Back Martin Luther Afrikaans Martin Luther ALS ማርቲን ሉተር Amharic Martín Lutero AN Martin Luther ANG मार्टिन लूथर ANP مارتن لوثر Arabic مارتين لوثر ARZ মাৰ্টিন লুথাৰ Assamese Martín Lutero AST

Martin Luther

For the 20th-century American minister and philosopher, see Martin Luther King Jr. For other uses, see Martin Luther (disambiguation).

The Reverend
Martin Luther
OSA
Martin Luther, 1528
Born
Martin Luder

10 November 1483
Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, Holy Roman Empire
Died18 February 1546(1546-02-18) (aged 62)
Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, Holy Roman Empire
EducationUniversity of Erfurt (Artium Baccalaureus, 1502; Artium Magister, 1505)
University of Wittenberg (Biblicus Baccalaureus in Bible, 1508; Sententiarius Baccalaureus in Sentences, 1509; Theologiæ Doctor in Bible, 1512)
Notable work
Title
Spouse
​
(m. 1525)​
Children
Religious life
ReligionChristianity
DenominationLutheran
ChurchProtestant
Ordination history
History
Diaconal ordination
Ordained byJohannes (or Johann) Bonemilch von Laasphe, Auxiliary Bishop of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Mainz
Date27 February 1507
PlaceCathedral Church of St. Mary, Erfurt, Holy Roman Empire
Priestly ordination
Ordained byHieronymus (or Jerome) Schultz OPraem, Bishop of the Diocese of Brandenburg
Date3/4 April 1507
PlaceCathedral Church of St. Mary, Erfurt, Holy Roman Empire
Signature

Martin Luther OSA (/ˈluːθər/ LOO-thər;[1] German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈlʊtɐ] ⓘ; 10 November 1483[2] – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and former Augustinian friar.[3] Luther was the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, and his theological beliefs form the basis of Lutheranism. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Western and Christian history.[4][5]

Born in Eisleben, Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507. He came to reject several teachings and practices of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church, in particular the view on indulgences and papal authority. Luther initiated an international debate on these in works like his Ninety-five Theses, which he authored in 1517. In 1520, Pope Leo X demanded that Luther renounce all of his writings, and when Luther refused to do so, excommunicated him in January 1521. Later that year, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V condemned Luther as an outlaw at the Diet of Worms. When Luther died in 1546, his excommunication by Leo X was still in effect.

Luther taught that justification is not earned by any human acts or intents or merit; rather, it is received only as the free gift of God's grace through the believer's faith in Jesus Christ. He held that good works were a necessary fruit of living faith, part of the process of sanctification.[6][7] Luther's theology challenged the authority and office of the pope and bishops by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge on the Gospel,[8] and opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood.[9] Those who identify with these, as well as Luther's wider teachings, are called Lutherans, although Luther insisted on Christian or Evangelical (German: evangelisch), as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ.

Luther's translation of the Bible from Latin into German made the Bible vastly more accessible to the laity, which had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture. It fostered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation,[10] and influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible.[11] His hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches.[12] His marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry.[13]

In two of his later works, such as in On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther expressed staunchly antisemitic views, calling for the expulsion of Jews and the burning of synagogues.[14] These works also targeted Roman Catholics, Anabaptists, and nontrinitarian Christians.[15] Luther did not directly advocate the murder of Jews;[16][17][18] however, most historians contend that his rhetoric encouraged antisemitism in Germany and the emergence, centuries later, of the Nazi Party.[19][20][21]

  1. ^ "Luther" Archived 27 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  2. ^ Luther himself, however, believed that he had been born in 1484. Hendrix, Scott H. (2015). Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer. Yale University Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-300-16669-9. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  3. ^ Luther consistently referred to himself as a former monk. For example: "Thus formerly, when I was a monk, I used to hope that I would be able to pacify my conscience with the fastings, the praying, and the vigils with which I used to afflict my body in a way to excite pity. But the more I sweat, the less quiet and peace I felt; for the true light had been removed from my eyes." Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 45–50, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 8 Luther's Works. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 5:326.
  4. ^ Hillerbrand, Hans J. (14 February 2024). "Martin Luther". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
  5. ^ Nelson, Robert H. (2017). Lutheranism and the Nordic Spirit of Social Democracy: A Different Protestant Ethic. Aarhus University Press. p. 64. ISBN 9788771844160.
  6. ^ Schreiner, Thomas R. (15 September 2015). Faith Alone---The Doctrine of Justification: What the Reformers Taught...and Why It Still Matters. Zondervan Academic. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-310-51579-1. Luther insists that good works cannot be understood as the cause or ground of justification. McGrath summarizes Luther's position, "works are a condition, but not a cause of salvation." The word "condition" is acceptable if one understands works as the fruit or evidence of justification.
  7. ^ Laffin, Michael Richard (20 October 2016). The Promise of Martin Luther's Political Theology: Freeing Luther from the Modern Political Narrative. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-567-66990-2. When Luther speaks of sanctification, he includes in this what has traditionally been referred to as the doctrine of the three estates. In sanctification our affections are conformed to Christ, and this formation occurs through suffering the divine activity in the estates of the ecclesia, oeconomia, and politia. In sanctification our affections and perceptions are transformed so that we may come to recognize and explore the will of God. Herein lies a major, and often overlooked, part of the topography of Luther's theology that presses back against the oversimplistic reduction of his thought to "justification by faith alone." Rather, in the estates we see that sanctification plays a significant role in the overall grammar of Luther's theology. As Bernd Wannenwetsch argues, "Sanctification for Luther is not just a matter of faith, but a matter of faith and created orders, or more precisely of faith that is exercised in love within the divinely assigned spheres of social life, politics, economics and religion (cf. WA16: 'in talibus ordinationibus exercere ceritatem')."
  8. ^ Ewald M. Plass, What Luther Says, 3 vols., (St. Louis: CPH, 1959), 88, no. 269; M. Reu, Luther and the Scriptures, (Columbus, Ohio: Wartburg Press, 1944), 23.
  9. ^ Luther, Martin. Concerning the Ministry (1523), tr. Conrad Bergendoff, in Bergendoff, Conrad (ed.) Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958, 40:18 ff.
  10. ^ Fahlbusch, Erwin and Bromiley, Geoffrey William. The Encyclopedia of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Leiden, Netherlands: Wm. B. Eerdmans; Brill, 1999–2003, 1:244.
  11. ^ Tyndale's New Testament, trans. from the Greek by William Tyndale in 1534 in a modern-spelling edition and with an introduction by David Daniell. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989, ix–x.
  12. ^ Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther. New York: Penguin, 1995, 269.
  13. ^ Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther. New York: Penguin, 1995, p. 223.
  14. ^ Hendrix, Scott H. "The Controversial Luther" Archived 2 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Word & World 3/4 (1983), Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Also see Hillerbrand, Hans. "The legacy of Martin Luther" Archived 16 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, in Hillerbrand, Hans & McKim, Donald K. (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Luther. Cambridge University Press, 2003. In 1523, Luther wrote that Jesus Christ was born a Jew which discouraged mistreatment of the Jews and advocated their conversion by proving that the Old Testament could be shown to speak of Jesus Christ. However, as the Reformation grew, Luther began to lose hope in large-scale Jewish conversion to Christianity, and in the years his health deteriorated he grew more acerbic toward the Jews, writing against them with the kind of venom he had already unleashed on the Anabaptists, Zwingli, and the pope.
  15. ^ Schaff, Philip: History of the Christian Church, Vol. VIII: Modern Christianity: The Swiss Reformation, William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, US, 1910, page 706.
  16. ^ Martin Brecht, Martin Luther (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985–1993), 3:336.
  17. ^ Luther's letter to Rabbi Josel as cited by Gordon Rupp, Martin Luther and the Jews (London: The Council of Christians and Jews, 1972), 14. According to "Luther and the Jews". Archived from the original on 4 November 2005. Retrieved 21 March 2017., this paragraph is not available in the English edition of Luther's works.
  18. ^ Sydow, Michael (1 December 1999). "Journal of Theology: Martin Luther, Reformation Theologian and Educator" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 17 May 2022.
  19. ^ "The assertion that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries after the Reformation, and that there exists a continuity between Protestant anti-Judaism and modern racially oriented antisemitism, is at present wide-spread in the literature; since the Second World War it has understandably become the prevailing opinion." Johannes Wallmann, "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century", Lutheran Quarterly, n.s. 1 (Spring 1987) 1:72–97.
  20. ^ For similar views, see:
    • Berger, Ronald. Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 2002), 28.
    • Rose, Paul Lawrence. "Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner," (Princeton University Press, 1990), quoted in Berger, 28;
    • Shirer, William. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960).
    • Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1987), 242.
    • Poliakov, Leon. History of Anti-Semitism: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews. (N.P.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 216.
    • Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1993, 2000), 8–9.
  21. ^ Grunberger, Richard. The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945 (NP:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 465.
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