Martin Luther Out of all the Christian denominations in the world and there are a lot of them! only one is built on a firm foundation. Only one is built on a rock; all the others are houses built on sand. And, as Our Lord says in the Scriptures, a house built on sand will wash away when the storms and rain come. The house built on the rock is c'mon, you know this, say it with me the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church! The houses built on sand are the heresies and the denominations which have sprung up from them. Although there are many different denominations of Christianity, they can be gathered into a few very big groups. If someone's Christian but not Catholic, chances are they're a Protestant. The title comes from the fact that they protested the Catholic Church and Her doctrines. Today, I'm going to tell you about the man who, more than any other, started the Protestant Revolution and laid the shoddy foundations for many, many houses built on sand. That man is Martin Luther, who gives his name to Lutheranism but his influence is much greater than one denomination. Like many founders of heresies, he was an intelligent man, hard working, outwardly holy, but suffered under the weight of a number of spiritual crosses which well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk some history. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Church was in a mess. The clergy was corrupt, plagues had devastated the population, taxation was squeezing the people and there was a wind of rebellion blowing across the whole of Europe. The stage was set for a dreadful revolt. And the actor who walked onto that stage was Martin Luther. Luther was born in 1483 in Germany. His family were peasants. They were simple, tough people who beat Martin and treated him cruelly. He was also beaten and punished in school. But despite the fact that his teachers were hitting him, Luther learned a lot. He went to university in 1501, and within four years he'd got two degrees, coming near the top of his class each time. After this, in 1505, he joined an Augustinian monastery. This was unexpected, but Luther later said the mistreatment from his parents and teachers forced him to run away and become a monk by making an involuntary and enforced vow. He was ordained two years later and threw himself into his work. For the next decade, he was a whirlwind of activity. He studied, he worked, he preached, he lectured, he wrote. He was placed in important positions at universities and in the monastery. He was working so hard he needed two secretaries to keep up with him. He even refused to abandon his post when the plague came to town! So what went wrong? I mean, something much have gone wrong or we'd be talking about Saint Martin Luther, patron saint of abbots or something, right? Listen to the list of what he did in the decade after his ordination: study, work, preaching, writing, lecturing, administration. Notice anything missing?
Prayer. Luther was working so hard, doing so much, that he didn't make time for prayer. He stopped saying The Divine Office something required of priests then and now under penalty of mortal sin so he had more time to study. He might go weeks without saying it, and then suddenly be overcome with guilt. He'd lock himself in his cell and torment himself by starving himself, or even whipping and beating himself as some sort of mortification. Luther suffered from scrupulosity. He was obsessed with his sins and compulsively punished himself for them. He couldn't or wouldn't see God as merciful and forgiving. Instead, he saw Him as wrathful and vengeful. He became depressed and angry. He seemed to hate God and blasphemed Him, saying he wished he'd never been born. He was obsessive and violent, saying he would kill anyone who refused to submit to the Church. Working so hard and not praying didn't help Luther overcome these problems. They merely became worse. He filled his life with energetic study and work, not taking time to stop, slow down and pray. Perhaps if he had just taken some time off and focused on Christ, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But he didn't. And things got worse in Europe. The archbishop of Mainz needed to raise a large sum of money. He'd got into debt buying his way to high powered positions in the Church. Remember what I told you about the clergy being corrupt? Yeah, this is it, right here. Historians debate about exactly what happened. Some say the archbishop decided to sell indulgences in order to raise money, and the Pope agreed, in return for a cut of the profits. Others say he just tried to raise money by asking for donations and that people were confused. The archbishop hired Johann Tetzel, a Dominican monk, to raise money. He was really good at it and preached throughout Germany, making a lot of money for his boss. And then he came to Wittenberg, where Luther was. Luther was angry. Regardless of whether or not Tetzel was actually selling indulgences, Luther and other people certainly thought he was. And selling indulgences is totally wrong. You can't do it not just you aren't allowed to, you just can't do it. You certainly can't have some back room deal and split the profits with your buddy in Rome as you pay off a debt you got after bribing someone to get a cushy job, which is what Luther thought was happening. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. Luther took his infamous Ninety five Theses and nailed them to the church door on October 31, 1517. Now, a lot is made of this particular event. Catholics see it as an act of open rebellion and vandalism, and Lutherans see it as, well, much the same, minus the vandalism. We have this vision of the arrogant
(or brave, depending on which side of the Tiber you are on) Luther marching up and bang bang bang! hammering something to a door and then dropping the hammer like a rapper dropping the mic. That's not the case at all. Firstly, we don't actually know if he did it! The story comes from someone who wasn't even there and might have just made it up. Regardless of that, back in the 16th century, there were no Imessage boards, no radio shows, not really any newspapers or things of that sort. If you wanted to talk about something, to discuss a point, you had to stick it up somewhere and have people read it. That is what the church door in Wittenberg was it was a notice board. People put all kinds of stuff up there. Luther also sent copies of his theses to the archbishop. He passed them to his advisers and local university professors. The advisers came back with a unanimous verdict that they were heresy and said action should be taken against Luther. That report was sent to the Pope. Things moved incredibly rapidly. Copies of Luther's theses were all over Europe, having been translated from Latin into German. Theologians and priests responded to them. Luther wrote more, expanding and doubling down on his theology. The Theses were certainly being discussed! But what did they say? Well, they denied the doctrine of indulgences. Luther had been so scandalized by the greedy sale of indulgences that he rejected the whole doctrine, rather than trying to prevent the abuse. The Church responded slowly to Luther; the Pope fatally underestimated him and called him a drunken German who, when sober, will change his mind. But Luther's errors weren't owing to drink. By this time, he had developed more of his own unique theologies, including the famous faith alone and Scripture alone falsehoods. But he also challenged the papacy, the infallibility of the Church and Her councils as well as the Mass itself. It was clear he was not only a heretic but getting worse. In 1520, the Pope warned Luther in the edict Exsurge Domine he would be excommunicated if he did not recant, but Luther refused. He burned a copy of the Pope's document to show his dismissal of it, and the Pope had no choice but to excommunicate him in January 1521. Luther's teachings were banned, but enforcement of that fell to the secular authorities. At the Diet of Worms that's not where you stuff your face with wriggly things you find in your garden, but rather a meeting held at the town of Worms in Germany at the Diet of Worms in April of 1521, Luther was asked if he stood by what he had written in his various books and pamphlets. Luther said that he did, in a famous speech; Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen. That's pretty clear.
At this point, heresy was not just rejection of the Church it was rejection of the whole social order. Heresies were dangerous because they could make people rise up against their rulers, starting wars and rebellions. It wasn't like today where people believe crazy things but carry on with their lives relatively peacefully; heretics started armed insurrections. The emperor issued a decree making Luther an outlaw. Now, that isn't a masked stranger riding into town and killing the bad guy in a shoot out like in a Western movie. No. That meant he had no legal protection, that it was a crime to give him food or water, and that it was perfectly legal to kill him. It was pretty much a death sentence. But Luther didn't die because he had protectors. Prince Frederick snatched him up and hid him in Wartburg Castle, wearing a false beard. (Luther wore a false beard, not the castle.) He continued to write and attack the Church and Her doctrines. By this point, the Protestant Revolt what they call the Reformation was well underway. Luther's ideas had been adopted by many of his former brothers in the monastery and elsewhere. They had stopped saying private Mass. Some went as far as to call Mass an abomination. Chaos reined. Luther's ideas the rejection of the Church's authority encouraged people to rebel against any kind of authority. Princes and nobles saw this as an opportunity to establish their own realms, without having to be under the emperor or the Pope. That s why leaders in Germany supported and protected him. But his political ideas weren't his most dangerous. He taught that Scripture should be the sole foundation of belief, not Tradition or the Church's teaching, and also taught that Scripture could be interpreted differently from the way the Church interpreted it. Lutheranism spread through Germany, and Luther soon found himself involved in the organization of this new community, separate from the Catholic Church. Not only was he involved in the administration of Lutheranism, but he also developed a new mass. It was in German rather than Latin, but that was not the main change he made: He got rid of everything sacrificial, turning it into a community meal. Luther continued to lead the Lutheran community and develop his heresy for the rest of his life. He rejected clerical celibacy, getting married himself to a nun he had rescued. He composed hymns and also translated the Bible, famously adding the word alone into the Scriptures so it supported his theology of faith alone, as well as removing seven books from the Old Testament because he did not agree with what they contained. There is much more that could be said about Luther. He was, more than anyone else, responsible for the Protestant Reformation. Check out some of the other videos we have that discuss his history and influence. His writings and sermons were popular because he had a humorous but vulgar style. He spoke and acted in a coarse way, and said some really horrible things. He was anti semitic, opposed to the Jews, and wrote against them extensively. Some historians think that, because of his popularity, his writings might be one of the reasons for the terrible anti semitism in Germany that culminated with the Nazis and the Holocaust.
But Luther s being a nasty, vulgar man who said horrible things about Jews and others shouldn't be why we reject him. We should reject him because he rejected the Church and, by doing so, rejected Christ. Luther thought he was lighting a candle to bring light. Really, he was setting a fire and that fire has burned for 500 years. He said men could interpret Scripture themselves privately, without reference to the Church. And men have done that for the last five centuries and now there are tens of thousands of Protestant communities all over the world, with new ones being invented every single day in their own little Protestant revolts. Luther's legacy is one of rebellion, and saying rebellion is okay, that it can reform the Church. But rebellion can never reform the Church, because only the Church is the house built on rock. Yes, there can be men who are evil and greedy like Tetzel and others but that doesn't mean the Church is wrong. And we mustn't think we can interpret Scripture which the Church wrote! better than the Church herself. We see this in the Church today. Check out our series Remaining in the Truth, where a cleric (another German, as it happens!) argues using Scripture something contrary to the Faith because he thinks he knows best. But you're not going to do that, right? I'll leave you with one thing. The lesson we can learn from Luther isn't really a warning against his theology although Protestant inspired theology has infected Catholic thought, especially in the United States. We can defend ourselves against Lutheran heresy by learning authentic Catholicism. No, the warning we learn from Luther's example is to keep praying. Luther was a clever, well educated man, but he spent too much of his time studying and working. Now, in the modern world this sounds stupid; how can we spend too much time studying and working? We should learn everything we can, get good qualifications, get a degree so we can get a good job. And then work hard at that job. Even if it is not for the money, God wants us to work hard at our duties, doesn't He? Our duties are to get to Heaven, to be holy, to know and love God. Of course we mustn't be lazy and stupid. But we must leave time for prayer, time to talk to God and let Him talk to us. Luther neglected to say his Daily Office; do we neglect to say some prayers each day? Can we set aside half an hour to say the Rosary each day? Spend time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament each week? It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking I have so much work to do, I don't have time to pray. No! You don't have time not to pray, to spend time with Jesus. All of your work, even work done specifically for God, won't get you to Heaven without prayer. Build your life around prayer, not your prayer around your life.
Well, that's all for this time. Like I said, Luther is a towering figure in Protestantism, and his life, history, impact and theology are much larger than I could hope to address here. Check out some of the links we've included. Many of them are shows on our Premium channel you can watch right away. But for now, stay holy and keep praying, my friends. I'm Charles Hornbacher, and this has been Houses Built On Sand.