Martin Luther King Jr.

There are very few men or women that it can be said with absolute certainty that they changed the course of history. Jesus was one; so was Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. Still another was Martin Luther, known as the greatest of the Protestant reformers of the 16th century. Luther was born in Eisleben, a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, November 10, 1483. He was the son of a miner, Hans Luther, in humble circumstances; his mother, Margarethe Luther (Ziegler), was a woman of exemplary virtue, and esteemed in her walk of life.

Shortly after Luther's birth, his parents removed to Mansfield, a town in the Mansfelder Land district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany where their circumstances significantly improved by industry and perseverance. Their son was sent to school; and both at home and at school his training was of a rigorous and solidifying of integrity. When he reached the age of eighteenth, he entered the university at Erfurt, with a view of qualifying himself for the legal profession.

Luther dedicated himself to monastic life, devoting himself to fasts, long hours in prayer and pilgrimage, and frequent confession. Luther tried to please God through this dedication, but it only increased his awareness of his own sinfulness. He would later remark, "If anyone could have gained heaven as a monk, then I would indeed have been among them." Luther described this period of his life as one of deep spiritual despair. He said, "I lost hold of Christ the Savior and Comforter and made of him a stock-master and hangman over my poor soul."

Johann von Staupitz, was a theologian, university preacher, Vicar-General of the Augus-tinian Order in Germany supervised Luther during a critical period in his spiritual life. Luther remarked, "If it had not been for Dr. Staupitz, I should have sunk in hell." Luther's superior, con-cluded that the young monk needed more work to distract him from excessive introspection and ordered him to pursue an academic career. In 1507 he was ordained to the priesthood, and in 1508 began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg. He received a Bachelor's degree in Biblical studies on March 9, 1508, and another Bachelor's degree in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509. On October 19, 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology and, on Octo-ber 21, 1512, was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Witten-berg, having been called to the position of Doctor in Bible. He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg.

Luther was one day to examining the vulgate version of the Bible in the University Li-brary, when he saw with astonishment that there were more gospels and epistles than in the lec-tionaries. He was shocked by the contents of his newly found treasure. His heart was deeply touched, and he was resolved to devoting himself to a spiritual life. He separated himself from his friends and fellow-students, and withdrew into the Augustine convent at Erfurt.

As a friar of the Augustinian Order of Eremites, named after Saint Augustine of Hippo, are several Roman Catholic monastic orders and congregations of both men and women living according to a guide to religious life known as the Rule of Saint Augustine, he was sent on a mission to Rome, and he has described intensely what he saw and heard. Upon his return, he was made a Doctor of the Holy Scriptures, and his career as a reformer may have begun. Money was largely needed at Rome, to feed the extravagances of the papal court; and its numerous missiona-ries search everywhere to raise funds by the sale of "indulgences," as they were called, for the sins of frail humanity; the principal of these was John Tetzel, a Dominican friar. Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel, a papal commissioner for indulgences: "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs"; and he insisted that since pardons were God's alone to grant, those who claimed indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

Luther then composed his 95 theses on the doctrine of indulgences, which he nailed up on the gate of the church at Wittenberg, and which he offered to defend in the university against all opponents. The general thrust of these was to deny to the pope all right to forgive sins. "If a sinner was truly contrite, he received complete forgiveness. The pope's absolution had no value in and for itself." Not until years later, in fact, did Luther come to realize that his action of Oct. 31, 1517, it was the first shot in the war of words that was to create the Reformation Era.

The Church of Rome was thoroughly monolithic and was not about to change into some-thing else. If a metamorphosis had occurred within the Roman Catholic Church, Luther would have had a different destiny. But Luther's fate was sealed, and his job was cut out for him. When looking at Luther and the Reformation Era, Paul Tillich states, "The turning point of the Refor-mation and of church history in general is the experience of an Augustinian monk in his monastic cell, Martin Luther." Martin Luther did not merely teach different doctrines; like others had such as John Wycliffe (c.1320 - December 31, 1384) an English theologian and early proponent of reform in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century or Jan Hus, (c. 1370- July 6, 1415) a Czech religious thinker, philosopher, reformer, and teacher at Charles University in Pra-gue. The Roman Catholic Church considered his teachings heretical, and Hus was excommuni-cated in 1411, condemned by the Council of Constance, and burned at the stake. But none of the others who protested against the Roman system were able to break through it.

The only man who really made a breakthrough, and whose breakthrough has transformed the surface of the earth, was Martin Luther:

He is one of the few great prophets of the Christian Church, and his greatness is overwhelming, even if it was limited by some of his personal traits and his later development. He is responsible for the fact that a purified Christianity, a Chris-tianity of the Reformation, was able to establish itself equal terms with the Roman tradition" (Tillich 227).

Former Professor at Yale School of Divinity and Church History Historian, Jaroslav Jan Pelikan stated, the Reformation was a "tragic necessity" tragic in that it shattered the unity of Christendom, necessary in that it cleansed the church and restored man's faith in God to its Scriptural roots. It is equally true that the Reformation is an unrealized hope and unfinished ideal. Dr. Wilhelm Pauck, while a Professor at Union Theological