Martin Luther's View of Social Justice

Martin Luther's View of Social Justice

Martin Luther was born on November 10th, 1483, in Saxony, southeast Germany. His mother and father Hans and Margarette Luther were peasants who improved their financial standings through mining. Luther's parents wanted much more for their child so they decided a good education was in order for a future lawyer. At the age of seven Martin Luther entered a school in Mansfeld, at fourteen he continued his studies north in Magdeburg, and then the following year he enrolled in a school where he was born in Eisleben. His schooling up to this point granted him admittance to the University of Erfurt in 1501. He would go on to receive a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degree in grammar, logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics. Martin Luther was on a good track to becoming a successful lawyer until a thunderstorm created an epiphany. Luther's life changing experience set out a new course for him. It all occurred during a severe thunderstorm where he was scared for his life. He prayed to St. Anne to save him and in return he would become a monk. The storm settled and Luther kept his word even though the decision disappointed his father. Luther was driven by religion and God's wrath, so he believed life in a monastery would help him find salvation.

On July 15th 1505, Martin Luther entered the Augustinian friary in Erfurt. Early on the monastery life was taking its toll on Luther. He couldn't find the religious enlightenment he was looking for. His mentor Johann Staupitz encouraged him to focus exclusively on Christ and this would let him find the guidance he sought. This allowed Luther to see the immortality and corruption among the catholic priests. When he came out of the monastery Luther was still interested in theology. He went on to attend class and teach at the University of Wittenberg where he received his doctorate in theology.

Martin Luther had a "Towering Experience" in 1514 and came to realize that the righteousness will live by faith (Romans 1:17). In other words, he realized the key to spiritual salvation was not to fear God or be enslaved by religious ideology, but to believe that faith alone would bring salvation. Luther would dwell on this idea for several years creating a lot of controversy between the church and government. In 1517, Pope Leo X announced a new round of indulgences to help build St. Peter's. Albrecht was authorized to sell indulgences for the remission of sins in his land, and the Dominican monk John Tetzel was authorized to do so. This frustrated Martin Luther so much that on October 31st, 1517 he nailed a sheet of paper with 95 theses on the university's chapel door. The Ninety-Five Theses criticized the indulgences as corrupting people's faith. Luther questioned how indulgences could release anyone from purgatory or gain forgiveness of sins. The printing press helped create a lot of copies of the Ninety-Five Theses and allowed Luther to spread his ideas throughout Germany and throughout Europe in a couple months. This is the beginning of Luther's reformation toward social justice.

The church wanted to stop the defiance, but when the Cardinal Thomas Cajetan met with Martin Luther in Ausburg Luther refused to recant. He would only agree if he could be proven wrong by scripture. They never came to an agreement and ended the meeting on bad terms. Luther continued to lecture and write in Wittenberg, and during the summer of 1519 he publicly declared that the Bible does not give the pope the right to interpret scripture. This was direct insult to the authority of the papacy. The pope had had enough at this point and threatened Luther that if he did not stop he would be excommunicated. This didn't stop Luther though. He actually burned the letter, and continued to give public presentations criticizing the Pope and his authority, and sharing an understanding of salvation by grace of faith and not through merit gained by good works.

Martin Luther was officially excommunicated in January 1521 from the Roman Catholic Church. He was summoned before the Diet of Worms which was a general assembly of secular authorities. Luther continued to stand by his ideas and refused to recant his statements. He demanded to be shown any scripture that would refute his position, but there was none. The council went on to release the Edict of Worms which banned Luther's writings and pronounced him a condemned and wanted man. Friends helped him hide out at the Wartburg Castle, and while he remained hidden he translated the New Testament into the German language and gave ordinary people the opportunity to read God's word.

Even though he was still under the threat of being arrested Luther returned to Wittenberg. He was able to avoid being captured and went on to organize a new church, Lutheranism. The German prince supported him and allowed for many followers to join the new church. Luther became somewhat dependent on rulers because they helped his church grow. Luther came up with new ideas on who is responsible for helping those in need. Although his new ideas conflicted with the existing ones, he was able to support them with his theology on justification. For some reason Luther's ideas made sense to people and he was able to establish his own type of religion.

Martin Luther's early education led him to be a nominalist. The schooling he received in Erfurt lead to his monastic life at Augustinian. The thunderstorm that scared Luther's life and his towering experience may have not happened if not for nominalism. Nominalists had a distorted image of God. They believed he was an arbitrary god who vengefully, mercilessly pursued anything that incited his wrath. This idea encouraged people to flee from such a god, and in Luther's case flee to a monastery. However, the Via Moderna doesn't show any trace of this arbitrary god. In fact the substance of the "modern way" emphasizes not on God as the "highest being," but as "the personal God" who had revealed and displayed His will to redeem mankind (Oberman, 1984, pg.122).

The Via Moderna was based on the idea that once a man meets the requirements of God by doing "what lies within him," then God will confer the gift of justifying grace. It was the entire theological tradition of medieval theology from the twelfth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century where people of the church believed justification was obtained in this manner. Unfortunately, the theological view of the "via moderna" regarding man's precise obligation to God caused significant uncertainty regarding whether a man had met the requirements. Luther went on to change this by creating three theological modifications with via moderna, even though he was a firm believer in the