Why did Martin Luther do this?

Question

Why did Martin Luther add the word "alone" to Romans 3:28? It said we are justified by faith, but Luther added the word "alone" after faith. You can't add words to the Word of God. He said in his writings that he did it out of his own authority and no one should question him.

Martin Luther called the Epistle of James in the N.T. an "Epistle of straw". No Christian can say that about a book in the Bible. The father of the Reformation was clearly committing a serious evil sin in the face of God, not to mention the 7 books he threw out, on his OWN authority.

The cannon was established and closed. read his early writings.

Answer 1

When looking at the work of theologians it is always important to understand the social context that their work occurs in (after all if theology is the understanding of our world and our relation to God in it, this is a necesity). Luther lived in a social climate that he felt was rampant with corruption in the church. The fact that the church went further as to claim that portions of their dogma were related to salvation disturbed Luther greatly. Luther assumes authority perhaps for two reasons. One might be that he like the rest of us is human and suffered from a bit of an ego problem and truly believed he had more of this God stuff figured out than everyone else. He also may have realized as the seperating from issues of doctrine within the church was occuring, many people would feel a void of authority if they could no longer trust the pope (granted this may be justifying on my part).

If you ever do any studying into the early origins of the church you will find Luther was perhaps not the first person to cast aside books from the bible on a personal level of authority. Granted these people were living in a time period before the set biblical canon, but the eventual canon does also change depending on when you look at it as well. If you took someone like Marcion for example, he advocated strictly Paul's letters (and the letters attributed to him).

The biggest lesson from all of this is probably that each of us will find things that we do not like throughout our spirtual journey. From time to time we will believe there may be an insight that we can provide to the traditions of those before us. This is not a bad thing, standing on the shoulders of your ancestors and then moving forward is all apart of the reformed tradition (reformed outside of merely the denomonational sense here). Your level and nature of the interpretation of scripture (from inerrancy to allegorical) will depend on your place in your walk of faith.

Try not to condemn others who are either with you or have gone before you. We all make mistakes and on occasion these mistakes are made with fairly noble intentions. I dont believe Luther was trying to keep others from finding out about God and understanding the nature of his Son - in fact id say it was the opposite. We are always in need of correction from time to time, but be careful to not let a detail get in the way of the entire message.

Answer 2

I don't know... what are your resources on the issue? does it come form an unbiased source? not that I agree but i feel everyone should have that right to believe what they want. I go by the King James Version and it is not the original and it acually was quite unpopular for a while after it was written but i think it seems to flow better and is more poetic then other versions , I could ask the same about my religion why not use the The Geneva Bible I think that was the first one translated to English.... so you could argue if you wanted to anyone that doesn't use the Geneva Bible is incorrect I would be one of them ;) just remember any argument can go both ways .

Answer 3

I think you'll find that anyone that claims to be a Christian will have an entire laundry list of reasons why all of these great omissions and additions and reinterpretations that have happened to the Bible over the past 2,000 years are "okay" in spite of the fact that they all go against the Old Testament's decree to not change, add to, or subtract from it.

They can't help it. The defense of the Christian Religion..... AS IS.... is extremely important to them. It's like a Chinese finger puzzle or something. If this theory that they have put their faith in their entire lives is wrong, then THEY are wrong, and they're all way too arrogant to allow that to happen. It's the prime example of what the Bible refers to as Sinful Pride.

Answer 4

He did the thing to Romans because James talks about the need of deeds along with your faith. Luther did to emphasize that to those who could have been confused. So he did the first one because of the last one.

Answer 5

The alone was to emphasize that we can not add to Christs righteousness and we are justified only by faith. As far as the reformation He was only one of many. It had started long before He came along. Was he perfect? no, no one is but One. But he did know his Bible.

Answer 6

Study out how the Bible came to be. Many changes were made. You will find that the bibles we have today are nowhere close to the original scriptures. I listed below a couple of things for you to check out to find out more.

Answer 7

becuase he wanted to