Hannah ruth sison biography of martin luther

You can read the whole thing here , which also includes recommended reading from Luther himself and by others on his theology. Justin Taylor is executive vice president for book publishing and publisher for books at Crossway. You can follow him on Twitter. Browse Articles Featured Essay.

Hannah ruth sison biography of martin luther

An essay by. Read Now. Kidd and Taylor. Melissa Kruger. Ray Ortlund. 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.

Finally, in , the pope had had enough and on June 15 issued an ultimatum threatening Luther with excommunication. On December 10, , Luther publicly burned the letter. In March , Luther was summoned before the Diet of Worms , a general assembly of secular authorities. Again, Luther refused to recant his statements, demanding he be shown any scripture that would refute his position.

There was none. Friends helped him hide out at the Wartburg Castle. Though still under threat of arrest, Luther returned to Wittenberg Castle Church, in Eisenach, in May to organize a new church, Lutheranism. He gained many followers, and the Lutheran Church also received considerable support from German princes. When a peasant revolt began in , Luther denounced the peasants and sided with the rulers, whom he depended on to keep his church growing.

Thousands of peasants were killed, but the Lutheran Church grew over the years. In , Luther married Katharina von Bora, a former nun who had abandoned the convent and taken refuge in Wittenberg. Born into a noble family that had fallen on hard times, at the age of five Katharina was sent to a convent. She and several other reform-minded nuns decided to escape the rigors of the cloistered life, and after smuggling out a letter pleading for help from the Lutherans, Luther organized a daring plot.

With the help of a fishmonger, Luther had the rebellious nuns hide in herring barrels that were secreted out of the convent after dark - an offense punishable by death. Luther ensured that all the women found employment or marriage prospects, except for the strong-willed Katharina, who refused all suitors except Luther himself. It provides a particularly tricky task to produce something valuable for a Protestant audience obviously familiar with the great reformer, a man ranked by Time Magazine in as the 17th most influential human being in history.

However, his personal life, i. What kind of things was he really passionate about, what drove him, exited him or, if you will, got his adrenalin pumping? Who was he as a man to those contemporaries of his who truly knew him on a personal level? The Luther family was, at the time, a prominent farming family in the Thuringia district in what is now central Germany.

Routledge: New York, , Working Paper. Martin Luthers: des Lehrer wahrer Theologie nach bestem Wissen beschreiben. Weinacht , Theologischer Verlag: Zurich, , Abington Press: Nashville, , 8. He would spend more than five years at the Erfurt monastery, until in , as part of the plan of John Staupitz, a professor of theology at the young University of Wittenberg, to turn the institution into a theological hub, Luther was transferred there.

In Medieval times, it was tradition that a man teach at the University where they earned their degree. Until the middle of the fifteenth century, oaths taken to this end were common, whereas the practice fell into disuse thereafter. It seems to have been revived at Erfurt at the beginning of the sixteenth century, 64 Jayson Scott Galler, Logic and Argumentation in the Book of Concord.

Proquest: Ann Arbor, MI, , Irvington: New York, , Erlanger Ausgabe der Werke Luthers. Erlangen, , vol. Luther, angered, responded harshly — by his own admission — too harshly. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. Nonetheless, history has shown that this personality of Luther was exactly what was needed at the time to re light the fire of Reformation in Europe.

Within three months Luther had translated the whole of the New Testament. This is an amazing feat, and is even more so considering the monumental impact that this translation would have on the German people. For the first time, an ordinary believer could read the Bible for themselves. Luther was helped by his friend and fellow reformer Phillip Melanchthon a much better Greek scholar and, having begun the New Testament in November or December of , completed it in March of — just before he left Wartburg Castle to return to Wittenberg.

After some revising, the German New Testament was made available in September of Luther immediately set to work on translating the Old Testament. The first five books, the Pentateuch, appeared in and the Psalms were finished in By the entire Bible had been translated. This was not the first German translation, but it was the finest and became the primary Bible of the German people.

Luther knew that for the people to return to the truth of the Gospel — that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, they needed Scripture in their own language. If Luther had done nothing else, had never preached a sermon, had never written a treatise, had never insulted a pope, had never taken a stand at Worms, his translating of Scripture into German would have propelled the Reformation onward.

Because the Bible was no longer in a foreign language, but the language of the people, the Reformation was not dependent on the works of any of the Reformers but depended instead on the Word of God. The people consumed the Word at an phenomenal rate. On Wittenberg printer sold about a hundred thousand copies in 40 years, which is an enormously large number at that age, and these copies were read and reread by millions of Germans.

I deserve nothing better; for all my wish has been to lead souls to the Bible, so that they might afterwards neglect my writings. Great God! Translating Scripture into the language of the common people would become a hallmark of the Protestant Reformation, with translations in Spanish, French, English, and other languages close behind. And take hold it did.

Thanks in large part to the preaching, teaching, and writing of Luther the theology of the Reformation spread throughout Germany and to other countries in Europe. Martin Luther, whose heart was held captive by the Word of God and who was used by God to usher in the Protestant Reformation, died on February 18, in Eisleben — the city of his birth.

Luther left us a complex and sometimes controversial legacy. But it is clear that — despite his faults — he was used greatly by God to restore Scripture to its proper place of authority in the life of the church and in the life of the individual believer. Luther was emboldened to risk his life for the truth that Scripture alone is to be our ultimate authority in all spiritual matters.

This doctrine came to be known as Sola Scriptura. It is for this reason that the Protestant Reformation was able to continue spreading even after his death. As bold a leader as Luther was, the Reformation was not about a cult of personality — it was a movement to return to the truth of Scripture. Hi, I'm Clay. I created ReasonableTheology.

Thanks for stopping by! Great informative article! I cannot wait to share it with my Sunday School kids!