“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”
— Romans 1:16–17 ESV
Martin Luther’s claim to fame is that he launched the Protestant Reformation. That whole movement was a “back to the Bible” movement; a key belief of the Reformation was that the Bible alone was man’s guide to Christian belief and morals. Luther and other Protestants believed that the Catholic church had traditions and practices at variance with the New Testament. They believed that Catholicism had strayed a long way from the Christianity taught in the Bible, and that this was why the church had become corrupt and ineffective.
On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther posted his famous Ninety-five Theses, concerned with church corruption [The specifics surrounding this event is highly contested today. There is proof that Luther did indeed write his Ninety-five Theses and sent them to the Archbishop on October 31, 1517; but no substantial evidence exists to support history’s further claim that he nailed them to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther himself was vague in his own recollection of the details surrounding this now historic event—as to whether or not it ever actually did, in fact, take place. Furthermore, his Ninety-five theses were not demands on the local church, per se, as some might insist; but were, rather, points to debate academically among peer theologians, as was the case with all theses composed in the Sixteenth Century]. It was the day before the Feast of All Saints, and he was thirty-three years old. From that point on, his life was one of controversy and drama. When he walked into the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and other powerful figures at the Diet of Worms, April 1521, to answer charges of heresy and to hear a possible death sentence, an old knight was heard to say: “Little monk, I like the step you take but neither I nor any of our battle comrades would take it.” He was asked to retract his views, but before the council he made his famous statement: “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” He was excommunicated, and there were threats on his life, but he pursued his vision of Christian beliefs and morals based on Scripture. Whereas Catholics claimed that both the Bible and the many centuries of church traditions were authoritative, Luther said, no, the Bible is man’s sole authority.
One key result of the Reformation was many new translations of the Bible into the people’s spoken languages, ending the many years of the Bible being only in Latin, a language the people no longer understood. Luther’s great contribution was his one-man Bible translation, completed in 1534. Somehow he completed the entire New Testament in a little over two months. It was the German Bible for centuries and one literary critic called it “the first work of art in German prose.” In his busy life Luther also managed to write dozens of theological works and commentaries on large parts of the Bible.
It has been said that in Martin Luther’s home in Wittenberg, Germany, there exists a dark spot on one of the walls that was reportedly caused by the breaking of an ink bottle that Luther threw at the devil. Apparently, Luther heard noises in the wall, and thought the noises were from the devil. Many have explained that Luther actually heard rats crawling in the wall, and perhaps rats would be a more logical explanation, but what does it matter—Luther thought it was the devil, and so he hurled the ink bottle at the direction of the noise! Charles Goodell—a twentieth-century American Politician—once added to this story, “I wish there were more men today who would fling their ink at the devil, whether by the bottleful or in drops from the pen’s point.”
— Ron Metheny
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