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Martin Luther - Good or Bad?

Madhuri

Madhuri

RF Goddess
Staff member
Premium Member
He was a scared, hateful man. Between him and Calvin, there's a lot of bad that happened including pioneering the witch hunts.
 
Shad

Shad

Veteran Member
RedDragon94 said:
Sure. It's not like only protestants get to go to heaven for believing that Jesus paid everything for them to get there. (Though the Bible may teach that.)
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Hardly as various Protestant groups considered Catholics "lost" for just being Catholic. Some groups considered the RCC to be the "whore of Babylon", the Pope is the anti-christ, etc.


Luther was a heretic and yet he was orthodox about it.
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He made a claim to orthodox, this does not mean it is a fact. Orthodox

[quote[In the Catholic Church's mentality Jesus and the Church are synonymous. [/quote]

Which Protestants had no issues in claiming their church, it's teachings were synonymous with Jesus. More so Protestants entertained the idea that Kings had a direct connection to God, more so than Popes of the time claimed, which had the duty to teach their subjects how to be Christians. Nevermind that these Kings often disagreed with each other to the point that even father and son contradicted each other.

Whatever the Church says, God says.
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Which Kings did as well under Protestantism

And it's even more so in that day and time because people are without the Scriptures to interpret them for themselves.
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Do you know what happened when anyone was free to interpret Scripture as they pleased? You had lawyers such Calvin dictating what was true or not. You had politicians dictating what was true or not. You had Kings dictating what was true or not. This is why Protestantism splinted so quickly as each self-proclaimed authority rejecting another yet none had any real basis for their views other than their own self-claimed authority. If you didn't agree with Lutherans you could just join the Calvinists. I you didn't agree with the Calvinists you could become a Puritan. Etc, etc. If you agreed with no one you could just start up your own church, call it the truth and find.

You seem oblivious that most people couldn't actually read the Bible so they had no use for this "opportunity" The Reformation caused the education system to collapse, for the commoners, as it was run by Catholics so even fewer people could read when Catholics were oppressed. They were no more free than they were under Catholics, less free if you happened to be in England, Switzerland or Northern Germany. This "freedom" to read scripture, as pointed out above, is a fantasy of the modern era. This "freedom" was only applied to the upper class. If a commoner, that could read, interpreted Scripture they often faced state power if they didn't agree with the state sanctioned religion than were free to voice their views.

In Martin Luther's mind it seems to me that God had become an oppressive force in the world and that he would change God by changing the Church back to what he felt was the way the first century Church was. And he was obviously pretty good at it.
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He started as a reformer for the RCC and was attempting to bring up issues that were already known and present. It had become abusive and far to political. Nevermind that he grasped at the same chances he denouced when he found supporters from the upper class.

I hope you understand that Luther opened a floodgate in which anyone could interpret scripture as they wished. No longer did one even have to be trained in theology, Latin, Greek, etc. Lawyers, commoners, anyone could do as they wished. The damage caused by this floodgate lasted for centuries
 
C

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
I was the beneficiary of 12 years of excellent Catholic education. Luther was right up there with Hitler and Nero.
I have since developed a little more sophisticated understanding of what was going on at the time.
He was very extreme. Which is a big problem when you get that sort of power.
Tom
 
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