Lutheran History
The Lutheran Church is named after Martin Luther who initiated the Protestant Reformation. Luther was born in Eisleben, Germany, November 10, 1483. He was a troubled young man who became first a monk and then a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. He sought with great earnestness to live according to all the teachings of his church in the hope that he might find peace for his soul and the assurance that he was just before God. He fasted and tortured himself in various ways. The Catholic Church at the time taught that these practices were especially pleasing to God, but they gave Luther no peace or assurance.
A spiritual turning point for Luther came when he was praying and studying the Bible. He read, "The just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:17; Gal 3:11). He realized that, contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, we are not saved by what we do, but by what Jesus Christ did. We are saved by our belief and acceptance of Grace. We are justified by faith, not by works. As the ramifications of this truth dawned on Luther, his troubled soul found peace, and his mission began.
Luther continued his study of the Word of God with renewed vigor and became increasingly distressed with how the Roman Catholic Church had departed from the teachings of the Bible on many points. For example the Catholic Church taught that tradition and the decrees of popes and church councils had the same authority as the Bible. Luther began to see the Bible as the sole authority of Christianity and realized that traditions and decrees were the inventions of people, not of God.
At this time, there were a large number of Catholic traditions and practices that had no basis in Biblical Scriptures. Most distressing to Luther was the Catholic Church's practice of selling "indulgences." People could purchase these indulgences and buy forgiveness of their sins, either for a specified period or for life, according to the amount paid. The Catholic Church taught that we become just before God, not by faith in Christ alone and through grace alone, but by faith and works of merit which man must do. It taught that prayers should be made to the saints, especially to the Virgin Mary, and not the triune God alone. The church also had the doctrine of purgatory, which is found nowhere in the Bible, and the doctrine of the surplus merits of the saints. The Catholic Church taught that priests had a privileged relationship with God and insisted that the Bible and worship services be held in Latin. Even the practice of celibacy among priests has no Biblical basis and was simply a tradition that arose in the early church hundreds of years after Christ's death and resurrection.
By October 31, 1517, Luther was ready to publicly challenge the Catholic Church. He nailed The Ninety-Five Theses, (or ninety-five points that he was willing to debate) upon the door of the castle church at Wittenberg. At the time, the church doors were often used as a public bulletin board, and, as he was a faculty member at the local college, an invitation for public debate was not uncommon. It should be pointed out that Luther did not intend to break with the Roman Catholic Church. His intention was only to cleanse it of its teachings and practices that lacked basis in the Bible. Instead, he began the great Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther was not the first to challenge the Catholic Church, but he was the first to do so without being burned at the stake for heresy. He also had a lot of help in spreading his ideas from Gutenberg's movable type printing press, which allowed documents to be mass-produced in various languages and distributed with a speed that was never seen before.
In April 1512, Luther was summoned by the Catholic Church to Worms, Germany, to account for defying the Roman Catholic Church. At the Diet of Worms (a religious council), Luther was commanded to retract his questioning of church practices or (it was well understood) he would be killed. His answer was, "Unless I am convinced by Scripture or other clear proofs, I neither can or dare retract anything, for my conscience is bound in God's Word." It is said that he took a Bible, threw it to the ground, stood on it, and continued, "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; so help me God, Amen."
It was not very long before divisions among the Protestant movements arose. Differences in interpretation of the Scriptures developed, especially in regard to the sacraments. Those who agreed with Luther's interpretations came to be called Lutherans. (This name was first used by the enemies of Luther.) The other Protestants have become known as the Reformed denominations, including the Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and Methodists.
The confessions of faith formulated in the earliest centuries of the Christian Church are the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. The Lutheran Church holds these confessions in common with various other Christian denominations. The specifically Lutheran confessions are the Augsburg Confession and Luther's Catechism. All the confessional documents of the Lutheran Church are found in a volume called The Book of Concord.
A spiritual turning point for Luther came when he was praying and studying the Bible. He read, "The just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:17; Gal 3:11). He realized that, contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, we are not saved by what we do, but by what Jesus Christ did. We are saved by our belief and acceptance of Grace. We are justified by faith, not by works. As the ramifications of this truth dawned on Luther, his troubled soul found peace, and his mission began.
Luther continued his study of the Word of God with renewed vigor and became increasingly distressed with how the Roman Catholic Church had departed from the teachings of the Bible on many points. For example the Catholic Church taught that tradition and the decrees of popes and church councils had the same authority as the Bible. Luther began to see the Bible as the sole authority of Christianity and realized that traditions and decrees were the inventions of people, not of God.
At this time, there were a large number of Catholic traditions and practices that had no basis in Biblical Scriptures. Most distressing to Luther was the Catholic Church's practice of selling "indulgences." People could purchase these indulgences and buy forgiveness of their sins, either for a specified period or for life, according to the amount paid. The Catholic Church taught that we become just before God, not by faith in Christ alone and through grace alone, but by faith and works of merit which man must do. It taught that prayers should be made to the saints, especially to the Virgin Mary, and not the triune God alone. The church also had the doctrine of purgatory, which is found nowhere in the Bible, and the doctrine of the surplus merits of the saints. The Catholic Church taught that priests had a privileged relationship with God and insisted that the Bible and worship services be held in Latin. Even the practice of celibacy among priests has no Biblical basis and was simply a tradition that arose in the early church hundreds of years after Christ's death and resurrection.
By October 31, 1517, Luther was ready to publicly challenge the Catholic Church. He nailed The Ninety-Five Theses, (or ninety-five points that he was willing to debate) upon the door of the castle church at Wittenberg. At the time, the church doors were often used as a public bulletin board, and, as he was a faculty member at the local college, an invitation for public debate was not uncommon. It should be pointed out that Luther did not intend to break with the Roman Catholic Church. His intention was only to cleanse it of its teachings and practices that lacked basis in the Bible. Instead, he began the great Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther was not the first to challenge the Catholic Church, but he was the first to do so without being burned at the stake for heresy. He also had a lot of help in spreading his ideas from Gutenberg's movable type printing press, which allowed documents to be mass-produced in various languages and distributed with a speed that was never seen before.
In April 1512, Luther was summoned by the Catholic Church to Worms, Germany, to account for defying the Roman Catholic Church. At the Diet of Worms (a religious council), Luther was commanded to retract his questioning of church practices or (it was well understood) he would be killed. His answer was, "Unless I am convinced by Scripture or other clear proofs, I neither can or dare retract anything, for my conscience is bound in God's Word." It is said that he took a Bible, threw it to the ground, stood on it, and continued, "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; so help me God, Amen."
It was not very long before divisions among the Protestant movements arose. Differences in interpretation of the Scriptures developed, especially in regard to the sacraments. Those who agreed with Luther's interpretations came to be called Lutherans. (This name was first used by the enemies of Luther.) The other Protestants have become known as the Reformed denominations, including the Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and Methodists.
The confessions of faith formulated in the earliest centuries of the Christian Church are the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. The Lutheran Church holds these confessions in common with various other Christian denominations. The specifically Lutheran confessions are the Augsburg Confession and Luther's Catechism. All the confessional documents of the Lutheran Church are found in a volume called The Book of Concord.
