The Luther Reformation

Short Paper #4

Between the timeframe of 1717 through 1564 a man named Martin Luther thought that the bible and Christian faith should be ran and taught a different way than the Catholics thought it should be. Martin Luther was alive from 1483 to 1546 he was born to a Peasant family in Germany. He entered an Augustinian Monastery at the age of 20. Six years after the Monastery in 1512 later he went to teach at Wittenberg University in Saxton. Luther disagreed with the ways the Catholics did things; he was very outspoken about this. He was never confident that he earned salvation by conventional means, and he hated indulgences. He published 95 theses with his ideas or his re justification by faith.

There was a lot of corruption that was going on in the church at the time of Martin Luther. The church used to raise money in exchange of indulgence. The idea of indulgence was that Christians would pay money to the church (God) to take pity on an individual Christian. They raised money through practices like simony and selling indulgences. The Catholics also had the ideology that eventually you and god would make communication. Regardless of the actions in church, eventually at the right time god would reach out to you. Martin Luther wanted to do away with this method the church used. Luther believed that there was a fine line between God and the individual. He didn't want the church to be acting as a merchant or sort of middle man anymore. Luther believed that rather than going to a priest or Bishop that you should spend your time reading the bible. By reading the bible that is how you should have your dialogue with God.

Luther also believed that the position of the Pope was completely irrelevant. After preaching this, Pope Leo X demanded that Luther recant 41 of his 95 theses. Coming back to Luther's main idea, he wanted to close the church as an organization, forget the pope, and forget the bishops. There was nothing in the