Short biography of martin luther
Following the publication of his 95 Theses , Luther continued to lecture and write in Wittenberg. In June and July of Luther publicly declared that the Bible did not give the pope the exclusive right to interpret scripture, which was a direct attack on the authority of the papacy. Finally, in , the pope had had enough and on June 15 issued an ultimatum threatening Luther with excommunication.
On December 10, , Luther publicly burned the letter. In March , Luther was summoned before the Diet of Worms , a general assembly of secular authorities. Again, Luther refused to recant his statements, demanding he be shown any scripture that would refute his position. There was none. Friends helped him hide out at the Wartburg Castle. Though still under threat of arrest, Luther returned to Wittenberg Castle Church, in Eisenach, in May to organize a new church, Lutheranism.
He gained many followers, and the Lutheran Church also received considerable support from German princes. When a peasant revolt began in , Luther denounced the peasants and sided with the rulers, whom he depended on to keep his church growing.
Thousands of peasants were killed, but the Lutheran Church grew over the years. In , Luther married Katharina von Bora, a former nun who had abandoned the convent and taken refuge in Wittenberg. Born into a noble family that had fallen on hard times, at the age of five Katharina was sent to a convent. She and several other reform-minded nuns decided to escape the rigors of the cloistered life, and after smuggling out a letter pleading for help from the Lutherans, Luther organized a daring plot.
With the help of a fishmonger, Luther had the rebellious nuns hide in herring barrels that were secreted out of the convent after dark - an offense punishable by death. Luther ensured that all the women found employment or marriage prospects, except for the strong-willed Katharina, who refused all suitors except Luther himself. The scandalous marriage of a disgraced monk to a disgraced nun may have somewhat tarnished the reform movement, but over the next several years, the couple prospered and had six children.
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Katharina proved herself a more than a capable wife and ally, as she greatly increased their family's wealth by shrewdly investing in farms, orchards and a brewery. The theses had spread across Germany in less than two weeks. As early as , Luther's works had made their way to France, England, and Italy. Luther's speech drew a large crowd of students to Wittenberg.
In addition to his Work on the Psalms, he wrote a short commentary on Galatians. Luther's early career was one of his most creative and productive periods. Luther lectured on the Psalms, as well as Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians, from to As he studied these passages of Scripture, he began to see the Catholic Church's use of words like penance and righteousness in a new light.
He came to believe that the church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of many of Christianity's central truths. The doctrine of justification— God's act of declaring a sinner righteous—by faith alone through God's grace was the most important for Luther.
Al juma penov biography of martin luther the reformer
He began to preach that salvation or redemption is a gift from God, available only to those who believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Luther came to believe that justification was entirely God's work. This teaching was clearly expressed by Luther in his publication On the Bondage of the Will, which was written in response to Desiderius Erasmus' On Free Will Paul's epistle to the Ephesians —10 informed Luther's position on predestination.
Luther wrote that Christians receive such righteousness entirely from outside themselves, that righteousness not only comes from Christ but is the righteousness of Christ, imputed to Christians rather than infused into them through faith, in opposition to the teaching of his day that believers' righteous acts are performed in cooperation with God.
Luther was originally rejected by Pope Leo X as "a drunken German who wrote the Theses" who would "change his mind when sober. After being warned of the possibility of assassination along the way, Luther went incognito to Heidelberg. He was, however, surprised to find that he was well-received and that he returned triumphantly.
Luther was emboldened to question the Roman Church's primacy and the power of ex-communication as a result of this. He went on to say that popes and councils could make mistakes and that the only final authority was the Bible. Luther was summoned to Rome shortly after to answer charges of heresy. The proceedings were moved to Germany thanks to the intervention of Luther's territorial ruler, Fredrick the Wise.
At Augsburg, Luther had an inconclusive interview with Cardinal Cajetan, the papal legate. Luther refused to recant, writing that the cardinal was as unfit to handle the case and requesting that his case be heard by a general council. Due to the political situation following the death of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, in early , the Pope adopted a conciliatory policy.
Despite their preference for one of their own, the German electors were content to accept the leader of one of the great powers, either Francis I of France or Charles V of Spain. The pope, on the other hand, objected to both of them, claiming that their election would disrupt the balance of power that ensured the church's security.
Instead, the pope preferred Luther's territorial lord, Fredrick the Wise. Given the circumstances, the pope had to be cautious when it came to Fredrick's prized professor. Carl von Militz, a Fredrick relative, was appointed as Cajetan's assistant with the mission of keeping Luther silent until the election was settled. Luther was unfortunately drawn into a controversy between the Universities of Leipzig and Wittenberg, which hampered those seeking reconciliation.
In a debate with Johann Eck, an Ingolstadt theology professor, Luther maintained "A simple layman armed with Scripture has more credibility than a pope of the council who lacks it. We should reject popes and councils for the sake of Scripture. During the year , Luther published three highly influential tracts that expanded on his ideas and established his agenda for ecclesiastical reform.
He declared his intention to attack the Romanists' "three walls," which had protected them and stifled reform. Luther proclaimed that the first wall, that the temporal has no authority over the spiritual and that "spiritual power is above the temporal," had been broken down, and that all believers were priests under their baptism. He also argued that the second wall, that only the pope can interpret scripture, was unfounded because all priests could distinguish what was right or wrong in matters of faith.
Luther then went on to criticise papal mismanagement and annates taxes , calling for a "German Prime Minister," declaring that clerical marriage should be allowed, "far too many holy days" should be reduced, and beggary, including that of monks, should be prohibited. Luther expressed sentiments shared by many Germans in all of these calls.
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Luther's next tract, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, dealt with the mediaeval church's seven sacraments. Only two of them, Luther claimed, were instituted by Christ: baptism and the Lord's Supper. He believed that penance—contrition, confession, and absolution—could provide relief to troubled consciences. The Freedom of a Christian, Luther's third major tract from , laid out his ethical vision.
Luther used a central paradox in this way. Two weeks later, against his father's wishes and to the dismay of his friends, Martin Luther entered the Reformed Congregation of the Eremetical Order of St. Augustine at Erfurt. Life as a monk at Erfurt was difficult.
Luther made his vows in and was ordained officially given a religious position in the church a priest in No longer in disagreement with his father, he was then selected for advanced theological study at the University of Erfurt. In Luther was sent to the University of Wittenberg to lecture in arts. He was also preparing for his doctorate of theology while he taught.
In Luther was sent to Rome, Italy, and in received his doctorate in theology. Then came the second significant turn in Luther's career: he was appointed professor of theology at Wittenberg. He was to teach throughout the rest of his life.
Biography of martin luther king: Martin Luther, a 16th-century monk and theologian, was one of the most significant figures in Christian history. His beliefs helped birth the Reformation —which would give rise to Protestantism as the third major force within Christendom, alongside Eastern Orthodoxy.
In Luther published his lectures on Peter Lombard — ; in — those on the Psalms; in — on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans; and in — on the epistles to the Galatians and Hebrews. Besides instruction and study, however, Luther had other duties. From he preached in the parish church; he was regent head of the monastery school; and in he became the supervisor of eleven other monasteries.
The doctrine of justification, taking shape in Luther's thought between and , drew him further into theological thought as well as into certain positions of practical priestly life.
Al juma penov biography of martin luther
The most famous of these is the controversy causing opposing viewpoints over indulgences. A person who committed a sin would buy an indulgence from the church to avoid punishment—especially punishment after death. In a great effort to distribute indulgences was proclaimed throughout Germany. In Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses for an academic debate on indulgences on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg.
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