Martin Luther King Analysis

RING! RING! RING! You hear the church bells ringing to start worship. Getting up everyday to praise the lord is habitat. Finding a spot in the church is hard to find because so many people are there. You listen to the priest preach the word and look at the stain glass windows to understand the meaning. As you are walking out you see a huge fire in the middle of the court. A man is yelling “You’ll burn in hell if you don’t buy an indulgence! You need to purchase one to forgive your sins and for tonight only Pope Leo X is willing to sell you one.” Fear rushes over you. As you look around you see a monk. That monk's name is Martin Luther. You don’t know it yet but religion is going to change thanks to Luther. Martin Luther was a german monk and
a professor of religion at the University of Wittenberg. In an article from Biography.com they stated that He first started his career as a lawyer.
He had a life changing moment and became a monk because he was caught in a storm and prayed to St. Anne that if he made it out alive he would become a monk. Many historians believed that this had been Luther’s plan for a while but his father would be disappointed in this decision. In the article Spiritual Anguish and Enlightenment by Biography.com he didn’t scense the spirtiual enlightment that he was looking for. A mentor gave him sight of this. When he was 27 he was given the chance to be the delegate for the church conference in Rome. While he was there he noticed how corrupt the Catholic Priest were. When he got back to Germany he was lost so as a way to find his enlightenment he went to the University of Wittenberg. He finished with his
doctorate. At this time Pope Leo X need money to build St. Peter’s Basilica. The pope began to sell indulgences. Luther didn’t think this was right. He’s know to be one of leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Mortification of the flesh was common for Luther because he need to reppent for his sins. Luther wanted a change in the church and he did so by creating the 95 Theses, Luther’s three core beliefs, and rewrote the bible in the German.
Luther nailed The 95 Theses in latin to a church door. He didn’t want to break the church but reform it. Luther.de listed all of the 95 Theses including 3.)Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortification of the flesh. 50.) Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the indulgence preachers, he would rather that the basilica of St. Peter were burned to ashes than built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.54.) Injury is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to indulgences than to the Word. The main criticized topics were the indulgences, power of the pope and the wealth of the church. The indulgences were pardons issued by the pope that people could buy to reduce a soul’s time in purgatory. This is basically stating that people can buy there forgiveness. Most of the people during this time were uneducated. They couldn’t read so they need priest to read the bible to them. This gave the popes a lot of power because people were frightened that they weren’t going to heaven. The popes would take advantage of people allowing them to become more powerful. Everyone in the town had to treat their priest polite otherwise they were told that they weren’t getting into heaven. Allowing the priest to get away with absurd tasks like hanging non-believers or different religion. Explained in History Learning Site rich families could purchase spots for their loved ones to go to heaven, but the peasants didn’t have the funds to do so. You need to pay to get baptized, married, and to be buried at holy grounds. This allowed the church to grow in wealth.
Luther had three core beliefs found in the lecture The Protestant Reformation by Mrs.
Giese: Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura, and Equality in the eyes of god for those who knew and followed God’s laws. Sola FIde meant that by just faith alone you could get into heaven. You didn’t need to buy indulgences are go to church every sunday. If you believed in God you could be saved. Secondly Sola Scriptura; faith through the understanding of the scripture. Luther believed that every person should be able to read the bible so he used the recently created printer press to make the bible into german. This would allow everyone to read the bible. Everyone could understand what they were reading because they would have a copy of it. The church couldn’t add anything into the bible because everyone was able to follow along. Lastly Equality in the eyes of god for those who knew and followed God’s laws. If you followed what god created you to do you would get into heaven. God doesn’t care about your wealth but about who you are. Luther wanted everyone to know that they could get into heaven no matter who they were on earth. It doesn’t matter about your wealth, as long as you have faith, in the lord and in the
scripture.
Lasty Luther wasn’t the first person to translate the bible into german. Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church said that scholars like De Wette and Weizsäcker were just a few of the people that translated it. Luther was just the most popular and he's had the most use. It was easy for Luther to make multiple copies of the translated version because the printing press had just been created. This would allow the bible to be in any home that could afford to do so. Luther was also so successful because he understood the content in the verses. He also had a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek which allowed him not to have independent judgement. Luther wanted a change in the church and he did so by creating the 95 Theses, Luther’s three core beliefs, and rewrote the bible in the German. He didn’t like all the power that the Pope had and he knew that everyone who believed in god was able to go heaven. He made it so people could understand the word by themselves. They didn’t need to depend on the church to learn about Christ or that people could pay to get into heaven. Even after the fact that Luther was excommunicated from the church he keep writing and allowing people to understand the worship.