Martin Luther and His Influence on Social Order

Martin Luther and His Influence on Social Order

On October 31, 1517, a copy of Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg stirred up the crowd. The author Martin Luther, together with his concept of ‘justification by faith alone' and ‘the freedom of the Christian' confronted the Catholic Church, shook up the widely accepted view on religion practices, and became the catalyst of the Protestant Reformation which upset the social order and the structures of authority in Europe later on.

The seemingly unexpected event broke out as a result of the dynamics of that period. Before the sixteenth century, the European societies were long regarded stable because of the rigid social order and the common religious faith led by the Holy Roman Catholic Church; however, discontent arose with two changes in the societies. One was the wide spread of Humanism spirit from the Renaissance which focused on individual as opposed to the Church hierarchy. The other one was the rise of the power of merchants and the middle class who were unsatisfied with the distribution of wealth and the corruption of the church, seeking opportunities through changes. After all, the various dynamics in the European societies incubated Luther's idea and the decades-long corruption of the church sparked the quest for change in social hierarchy, which all indicated that a reformation and change on social order would arrive shortly.

Indeed, the Ninety-Five Theses, together with Luther's other ideas revealed the critical problem within the seemingly stable societies during the sixteenth century and went along with the quest for social changes among the people. Stating ‘Faith alone is the saving and efficacious use of the Word of God' by citing from Rom.10 [:9] ‘If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,'(On Christian Liberty, page7) Luther radically rejected the practice of ‘indulgences' which was the remissions of temporal punishment due for sins. He insisted that ‘the believing soul by means of the pledge of its faith is free in Christ, its bridegroom, free from all sins, secure against death and hell, and is endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of Christ its bridegroom.' In this sense, in contrast with the traditional Roman Catholicism and ‘indulgences', Luther brought up a new idea of religious ritual that individual could have open and direct communication with God and would be free from sins by having faith in heart. The "faith alone" doctrine theoretically refuted the necessity of the common social practices of ‘indulgences,' fundamentally challenged the absolute authority of Catholic Church, and brought a greater responsibility on individual. Although Luther refuted the absolute