efforts at conversion failed, he grew increasingly bitter toward them. In 1543, his
most egregiously anti-Semitic book was published, On the Jews and Their Lies, in which he makes outlandish
statements regarding the Jews, calling them "a base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast
of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.” (https://www.gotquestions.org/Martin-Luther-anti-
semitic.html)

As Luther got older, he believed that Jews should have limited rights, their money taken from the, and their
synagogues burned. He even went so far as to say that Jews should be given the choice to either convert to
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