Martin Luther & Reformation Introduction Term Paper

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It made Luther angry that the Church was telling people that unless they paid their indulgences, they would be stuck in purgatory forever. This was a ploy, Luther thought, made up by greedy men who were hiding behind the masks of religion in order to take advantage of people.

But the printing of a long list of criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, which was all-powerful, made the Church even more angry, and Luther was considered an iconoclast. By the time the Church charged him with heresy. He was brought before Cardinal Cajetan in Augsburg, and the Cardinal demanded he recant what he had written, and in effect, apologize. In 1519, Luther was asked to debate with theologian Johann Eck, and the Church kept demanding he recant, but he ran back to Wittenberg for safety, and his faculty sent a letter to the Papacy saying Luther would not return and be subject to prison of death. Pope Leo declared that 41 of the 95 articles in the theses were heretical teachings, and Luther's books were burned in public in Rome.

In 1520, Luther wrote his views on Christianity again, and accused the Pope of being the antichrist. Luther's main point was that the Holy Bible should be the power that people turn to, not the dogma of a corrupt Catholic Church. In 1521, Luther agreed to appear before the Diet of Worms, and Johann Eck showed Luther copies of Luther's writings and demanded Luther either recant or accept his punishment.

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Luther refused to back down. He told Eck, "Unless I shall be convinced by the testimonies of the Scriptures or by clear reason...I neither can nor will make any retraction, since it is neither safe nor honourable to act against conscience. God help me. Amen."

Question Three: What kind of legacy did Luther's protest bequeath for modern history, and how did Luther's protest become the Reformation?

Luther basically took the old Roman Catholic Church to task for their arrogance, and he made a new start for millions of people to come, by essentially inventing a new way for Christianity to be practiced and celebrated. The Lutheran Church today is a protestant church with much less dogma, fewer rules, no requirement of "confession" of one's sins to a priest once a week. Modern history is now a place of many denominations, of many faiths, and even within the Christian community there are dozens of different ways of believing in Jesus Christ. So what Luther did was truly reform what had been a hard-core dictatorial Catholic Church that served as God on earth, which was politically powerful and greedy. Luther is the reason that the ordinary people, the poor, middle class, and all ethnic races, can believe in God and Christ in different ways. What Luther taught was that Christ and God were influencing people's lives in personal, spiritual ways, and an institution like the Church should not interfere too much.

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