Wittenberg, 1517
On 31 October 1517 Martin Luther of Wittenberg sent out ninety-five theses for a debate on indulgences, and the press carried them across Germany; at Worms in 1521 he answered that his conscience was captive to the word of God. His story holds the light of the German Bible and the shadows of the Peasants' War and his writings against the Jews.
Indulgences and the Ninety-five Theses
Martin Luther (1483–1546) entered the Augustinian friary at Erfurt in 1505. From 1512 he taught the Bible as a doctor of theology at Wittenberg, the university of Frederick, Elector of Saxony. What he found in Scripture there is the Theology course's Luther: the theology of the cross and justification; this lesson follows the events.
In 1517 the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel was preaching an indulgence near Saxony. In Catholic teaching an indulgence remits, through the church, the punishment that remains for sins already repented and forgiven. Pope Leo X had issued it to rebuild St Peter's in Rome; in the lands of Archbishop Albert of Mainz part of the money also paid the debts of his appointment. Frederick kept the preachers out of his lands, but people from Wittenberg crossed the border to buy.
On 31 October Luther sent Albert a letter with ninety-five theses for a debate on penitence and the power of indulgences Luther, The Ninety-five Theses. The first begins from Jesus' call, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near" (Matthew 4:17):
Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ in saying: "Repent ye," etc., intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence.
Ninety-five Theses, 1
The picture of Luther nailing the theses to the door of the Castle Church rests chiefly on Philip Melanchthon's account of 1546, after Luther's death Melanchthon, Preface to Luther's Latin Works. Melanchthon came to Wittenberg only in 1518, and Luther himself never mentions it. Scholars are divided: some think he did post them, since the church door served as the university's notice board; others that he only sent them by letter and the hammer belongs to later memory. The letter of 31 October is certain, and Lutherans still keep the day as Reformation Day.
From Leipzig to Worms
Luther wanted a debate among scholars, but by the end of the year the theses were printed in several cities, and soon in German. Gutenberg's press carried his short German sermons and pamphlets straight to lay readers.
At Leipzig in the summer of 1519, pressed in debate by the theologian Johann Eck, Luther said that popes and councils can err and that some teachings of Jan Hus, condemned at the council of Constance in 1415, were truly Christian (see The Black Death, the Great Schism and Hus). In 1520 he published To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church and The Freedom of a Christian, on the priesthood of all the baptised, the sacraments tested by Scripture, and the Christian as free lord of all by faith and servant of all by love. In December he burned the papal bull that threatened him, and in January 1521 he was excommunicated.
In April 1521, summoned by the Emperor Charles V, he came before the Diet of Worms. Asked on 17 April to recant his books, he asked for a day. Next day he answered that he could not trust popes or councils alone, for they had often erred and contradicted one another; unless he was convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reason, his conscience was captive to the word of God, and he would not recant, since to go against conscience is neither safe nor right. The famous ‘Here I stand, I can do no other’ is not in the record of the day but first appears in a printed account afterwards, and many historians take it for a later addition Luther, Reply at Worms.
On the road home Elector Frederick's men seized him, as if in a kidnapping, and hid him in the Wartburg castle; late in May the emperor's Edict of Worms put him under the ban of the Empire. In the Wartburg, from the 1519 second edition of Erasmus's Greek New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum, Luther translated the New Testament into German in less than three months; it came out in September 1522. There had been German Bibles before, from the Latin Vulgate, but Luther worked from the Greek into the German ordinary people spoke; his Bible shaped the language, and farmers and craftsmen could read and hear the word in their own tongue.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Psalm 119:105
Light and shadow
In 1524 and 1525 peasants rose across southern and central Germany. Their Twelve Articles of spring 1525 appealed to Scripture for a congregation's right to choose its pastor and an end to serfdom, and many peasants heard in Luther's freedom of a Christian a freedom of their own. At first Luther rebuked the lords' tyranny and the peasants' violence alike and urged peace. But as the rising spread and monasteries and castles burned, he wrote Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants, urging the princes to strike the rebels down without mercy. In May Thomas Müntzer's army was crushed at Frankenhausen; the rising ended in the deaths of a great many peasants, and Luther never withdrew what he had written.
In 1523, in That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, Luther rebuked Christians for treating Jews like dogs and urged kindness, hoping they would come to Christ. His title says what Paul says:
Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them proceeds the human descent of Christ, who is God over all, forever worthy of praise! Amen.
Romans 9:5
Yet in 1543, near the end of his life, in On the Jews and Their Lies and other writings, he urged the princes to burn synagogues and schools, destroy Jewish homes and forbid rabbis to teach. In the twentieth century the Nazis used these writings in their propaganda. Luther's own churches confess this as their story. In 1994 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in a declaration to the Jewish community, plainly rejected Luther's violent words and voiced deep sorrow for the harm they did to later generations ELCA, Declaration to the Jewish Community.
Four traditions remember Luther, and today
Lutherans remember Luther not as a founder but as a teacher who brought the gospel to light again, and still use his Small Catechism in homes and churches Luther, Small Catechism. The Reformed honour him as the one who opened the Reformation while taking another way on the Lord's Supper (see The story of the Reformation).
For centuries Catholics remembered Luther as the heretic who broke the church's unity. In the twentieth century Catholic scholars began to read him as a man earnestly seeking God, and the Second Vatican Council acknowledged that people on both sides were to blame for the divisions Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio. In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church affirmed together basic truths of justification Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. On 31 October 2016 in Lund, Sweden, Pope Francis and the Lutherans opened the Reformation's five hundredth year in common prayer, giving thanks for what the Reformation gave the church and repenting of the wounds they had dealt each other Lund Joint Statement. Differences remain.
The Eastern Orthodox mostly see the quarrel as one inside the Western church, over the Western questions of indulgences, purgatory and papal power. When Lutheran theologians at Tübingen sent the Augsburg Confession in Greek to Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople in the 1570s, he replied three times, courteously, agreeing on some points and setting out where Orthodox teaching differs, on faith and works, the sacraments and tradition Jeremias II, Replies.
Luther's first thesis calls the whole life of believers one of repentance, and that holds for how a church remembers its past. As Lutherans have rejected his writings against the Jews, we can honour our own tradition's heroes without hiding their sins, and listen to how other traditions remember them. Churches that condemned one another now pray together after five hundred years: unity has not yet come, but the road to it is open. Jesus prayed "that all of them may be one" (John 17:21). The next lesson, Zurich, Geneva and Scotland, follows the Reformation in Switzerland and Scotland.
Practice
- Practice 1 of 8
What is certain about what Luther did on 31 October 1517?
- Practice 2 of 8
What does the first of the Ninety-five Theses say?
- Practice 3 of 8
What did Luther say at the Leipzig debate of 1519?
- Practice 4 of 8
Why, by his own account, did Luther refuse to recant at Worms in 1521?
- Practice 5 of 8
What did Luther do while hidden in the Wartburg?
- Practice 6 of 8
What did Luther do in the Peasants' War of 1525?
- Practice 7 of 8
What did the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America declare in 1994 about Luther's late writings against the Jews?
- Practice 8 of 8
Which describes how the Catholic Church regards Luther and the Reformation today?
Reading to the end marks it read; tap to switch it.
Related topics
Source
- Martin Luther, The Ninety-five Theses 1517 — Theses proposing a debate on the power of indulgences, remembered as the start of the Reformation. Read
- Philip Melanchthon, Preface to the second volume of Luther's Latin works 1546 — 1546, the year of Luther's death. Reports that on 31 October 1517 Luther posted his theses on indulgences at the castle church in Wittenberg; the story of the door rests chiefly on this later account.
- Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation 1520 — Teaches that all the baptised are priests, each serving the neighbour in their own work and station.
- Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church 1520 — 1520. Criticises the Roman sacramental system of seven sacraments; Scripture institutes baptism and the Supper (and, he then allowed, penance).
- Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian 1520 — A Christian is by faith a free lord of all, and by love a servant of all. Faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride with her bridegroom, so that they hold all things in common: his grace, life and salvation become the soul's, and its sins, death and damnation become his. Read
- Martin Luther, Reply at the Diet of Worms 1521 — 18 April 1521. Unless convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reason he cannot recant, for his conscience is captive to the word of God. ‘Here I stand’ was added in a later printed version.
- Erasmus, Novum Instrumentum (the Greek New Testament) 1516 — The first published Greek New Testament, printed with a new Latin translation; it opened the way back to the sources for Luther and the Reformers.
- Martin Luther, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants 1525 — 1525. A tract during the Peasants' War urging the princes to strike down the rebel peasants without mercy; among his harshest writings.
- Martin Luther, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew 1523 — 1523. Rebukes Christians for having treated the Jews like dogs, and urges that they be dealt with kindly and allowed to live and work among Christians, in the hope that they would come to Christ.
- Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies 1543 — 1543. In his last years Luther urged that synagogues and schools be burned, Jewish homes razed, their prayer books and Talmud taken and their rabbis forbidden to teach; the Lutheran churches today formally reject it.
- Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Declaration to the Jewish Community 1994 — 1994. Rejects Luther's anti-Judaic writings and their violent recommendations, and grieves over their tragic effects on later generations.
- Martin Luther, Small Catechism 1529 — Luther's catechism for households: the Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, baptism and the Supper. Read
- Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio 3 (1964) — Catholic teaching that people on both sides were to blame for the divisions, honouring separated brethren and seeking unity.
- Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification 1999 — A shared statement of basic truths on justification, signed at Augsburg on 31 October 1999: together they confess that God accepts us by grace alone, as we trust in what Christ did to save us, and not for anything we have earned, and that the sixteenth-century condemnations do not apply to the teaching it sets out, while naming the differences that remain. The World Methodist Council joined it in 2006 and the World Communion of Reformed Churches in 2017.
- Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church, Joint Statement on the Joint Catholic–Lutheran Commemoration of the Reformation 2016 — 31 October 2016, Lund, Sweden. Pope Francis and the Lutheran World Federation mark the Reformation's anniversary together, repenting of the wounds each inflicted and giving thanks for the gifts of the Reformation.
- Lutheran reformers, Augsburg Confession 1530 — The basic Lutheran confession. Read
- Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople, Replies to the Tübingen theologians 1576–1581 — 1576–1581. The Orthodox patriarch's three replies to the Lutheran theologians who sent him the Augsburg Confession: some agreement, but on justification by faith alone, the sacraments and tradition the Orthodox hold otherwise.
Lessons from the Bible, the church's creeds and the sources and witnesses of its history. They tell the church's story fairly, as each tradition remembers it, and do not hide the church's sins. Scripture quotations: BSB.