how did luther begin a revolution in religion?

Answer 1

Luther attacked the obvious corruptions and peversions of Catholicism, which started a revolutionary religion, Lutheranism, and ultimately reformed Catholicism through the Counter-Reformation.

On the other hand! the Pope at the time refused to get involved in Luther's ideas, calling the whole thing a "monk's quarrel." Calvin would still have stirred up trouble in Switzerland. Thomas Cranmer would surely have split the Church of England from Rome after the death of Henry VIII. So it could be said that the revolution came from Calvin and Cranmer rather than centrally from Luther.

The Anglican "39 articles of religion" have had a much profounded impact on Christianity than Luther's 95 theses, and radical modern Protestantism has its roots in Calvin, so maybe Luther gets good press but was just a quarrelsome monk.

Answer 2

From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, the books of Hebrews, Romans and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to understand terms such as penance and righteousness in new ways. He began to teach that salvation is a gift of God's grace through Christ received by faith alone.[23] The first and chief article is this, Luther wrote, "Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification ... herefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us...Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls."[24]

Luther translated the Bible into German to make it more accessible to the common people, a task he began alone in 1521 during his stay in the Wartburg castle, publishing The New Testament in September 1522 and, in collaboration with Johannes Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, Caspar Creuziger, Philipp Melanchthon, Matthäus Aurogallus, and George Rörer, the whole Bible in 1534. He worked on refining the translation for the rest of his life. The Luther Bible contributed to the emergence of the modern German language and is regarded as a landmark in German literature. The 1534 edition was also profoundly influential on William Tyndale's translation [59], a precursor of the King James Bible[60].Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 – February 18, 1546) was a German monk,[1] priest, professor, theologian, and church reformer. His teachings inspired the Reformation and deeply influenced the doctrines and culture of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions, as well as the course of Western civilization. Luther's hymns, including his best-known "A Mighty Fortress is Our God", inspired the development of congregational singing within Christianity


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther

http://www.ctsfw.edu/etext/luther/theses/

Answer 3

By daring to say that we need a relationship with God not church politicians and that we shouldn't have to pay the religious hierarchy for forgiveness that God grants for free.

Answer 4

Those 95 theses he nailed to the door of the church

Answer 5

yeah, what that other guy said.

Answer 6

Germany was divided into hundreds of states, many of them only semi-independent and belonging to what was called the Holy Roman Empire. Each of the states of the Holy Roman Empire was ruled by a prince, also called an "elector," whose powers were limited by powers that belonged to cities and ecclesiastic establishments within the Prince's realm. One of the Holy Roman Empire's more powerful elector-princes was Frederick of Saxony, who forbade the sale of indulgences within his realm. Indulgences involved payment in coin to a priest for the purpose of relief from guilt of sins, release from purgatory and assurance of a place in heaven. And defying Frederick, many people were crossing Saxony's border into Jüterbog or Thuringia to buy these indulgences.

Another who disliked indulgences was an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at a university founded by Frederick, in the town of Wittenberg. This was Martin Luther, who disliked seeing poor Germans giving up scarce coins that would be going to Rome. But rather than economics, Luther's foremost concern was religion. Luther approved of the view of the humanist priest Jacques Lefever d'Etaples that more devotion to reading the Bible and a more accurate reading of the Bible would lead to people living better lives. He had been tormented by whether he was worthy of salvation. Then he found assurance in the Bible in the idea of forgiveness of sins: that God forgave individuals by their faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, without the intercession of a priest. Luther found in the Scriptures no support for indulgences and believed that indulges were of no value to a sinner. He worried over his questioning of the Church, asking himself whether he alone was so wise and whether centuries of Church policy could be wrong. But he answered his own question, concluding that authority lay in the Bible.

Then, in 1517, a priest arrived in Wittenberg selling indulges for the sake of raising money for Leo X and the construction at the Vatican. Luther's response was to write a letter, sent at the end of October, 1517, to Germany's most powerful churchmen, the twenty-seven year-old Archbishop of Mainz, Albrecht of Hohenzollern. The letter was received on November 17 - the speed of mail in those times. The letter was respectful, asking the "Lord God to guard and guide" the Archbishop and without sarcasm Luther described himself as "the scum of the earth." He asked the Archbishop to look at the propositions he had enclosed - the 95 theses that Luther is rumored to have also nailed to the door of the Wittenberg church. - propositions that included Luther's opposition to indulgences.

The Archbishop responded to Luther's propositions by writing a letter to Pope Leo X. Much letter writing followed as Luther's propositions stirred much debate. Some complained that to deny the legality of indulgences was to deny the authority of the pope who had authorized them. Luther acknowledged this, saying that the pope had no such authority. The Church demanded that Luther retract a number of his protests. And rather than retract, Luther described the Church as its people. He announced that he was bound by Holy Scripture alone and that it was neither safe nor right for him to go against his conscience.

It was an age when diversity in opinion was less expected and less tolerated, giving Luther more attention than would any dissenting professor, for example, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. And Luther had at his disposal what dissidents had lacked in previous centuries: the printing press. Luther wrote pamphlets explaining his positions. Printing in Europe was by now around seventy-five years old and had been largely of expensive ecclesiastical books in Latin, which few people read. Luther's pamphlets were only a few pages, quickly printed for little money, and they cost little to buy. From the year 1518 to 1520, thirty of Luther's pamphlets were printed, while those wishing to counter Luther's opinions had difficulty getting published - publishers having little interest in publishing pamphlets for which there was little demand.

On June 15, 1520, the papacy ordered Luther's works burned, and the papacy gave Luther sixty days to recant if he were to prevent his being excommunicated. After the sixty days passed, Luther was ordered to appear before representatives of the Pope and before the Holy Roman Emperor - scheduled for April, 1521 at Worms. That year, as Luther passed through towns on his way to his appointment, jubilant crowds turned out to see him. The emperor, Charles V, now twenty-one, had just been made king of Spain and Holy Roman Empire, inheriting these positions as the head of the Habsburg family. He looked down upon Luther but had more troubling concerns. At the meeting, Luther was accused of heresy, and Luther announced that he could not and would not recant anything, "for it is neither safe nor right," he said, "to go against conscience. God help me. Amen."

Luther's statement rang across Europe. Luther was declared a heretic. Luther went into hiding in one of Frederick's castles, and the Church declared Luther an outlaw. Charles left Germany and would not return for a decade. Unofficially a war between Charles and the King of France had begun with the French invasion across the Pyrenees into Navarre and a French march eastward against Luxembourg. It was the beginning of an exhausting war that was to last nearly forty years. Charles left Germany in turmoil and fragmented. And some Princes in northern Germany sided with Luther, hoping to strengthen themselves as the expense of Charles.

While in hiding, Luther began translating the New Testament from Latin into German, to make the Bible available to more people. Luther pursued his belief that people found grace through faith and study rather than through sacraments performed by priests. God, he held, was gracious rather than vindictive. And by now he was also advocating marriage for the clergy. He saw celibacy as a cruel defiance of the sexual drive that God had ordained for the purpose of begetting children.

Luther was appealing more to individualism than the community of faith practiced by the Church, and he appealed to the empire's individualistic-minded middle class (the bourgeoisie) who preferred his appeal to intelligence rather than to childlike obedience. The bourgeoisie found Luther's belief in an individual's direct access to God attractive. They shared Luther's nationalism and indignation at the sight of Italian clerics taking money from Germans. They shared Luther's brand of discipline as opposed to the tradition of saintliness through poverty. And, with the help of the bourgeoisie, Protestantism spread, while the Church was maintaining its internationalism and maintaining its hold on the landed wealthy - the owners of estates.

Christians with a variety of views were flocking to Luther's banner - the beginning of the fragmentation that would be Protestantism into the 21st century. There were those who found no support for infant baptism in scripture and supported baptism only for believers. They were derisively called Anabaptists. Some of them espoused egalitarianism and other revolutionist doctrines, and they found followers mainly among the poor. They revolted against princely authority, led by Thomas Münzer, the Lutheran pastor at the German town of Zwickau - about fifty miles north of what is now the Czech border.

Luther was unhappy about the diversity appearing among the Protestants. He was no defender of choice in religious conviction. He believed that God had spoken clearly and that no excuse existed for deviation. Truth for Luther was not a matter of interpretation. Truth for Luther was absolute and people who strayed from that truth were in error.

Peasants Revolt and Princes Dominate
Luther's movement coincided with unrest among German peasants and added to their unrest, as did crop failures in 1523 and 1524. Republicanism - opposition to royal authority - also contributed to unrest among the peasants, republicanism in Switzerland spilling northward across the Swiss border into that part of Germany where the peasant uprising in 1524 began. The rebelling peasants denounced feudal oppression. They complained of nobles having seized lands that had traditionally been used by all - a part of the trend of the rich and powerful becoming richer and more powerful. The rebelling peasants complained of new rents and new obligations imposed on them by the owners of land, and of death duties in the form of a peasant's best horses or cows.

Luther approved of the demands made by the protesters - one of which was the right to choose their own ministers. Luther urged the princes to accept those demands that were reasonable. Frederick of Saxony was the only prince who had some sympathy for the peasants, saying that the poor were in many ways oppressed. Frederick hoped for a peaceful settlement with the peasants, but he died on May 4, 1525. Meanwhile, the demands of the peasants had been rebuffed, and protest by the peasants had turned violent and to pillage. Luther feared that the peasants would discredit his movement in the eyes of the princes and the upper classes. Luther took literally Paul's words, described in Romans 13:1-2, that every soul should be subject "to the higher owners." He declared that Christians had to accept the government that was put over them and had to accept with patience their sufferings, that their rulers might be damned by God for their injustices but that nobody fighting these injustices would enter heaven. Rebellion, he added, hastened the end of civilized society.

Luther called on the princes to crush the rising. He declared that if there were innocent people among the rebels that God would save them, that no mercy should be given them. The princes did not need Luther's encouragement. The armies of Protestant as well as Catholic princes overwhelmed the rebels - as armies usually did against pockets of rebels. Historians estimate that over 75,000 peasants were killed in 1525. The victorious German princes claimed the right to determine the religion of their subjects. Those princes who had converted to Lutheranism took control of local Lutheran churches. Ten years later the Prince of Waldeck, would crush the Anabaptist society at Münster, diminishing the Anabaptist movement.

The Lutheranism Spreads, Erasmus Remains Catholic
The Lutherans abolished confession, an abolition that appealed to women wishing freedom from embarrassing observations about their sexual lives. In Lutheran schools, boys and girls became literate in the catechism and the Bible. The Lutherans abolished monasticism and emphasized the home as a special domain of the wife and a place of love, tenderness and reconciliation. The Lutherans allowed their clergy to marry, making it possible for those women who had been the concubines or mistresses of priests to become honorable wives. In 1525, Luther's sexual frustration came to an end: around the age of forty-three he married a former nun, Kathrina von Bora, and he was to father six children.

Luther's movement also proliferated. By 1522 his movement had taken hold in the city of Bremen. By 1523 it had taken hold in the city of Strasbourg, and by 1529 in Hamburg. And Protestantism spread to the Netherlands.

Sweden had freed itself from rule by Danish royalty in 1520, and its new king, Gustavus Vasa, owed much money to his supporters at Lübeck, in northern Germany. To liquidate this debt he raised taxes and asked for a special contribution from the Church. The Church refused. Luther's ideas were migrating to Sweden, and the New Testament was translated in Swedish in 1526. The following year the king, still short of money, decreed that the Church was to surrender part of its income to the Crown, all its castles and all donations it had received since 1454. Church estates were transferred to the crown. The power of the Church in Sweden was broken. Religion was organized along strictly Lutheran lines, and upper clergy were now to have more common origins. As the Church saw it, selfish rulers were increasing their political power and wealth at the expense of the Church.