Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a theologian of German origin who was in charge of initiating the Protestant Reformation . He defended his opinions in all the cities he visited and was investigated and to some extent persecuted by the Christian church until Pope Leo X managed to arrest him. He was a great reformer and father of the Protestant Reformation who made strong criticisms and fought to combat the corruptions that occurred within the Catholic Church during the sixteenth century.. He was always driven to seek a merciful God, he was an obedient monk and disciple, fasting and praying many hours a day while meditating. It was characterized by trying to get the Christian church to take up the teachings that were in the Bible, trying to restructure the Christian churches within Europe. For this reason, the Catholic Church created a Counter Reformation to try to eliminate Luther’s Protestant Reformation.

Biography of Martin Luther

Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483. His father, Hans, and his mother, Margaethe Luder . A year after his birth, his family moved to the town of Mansfeld , where his father ran several copper mines. His father, in his desire for Martín to become a civil servant to give more honor to the family, sent him to different schools to study. Following his father’s wishes, he dedicated part of his life to studying law . Having been raised in the Catholic Church, but without proper knowledge of it, he was always afraid of the wrath of God . On July 17 he decided to become a monkand in the year 1505, he entered an Augustinian monastery in Erfurt , an act that was not fully supported by his father. In 1507, Martin Luther was ordained a priest and focused on the issue of forgiveness of sins . In 1508, he was appointed Wittenberg Professor of Philosophy. He received his doctorate in theology in October 18, 1512, the year in which he also served as a preacher at the monastery and in Wittenberg as well. During the year 1520, the pope gave Luther a warning, letting him know that he risked being excommunicated unless he retracted all his writings. In October of that year, Luther sent a letter to the pope letting him know that he did not agree and that he would continue his teachings. The Pope Leo X was the one who excommunicated Martin Luther, on January 3, 1521, by a document called Decet Romanum Pontificem .

Death of Martin Luther

In late 1545, Luther traveled to Mansfeld out of concern for his relatives who were in Hans Luther’s copper mine . This mine was under threat of being controlled by Count Albrecht de Mansfeld . He tried to seek a negotiation to reach an agreement until finally on February 17 they managed to conciliate. That same day, he began to suffer from chest pains, then died in the early morning hours.

Philosophical thought of Martin Luther

For him, faith must be a matter of reflection.  Although its reform was mainly of a religious nature, it produced different changes in society , economy and politics that have had repercussions to this day. All his thinking was based on the doctrine of the two kingdoms , one the kingdom of God and the other the kingdom of the world . It divided the human being into two different parts, one of them was made up of men who belonged to the kingdom of God ( Christians ) and those who belonged to the worldly kingdom (those who were not Christians). He also thought that political power was created by God for the world and that the two kingdoms were the way in which God governed men. For him, the standards were those of God and divine right was communicated through the Word of God .

The 95 theses

The 95 theses were a document that questioned the power and efficiency of indulgences , it was written by Martin Luther and it was directed specifically to the church of Rome , a document through which the papal doctrines were discredited. It was a direct confrontation between Martin Luther and the Catholic Church. The main reason for writing them was the knowledge he had about Johann Tetzel , who was a priest of the Order of the Preaching Brothers or Dominicans , and who, together with Pope Leo X, they sold indulgences to supposedly cleanse all the sins of the people with the sole objective of getting rich. He made them so that everyone could read them and they were also written in Latin. He rejected the possibility of salvation through the purchase of indulgences. He spoke of the indulgence for the dead and the living, the ecclesial treasure and criticized indulgences. 95 theses were sentenced on June 15, 1520 by Pope Leo X . And after this, Luther was excommunicatedof the church, they demanded that he retract what he had written in his thesis, however, he refused, thus giving rise to the Protestant Reformation, and at the same time, with this act, the birth of several doctrines within Christianity , such as Presbyterianism and Lutheranism .

Doctrine of Martin Luther

The Lutheran or Protestant religious doctrine had a special doctrine. For Lutheranism the sacred sacraments were only two: baptism and the Eucharist or Holy Supper . People belonging to Lutheranism allow the use of images to teach their faithful, but they do not accept the veneration of images. Within its doctrine, pastors and ministers also had a very important role and could, among other things, marry and exercise economic activities with the sole objective of favoring the church.

Contributions of Martin Luther

Among his main contributions we can mention the following:

• He formed the school scholastic and humanist , school reform which was in favor of education provided and managed by the state .
• He established the foundations of Protestantism causing a great impact on the mentality of Europeans. His ideas paved the way for freedom , faith and the spirituality of man .
• It spread the Protestant religion which caused a change in attitude towards daily life.
• He managed through his ideas, that the peasants rebelled against the manorial power .
• Many of its principles are the basis of human rights .
• He was in charge of rescuing basic principles of the Bible that had been put aside by the church.

Phrases

Some of the most famous phrases of Martin Luther, are the following:

• The music is the best relief to a worried man. Thanks to her, the heart is happy again, it is comforted and renewed.
• I have three dangerous dogs: ingratitude, pride and envy . When they bite they leave a deep wound.
• A lie is like a snowball; the more it rolls , the bigger it gets.
• The heart of a man is a mill wheel that works without ceasing; if you grind nothing, you run the risk that it will crush itself.
• You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.