Short biography of martin luther
Marcela mangabeira biography of martin luther king
Here Luther laid out some of his foundational beliefs about the nature of Christian theology, which were to pull him farther from Rome. In , he traveled to the city of Leipzig, where his Wittenberg colleague Andreas Karlstadt was to debate the academic Johann Eck on the topic of free will. As it was clear that Eck really wished to attack Luther, Martin did end up agreeing to debate with him.
During their disputation, Luther acknowledged his belief that scripture was the ultimate authority on issues of doctrine, and that Church councils and popes were capable of error. With this admission, Luther had taken another step away from Rome. After their debate, Eck continued to press the case against Luther to those in Rome, and the following year, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull edict demanding that Luther retract many of his statements or be excommunicated.
Surrounded by his university colleagues, Luther publicly burned the bull. The pope then followed through with the excommunication, and Luther was called to appear before Emperor Charles V at the imperial diet, which was meeting that year in Worms. Although he was given a promise of safe conduct, Luther feared that this appearance may lead to his death under accusation of heresy.
Nevertheless, he went to Worms, where he was once again called upon to recant what he had written. After some hesitation, Luther finally said the following:. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Once again, we see how concerned Luther was with the issue of spiritual truth, and how he considered his assurance from God more important even than his physical life.
Even as he was allowed to leave the city of Worms, there was a high probability that Luther would be seized and put to death. Instead, he was taken captive by men working for the ruler of his home region of Saxony, Elector Frederick the Wise. Martin spent about a year there and put his time to good use, not only writing numerous letters and pamphlets, but undertaking what was to be among the most important works of his life: the translation of the New Testament into German.
In this endeavor, Luther received help from his friend and fellow Wittenberg professor, Philipp Melanchthon. It was the young Melanchthon who was left in charge of the reforming work in Wittenberg while Luther was away, and it proved to be a tumultuous time. Their early ally, Karlstadt, had adopted a more radical set of theological views, and there were soon others like him.
This led to serious discord in the city and beyond. In March of , Luther made his return to Wittenberg out of concern for the problems that had arisen in his absence. Of particular concern to Luther was respect for authority and the ending of civil discord, and this was to prove very significant when the German peasant class started to demand greater political and economic rights.
Luther criticized much of the violence that occurred, at one point in coming down particularly hard on the peasants. Between and , there were many changes in Wittenberg. Philipp Melanchthon published the first Protestant work of systematic theology, Commonplaces Loci Communes. Already, the ideas that were to drive the Lutheran Reformation were being codified.
The Mass took on a very different form and was eventually abolished altogether as the standard of worship. Martin Luther and his wife, Katharine Von Bora. As the ideas of the Reformation continued to spread, many men and women left the monastic life behind and sought to be married. It fell to Luther to arrange marriages for a dozen nuns who escaped to Wittenberg.
He soon found husbands for all but one, a woman named Katharina von Bora. She eventually insisted that she would only be married to Luther or his friend and fellow theologian, Nicholaus von Amsdorf. Although he supported clerical marriage in principle, Luther at first rejected the idea of being married himself, fearing that he might be put to death, and in any case believing that the Reformation needed his full attention.
The catechism is one of Luther's most personal works. For I acknowledge none of them to be really a book of mine, except perhaps the Bondage of the Will and the Catechism. Luther's Small Catechism proved especially effective in helping parents teach their children; likewise the Large Catechism was effective for pastors. He rewrote each article of the Creed to express the character of the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit.
Luther's goal was to enable the catechumens to see themselves as a personal object of the work of the three persons of the Trinity, each of which works in the catechumen's life. Luther's treatment of the Apostles' Creed must be understood in the context of the Decalogue the Ten Commandments and The Lord's Prayer, which are also part of the Lutheran catechetical teaching.
Luther had published his German translation of the New Testament in , and he and his collaborators completed the translation of the Old Testament in , when the whole Bible was published. He continued to work on refining the translation until the end of his life. Luther's translation used the variant of German spoken at the Saxon chancellery, intelligible to both northern and southern Germans.
As such, it contributed a distinct flavor to the German language and literature. Luther did not include First Epistle of John , [ ] the Johannine Comma in his translation, rejecting it as a forgery. It was inserted into the text by others after Luther's death. His tool of choice for this connection was the singing of German hymns in connection with worship, school, home, and the public arena.
Luther's hymns were frequently evoked by particular events in his life and the unfolding Reformation. Messenger's translation by the title and first line "Flung to the Heedless Winds" and sung to the tune Ibstone composed in by Maria C. Luther's hymn, adapted and expanded from an earlier German creedal hymn, gained widespread use in vernacular Lutheran liturgies as early as Sixteenth-century Lutheran hymnals also included "Wir glauben all" among the catechetical hymns, although 18th-century hymnals tended to label the hymn as Trinitarian rather than catechetical, and 20th-century Lutherans rarely used the hymn because of the perceived difficulty of its tune.
Luther's hymnic version of the Lord's Prayer , " Vater unser im Himmelreich ", corresponds exactly to Luther's explanation of the prayer in the Small Catechism. The hymn functions both as a liturgical setting of the Lord's Prayer and as a means of examining candidates on specific catechism questions. The extant manuscript shows multiple revisions, demonstrating Luther's concern to clarify and strengthen the text and to provide an appropriately prayerful tune.
Other 16th- and 20th-century versifications of the Lord's Prayer have adopted Luther's tune, although modern texts are considerably shorter. Luther wrote " Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir " "From depths of woe I cry to You" in as a hymnic version of Psalm and sent it as a sample to encourage his colleagues to write psalm-hymns for use in German worship.
In a collaboration with Paul Speratus , this and seven other hymns were published in the Achtliederbuch , the first Lutheran hymnal. In Luther developed his original four-stanza psalm paraphrase into a five-stanza Reformation hymn that developed the theme of "grace alone" more fully. Because it expressed essential Reformation doctrine, this expanded version of "Aus tiefer Not" was designated as a regular component of several regional Lutheran liturgies and was widely used at funerals, including Luther's own.
Along with Erhart Hegenwalt's hymnic version of Psalm 51 , Luther's expanded hymn was also adopted for use with the fifth part of Luther's catechism, concerning confession. He wrote for Pentecost " Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist ", and adopted for Easter " Christ ist erstanden " Christ is risen , based on Victimae paschali laudes.
He paraphrased the Te Deum as " Herr Gott, dich loben wir " with a simplified form of the melody. It became known as the German Te Deum. Luther's hymn " Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam " "To Jordan came the Christ our Lord" reflects the structure and substance of his questions and answers concerning baptism in the Small Catechism.
Luther adopted a preexisting Johann Walter tune associated with a hymnic setting of Psalm 67 's prayer for grace; Wolf Heintz's four-part setting of the hymn was used to introduce the Lutheran Reformation in Halle in Preachers and composers of the 18th century, including J. Bach , used this rich hymn as a subject for their own work, although its objective baptismal theology was displaced by more subjective hymns under the influence of lateth-century Lutheran pietism.
Luther's hymns were included in early Lutheran hymnals and spread the ideas of the Reformation. He supplied four of eight songs of the First Lutheran hymnal Achtliederbuch , 18 of 26 songs of the Erfurt Enchiridion , and 24 of the 32 songs in the first choral hymnal with settings by Johann Walter, Eyn geystlich Gesangk Buchleyn , all published in Luther's hymns inspired composers to write music.
In contrast to the views of John Calvin [ ] and Philipp Melanchthon , [ ] throughout his life Luther maintained that it was not false doctrine to believe that a Christian's soul sleeps after it is separated from the body in death. In his Smalcald Articles , he described the saints as currently residing "in their graves and in heaven.
The Lutheran theologian Franz Pieper observes that Luther's teaching about the state of the Christian's soul after death differed from the later Lutheran theologians such as Johann Gerhard. Luther's Commentary on Genesis contains a passage which concludes that "the soul does not sleep anima non sic dormit , but wakes sed vigilat and experiences visions".
In October , Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse , convoked an assembly of German and Swiss theologians at the Marburg Colloquy , to establish doctrinal unity in the emerging Protestant states. Zwingli, for example, denied Jesus' ability to be in more than one place at a time. Luther stressed the omnipresence of Jesus' human nature. Citing Jesus' words "The flesh profiteth nothing" John 6.
This is Hesse, not Switzerland. Despite the disagreements on the Eucharist, the Marburg Colloquy paved the way for the signing in of the Augsburg Confession , and for the formation of the Schmalkaldic League the following year by leading Protestant nobles such as John of Saxony , Philip of Hesse, and George, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach.
The Swiss cities, however, did not sign these agreements. Some scholars have asserted that Luther taught that faith and reason were antithetical in the sense that questions of faith could not be illuminated by reason. He wrote, "All the articles of our Christian faith, which God has revealed to us in His Word, are in presence of reason sheerly impossible, absurd, and false.
Contemporary Lutheran scholarship, however, has found a different reality in Luther. Luther rather seeks to separate faith and reason in order to honor the separate spheres of knowledge that each applies to. He saw the Turks as a scourge sent by God to punish Christians, as agents of the biblical apocalypse that would destroy the Antichrist , whom Luther believed to be the papacy and the Roman Church.
This is absolutely contrary to Christ's doctrine and name". In , Luther read a Latin translation of the Qur'an. Early in , Johannes Agricola —serving at the time as pastor in Luther's birthplace, Eisleben—preached a sermon in which he claimed that God's gospel, not God's moral law the Ten Commandments , revealed God's wrath to Christians.
Based on this sermon and others by Agricola, Luther suspected that Agricola was behind certain anonymous antinomian theses circulating in Wittenberg. These theses asserted that the law is no longer to be taught to Christians but belonged only to city hall. In his theses and disputations against the antinomians, Luther reviews and reaffirms, on the one hand, what has been called the "second use of the law," that is, the law as the Holy Spirit's tool to work sorrow over sin in man's heart, thus preparing him for Christ's fulfillment of the law offered in the gospel.
Luther also points out that the Ten Commandments—when considered not as God's condemning judgment but as an expression of his eternal will, that is, of the natural law—positively teach how the Christian ought to live. The Ten Commandments, and the beginnings of the renewed life of Christians accorded to them by the sacrament of baptism , are a present foreshadowing of the believers' future angel -like life in heaven in the midst of this life.
Philip solicited the approval of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer, citing as a precedent the polygamy of the patriarchs. The theologians were not prepared to make a general ruling, and they reluctantly advised the landgrave that if he was determined, he should marry secretly and keep quiet about the matter because divorce was worse than bigamy. Philip's sister Elisabeth quickly made the scandal public, and Philip threatened to expose Luther's advice.
Luther told him to "tell a good, strong lie" and deny the marriage completely, which Philip did. In the view of Luther's biographer Martin Brecht , "giving confessional advice for Philip of Hesse was one of the worst mistakes Luther made, and, next to the landgrave himself, who was directly responsible for it, history chiefly holds Luther accountable".
Luther wrote negatively about Jews throughout his career. Therefore, in any case, away with them! Luther launched a polemic against vagrants in his preface to Liber Vagatorum , saying that the Jews had contributed Hebrew words as a main basis of the Rotwelsch cryptolect. He warned in the admonitory preface Christians not to give them alms as it was, in his opinion, to forsake the truly poor.
Luther spoke out against the Jews in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Silesia. Throughout the s, riots led to the expulsion of Jews from several German Lutheran states. Tovia Singer , an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, remarking about Luther's attitude toward Jews, put it thus: "Among all the Church Fathers and Reformers, there was no mouth more vile, no tongue that uttered more vulgar curses against the Children of Israel than this founder of the Reformation.
In , he began to suffer from kidney and bladder stones , arthritis , and an ear infection which ruptured an ear drum. In December , he began to feel the effects of angina. His poor physical health made him short-tempered and even harsher in his writings and comments. His wife Katharina was overheard saying, "Dear husband, you are too rude," and he responded, "They are teaching me to be rude.
His last sermon was delivered at Eisleben, his place of birth, on 15 February , three days before his death. And so often they do. Luther's final journey, to Mansfeld, was taken because of his concern for his siblings' families continuing in their father Hans Luther's copper mining trade. Their livelihood was threatened by Count Albrecht of Mansfeld bringing the industry under his own control.
Luther journeyed to Mansfeld twice in late to participate in the negotiations for a settlement, and a third visit was needed in early for their completion. The negotiations were successfully concluded on 17 February After 8 p. When he went to his bed, he prayed, "Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God" Ps. He thanked God for revealing his Son to him in whom he had believed.
His companions, Justus Jonas and Michael Coelius, shouted loudly, "Reverend father, are you ready to die trusting in your Lord Jesus Christ and to confess the doctrine which you have taught in his name? An apoplectic stroke deprived him of his speech, and he died shortly afterwards at a. He was buried in the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, in front of the pulpit.
A piece of paper was later found on which Luther had written his last statement. The statement was in Latin, apart from "We are beggars," which was in German. The statement reads:. Do not assail this divine Aeneid ; nay, rather prostrate revere the ground that it treads. We are beggars: this is true. Luther was the most widely read author of his generation, and within Germany he acquired the status of a prophet.
Heinrich Himmler albeit never a Lutheran, having been brought up Catholic wrote admiringly of his writings and sermons on the Jews in Schulz and R. On 17 December , seven Protestant regional church confederations issued a statement agreeing with the policy of forcing Jews to wear the yellow badge , "since after his bitter experience Luther had already suggested preventive measures against the Jews and their expulsion from German territory.
Nevertheless, his misguided agitation had the evil result that Luther fatefully became one of the 'church fathers' of anti-Semitism and thus provided material for the modern hatred of the Jews, cloaking it with the authority of the Reformer. At the heart of scholarly debate about Luther's influence is whether it is anachronistic to view his work as a precursor of the racial antisemitism of the Nazis.
Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic.
Marcela mangabeira biography of martin luther the reformer
Johannes Wallmann argues that Luther's writings against the Jews were largely ignored in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that there was no continuity between Luther's thought and Nazi ideology. Hillerbrand agreed that to focus on Luther was to adopt an essentially ahistorical perspective of Nazi antisemitism that ignored other contributory factors in German history.
His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial. Probst, in his book Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany , shows that a large number of German Protestant clergy and theologians during the Nazi era used Luther's hostile publications towards the Jews and their Jewish religion to justify at least in part the antisemitic policies of the National Socialists.
Some scholars, such as Mark U. Edwards in his book Luther's Last Battles: Politics and Polemics —46 , suggest that since Luther's increasingly antisemitic views developed during the years his health deteriorated, it is possible they were at least partly the product of a state of mind. Edwards also comments that Luther often deliberately used "vulgarity and violence" for effect, both in his writings condemning the Jews and in diatribes against "Turks" Muslims and Catholics.
Since the s, Lutheran denominations have repudiated Martin Luther's statements against the Jews [ citation needed ] and have rejected the use of them to incite hatred against Lutherans. Luther made effective use of Johannes Gutenberg 's printing press to spread his views. He switched from Latin to German in his writing to appeal to a broader audience.
Between and , Luther's works represented one fifth of all materials printed in Germany.
Biography of martin luther king: A more recent short biography is that by the distinguished Lutheran historian, Martin Marty, in the Penguin Brief Lives series. This is fun too: well-written and peppered with little anecdotes of Luther’s personal life.
In the s and s, printed images of Luther that emphasized his monumental size were crucial to the spread of Protestantism. In contrast to images of frail Catholic saints, Luther was presented as a stout man with a "double chin, strong mouth, piercing deep-set eyes, fleshy face, and squat neck. His large body also let the viewer know that he did not shun earthly pleasures like drinking—behavior that was a stark contrast to the ascetic life of the medieval religious orders.
Lutheranism, the Reformed tradition , and Anglicanism. Branches of Protestantism that emerged afterwards vary in their remembrance and veneration of Luther, ranging from a complete lack of a single mention of him to a commemoration almost comparable to the way Lutherans commemorate and remember his persona. There is no known condemnation of Luther by Protestants themselves.
Various sites both inside and outside Germany supposedly visited by Martin Luther throughout his lifetime commemorate it with local memorials. Mansfeld is sometimes called Mansfeld-Lutherstadt, although the state government has not decided to put the Lutherstadt suffix in its official name. Reformation Day commemorates the publication of the Ninety-five Theses in Two further states Lower Saxony and Bremen are pending a vote on introducing it.
Slovenia celebrates it because of the profound contribution of the Reformation to its culture. Austria allows Protestant children not to go to school that day, and Protestant workers have a right to leave work in order to participate in a church service. Switzerland celebrates the holiday on the first Sunday after 31 October.
It is also celebrated elsewhere around the world. Luther is often depicted with a swan as his attribute , and Lutheran churches often have a swan for a weather vane. This association with the swan arises out of a prophecy reportedly made by the earlier reformer Jan Hus and endorsed by Luther. In the Bohemian language now Czech , Hus's name meant "grey goose".
In , while imprisoned by the Council of Constance and anticipating his execution by burning for heresy, Hus prophesied, "Now they will roast a goose, but in a hundred years' time they'll hear a swan sing. They'd better listen to him. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools.
Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. German priest, theologian and author — Not to be confused with Martin Luther King Jr. For other uses, see Martin Luther disambiguation. The Reverend. Ninety-five Theses Priest Theologian Author Hymnwriter. Katharina von Bora. Reformation Lutheranism.
Prolegomena Soteriology. Ordination history. Diaconal ordination. Priestly ordination. Christianity Start of the Reformation Reformation Protestantism. Doctrine and theology. Bible Old Testament New Testament. Augsburg Confession. Read Now. Kidd and Taylor. Melissa Kruger.
Marcela mangabeira biography of martin luther
Ray Ortlund. Erik Raymond. Scotty Smith. Justin Taylor. Trevin Wax. Learn More. Caught in a horrific thunderstorm where he feared for his life, Luther cried out to St. The decision to become a monk was difficult and greatly disappointed his father, but he felt he must keep a promise. The first few years of monastic life were difficult for Luther, as he did not find the religious enlightenment he was seeking.
A mentor told him to focus his life exclusively on Jesus Christ and this would later provide him with the guidance he sought. At age 27, Luther was given the opportunity to be a delegate to a Catholic church conference in Rome. He came away more disillusioned, and very discouraged by the immorality and corruption he witnessed there among the Catholic priests.
Upon his return to Germany, he enrolled in the University of Wittenberg in an attempt to suppress his spiritual turmoil. He excelled in his studies and received a doctorate, becoming a professor of theology at the university known today as Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Through his studies of scripture, Luther finally gained religious enlightenment.
Finally, he realized the key to spiritual salvation was not to fear God or be enslaved by religious dogma but to believe that faith alone would bring salvation. This period marked a major change in his life and set in motion the Reformation. Luther also sent a copy to Archbishop Albert Albrecht of Mainz, calling on him to end the sale of indulgences.
Aided by the printing press , copies of the 95 Theses spread throughout Germany within two weeks and throughout Europe within two months. The Church eventually moved to stop the act of defiance.
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In October , at a meeting with Cardinal Thomas Cajetan in Augsburg, Luther was ordered to recant his 95 Theses by the authority of the pope. Luther said he would not recant unless scripture proved him wrong. The meeting ended in a shouting match and initiated his ultimate excommunication from the Church. 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.