June 27, 2017
Dear Friends and Family of Faith,
This year is the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Timothy J. Wengert, an ELCA pastor and a Professor Emeritus of Reformation History at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, penned the following for “Living Lutheran”, the ELCA magazine. I thought you would enjoy interesting Reformation information on Martin Luther.
This list is not meant as an all-encompassing compendium of everything essential to the Reformation and its theology, but rather as a glimpse of the variety of ways the movement that Luther sparked in 1517 would influence the history of the world.
1. Martin Luther did not think of himself as a reformer of the church. He felt that that job belonged only to Jesus Christ; Luther was merely a “John the Baptist”, pointing to the Lamb of God.
2. Luther was not exactly from peasant stock. His father—whose father was a farmer—ended up a well-to-do mine owner, and his mother’s family, the Lindemanns, included a mayor of Eisenach, Thuringia, in Germany.
3. The 95 Theses may or may not have been posted on the University of Wittenberg’s “bulletin board” (the Castle Church door) on October 31, 1517—but they were posted in the mail to the Archbishop of Mainz, Albrecht von Brandenburg.
4. Luther’s chief complaint in the 95 Theses was bad preaching and how it undermined the listeners’ faith in God.
5. In the 16th century, Luther would’ve posted a university notice like the 95 Theses with wax or paste, not hammer and nails. The depiction of Luther hammering the Theses first appeared in 1717.
6. During Luther’s lifetime, the 95 Theses were only available in three Latin printings. Only with the publication of the German Sermon on Indulgences and Grace did Luther become the world’s first living best-selling author.
7. In Luther’s defense of the 95 Theses, called the Explanations, Luther first insisted that God’s word, not our decisions or works, creates faith in us and makes us Christians.
8. When Luther insisted that Christians are righteous and sinner at the same time (“simul iustus et peccator”), he was not giving believers an excuse to sin but was providing a way to be honest about themselves (as sinners) and about God’s mercy (as righteous).
9. Luther rarely used the phrase sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”) because he also recognized other, lesser authorities in the church and because he preferred to use phrases like “God’s word alone,” which implied proclamation of Scripture’s commands and promises.]
10. With the phrase “faith alone,” Luther excluded all human preconditions for receiving God’s mercy, so that faith itself can never be a “work” we do for God but a relationship God establishes with us through word and sacrament. That is why his explanation of the third article of the Creed in the Small Catechism begins, “I believe that … I cannot believe.”
Shalom,
Pastor Sandy
Dear Friends and Family of Faith,
This year is the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Timothy J. Wengert, an ELCA pastor and a Professor Emeritus of Reformation History at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, penned the following for “Living Lutheran”, the ELCA magazine. I thought you would enjoy interesting Reformation information on Martin Luther.
This list is not meant as an all-encompassing compendium of everything essential to the Reformation and its theology, but rather as a glimpse of the variety of ways the movement that Luther sparked in 1517 would influence the history of the world.
1. Martin Luther did not think of himself as a reformer of the church. He felt that that job belonged only to Jesus Christ; Luther was merely a “John the Baptist”, pointing to the Lamb of God.
2. Luther was not exactly from peasant stock. His father—whose father was a farmer—ended up a well-to-do mine owner, and his mother’s family, the Lindemanns, included a mayor of Eisenach, Thuringia, in Germany.
3. The 95 Theses may or may not have been posted on the University of Wittenberg’s “bulletin board” (the Castle Church door) on October 31, 1517—but they were posted in the mail to the Archbishop of Mainz, Albrecht von Brandenburg.
4. Luther’s chief complaint in the 95 Theses was bad preaching and how it undermined the listeners’ faith in God.
5. In the 16th century, Luther would’ve posted a university notice like the 95 Theses with wax or paste, not hammer and nails. The depiction of Luther hammering the Theses first appeared in 1717.
6. During Luther’s lifetime, the 95 Theses were only available in three Latin printings. Only with the publication of the German Sermon on Indulgences and Grace did Luther become the world’s first living best-selling author.
7. In Luther’s defense of the 95 Theses, called the Explanations, Luther first insisted that God’s word, not our decisions or works, creates faith in us and makes us Christians.
8. When Luther insisted that Christians are righteous and sinner at the same time (“simul iustus et peccator”), he was not giving believers an excuse to sin but was providing a way to be honest about themselves (as sinners) and about God’s mercy (as righteous).
9. Luther rarely used the phrase sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”) because he also recognized other, lesser authorities in the church and because he preferred to use phrases like “God’s word alone,” which implied proclamation of Scripture’s commands and promises.]
10. With the phrase “faith alone,” Luther excluded all human preconditions for receiving God’s mercy, so that faith itself can never be a “work” we do for God but a relationship God establishes with us through word and sacrament. That is why his explanation of the third article of the Creed in the Small Catechism begins, “I believe that … I cannot believe.”
Shalom,
Pastor Sandy